After Theo’s body hit the ground he took a ragged breath as his body greedily sucked in air. As he gulped down another breath he glanced around in confusion, it was completely dark and he didn’t know where he was at first. On his next breath he regained some clarity and quickly stood up as he started to cast a barrier spell. After the barrier spell was in place he then created a new light spell, to see what was going on.
As the space around him became illuminated, he took a step back. The vampire lord stood directly in front of him with a blank look on his face like he was under a genjutsu. Theo studied him for a few moments in confusion before a voice said, “I admit, I’m just as confused as you are. A vampire lord shouldn’t be able to fall for one of your genjutsus. But whatever your eyes did overpowered them.”
“My eyes?” Theo asked as he turned around to see Tao, who nodded as she said, “Your eyes changed.”
Theo froze for a moment as he sensed the chakra flowing to his eyes which he cut off, before he threw both arms in the air as he said, “My eyes changed!”
“Yes, yes, your eyes changed. Congratulations. But you should really change back before someone else sees the real you.” Tao said in an unimpressed tone of voice.
Theo’s eyes went wide for a moment before he henged back into Ezekiel. Afterwards he pulled out a seal and placed it on his arm. Once that was done he glanced at Tao and asked, “What took you so long? That was easily five minutes or more.”
Tao smiled as she said, “I’ve been here since just after you called me early. I’ve watched everything you did to see where you currently lack so we can focus on it during training. Which reminds me.”
Tao flicked her hand and the vampire lifted into the air as she said, “Come along, we need to go back to the others.”
Ezekiel frowned before he pulled the sword from the vampire's hand and said, “If you’ve been here since the start, why didn’t you help sooner? I could have died.”
“It was an invaluable training experience for you and the others. One that you will never forget.” Tao said with the hint of a smile before she added, “Besides, he wanted you alive.”
Ezekiel glanced at the vampire lord for a moment before he said, “That’s true, but shouldn’t you restrain him? I’m not sure how long that genjutsu will last.”
“It’ll be fine. But you should probably summon a medical team to help Mordo and the others. They’re alive, but pretty beat up.” Tao said as they walked out of the tunnel into the cavern area the vampire used.
Ezekiel paused to check his chakra reserve before he summoned shadow clones of Sakura and a few more medical-nin from different villages. They rushed over to the others and started to work on them. Luckily like Tao said, they were banged up but had no life threatening injuries. The vampire in his haste only subdued them before he knocked them out. So within a couple of minutes all of them were back up and on their feet.
After everyone was up, Ezekiel told the medical-nin to go check on the people in the cages. Before he handed Sanhildr her sword back and said, “Sorry about that, I honestly didn’t think he would be that powerful.”
“It’s fine, as a warrior, fighting a strong opponent is a great honor and helps to test your skills. Unfortunately my skills are currently lacking since I haven’t adjusted to this body.” Sanhildr said with a smile.
Mordo frowned slightly as he pointed a finger at Ezekiel and said in a raised tone of voice, “I told you! I told you to stop joking around! If The Ancient One didn’t show up, we all could have died because of your foolish actions!”
Ezekiel raised both arms in the air as he said, “Let's just chill out for a moment and think about what he said. He planned to kill us from the start, it was only because of me that he didn't. If anything I kinda saved our lives.”
“That doesn't make it any better! I told you before, don't goof off and take this seriously!” Mordo said as he glared at Ezekiel.
Kaecilius nodded in agreement before he said, “While it's good no one was seriously hurt, you need to take things more seriously when facing any opponent. Especially an unknown and powerful one like that.”
“Exactly. If we had worked together from the start, we could have easily subdued the creature till sunrise.” Mordo said.
Tao coughed lightly before she said, “While I agree Ezekiel should take things more seriously.”
Tao turned to look at Mordo and Kaecilius as she said, “I don’t understand how neither of you failed to kill this vampire lord alone. Let alone Ezekiel.”
“It was basically immune to everything we used on it except Sanhildr's sword. We planned to restrain it and kill it with sunlight.” Mordo said.
Kaecilius nodded in agreement as he said, “It even broke out of a combination binding spell with little issue.”
Tao nodded along before she asked, “Did either one of you read the small collection of books we have on vampires and how to deal with them?”
Kaecilius shook his head as he said, “I started the main one on vampire types, but never finished it.”
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“And you?” Tao asked as she turned to look at Mordo.
Mordo shook his head as he said, “It's not my area of study, so I never looked into them.”
“So you came to fight a large nest of vampires and neither of you bothered to invite someone who knows about vampires to help?” Tao asked with a raised eyebrow.
Both men shook their heads as Ezekiel snickered for a moment before Tao turned her gaze on him and said, “I don’t know why you’re enjoying this. You’re just as responsible for this mess as they are.”
Tao glanced over them for a moment before she said, “I want all of you to read the complete collection of vampire books within the next month and you will also be training with me four hours each day for the next month.”
Ezekiel wanted to argue it wasn’t his fault, but the look Tao gave him stopped him as he nodded in agreement instead. Tao then pointed to the vampire lord who was floating in the air under Ezekiel’s genjutsu as she said, “Now, I’m going to wake that creature up and show you how to deal with a vampire lord.”
Blade who was next to Ezekiel leaned in as he said, “Is this okay? He beat us like we were children the last time.”
Ezekiel nodded as he said, “When she’s like this, it best to let her do what she wants… It’s not like we could stop her anyways.”
“Stop talking and pay attention.” Tao commanded as she slammed the vampire lord into the ground breaking him out of the genjutsu.
A moment later the vampire lord climbed to his feet and looked around in confusion as he asked, “What happened? Wasn’t I just torturing that little bastard?”
He noticed everyone back on their feet along with Tao and the other new people and frowned as he looked at Ezekiel and asked, “What did you do? What were those eyes?”
Tao pointed at the vampire lord as she said, “Pay attention because we only have one. When facing a vampire lord the first thing you should do is restrain them with the proper spell.”
The vampire lord rushed towards Tao and hit a protective barrier before he said, “It was you, you must have helped him!”
Tao causally waved her hand and a binding spell latched onto the vampire lord. As the vampire lord struggled against the bindings she said, “This is a spell designed to hold any type of vampire. No matter how powerful they are, they will never be able to break out of it.”
As the vampire lord struggled against the bindings Tao glanced at the other as she said, “The next step is the most important one, so remember it well.”
Tao spun her hand in a circle for a moment and a blindingly bright portal opened up underneath the vampire lord which made him scream in pain as his skin burned and peeled off before he dropped down into the portal itself. After the vampire lord passed through the portal, the darkness and cold that blanketed the area disappeared a moment later. Tao left the portal open and looked at everyone as she said, “You open a portal in space facing the sun and drop them into it.”
Ezekiel opened his mouth to speak and couldn’t find the words for a few moments. Both Mordo and Kaecilius also looked lost for words before Tao closed the portal up and said, “It’s good all of you realize, just how stupid you really are. I expect to see all of you for training, starting tomorrow. I’ll hold it at the Genosha school at three AM Genosha time. Is that understood?”
“Yes master.” The three of them said before Tao nodded, created a portal and left.
After Tao left Ezekiel glanced where the vampire lord fell into the portal and said, “You know it makes perfect sense… Now that I stop to think about it. We could have used portals the whole time…”
Mordo shot a glare at Ezekiel but before he could say anything, Kaecilius placed a hand on his shoulder as he said, “We’re all at fault in what happened and let's leave it at that.”
Mordo let out a tired sigh before he said, “You're right…”
Ezekiel turned towards everyone and said, “Sorry again about what happened, I’ll be more serious when facing unknown enemies from now on.”
“Ezekiel! I need help over here!”
Everyone turned to see Sakura as she stood over one of the five torture tables using a skill. Ezekiel quickly crossed the room and stopped next to Sakura as he asked, “What’s wrong?”
“They're still alive!”
Ezekiel looked down at the man who’s chest cavity was splayed open and saw his heart slowly beating. Ezekiel then glanced at the other tables and noticed the other people were all in a similar state, but still alive. Ezekiel pulled out his tablet and made a call on it, which was picked up on the second ring before a woman said, “If you're wondering about the oldman, he's out of surgery and stable.”
“Lady Tsunade, I have five people here in critical condition. I need your help to stabilize them.” Sakura said as she worked on the person in front of her.
“Sakura, how bad are they?”
Ezekiel glanced at them as he said, “Someone opened them up like they were doing an autopsy.”
“Open a portal, I’ll be there in a moment with a team.” Tsunade said before she hung up the call.
Ezekiel put his tablet away before he opened up a portal, and within a half a minute Tsunade, Shizune and a medical team came out of the portal. Without a word they each moved to a different person and went to work.
Ezekiel then moved back to his original group and said, “I’ll finish cleaning up down here, while you guys go and finish off any vampires we didn’t kill in the tunnel.”
Mordo nodded before he said, “We’ll double check everything and then head back up. If they're done, I’ll have Wong drop the contaminant spell and transport everyone back.”
Ezekiel nodded his head and said, “Thank you.”
Ezekiel glanced at Sanhildr before she left and said, “I’ll contact you once I’m done down here.”
She nodded her head and then headed back with the others to go back upstairs. Blade was the only one who stayed behind as he asked, “Did she say Whistler was stable?”
“Ya, I’ll take you to him once I’m done here.”
After that Ezekiel went around the area and stored everything into storage scrolls. The medical equipment, books, coffin, the blood from the pool of blood. After he finished, the five people on the tables were stable enough to move so Ezekiel opened a portal and let Blade go back to visit Whistler with Tsunade and the others.
After that he used an earth style skill to fill in the cavern and the tunnel that connected to it. It took almost an hour and a lot of chakra but he was able to fill in everything with compacted dirt. Once finished he double checked the building himself one more time before he left for Genosha. He needed to take Sanhildr and the valkyries out for breakfast and then make them watch a movie.