Tristan

So, Fionn had found an immortal vampire buried in the ground and the fucker was apparently impossible to kill. I hadn’t even needed him to pass on his opponent’s name, I’d figured it out the moment I’d heard the terms “buried,” “blood magic,” and “short.”

It was Abhartach, quite possibly the oldest vampire. Definitely among the oldest beings that wasn’t a spirit or demon with a hundred different variations to their myth who could feed on everything from blood to souls, depending on who you asked.

Fionn had messaged Charlemagne, and the emperor had magically passed that message along to me, along with a little extra information about how Mia and Dietrich were currently in the fortress, back from their first expedition, so I could wait for them with the portal. Should, really, and I should also go meet them halfway to minimize the amount of time it took before I zapped us to Ireland.

As I ran, I took my sword, Nagelring, out of [Diplomatic Pouch] and tried to strap it to my belt, failed miserably, then used [Modern Makeover] to recreate my outfit exactly as it was right now, except this time, my belt was threaded through the loop of the blade’s sheath.

I also heard the System finally confirm that I had learned some more spells, these ones more utility-focused.

[Spell gained: Lesser Visual Illusion]

[Spell gained: Lesser Auditory Illusion]

[Spell gained: Light]

[Spell gained: Mend]

That last one was utterly superfluous for me, but since I was mostly learning to teach others, I’d still picked up the object-repairing ability.

As for the others, it was simple. Lighting up the dark was useful, the auditory illusion would be nice as a white noise machine, and the visual illusions would give me some privacy whenever I wanted.

And I could make holograms with it. [Objective Recordkeeping] already let me display my memories in visual form, but nowhere near as well, or as impressively, as three-dimensional models of light would.

But none of those were even remotely useful right now, which was semi-frustrating.

I ran straight into Dietrich and Mia as I ran through the corridors, slid to an immediate stop, and emerged into the northmost location in Ireland I’d ever been. It was just a random spot I’d passed through when I’d been running all over Europe to optimize my portals during the tail end of the Second Challenge, but there was nevertheless an Irish army helicopter standing there in the middle of the road, blades already spun up right to the point where it could take off in a matter of seconds, just far enough away that there was no risk of someone leaving a portal walking into the rotor.

There was even a soldier standing right there, close enough that, if he shouted, I could hear him even over the noise of the chopper. Barely.

It took a few seconds of shouting back and forth, but the gist of the matter was that Fionn had sent the chopper to ferry reinforcements to the battle. So I joined Dietrich and Mia on the chopper, not because I intended to help fight, but because if we needed more reinforcements, having been there would let me teleport people straight there.

The helicopter ride was noisy and brief, and we were let out a couple of hundred meters from where the Fianna was currently clashing with the ancient vampire. It didn’t look quite as bad on the ground, but from above, from the air, I’d been able to see a long scar carved into the ground. Bloody mud, spires of stone, small embering fires, what looked like lightning strikes … the landscape had been devastated, but the lone figure dueling the Fianna was largely intact, while his opponents were looking wary. Healthy, but inching ever closer to a state of exhaustion.

Abhartach was a chump, all things considered. He’d died to heroes, assassins, and even farmers with pitchforks, repeatedly, but therein lay precisely the problem. He could die repeatedly and pop right back up like one of those dolls that always stood up straight the moment you stopped holding them down.

Dietrich had killed a dragon using just a magical sword, alone, and even before that, he’d fought it to a standstill without a single enchanted piece of gear, only wielding his hunting equipment.

Fionn had slain countless foes, including the fire-breathing giant Aillen, prince of the Tuatha de Dannan. After repeatedly stabbing himself with his spear to stay awake through the monster’s somnolent song.

Ogier had killed countless Saracens, won wars on Charlemagne’s behalf, killed the Giant King Brehus, and defeated Cath Palug, a monstrous giant cat that haunted Wales. Though in some stories, that last one was a part of Arthur’s legend, I hadn’t asked for clarification.

Any one of them was practically able to turn Abhartach into paste with a sneeze, and they had likely killed him a dozen more times just while I’d been here, watching.

But getting him dead wasn’t the problem, making him stay dead was. And there was no known way to do this, not in his legend, not in anyone else’s legend. It was impossible … which meant that I suddenly knew two things.

One, we all had, collectively, forgotten to inform Fionn of the fact that Excalibur could destroy impossibility and that was a major oversight.

Two, I knew how to kill Abhartach.

And actually, there was a third piece of information I’d realized just now. Excalibur had somehow resisted Fionn’s scrying. Was it a matter of it being fundamentally resistant, it countering Fionn’s “absolute” ability to gather information, or it being not of this world, thereby being beyond the earthly domain that Fionn’s knowledge was centered around?

I grabbed my phone as I scrambled to open up the distance again, hoping against all odds that Arthur was even remotely close to a place I’d been so I could teleport him straight here.

***

Dietrich

That thing was literally immortal. [Equalizer] insisted its powers were baked in, a part of the vampire’s fundamental being, with no runes to cut, items to steal, and utterly lacking in clear weak points.

And [Slayer of Myth] was sliding off like water from a duck’s back, completely unable to advise him how to kill the unkillable in any meaningful way. Disintegration, complete destruction, mixing the ashes with something else … nothing would work. Nothing save a vague sense that destroying the source of his power, the being who had granted Abhartach his abilities would cause him to slowly lose his immortality.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Yet that was as much as he could gather, with him having no real threads to pull on with how to find that being.

Of course, that also led Dietrich to an entirely new idea, the blade that could overcome all kinds of impossibilities and no-win situations, but Tristan had clearly realized that Excalibur would fix this situation at the same time he had.

So Dietrich decided to ignore that part of the battle and chose to instead focus on relieving the beleaguered Fianna, who had been fighting this unwinnable fight for a long time.

He charged, whipping Mimung out of its sheath, and the warriors currently holding back the vampire understood his intentions without him even having to speak.

They’d been fighting for a long time, trying to hold down an unstoppable, immortal, foe had to be draining. Dietrich, on the other hand, was entirely fresh. So the members of Fianna retreated just as he arrived, a final sword stroke hacking off Abhartach’s legs to keep him in place for the few seconds Dietrich needed to set up his attack.

The vampire’s head flew off as Mimung hacked through his neck but [Endless Cut] carried the blade back around, chopping off the right arm beneath the shoulder, carving through the chest, then out the other side before coming back from the opposite direction, weaving back and forth half a dozen times until the Abhartach was reduced to nothing but cubes of meat falling towards the ground.

Then, Dietrich punched the mess, [Titan Strike] utterly blasting apart the pile of cubed meat and spreading it over several dozen square meters, a gory mess of blood and bone that began to pull itself together again almost immediately, all flying towards a single point, a single chunk lying there in the distance.

“That’s the heart!” he yelled, pointing, while he ran towards it.

But before he reached it, and before Abhartach could fully pull himself together again, the single chunk things to be flying towards came rocketing towards him, though it clearly wasn’t the vampire’s doing, not with how the rest of the pieces were suddenly looking like the swarm from a kicked beehive.

A [Grand Slash] slammed into the heart and reduced it to a bloody mist that went absolutely everywhere, painting even the relatively clean parts of the stone floor red.

Dietrich turned and flashed his squire a grateful grin. She might have only learned magic mere days ago, but her use of [Lesser Telekinetic Pull] had been beyond perfect.

And even that hadn’t been enough to put down their enemy.

Though this time, regeneration did seem a little slower. “Slower” in the sense that instead of putting himself back together across several minutes, instead of a mere handful. And reaching that point had practically required the heart to be atomized and spread out across a huge area.

He and Mia could work with that, always striking at Abhartach the moment any part of their foe was solid enough to target, but based on all the ash and scorch marks, that same trick had been tried before, just with magic rather than physical force. And they had also failed.

As the vampire began to slowly take a new form, Mia charged in, using one of her Sword Arts to hack into him almost a hundred times in under a second, causing the regeneration to stutter briefly before resuming his inexorable return.

So they continued to fight, the tide of battle eternally against the vampire, but it was never to the point where he was in any danger of losing.

The greatest “attack” Abhartach ever landed was a wave of blood and crimson spikes that made Dietrich lurch back, but that only served to make him use another big attack. [Sword Art: Giantsplitter] cleaved not just the magical construct but also the vampire, making him pause just barely long enough for Dietrich to hack him apart again. And again. And then, Fionn took over once again, tearing apart that immortal pest with magic and what had to be his dozenth sword.

… He’d broken a lot, based on some of the comments Dietrich had overheard.

***

Arthur

Just what the hell had those idiots gotten into? An issue that had half a dozen Ancients piling on and still needed him to help?

Really, what had they gotten themselves into?

At least he’d already been finished with what he was doing in Greece. There’d been a massive lion with impenetrable fur running around since the first wave of monster which he’d set out to beat, and he’d managed it handily.

Fur that was impenetrable to anything save the beast’s own claws parted like cheap parchment under Excalibur, and with that in mind, all he had left to face was a giant lion. Hardly the first overly-large animal he’d slain, in this lifetime or the last.

He’d barely finished skinning the thing when that infernal device known as a “cellular phone” had gone off, making a ridiculous amount of racket.

Though whatever faults the young man on the other end had, he could give good directions. Arthur should head to the Acropolis, the large mountain in the middle of the city the plane had dropped him off at, and call back once he was at what used to be the front gate.

So that was what he did, with the still-bloody lion pelt slung over one shoulder. He ran.

People stared whenever they saw him, and by the time he entered the city proper, his mere presence was all but causing traffic accidents, and some of the citizens even tried to talk to him for … something.

But he wasn’t here to do any of that, and besides, he didn’t even speak Greek.

And after half an hour, he was standing on the mountaintop, and calling the portal mage back. It took a while to make the phone’s screen work, it had some trouble detecting his fingers while they still had blood on them. Damn technology!

Levers, wheels, and gears might be nowhere near as capable as these phones, but they did what they did regardless of such trivialities as someone not having clean hands.

But he managed it, and a portal flashed open around fifty meters away. Arthur strode towards it.

“So, what exactly is the issue, and why couldn’t you handle it?” he growled.

“Literally immortal vampire,” the young man said. “Excalibur should be able to destroy him, though you might have to destroy the heart for it to work.”

Arthur nodded, tossed him the lion pelt, and began to stride towards where he could see the battle unfolding.

Excalibur slid from its sheath with a low but deliberate scraping sound, announcing his entrance into the battle.

“I’m your opponent now!” Arthur bellowed, triggering [Royal Proclamation], making everyone who hadn’t already noticed him jump, including the vampire.

Though the main point had been to warn off everyone. Between [Army of One] and [The Lonely Road] much of his power depended on him being alone in the fight, so it really would be nice if everyone could just. Take. The. Hint.

They could, as it turned out.

The vampire glared at him as the others backed off, crimson armor forming around his form, before lunging for Arthur’s throat as blood-red claws sprang up on his knuckles.

It was abundantly clear how much this guy had learned to lean on his immortality to win.

Arthur swayed out of the path of the strike and swept Excalibur around, the blood armor barely enough to stop his sword, and the flesh and bone underneath was even less of a hindrance.

Spinning around, Arthur was already facing the vampire as a cry of utter pain and fury rang across the battlefield, clearly having realized that that leg was staying … it was supposed to stay off. The vampire was suddenly standing again, leg re-attached, but it wasn’t quite the same. It was there, connected to the stump, but a crimson line remained where the limb had been amputated. Blood magic gluing that abomination back together?

So, that was how it was … the Germans’ adjutant had been right. He probably would have to destroy the heart to end this.

A single [Grand Slash] simultaneously flattened the vampire and bisected him. He was still moving and managed to reinflate himself somewhat, so the heart hadn’t been destroyed, but the vampire was nevertheless too injured to defend himself from the follow-up attack.

It was a simple diagonal cleave, entering the torso above the left shoulder and exiting at the right hip, and the vampire simply fell apart as he hit the ground.

Every single “fix” the monster in human skin had made also collapsed, resulting in Arthur standing in a massive lake of … mess. He wrinkled his nose, then turned around and headed to where the others were waiting, and the adjutant was saying something.

“… I think the real takeaway is that there could be a whole lot more buried. We should probably start searching. Maybe we’ll even find Merlin in his tree…”

The young man trailed off as he noticed Arthur’s expression.

“How do you know what happened to Merlin?” Arthur growled.