“Are you sure you’re okay, Lucy?” Chloe questioned, carefully examining Lucy who sat down as her friend did this.

The cleric giggled lightly. “I’m fine, Chloe. I’m just a little sluggish, okay?”

While the girl pair were relaxing a little, Vlad and Arthur stood near the stairs and pensively stared down the steps. After Lucy was finally healed with the help of the blood ritual, the Cleric got to work and used her healing spell on Arthur and Chloe, healing both of them. With all three of Vlad’s friends fully recovered, they were now ready to move on to the next step.

“Although we’re all healed up and ready for a fight, I doubt we can just rush down there and deal with all the goblins, including the Boss,” Arthur noted.

“No,” Vlad muttered. “though we also can’t take our time, since we’re on the clock. We’ll have to be efficient. We need to take them all down, or at least a good majority of them to where we can take on the Boss and exterminate the nest.”

This entire warehouse was filled with Goblins. Even when Vlad took down a lot of them on the second floor when he saved his friends, he doubted that he took down ten percent of the whole population. There were so many monsters that it would take Vlad and his friends a while to get rid of all of them. And they were short on time as it was.

“Do you have any skills that can help us?” Arthur asked. “Like that blood wave skill from before?”

“It’s called [Blood Strike], and while I do think it can help, I’m certain it won’t be as effective against the entire horde. Plus, using the skill too much will severely deplete my Blood Points, and I don’t know if I can multi-task.”

While [Blood Strike] was powerful, Vlad knew that even that skill was not strong enough to take on the goblin nest. He probably would eliminate a quarter of the nest before he ran out of BP. After that, he was a sitting duck…or sitting vampire in this case.

Knowing that his most trusted skill wasn’t going to be of much use, he needed to come up with another plan. One that wasn’t time-consuming.

“Also,” Arthur leaned toward Vlad as he whispered. “What are we going to do about Lucy?”

Both players turned and glanced over at the Cleric and Brawler, still resting a little after everything that happened. As Vlad took a closer look at Lucy, his gaze was especially trained on her eyes after he saw them briefly flash red before. Seeing something like that, he was reminded about the corruption that occurred during the ritual, and her crimson eyes might be connected to it.

However, that did beg the question…what kind of corruption were they dealing with?

“Right now, we have a lot more problems on our hands regarding the goblins. At the moment, we just monitor her and see if she shows any changes to her behavior.”

“Like what?”

“My guess? Acting violent or maybe displaying physical changes.”

“Like with you?”

Vlad turned to Arthur after hearing this, wearing a rather stern and serious expression. “Believe me when I say, if she starts turning into what I am, then we have a serious problem.”

Having Lucy turn into a Vampire would be the worst thing to happen. That and it would make her extremely unpredictable. Vlad and the other two won’t know what to do with her, and they might not even be able to keep her vampirism a secret. Hell, she might not be able to control herself like Vlad was doing and just go on a blood-drinking rampage. That would be the worst kind of situation that they would have to deal with.

“We can worry about Lucy’s corruption situation later, alright? For now, we need to focus on the situation regarding the nest. How do we deal with all the monsters before the time runs out?”

“Speaking of which,” Arthur muttered, his tone being filled with concern. “How much time do we have?”

Right, there should be a timer that told the group how much time was left before they failed the mission, like back when the apocalypse started and they had to last ten minutes. Knowing this, Vlad glanced at the quest, immediately spotting the timer.

[45:22]

“Tch,” He clicked his tongue, realizing how short on time they were. “We only have a few more minutes before we only have half our left. Even then, I’m not sure we’ll be able to come up with a plan.”

“What about your Blood Ritualist Profession?” Arthur suggested. “Do you have any more Blood Rituals aside from the Healing Sacrifice one that could possibly help us?”

“Other than [Healing Sacrifice], there’s [Siphon Life] and [Blood Ward]. One ritual drains a target of their lives, and the other acts as a protection barrier. I can probably adjust the size of the blood circle for the [Siphon Life] ritual, but that will likely require a lot of blood points. That and I need to make the circle before actually using it.”

From what Vlad could read from the description for the [Siphon Life] skill, Vlad would be able to receive blood points, but it’s the number of blood points he needed to spend that concerned him. While using the [Healing Sacrifice] ritual cost him 250 BP, using the [Siphon Life] skill in the way he planned to use would have cost twice as much. A whopping 500 BP. And right now, all Vlad is taking on at the moment are goblins below level 10. If he did this wrong, he would lose a lot of BP and would only use this ritual once, instead of multiple times.

He needed to play his cards right or he would lose the fight way before they get the chance to finish it. And he couldn’t afford to do that with his friends’ lives on the line.

“[Life Siphon] might be our only chance to get rid of a good majority of the monsters. But we need to do this right and collect as many goblins as we can to make up for the BP that I’m spending, alright? That’s the only way that this will work.”

“Yeah, I understand,” Arthur said. “So, for now, you should probably get some blood to fully replenish yourself, right?”

“I…actually got that part covered. And with Lucy fully healed and able to use her healing spells, she’ll be able to heal that bastard…”

Arthur’s face slowly looked concerned as he stared at his friend. “What do you mean by that?”

“You’ll find out in a minute,” Vlad stated while patting his friend’s shoulder. “You stick with Chloe and Lucy for a minute while I…bring in a certain somebody.”

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

Making this statement, Vlad walked away and moved toward the other side of the floor. Before walking back to his friends, Arthur couldn’t help but stare at the back of Vlad, worried about what he was talking about. It wasn’t that he didn’t know what kind of person Vlad was bringing to them. In fact, he knew exactly who he was bringing, and that was what concerned the knight.

However, knowing he couldn’t do anything to stop Vlad, he only let out a sigh before walking over to his Chloe and Lucy, enviably waiting for the reveal to occur.

…

A couple of minutes passed and Vlad finally returned, and much like before with the Blood Ritual, he was dragging something with him. Arthur and the girls could hear the muffled screams from where they were standing, immediately catching their attention as Vlad closed in on them.

Once he got in front of them, he tossed the person he was dragging in front of him and his friends, allowing them to see who it was. The moment the friend trio laid their eyes on the person, they widened with surprise before anger replaced their shocked expressions. Laid out before them was the very person who got them into this mess and even abandoned the trio to save his skin.

It was Rick Collins, one of the last surviving members of the team that first entered this warehouse. And he was in very bad shape. Not only was he bound, but his legs were still missing and bleeding all over the place. His stumped legs were roughly and crudely bandaged as if the person who did was in a hurry and didn’t care about being careful. While bound by rope, he was also gagged, as a large balled-up piece of cloth was lodged in his mouth. The thief thrashed around, trying to break free, but was unsuccessful.

When his eyes laid on Chloe and the other two, he looked surprised while trying to say something to them, but the gag was preventing the thief from speaking.

As the trio stared at Rick, their expressions slowly became colder and more menacing. And after everything that happened, they had every right to do this. Even Lucy, someone who was rather innocent and cherished life, couldn’t help but look at Rick with a disgusted expression. The very sight of this gave Rick chills, briefly stopping him from thrashing around to break free.

While this happened, Vlad bent down and reached for Rick’s gag, pulling it out so he could finally speak.

The thief let out a gasp as he glared at the vampire. “Y-you fucking psychopathic bastard! You cut off my legs and then tied me up so monsters could get to me?! I could’ve died you piece of sh-agh!?”

Vlad didn’t let the thief finish his sentence as he kicked him in the face. “Will you shut up, already? Hearing your voice is making my ears bleed, man.”

After getting kicked, Rick stared at Chloe, Lucy, and Arthur, a look of desperation and fear written all over his face.

“Y-you guys have to help me! Y-your friend here is out of his mind! W-what’s even worse is that he’s a fucking monster! H-he drank my blood after he cut my legs off! H-he’s a vampire, dammit! A damn blood-sucking monster!”

“We know,” Chloe said coldly while crossing her arms.

Rick’s face went pale. “W-what…?”

“She said we already know, asshole,” Arthur replied, his voice filled with anger. “Vlad told us after he saved us from the goblins.”

“You know, the very goblins you left us to die from?” Chloe emphasized. “As you ran away to save your own damn skin.”

Panic took over Rick, making him stutter as he spoke. “W-what was I supposed to do, dammit?! Die like the rest of you idiots?! The only reason we got into this mess is beca-aaagh!”

Chloe didn’t let him finish as she swiftly kicked him in his stomach, making the thief recoil in pain as he groaned.

“If you even think about blaming me, let me remind you that I had a bad feeling about this place from the start,” Chloe snarled. “I knew something about this warehouse was wrong, and didn’t want to enter it, but guess who decided to ignore my suggestion just so he could gain some reputation? You!”

“Y-you fucking bit-ugh!”

Vlad stomped on his head, grinding his shoes against the Thief’s face angrily. “You so much as finish that sentence, I will make your death a painful one. Got it?!”

Rick weakly and fearfully nodded, not wanting to get beat up anymore. Satisfied with the response, Vlad lifted his foot off the thief.

“Anyway, Lucy, I need you to heal this guy,” Vlad asked his friend. “I’m assuming your spell won’t be able to fully heal his legs?”

Lucy continued to glare at Rick before turning her gaze toward Vlad, a gentle smile replacing her previous cold demeanor. “Yes, I won’t be able to regenerate his legs with my spell. Will that be a problem for what you plan to do?”

“No,” Vlad stated while bending down to glower at Rick. “I just need him healed enough to provide me with some…power.”

Hearing this, Rick started to panic once more, squirming in his bindings as the vampire smiled at him.

“N-no!” He cried out. “Don’t let him drink my blood! He’ll kill me, dammit!”

“Not our problem, asshole,” Chloe coldly stated. “You’re lucky Vlad’s taking your life. If it were up to me, I would’ve tossed you to the horde of goblins and watched as they ripped you limp from limp.”

It seemed that Arthur and Lucy agreed with Chloe’s statement, as the two nodded their heads in response. Seeing this, Rick realized he had no one on his side as everyone was against him, only making him freak out more.

“Dammit, dammit, dammit!” He roared. “It’s not my fault, dammit! You guys were deadweight when we climbed those stairs! Any one of you would’ve done the same if you were in my shoes!”

“Honestly, you’re not wrong,” Chloe said. “The only difference is that the only person we would abandon is you. I would still save my friends and leave you to die.”

“Y-you…you!” Rick started to seethe, his eyes bloodshot as they glared at Chloe and the others. “I-I’ll kill you! I’ll kill all of yo-mff!”

Vlad covered the Thief’s mouth, slowly getting annoyed by his antics. “We’re wasting time, at the moment. Lucy, heal him.”

“Understood,” Lucy nodded while walking over to him.

With her arms raised, the cleric used her healing spell on Rick as a yellow light enveloped the thief. As it did, his wounds slowly mended together, as if time was turning back. A few seconds later, Rick was fully healed, aside from his legs still being stumps.

Seeing this, Vlad smiled, revealing his fangs as he hungrily stared at the player.

“Alright then, time to dig in…” Before digging his fangs into Rick, Vlad turned to his friends. “You guys might not want to see this, so…”

“No, we do,” Chloe declared, surprising Vlad in the process.

“A-are you sure…” He asked, clearly concerned regarding this situation. “I’m about to feed on this guy. You may hate him, but seeing what I’m about to do might not be what you want to see.”

Although Vlad understood his friends' anger, he also knew that watching him feed on the bastard wasn’t exactly going to be a sight to see. And yet they looked determined to watch, which…disturbed the vampire a little bit.

“This bastard left us to die while he tried to stay alive, Vlad,” Chloe asserted. “He deserves every second of this, and I’m going to watch.”

“Same here,” Arthur agreed.

“Yes,” Lucy chimed in as well.

Seeing all his friends in agreement that they want to watch Rick die slightly worried Vlad. However, he couldn’t really dwell on it since they were still on the clock, so he pushed the thought aside and focused on feeding.

“Alright, have it your way then.”

The vampire then gripped the thief by the collar, bringing him up to where they were at eye level. As Vlad stared at Rick, the bastard quivered in fear.

“P-please, do-aagh!”

Without letting his finish pleading for his life, Vlad sunk his fangs into the thief, draining him of his blood. The vampire once again tasted the sweet flavor from before, being filled with a sense of euphoria as if he were taking drugs. As Vlad continued to feed on the thief while he struggled in vain, Chloe, Lucy, and Arthur watched with blank expressions.

It was clear that they didn’t show any remorse for Rick’s demise, and Vlad wasn’t all that bothered by it. He was a bit embarrassed that his friends were watching him feed though. It was kind of like them staring at him while he was eating alone. It felt really awkward.

It didn’t take long before Vlad received the Kill Notification as Rick’s body went limp soon after.

[Player Rick Collins has been defeated! 1,200 EXP has been obtained!]

[You have defeated your first player! An additional 3,500 EXP has been obtained!]

[You are experiencing a Level-Up! You are now Level 13!]

[You have obtained 5 SP!]

[Player has consumed the blood of another player! 140 BP has been collected!]

[Skill [Hemophagia] has been activated! An additional 30 BP has been collected!]

Once Rick was dead, Vlad released the thief, watching him fall to the floor like a lifeless doll. Breathing heavily, he turned his gaze to his friends, noticing how they were unaffected by the scene.

The four of them stared at one another before Vlad finally spoke first. “Alright then, let’s get to work.”

And thus the Monster Nest Extermination Quest finally began.