Scouting
Saia and I left in the same general direction, but not together. Or rather a part of Saia left, in her drone, while her core and a thin band around my wrist remained. We wanted to maximize the area we could cover, so we separated. She couldn’t be too far away from me, as the core of her being was within me, but she could range out several kilometers away from me.
It was hard to get lost in this place, it was a halo after all, there were only two directions that one could feasibly go. We picked a big landmark, a mountain sticking out in the distance on the curve of the halo, and decided that was our destination. Saia took the left side, while I decided to head to the right.
I was glad that the others had agreed with this plan, we all needed to get stronger. Not that we had been doing nothing before, it was just that I, and apparently everybody else, felt that we could’ve done more. And looking up and seeing Terra falling behind Suul’Dar every day had lit up a fire beneath our feet.
I ran through the forest, not at top speed as that would’ve tired me out quickly, but still faster than a human could manage. I searched for any signs of trials, but I only encountered beasts that I avoided, though I did make note of their locations. The team would need to make their way through here if I found something ahead.
The first hour, I was surrounded by a forest, until I stepped out into a completely different biome. A lush grassland stretched in front of me. Plains and pastures speckled with lakes and rivers.
I didn’t pause for long. I ran across the plains in the open, there wasn’t much cover, which made me hypervigilant of my surrounding. I crested a hill and came to a stop. It looked like a good location to scout things out a bit.
I reached back and pulled out my serpent-tongue spear out of from the improvised sheath behind backpack, then I slung the pack off too.
I reached in and pulled out my binoculars. It was one of the few items that I had managed to save. A couple of days ago I had an accident over a river, where I lost a lot of my supplies. My gemstones, my ammo boxes, ferro rods, and a few bandages all spilled out and were lost to the current.
Thankfully, I still had my grapple with paracord, binoculars, and gourds with blood and some bandages.
I looked through the binoculars, scanning the plains and looking for anything of interest to direct my heading. The mountain that was my destination still loomed in the distance on the upslope of the halo.
I noted a large herd of beasts that looked like a cross between a bison and a rhinoceros, as they had a horn growing from their foreheads. I would’ve called them unicorns if they weren’t so wide and thickly built.
I decided to avoid them. Then, a glint of purple light caught my eye. It was a rift. We didn’t know exactly what the colors of rifts meant, but so far green rifts were the easiest, and most often just puzzle themed. Blue were harder, and had a chance of being resource rifts—meaning once they were cleared they wouldn’t be repopulated with beasts if there were any inside, but they would remain with any resources within. White, like the one that I had cleared on Ish Vimza was still unknown as I hadn’t encountered another like it since. Red were rifts that were close to breaking open and spilling monsters out. I didn’t know if they started as any other color and then changed, or if there were a specific different shade of red rifts—what we knew about them was that they disappeared once cleared. Purple though, that I hadn’t encountered before.
My task was to find trials, but… Rifts did provide investment, and I was sure enough that I could clear any rift fast enough that it wouldn’t be an issue.
I packed my stuff away and then rushed across the plain toward the rift.
“Did you find anything?” I asked once I got close to the rift.
Saia’s voice answered from the thin band around my wrist. “Report: No trials or rifts, only a large group of animals.”
“Can you get your drone somewhere safe? We never tested how the connection between it and you will behave if I’m inside a rift.”
“Feedback: If rifts are wormholes that serve to transport those who enter to another place, then the distance between the drone and myself will be too large for me to continue operating it at a distance. I’ve left simple instructions and have hidden the drone as best as possible.”
“Great, heading in,” I pulled out my serpent-tongue spear out, then stepped close to the rift and felt it pull me in.
The moment of disorientation passed quickly, and my feet hit solid ground. Immediately I could tell that this was going to be a pain.
The rift behind me vanished, meaning that no one else could enter, and that I would have to accomplish something in order for the exit to appear. We still didn’t know a lot about the rules of how many people could enter a rift, it seemed to vary. Some were apparently solo; others had the entrance vanish after a set time-frame after the first person entered. Others had a hard cap of three, of five, or even six.
Like all rifts that were on the surface, the sky here was filled with lights of nebulae and stars. It was a flat plain, like the one that was outside the rift. A few trees grew here and there, but I could see across the entire rift. Like all others, it was a chunk of ground, an island floating in space, perhaps two kilometers across.
And it was filled with kobolds, an army of them, hundreds. As I rolled my shoulders and prepared, I had a thought about what kind of a rift this was. There were few people that could survive this on their own, but the fact that the entrance vanished as soon as I entered meant that it was probably limited to one or at most a handful of people. That put purple rifts in the dangerous tier, unless this one was an aberrant one.
“Report: I lost contact with my drone.”
“Expected,” I said simply.
I dropped my backpack to the ground then started walking toward the kobolds, I pulled the helmet from where it hung on my belt and put it on top of my head, fastening the clasp below my chin. I still wore my vest and after my fight with the Suul I was down to my last spare plates, as the others had been ruined in the fighting.
My second profile was currently active, which meant that my combat trait was active too. This seemed like a perfect opportunity to test things out.
I waited until they were relatively close, their screams and roars of challenge assaulted my ears, and their charge shook the ground.
I dashed forward, straight into their first line and swung, cutting down half a dozen of them with a single attack. I felt a shudder pass through the Way, the world around me, and knew that some of them were activating skills. I didn’t try to evade, I pushed forward, settling into the third kata of Veiled Mist Assault: Advance, Whirling Mist. I spun, wielding my weapon and carving up room for myself as they surrounded me.
I could feel my trait activating, it pulsed within me. With every death at my hands, I felt stronger. It was as if every time my weapon connected with my foe I got a burst of strength, I was tearing through them, armor, flesh, and bone.
Some of the kobolds were taller, more muscular, carrying larger weapons. One swung a double-headed axe at my head, and I sidestepped just enough for it to avoid splitting my head in half. I bent my knees as the axe hit the ground, and then stabbed forward, activating [Triple Thrust]
My weapon was surrounded by a faint sheen, and then my muscles burned as it stabbed forward three times in the span I could finish one. I punched two holes in the taller kobold’s abdomen, and the last stab obliterated its head.
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Something struck me in the back, but didn’t penetrate my armor. I twisted, acting on instinct as I let all the emotion I felt over the last few weeks flow through me. My anger at my sire, the feelings of inadequacy, even shame. It all rose through me, and the thirst sang with me. It wanted me to feed, but I directed it, guided it. I fought, time ceasing to have a meaning as I danced through blood and carnage.
Everything faded away but the slow pumping of my heart, the rage inside of me, and blood that splattered all over me.
From time to time, an errant thought would slip through. The same as I had before, wondering how and why these kobolds were attacking me. They were clearly intelligent, they spoke, yet they only wanted to kill me. Were they another race that the Grand Spell found somewhere else? Or where they like Shadow inside of my soul space, copies of real people?
I didn’t have the time nor the will to wonder. They wanted to kill me, that allowed me to retaliate and kill them in turn, that was all that mattered.
Something smashed into my side, sending me flying into a group of kobolds, and I bowled through them and took them to the ground. Others jumped over me, piling on top of me and trying to smother me in a mountain bodies. Stabs punched through my thighs, my side, my neck, one even through my cheek and into my mouth. I bit down and shattered the blade with my teeth, then roared and pushed, standing with a dozen kobolds clinging on to me and stabbing me with their short knives.
[Overburn Skill—Sonic Screech]
I took a breath that inflated my lungs past what was comfortable, then I opened my mouth and felt my throat tear open as my cords vibrated with a strength of the air pushed by an Elder Vampire’s strength.
A screech blasted out, raw and high pitched, I felt it expand and saw the air shake. The kobolds closest to me twitched, their eyes exploding out of their sockets as blood rushed through every orifice in their head. They fell from my body and every kobold near me followed. Most within a short distance were dead on the ground, while those further away fell to their knees, stunned.
I jumped forward over them, my wounds healing as I swung my weapon and cut down everything in my way. I laughed as warm blood splattered over my face, my tongue sneaking out to get a taste. I could hear the thirst whispering, it was frantic, so much blood all around me was sending it into a frenzy. My vision darkened, turning red with a haze that was familiar to me. It was stoking the fire of my emotions, trying to make me lose control. But that wasn’t who I was, I had an obligation, a debt to collect. I entered a rift, and kobolds charged me, death was a suitable price.
My emotions were mine, not the thirst’s, I was the only one that controlled it and myself. I embraced my emotions and used them as fuel. Silently, I offered the thirst a promise that there would be blood soon. My muscles burned, and the thirst calmed, almost as if it understood that it would get nothing if it tried to overtake me.
My movements were wild, erratic, but that was by design. I whirled uncaring for any attacks coming my way. I let them hit me and draw blood, they were inconsequential. A dirk stabbed through my ankle, cutting off a tendon and making me stumble and fall to my knee. A kobold jumped at my face, its eyes filled with madness and its mouth foaming red.
I dropped my weapon and grabbed it mid-air. It stabbed my arm, but before it could take its dirk out, I pulled it into a tight embrace that crushed its bones against me. My jaw opened, and I bit into the side of its neck, sucking blood like through a straw.
More attacked me from behind, stabbing me in the side and one climbed on top of my back. I barely had the presence of mind to realize that that could be dangerous when I felt something flowing over my arm beneath my clothes. A strike impacted the back of my neck and bounced off. I realized that Saia had moved and covered me there. That was dangerous. It was incredibly hard to kill a vampire like me, but severing the spine at the neck… My bones were tougher, so perhaps I could’ve survived that strike, but I had to be more careful.
I dropped the dead body in my arms, felt the blood fill my stomach and the thirst fed on it immediately. My wounds healed faster, my heart pumped, and I took a deep breath.
I switched from Scarlet Moon Style to Azure Moon. I drew the dagger from my hip with one arm then let my fear rise to the forefront. I almost died; it was easy to call up.
A sharp rise of panic alerted me, it was hard to explain what it felt like, like a sixth sense perhaps. One that was a combination of things. Through my perception of the Way, I could feel when skills were being activated, my other senses were constantly assaulted by information. The vibration of the ground and air, the scents around me, the light and shadows on the ground, all of it together touched something primal in my altered brain. Perhaps it was the thirst, flowing through my veins, my brain, but the result was emotion—fear and panic. I whirled the moment a blade touched my back, instead of a stabbing wound it cut open a thin and shallow cut across my hip, and then my dagger was in the kobold’s eye. Its head exploded from the force of the strike, my dagger and fist passing clean through.
Part of it was my Elder Vampire strength, and part I knew came from my new trait.
Another of the tall kobold’s came at me, this one carrying a wooden shield and a spear. I let him stab me, guiding the strike to my abdomen just below my vest plates. I pushed myself forward along the shaft, until I was close enough to stab him in the head.
I twisted once I punched through his jaw with the dagger, breaking the spear in my stomach and with my leg reached for my own weapon on the ground. With a roll over the handle and a kick up, I threw the serpent-tongue spear up to my free hand.
I grabbed it and swung, cutting through legs of nearby kobolds and got more free room and time to rip what was left of the spear out of my guts.
A slight pain on the back of my thigh alerted me to an attack, and I moved, now fully aligned with the Stalwart Mist technique. Shadow’s original technique was based on illusions and trickery, misdirection of the mist, then overwhelming retaliation once the opponent committed. I didn’t have any of that, my trickery was allowing them to attack me, trapping them in my body then annihilating them completely in retaliation.
The first kata of the technique, In the Mist, Await, was all about waiting before attacking. With Shadow, I modified and altered his techniques for my own use. Veiled Mist Assault was rooted in anger, in unrelenting attack regardless of any injury taken. Each kata built up on that, with the From the Mist, Strike, being fueled by my anger for a devastating attack from ambush—where Shadow would do so from the mist, I used my natural vampire stealth to accomplish the same.
The second kata: Tempest in the Mist, was the flurry of attacks from multiple angles, using my anger to fuel a torrent of devastating blows. The last kata: Advance, Whirling Mist, served to chain both of those together, to advance through the carnage and create confusion through aggression, create opportunists for ambush from the open.
But it was the Stalwart Mist that I now called on. The technique that was rooted in an idea of fear, both my own and that of my enemy. Fear was a survival mechanism that all life had, and it told us many things. Most important, it told us when there was danger around.
I most often fell into the Scarlet Moon technique, as it came easier for me. But in moments like these, when I was surrounded with enemies, when I felt fear for my life. My connection to the Azure Moon technique came to the surface. I settled now in the second kata: From Mist, Terrify.
As I turned to my attacker, turning a deadly strike into a scratch, I stepped close to him and raised my weapon. Every kata was a set of movements that I incorporated in my fighting. The first kata was retaliation, the swift turn and lashing out. The second was a follow up, it was three moves.
My first came as a strike from above, my blade came down and the kobold that had attacked me from behind was cut in half, from top of the head to groin.
My second came as a dash forward and a grab. I let my weapon go with one hand and grabbed one of the two halves of the dead kobold, raising it up above my head and letting the blood and gore pour all over me, turning me into a nightmare. Then I threw the body at the kobolds running at me. Their dead hit them and sent a handful stumbling to the ground.
My third came as I dashed forward behind the body, then swung my weapon.
[Quick Swap Slot—Dodge>Crescent Swipe]
[Dodge] wasn’t as useful in this situation, so I quickly swapped it out before I activated the new skill.
[Crescent Swipe]
My weapon left a silver arch, hanging in the air for a split moment, a line tracing its path. The dozen kobolds that had been close enough split apart, their heads sliding off from shoulders.
I looked around, seeing that the attacks had faltered. Whether that was because they actually felt fear didn’t matter in the end. I created room, and that let me take control of the fighting again. I switched back to the Scarlet Moon technique and danced forward.
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The dead were everywhere, blood had soaked into the ground, and I was left watching the carnage that I had wrought. It was a battlefield, of the kind and scale that I hadn’t seen often. This was what humans feared when they spoke of my kind. Each of those kobolds was no weaker than an ordinary human, some were even stronger. And yet it didn’t matter. I was an Elder Vampire, and before me they were nothing.
Yes, I was exhausted, my legs barely holding my weight, and I could see why vampires feared humans. It wouldn’t take much to ambush me now and kill me. I resolved myself to being smarter, I couldn’t keep putting myself in these situations. Thankfully, I had a lot of blood to drink and time to recover.
The exit to the rift had appeared in the center of the plain, with a chest right next to it. The exit was still closed, probably until I opened the chest, the same as my first rift had been.
But for now, I had a few hundred corpses to drain of blood.
“Saia, consume.”
The small part of Saia that was with me flowed over my body and into the pile of corpses as I grabbed one and started to drink.