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Chapter 19
🕑 Added 2023-12-20 02:11:44 +0000 UTCWe shot across the college campus, passing abandoned cars with broken windows and corpses that littered the street. Those were new; there must have been other people left behind as we escaped the college.
The scenery blurred by as I applied the full weight of my stats, running once more with superhuman speed. Not as fast as I was under the effect of the Progenitor’s blood, but faster than I had ever been as a human.
[Internal threats: Hostile monsters within city walls. Eliminate all hostiles to enable city interface. Monsters remaining: 84]
The vampire population was rapidly growing as humans that were infected last night began to turn across the city. We needed to cut that off — and that started with finding every survivor. Including the ones trapped underground in the sprawling vampiric lair buried under my new castle.
The ceiling pressed down on the store; one of its walls leaned against a stone column that spanned the cave from bottom to top. The windows were all shattered from the store half collapsing.
I leapt over the window and into the store front. Long shadows pervaded the space, moving with the fire. My new dark-vision meant the flashes of light from dancing fire were near blinding. Flashlights scoured the sections of the shelves.
When light passed over me, I huddled low between the shelves. Goods covered the ground where they had been plundered or knocked loose. There wasn’t fighting happening; I crept closer slowly, trying to assess the situation.
“Get to cover!” A woman shouted. Something was thrown, clattering on the ground.
Blood-Thralls hissed in response.
Shopping carts and cardboard boxes of furniture had been assembled together into makeshift walls in the back of the story. Some two dozen adults huddled at the gaps in the walls, holding baseball bats and power tools. As the blood-thralls circled closer, a woman stepped out of the gap in the fortress wall.
“Stop, Clarissa!” Someone shouted behind her as she ripped the cord on the chainsaw she held. It rumbled to life.
Her eyes glowed green with [night-eye,] her lip curled in agitation, teeth showing in a grimace. Her hair was frazzled, strands catching light from the fire behind her. Her hair framed her face like a glowing halo of light.
She looked like she had spent almost two days hidden in a cave in the back of a store.
“I fear no evil!” She shouted, spinning to address the room. For half a moment, her glowing-green eyes locked with mine. I saw them widen. She didn’t have a chance to say anything as the first blood thrall charged her.
She brought the chainsaw down between herself and the first of the vampiric nightmares, laughing madly as the blade ripped apart flesh, the motor choking and spitting as it caught on muscle before ripping into viscera.
The blood-thrall screamed, almost human. I noticed that it had fragments of clothes still stuck to it from before it transformed. Then I noticed the blood-thrall hanging from the rafters above Clarissa.
[Crimson Veil] was a strange skill. It worked like a dash mechanic in a video game. But it wasn’t like I walked when I activated it.
It was obvious in hindsight that it was the skill that the vampire progenitor had used to flash around in midair. The skill’s unhelpful description had left its exact nature confused, and I hadn’t had time to experiment with it.
Activating the skill was like using a muscle belonging to an olympic athlete, and the system had embedded me with the exact muscle memory to use it. The ability to use it and to control it were different things.
I had already experienced, to a more minor degree, the ability’s tendency to lift me off the ground. The fact that it had done that was overwhelmed in my memory by the taste of Jason’s blood and the look of betrayal on his face.
Terror overwhelmed me as the skill picked me up, a hundred tiny claws grappling into me, and then slung me forward in midair. My body became less corporeal as I flew directly into the blood-thrall, both of us spinning in midair over the barricade… and directly into the human’s makeshift encampment.
Screams erupted as we slammed into a shelf, tumbling end over end as we fought for control. We hit the ground with the monster on top of me. Within a moment, I had it pinned under a knee, one hand pressing its head down while the other beat it. The blood-thrall bit me.
I was tired of being bitten. I bit back.
The monster’s willpower was much, much lower than mine.
[Will Check Succeeded. Progenitors Will activated.]
The skill had evolved out of Sanguine, merging my poison resistance and blood control together. The system, convinced I was about to die, hadn’t tried very hard to explain how it worked. The knowledge it embedded in me did more work than its description.
But that knowledge took time and effort to be externalized. I couldn’t describe what the skill would do; I could just do it.
When my senses sunk into the monsters blood, I felt myself gain control over all of it. I could feel it as both blood and poison, one and the same intermingled, corrupted.
I drank it.
The blood of other vampires was foul, rotting and sweet and slick. It dripped off my lips as I raised my head with a gasp, a drowned animal rising from waves of power and pain. I grew thirstier, running a hand through my hair.
Sweat clung to my clothes. It had been nearly two days since I showered; I wasn’t even sure if the plumbing worked at all.
“Get back from him!” I heard Clarissa shout.
Almost leisurely, I turned my head to the side. When I fell into [Progenitor’s Will,] it was easy for the entire world to fall away. I wasn’t paying attention.
At some point in my fight with the blood-thrall, we had slammed into the barrel. It was still rolling away, setting a section of the floor alight. Only a few feet away from me, Clarissa raised a chainsaw above her head.
A dozen flashlights pointed at us. People screamed and shouted and ran in circles in their makeshift fort.
“Begone, you abomination! I’m not afraid of you!”
