Malphegor
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MCIM Ch. 13
🕑 Added 2025-09-14 15:30:21 +0000 UTCCarrying his newly collected Vampire Blood, Mario walked up to the vampire hunter NPC and opened the upgrade interface. The text on the screen had already changed.
[For training, please submit 2 vials of Vampire Blood]
He pulled two bottles of Vampire Blood from his inventory, placing them in the designated slots.
"Level 2 needs twelve bottles, Level 3 takes eighteen... This is gonna be a long haul. Better stop relying on guns to take down vampires. No loot drops is a real problem."
He fed ten bottles of Vampire Blood into the interface, watching his hunter level climb from 2 to 3. His skill points jumped from 0 to 2.
There was only one skill tree available, so no choice paralysis to worry about.
[Increased Attack Speed]
[Disguise]
The skills were straightforward enough. Once he saw them light up, he pulled his wooden stake from his inventory and gave it a few swings through the air. The attack interval had been cut by at least half.
He put away the stake. Disguise wasn't something he could test right now, even when he activated it, he could still see himself perfectly fine.
[Disguise:
Allows the user to become invisible to monsters, making detection more difficult. During effect, user cannot perform melee attacks, break blocks, place blocks, or eat food, but can still use crossbows for ranged attacks. Zombies and vampires will detect the player within approximately 10 meters, while skeletons and creepers cannot detect the player at all.]
"Revenge is a dish best served cold," he muttered, pulling out his phone and dialing Blade's number. "Too bad I'm not a patient man."
"Hey, Mario, you made it out?"
The call connected immediately, Blade's voice mixing with the roar of an engine. Mario frowned. "I'm back home already. You being chased or something?"
"If it's convenient, come pick me up at Central Park. Same spot as usual."
---
Blade, speeding wildly through Manhattan traffic, felt something was strange. He'd only left the bar a few minutes ago, and now Mario was telling him he'd somehow gotten from the Bronx back to Central Park in Manhattan?
"Mario, you sure you're not fucking with me?"
"What's there to joke about?" Mario replied. "If you can make it, great. If not, I'll just grab a cab."
"Give me half an hour."
Blade hung up, gripped the steering wheel tighter, and took the next corner in a drift. His tires squealed against the asphalt, throwing up clouds of smoke as he headed straight for Manhattan.
Ring ring.
His phone rang again. He glanced at the caller ID, his face darkening, but he still picked up.
"Agent Coulson. What made you think of calling me?"
On the other end, Coulson's tone came through clearly.
"Eric, didn't you used to call me Phil?"
"Alright then, what do you want, Phil?"
Blade already knew why Coulson was calling, but he wanted to hear what S.H.I.E.L.D. was really after.
"You went too far this time. Those damned vampires are one thing, but over a dozen human followers died as well. They all had legitimate identities on the surface."
Traffic was heavy, but Blade drove effortlessly through the congestion at high speed toward Central Park. Hearing Coulson's complaint, he snapped back impatiently.
"What do you really want? If it's nothing important, I'm hanging up. I've got shit to do."
"Fine."
Coulson couldn't do much about Blade's attitude. He understood the vampire hunter's perspective, but as a professional agent, he had to follow orders. Sitting in his office, holding the phone, he asked, "That man working with you, who is he?"
"I don't know."
Blade answered bluntly, pressing harder on the gas. "We've only known each other for two days."
His feelings toward S.H.I.E.L.D. had always been complicated. He was technically part of one of their auxiliary teams, but the organization had made agreements with the vampires, maintaining a balance between the two sides. It was politics, and he hated politics.
Through the phone, Coulson could be heard tapping his fingers against his desk.
"Tell him to be careful. Those followers may work with vampires, but they're still human."
"Phil, I got it. But the vampires here in New York, they've already broken the agreement."
"I know. I'll report it to the Director. Just stay safe. Maybe I'll buy you a drink sometime."
The vampire network was vast and ancient. Compared to their American counterparts, the real power lay with the European bloodlines, older, and more dangerous.
Coulson ended the call and glanced at the security footage showing Mario outside the bar. He smiled faintly.
"Another one with special abilities, huh?"
---
Thirty minutes later, Mario spotted a black muscle car roaring toward him from down the street. He waved, catching Blade's attention. With a sharp screech of brakes, the car stopped in front of him.
He opened the back door and slipped inside.
"Blade, take me to Frost's building. I've got some unfinished business with him."
Earlier, he hadn't even gotten to see the boss before being wiped out by low-level trash mobs. Now that he'd gained two new skills, he was determined to even the score.
Blade nodded slightly, started the car, and drove back toward the Bronx. Neither man mentioned how Mario had managed to return to Central Park so quickly. Everyone had their secrets.
Just like Blade, who needed serum injections to suppress his bloodlust, something he'd never told anyone except Whistler.
"What's your plan?" Blade asked as they drove.
Mario gazed out the window. "Go there and kill them. That's the whole plan."
"If I can kill one, I'll kill one. If I can kill ten, I'll kill ten. I don't give a shit about the rest of the world, I just don't want these disgusting creatures in my city."
Hearing this simple philosophy, Blade broke into a smile.
"I'll join you."
The two men kept talking during the drive, and their shared hatred of vampires quickly strengthened their bond. Blade's way of thinking was beautifully simple: As long as you kill vampires, you're my friend.
At an abandoned factory on the outskirts of the city, Mario pressed his face to the car window, greedily eyeing the rusted steel pipes and discarded equipment scattered around the complex.
"Is all this abandoned stuff really unwanted?"
The car drove into a workshop that served as Blade and Whistler's safehouse, though it had already been too easily discovered by vampires for Mario's liking.
"I'm not sure, but I've been here for months and no one's ever come to clear any of it away."
Blade pushed open the car door and walked toward an old man with graying hair who was hunched over a workbench.
"I'm back."
Whistler glanced at the car and saw Mario and Karen getting out. His expression made no effort to hide what he was thinking, like someone owed him a lot of money and had just defaulted on the loan.
"Why did you bring strangers here again?"
Blade began removing his weapons and gear, sitting down in a familiar chair as the familiar thirst for blood started gnawing at his reason again.
"He's the one I told you about yesterday. If it weren't for him today, I wouldn't have gotten out so easily."
Whistler saw Blade settling into the chair and went over to bind his hands. Then he opened a nearby metal case, revealing neatly arranged rows of red serum vials.
Mario, who had been examining the old equipment around the workshop, noticed Blade strapped to the chair and walked over.
"Why don't you just buy blood bags from a hospital? You know your power comes from blood. If you actually fed properly, your strength would be way greater than it is now."
"Humans don't drink blood," Blade said firmly.
But Mario just shrugged. "Humans don't drink blood, but we do eat sanguinaccio dolce."
"Sanguinaccio dolce?"
Blade froze. It was the first time he'd heard the term used so casually.
"Blood sausage. It's made mostly from pig's blood, mixed with fat and fillers. You can find it in places like Italy and Germany, though it's not all that common. My nonna used to make it when I was a kid."
As he spoke about the Italian dish, he couldn't help licking his lips. After eating nothing but bread for the past few days, his mouth was craving real flavor.
This time Blade was surprised. He'd never imagined there were actually dishes made with blood.
"Then I'll have to try it sometime."
Even if animal blood was useless for his condition, it might still taste decent to someone with vampire physiology.
Mario pulled out a bucket of milk and was about to say something when Whistler had already prepared the syringe and plunged it into Blade's neck.
"The serum's becoming less effective each time..."
The meaning was clear: once the serum stopped working entirely, Blade would only be able to rely on sheer willpower to resist the bloodlust. But no one had ever succeeded at that. The moment desire shattered reason, the person who'd been bitten was already dead, what survived was just a monster enslaved by its cravings.
Strapped to the chair, veins bulging across his face, Blade let out low, pained growls as he fought the internal war between human and monster. Mario felt pained watching him. He was grateful he'd been drained completely when turned, otherwise, facing agony like this, he would have completely broken down.
As Blade writhed in the chair, Whistler tossed the empty syringe onto a table, pulled out a cigarette, and stuck it between his lips.
He glanced at Mario and nodded toward his lighter.
Mario stepped forward, pulled out his own cigarette, lit it, then held the flame for Whistler. The two men began smoking.
"You're alright, kid."
Mario chuckled through the smoke. "You're not bad yourself. By the way, all this broken-down machinery around here, is it still useful? If not, can I salvage some scrap metal?"
Not knowing Mario's thoughts, Whistler answered, "None of this stuff belongs to me. If you need it, help yourself."
That's exactly what I wanted to hear.
Mario was about to grab a pickaxe and help Blade and Whistler clean up the cluttered workshop when Blade, drenched in sweat, finally recovered from the serum's effects.
He undid the leather straps binding his wrists, stood up, and flexed his hands before turning to Mario. "What do you even want with scrap metal? And didn't you just pull out some kind of bucket?"
"In my hands, this isn't scrap."
Mario grinned at Blade and pulled the milk container from his inventory. "This is a bucket of milk, but it has special properties."
To demonstrate, he turned the milk bucket completely upside down.
"See? Even upside down, not a single drop spills out. Pretty amazing, right?"
Blade: "..."
Whistler: "..."
Fortunately, Karen had buried herself in researching vampire blood samples as soon as they'd returned, or there would have been one more person struck speechless.
"No sense of humor," Mario muttered.
"This milk can cleanse all status effects. Blade, you ever play video games? Never mind, judging from your idea of fun, relaxation for you is just chopping up vampires."
"I wanted to let you try it earlier, see if it works on your condition, but your partner's hands were way too fast with that needle."
When it came to conceptual, rule-breaking items like this, neither Blade nor even the well-traveled Whistler understood what Mario meant by "cleansing all status effects."
Both men wore confused expressions. Seeing their looks, Mario decided to give them a concrete example. Pointing at Karen, who was still completely absorbed in her research, he said, "Take her, for instance. She's been bitten by a vampire and is slowly turning into one. But in my eyes, she's just been poisoned, by a very specific type of toxin. If she drank this milk, it would cure the poison immediately."
"Can I take a look at this?"
Honestly, Whistler didn't believe a word about the milk's supposed powers. Mario handed the bucket over without hesitation. Up close, Whistler noticed the container seemed to be made of countless tiny square blocks somehow fused together...
He carried it over to a microscope, wanting to take a sample for analysis. But no matter what method he tried, droppers, needles, even dipping his finger directly into the bucket, he couldn't extract even a single drop of milk. When he reached his hand inside, he couldn't feel any liquid at all.
Blade, watching the now completely silent Whistler at the lab bench, couldn't help but ask, "Could this thing turn me from a half-vampire back into a full human?"
Honesty was Mario's sharpest weapon. He shook his head, hiding nothing. "You're a dhampir, half-vampire by birth. The milk won't change your nature. But it might help with your bloodlust. I'm not sure exactly how. To be completely honest, I was hoping to use you as a test subject."
