The Fallen Vampire

Vance screamed bloody murder as he watched his arm hit the floor without having any ability to stop it.

Tears filled his eyes as his hated enemy flickered in and out of his vision like some kind of ghost.

Smiling, Taira looked down at the enraged human who was trying to stop the concerning amount of bleeding through sheer force of will.

"They said you would have more tricks than this... I am relatively unimpressed thus far."

Vance's agony quickly turned into anger as he picked up his sword with a single hand and gritted his teeth hard enough to make his gums bleed.

"I can assure you, you fucking beast...! You haven't seen anything yet!"

"More needless bravado from your kind."

"Tidal Blade Art : Massacring Waves!"

Vance's sword started to glow with a blue light and a thin veil of concentrated water formed along the edges- increasing the sharpness to a drastic degree.

With a loud battle cry, the hero rushed at his would-be executioner with oppressive strikes like that of a raging sea.

At first, things were going great.

Deep gashes that spilled black blood appeared on Taira's face, chest, stomach, and legs.

Vance's ninth move was a vicious one that attacked the whole body of his opponent in an attempt to break them down, and macerate their body into paste.

Once began, it was designed to become more and more overbearing the longer the art was in use.

So why was the opposite happening instead?!

The longer Vance attacked, the more difficult he found it to injure his nine-tailed assailant at all.

It was almost as if...

'No... that's not possible..!'

With Vance's suspicion taking root, he performed a cardinal sin among cultivators.

He stopped his attack in the middle.

And when he did so, his eyes caught the moment where Taira moved to block the move that would have come next, almost as if he already knew.

Vance immediately took several steps back from Taira and stared at him like he was some kind of demon.

"Y-You.. you're a freak..! HOW CAN YOU LEARN MY ART JUST BY WATCHING ME USE IT?!"

Taira did not say anything, and instead smiled at the irate human as if he found this all terribly amusing.

At the moment that Vance saw his two large fangs that seemed to be too big for his mouth, he felt the smallest twinge of fear creep into his heart.

Desperate, he pointed the tip of his blade at his intruder warily as he backed away warily.

"Arcane Water : Sea's Grace!"

-

"There there now, easy. Sit here and eat this, alright? I promise that it won't hurt you at all." Vermeil said kindly.

The abused fallen woman leaning against the tree couldn't help but look behind the human woman warily.

She made eye contact with two more of the fallen women who were administering first aid to everyone else who'd been broken out of the compound tonight, and saw that they seemed to trust her.

For reasons that she did not understand, the same kind of human who had just persecuted her so openly was now trying to save her despite having no reason to.

And despite knowing that she shouldn't have... she wanted to trust her.

Parting her cracked lips, she allowed Vermeil's pretty porcelain fingers to insert a healing pill in her mouth.

It began to dissolve immediately, and a small heat began to pass over her body as any wounds or bruises she had started to heal miraculously.

To top it all off, she could even feel herself starting to look fifteen years younger.

"H-How..?"

"I'm pretty good at what I do." Vermeil said with a smile. "Are you feeling better? Can you stand-"

BOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!!!!

A loud explosion suddenly rang out from the compound and an enormous volume of water blew out almost the entire wall on the north side.

A brief glimmer of recognition crossed the eyes of Vermeil and she began to worry slightly.

Glancing at the other girls for permission, they nodded and she took off to the field underneath the grounds.

There, she glanced around the recently created swamp lands as she searched for the body of her beloved.

Only for him to appear in front of her a second later from thin air; surprisingly not wet and undamaged.

"...!" Vermeil's shock quickly turned into a knowing smile as she pushed her hair out of her face. "You.. you're having fun with this, aren't you?"

"Not yet, but I'm about to." He said with an honest smile.

"Vermeil..!"

Looking up at the hole in the compound, Vermeil saw a man she'd long forgotten about.

Where he used to look more charismatic and like something of a baby-faced older brother, he now looked like a grizzled war veteran.

Even the sword in his hand seemed to be bordering on wavering as if he were mentally exhausted.

His eyes did not want to believe that it was her standing here, but a moment later a scene was burned into his memory that he would never forget.

The enemy he had been fighting with so fiercely a few moments ago suddenly grabbed the object of his affections by the waist and kissed her passionately.

She seemed surprised for only a moment, but she did not pull away, and instead returned it just as fervently.

It was no surprise then that his mind snapped in two.

Again.

See, Vance had never been in love with Vermeil, or even sexually attracted to her.

But after the fragmentation of his mind caused by the cursed art he'd been using, his feelings turned into a sickened sense of entitlement.

'H-How could she so that with him..!?'

'Doesn't she know how much I suffered for her?!'

'All of the punishment that I had to endure for failing to instruct her properly, and she just dashes away into the arms of someone else?!'

'She owes me..!'

'How dare she..! With that beast..!'

'She likes beasts so much...'

"I'LL SHOW YOU A BEASTTTT!!!!"

As Vance roared madly into the night, a column of power left his body and soared up into the black sky.

Dark storm clouds began to form overhead, followed by the crackling of lightning and the booming of thunder.

The wind howled fiercely as heavy rainfall fell from the sky like angry meters descending upon the world.

Taira finally pulled away from Vermeil, and he appeared to have gotten what he wanted.

'I'm sorry to use you like that, my love... I just needed to rile him up enough to get him to use the art.'

'You don't have to apologize for kissing me when we're married, love. But why did you know that specifically would be the act to send him over the edge?'

'...He-'

"AAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!"

Vance became more and more crazed as his skin became grey and his eyes turned into miniature red lightbulbs.

And then... something neither of them understood happened.

A wave of corruption suddenly pulsed outward with Vance at the source and washed over everything nearby.

Everything it touched turned black and rotted to any noticeable degree possible.

Even the stone seemed to become soft and weak as it was tainted all the way down to it's molecular structure.

Vermeil attempted to back away from the wave out of caution, but her husband stopped her at the last moment.

'Wait... I think we'll be fine.'

'How sure are you?!'

'...80%.'

'TAIRA!'

'90.'

At the next moment, the wave passed over the two of them, and Vermeil got to learn firsthand what this new power of Vance's was attempting to do.

'By the gods... How can such a terrible thing exist..?'

As soon as the wave passed over Vermeil, it returned inward on itself, back towards Vance.

When the energy returned to him, it seemed to have brought all of the energy that it had taken from the surroundings along with it.

The amount of qi within Vance's body practically quadrupled, and his body seemed to become miles more tough than before.

Although his mind seemed to be gone to compensate for his increase in musculature.

"VERMEILLLLLL!!!!!"

Vance cried out like an anguished beast as he took personal control of the rain around him.

Suddenly, its fall was no longer quite natural as it sped up to an abysmal degree.

Sensing danger, Vermeil conjured a wall of qi to protect herself and narrowly avoided being hacked to pieces by the trillions upon trillions of drops of rain that were now trying to cut her.

But Taira was not so lucky.

His body was riddled with holes in an instant, and he fell onto the ground face first.

However, his body exploded into a shimmering dust a moment later.

"WHAT?!"

*Whistling* "Having illusion magic in my bloodline is so much fun. It is one of the few things that makes me smile openly around others."

Vance's eyes shot towards a watchtower nearby, where a very annoying figure was standing as good as new.

It was like he'd never been touched at all.

He held a sleeping woman across his back, and in both hands he held two items.

One was the hand that was cut off when they first began their collision.

The other was the manual that he kept locked within his desk drawer.

The one that absolutely none but the other heroes were allowed to see.

"Abusing the Quintessence of this plane... Oh how low you humans have fallen." Taira said with faux pity.

"Give it back... STOP TAKING MY THINGS FROM ME!!"

As Vance lunged at Taira with impossible speed, he kept his mind calm, and utilized the efforts of years of hard work and ingenuity.

"Arcane Union : ...."

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