Ch.218Vampire (5)

Adler von Balzehide lay on the ground, continuing his thoughts in a daze.

What on earth is this situation?

The result of a mental disorder—a chronic weakness of vampires—triggered by the sudden shock to his brain.

This vampire, who had momentarily lost his grip on reason, barely managed to regain his mental faculties and somehow interpreted what had just happened.

Yes, looking back… the man called Adler had fallen victim to a sudden attack.

Twelve blades combined and launched a surprise attack, not only piercing a flat hole in his stomach but also diagonally slicing through the head of the Vampiric Dragon he was riding, causing them to crash.

The fact that the individual flying blades had merely combined into one, yet their speed and cutting power had been raised beyond imagination, made it an ambush that was practically impossible for him to predict.

But making excuses for himself wouldn’t change anything.

As long as he believed it was an accident caused by his own carelessness and lack of ability. Adler pushed his intestines back into the split skin of his abdomen, rapidly promoting regeneration.

Based on a vampire’s ability to accelerate their natural high-speed regeneration by consuming large amounts of blood, he healed his wounds, regenerated the armor formed by his special ability, and quickly rose to his feet, lifting his cross spear.

Yes, he was fundamentally a warrior. Using magic clumsily was neither his specialty nor something he enjoyed.

So Adler stood up, pulled out bat wings from his back and spread them, then charged toward the Pegasus Knight in the sky, flapping these magically formed wings.

He somehow deflected the incoming blades to minimize damage and consumed more of his remaining blood to increase his speed further.

His armor not only possessed enough durability to easily withstand the 12 uncombined versions of the blades, but with a vampire’s durability and regeneration, he could certainly endure these blades while advancing.

And by the time the blades noticed this and began to combine, it would be too late—Adler had already lifted the massive spear with his hands and aimed it at the Pegasus’s body.

—Fwooosh!!

He withstood the holy wind created by the wing beats with his body. The opponent’s sacred body was ultimately just a mid-level magical beast based on a horse; his blood-enhanced cross spear could easily pierce through it.

Having completed this analysis based on the surrounding situation, Adler approached right in front, gripping his spear tightly with both hands, but…

“…What!”

—Thwack!!

Even for someone like him, the Pegasus’s hooves striking downward were an unexpected blow for someone with relatively little aerial combat experience.

Although he deflected the attack by swinging the solid metal shaft of his spear, the aftershock of a mid-level magical beast’s attack couldn’t be completely negated.

Adler could feel some muscle fibers in both arms snap momentarily. While quickly healing them and preparing to counterattack by surrounding his hands with rotating blood—

‘—Gone?!’

He was bewildered by the knight who had somehow vanished from the Pegasus’s back, leaving him completely exposed to a surprise attack from the side.

—Slash!

A slash that drew a clearly strange yet beautiful trajectory. The attack, extended physically using aura, cut off half of the right wing along with the vampire’s back.

Of course, a vampire’s flight ability is magical rather than physical, so losing a wing isn’t a major problem in itself, but the issue is that these severed wings assist magical power from a mystical perspective.

As a result, the vampire momentarily lost his flight ability and began falling to the ground like he was crashing, and the white-armored knight rapidly dove after him from behind.

The knight kicked off the blades as footholds, used magical energy as propulsion, and displayed acrobatic movements.

A unique technique where six blade shields were attached to various parts of the armor and extended with aura, so that merely moving the body caused the attached blades to unleash attacks in all directions.

Though Adler didn’t know it, this was a three-dimensional technique the Pegasus Knight had acquired through exchanges with his lover. This attack, established by natural talent for handling blades and overwhelming instinct, was something Adler couldn’t even think of how to counter.

There were no blind spots. The attacks continued relentlessly. Yet each attack maintained its power without diminishing.

They were easy to avoid from a distance, but as one approached, the density and power of the attacks increased, making it dangerous to get too close.

“Huff—”

Therefore, as soon as he felt his flight ability recover, he immediately stopped his descent and soared upward again, somehow blocking the slashes coming from all directions while reflexively exhaling a meaningless breath.

Consecutive strikes, consecutive strikes, and more consecutive strikes. This combat style, rarely seen among warriors, dominated the space itself and guided the battlefield to suit his fighting style, making it truly difficult to deal with.

However… that didn’t mean there was absolutely no way to respond.

‘The blades… are gone.’

All twelve blades had been used up, attached to the knight’s body (armor) as footholds, and if he could create just a little distance, the frequency of those consecutive attacks would decrease, making them much easier to avoid.

Of course, the space-dominating ability coming from those 7 (6+1) blades was too severe to be considered simply a warrior’s skill.

So as he skillfully flew through the sky avoiding the continuous attacks, he suddenly noticed that the further the attacks got from the blade tips, the more their speed decreased.

The Pegasus Knight was using this to increase spatial dominance, but even so, the fact that the attacks slowed down by a beat was critical from a mid-level perspective…

After dragging out the time for several minutes to grasp the pattern of those attacks, Adler eventually recognized that there was a clear opening—and aimed to strike at that part.

He continued his circling flight to avoid the dozens of meters-long slashes, occasionally defended against critical attacks with his cross spear, and when he thought he spotted an opening, he charged forward in a straight line.

A spear charge at his maximum speed. This was the final performance of the warrior called Adler, who felt the situation was far from favorable.

The full-power piercing attack, executed with all the focus a spear user could muster, was thrust with all his might to strike at the opening the knight had exposed—

‘This bastard…!! On purpose—’

The Pegasus Knight, who calmly took the blow with his body, now with a hole pierced through his lung area, held the spear fixed with one hand while raising a unicorn horn longsword with the other…

—Slash!!

As the slash belatedly cut through his wings, the blade shields that had somehow separated and recombined in pairs mercilessly sliced through Adler’s entire body.

And as his body began to be gradually shaved away from the extremities, in a situation not much different from being put through a shredder.

—Crack!

At almost the same moment a blade penetrated his neck creating an air hole, Adler von Balzehide… Adler felt the existence of his mostly destroyed body, and simultaneously found true freedom because of it.

Free from the constraints of a vampire’s body, he was able to reclaim his true self for the first time in hundreds of years.

Thanks to this, only at that moment, standing at the boundary between life and death, could Adler recall his past.

Adler Fantrien. The heretic of the Fantrien family. A Pegasus Knight who had last fought against ‘that thing’ before it completely took the Fantrien family into its hands.

‘…Ah.’

Feeling that noble and glorious past directly through his body, and gaining an even broader perspective from being freed from the prison of his physical form, he felt a kind of sympathy for the Pegasus Knight before him, who was bound by a thread of fate similar to ‘that thing.’

A reality too cruel and heartless for a mere 16-year-old boy to be involved in. Though clearly different from his past self, there was something that evoked a sense of kinship.

Therefore, this knight who had been sitting dazed in thought for a moment, now moved his body that he had barely regained control of…

“Thank you… for liberating me, boy.”

He managed to utter those words through his barely functioning vocal cords and tongue.