bookworm

[Tips] Triskeles are arcane life-forms and the canine of choice for the Empire’s military affairs. They are highly intelligent, with those trained by expert handlers capable of comprehending human speech and following complicated orders. Though most serve alongside city policemen, some find work supporting more specialized recon units.
As artificial organisms forged purely from thaumaturgic science, a male and female triskele still cannot breed without the assistance of a magus; one could consider them the descendants of animal familiars.

Is man stronger than beast? I think there are convincing arguments for either side. But one thing is for sure: there aren’t a lot of creatures mensch can beat in a fair fight.
“Eep!”
Two rows of razored teeth clamped down on open air, barely missing my foot. Not only were their fangs finer than pointed blades, but their massive jaws packed just as much power as they seemed to; they could tear through my leg as casually as I could snack on a pretzel.
The triskele that had leapt at me from a low crouch—hereby referred to as Dog A for my own convenience—led with its middle head, but then its left head tried to chomp at my midsection a beat later. I kicked this second snout both to divert the attack and to leap upward to make some space.
Despite its menacing appearance, the hound whimpered like a puppy when I kicked off it; was it trying to guilt-trip me? Too bad it wouldn’t work when its partner—aka Dog B—cleverly jumped up to catch me midarc.
I tried to summon an Unseen Hand to act as a platform so I could sneak in a slash while slipping past Dog B...
“Whoa?!”
...but my Hand was nowhere to be found, and the weight I’d committed to my step sent me tumbling in midair. As I spiraled to earth, I spied the masked noble muttering to himself and gesticulating with his cane; the bastard erased my spell!
“Man, that was close!”
I kicked Dog B’s left mouth shut to counter its perfectly timed attack, landing hands-down on top of Dog A as it tried to turn for another strike. Quickly bouncing right off, I curled up and swung its way as a parting gift...but only grazed it.
The Craving Blade’s unusually perfect edge let me cut right through the hardy coat of fur and score the dog’s flesh; a normal sword would have had trouble snipping off more than a few stray strands. Unfortunately, I wasn’t a manga protagonist, and a slash made without any solid footing lacked the force needed for a deep cut. Although it seemed like I’d rent a good chunk of flesh, I hadn’t so much as scraped the organs beneath.
Put another way, I’d cleared my saving throw and got a bit of chip damage in to boot—that wasn’t anything to scoff at. It was just that this world failed to provide me with the numerical hit points or damage numbers that would make these sorts of glancing blows feel rewarding.
Truth be told, the first triskele’s oozing red blood did nothing to stymie its feral rage, and the wound was already closing up. There was no doubt in my mind that they had some kind of spell woven into their cells to accelerate their regenerative properties.
They were the ultimate vanguards: strong, fast, and good at protecting their back line. Adding insult to injury was that they were composed of four distinct parts—three heads and a torso—making them difficult to take out in one go. Lopping off one head wouldn’t be enough for a kill; I couldn’t afford to keep playing fair forever.
I wanted to regain my footing upon landing a short distance away, but the hounds weren’t kind enough to let me. Dogs A and B twirled around with celerity unthinkable for animals of their size and bolted toward me with uncanny agility. Whereas I was sneaking in hits on reaction rolls, these two had specced their builds to take initiative every round—it was downright unethical.
Well, I guess that makes two of us!
Dog A charged straight at me, forgoing any wily tricks to simply crush me with its weight. Right behind, Dog B jumped high to attack from the air.
Are these things really animals?! Their synergy puts most adventuring parties to shame!
The flanking heads let them cover a great deal of lateral space, and their rushing legs were built to follow a sudden lunge to either side. Stepping back would only put me one pace away from the inevitable, and the massive frame barreling down from above gave me almost nowhere to run.
Fighting the urge to cry, I slid down the only escape route left: the wide space between the massive triskele’s legs. The thin layer of water coating the floor flared up in a tremendous splash as I dove, and I boosted myself with an Unseen Hand to clear the danger zone.
The mage’s jamming caused my Hands to dissipate immediately after construction, but the momentum they imparted upon me was here to stay. Though a force field may be magic, its physical effects on the world are not.
I considered sneaking in another hit as I slid by, but thought better of it. While it was tempting to strike at a distance where I could pierce the hound’s exposed belly to rupture its heart or rip out its organs, it would cost me a lot of speed; the remaining dog would pile on its friend’s corpse to crush me alive.
So instead, I left them a little present.
After completing my shiver-inducing ride under the great archway of the triskele’s legs, I sprinted toward the puppeteer behind it all. The Hands I used to push myself back onto my feet disappeared in an instant, but they were cheap enough to produce en masse. It was like I was a spendthrift filling up on bottomless hush puppies at a tacky American restaurant, dishing out more magic boosters every second to force myself forward.
All things considered, I was glad the noble was taking the time to annoy me by erasing every spell. I was a fragile little mensch, already wounded; if he’d started harassing me with attack magic that pierced my flimsy barriers, I would have been done for.
Plus, the triskeles were giving me enough trouble, so I did not want to have a ranged opponent to dodge. I hate to admit this, but I wasn’t strong enough to solo bosses, okay?!
“My word. You’ve gotten past them both! Alas, before you can close the distance...”
...Your hounds will chew me up, right? Don’t you worry about that: I’ve laid the groundwork. Before the masked man could say another word, an eruption of radiance lit up the world behind me.
“What?!”
Even with my back turned and the triskeles blocking the view, the flash was blinding; the dogs ate the same brilliance at point-blank range. The screeching blast that accompanied it put every canal in the ear through the wringer and dismantled any semblance of balance. As a finishing touch, I’d fitted my well-loved arcane flash-bang concoction with a modified trigger spell that had a few seconds of delay.
I didn’t know how long this would disable a triskele for. They seemed hardier than mensch, so there was a chance they’d recover more quickly. Worse still, the beasts were intelligent; the trick might not work a second time.
Still, I’d decided that this was the time to play my card. If I could disable the masked noble, his dogs would pose less of a threat. You know what they say: it’s always a good day to die—not that I planned to, of course.
I sprinted ahead, holding the Craving Blade to one side. I had to close the distance while the hounds were out of commission and the sorcerer was flinching from the residual flash.
The quality of my spirited yell was something difficult to put into words, even as the one making it; all I could say was that its energy was at least on par with the intensity of my hulking sword as I shifted my forward momentum into a sideways swing. Collisions fed back from the edge to the handle, letting me know I’d hit more than a few obstructions as thin as they were hard...but this time, my blade swung true.
I didn’t know whether his counterspells or the need to command the triskeles were to blame, but the nobleman’s barriers had lessened from his original seven to five. Perhaps he’d thought the last two superfluous to block a simple attack—unfortunately for him, a strike made on solid ground was sharper than anything I could do in midair!
His head flew. I would have liked nothing more than to mercilessly lay down another slash, but I could feel danger stirring behind me and had to retreat. Shit, they’re already up?! Not even tabletop wyverns recover this fast!
Both hounds jumped in for a tackle; I intercepted their front paws with the Craving Blade and pushed off, turning the force of impact into an accelerant to buy myself some space.
This time, neither Dog A nor B followed through with another offensive. Instead, they posted up next to the aristocrat’s body in a defensive stance, growling at me the whole time. I couldn’t help but feel that their worry was unfounded when the thing was standing upright, all peachy without its head.
Look, see?
The decapitated body sauntered off in the direction of its head, hoisted it into the air with a flick of its staff, and caught it in its left hand. The long wand activated, Cleaning the sewage off the smirk hidden behind a perfectly repaired mask.
I was up against the truest form of undeath: he wouldn’t die even if I killed him. Judging from how he shrugged off lethal damage, his talent in sorcery, and the fact that he was anything but physically inept, my best guess was that he was a vampire. That would prove a problem. Without a silver weapon—the metal triggered a visceral allergic response—laying around or a priest to invoke the word of a god, I had no way of putting him down for good.
Of course, that wasn’t to say that undying beings could restore themselves indefinitely. Regenerating after a fatal blow took a lot of resources, and enough repetitions would eventually cause his resurrections to slow down to a snail’s pace. The only problem was that I had no way of telling how many more deaths it would take.
Much to my dismay, I didn’t have so much as a spare second to scour through my character sheet for new skills—not that I could’ve brought myself to subject a deity to such blatant circumstantial worship. Seeing as They already had to deal with workplace power harassment, I could only imagine how painful it would be to have Their followers draw on Their power out of convenience alone. Besides, Faith-based skills were literally based on devotion, as the name suggested, and I doubted I could pray sincerely in my current state; any miracle I could conjure up would certainly be too weak to make a real difference.
“My goodness, how surprising. To think you’d not only incapacitate my little darlings—albeit for a fleeting second—but lead your blade to my person not once, but twice! It has been over a quarter of a century since I was properly bisected, and my most recent memory of losing my head is over a century since past. You have me feeling rather refreshed, young man.”
The man merrily twirled his staff in a way that skipped straight past nonchalance into open mockery of mortals. His mannerisms were so derisive that, had I not been surrounded by silver tongues that let loose frequent sarcastic jabs in my daily life, I would have lost my temper and cussed him out like a sailor.
“Swordplay is wholly removed from my realm of expertise, but it is apparent that yours is remarkable. The way you couple it with magic is likewise splendid. Much like your grade in formula assembly, I shall grant your practical applications an A. Though, I must say, while swiftly replacing every spell I erase is technically a solution, it fails to stimulate my love of beauty. What I’d desired from you was the ingenuity to rewrite the formula on the spot to prevent any further interference.”
Thanks for the rapid-fire analysis. Maybe I could’ve done that if your two dogs weren’t nipping at my heels!
“Yet I must admit, that last spell was splendid. Regrettably, its construction remained hidden to me behind the silhouettes of my darlings here—would you mind showing me again? I shall save my evaluation for after I have had a proper look.”
Oh, wait. I should just tweak my spells while he’s killing time taunting me. I’d gone out of my way to invest in multithreaded consciousness, so it would be a waste not to dedicate a portion of my mind to shoring up my weaknesses. I came up with a few new permutations which I would cycle through at random, making my Hands a bit harder to erase...I think. Man, I hope this works. Maybe I should pray.“Well then,” he concluded, “lecture resumes. Do your best to keep up in the third period, young man.”
The click of his cane striking the floor rang out once more, followed by a vibration that tickled my eardrums. Though it began as a low drone, the buzzing grew louder and louder, causing my skin to crawl; at last, the light tickle became a violent scratch that made me shudder as my ears cried out against the unpleasant wave of noise.
This was the sound of insect flight in full murmuration. The cacophony of beating wings crept closer from the back of the room in the form of a single unified mass; each bug fluttered in such peculiar consonance with those around it that the whole flock looked to be a single organism that triggered a hard-coded mammal revulsion.
Faced with a white lump of insects folding in on themselves, I reflexively gave the noble what he wanted: I shoved an Unseen Hand into my pocket and grabbed every remaining ounce of catalyst, throwing it at the swarm. Instead of clumping it up, I scattered it to cover my whole field of view in an attempt to blot out the cloud of bugs.
Intense radiance followed as the dolomite powder exploded into light and sound. Seventy-five thousand candelas flashed across 150 decibels of raw noise to burn and shock the insects’ sensory receptors until the critters could no longer fly. The wall of vermin that had been steadily approaching now crashed into the earth like a wave.
Upon closer inspection, I found they were white moths.
“Eugh!”
As the moths rained down onto their fallen comrades, they began to crush those at the bottom, releasing a pungent odor that stung my nostrils. Whatever fluids ran through their bodies were anything but kosher; they were probably familiars that had had been designed from the outset with self-destruction in mind.
Some time ago, I’d thumbed through some tomes on familiars after seeing how helpful and cool Floki had been. Can you blame me? Just imagine a mystic swordsman with a raven perched on his shoulder and try to tell me that isn’t cool. Alas, beastly companions were both inconvenient and inflexible. Their most glaring flaw was expense, in that rearing a proper familiar took vast reserves of time and money. I frankly did not have the patience to spend generations acclimating animals to arcane contact just to get the base to start making adjustments on. Mika had been gifted a thoroughbred from her master and was fortunate enough to tame it straight away; that wasn’t going to happen for me.
Modern magia dismissed the art as a hobby for the affluent, and there was no chance that Lady Agrippina had connections with anyone in the scene. After all, my employer and the perverted wraith she called a master belonged to the School of Daybreak—the foremost critics of familiar breeding.
Setting my bygone dreams aside, I hurried away from the stinging poison while conjuring the Insulating Barrier I’d picked up on a cold winter day, complete with the Selective Screening add-on. Though I primarily employed it to keep me warm or dry in my daily life, a quick shift in perspective made it a protective suit against harmful substances.
“Ahh, how clever of you, young man. Hm, perhaps a reevaluation is in order: consider your grade in spell structure bumped up to a B. Your formulae are multifaceted—truly quite delightful. Simple and versatile, I suspect this dandy trick would temporarily impede persons of any make. Not bad at all. I’d love to purchase the rights when we’re finished, so begin thinking of your price now, will you?”
Can you please stop breaking down everything I do after a single glance?! I didn’t spend all this experience just for you to see right through me!
Despite shaving away the frontmost layer of moths, the swarm continued on unimpeded; as I backed off, I could feel the rage getting to my head. I knew perfectly well—oh, believe me, I knew—that the masked noble was stronger than me...but having him underestimate me to this degree ground my gears.
It was already too late to run. The only path left was to fell the goliath.
The time had come to unveil one of my trump cards. Having nearly died at the hands of undead once, it wouldn’t have made sense for me to walk around without some kind of counter, now would it?
You see, on that day many moons ago when Lady Agrippina had laughed at me until I curled up into a miserable ball for ruining one of the firing ranges at the College...that hadn’t been the only spell I’d planned to test.
Sprinting away from the cloud of moths at full tilt, I thrust a Hand into my bag to pull out my ace in the hole—or maybe it would be more apt to say I tore off the seal on Pandora’s box. I’d hidden it away partly because I’d wanted to save it for when the time was ripe, but the main reason was that I’d known a facility that couldn’t handle molten thermite definitely couldn’t withstand this. When I’d packed it back at the atelier, I’d thought to myself, I bet I won’t use a single one of these—in fact, I’d laugh if I ended up in a predicament where I had to.
I tossed the catalyst. Although it looked like a scrap of junk wrapped in a few layers of cloth, this was the product of my mind firing on all cylinders to create the world’s most unethical board-clearer.
As the package disappeared into the veil of moths, I could feel the tactile sensation of my Hand being crushed by the overwhelming torrent of insects, crushing the packet into dust. Oh. I guess self-destructing isn’t their only trick...
Regardless, their efforts simply saved me a step in activating the spell. The outer safety layer was supposed to be activated by crushing it in a Hand, so its destruction posed no issue.
The safety carapace doubled as a trigger, and its destruction automatically activated the cantrip surrounding the catalyst within. A bit of simple migration and mutation was all it took to convert the contents, and an Insulating Barrier much like the one around me surrounded point zero to limit the blast zone’s radius before it warped the laws of reality to its whim.
And the final step lay with me.
Once the alchemical reaction completed and the final layer of cloth was gone, the aerosolized particles of the mixture flooded the isolated space in fractions of a second...
“Petals of the Daisy, hear me and scatter!”
...at which point I used one of the “overblown” chants the magia disliked so much—I found them a tad embarrassing too—to set it off.
The world erupted in an instant.
Despite being quarantined in space by a mystic barrier, the detonation was so powerful that the gale that leaked through knocked me away. I wouldn’t have shamefully tumbled off had I controlled the explosion from start to finish with true magic, but I’d opted for a cantrip in order to skirt by with the bare minimum mana usage.
Searing waves of air stirred within the bubble, carrying the force of the blast like an invisible iron hammer that rammed into everything it encountered. The liquid oxygen I’d scattered had instantaneously dispersed and subsequently exploded; to say the air itself had blown up was no exaggeration.
A tiny spark had been all it took. The insignificant outset began a chain reaction of ignitions in the oxygenated air that produced nearly two thousand degrees of heat with which it battered the space inside the barrier.
I’d heard that the destructive range of an explosive was far less than what it seemed. So much so that one could survive the scorching flames of an impressive blast—injuries notwithstanding—so long as they avoided the impact at the center. This was why every modern Earth explosive from grenades to flechettes utilized the initial burst as a means to deliver more damaging metal projectiles.
This had led to a realization that straddled the baffling line between brilliant and barbaric: since shock waves lost their force as they diffused over long distances, if one distributed combustibles across the whole area intended for destruction, then everything would blow up without losing the initial blast to natural dispersal! I’d just happened to borrow what these scientists had dubbed fuel-air explosives.
I hadn’t been able to synthesize the complicated fuels used in cutting-edge thermobaric weapons. Mulling over an alchemy station for hours and even getting a bit of help from the madam had only been enough to produce an early version that relied on liquid oxygen, and even then, I’d broken my fair share of equipment trying to keep the fluid below the boiling point. Had the smirking Lady Agrippina not offered a word or two of advice, I would have spent a truckload of experience points trying to develop this card up my sleeve.
And, well, this one should have stayed up my sleeve; whether I was happy or sad about finally seeing it in action was a complicated question.
But what mattered now was that it was strong enough. Everything in a ten-meter radius from its origin had been sectioned off in a barrier that trapped what should have been a momentary blast for seconds. The violent winds were paired with a vacuum that contorted lungs already emptied by the shock of impact; to top it all off, the reaction filled the air with carbon monoxide. Everything melded together to become an unsurvivable nightmare for anything that breathed...
...or at least, it would have by Earth’s standards.

[Tips] Formula revision is perhaps the highest form of spell jamming, in which one tweaks another’s spell to dissipate or otherwise backfire. To do so is to read someone else’s mind in order to rewrite their mystic formulae, and is a considerable display of arcane mastery.
It is similar to inserting erroneous variables or numbers into a mathematical equation. Say, for example, that a merchant wishes to tally a total sum via multiplication: if the price of the items or their quantity changes, or if the foundational idea of multiplication turns to division, the output loses all meaning. In fact, at times, the final result may cause direct harm to the solver.

The life-form thought.
The life-form always thought.
Such was the purpose that led to its creation; such was the desire that led to its acceptance; and such thought was how it had won its love.
Equipped with enormous capacity for thought that enabled quick and accurate arithmetic, it understood that a great many of its selves had been destroyed in a single breath. Eighty-five percent of the battle-ready units that it had split off and carefully cultivated had been blown apart in a terrific, never-before-seen explosion that burned and blew for far longer than anticipated.
The unknown spell demolished the swarm so thoroughly that no individual unit caught in the blast could be recycled for further use. Every call to its many selves went unanswered. Furthermore, the toxic fluids it had secreted were burned away; the pragmatic mind assessed that it was in no position to fulfill its duty.
At the same time, its master was incapable of movement. While he would have been fine if the burns were only surface level, the damage to his body was so salient that it was harder to pinpoint what sections were undamaged. The incessant turbulence of the prolonged explosion had churned his organs like a meat pie, and his bones had shattered under the extreme pressure. Unblocked heat had melted his skin into a frightful goo that dribbled onto his charred clothes, producing a sorry figure.
A normal person from nearly any other walk of life would be unequivocally deceased; yet the life-form knew from its unwavering link that its master was still alive. To be refused death even when reduced to this painful state of outright physical destruction begged the question: could this truly be called a blessing?
Vampires were hardy creatures. They could lose their heads or spill their guts and continue about their lives. There were only three things that could kill one of their kind in the truest sense of the word. However, what seemed an inexhaustible font of life could be drained by seriously maiming them.
Though the life-form’s master accepted that he was a vampire, the man personally rejected a life of vampirism. He scarcely ever partook in blood, and on the rare occasion he did, he far undercut his contemporaries. The raw power he had inherited meant living in a constant state of fast did not spell doom for him, but his diet remained insufficient for robust growth.
Eternity was a prison without something to cling to; if not warm nectar, then, what did he choose? Uncontent with the thought of surrendering himself to the circumstances of his birth, the man found meaning in the product of his own diligence, something that none could ever deprive him of: his own wit. He learned how to manipulate his mana by branding the lessons of magecraft onto his brain, actualizing a flood of creative ideas to imprint himself onto the world.
He was not a mere Erstreich, born to a fate of privilege. No, he was an individual: he was Professor Martin von Erstreich, member of the College’s factionless School of Midheaven—and he had polished himself to suit his own ideals through the merit of his own intellect.
The history of his studies threatened to numb the mind. Making full use of his immortality, the magus had spent day in and day out steeped in nothing but thaumaturgical research. As a result, he had climbed the sublime peak of strength; even a bloodsucker who had bolstered their own might via sin was no better than a pile of ashes in his wake.
Yet this also meant that he was incomplete as a vampire. His ability to heal was significantly inferior to a comparably powerful member of his ilk.
Today, he had already suffered two fatal blows—at the hand of a child he could annihilate at first sight, no less. The cost of frolic was steep. Although he carried himself as if nothing concerned him, a crumbling vampire in his position would have long since been reduced to dust; having endured two attacks that would ordinarily necessitate a prolonged holiday to heal from left the life-form worried.
Worse still, the life-form considered the act of taking a third attack head-on because it “seemed unique” to be utter insanity. Despite having seen the immortal prioritize curiosity over well-being all its life, it could not accept this as a decision made by a sound mind.
His resurrection was slower now. A vampire of his age who had nourished themselves with ample nectar would have easily brushed off the damage, but it knew its master’s injuries were deep enough to prevent him from moving for a short while. Given a few dozen seconds, he would be back to good health. His wounds would close, his clothes would neatly mend themselves, and he would once more resume his bombastic praise in his usual taunting—though he himself did not intend it in the slightest—tone.
But the life-form thought even this was too long.
The unsightly child had failed to rein in his own spell and flew off into a faraway pillar, but the will to fight burned on within him. While he’d unhanded his weapon upon being knocked away, his body remained full of life.
The life-form felt strongly that it could not let the child approach its master before he was fully healed.
It did not have time to recall the many selves posted far away. The stockpile of units it had left amounted to no more than a twentieth of its full arsenal.
Yet for it, that was not reason enough to forgo trying. The life-form scrounged up its dwindling selves to create a weapon that came pitifully short of its true power. Still, that would do: it just needed to buy a transient moment. In less than a minute’s time, its master would wake and clean up this elementary problem.
The life-form had no hope of comprehending his true intentions, but that was fine. His thought process mattered little to it. All that mattered was that he had loved it; as a tool, it was its duty to repay him.
So the life-form did not hesitate: leaving only the bare minimum needed to ensure its continued ego, it crawled out of hiding.

[Tips] The excellence of a vampire is decided on two key points. The first is the strength of their lineage: a vampire born as the result of a mighty mother and father will invariably inherit their strength. The second is the quantity of blood consumed: the liquid residue of foreign souls ennobles them.
However, this rule only expresses an individual’s merit as a vampire, and is an inadequate measure of overall power.

After letting loose my secret weapon—in the sense that I would’ve liked it to have remained a secret—the explosion sent me tumbling straight into a pillar.
Since I’d had no chance to practice, I hadn’t been sure how much of the impact would escape the barrier. I’d been wholly unprepared to steady my footing or to incrementally bleed off the momentum like I’d done with the masked man’s opening attack.
Still, it seemed like my combat rolls weren’t too shabby today. Luckily enough, I’d flown off at an angle that avoided collision for a few dozen meters, letting me roll for a decent while before slamming into a pillar. In the worst case, I could have flown right into one and splattered like a pomegranate.
“Augh! Blegh, ack!” ...But I ended up sustaining a deep wound that I couldn’t shrug off. “Hrgh... Ugh... I think I broke a rib...”
Every breath caused my stomach to spasm in pain at the sensation of something digging into my gut. I wasn’t shrewd enough to diagnose how many ribs I’d broken, nor was I slick enough to laugh it off as a flesh wound. When every breath felt like I was drowning, the best I could do was forcibly shut my wailing body up with my mind.
Okay, calm down—I gotta calm down. I didn’t have the time to writhe around in pain. While it was tempting to jot down the lessons that the output produced might be overdone and that I needed to work on the mystic barrier containing it, I knew I still hadn’t finished the job.
A mensch like me would need to be maxed out with special traits—enough to march across the line of humanity with their own two feet—in order to avoid being pulverized into dust; that much was clear to see from the two gargantuan triskeles laying on their backs, twitching and frothing at the mouth.
But I wasn’t brainless enough to expect raw destructive force to put an undead down for good, especially when I was up against the most physically resistant race of them all. Besides, blowing a giant fuse only to face the billowing smoke with a “Did we get him?!” or a “He couldn’t have survived that!” was just asking for him to get up again.
Although some considered methuselah “undead,” they were perfectly reasonable organisms that died when you lopped off their heads or tore out their innards. Of course, the question of how someone like Lady Agrippina might ever lose her head was a conundrum too ambitious to waste time on now.
No, the problem lay with those that never truly died unless a specific condition or conditions were met—vampires were the worst of the lot. The most effective means of permanently finishing one off was to either keep them in direct sunlight or impale their heart with a divine stake blessed to prevent further regeneration, but neither of these were clear-cut one-hit kills. If left alone, they would resurrect after years and years of healing; their ludicrous persistence was comical.
Other options were limited. Bitter that His wife granted them Her protection despite His having been fooled by them, the Sun God imbued his devotees with intense powers of purgation. On the other hand, the Night Goddess had recognized vampires to be too individually powerful and shackled them with a mortal weakness to silver. Without one of these methods, a vampire was sure to put themselves back together time and time again.
“Marvelous.”
See? He’s still kicking. As the lingering aftershock mellowed, I could make out a silhouette in the settling dust. I figured he’d still be alive, but why the hell is he still person-shaped?
Still, his recovery was incomplete and he seemed unfit to move. Inaction would let my short-lived moment of opportunity pass in the blink of an eye, so I had to hurry.
Clutching at the pain with a few Hands—I figured a makeshift corset would be better than nothing—I called the Craving Blade back to my side. It nestled itself into my outstretched hand like a lovable puppy, but its mad desire to hack and slash was anything but adorable.
Propping myself up with my uncute sword, my psyche gave my flesh the brutal order to start running. Every step caused tears to well, but I sucked it up—pain would quickly cease to be an issue if I dared stop.
I was going to kill him, right here and right now. As I started to weave my Unseen Hands with an iron will...it appeared.
“Ngh?!”
Permanent Battlefield triggered as a jolt of unease that zipped across my body; a moment later, I sensed a dull and strangely artificial bloodlust coming my way. Acting in slow motion on Lightning Reflexes, I managed to sling the Craving Blade around my back to block the attack aiming to pierce my heart from behind—that I pulled this off was a miracle no better than happenstance.
I’d positioned myself in a desperate bid to preserve my life, and the heavy blow easily knocked me off my dubious balance.
It barely took any time to regain my poise. I’d known from the start that I couldn’t block properly with my impromptu stance, so I’d managed to leap away in a direction of my choosing. Rolling off the momentum of a hit for the umpteenth time today, I funneled the recoil into my arm to swing my “emptied” right hand.
Having rerouted nearly all my kinetic energy into this motion, my arm whipped at breakneck velocity; the Craving Blade once again answered my call just as quickly. The sword had been blown away when I’d blocked, but it was already perfectly set in my hand as I swung to intercept the mystery assailant’s follow-up and sliced straight through their right forearm.
“Wha— Who the fuck?!”
My inner thoughts leapt out into the dimension of spoken word; the enemy pulling away from me was bleeding purple blood.