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Chapter 167- The Perfect Assassin
🕑 Added 2024-09-22 23:50:29 +0000 UTCArthur stood outside the Territory of Blood. It was far too early for him to be returning to this place in his opinion but life never followed his plans. He wasn’t certain what had happened here over the last few days, but something had definitely gone wrong because all the guards Ayesha had set up were nowhere to be seen.
A little investigation on his part had revealed that the ‘gas leak’ tragedy that had claimed the lives of over three hundred children was eerily similar to the one that had destroyed his house and street. Homunculus's eye had detected an abnormally high quantity of blood magic on the scene. It didn’t take a genius to realise that the two incidents were connected.
Arthur had debated revealing himself to Iris to find out exactly what had happened but decided against it for now. For starters, it would remove the remainder of his Darkstar Essence Core's effects. He was counting on it to infiltrate and hopefully assassinate the vampires responsible for all this destruction today if things went well. For whatever reason, the item's effects were greatly diminished compared to Iris’s initial predictions, at least when it came to the expected time frame it would be last. Arthur suspected it was because his refinement consumed so much of its abilities. He’d expected at least a month before he’d have to start to worry about people remembering him. Now Arthur would feel lucky if it lasted the rest of the week.
If vampires had managed to establish themselves in the territory as he feared, he worried if his stealth was still strong enough to keep him hidden from their enhanced senses. Territory lords had some pretty crazy powers if Iris was to be believed. Arthur’s augmented recovery was currently on cooldown, and he knew the smart option would be to wait until it was back online before he chose to attack. His plan of action today, however, wasn’t to engage in a long protracted battle but a quick assassination. If the engagement lasted over a minute, it would mean that Arthur had failed and it was in his best interests to disengage for another day.
Considering all this, Arthur didn’t need to wait for his skill to come back online, not when the delay risked removing his greatest advantage. Still, I guess there's one easy way to check if the Darkstar essence core is working properly. Taking a deep breath, Arthur allowed his domain to billow out from him, holding his breath as it washed over the territory of blood. This was the moment of truth. Would they notice it? There was no sudden blurring of alarms, no wires were tripped and then he was done.
Arthur’s aura now covered the entirety of the territory, his magic as hidden as his presence was. With the first test out of the way, Arthur was now free to move forward however he wanted. His domain told him there was only a single living creature within the territory- or is it unliving? Arthur didn’t know if vampire physiology followed the tropes in Earth’s fiction. He was surprised there was only a single vampire here, though, now that they’d gained a Territory for themselves, Arthur had expected they’d have started coming in droves. Whatever the case, it made Arthur’s job easier.
Arthur entered the locus and let out a sigh of relief when it didn’t register his presence. He’d worried it might trip him up on the final stealth check. Now certain he hadn’t been noticed, Arthur moved forward. Since the forty-odd hours since he’d last been in the territory of blood, the place had changed drastically. For starters, all the rubble and wreckage had been cleared away as well as all the dead bodies that had been lying around. Arthur didn’t want to think about what vampires had done with them.
The formerly crater-ridden streets had all been fixed and replaced with a maroon clay-like substance that was positively drenched in blood ether. Arthur would bet the entirety of his fortune- which currently didn’t amount to much- that this was a tier 2 material. Besides that, now the territory was filled with houses, though their design wasn’t anything you’d usually find in a city in America. They were built with far too much elegance and not enough function in mind, each of them looking almost like mini palaces.
Arthur ignored them all for now, heading deeper into the territory where he could sense the vampire. As he grew closer, he began to understand what Iris had meant when she said fighting a Territory lord on their turf was tantamount to suicide. The ether in the atmosphere was overwhelmingly of the blood affinity, stagnant, almost as if it was waiting for the lord to act. His domain felt sluggish here, struggling against the natural state the territory tried to establish. Manifesting active skills would prove to be difficult.
It was a good thing Arthur's plan only required him to use one. He wondered what Iris was thinking, letting the vampires establish themselves here. Already, he could tell the territory had expanded in size, not by much, but even a single meter was too much.
I'm sure she's got a reason. I guess I'll get my answers when we next meet. A half minute of walking later, Arthur finally came upon his target. Through a massive wrought iron gate, he entered the courtyard of what he could only describe as a Gothic castle straight out of the Dark Ages.
How did they build so much in such little time? Do they have transportable property on hand or something? Whatever the case, the Territory lord, Arthur's target lay within. Entering the place was almost anticlimactic. He had been prepared to play ninja, expecting to sneak past hundreds of guards and disable all kinds of traps, both magical and mundane. The reality was far more boring; he just waltzed in. There was nothing to stop him.
The only magical thing about the place was the castle itself, but that made sense- it had to be, to fit inside such a small Territory. Did the spatial enchantments come with the property, or do the vampires have a space mage? They need reinforcements from their home dimension, so… possibly?
The rest of his journey was uneventful. The biggest problem he faced was getting lost for a while, and finding a single door that was locked. Getting into the castle's main chamber took him ten minutes, but finally, he had arrived. His foe was before him at last, an old-looking man pacing up and down with a frown on his wrinkly face. Hollywood had definitely gotten vampires wrong. They weren’t creatures of grace and beauty, predators of the night. If anything, this vampire before him was ugly. His pockmarked skin sagged around his forehead, his eyes were set too far apart, and his lips were so thin they barely existed.
Growing in power was supposed to make you more beautiful, closer to your ideal form, but something had clearly gone wrong here. The man looked stressed, muttering something under his breath, so fast Arthur's Myriad Tongues was only translating bits and pieces. "Bastards, the lot of them." Arthur missed the next sentence. "Always demanding results but never satisfied with how I get them." He could only make out every third word after that, but he got the gist of it.
Ishaya, as the vampire was known, had been tasked by his masters back in his home dimension with securing a foothold on Earth. The person he was so angry with, however, was a fellow vampire he'd been sent with named Elaina, who was some kind of vampire nobility. Apparently, the fact that nobility tended to be dicks was a facet of life that transcended both dimensions and species. Listening to Ishaya's rant, Arthur found himself taking the woman's side. It wasn’t hard when the alternative was an old man who killed hundreds of innocent children just to make a point.
It took significant self-control for Arthur not to attack him right there, but he controlled himself with the knowledge that the vampire wasn't long for this world. So, let me get this straight, Arthur thought. The vampires are down to the very last of their territory on their home planet. Someone important- maybe this ancestor he's been cursing- is nearing death, and now the vultures have started to close in. He had filled in many of the blanks himself, but the details lined up, and he didn’t think he was far off from the truth.
It was understandable then, why Elaina wasn’t happy with how her colleague had gone about securing The Territory of Blood. While people could forgive the occasional murder or butchering of common folk, they tended to get angry when only children were targeted- especially when it was senselessly done to hasten a deal where diplomacy would have served just as well. Not that there was ever a justifiable reason to target children.
While the vampires were confident they could establish themselves on this relatively undeveloped tier 1 planet, they didn’t want to become the subject of a World Quest or make enemies of the higher powers. Their alien overlords would definitely have something to say if that happened.
It didn’t matter now. The vampire responsible was about to die. For the first time, Arthur activated the secondary effect of his legendary skill, Cloaked Blade. It allowed him to create a Dark Crest that he could either place on himself or on his weapon. Naturally, Arthur placed it on his soul-spear. This would prevent any damage he inflicted from healing organically for the next six hours. He wasn’t sure how effective it would be against a powerful vampire, and a territory lord to boot, but Arthur wanted to stack the odds in his favour.
He debated whether or not to use the Homunculi's Ire debuff on the vampire but ultimately decided against it. As powerful as the Darkstar Essence Core was, Arthur didn’t want to overreach and risk discovery at the final juncture. People tended to notice when they were debuffed, especially if they had detection skills. And besides, I don't need the debuff in the first place.
Arthur began channelling his strongest attack skill, Poisoned Fang of the Hydra. This time, he didn’t stop when he reached 20,000 ether or even 30,000. By the time he'd reached his previous maximum, the spear in his hand was throbbing with violent energy. Its tip was a shade of green so dark it appeared black and the ambient ether in the room began to shift away from its blood affinity as it was rapidly replaced by the poison Arthur was now passively releasing. At this point, Arthur was certain he could have gotten away with placing the debuff on Ishaya. If he hadn’t noticed the magical nuke right next to him, there was no way he’d notice being debuffed.
At 45,000 ether, the very world around them seemed to warp. The tier-two materials composing the floor and walls began to crack under the strain. Ishaya remained oblivious to it all, though he appeared a bit unsettled. I seriously underestimated this core, even after seeing how it wiped the system’s memory. I'm a damn fool.
Arthur was surprised he was able to control so much energy, but it made sense that traits gained from Apocalypse Beasts and a dragon core were at least capable of this much. It was his Hyper-efficient trait giving him a 50% reduction in skill costs combined with the reduction his domain gave him that allowed him to completely ignore Poisoned Fang's 30,000 ether limit.
That being said, once he reached 55,000 ether, he knew he had hit his limit. He instinctively felt he could push further, but knew it would start to damage him too.
If this wasn't enough to get the job done, Arthur didn't know what would be. Moving to stand in front of his foe, Arthur got a good look at the vampire responsible for so many senseless deaths. An old, decrepit man. One far past his prime that had lived a century too many. Death stood before him but he remained oblivious, a sitting duck waiting for his end.
Arthur plunged his spear into Ishaya's heart.
Next chapter- Ten minutes or so
AN-
This AN is going to get old very fast so you don't have to read it if you don't want to. It's copy pasted from before. Feel free to ignore it.
Author Note:
Thank you everyone for all the support during my stories launch. Things turned out better than I expected but worse than I had hoped. Self-publishing means my story is only as successful as I am capable in marketing it, and I have never before in my life marketed anything. It's been an interesting learning experience to say the least.
That is to say, that releases will hopefully be going back to a normal two chapters a week baring any unforeseen circumstances that may blindside me. This will be getting old very soon, but once again, I make an appeal to everyone to please go and check out my books release. Leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads, posting it on anywhere you think people might be interested, telling friends and family. Every little bit helps so much more than you could know.
On a side note, if hypothetically, all my readers went and got a KU trial for free for one month (RR says its around 5,000), and read my story Etherious: Fresh Beginnings, entirely for free, all within 24 hours of reading this, a LitRPG story, could hypothetically break into the top ten ranks on Amazon Books. It's impossible, but one can hope.
Day dreaming aside, my book has currently passed 200 sales so far, calculated via copies sold and KU pages read. If by the end of September, my novel passes 1,000 sales, I will start releasing 3 chapters a week. I've been devoting far more time to writing then I used to, and am enjoying it a lot more too since my novels release. So long as I don't get burned out, things are looking up for my writing. Thank you everyone for sticking with me.
