With a surge of force, I finally threw the vampire off me. I got to my feet, coughing and dragging in deep lungfuls of air. There was something terribly weird about me now. It was like the natural forces of the world just didn’t affect me anymore. I hardly felt my body being weighed down by gravity, or the air dragging at me as I moved. Like I was untethered somehow.
Was this how these Scarthralls always felt? I could see how they got addicted to power like this.
It wasn’t just the weirdness of my body. Along with that strangeness came the ever-present sensation of rippling power. I knew—in a way that had sunk bone-deep—that I wasn’t going to be cowed. I wasn’t going to be beaten. Not here. Not by this stupid Scarthrall.
And he knew it too. The Thrall’s eyes had gone wide. He even took a step back.
So I took a step forward. I was already on him. The widening of his eyes sent a shivering thrill through me an instant before my fist connected with his face. His nose cracked, his lips burst, his cheekbone shattered, his mouth spewing more blood. All of which my empowered eyes caught in the fraction of a heartbeat it took for him to fly back from my hit.
The vampire slammed into the house across the street. With a gurgling roar, he threw himself back upright. The crash had finally dislodged the stake from his chest, but the wound wasn’t healing.
I noted all that within the instant he was back up. In the next, I was on him again, my foot lashing out in a kick.
The Scarthrall shrieked out as he went flying once more, flying across the next street before shattering another house, destroying it completely. When he staggered up out of the debris once again, I was standing over him.
“Wait!” he gurgled out in desperation. “
Stop
. You’re one of—” He coughed out more blood. “One of us. Can’t kill one of your own!”
My next punch crushed half his head. I aimed down this time, so that his skull was caught between my fist and the ground. The impact left a little dent on the ruined floor, but more importantly, caved half his head in.
I pulled back, my fist coated in gore. My muscles felt like snakes writhing under my skin, and the sight of blood was drawing up a disgusting amount of saliva. Was my tongue narrower and sharper somehow too? I couldn’t pay attention. First, this bastard had to die.
Stomping all over his body left more crushing injuries everywhere. I still had a bit of mana, and I used that to infuse more weight into my legs before jumping up and bringing them down with furious force. I crushed his ribcage, then flattened his other arm, before doing the same to his legs. It was almost pleasant to do without hearing his stupid shrieking.
But it wasn’t going to be enough. Bastard was already regenerating. Didn’t matter how hard I struck wherever I struck, his wounds kept recovering. His body was immortal.
Sure, he wasn’t fighting back right that moment, but I couldn’t keep this up forever. A minute or two had already passed. The Sacrifice reward was going to run out.
The regeneration was slow, though. And there was the burning smoke coming out of the wound in his chest…
A few things were becoming clearer. One of which was noting that crushing the Thrall’s head was what stopped him from fighting back. Made sense, since that essentially destroyed his brain, which was a difficult organ to move around when compared to ones in his torso. To that end, I made sure his skull stayed destroyed as much as possible.
The other fact was that his regeneration was slowing as the smoking stench intensified. Was his self-healing going to stop first, or was my Sacrifice reward? It was a race. One I was determined to win.
I stopped destroying his body and focused on twisting his limbs right off. It was a heady sensation to realize I temporarily had enough Power to do just that. Grab an arm, twist the flesh and bone, then yank it right off with a wet ripping and rending sound that reverberated in my ears, more blood splattering everywhere.
Making good use of my strength, I did the same to pretty much the rest of his body, including his head too. Just tore it off—neck and all, bit of the spine sticking out—without actually destroying it.
The Scarthrall cursed as he could talk again, apparently not needing his lungs to power his mouth. I almost laughed at the thought of keeping just the head around.
“You bastard,” he spat. “What are you
doing?
”
“I’ve figured you out.”
“
What?
”
“Your body keeps regenerating,” I said. “But it’s slowing down. Also, you only regenerate wounds where your body is destroyed and deformed. The regeneration can’t create
extensions
of your body. So instead of injuring you, if I just carefully rip you apart…” I grinned at him, baring
my
fangs for a change. “You’ll be helpless.”
He screamed out. Which was all he could do. I had ripped off his arms and legs and made sure they were separate from the head and body, which were also no longer connected to each other. They weren’t moving, but that hadn’t stopped me from driving more stakes through them to lock them into the dirt. Best not to take any chances.
“You can’t do this!” the Scarthrall cried. “I will—”
I stabbed through his mouth with another stake. That shut his stupid words into muffled, wet gurgles. “Pretty nice how our little fight created all these handy little stakes, right?”
With a sigh, I finally stepped back. My butt plopped onto the ground on its own. It wasn’t that I was tired. Not physically, at least. The reward from Sacrifice was driving energy into me too, making sure I had ample ability to use the newfound might it had gifted me.
What it
hadn’t
granted me was any sort of mental relief. I felt the urges of a Scarthrall, but that didn’t take away the sheer, soul-deep exhaustion I couldn’t even begin to get rid of.
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Worsened all the more by the fact that the fight was really over. I had won. It was pretty obvious. The Scarthrall’s struggles had stopped, and so had his regenerative power, the smoky stench growing heavier and heavier as his body’s natural capabilities finally failed him.
I just sat there for a bit. Everything weird and different about being a Scarthrall was hitting me one after another, blows pelting me in lieu of the actual Thrall dying nearby. The way my muscles writhed under my skin and my flesh felt it was about to bubble and pop. The way my skin felt like tarp stretched taut over what it was supposed to hold, ready to tear at any second. My claws, my fangs, my dripping tongue…
The way I could just barely restrain myself from attacking the ripped off limbs of the Scarthrall…
It was disgusting.
Monstrous
. The longer it went on, the more I hated every single second of it, felt like ripping my tongue out and skin off. If this was what the Scarthralls felt like every moment of their lives, no wonder they were so twisted and evil.
This wasn’t what a
person
was supposed to feel like.
I had to wait. One hour, the notification had said. It had also said that I had acquired a new Affix for Sacrifice too. I supposed the name was self-explanatory here too. I really
had
emulated a Scarthrall by Sacrificing a chunk of its body.
Questions arose at that. The Weave had considered the heart of the Scarthrall to be mine after I had ripped it out. Like taking it from the Scarthrall had shifted ownership to me.
In some twisted way, that kind of made sense. After all, the cultists had been able to Sacrifice me after ripping me from my home.
It hadn’t worked when the Elder had tried to Sacrifice my blood for some reason. Was the difference in this case the fact that I had Windfall? That the overwhelming amount of mana my core could provide was overriding Sacrifice’s “natural” limits? I saw no other reason. Though that made me question what the ultimate depth of my mana core even was.
How far could I push back the number of days before the mana implosion occurred? Would it ever reach a point where my mana core was empty? Would Windfall just fail then?
If I was remembering right, the message from the Weave had specified that I had Sacrificed the Thrall’s heart. That suggested the effect would have been different if I had used a different part of the vampire’s body as an offering. Now I was questioning what I’d get if I used legs or arms. How granular could I get with it? Would Sacrificing a spleen be different?
Since I was just sitting and waiting for the monster to fully die off, ignoring how the smoky taste in the air kept growing, I had nothing better to do than ponder.
Well, I
did
have the other parts of the Scarthrall to test it out on. I vacillated. Did I want to do that right now, what with how turning into a vampire was making me feel less and less like myself? I had a sneaking suspicion Sacrificing anything of the Scarthrall was going to lengthen the duration of my current transformation.
[ Rank Up!
Your Vitality, Agility, and Fervour Attributes have risen by two Ranks.
Your Power and Spirit Attributes have risen by one Rank.
Your Sacrifice and Gravity Aspects have risen by one Rank.
Your Path of the Acolyte has risen by two Ranks.
Your Path of the Newborn Star has risen by one Rank.
Vitality
: Iron V
Agility
: Iron IV
Fervour
: Iron VI
Power
: Iron V
Spirit
: Iron IV
Gravity
: Iron VI
Sacrifice
: Iron IV
Path of the Acolyte
: Iron V
Path of the Newborn Star
: Iron V
]
Well, wasn’t that something. Literally every single thing I possessed in my Status had risen by a rank—two for some of them, even. Well, not
everything
. I had a feeling Universal Language Approximator didn’t work the same way.
Although, thinking of languages now made me wonder why ranks were presented with roman numerals. Seeing it all listed out like that wasn’t
as
intuitively easy to grasp as it would have been with plain old numbers—like the Arabic numerals—although it wasn’t like grasping the roman numerals was difficult. Plus, it did look kind of nicer this way.
The Weave probably personalized the notifications to everyone’s easiest language. I was pretty sure no one on Ephemeroth saw everything in English like I did.
Having every single Attribute, Aspect, and even my Paths go up like that was definitely causing some weirdness in my body. But combined with the already-present peculiarity thanks to my Scarthrall transformation, I couldn’t even begin to understand what all was going on.
The strange interaction was probably due to my ranks technically being higher than what the Weave was saying thanks to Sacrifice, even if it was temporary. I was starting to feel a little sick.
When I looked over, more of the Scarthrall was dissolving into smoke and crumbling to ash. Pretty sure my window of opportunity to Sacrifice any other bits of him was now gone.
I considered what to do next. Just sit around and wait for this to wear off? Maybe I could use it. I had killed one Scarthrall, but there were a bunch of them who needed to pay for invading the temple. The others had gone after them, but that didn’t mean they were successful. I could help.
On the other hand… I looked down at myself. At my claws, at the way I was half-naked and ripped with muscles that were obviously not mine. My robes were gone and I couldn’t even open my mouth without displaying the sharp fangs and sharper tongue seeking blood.
If anyone saw me in his state, what was there to stop them from attacking me in fear? I was literally a Scarthrall. Anything I said would sound like lies.
But a Scarthrall might not try to kill me on sight.
Pacing and thinking didn’t help. I sighed, making sure that the Scarthrall was indeed dead. All the smoking ash confirmed it. Then I headed out. Even if I couldn’t directly show myself to anyone, there was a possibility I could run across some other Scarthrall. Then I could take advantage of the situation, the potential confusion, to take care of another nuisance.
I wasn’t exactly the sneaky type. Playacting a part wasn’t going to come naturally to me. I was sure I could improvise though. It wasn’t like I needed them to believe me for long, anyway.
What I was absolutely going to avoid was meeting a regular person. These urges, this clawing hunger for blood… I couldn’t convince myself that I could restrain them.
My plan never got to materialize. I was edging my way through the streets when I spotted Hamsik.
“Shit,” I muttered, before hiding myself in the nearest house.
Not fun. Not fun at all. Hamsik was the last guy I wanted to see right that moment. One look at me, and he’d probably start blasting with that sun-shooting wrist-mounted blaster of his. And—
And hold on. Because I had the racial traits or whatever it was of a Scarthrall, did that mean I had received all their weaknesses too? Was sunlight now my bane? My heart started thudding a little harder. If I felt the urge to rip into fresh meat and drink up blood, then it wasn’t unlikely that I had developed a fatal allergy to garlic too.
As well as to getting my heart stabbed with a wooden stake, but that would normally be fatal anyway, so.
I peeked at Hamsik through a slit in the wooden wall.
“Keep moving,” I muttered. Once he was past, I could continue sneaking onwards.
But Hamsik did not keep going. He came to a stop
very
close to my hiding spot.
“I can sense you,
Thrall
,” Hamsik said. “Stop wasting everyone’s time and come out of hiding.
Now
.”
Hamsik turned, looking straight at the house I had hidden inside. I cursed.
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