All Chapters of The Broken Vampire System: Chapter 71
- Chapter 80
148 chapters
71
~LaurentRaka laughed. Not the mocking kind people use when they know they’re safe — the desperate kind, built to mask fear. His voice bounced off the ruined walls. “You think you can win?” he said. “Look around, Laurent Draven. You’re outnumbered. And last I checked…” He tilted his head, grin spreading, “you’re just an E-rank.”The shifters behind him hissed in unison, eager for the command.Raka’s hand sliced through the air. “Kill him.”Four of them lunged at once, limbs blurring in the dim light — too fast for the eye to follow.My blade was already moving before their claws reached me.Ereval sang through the air, a single, fluid sound — the kind that didn’t break so much as erase. A flicker of red light trailed behind the arc, blooming a heartbeat later into a line of severed heads thudding to the floor.Their bodies stumbled forward without them, twitching as blood fountained in silent rhythm.Ereval’s edge glowed faintly, dripping scarlet.I turned to Raka, my head down, my vo
72
~LaurentThe crunch of gravel grew sharper as the night wind cut through the broken doorway. I lifted my blade and waited—ready for another wave, another set of monsters to vent out my anger on.But it wasn’t more shifters.It was Denzel. And Kendrix.They stepped into the wreckage like men crossing a battlefield they hadn’t fought on. Their boots sank in the blood pooling near the threshold. The smell hit them first; the sight followed. The ruined furniture. The glass. The quiet bodies.Kendrix froze mid-step. “What the hell—” He didn’t finish. His gaze found her.“Ciela!”He was at her side before Denzel could speak, dropping to his knees. His hands shook as he touched her face, brushed hair from her cheek like he could will her eyes open. “Ciela, hey—wake up, come on—please.” His voice cracked halfway through her name.She didn’t move.I didn’t either. My blade hung loosely at my side, its red edge dimming. I could still feel the fight pulsing in my blood, but it was already turnin
73
~Omniscient POVThe house was silent except for the sound of breathing that wasn’t hers.Ciela lay motionless on the floor, the faint rise and fall of her chest almost too shallow to see. Kendrix knelt beside her, every few seconds brushing the hair from her face, whispering something that didn’t quite reach words.Behind him, Denzel stood with his arms crossed, face unreadable. “Stay with her,” he said. “Don’t let anyone in. I’ll be back.”“First Laurent. Now you,” Kendrix looked up. “Where are you going? Shouldn’t you be here with her?”“To her father.” Denzel’s voice was clipped, already halfway gone.Kendrix didn’t utter another word as Denzel walked away. The door closed behind him with a hollow thud that carried farther than it should have.–––Denzel moved through the street, his boots steady against the stone. Street lamps spilled long pools of yellow light that bent and broke around him.He didn’t rush. He never rushed. But his pulse betrayed him.The Ardent mansion loomed ah
74
~LaurentThe beast came at me like a mountain deciding to fall. The first step it took made the earth buckle. Trees tore free from the soil. Its roar ripped through the clearing — a low, vibrating note that crawled straight into the ribs.I moved first.[Skill Active: Shadow Step]The world blinked sideways. I reappeared at its flank and slashed for the leg — a clean, vertical arc. Ereval’s red trail carved through the air, meeting the hide with a hiss. The blade bit in, but only halfway. Scales thicker than iron turned most of the cut aside. The delayed slash went off a heartbeat later, opening a gash that oozed dark light instead of blood.The beast screamed and swung.The tail hit me before I could vanish again. The impact was like being hit by a collapsing wall — ribs cracked, breath gone, the air itself knocked out of me. I flew backward, slammed through two trunks, and rolled until the ground caught me.“Not good enough,” I muttered, pushing myself up, spitting blood into the di
75
~KendrixThey say time doesn’t stop for anyone.Turns out, that includes people lying in comas.Two days had passed since the night everything fell apart—Ciela, still unmoving in that hospital bed, machines breathing for her; Laurent, gone without a trace. No note, no message, not even a whisper from Denzel about where he might’ve gone.So, yeah. Life moved on. Classes resumed, tournaments restarted, and the Academy acted like the world hadn’t tilted off its axis.Me? I needed a distraction. I needed noise.That’s how I found myself standing in the center of this arena again.The roar of the crowd filled the stadium—thousands of voices layered over each other, waves of heat and excitement rolling through the air. Dust lifted from the sand-covered ground as combatants from earlier fights left behind the smell of sweat, steel, and burnt mana.“Next match!” The referee’s voice boomed, magically amplified. “Titan System—B rank—versus Necromancy System—B rank!”The crowd screamed louder.I
76
~LaurentI jumped back and turned to face the two figures that I initially thought were my clones.They smiled in unison.It was the same smile I’d worn a dozen times in the mirror. The two figures folded toward each other like reflections that had decided to stop pretending they were separate. Where they met, shadow stitched itself together and the shape resolved into one body.I didn’t flinch.“Who are you?” I asked.The thing cocked its head, the motion disturbingly human. “I am Mimic,” it said. The voice was my voice, but thinner, a copy with the edges sanded off.A pale panel blinked into my vision without my permission.[Mission unlocked]Kill: MIMICReward: Free passage to obtain Heartroot PetalFailure: Death at the hands of the MimicNo options. No ceremony. Just the cold, hard sentence of a task.The Mimic smiled again, then dissolved its lip into something almost amused. Before I could answer, it vanished. A fist swung into my stomach so fast I heard nothing but the world
77
~KendrixThe ride felt longer than it was.Ardent’s car hummed over the road, quiet except for the faint rumble of the mana engine and the rhythmic sweep of the wipers. Night pressed against the tinted glass, the city lights sliding by in blurred streaks of white and gold. Denzel sat to my left, elbow against the window, face unreadable.I watched the reflection of Ardent in the rearview mirror. His eyes didn’t move from the road.We hadn’t spoken since leaving the arena. The silence sat heavy.Halfway through the trip, he finally broke it.“How long have you known her?” His tone was casual on the surface, but every word carried weight.I didn’t have to ask who he meant. “Ciela?”“Yes.”“A few months,” I said. “Feels like longer.”Ardent hummed like that answer wasn’t enough. “And you’d do anything for her?”I hesitated, then nodded once. “If I have to.”He turned the wheel, voice flat. “Good.”The word landed with the finality of a verdict. I didn’t know what he meant yet, but it did
78
~LaurentThe air was still heavy with the memory of the fight. The dirt beneath me reeked of blood — mine, the mimic’s, maybe both. I stayed flat on my back for a while, watching the canopy pulse with faint light. My ribs creaked with every breath. The system’s faint hum filled the silence, a sound between machinery and heartbeat.[Skill: Blood Recovery: Active]Threads of crimson light crawled along my skin, knitting torn flesh back together. It hurt — not sharp pain, more like a slow burn from the inside out. By the time I pushed myself up, the ache had dulled to something I could ignore.The Hollowwood whispered above me, branches sighing in a wind I couldn’t feel.“Alright,” I muttered, getting ready to start moving. “Let’s finish this.”As I walked, a path in faint red lines appeared before my eyes. I followed.The deeper I went, the less the forest felt like a place and more like a body — veins of glowing bark, roots that twitched when I stepped on them, air thick with a heartbe
79
~Kendrix We stayed in that lab until the lights went flat and the hum in the walls felt like it might be the only thing left alive. When Ardent left, he took the projection with him—literal evidence of what he’d done—but the map and the seed of his plan had stuck to the air between Denzel and me like a stain. Before we went hard at it, Denzel insisted we get the facts straight. No heroics, no stunts. Only facts. That was his thing — quiet certainty. My thing was usually “smash first, ask questions later,” but I’d learned the hard way not to do that with people who could rearrange your bones with a flick of their finger. We sat back down at the black table. The screens were dark; the only light came from the thin veins of conduit overhead and the reflection where the projection had been. “So what’s the play?” I asked. I pushed my knuckles against the glass because thinking felt better when my hands did something. Denzel tapped a rhythm on his knee with two fingers. “We don’t walk
80
~LaurentThe forest had gone completely still.No wind. No sound. Even the ash that had been falling like slow snow hung motionless in the air.Ashmother’s eyes fixed on me—two moons burning silver in the smoke. Her gaze wasn’t angry. It was ancient. Measured. The kind that saw through bone, into the wiring underneath.I’d fought monsters that howled, screamed, cursed my name.This one didn’t need to. She was the curse.[Warning: Entity’s mana output exceeds calculable limits.][Estimated power ratio—1:1200.][Recommendation: Immediate retreat.]Retreat wasn’t an option. The Resin was behind her.I kept my voice even. “You said I had to pay.”Her head tilted, and the trees tilted with it, branches bending like they were listening. “Yes. A price equal to the theft.”My fingers tightened around Ereval’s hilt. The blade trembled faintly, humming against the weight of her presence. “And if I give something valuable?”She leaned forward—if something made of a thousand roots could lean. Her