The two heavy-blooded knights immediately screamed in utter fury as they saw yet another of their magicians being slain. Things might have gone completely different if I hadn’t gotten the Nephilim Class before; even with just Sunshine and my physique, it wouldn’t be possible for me to slay these Vampires as fast.
Well, I also owe a good amount of my success to Gram, purifying him was quite a hassle, but all things considered, it feels like I was made for this Dungeon’s enemies. And I won’t let any of these bastards survive. The fewer there are, the more chances the people of this village have to survive.
And I won’t have mercy, no matter how much they scream or how much they suffer the death of their comrades.
“All the people you’ve been mercilessly killing, all those innocent people you toyed with, also had friends and family that loved them,” I said, my sword beginning to gather more of my Mana, as I finished drinking a Mana Potion and dropped the bottle into the ground. “You don’t have the right to mourn for the deaths of your comrades, you hypocrites.”
“They’re nothing but cattle! Why should we care about them or their damn families?!”
The two heavy knights charged towards me, unleashing a powerful Crimson Shield Bash by imbuing Blood Energy into their shields, which made the crimson shields gain hundreds of sharp, metallic spikes.
“If you took lives so mercilessly and without a care in the world, then you should have also expected that one day the same would happen to you!”
I jumped into the air and flew above the ground using my Seraphin wings, evading their powerful shield bashes. The impact of their attack on a large stone behind me created a huge explosion.
“SILENCE, CELESTIAL!”
“You don’t have the RIGHT to say that after your kin massacred our World!”
The two Blood Knights suddenly grew bat-like wings made of blood and pointed their Greatswords at me, swinging them furiously while charging them with the magical power of their deceased allies.
“{Bloody Revenge}!!!”
Their swords moved at lightning speed, carrying with them the almighty magical power of their fallen comrades, including the large magic power that the magicians held!
They were synchronized to an extreme level, and I had to quickly make my wings disappear so that gravity would pull me down faster than I could fly higher, evading their slashing attacks by a hair.
The two attacks unleashed waves of blood energy that followed me all the way down, quickly glowing brighter until they exploded on my face.
“Hahahaha! Take that, you bitch!”
“This is our revenge against you damned Celestials!”
As they thought of their victory, the smoke slowly dissipated to reveal several illusions of myself. Thanks to my Bastion Shield shielding me from most of the damage and my wonderful angelic armor taking another part of the damage dealt, I was left almost unscathed.
I used this opportunity to divide myself into several Light Illusions, burning through my Mana, but I had already recovered thanks to a Mana Potion I had saved.
The two Heavy Blood Knights panicked as I flew with my clones towards them, firing beams of sunshine against them while my clones rotated around me.
They weren’t mere distractions; through the ability to imbue my Mana Connection into these illusory clones, I could use them as “drones” to fire off Magic Spells in any direction they could reach.
By making them rotate around my body, they were able to unleash a barrage of Sunshine Beams at an erratic and rapid pace, confusing the heavy knights and pushing them back!
One of them had his wings destroyed, pummeling into the ground, which I quickly took advantage of, flying down and pointing Gram into his neck.
“G-Get away from me!”
He desperately attempted to slash my body with his great sword, hitting me with his shield. However, I sliced his arms off using my two daggers while I held Gram with my teeth.
And without letting me regenerate those arms, I jabbed Gram into his neck and then moved my mandibles, slicing through his neck horizontally, his huge head flying away and hitting the ground a second earlier than his body.
[You have slain [Heavy Blood Knight: Hercler (A+ Rank)] x1!]
[You earned 250.000 EXP.]
The other Heavy Knight rushed down towards me, tears flowing from his red eyes. Aw, come on, as if I would ever empathize with you cold-blooded murderers. Ah, well, I am not so different from them, though.
He erratically swung his sword while imbuing it with berserk quantities of Blood Energy while descending, attempting to push me down into the ground as much as he could.
“DIE! DIE! DIE! {Wrathful Blood Blade}!”
He moved his Greatsword all the way above his head and then imbued all the energy he had left, making the sword grow three times its original size and then pointing it towards my stomach!
My shield resisted the blow but gained several cracks across its body, and its Durability plummeted by a lot! I’ll have to ask Hilda to repair it later.
“That damn shield you summon whenever you want! What kind of power is that?!”
He kept hitting me, using his momentum to his advantage, as I could find very little time to retaliate, being forced into a defensive stance as we both fell from the skies.
“{Demon-Sealing Celestial Chains}!”
In a split second, the whole body of the heavy knight was wrapped in chains made of light, temporarily sealing his movements, his sword falling into the ground before he could swing it, and his magic being slightly sealed as well.
“Y-You tricky- What are you doing?!”
I gave him a hug of death as I unleashed the brightness of Sunshine at full power, burning him alive until his body ended up being roasted to a crisp.
I landed over his burned body, and I sliced his head, making sure he would die. I can’t lower my guard against these immortals after all; Vampires are tricky because they can pretend they die and sneak behind you.
[You have slain [Heavy Blood Knight: Jeremias (A+ Rank)] x1!]
[You earned 250.000 EXP.]
I combined [Mana Senses] with [Eyes of Truth], their effects combining as my sight expanded to as much as my Mana Senses. In a second, I noticed the last Blood Knight escaping as fast as he could, running across the withered tree forest.
“You’re not getting away.”
Using the last minutes left of my Seraphin Wings, I flew at lightning speed, catching the Blood Knight by surprise by piercing his chest with Gram.
“A-Arrggh…! Y-You..?! You damn… bitch!”
“Yeah, yeah, go to sleep now, bloodsucker. Your beloved Countess will join you very soon~”
“Lady Blednica… will… never lose… to the likes… of… yo… u…”
While vomiting blood, he managed to say a small slur before I sliced his head using my Frost Wolf Fang Dagger, finishing him off swiftly. He already seemed weak beforehand.
[You have slain [Heavy Blood Knight: Heckert (A+ Rank)] x1!]
[You earned 250.000 EXP.]
[Your Level has increased to 43!]
[You have Gathered [Blood Knight’s Corpse (A Rank)] x6]
[You have Gathered [Blood Knight’s Full Armor (B Rank)] x6]
[You have Gathered [Blood Knight’s Blood Swords (B Rank)] x6]
[You have Gathered [Pure Blood Heart Core (A Rank)] x6]
[Amazing! All Gathered Items Quality has increased by one Rank!]
“Level 43… Not bad.” I sighed in relief.
[“Brutal as ever, huh? You have slain six knights like nothing! You’re a monster! But a righteous one, thankfully. I can’t imagine you being on the side of the bad guys; nobody would be able to stop you.”]
“Well, there’s no real “bad guys” …” I sighed. “It’s all subjective. Maybe the vampires love each other and value their family and all, but I won’t forgive them even if they love each other and think of themselves as nice people if they kill innocents. Also, I kind of empathize more with poor people who suffer than them…”
[“Okay, fine, don’t go overboard with your philosophy; that’s not going to help you get anywhere…”]
“I know; that’s why I usually don’t talk about that stuff.” I shrugged. “Now let’s go save some lives to make up for the ones I took.”
I quickly ran back into the village, of course, not without repairing the door by using my Synthesis Skill on the broken parts and reinforcing the door with a quick Sealing Array that covered the rest of the wooden walls.
Afterwards, I jumped underground and was greeted with a trembling Inferna pointing a spear at the stairs; her entire body was sweating rapidly while she was gritting her teeth, and tears quickly began flowing from her eyes the moment she saw me.
“Inferna? Are you alright? It’s fine; they’re gone. I took care of them. Lower your weapon.”
She dropped her spear and then hugged me, crying on my shoulders.
“I was prepared to die—to become their plaything so the rest could escape! Sniff… I was so scared. I actually didn’t want to die…!”
“Sigh, it’s fine… It’s alright now.”
I calmed myself a bit after being hugged by her, as Inferna quickly blushed the moment she realized she had been crying on my shoulders while hugging me tightly for a couple of minutes.
“T-That’s…! S-Sorry! I didn’t mean to…”
“Hahaha, it’s fine. I can understand that fear very much…”
The two of us began walking across the underground corridors as Inferna calmed down, although she was still embarrassed.
“Back in my own world, my family was killed in a catastrophe; monsters started coming out of portals, ravaging everything... In that time, I got hit by rubble in my head and fell into a coma for a couple of years.”
“Y-You went through all of that? You?!”
Inferna couldn’t believe the strong Anna of now had gone through something like that.
“I used to be a dumb, innocent, hopeless little girl too... A very dumb and conceited one, living in a world filled with lies.” I sighed. “A world that was never free as I thought, a world that always belonged to the Constellations.”
“So you went through the same as us?" She sighed. “How many worlds have gone through the same? How many people have to die to please those monsters?”
“I don’t know, thousands, millions of worlds, perhaps." I sighed. “I visited the world of your antagonists, the Celestials too.”
“Y-You did?!” She asked. “Were they living in luxury? I remember those bastards were always wearing gold and stuff. Always acting as if they were all high and mighty…”
“Their world was in ruins just one.” I sighed with a hopeless smile.
“Eh?” Inferna looked at me in disbelief.
“Their children and elderly were massacred. Their beautiful world is in ruins. Even their King, Solomon, betrayed them because he was manipulated by a Constellation, turning his people into statues, eternally sealed to be at his side…” I sighed, looking at the small golden mirror in my hands. “I gained these powers because I freed them from him.”
“…” Inferna seemed to have a hard time understanding everything, but she did understand something out of what I was trying to tell her.
“So… we were all victims at the end?” She looked down, giving a cynical smile. “All victims of a power we cannot fight against... Even the damned Celestials got what they deserved, but I bet... not everyone was a prick, isn’t it?”
“Of course not…” I looked into her eyes. “I’m not trying to tell you to forgive them or something, but just so you can understand that even they were powerless against the Will of the Nebulas and the Higher Ups…”
“Why do they seek this much destruction? What are they trying to find? What are they looking for?” Inferna asked, incapable of understanding the motives of beings beyond her comprehension.
“It’s a filter,” I answered.
“A… filter?” She wondered. “What?”
“A filter so the strongest and most capable of us come out and are taken away, to join them... Into the real battlefield, where everything actually matters.”
"What... is that place?”
“Anyways, we’re here. I got all the ingredients, so I’ll get to prepare the medicine!” I smiled. “Cheer up, now that I am here... I’ll make sure that, at the very least, I can make things better for all of you.”
“Anna…” Inferna was about to cry again, but she contained her tears. “Let me help you too! I-It’s the least I can do!”
“Sure… I guess I don’t mind a helper.” I giggled.
[The [Character: Inferna] Affinity with you has Increased Greatly.]
[Because of this, she has become qualified to be sponsored by you!]
[Do you wish to purchase a [Super Growth Package Gift (C Rank Privilege)]?]
[Cost: Varies depending on the target’s Potential.]
This is… Of course! How didn’t I think about it before?!