Ascendant Path of a Lustful Vampire

Chapter 539: Feints

Everyone got right to work on their task.

As Meline formed the required seals and whispered a few spell words, a purple magic circle appeared beneath Kyre, Nadine, and Hugo, wrapping them in darkness that erased their presence and rendered them as invisible as they could be in a well-lit room and with the rays of the moon coming through the hole in the wall.

The spell definitely proved effective because, by the annoyed look that crossed his face, the Noble Emissary had just lost sight of three enemies. And he would have been able to pay better attention to the situation if not for the wing flapping, growling Vampire encased in the shadow of a Wyvern who was charging at him.

Meline did as Caius asked and, after securing the trio’s escape, remained behind to face off against the rest of the Minions. Their numbers had dwindled, but since she’d have to fight on her own, the situation wasn’t ideal.

That said, she was still an Eighth Circle Vampire, and the only enemy Vampire in the room was the Noble Emissary, who was already getting engaged in combat with Caius.

The minions were all humans—or at least humanoids—and while they boasted impressive strength and adept techniques to utilize their strengths, Meline easily outstripped them individually. If they came at her all at once, however— well, that would be a different story. One she would like to avoid as much and as effectively as she could.

She cast her fastest and most stealthy movement spell, melting away before her enemies’ eyes so she could draw them out of a collective unit and bring them down one at a time. If she could.

Roxanne, meanwhile, dropped all attempts at being stealthy. If she were to get things done quickly, she just couldn’t afford to be bothered about being noticed.

Roxanne had tools in her hands— Inscription tools that were necessary for drawing Formations. She had been drawing the Formation as secretly as she could, but not now. Not anymore. As Caius charged the enemy, she was seized by urgency, darting around and using her magical energy—channeled through the Inscription tools—to etch symbols onto the ground.

It was hard for Roxanne to keep her focus. Her heart beat hard in her chest, and images of the earlier failure to contain and defeat the Noble Emissary kept flashing in her head. Over and over, she was rewatching the horrible way Hugo, despite his sturdy and near-impenetrable body, had been slammed away and even bled.

Would Caius survive?

She and the other Leopolds were here to protect him. That was their entire purpose and why they joined him on a journey to a location he didn’t even reveal.

How had they failed so much in their duty that Caius was putting himself on the line to save them?

It should be them putting their lives on the line to let him escape, instead!

As much as Roxanne felt it would be heart-wrenching to face the prospect of never seeing him again while she laid her life on the line, it was far better than the way her heart was tethering toward shattering into a million tiny pieces with every sound of clash she heard between Caius and the Noble Emissary right now!

But, as difficult as it was, she had to focus.

Caius’s plan wasn’t too difficult to decipher, and if things worked out well, they could and should be able to make it out of here alive. Three of them were relatively safe now anyway.

Caius didn’t draw his sword because he knew it was going to be useless here. He had a Five Star weapon as well as a Sixth Star weapon in his storage ring, and he was sure the Leopolds had weapons even better than that, but he would struggle to wield them.

Even with the Wyvern Trait he had acquired, weapon-wielding would still be a struggle as Wyverns are not at all built for weapon fighting and have all the weapons they need in their talons and razor-sharp teeth.

And Caius was armed with the Talons at least.

With a flap of the Wyvern-wings of magical energy that the Beast blood had granted him, Caius was in front of the Noble Emissary with speed comparable to the Eighth Circle.

Wyvern have always boasted of being cousins of the Legendary Dragons, and while some look at the idea of the relation with skepticism, the speed a Wyvern was capable of could sway their opinions somewhat.

Caius hadn’t yet managed to draw out the entirety of a Wyvern’s capabilities in his Trait Acquisition Potion, but on the matter of speed, he had gotten it damn near perfect.

When Caius struck a taloned superimposed hand at the Noble Emissary, he wasn’t surprised that the enemy raised his hand just in time to deflect the blow. He had been hoping for that actually, and with another flap of his wings while in motion, Caius flung himself to the side and swung his leg in a kick at the Emissary’s exposed side.

*Bam!*

It was a testament to the speed of a Wyvern that Caius’s move succeeded and caused the Emissary to slide back two steps. Caius didn’t just let that pass, and with another flap of his wings, he charged to press his advantage.

He used another feint and only just managed to strike his talons into the Emissary’s midsection, creating a flash of annoyance in the wild man’s otherwise composed expression.

Now Caius had to keep kicking things up a notch to avoid becoming predictable. For his next attack, he performed two feints, and the one after that, he performed four. And finally, he performed six. That proved to be his limit, and with the way his wings flapped to allow him to change directions so quickly, he looked more like a bumblebee than a Wyvern, despite what the shadow of the beast superimposed over his body said.

Hell, the damage he managed to do was about the same as a bumblebee would. And not damage comparable to that of a bumblebee to a human, as that can still be dangerous, but rather the danger of a bumblebee—a normal one from Caius’s old human world—to a presumably many centuries old Vampire boasting an Eighth Circle magical strength. In other words, he did absolutely nothing.

In fact, after the first attack that made the Emissary slide two steps away, every subsequent attack that Caius landed didn’t move the enemy an inch. It didn’t even cause the Emissary to flinch.

Caius consoled himself with the idea that by moving faster, his attacks had also gotten weaker because they were more fleeting.

The six-feint maneuver had really tired Caius, and he was breathing a bit hard. Also, the Trait Acquisition Potion that ordinarily should have lasted an hour was now at risk of barely lasting ten minutes with how much Caius had exerted himself in such a short period.

So it was fortunate that Caius’s next plan of attack was to return to a single feint maneuver. He believed he had sufficiently made the Emissary believe he was going to increase the number of feints, and he could manage to catch him by surprise by only performing one.

Ultimately, Caius was returning to a single Feint maneuver because he wanted to reserve his time with the Wyvern trait he had acquired since he didn’t think Roxanne was close to completing her part of the plan. And it was vital to the whole thing.

He needed to make sure he could keep buying her time.