The sun had completely dipped below the horizon, casting long, bruised shadows across the sprawling gothic estate as twilight yielded to a deep, inky night.
I blinked away the lingering remnants of sleep, coaxed back to full consciousness by Chloe's gentle stirring beside me.
"Did I wake you up? Sorry about that. We need to get ready, though," she murmured softly right against my ear, her breath warm and carrying the faint, intoxicating scent of jasmine and midnight air.
"It's okay, I would have woken up soon anyway. Let's get ready. Shall we?" I responded, stretching my arms over my head as my joints popped in a satisfying sequence.
I knew perfectly well that we were gearing up to assault the enemy's hidden sanctuary tonight—a massive, high-risk operation against an underground cult harvesting human and supernatural souls. Yet, despite the gravity of the mission, I felt entirely non-pulsed.
I wonder why that is?
Logically, I could easily justify my calm demeanor by pointing to Chloe's overwhelming competency, tactical genius, and terrifying raw power. But if I was brutally honest with myself, the fundamental reality that I couldn't permanently die had been hammered so deeply into my psyche that I simply couldn't bring myself to stress over the endless 'ifs' and 'maybes.'
Normally, I would have still experienced a healthy dose of anxiety, especially given that my teammates didn't share my absurd immunity to death. But looking at our strike team lineup, they weren't ordinary people—they were absolute monsters, every single one of them. I mean, just review our roster:
Someone with the biological and mystical potential to eventually become as powerful as the very first vampire ever created.
A towering shaman bound to a primal, terrifying force of nature.
A pale, emotionless vampire who pioneered the art of blood magic.
A master mage wielding a unique, highly specialized combat profession and razor-sharp insight.
A pair of identical shifter twins famed for their unequaled, savage lethality.
An exiled Fae prince harboring a growth potential that easily rivaled the aforementioned vampire nobility.
Reflecting on that lineup, I realized that yesterday, when I had voiced concerns about our limited numbers, my protective instincts had been directed entirely at worrying about them—not myself.
Before acquiring my unique abilities, I would have endlessly stressed and obsessed over every single variable that could possibly go wrong. Falling asleep the night before a major military raid would have been a physical impossibility.
I could only conclude that once permanent death became a non-factor in my personal equation, the inherent dangers tied to the simple act of living were drastically mitigated. Or at least, the paralyzing anxieties I used to harbor were now heavily muted.
While musing over this profound shift in my life outlook and general psychological behavior, I reached over to help Chloe bathe. She soon reciprocated, washing the fatigue from my skin with slow, deliberate strokes. The atmospheric tension shifted rapidly, and the simple act of bathing nearly escalated into a full-blown intimacy marathon. Thankfully, a shred of late-night rationality managed to reassert itself just in time before we completely lost control.
It seems that ever since restarting my active sex life with Stella, my baseline sexual drive has been permanently dialed up to an insane degree. I constantly feel ready to go at it. I wonder if there's a direct correlation?
Who was I kidding? As if regularly sleeping with a lust demon—albeit a half-demon—would come without physiological side effects beyond extreme, mind-blowing sexual gratification.
"Earth to Samsara, are you coming?" Chloe's voice broke sharply through my internal musings.
"Yes, I'm coming," I muttered, realizing I had zoned out for a solid few minutes. She had already dried herself off with a fluffy towel and was stepping gracefully out of the bathroom.
I pulled on a generic black shirt and a pair of fitted jeans, then looked over at Chloe, who had been standing quietly and staring at me with an inscrutable expression.
"What? Do you want to sneak in a quickie before we ship out?" I teased, flashing her a grin.
She laughed softly, rolling her eyes and shaking her head.
"I was just evaluating whether the fit was right," she said cryptically before reaching beneath the bed to pull out a heavy metallic case. When she popped the latches and spread the contents across the mattress, I noticed two long, sleek black jackets resting inside.
As she lifted them up, I immediately observed that one was tailored significantly smaller than the other. I arched an eyebrow in silent question.
"These are our strike team uniforms. Well, technically they are standard-issue Crimson Clan tactical coats, but since we operate as an affiliated elite squad, we retain full authorization to wear them," she explained, tossing the larger jacket in my direction.
I caught it effortlessly with one hand and admired the fine craftsmanship of the garment.
The material felt deeply unusual to the touch; no ordinary animal hide or synthetic fabric could produce this specific texture. It was a shade of black so absolute it seemed to actively swallow 99.99% of ambient light—a substance I recalled reading about called Vantablack.
I slipped my arms into the sleeves, and it felt astonishingly, impossibly comfortable. None of my athletic movements were restricted in the slightest, and I instantly felt a strange, inexplicable lightness wash over my frame. As the dim overhead light caught the cuffs of the forearms, subtle, iridescent dragon-shaped blood prints shimmered across the dark fabric.
"You can essentially look at it as a specialized form of magic armor," Chloe noted, watching my reaction with satisfaction. "My father commissioned a master enchanter he maintains ties with to forge them. They are capable of absorbing and neutralizing up to 25% of incoming magical and physical kinetic damage. Furthermore, they grant the wearer an enhanced baseline stealth profile. I specifically requested one be tailored to your measurements when I invited you here."
"I like it. A lot," I murmured.
Without warning, I swept her off her feet, pulled her flush against my chest, and planted a long, deep kiss squarely on her lips.
"Okay, okay, I get the message—you clearly like it," she chuckled, finally breaking away from our embrace two breathless minutes later.
A short time later, we found ourselves packed inside a heavy-duty black transport van, cruising silently down a deserted, winding asphalt highway. One of the shifter twins, Liye, sat comfortably in the driver's seat, while her identical sister manned the passenger side up front.
The rest of us occupied the rear cabin, seated on reinforced metal benches bolted along the interior walls. The atmosphere inside the van was heavy with silence—not a fearful, suffocating quiet, but rather the sharp, intense stillness of an elite unit locking their mental focus onto an impending target.
True to form, Lorn sat cross-legged near the corner, methodically polishing the wide fuller of his medieval longsword with an oil-soaked cloth.
I genuinely still wonder where he keeps pulling that massive sword out from, I thought, suppressing a mental chuckle.
Kelia sat directly across from him, one leg crossed lazily over the other, her dark eyes closed in quiet meditation. Uncharacteristically, Prince Eric wore a completely blank, expressionless mask—he almost looked like a pale, aristocratic carbon copy of Kelia, at least in terms of outward posture.
Meanwhile, the giant Arum sat with his massive hands resting on his knees, his lips moving continuously in a rapid, hushed cadence. Even though we were crammed together in a tightly enclosed metal box, I couldn't catch a single coherent word of whatever ancient chant he was reciting.
Liye spun the steering wheel hard, navigating the van off the paved highway and onto an uneven, neglected dirt road cutting straight through a series of abandoned agricultural fields. The overgrown wild weeds flanking the path were so tall they brushed violently against the chassis, nearly reaching the height of my waist.
After enduring a few more jolting bumps, sharp turns, and perimeter circles designed to mask our exact vector of approach, the van finally rolled to a stop near the edge of a massive, decaying industrial factory complex.
From the exterior, the facility looked completely abandoned, dead, and forgotten by time—at least, that was the superficial impression it was meticulously crafted to project to any ordinary mortal human wandering near the perimeter. Through my enhanced sensory perception, however, I could already distinctively track the scattered, erratic energetic signatures of numerous supernatural combatants moving around inside.
Thankfully, Lorn had successfully clocked our arrival without tripping any external alarms. The enemy sentries had not yet caught onto our infiltration. Our tactical goal wasn't a stealthy, whisper-quiet assassination mission; we intended to level the entire compound. We simply needed to maintain our veil of secrecy for a few more crucial minutes.
During our strategy sessions yesterday following my brutal sparring bouts with Arum, we had hashed out the rudimentary framework of an operational plan. Calling it a polished "plan" was arguably an overstatement; since Chloe demanded an absolute, unsparing wipeout of the facility—along with recovering any vital intelligence pointing to the wider reach of the snake-pattern cult—our primary tactical priority was physically blocking all possible avenues of escape.
That specific objective birthed a massive logistical question:
How on earth do you construct a localized containment ward robust enough to withstand tens, or potentially hundreds, of desperate supernaturals fighting tooth and nail for their lives as they try to flee?
Kelia had stepped forward with a brilliant, highly workable solution to our dilemma. She proposed utilizing advanced blood magic to securely anchor the defensive ward directly to our physical life forces. As long as at least one member of our strike team remained alive and breathing, the spatial barrier would stubbornly hold against any assault.
Lorn had immediately applauded the elegance of her strategy and concurred. He would assume direct operational control over architecting the vast structural geometry of the ward, while Kelia would channel her specialized blood magic to cast and sustain the anchoring spell.
Admittedly, we could have arrived at the target zone much faster, but we had deliberately burned precious time circling the sprawling five-kilometer perimeter. That detour was executed for the sole purpose of allowing Lorn to quietly weave a massive, interlocking ward spanning a full five-kilometer radius around the enemy's subterranean lair. Naturally, absolute operational discretion was mandatory during the setup phase, which explained why he had layered a heavy cloaking spell over our movements.
Now, we stood at the precipice of execution, waiting solely for Kelia to finalize the link.
She opened her eyes, her gaze sharpening into focus, and slowly locked two of her pale fingers together in a precise mudra. Resting on the floorboards directly in front of her sat a shallow ceramic bowl filled with a dark, swirling crimson fluid.
We had all voluntarily contributed samples of our blood to that vessel earlier that evening; she required our biological essences to successfully complete the complex resonance linking spell.
The crimson liquid inside the bowl abruptly began to bubble violently, rapidly evaporating into a dense, oily cloud of red mist. Tiny, aggressive flashes of crimson light occasionally sparked within the vapor. Finally, Kelia brought her palms together with a sharp clap, and the swirling mist expanded outward in every direction at breakneck speed. It drifted straight through the metal frame of our van before vanishing entirely into the surrounding night air.
"So, how will we know if the anchoring spell actually took hold?" I asked, leaning forward on the bench.
"Should be any second now... NOW," she stated calmly.
Indeed, the feedback was instantaneous and impossible to miss. A violent wave of inner vertigo crashed over me, and my eardrums popped simultaneously under an intense pressure shift. A cascading wave of heavy goosebumps broke out across my skin. Finally, the heavy chassis of the transport van shuddered audibly against the dirt.
One of the primary strategic justifications for opting for a heavy, frontal assault right out of the gate was the hard reality that the moment our defensive ward fully locked into place, the magical shockwave would instantly tip off the enemy camp.
Just like right now.
Through the tinted windshield, I watched as every single perimeter guard abruptly froze in their tracks, turning their heads in unison to fix their terrified gazes directly on our parked vehicle.
Well, it official—we are thoroughly busted, it seems.