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A being that calls itself a hunter naturally...
"Kill him."
Would be enraged if it saw someone it categorized as mere prey eating its arm.
That's what the vampire felt upon seeing Arata bite his flesh with that mocking smile beneath the oni mask.
Uttering cold words, his cold eyes fixed on him and he no longer even cared about what he said before, about wanting his slaves to only capture and not kill him. That order no longer mattered when his pride had been wounded.
At his command, the slaves responded with hungry growls and surrounded Arata in an increasingly tight circle.
He writhes uncomfortably a couple of times while biting his lip, his body trembling slightly. He seems to be going through a painful moment, but doesn't let out any sound of pain despite the agony in his tense posture.
When a claw is about to catch him, he kicks hard and smashes the ghoul's head, making it explode like a rotten watermelon.
—Crack! Splash!
Executing that abrupt movement, he staggers and almost falls to his knees. Another ghoul approaches taking advantage of his weakness, and scratches his shoulder leaving deep bleeding furrows.
He uses his only remaining hand and catches the ghoul's head before crushing it against the ground with a wet and horrible sound.
—Crunch!
Some time has passed observing this strange battle, but the vampire finally understood something.
"Hahaha! So that's how it is..."
The reason why Arata appeared so weak while fighting the vampire's ghouls, despite being dominant and powerful before when he massacred the guards with ease.
"I've never allowed others to drink my blood... I see, so it has this debilitating effect on whoever consumes it... I've never heard of anything like that, I suppose I'm special."
The vampire smiles with satisfaction upon discovering this interesting detail.
'Yeah, yeah, bitch, you're special.'
Arata twists his lips sarcastically while fighting.
'Damn it. What are you, Alucard?'
While the vampire rambles on about how special his blood is, Arata kicks a ghoul zombie until he knocks its brain out through its eye sockets.
—Squelch!
His body convulses again, violent tremors running down his spine, and at the same time the vampire who isn't willing to keep watching a small fish massacre his valuable slaves decides to act personally.
—Swoooosh!
Is it because Arata is weakened? He doesn't even react when a claw approaches vertiginously from his front. He emits a grunt upon feeling the claw penetrate his stomach once again.
He even wonders if this vampire has perverted fantasies about penetrating stomachs since this is the third time he's done it.
Using the vampire's proximity as a signal, Arata tightly grabs the vampire's arm with his only hand and thinks about using his other arm to split his face. Ah... that won't work. Now he remembers that his other arm had been cut off and is lying somewhere in the tunnel.
Not finding another suitable method, he has no choice but to use his head to smash the vampire's face. Having evolved a lot from eating so many kakuhous and parasites, it's natural that his body would reach explosive strength, and that also applies to his head.
The vampire, who has been headbutted full-on, feels as if he's been hit by a cannonball at full power.
—Crack!
Accompanied by the refreshing sound of a watermelon being split, the bat's head is pulverized. Red juice mixed with eyeballs and brain matter splash the wall and create a picturesque scene.
"Looks delicious."
As expected of a vampire, his regeneration rate is something that can make a person green with envy, especially Arata, who sees how the moment he looks away, the vampire is complete once again with a new head.
"Haven't I told you? It's useless."
The vampire attacks ferociously again, and Arata suffers again under the relentless blows.
'Crap. I'm a little scared if this doesn't work, but I guess I have no other choice...'
For several minutes, he transformed into a punching bag that gradually filled with wounds that accumulated ceaselessly.
But the strange thing is that he's not healing as he should. Even the vampire is frowning at this, but didn't think much about it. After all, it's more advantageous to have an enemy who has lost his ability to regenerate than an enemy who can heal his wounds.
Then...
—Booom!
Arata's back impacts deeply into the ground creating a crater, and he lies there as his eyes slowly go out beneath his oni mask until only darkness remains in them.
"Is that all? You can't expect much from a ghoul. Hah... but I'm angry that you killed all my slaves."
The vampire looks at the motionless body with disdain.
Arata, who is lying on the ground like a corpse, upon hearing him speak raises his hand with great effort that makes his entire arm tremble, and while the vampire makes a sound of curiosity at this last act of defiance, he shows him the middle finger.
Mr vampire expression darkens so much it looks like a face that's been scrubbed with charcoal.
In his anger radiating from every pore, he forgets his principle of "don't kill the food to enjoy the blood more" and attacks with fingers hard as a knife.
The next moment, Arata dies.
His head detaches cleanly from his neck as if it were butter cut by a hot knife, and black blood spreads across the floor in a growing puddle.
—Splash!
The vampire clicks his tongue with annoyance.
"I got carried away and killed him. Well, can't do much about it."
With cold and indifferent eyes, he turns around and tells his zombies with an authoritative voice.
"Bring me the food to the room."
The zombies rejoice emitting happy grunts and approach quickly with their eyes fixed on Arata, who has his body separated from his head. Because of the spilled blood emitting a tempting smell, they even had the perverse thought of wanting to go against their master's order and devour him themselves.
Being aware that his slaves want to go against his order because of Arata's intoxicating smell, the vampire tells them in a threatening tone.
"Don't eat him, since he's mine. I can feed you later."
As the vampire walks toward the exit of the battle area, he clicks his tongue.
"I must join the other vampires to see how the plan is going. After all these years of preparation, it must be almost complete."
"Hm...?"
At that very moment, he realizes something is wrong, as he feels a sensation of something sticky adhering to his skin.
Due to the fight that occurred before, especially with many ghouls that died plus the slave zombies, blood was spread all over the floor forming puddles and streams. But now, for some inexplicable reason...
The floor is dry, and no blood is seen anywhere.
He looks at the decapitated corpses or ones cut in half, and there's no blood flowing from their bodies either. They look like mummies that have dried under the desert sun for decades.
"Grrrr..."
He hears the sound of his slaves letting out growls of fear, backing away.
'What's happening...?'
And it was also at that moment that from his body he feels a strange pull, as if something were tugging from within. It's the blood that seems to want to escape from his interior and head toward...
...Behind.
"Dying again isn't pleasant."
Upon hearing that familiar voice, he turns around quickly, and his cold expression becomes rigid for the first time in centuries.
All the blood had previously disappeared is surrounding Arata's body forming a liquid sphere.
Headless, the body rises from the ground. Then it crouches down, grabs his head that's a few meters away, and places it on his neck.
Instantly, his head sticks to his neck with a wet sound.
—Squiiiish!
His arm that was cut off before and is a few meters away, dissolves into blood and the next moment moves at a speed extremely defiant to the vampire's senses, becoming a crimson river that joins Arata's stump before his arm is new and fully functional.
—Swooosh!
All the accumulated blood that's floating around him forming a grotesque orbit is sucked into his body, disappearing into his skin's pores without leaving a trace.
It was the moment when Arata stopped being a zombie, ghoul, or parasite, and became something more than a vampire.
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You can read 20 advanced chapters on my Pa treon
pa-treon.com/OlwinMoriarty