Mob Sorcery 5 - Ch36

Note: Chapter 34-40 are being posted together. Be sure not to read them out of order. Commentary will be in Ch40.

“Do you know the definition of insanity?” Vince asked the void.

Utter blackness surrounded him. Unlike the previous two times Juliet had pulled him into her abyss, he couldn’t hear anything from the world outside her magic bubble. He attempted to conjure a flame, and it was eaten by the darkness immediately.

Just like before, his barrier sizzled as her darkness ate away at it. He’d spent the past month training his barrier almost exclusively so wasn’t worried. Her spell drained his reserves relatively slowly, and with his training and much greater magic efficiency after months of using his dragon for long stretches, he doubted she could wear him down.

“Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer,” Juliet taunted. “You’re so arrogant. Oh, Juliet is just an incompetent buffoon. She’s failed so many times before, so she can’t threaten me. Such a human reaction.”

He frowned. “Isn’t that first quote from a video game?”

“You get bored when you live forever. I’m not sure if it’s good that you wasted enough time to recognize it, or that you’re a fool who should have trained harder to avoid becoming my food.” Her laughter echoed around him.

“I haven’t played it, but I know people who do.” He turned and tried to spot her.

For some reason, she avoided showing her face this time.

“Are you scared of me?” he asked. “If this abyss of yours is so amazing, why avoid me? You never did before.”

His taunting worked and Juliet emerged from the shadows, but she kept her distance. A good dozen feet stood between them. Close enough to be dangerous in a normal situation, but nowhere near close enough for his plan.

“Please.” She flicked her rainbow highlights. “Don’t act as if you’re special. It’s just fun to play god, taunting you from the shadows while you spin around. That’s what this is. Fun. You ruined it for a bit with your bullshit.”

His… bullshit? He hid his concern and took a step closer to her.

“Oh, trying to scare me?” She acted like a Halloween ghost, complete with wiggling fingers. “Ooh! Scary! Heh. Your dragon is outside and you’re in here. Maybe if you’d brought it in you might be able to summon enough magic to bother me, but no.”

He still felt his dragon, but the connection was weak. He couldn’t feel anything through its senses. Her darkness chewed away at the threads he used to keep it summoned.

If he’d been caught in this abyss before training with Daji, he’d likely have lost his dragon immediately. So much for thinking it could have helped him against her in the past.

An empty sensation tickled his mind as he pulled back from his dragon. His magic reserves were running low.

Even as he downed one of Ally’s magic-restoring infusions, worry built up in his mind. Sure, he’d used a fair bit of magic fighting, but he’d gotten used to using his dragon. Plus, he’d only just cast it several minutes ago. To be running empty enough to noticeably feel it…

Juliet’s grin turned that worry into a cold sweat that ran down his back. The cold chill of the abyss gripped his heart.

“You’ve done something, haven’t you?” he asked.

“I warned you not to be cocky,” Daji said.

Giggling, Juliet began to circle him, hands on her hips. “Fuck, watching the confidence and hope of meatheads like you slide from your eyes never gets old. Of course I fucking did something, you oversexed dipshit. This abyss spell has been the hallmark of my assassinations for a century. I’ve killed CEOs, grandmeisters, heads of state, and countless other asswipes far greater than you could ever hope to become.”

“But I’m still alive,” he said. “Funny that. We’ve been through this.”

“Yeah, yeah. You have some annoying trick that made you hard to fight.” She rolled her eyes.

Had she learned about the fake soul egg he’d used? Unfortunately for her, he had a real egg now.

“You’re too mortal for my immortal slayer to affect, but you have enough immortal in you to outlast me. Hamelin told me all about you.” She sneered.

“She fucking what?” he snapped.

“Calm yourself. You’ll give the necromancer away,” Daji warned. “She likely told the vampire about you before you met.”

He hoped so. Or else he’d be introducing Hamelin to her own flaming lanterns.

“Doesn’t that suck, having your secrets out there?” Juliet giggled again. “Should have protected them better.”

Once again, he felt his reserves drying up far too fast. He downed another infusion.

Clearly, her abyss ate away at his magic at a far greater rate.

“So your spell eats my barrier faster,” he said. “Why didn’t you make it do that to begin with?”

He stepped forward, hoping she wouldn’t notice and keep a constant distance. For some reason, she happily let him get closer to her.

“Efficiency,” she said. “I’m an assassin. I tailor my spells to my targets. Glass cannon bruisers like you usually go down to my mirror spell. Pretty much all mortals are vulnerable to this, as you have less magic than me, so spending more to achieve the same effect is overkill. But immortals have more magic, so I can’t brute force them with the abyss. Hence—”

“Your immortal slayer.” He narrowed his eyes. “You’re burning magic to consume mine. That’s wasteful. I thought you were eating me.”

“I am, but sometimes you burn more energy on the hunt than you gain. You’re a trophy. I modified my meister-tier spell just for you.” She spread her arms out, letting him take another step. “The Vincent Keys Abyss, built for you and only you. By pumping extra magic into your barrier, I cause it to burn away faster, instead of relying on the innate nature of vampiric darkness to consume it. My nights will be warm for centuries watching you melt away, suffocating and begging for a swift death.”

“You’re a real charmer,” he said drily. “No wonder half the city wants you so badly.”

She stood just out of arm’s reach. A little closer…

“It doesn’t matter. Just like your obvious attempts to grab me. Go ahead. Strangle me. Waste your time.” She grinned at him, baring her fangs. “I love futile efforts. It annoys the shit out of me that I’ve had to go to so much effort to kill an ignorant buffoon like you.”

“Ignorance, you say?” he said.

With her blessing, Vince closed the gap. His hands reached for her and her red eyes glittered with malice. Then confusion as he raised his hands above her head.

His storage bracelet glittered with magic. A burlap sack appeared in his hands.

He slammed it down.

The instant it touched her skin, an unearthly screech burst from Juliet’s throat. Her darkness tore at his barrier, as if trying to redouble its efforts. Even as she sank back into the void, she batted away the sack. One of her hands collided with it. It fell limp upon contact.

She vanished before he got it over her head. The darkness did nothing to the sack itself, but he noticed it consumed the nylon rope around the bottom. Apparently Juliet’s magic couldn’t even damage a hand-woven burlap sack.

“Why the hell do you have that?” Juliet wailed. “You should be dead! You will be dead! Do you know what it means to use a vampire’s weakness against her? Elite enforcers will kill you in your sleep. They’ll come from Europe, China, the Middle-East—”

“No, they won’t,” Vince said. He returned the sack to his storage bracelets while drinking another infusion. “Nobody is here to save you, Juliet. Tonight is the end.”

“Why won’t you just die? Die! Die! Die!” She began hurling insults at him in a myriad of languages, but he picked out an abundance of German above all else. “You’ll rot in here, you bastard. No-one can help you here.”

The odds of her reappearing were slim. He wouldn’t say he’d blown it, as the chances of catching her inside the void were minimal to begin with.

He simply had to hope the risk paid off. Vince had burned far more infusions than he’d expected.

“It looks like the abyss still works the same otherwise,” he said aloud. “Care to help?”

Daji tittered. “Talking to me out loud. A dangerous idea, even if it will unnerve her.” She paused. “Drawing on my flames will weaken the seal. That’s been the entire reason I’ve pushed you to use them in the past. But if Wagner’s right—”

“I’ll take the risk. I trust you.”

He also lacked any other choice. Relying on Daji had been his backup plan, with the original being to scare Juliet into lowering the abyss with the sack. The vastly improved spell meant he would die shortly if he didn’t escape. He’d assumed Juliet only wanted him in here out of pride, idiocy, or a plan to get Kigenai to kill everyone else.

Daji’s power ran through his veins even before he touched her egg, but it lacked the intoxicating, burning feel of the past times. Her presence existed within him at all times now. Even if she didn’t plan to possess him, would she always be badgering him like this?

“The connection will remain even after I gain a body, yes,” she said. “I’m a spirit. Spiritual connections are practically de rigueur.”

Her lust washed over him as he reached for her magic, but was tempered by her hesitance. An image of her wearing only his shirt while laying on his bed showed in his mind before she banished it.

“Don’t get too excited,” she chided with a hint of embarrassment. “There’s a divine beast to slay.”

He grimaced. Once out of the abyss, he would find out what Kigenai had accomplished without him to assist the others.

Daji’s magic came easily to him. A simple black fireball flickered above his hand. It stood out from the void by virtue of a crimson outline, as if the flames burned the darkness itself.

Within a second, the fireball doubled in size. Vince hadn’t fed it a single mote of additional magic.

“How foolish. Trying to burn me out with brute force. Your flames won’t… last…” Juliet’s voice trailed off as she witnessed Daji’s magic-consuming flames rapidly grow.

The fireball grew larger than Vince within several seconds. He lost control of it just as fast, and relied on Daji to keep it from eating him. A strange inferno ripped through the void, barely distinguishable from the darkness itself by thin waves of crimson embers.

Whenever Juliet’s darkness tried to take a bite out of Daji’s flames, the fire bit back, but harder. The modifications made to the abyss only made the process faster, as Juliet fought fire with oil.

Within twenty seconds, Vince stood inside an inferno rather than a void.

“This is my world!” Juliet said. “I won’t… I…”

Her voice trailed off as the void blinked away. The flames appeared to vanish as well.

Vince tried to refocus as the truck yard returned, and a flash of lightning nearly blinded his eyes before his pupils adjusted. Shouts and yells echoed around him. An explosion came from behind him, roughly where he expected the loading docks to be.

Juliet’s screams forced him to open his eyes. He saw the vampire ablaze from Daji’s black fire. Her body sloughed away in inky piles that melted into prismatic slush. While Juliet regenerated, hope grew in Vince he’d discovered a secret weapon.

Then she teleported away in a burst of darkness and reemerged, whole, if exhausted. Juliet bent over, eyes wide and no longer on fire.

“It would work,” Daji said. “But only at full power.”

Her tone suggested he shouldn’t waste her magic. He’d weakened her seal immensely by using her power like that against Mei. Given he’d need her again shortly, damaging the egg prematurely over Juliet was stupid.

An azure firework burst above them. He looked over to see Pola standing nearby.

“You’re back.” Pola rushed over to him. “The others are fighting Kigenai, so we need to be quick.”

“Anyone hurt?” He paused. “Seriously hurt?”

She shook her head. “Nothing an infusion can’t fix. We’re so tired. Even just in the past few minutes while you’ve been gone, we’ve been switching out. We won’t last five more minutes. We need to crack her. She’s still going strong.”

Vince would love to say that was his job, but he’d hoped to receive better news. Kigenai had taken ages to push to herself limits during the heist, and that had been with the help of the Inaba twins tag-teaming her while pretending to be Izu.

His original plan had been to bag Juliet while exhausting Kigenai with their superior numbers. It sounded like they needed to take out Kigenai before she exhausted them instead.

“Don’t ignore me!” Juliet yelled.

The vampire rose into the air, and darkness swelled beneath her. Not a meister-tier spell, but a juiced-up version of her usual attack spells.

When the darkness kept spreading, Juliet smirked. She pointed at Vince.

“Not so arrogant now, huh? You’ll pay for that stunt… Wait, this isn’t my darkness.” Juliet looked around in confusion.

Black mist rose across the entire yard. Endless quantities of it poured forth, including from behind Vince, where the others battled Kigenai. Flute music drifted across the parking lot.

Hamelin’s phantoms rose in massive numbers. Just as quickly, they unleashed hundreds of beams of light at Juliet, and some at Kigenai.

The vampire squealed as her body exploded into ink. She swallowed herself with darkness, and reemerged nearby, but more phantoms surrounded her. Simply swinging her arms at them and conjuring tendrils did nothing.

As Hamelin had predicted, most of Juliet’s shadow spells were initiate-tier. If creating an entire magic-consuming pocket dimension was meister-tier, then vampires had enough control over the element to easily create shapes.

The wolf heads made their reappearance and blew apart numerous phantoms, and Vince grimaced.

“Okay, so she’s not completely defenseless,” he said.

“Chrissy, you traitorous bitch!” Juliet roared as she rose above the mass of phantoms. “I included you in all my best jobs, and you’re fucking me over? I’ll use you like a toy on that throne you love so much. Hell itself will be claiming you for this.”

Hamelin’s pickup tore around the ruined trucks. A black barrier shielded it, but Vince swore he saw the mousegirl grinning in the driver’s seat.

Her voice boomed from a speaker, presumably mounted to the pickup, and briefly interrupted her flute solo. “The only bitch getting used as a toy is you! Ceres warned you, you fucking idiot.”

Juliet froze in mid-air and her skin somehow went paler. Vince caught her mouthing, “Ceres.”

Anzu had mentioned a vampire called Ceresviel connected to Juliet. Was that her nickname? He needed to mention it to Salome.

When Juliet turned to face Hamelin’s truck, ignoring the light blasts from the phantoms, Vince and Pola sprung into action. He surrounded the vampire with a fire cage. A furious wail escaped the vampire even as she teleported away.

Pola’s wind vortex ripped through the vampire’s limbs, sending her tentacles astray before they took out Hamelin’s truck.

The pickup skidded to a stop a hundred feet away from Juliet. Something massive burst out from the tarp over the truck bed and leaped toward the vampire. Its jump rocked the pickup enough to nearly tip it over, and Vince heard Hamelin’s panicked wailing over her speaker.

A gargantuan bull beastfolk cracked concrete upon landing. An undead bull, Vince corrected. The monster towered to an easy ten feet or more, with a torso nearly the width of the pickup. No wonder she’d found a truck with an actual bed, instead of the show trucks he saw driven around the city. The undead bastard was huge, heavy, and meant business.

The undead bull was also buck-naked and lacked genitals. Vince did not want to know what Hamelin did with them. Black sigils glowed across its entire body, much like the undead elves.

“You think your stupid toys can hurt me?” Juliet snapped.

She extended her cape out again, but rather than summon tentacles, the cape itself shot toward the bull. The cape struck the ground first and disintegrated concrete on impact.

How many spells did this vampiric bitch know? And why hadn’t she used them before?

“Less complex spells can be more efficient at killing and breaking barriers,” Daji said. “It looks nasty, but would it be more likely to get through your dense barrier?”

The bull lacked a barrier, so Vince thought the plan had failed for a second.

Only for the bull to plow right through the cape spell. Huge holes appeared in its torso, but necromantic magic filled them, allowing the undead to charge Juliet.

Juliet’s eyes widened and she began to teleport.

Vince reached for Daji’s power once more at the same time Hamelin leaned out the side of her truck. He pointed his cane at the shadow welling up around Juliet. His black flame laser lit them up, much like the void, and Juliet’s teleportation failed.

Hamelin froze, flute to her lips. Vince briefly wondered what spell she might have cast to stop Juliet’s teleportation.

Then the bull leaped through the air. Juliet struck it with her shadow wolves, to no avail.

Upon impact, the undead bull’s runes glowed. More shadows swelled around Juliet. With the undead beast so close, Vince couldn’t help.

It didn’t matter. Juliet’s teleportation failed. She beat against the bull as it held her tightly. Teleportation attempt after attempt did nothing. More phantoms drifted over to the flashy Kigenai battle.

“Now!” Vince ordered.

Pola rushed forward, and he tried to follow. Both of them had burlap sacks, as did a few others. But Pola was far more nimble than him.

The wolfgirl flipped atop the bull, who ignored her. Juliet snarled at her.

“I’ll rip your tail off and—” the vampire tried to say.

The sack appeared in Pola’s hands, and Juliet shut up. An incoherent screech escaped her.

Pola pushed the sack over Juliet’s head and pulled the rope tight. Juliet went limp the instant the sack fully covered her head and her voice went silent for the first time in too long.

“Package secured,” Pola shouted, and pointed at Hamelin’s pickup. “Go!”

She leaped off the bull when it started rushing back to the truck, Juliet held over its back like a sack of potatoes.

A deafening boom split the air, at exactly the worst time. Vince’s barrier crackled, as did Pola’s. Loose steel and debris rumbled.

Every phantom stopped moving. So did the bull, which became completely stationary. Its bulk nearly caused it to tumble over mid-step, but its legs barely retained balance.

Vince turned to see Kigenai standing amid a crater near the loading dock. She held her arms above her head, while Nina and Ashley stood a dozen feet away, both looking worse for wear. Kiyoko was nowhere to be seen, and Gaby pulled herself up from the crater.

“I overestimated my ally,” Kigenai uttered, her voice echoing through the silence. “Allow me to rectify my error.”