*Chapter 125 - Hunting for Vampires

Chapter 125 – Hunting for Vampires

Silvara, the stunningly pretty silver-haired elf friend Carol had was in a rather sour mood.  She wanted nothing to do with Maltetious and was a devout follower of Agnude, Maltetious’ arch enemy.  Even Carol had become what was called a ‘mouthpiece of Agnude’, which was essentially a prophet for the numen - but at least she was willing to hear Maltetious out due to their mutual interests surrounding Trey.

The meeting was set within the phantom world between magical amulets Maltetious had created, with Trey being the informal referee between the two sides as they tried to broker a peace agreement of some sort.  Apparently Maltetious had been the underdog, causing a lot of trouble for Agnude over the past couple of centuries after he’d committed a nearly complete genocide against her people, and she’d been committed to guerilla tactics using elite warriors like Taen and his friends to hit Agnude hard where it mattered most.

Honestly, Trey didn’t give a damn about any of it.  He cared about Carol, and he really liked Taen, but those two numen could go fist fuck themselves for all he cared.  He found himself snoring himself into a deep sleep halfway through the screaming match between the two sides and had to be reawoken by Rivia numerous times - who insisted that this squabble between essentially what surmounted to demigods was rather important.

But still, he’d never met Agnude and he only knew Maltetious as an acquaintance.  He liked Maltetious, and she was kinda hot too.  Agnude on the other hand… seemed like a religious zealot based on what Carol and Silvara were saying.  They seemed like religious fanatics cracked out on the idea that Agnude was only conquering other countries through his armies of what were called ‘Vetteresies’ - which were his elite soldiers, because they wanted to end all war and turn to world peace.

How obviously naive and full of shit.

Then there was him, who was stuck in the middle of it because of his position as a chosen of Alkir, the newly exposed Heir of Eleknar, and he’d even been recognized as Vatosis Inferna by numerous scholars across the globe already just based on his eyes alone.  His presence had been celebrated by some, who’d reveled in seeing Vorganoth vanquished - while others proclaimed him only to have taken it for his own ends and were literally forming crusading armies to come and hunt him down so that they may strike him from existence.

Who knew it was such a profound topic?  He certainly hadn’t heard of it before his transition.

Anyways, both sides were trying to sway him in their favor, and he was largely ignoring all of it in favor of feeling up Rivia’s body on the side and resting his head in her lap in their ghostly forms on a sea of semi-tangible matter in this odd dimension.  The priestess was loving the attention, but she was also constantly having to scold him whenever he completely passed out.

Eventually he’d had enough of it, yawned, and stood up.  Raising his hand to calm the annoyingly loud squabblers, he cleared his throat.  “Alright.  I’m out.  Try to talk it out amongst yourselves, but if you’re not done in the next hour - we’re continuing our trek towards Zekul.  You all know about it already and I’m not going to sit on my ass as other world powers try to come and find me when Alkir has a job for me to do.  I need to get to that vampiric city, and fast.”

Vanishing from the phantom realm with Rivia quickly following behind him, he opened his eyes and adjusted to the bright sunlight of the area around him.

He sat on a large hill overlooking a sprawling grassy landscape littered with clusters of trees and mountains off in the distance.  He was extremely excited and happy to have Carol back in his life, and glancing over at the dirty-blonde woman who was still in her meditative state while she continued to preach nonsense to Maltetious about Agnude’s glory in some form or another - he smiled.  His cousin really hadn’t changed much.  She was headstrong as ever, though he hadn’t expected her to be so caught up in a religious cult.

Couldn’t really blame her though.  He was literally one of the centerpieces of a religious cult himself, even being worshiped by many of the demons he had acquired as minions.

The wind picked up and carried a sweet aroma of wild flowers through the air, and he sighed in relief as he felt the warm body of Rivia press up against his back.  In the distance he could see Ezdeath, Atharost, Boxamoth and Sithis flying through the air in what he could only assume was some kind of game or race.  Perhaps a competition?  He couldn’t really tell, but they were going rather fast in back and forth patterns across about a mile’s worth of sky.

A familiar squeal turned his attention to the left, and he rolled his eyes when he picked up the source.  His imp Napoleon used to be rather discrete in his sexual activities, but now he would openly assault Piggy, Juila or Telipe on a whim since the arrival of tiers or brackets between minions.  Because the imp was higher up on the hierarchy, these three women were all absolutely subject to his commands - and right that moment, Napoleon was using his authority to buttfuck a squealing bent-over Piggy into submission about ten yards away in the grass on the hill.  It was kind of odd watching the small demon go to work on the larger half-elf-half-demon hybrid, but nonetheless amusing.

The hierarchy had been a needed one, in his opinion.  Recently there’d been some infighting amongst Telipe and Piggy, and there’d been some heat exchanged between Sithis and Ezdeath as well.  He wanted none of that, and through his ability to manipulate his minions through commands he’d given them strict rules on who was to be in charge of who.

The list started with Sithis, who was at the very top of the hierarchy at rank or bracket 1, and others were sorted into further brackets.  Those in bracket 2 could command or exert their complete and absolute authority over bracket 3, bracket 3 could do the same to bracket 4, and when he got more minions there would be more brackets in the same chain of command.

Bracket 1: Sithis

Bracket 2: Atharost, Ezdeath, Rivia, Napoleon, Talsh’Noc’Un

Bracket 3: Piggy, Juila

Bracket 4: Telipe

With the vampire quest coming to a head soon enough, he was sure he’d be acquiring new minions for the job either during or beforehand.  He even had a couple of potential minions bottlenecked in that giant sword of his, and was considering taking them out for a potential capture soon.  He wondered what it’d be like to have vampire soldiers as minions.  Perhaps some ghouls like bann, or flesh golems like the one Taen had, but that’d have to wait for later.

But there was more on his mind than that.  He had to get to Zekul, had to continue sword practice under Ezdeath’s tutorship, had to explore more theoretical avenues of necromancy with Taen, had to get Ashe up to par with acquiring her curse and dark attributes, had to figure out how to expedite his arachnid evolution, had to find more of those holy books that Rivia was looking for in order to achieve unholy sainthood, and had to avoid incoming crusades of what were undoubtedly thousands upon thousands of people who wanted to kill him for various reasons.  He’d already taken the liberty of putting lots of distance between himself and the ravaged city he’d found Carol in, but Alkir assured him that neither Agnude nor Malteitous would take direct action against him… at least for now.  They both wanted to obtain her favor, his favor, and would not risk the other obtaining it over themselves.

Oh yeah, and he had to rearrange his stat points after leveling 6 times after the last fight.  His minions had also grew a couple levels each, that slaughter of undead had really done a number on his progress.

“Everything ok?” Izumi asked as she stepped around Napoleon and Piggy to sit next to him with a plop.  Bann, Taen’s armored and bald ghoul, came with her to sit as well with a sideways smile.

He gave her a glance and groaned as Rivia began to rub his shoulders with a deep massage.  “Yeah.  Why?”

Izumi frowned, adjusted her top hat, and folded her arms.  “You’ve been distant lately.  Worried about the mission?”

He bobbed his head from side to side, red eyes keeping focused on the distant minions flying in the distance.  “Somewhat.  More than anything I just wish that Carol would shut up about her fucking numen-god or whatever the fuck he is and just talk to me like we used to do.  She’s always been stubborn though, and no doubt she just found it something to latch on to after transitioning between worlds.  How’s Ashe’s studying coming along?”

A slow smile traced Izumi’s lips and she shared a glance with Bann, who just shrugged.  “Honestly Trey, she’s already learned the dark attribute and she’s almost to the point where she can learn the curse attribute as well.  Napoleon has been a really good teacher, but he’s been too busy with your other minions lately to give a damn about teaching.”

Trey frowned.  “If that keeps up you let me know and I’ll not let him have any fun-play-times with any of the girls at all until Ashe gets it.  That’s ridiculous.”

Izumi nodded in agreement.  “Will do.  I’ve got a question for you though…  How are you going to disguise yourself in Zekul if everyone in the world knows your face after the battle with Vorganoth?”

Rivia interrupted with a scoff as she continued to rub Trey’s shoulders.  “The Vatosis Inferna is able to disguise himself.”

The statement was one of arrogant disgust, and Trey shot Rivia a behind-the-back glance.  “Don’t talk to Izumi that way ever again.  You may be one of my favorites, but don’t push your luck.  Got it?”

Rivia’s look of judgemental arrogance immediately faded into pouting self-doubt as she quickly nodded her acknowledgement.

In turn, Trey turned his attention back to Izumi and sighed.  “Sorry.  Anyways, between the vampiric quirks I’ve acquired and the demonic mask I already have - Eleknar actually told me that modifying my features won’t be hard to do.  You already knew that I am able to retract my demonic features at will now, right?  Well, Eleknar can expand upon that to just slightly shift my bone structure.  It’s similar to how Ezdeath’s ability to shift appearances works, watch this.”

Trey furrowed his brows and began to focus, and soon his features began to change.  His horns receded, his eyes went from red and black to blue and white, his hair shortened, his jawline pointed, and his cheekbones heightened.

It still looked similar to him, but definitely would have been a distant-cousin kinda look instead of something that someone would mistake him for.

“Wow.” Izumi stated slowly, touching his face with her hands to feel it for herself.  “I’m rather impressed.”

Trey grinned deviously.  “I’m just hoping that the vampires are just as impressed with it as you are.  Tell the others that we’re heading out within the hour.  All of you will have to camp out on the fringes of society while I’m gone, but hopefully it’ll be less than a month…”

“Are you taking any of your minions in with you?”

Trey shrugged.  “Ezdeath definitely.  She can change form and has fangs just like a vampire does as well when she wants to produce them.  Maltetious recently taught us how to make a poor-man’s copy of a falsified status page too, so that shouldn’t be too much of a problem without a professional identifier scrutinizing me.”

He gestured over to where his blonde wolf-girl demihuman was curled up into a blal underneath a tree, sound asleep.  Her smooth, naked rear end glistened in the rays of sunlight able to make it through the foliage almost as much as the collar around her neck - and he stood to bring Rivia up with him.  “Anyways I’m going to go have a round with Telipe and Rivia, come and let me know when you’ve informed the others.”

***

Trey exited the brothel in full plate armor excluding a helmet and entered the streets of Mobobe with a wave to the two girls he had spent the majority of the day with.  They waved back laughing happily and told him to come back as soon as possible.  He smiled to himself and trotted along to find his inn before nightfall.  The sun was setting on the small city in the shadow of the mountains, and although there was a cool breeze it still smelled like pig shit.  A rather filthy place, full of livestock, old cottages and poor beggars who hadn’t seen a bath in years - it was a frontal assault to his nostrils.

Maltetious and Alkir had said that Mobobe would be the place to find the vampires.  He was to infiltrate their sacred city of Zekul after finding them here and would eventually steal the artifact required there, but he was having no luck finding any vampires at all.

“They’re supposed to smell really nice right?” muttered Trey to himself as he walked down the street.  “Haven’t smelled anything but feces and piss… Maybe they only come out at night.  I guess that would make sense because they don’t usually like the daylight.”

Coming to a stop Trey remembered what Alkir had emphasized during a brief talk on the trip across the country.

‘You will have to ACT as if you are actually a vampire to fit in with the locals there, otherwise you’ll probably be killed… or eaten.’

Trey sneered in defiance.  “I’ll be damned if I’m eaten by some fanged fairy any time soon.”

He had been insulted that Alkir would even consider the possibility that he would die… but then again he was about to enter a coven of who knows how many vampires that - while definitely weaker than he was considering the general populace - were still stronger and faster than regular men and might have a couple of power-players that could currently match him in strength if he ran across them in direct combat.  They also were out to eat anything that wasn’t them.

He crossed over into an alley and laid his back against the wall next to one of the homeless people in town.  The man smelled terrible and was probably diseased by the looks of the many ulcerated lesions on his skin.  Trey grimaced and scooted away slightly as to rid himself of the smell, but stayed all the same.  It wasn’t like he could truly escape the stench because the whole goddamn city smelled like shit.  Other homeless men, women and children were scattered about in the alley too.  This was the beginning of the slums, the number one place a vampire would strike - or so Trey had guessed.  He had picked it out himself as a target while imagining where he would choose to hunt if he indeed was a fanged fairy.  For many streets down from where Trey sat: the poor, homeless and less fortunate of society were clustered into alleys, small buildings in need of repair and underground sewers.  They would often come out to the rest of the city and beg before being turned away by the guards.

“Taen would die from a broken heart if he was here to see this,” said Trey looking up at the darkening sky.

It took a while until the stars were shining down, moons ablaze against the black cloak of midnight before Trey got up and stepped over the snoring, stinking man on the ground.  Noticing a dwarf wandering drunkenly through the streets only to trip and fall onto his face, Trey suppressed a laugh and kept on walking.  The first time he had seen a dwarf he had thought the man was just unnaturally short and built.  As time went on he learned that he had been wrong, these short built people that shared Neirtho’s city of Mobobe with humans were actually an entirely different race of dwarf he hadn’t encountered before.  These dwarves were pudgier, taller, and could easily be mistaken for short humans if he hadn’t known better.  He had seen families of them in the market, and had even gone up to ask them where they were from.  In turn they only looked at him oddly and moved along.

He glanced left, sensing Ezdeath via his ability to track minions as her presence was focused in on a dark recess in a far off alley - but he was unable to detect her at all otherwise.  Risking a brief blue glow of his eyes as he activated his vampiric version of night vision, he was unable to see her at all even then.

She truly was an elite, in more ways than just combat apparently.

Then Trey stopped when he saw movement to his right, nothing more than a shadow but it was quick.  He was standing in the middle of a clearing between buildings but charged the shadow with implausible speed to reach his destination.  He found nothing there but darkness and, flipping on his night vision again, his eyes began to glow while he raced down the alley.  Running partway up the side of a wall he launched himself onto the other side of the alley to land on top of the roof.  He came to the other side and top of the building to look about.

It still wasn’t enough to get there in time to see what the movement had been.

Frustrated and confused Trey plopped down back the way he had came to let his legs dangle off the front of the building.  Looking out over the clearing and down the streets to his left or right, he saw nothing but a few beggars asleep on the road - and the dwarf from earlier who had passed out where he had fallen.

Returning his vision to normal he hopped down to the ground and began to walk about.  He was to have no luck finding any vampires this night, but as he turned the next left two pairs of eyes watched him in interest - gleaming out from the darkness of an abandoned shack.

***

The next day Trey woke when the sun was already high overhead.  He had gone to sleep very late and slept in past regular hours.  Putting on his clothes and cloak, strapping a mace he’d borrowed from some idiot he’d mugged to his back, he began to walk out of the inn and into the street.

Here came the interesting part: he’d etched Maltetious’ symbol, a symbol of a black whithering rose, into the side of the weapon with Ezdeath’s help last night.

The trick was twofold.  One - he would hide in plain sight.  People wouldn’t think to look for the Vatosis Inferna if he was so blatantly putting on the guise of one of Maltetious’ champions out in public - they’d take it at face value.  Who would want to be associated with the crazed numen if not for one of her fanatical followers?

He’d much rather be associated with her rather than being recognized as the potential savior of the hells and void.

Secondly - He wanted to draw the vampires out.  Again, it was a beacon.  Peacocking is what it was called back on Earth, and if he could acquire their attention via this mark - perhaps he’d meet some that then realized he had a vampiric scent to him.  It was also a known fact that she imbued some of her champions with vampiric qualities, and even Taen had vampiric blood running through him to keep the good and expel the bad qualities of the race via her super-soldier molding agenda.

It was something he’d have to talk to Taen about more in the future.

So he didn’t bother hiding the symbol upon the weapon, he could care less who saw it.  Anyone that had a problem with him had a death wish and was asking to be put down.  Word had reached Mobobe of Lord Gunth’s assassination in southern Shrubeth - rumor had it that two men, followers of Maltetious, had killed him in the middle of his own castle.  One of them carried a mace bearing Maltetious’ symbol, the other had less known about him.  Rumor also had it that they were the same men who had fought off the slavers in the High Stone Mountains to save the people there.  Trey had gone to a pub nights before and was sitting down to eat when he had heard some drunks yelling about it.  Other people who had been there before Trey’s arrival for the most part kept silent as their eyes flicked back and forth between the raving drunks and Trey’s weapon.

Truthfully Trey didn’t know jack shit about what they’d done or the rumors that were going around, but played it by ear after he’d been fed this information by Taen.  It made it easier to replicate Michael’s persona knowing that he’d had a mace like the one Trey carried - Michael being one of Taen’s best friends and a man Trey knew little about, but it was all he needed to get the kind of attention Trey wanted.

As for the people who got in his way while he hunted down this specific type of attention: he could give zero fucks about anyone trying to make a problem out of it when they saw what he carried.  Let them die.

And die they would.

Stepping into a bakery and moving around some of the other customers, Trey went right to the pastries with his belly rumbling loudly.  It smelled delicious.  There were tarts, sugared muffins, buttered bread rolls with filling and even cakes!  Taking a few of each Trey put them into a basket he had bought the day before yesterday and came up to the bakers - a man and wife in their early twenties, about his age.

“How much for all of these?” asked Trey as he pulled out his coin purse.

“Eight silver should do it!” said the young woman happily.  The man looked over Trey’s shoulder with a weird expression that remained there until he poked Trey in the chest.  Trey looked up from counting coins in a confused manner.

“I think they might be here for you…” said the man who then pointed out the door.

Trey turned around as he stuffed one of the small cakes into his mouth and licked his fingers.  Looking out the door a number of armed men, who definitely weren’t guards, were standing and waiting in the street with weapons drawn while staring Trey down.

Trey chuckled.  “Yeah probably.”

The bakers both looked concerned.  “Is everything ok?”

“Don’t worry about it, they’ll be dead in a few minutes if they try to pick a fight.  Thanks for the heads up.”  Trey walked out of the bakery confidently as he stuffed one of the buttered rolls into his mouth.  It tasted incredible and he hadn’t eaten breakfast yet.

To his right three guards sat back and were watching as they counted a small amount of money.  Apparently they had been paid off to not interfere.  People were watching from various other shops in the street as Trey was stopped by the biggest of the men wielding an axe.

“That’s a nice mace you’ve got there,” said the large built man as he brandished his weapon.  Raven hair was thrown back into a ponytail and a scar was strewn across his features.  “What is your name?”

Trey nonchalantly continued to chew until he swallowed, “Trey.  You have something you want to talk about, pretty boy?”

The other men around them snickered as Trey in turn also grinned, “What’s with the sausage fest boys?  Can we get some ladies up in here or nah?”

The large muscular man in front of him took one hand and slapped the food from Trey’s grasp - tarts, cakes, muffins and rolls all falling to the dirt.  Trey frowned and crossed his arms to look at the food beneath them.

“You’re wanted for the assassination of the king of the southern City States of Shrubeth.  A price of 12,000 gold pieces has been placed upon your head, dead or alive.  You can either come with us, give up your weapon and place your hands behind you… or you can die like a dog here in the dirt.”  The man said loudly as he sneered while the others slowly began to close in.  “We’re going to be rich men after we bring your nancy ass back.”

Well then.  It’d worked like poetry in at least one way Trey’d anticipated.  Hopefully the vamps would be next.

“Hmmm…” Trey said while scratching his morphed, pointed chin.  “I believe you owe me some silver for those pastries you just threw to the ground.”

A split second later Trey’s mace had been unhooked and landed sideways into the man’s chest, rupturing his body as pieces of arm, rib and organ flew out to land onto his friends to the left of Trey.  No one had had any time to react as what remained of the huge man’s soon to be lifeless corpse shuddered lying upon the ground nearby.

“You have gained XP.”

The guards had stopped counting the money and sat wide eyed as did many of the other onlookers as everything stood still and silent for a couple seconds afterwards.  Then Trey laughed hysterically and the other opponents closed in.

“COME ON BITCHES!”

Trey waited until the closest three were just out of striking distance - two with broadswords and another with a flail.  Grinning sinisterly beneath his rearranged face, he assumed the stance for a charge.  His feet planted and, sure that his massive strength would easily overpower these mortal dimwits, he rushed them head on.

They came right to him.  Each of the swordsman tried to run him through and the man with the flail cackled as he drew it back and swung the weapon forward to smash into Trey’s head.

The resultant blows ended much differently than the attackers had anticipated.  Trey knocked the attacks easily aside, and the weapons were utterly repelled.  One of the broadswords shattered with a swing from Trey, the other was deflected and sent the wielder backwards to drop his weapon.  The flail’s spikes also shattered and the core of the ball bounced back to smack into the one holding it - shattering his arm with a scream.  All three of them were momentarily stunned, and taking advantage of their momentary state Trey shattered the first man’s skull in a spray of blood.  The second man promptly screamed as two chaos chains erupted from the ground on either side of him and came together in a blur - smashing his entire body in a spray of guts and bone.  The third man tried to run, but a sudden barrage of swift blows from Trey’s mace tore and smashed into him - turning him into a crushed bag of flesh and bones with oozing open wounds.

The next opponent was just as lucky.

Black mana hummed and flared to life all along his weapon as Trey spun his mace around with one hand to knock his next opponent off his feet vertically into the air to land on top of the bakery roof.  When the weapon had collided the currents of mana flowed out and into the man’s body, tearing the man apart as he skimmed across the road in a bloodied mess.

“You have gained XP.”

“You have gained XP.”

“You have gained XP.”

“You have gained XP.”

Sidestepping a spear, catching it, and breaking the shaft with his free hand Trey laughed again and stopped to face the other now worried and hesitant men.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Trey with a smirk as he threw the large flanged mace over his shoulder, “Give me all of your money and I’ll let you all live.”

There were still seven of them left.

“I’ll see you in the afterlife!” screamed the next man who came up and swung a sword in a downward arc.  Trey whirled his flanged mace in an upward motion to shatter the sword and turning with the flow of his weapon as he sidestepped - Trey did a roundabout to thrust his arm forward - stabbing the lone end, the spiked tip of the mace, into his enemy’s skull.

“God, this is just too easy.”

Withdrawing the spike of his mace from the head of his opponent, the man dropped lifelessly to the ground with a thud.  From behind him Trey saw out of the corner of his eye yet another man coming at him with an axe.

Trey turned his body to swing his mace with massive force into the man’s front.  His opponent’s body opened up as it was thrown down the street, skipping along the ground as if a stone upon the river, coming to lie still in a bloody mess twenty five yards from where Trey had landed back onto his feet.

“You have gained XP.”

“You have gained XP.”

The five men still remaining threw down their weapons then unhooked pouches of money from their belts and threw those down as well.  They then turned and ran down the street.  Trey shook his head in annoyance and looked about the disaster he had created.

“The one thing I don’t like about maces is they’re incredibly messy… it’s why I’ll be sticking to swords.”  He bent down and picked up the pouches of gold, coming to the other seven corpses he also rummaged through their belongings.  Finding more money on each of them, even the one on top of the bakery, he counted out a small sum and threw it at the guards in disgust.

Trey pointed to them with a commanding, even menacing voice.  “Clean this mess up you useless sacks of shit.”

He then turned around and walked away to find some new clothes at the market.  The guards didn’t bother to follow him, wanting to stay as far away from Trey as possible after they’d knowingly let those other men attack him in broad daylight.

“Now if that wasn’t entertaining I don’t know what would be,” snickered a hooded shady looking man nearby as the guards gawked stupidly at the mess.

The man’s companion was chuckling uncontrollably and couldn’t respond as he covered his mouth with one gloved hand.  Together they made their way down the street to follow in Trey’s wake.