302 Forest Dungeon II : Growing Darkness

Having myself And Soren surrounded by this things was really unsettling, with the way they hung around my awareness liken blanks on a picture, they made me feel nauseous and quite weird. But who had time to worry about all that, there was fight right in front of us, and it was time we faced it.

Soren and I jumped into the fray, I called out my sword and drew my shield close to my body as I flashed with this weird monsters. A claw to mg head was deflected with my shield, and a swing from my sword tore open a huge hole in the neck of what looked like a cross between a giraffe and a hyena.I shifted mg head back, avoiding being stomped by neon green gorilla almost twenty feet tall, with a gracious amount of horns on it's head.

I jumped up, reaching the height of the gorilla with ease and staring at it right in the face. Then I proceeded to slam my shield into it's face, blasting it's huge skull apart as it's huge body fell to the ground raising a cloud of dust as it landed. I bent backwards in the air, watching as a wing glowing silver with a metallic tint flew over my face. I jabbed my sword into the side of the huge flying snake, showering it's compatriots below with a lot of it's guts and intestines as the poured out of it's open wound to the ground, closely followed by the snake itself.

I dropped back to the ground, and just in time to see Soren jump onto the back of another crab man, and began to draw his claws from one end of its hard shell to another. And then he placed both paws on the incision his claws had made, and then pulled his limbs apart with an animalistic fervor that was true to lion form. The crab man was split into two gross halves and tossed away into the dark, as Soren came down with his body covered in golden lightening and his eyes shining a bright yellow. Then he opened his mouth and.

*Roooaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrr!*

A massive shocker wave of energy and electricity was released from his mouth, and spread out from him like a ripped in the pond. Soren and I might be connected on a very fundamental level, but even I knew it was incredibly stupid to just stand there watching as that shockwave came close to me. It might not hurt me, at least that much I can be sure of, however if I let it touch me, then it's bound to hurt like a bitch, and I'm not really in the mood for discomfort.So to avoid getting fried and blasted by Soren's skill, I jumped into the shadow realm.

And from within the shadow realm, I watched Soren's ability spread, and even affect me to the point of me coughing out blood. I was shocked, I couldn't understand or fathom how is it, that Soren would be able to have an ability that could literally cause damage through dimensions, and could even hurt someone as strong as I was. In regards to strength and defense and speed, mine could be considered almost godlike, or demigod like. But for Soren to be able to hurt me this badly, then it means that he's strength was very much close to that same level, if not on the level itself.

I'm not exactly sure about the composition of Soren's ability, whether it was driven by sound or by the lightening he loves using so much. Either way the weird monsters that decided to ambush us as we were sleeping, all had extreme reactions to the skill. As the shockwave from his roar spread, the unlucky monsters directly exploded into bits spreading guts and blood the colors of varying shades of pink, red and green. The semi unlucky ones had their brains exploded in their heads, most of them died, the ones that lived became nothing more than a vegetable. Of the monsters that completely resisted Soren's ability, there were three of them. A giant crocodile monkey, a snake with centipede legs, and a donkey with a scorpion's tail.

For them to be able to resist the skill when they were literally at ground zero, means that they must be really powerful or had some sort of skill capable of negating Soren's ability. Either way, it made me really upset, seeing as I had to run away and they could stay and take the full brunt of the attack and still seem completely unaffected. My annoyance became so strong that injustice raise both my hands, and used pushand pull at the same time to drag all three monsters together ignoring their startled pleas.

But putting them together was not enough for me. I was incapable of controlling gravity, however I could accurately mimic the effect of gravity with both my Push and Pull soul runes. So I made it seem like a black hole that was sucking them in and crushing them at the same time. I was so angry and jealous at this bloody monsters for being able to withstand Soren's ability that as I crushed them into miserable bits, one into the other, I had the most sinister smile imaginable plastered on my face.

Somewhere at the back of my mind, I knew I had lost control of my emotions again and that my animosity, ruthlessness and bloodthirstiness was at an all time high. But I didn't care, not at the moment at least, I just wanted to get rid of these bloody things and have them wiped out of existence for the sin of being better than me.

"Master! That's enough, they're already dead."

I was drawn out my edgy zone by Soren's voice, my breaths were deep, my heart pounded within my chest, and even though my face looked completely blank and devoid of any emotion, I was so terrified of what just happened. I obviously lost complete control over my emotion, over myself. I had let the darkness I knew was within me out, and it scared me…..it scared me a lot.

(Well what do we have here, quite a mess you made there Jason, or you go by Kael now right. That's good. So it's been a while since we talked or since I've had a mission for you. Well time to pay your dues boy, you're progressing nicely, but for an awakened universal being, your progress is too slow. So deal with this and get back to me.)

(Mission Alert: investigate the forest in front of you and find the reason for the monsters mutation and if someone or something is behind it, bring upon them the justice of mother earth./Reward: 1 first circle spell,power crest evolves to lord crest)

"fuck!!!" I screamed out loud in anger and rage.

How long has it been? Has it been up to six months? To be honest I wasn't able sure, but the fact of the matter is that for a while I was free.Of course it's not as if the missions I've chosen to undertake does not coincide with my current goals at that particular moment. But the idea of being led, being controlled! By a fucking planet that has done nothing but manipulate and shift pieces around my life like it was some sort of chess game did not sit well with me.It was not all bad, and the rewards I've received has been what has made me strong, Strong enough to face every enemy that has come my way. But whenever I see those missions alerts, I feel so out of control, like I was some sort of puppet and my decisions are no longer my own. Or maybe I'm just over thinking things, but either way I guess I had a job to do.

Soren and I went into the forest, for some reason the moment we went into it, the atmosphere just felt a lot heavier, and everything was darker than usual.But I suspect that was because we were within a forest, so visibility of the moon and stars above us would be reduced by quite a bit. But being in this forest had one fundamental difference than being out in the open, and that was the fact that everything was silent, way too silent to be normal.

Before we marched into the forest, we could hear night creatures in the distance, though they were a scant few, seeing as Transylvania is not exactly your flourishing land of nature and opportunities. However we could still hear them; the crickets, frogs, a coyote or a wolf maybe more. But within this forest the only truly prevalent was it's eerie silence, and it hung over my neck like a heavy cloak.

Soren and I kept on marching forwards, until eventually we came to a glade that had a campfire right at it's center. And there was a hunch of over figure with a heavy cloak placed on it's shoulder, completely obscuring itself from my view. I couldn't tell if I was facing a demon, a monster or a person, and without even hearing their voice, I couldn't tell if they were male or female.

I took a step forwards, successfully dragging the figures attention to myself, it looked up at me with glowing yellow eyes, before looking down and staring back into the fire in front of it. I still couldn't see the figure's face clearly, and for some reason mg perception couldn't see through it. It was not as if this person was erased from nature, appearing as a blank in the natural order of things like those other monsters, I could see and feel the person. It was just that I was feeling blocked, like the person was actively using their own power or aura to stop me from finding out their identity.

"It seems you have no idea of the customs of the old vampires. Unless someone is your enemy or property, it's considered rude to use your aura and senses to probe that person. That's like going up to a woman in public and shoving hour hand into her underwear."

I was startled when I heard the voice, it was deep yet clear. There was just this sense of protection and safety that I felt from it, like it was familiar. It made me raise my guard up, based on everything this person has said so far, it's obvious he knows quite a bit about vampires and their customs. Which means he's someone who lives in Transylvania, however what the fuck was he doing in the middle of a dead forest.

"Please have a seat and shade my fire, you and your companion are more than welcome. It has been quite a while since I last spoke to another soul."

I looked at Soren and telepathically asked him to keep his guard up. Everything about this suspicious person, with his suspicious campfire, within this suspicious forest was just so....suspicious.So we had to thread carefully, at this point I knew that as far as Shearath and seven layer universes are concerned, it is filled atheist crouching tigers and hidden dragons. Making it so that you don't know who is stronger than you and could kill with a slap, neither would you know who you can trust and who you can't.

I sat directly opposite the figure, with Soren sitting behind me, also facing the cloaked figure, his eyes focused and his muscles poised for any foul play. I crossed my legs and released my soul energy into the surroundings in little amounts, keeping it to a minimum so that he wouldn't notice.

"The both of you should relax, we're not enemies, and I don't think we would ever be. We're all friends here, besides Kael, I've been waiting Millenniums for you."

Oh great here we go again, this bullshit is getting old. I just knew that some shit would pop up the moment I saw that mission, that's just how it was with earth, it's the trend that bloody planet followed. Giving you all this random encounters and telling you that it was destiny at work here.

"Great another one of earth's lackeys. And who might you be this time, my teacher, my old pet, my asshole uncle, or my father?" I asked the cloaked man.

He chuckled in amusement as he let the cloak fall off his body and I came face to face with the most beautiful face I've ever seen in all of my lives. The only thing annoying thing was that it was the face of a man, at least I thought he was a man given how deep his voice was, and the prominent Adam apple he has on his throat. He dusted his shoulders in a leisurely pace as he took up a flask and gulped down what my nose told me was blood. He offered me some, but I declined his offer, still keeping him within my sight.

"Well I'm not your teacher, maybe I would be, that's up to you, and I'm definitely not your pet, gods know. I don't know about your asshole uncle, if I were then you'll probably be a lot older than this or very dead. And I don't know who this earth person is, and quite frankly I feel insulted that you would call me the lackey of some idiot with a poor naming sense. Who would call themselves earth. As for being your father well, there's some truth in that. Because after all when you think about it, you and every other vampire in existence came from me, from my blood and my darkness. So I guess introductions are in order young Kael. My name is Vladimir Dragonov Dracula, son of the night, king of blood and shadows, herald of hell, nightwalker, monster, demon, devil, evil, blood drinker and many others. But in the end I am and will always be the first vampire to have existed, on earth where I was born in the pages of a book, or here in Shearath where the minds and will of human beings gave me life. So what do you think."

"...Jesus Christ!"