523 Chapter 523: Vampire Attack

Screams rang through the courtyard as the vampires attacked from the north. There was some delay because the barrier of silver crosses turned out to be still active, and they had to waste precious time dismantling the defenses. The zombies they planned to unleash on the school ended up being almost eradicated. Without their undead troops, the vampires had to launch the attack themselves.

The security guards weren't able to put up much of a struggle before being overpowered by the sheer numbers of vampires, who then gleefully sucked their blood dry.

The students who were unfortunate enough to be out in the northern premises of school during that time also fell victim to the invading vampires. Despite the warning my friends and I had broadcasted when we saw the vampires coming, these delusional fools refused to believe us and remained where they were. Now they paid for their idiocy and stubbornness with their lives.

As Xu Wu Cheng, the young vampires, the adult vampires and the king himself swept through the school, Fan Le Lao couldn't help but pause in the middle of the courtyard, where all the surviving students wept and cried at the atrocious horrors unfolding before their very eyes. Despite being trained as mages, none of them fought back, fear having paralyzed them and stopped them from casting the spells that they learned.

Having emphasized too much on individual rankings – a problem that was prevalent throughout the whole of the Global Federation – the poor students lacked actual combat experience, and when danger was staring at them in the eyes, they lost the ability to fight back and forgot everything that they had learned. Pathetic.

If they had taken my warnings seriously and believed everything I said, I might have some sympathy for them. But they returned my good intentions with hostility and scorn, which made me resent them a little. Despite my desire to be a hero, I was not a saint. I wasn't going to smile and turn the other cheek after someone had slapped me. I was still a human, with my foibles and anger. It was only natural that I would resent them for their contempt and accusations of me being a liar.

Fan Le Lao smiled as he swept his cold gaze across the sobbing students.

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen," he proclaimed in dark humor. "We're…tonight's entertainment!"

He then plucked a rose off a bloodied bush before proceeding to a fallen, crying girl and gently biting into her neck. The female student screamed and struggled briefly before going still, a hypnotic daze settling over her ever-paling face.

Meanwhile, the humans remaining in school were gathering, flustered at the sudden assault. At one end of the corridor, the members of the Guang Zhi Yi Sect gathered.

"There's a large group of vampires attacking the school," Zhao Yan reported, stating the obvious. Duh, anyone could see that.

"The barrier of silver crosses has no effect on them," Kai Lin interjected worriedly, her pretty face screwed in worry. Fortunately, despite Ji Yan doing her job well, I had replaced the defective silver crosses. "They eliminated the horde of zombies, but they don't seem to work on the vampires themselves."

"The vampires are higher leveled, so they have more resistance against such defensive charms. Not to mention, their power is exponentially higher than that of zombies'. Zhao Yan was grim. "We underestimated them."

"The day has finally come…" Yi Shen faced the two of them. None of them remarked on the absence of Ji Yan. I wondered why. Did they not care about what happened to Ji Yan amidst this chaos? "They want to kill all the hunters so that their king can conquer the Global Federation unopposed."

I wasn't sure how his speculation was relevant to the current situation. Dude, you guys weren't the only hunters in the entire Federation, right?

"This will determine whether we live or die. We should split up, attack from different directions to counterattack the vampire clan, and evacuate the students and teachers."

Dude, the teachers were stronger than you. You should be the ones evacuating. Additionally, weren't you triggering a death flag? In any horror movie, splitting up was the worst decision that you could ever make! You just effectively signed your death warrant! Wasn't the logical, rational strategy to stick together, find and unite the separate, disparate fighting units into a single cohesive combat force and slowly reclaim the school sector by sector? You know, strength in numbers and all that?! Who the hell split up when they were already outnumbered?!

I couldn't believe that these guys were calling themselves hunters. They were making incredibly dumb mistakes that no trained soldiers would ever conceive. If my sergeant heard this, he would be yelling at them, something along the lines of, "you think you're Rambo, is it?! You think this is a shooter game, is it?! Don't anyhow solo people and play hero, can or not?!"

Unfortunately, neither Zhao Yan nor Kai Lin saw the folly of Yi Shen's highly flawed strategy and they both said, "Yes!"

Geez, I give up. Just go die by yourselves, you idiots.

While the so-called professional hunters of Guang Zhi Yi Sects split up to their respective doom, my friends and I were fighting in an organized manner. We had been driven back by the invading vampires from the north, forced to yield ground because of their sheer numbers. Fortunately, we had planned for this in advance and were able to channel them into a narrow killing ground where Miura and I offered ranged support for Kufa and Rossetti to slice and dice them up in close range within a corridor. Scores of vampires fell, but many more kept coming.

It was almost as if we were facing an endless wave of undead.

"I'm sorry."

"Huh?" I glanced at Miura, and she bowed her head apologetically.

"We should have believed you. You warned us, yet none of us listened. And it turns out that you're telling the truth, after all."

"Hey, I believed him!" Kufa complained as he beheaded a vampire with his katana.

"Yeah, you did, and I'm grateful for that." I nodded my appreciation at him before shooting a vampire that was about to bite him with one of my arrows. The bloodsucker fell back, his head vanishing in a shower of blood. Kufa flashed a thumb's up at me, and I nodded before turning to Miura. "And it doesn't matter. We took precautions and planned for this, and we're still alive. We might survive this."

"I hope we do."

"Did Ji Yan really betray us?" Rossetti asked as she ducked under the blood claws of an assaulting vampire, despair in her voice. "I can't believe it."

"It doesn't matter," Kufa told her. "Right now, just focus on surviving."

"Yeah," I agreed before I blasted another vampire that was about to bite Rossetti's neck. My azure arrow detonated, taking the top half of its body away and obliterating the soulless creature. "We can always ask her if she's still alive after all this."

And I bet she would be. She would have to answer for her crimes.

While we fought in our little corner of the school, the vampires continued their massacre.

As Fan Le Lao placed the corpse of his victim down on the ground in a gentle manner, the girl having a blissful expression in death, an elderly man with a neatly trimmed beard appeared beside him.

"Father," Fan Le Lao acknowledged with a respectful bow of his head.

"Son." Fan Le Lao returned the greeting with an almost imperceptible nod. "You know what to do. I'll be bringing my forces to crush the hunters and expert mages hidden in Saint Teresa Academy. I'll leave the students to you and your unit. Annihilate them."

"Consider it done, Father."

Fan Le Lao complied humbly as he rose, his head still lowered. Rewarding his son with a stiff smile, the king of the Crimson Blood Demonic Night Clan took flight, leading his vampire soldiers deeper into the normal humans' territory. Glancing back, Fan Le Lao straightened himself and regained his regal composure. He had transformed from loyal son to commander in an instant, almost as if flicking a switch on. Nodding to Xu Wu Cheng, who was leading the young vampires in Fan Le Lao's so-called elite unit, he subtly gave the order.

The young vampires took off, ready to hunt down any students who were still resisting. Fan Le Lao's gaze then ventured toward the place where Lute Dragoon and his enormous harem were fighting ferociously, countless slain vampires at their feet. For now, plot armor protected the Mary Sue.

But what would happen if a Mary Sue met another Mary Sue? Only one of them would walk away alive after the encounter.

Smiling to himself grimly, Fan Le Lao then dove toward Lute Dragoon's location.

Meanwhile, the adult vampires had problems of their own. Even as they spread out in their individual squads, one five-man squad had broken off and was racing in a different direction.

"Boss, where are we going?"

The wingman of the lead vampire asked. The leader, who was leading his squad from the front in an arrow-shaped formation, smiled. His fangs glistened as they descended over his curled lips.

"To kill a beast, we must first cut off its head. So I was thinking, why not we end this battle once and for all by going straight for the humans' leader?"

"You mean the headmistress?"

"Yes. If we kill her, not only do we destroy the humans' morale completely and effectively end this battle, we will also gain glory and and credit for eliminating one of our – the Crimson Blood Demonic Night Clan's – biggest threat."

The four followers who trailed their leader couldn't help but smile at his ambition. They knew he was right. If they could pull this off, they would be massively rewarded by their king.

The five vampires tore through the three teachers standing in their way. Despite being veteran mages, the trio were no match for the speed and ferocity of the five vampires, whose blood magic viciously cut through their arcane defenses and slew them. The leader didn't even pause as he rushed past the falling bodies, long gone before the bloodied corpses hit the ground. That was, if you could call those near-unrecognizable chunks of body parts "corpses", of course.

As the unfortunate teachers fell prey to the vampires' merciless slaughter, the five smashed through the door that the trio had been guarding and skidded to a stop in a white, squeaky clean office. Ahead of them, behind the wooden table that served as the headmistress's desk, stood Headmistress Teresa Taylor herself. She merely glanced at them calmly when they barged into her office.

The five vampires spread out, stabilizing their blood-red mana and getting ready to attack. But for some reason, they felt intimidated by the single elderly lady who was standing in the middle of her office. However, having come this far, they refused to back down.

Teresa Taylor narrowed her eyes as she eyed the five trespassers.

"I'm afraid I don't have an appointment scheduled with anyone at the moment. The Holy Supper will be taking place shortly, so I'm afraid you will have to schedule an appointment for another day."

"Oh, this isn't an appointment," the squad leader said with a feral grin. "We're here to kill you."

If Teresa Taylor was affected by that revelation, she showed no sign of it. Instead, she merely asked, "Who are you?"

"I guess this is the first time we've met, Headmistress of Saint Teresa Academy, Teresa Taylor."

"Yes, I suppose it is."

"However…I am surprised. It was quite easy to break into your office, despite it being the personal room of the headmistress of Saint Teresa Academy, which is well known for being an elite combat magic school. Isn't security a little too lacking?"

"There is no need to worry." Teresa Taylo narrowed her eyes. Even though there was no mana, the tension in the room suddenly jumped a few notches. "I am here. There is no better security than this."

"I see…" The squad leader swallowed, but was unable to suppress a smile. "Those will be your last arrogant words, Teresa Taylor."

The five of them attacked Teresa Taylor at once. It was a splendid attack, one that could only be pulled off between the five, who had been in the same squad for so long that they could almost read each other's intentions as easily as they would a book. Having long since coordinated with each other, the squad had adopted an attacking pattern that made use of their strengths, having honed it to perfection through countless practices on actual battlefields.

If it were any other opponent, she would have ended up like the trio of teachers outside her office. That was what caught those three by surprise – their near-flawless coordination, their ruthlessness, the overwhelming power and brutal efficiency of their united attack.

However, their opponent this time was Teresa Taylor, the headmistress of the prestigious and renowned Saint Teresa Academy, and a former Paladin of legendary stature.

With a swing of her sword, which seemed to have been drawn swiftly from her thick, white sleeves, Teresa Taylor shattered that formidable formation of theirs.

"Holy Judgement. Sacred Flames, burn all evil to ash."

At that moment, when the enormous, unstoppable inferno of white holy fire swept toward them, the vampire squad leader realized too late that he was mistaken.

Teresa Taylor wasn't being arrogant at all. No, instead, it was he who was arrogant to think that he could ever challenge the headmistress with his mere squad of five men. It was he who was arrogant by defying his king's orders and rushing straight to the headmistresss's office.

She might have aged a little, but that did not change the fact that Teresa Taylor had once been the strongest paladin to have served the Global Federation. A strength that had remained undiminished throughout the years.

The vampire squad leader realized that he had just made a fatal mistake, and now his entire squad was paying for it.

"D…damn it…!"

Hollering, the vampire squad leader tried to form a blood-red barrier in front of himself, but Teresa Taylor's holy flames were too powerful, too ferocious that they cremated everything and anything in a single go, seeking to purify all that was evil. The four members behind the boss were reduced to ash in an instant, their screams abruptly cut off and silenced by the judgement of sacred fire.

The leader himself didn't last much longer, perhaps for only one second more than his comrades, before he too was engulfed by the holy inferno and completely erased from the face of the earth for his sins.

Teresa Taylor didn't pay her vanquished foes much heed, already turning her back on their ashes before her holy flames faded away. Instead, she glanced at the wall behind her desk.

"Vice-princpal Fu."

"Yes, ma'am!"

As if appearing out of nowhere, Vice-principal Fu Xiao Zhang knelt in front of Teresa Taylor, whose white silhouette was illuminated by the flickering flames behind her.

"Relay the message to all surviving teachers and students still capable of combat in the academy. Our counterattack against the vampire clan begins now."

"Yes, ma'am."

Fu Xiao Zhang acknowledge the order and disappeared. The headmistress of Saint Teresa Academy then stalked out of the office, her white cloak billowing behind her as she prepared to join the frontlines.

Glancing into the distance, she shook her head and sighed.

"I'm very sorry, Richard Huang. I should have listened to you, after all. It seemed that you were telling the truth this entire time. I was a fool for choosing to believe Nan Gong Ji Yan and Xu Wu Cheng over you."

She then hardened her gaze.

"You had better survive this, Richard. I need to make a proper apology to you once I eliminate all of the villainous bastards who dared lay their filthy paws on my academy."

Then she was gone, kicking off the ground in an explosive burst that sent tremors throughout the beleaguered school.

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