Book 3: Chapter 58: The Concubine

Book 3: Chapter 58: The Concubine

The smell of decay mixed with moist odor of drifting fog as Elijah approached the pile of servitors. None of them even twitched, and as he drew closer, he verified that they were dead. Perhaps they’d never truly been alive, though he suspected that he’d gained some experience from each one, because his levels had skyrocketed after killing the Creator. He looked at his status:

Name

Elijah Hart

Level

66

Archetype

Druid

Class

Animist

Specialization

N/A

Alignment

N/A

Strength

99 (77)

Dexterity

84 (69)

Constitution

77 (67)

Ethera

75

Regeneration

89(69)

Attunement

Nature

Cultivation Stage: Cultivator

Body

Core

Mind

After leaving that behind in search of such a key, he reached what seemed like living quarters fit for a princess. Ignoring the rich décor, which trended toward velvet and silk amidst wrought iron and dark wood, Elijah stalked forward. And that’s when the trail he’d been following ended in the scene of a massacre.

A blonde woman, all in white, knelt amidst a dozen bodies. Her porcelain skin was marred by blood that coated her dainty chin, while tears flowed freely down her cheeks. The corpses around her were dressed like all the other natives Elijah had seen, but it didn’t take him long to recognize the woman who’d helped him only a couple of hours before.

Her throat had been ripped out.

The blonde woman quivered with her tears. But then, she leaned forward and licked the congealed blood that had pooled beneath her. As she did, she muttered, “So hungry. S-so...hungry.”

For a long time, Elijah just watched the woman feasting upon the pool of blood, and though he was disgusted, he couldn’t help but feel pity. Clearly, she was in no small degree of distress. She obviously hated what she was doing. But she couldn’t resist. She couldn’t stop herself.

It didn’t take a huge leap of logic to come to the conclusion that she was a vampire, and not a willing one.

But as much as he pitied the girl, he knew he couldn’t afford to try to help her. Perhaps the natives had tried that route, and they’d paid the price for their sense of mercy.

Elijah wanted to let her live, the signs were too obvious to ignore. Perhaps someone else could have saved her. Maybe there was something he’d missed. For all Elijah knew, there was some cure for her condition somewhere else in the house. But the fact was that he didn’t have the time to search the entire manor. As such, he had one option, even he hesitated to exercise it.

But hesitation wasn’t refusal, and he slowly crept forward until he was only a couple of feet behind the weeping vampire. Then, after using Predator Strike and Venom Strike, he struck, snapping out with his powerful jaws. They closed around her head, clamping down with tens of thousands of pounds of pressure. She reacted just before his teeth connected with her skull, but by that point, it was too late.

Her head burst in a fountain of blood. A second later, her entire body melted into crimson liquid that, in turn, evaporated after a few more moments.

And just like that, she was dead.

But standing in the center of all those corpses, Elijah was a little disappointed. She had fallen too easily. Of course, he didn’t crave a life-or-death fight. However, there was a part of him that had expected his opening salvo to be just that – the beginning of a back-and-forth fight.

He knew it wasn’t because he didn’t know his own strength. He was well aware of how powerful he could be. Instead, he suspected that the vampire girl simply wasn’t that strong. So, she’d never really been meant to be an obstacle.

So, after making certain that the rest of the natives were dead, Elijah moved further into the living quarters. Soon enough, he found his way to a bedroom, and after a little searching, he found two items.

The first was a diary, and looking at the first few pages told Elijah that it belonged to the vampiric girl he’d just killed. He continued to read – or skim, really, given the time constraints – and he found himself engrossed in her story.

Predictably, she hadn’t always been a vampire. Instead, she’d been abducted from a nearby village, and when she was brought to the manor, Lord Lothgal had taken her to his bed. At first, even though she wasn’t willing, she had not resisted, thinking that he would tire of her company and let her go. That had never happened. Instead, he somehow converted her to vampirism and forced her to feed on her former neighbors.

But the girl – whose name was Sharath – hadn’t given up. Instead, she’d plotted to kill Lothgal, persuading a local wizard to create an item that would allow her to infiltrate the lord’s chambers and kill him in his sleep.

That was the second item Elijah had found.

He turned the locket over in his hands. He knew how it worked, and he knew what it would do, too. The diary had been clear on both counts. Yet, Elijah hesitated. Surely, there was a better solution to his issues than to use some untested magical device.

However, his hesitation only lasted as long as it took for him to hear a scratching at the bedroom door. Using One with Nature, he sensed that the corpses he’d left behind had risen as vampires, and they’d followed his scent to the bedroom. Soon enough, they would break down the door, and after that, it would come down to another fight.

But it wouldn’t get him any closer to the lord’s quarters.

So, Elijah took a deep breath, then slipped the locket around his neck. As he stepped forward to the spot described by the diary, the vampires burst through the door. He opened the locket, and the item activated.

Instantly, Elijah felt his body contract, and the item’s effect was not a painless experience. Instead of shrinking down, like he’d seen in so many movies growing up, it was more like his body imploded, collapsing in on itself. Which presented a problem, because when the effect completed, he was only about a quarter of an inch tall.

And he was hundreds of body lengths above the floor.

As the vampires burst into the room, slavering for blood, he fell. During the fall, he cast Soothe, then shifted into his lamellar ape form just before he hit the floor with a thud. Thankfully, he was more than durable enough to survive such a fall, and nothing broke. But that extreme of blunt-force impact definitely wasn’t pleasant.

Soothe helped, though, and he pushed himself upright before taking stock.

He’d positioned himself according to the diary’s description, so he wasn’t far from his destination, which was a crack in the baseboard. From there, he didn’t know what to expect. Indeed, all he knew was that it would lead him to Lord Lothgal, which was the ultimate goal.

Most importantly, Elijah knew that the item’s effect would only last for a little more than thirty minutes. Which meant that he was on an even tighter timer.

So, he set off, passing through the crack and leaving the vampires behind.