Book 9: Chapter 41: The Fall

“This should be the place!” Grant reached out and pressed his hand against the red leather wood door, then pushed hard with a sudden burst of strength.

Bang! The thick office door burst into pieces, flying inward.

“Oh, he really didn’t run away…” After seeing the situation inside the hall clearly, Grant helplessly covered his face with his hand. He placed a syringe filled with brown liquid into Qin Lun’s hand. “You win!”

Qin Lun smiled, put away the syringe in his hand, and casually threw a human body he was dragging to the center of the hall. This limp body belonged to a man with a determined face. He didn’t have any major wounds on his body, but a long, slender Fine Iron Long Arrow was deeply embedded in his left chest.

The shaft of the Fine Iron Long Arrow was engraved with mysterious patterns, one circle after another. Under the light, it shimmered like flowing liquid mercury. This was one of the eleven Mithril Magic Arrows that Qin Lun brought back from the Toril World.

These Mithril Magic Arrows, personally crafted by the Elf Elder Adeline, were incredibly powerful. Originally, there were twelve of them, meant to be used with the World Tree Longbow. One had already been used in the Toril World and couldn’t be replenished.

As the body rolled and shook against the ground, the man groaned and woke up. He opened his dim, lifeless eyes, and fresh blood seeped out from the arrow shaft. The man was Hawkeye, Clint Barton. After the Joker broke into the manor’s main building, he had reached his limit. The perceptive Qin Lun seized the opportunity and defeated him with a Mithril Arrow.

Actually, if he hadn’t been intercepting the Joker and exhausting his mental energy, Clint wouldn’t have been defeated so easily. The syringe that the Joker had earlier was another one of Hawkeye Clint Barton’s hidden cards. This syringe contained Pym Particles given to him by his friend Hank Pym.

Pym Particles were miraculous particles. If a human consumed them, they would temporarily possess immense strength that didn’t match their body size, and they could even change their size. They could become as big as a Titan Giant or as small as an ant. This was also one of the reasons why Clint stayed behind to cover the retreat; it wasn’t just a reckless act of seeking death.

Most of the superhumans in the Avengers Alliance had rich combat experience. Battles against numerous evil forces had given them cockroach-like tenacity for survival. If Clint had been in a stable condition, he really would have had a chance to escape from Qin Lun.

Unfortunately, Hawkeye underestimated his enemy, was mentally and physically exhausted, and chose to escape too late. In front of Qin Lun’s all-pervasive Perception, even a slight moment of relaxation gave the opponent an opening. Before he could even use his hidden card, he was hit by the Mithril Arrow. The Pym Particles became the spoils of war for Grant, who had entered the villa first.

However, neither Grant nor Qin Lun were very interested in the Pym Particles. This item was a consumable, and it was possible that their original bloodlines would reject it. Apart from being able to sell for a bit of Shattered Crystal, it was basically useless, so it was treated as a joke-like bet.

Grant, standing next to Qin Lun, twisted his neck and also threw a girl in a military uniform, whom he had been carrying on his shoulder, onto the floor. The military-uniformed girl had a childlike face and large breasts. She was Seras Victoria, another Vampire from the HELLSING organization besides Alucard.

Seras was originally a policewoman. During a certain Vampire incident, she was given the embrace by Alucard and turned into a Vampire.

However, Seras strongly resisted the fact that she had become a Vampire, so until now, she had never drunk blood. Besides having the unusual physical qualities of a Vampire, she didn’t possess any special abilities like Alucard’s control over blood souls.

After the battle with MI7, the mercenaries hired by the HELLSING organization, for some reason, none of the survivors returned to the headquarters. Even the Old Butler Walter, who was usually inseparable from Integra, went missing during an interception battle along the way. The few remaining guards and servants at the HELLSING headquarters were also Sacrifice during the previous Crusaders’ attack.

In such a fierce battle, Seras had already made up her mind to drink blood. However, after Grant broke into the villa, Seras was no match for the Joker, who wore a Human Skin Mask and could change his physical attributes at will. She was quickly knocked unconscious and didn’t even have time to drink blood. If Qin Lun hadn’t stopped Grant from killing her, she would probably be dead already.

Unlike the dying Hawkeye, who was on the verge of death, the Vampire girl, although covered in blood, with multiple fractures and ruptured internal organs, actually wasn’t in life-threatening danger thanks to the powerful recovery ability of the Vampire bloodline.

“Seras…” Integra glanced at the two people on the hall floor, sighed, blew out a puff of smoke, and raised her head to look expressionlessly at Qin Lun and the other. “Do you plan to use them to threaten me?”

“Heh, you have no value to be threatened!” Qin Lun smiled and stepped on Hawkeye, who was still struggling to get up. He bent down, rested his arm on his knee, and his gaze unintentionally fell on the rapier in Integra’s right hand. “But, it’s best if you put away your sword. My companion is unhappy right now because he lost a bet!”

Whoosh! Before Qin Lun’s words faded, a strong wind brushed past him. The Joker, who still hadn’t removed his Human Skin Mask, suddenly vanished from his spot.

Integra felt all the pores on her body stand on end. She instinctively raised her rapier to guard her chest. But immediately, she felt an irresistible force strike her sword-wrist. The gleaming blade grew larger and larger in her pupils, and her retinas were filled with a blinding white light.

Thump! Integra faintly heard a soft sound in her ear, and then she felt herself getting lighter and lighter, slowly rising into the air like a balloon. The scene before her was completely blood-red. Reflected in her pupils was a headless corpse below that seemed familiar. It sprayed a column of blood over a foot high from the neck and slowly collapsed onto the floor.

“Miss…” In Integra’s final moments of consciousness, she saw Seras, who had woken up at some point, with tears streaming down her face, struggling to get up and staggering toward her.

“Seras, I’m sorry. Let me rest now!” The beautiful head, held in the Vampire girl’s arms, slowly closed its eyes and bloomed into a sweet smile, like a pure white rose.

“You… you…” Staring at the beautiful face in her arms that seemed to be peacefully asleep, Seras’s eyes widened with rage. Her tightly clenched teeth grated, and a hint of blood red slowly emerged in her sky-blue pupils.

Thump! A dark shadow flashed behind Seras. Grant struck the back of the girl’s head like lightning, making her body go limp and causing her to fall unconscious again.

“The recovery ability of the Vampire bloodline is really strong. She woke up so quickly!” Grant reached up and removed his Human Skin Mask. His chest heaved violently a few times, and his forehead was covered in dense beads of sweat. After using “Joker’s Gift” for so long, he was nearing his limit too.

Glancing at the prompt information in his Apostle Soul Mark, Grant revealed a slight smile.

After killing Integra, the progress of their Main Plotline had actually increased by a full 40%, much higher than when he had killed the Defense Minister Brown earlier. With this, just the Main Plotline alone should give him a bronze rating. Combined with the few Reincarnators he had killed earlier, his task rating in this world would be at least silver level.

“This should do it. Our mission can be considered successfully completed!” Qin Lun took two steps forward, grabbed Integra’s hair, and lifted the head from the Vampire girl’s embrace. He sighed as he looked at this pale, serene face. “…Maybe we can let her go.”

“Qin Lun, wipe that hypocritical look off your face. A demon should have the awareness of a demon.” Grant showed a cold smile. “We will all die eventually. If you’re feeling soft-hearted, wait until you’re dead, then go to hell and apologize to them!”

“What about these two? Should we clean them up too?” Grant took a deep breath, suppressing the slight irritation stirred up by Qin Lun. His increasingly cold gaze shifted toward the dying Hawkeye and the Vampire girl Seras.

“No, these two don’t contribute much to the mission. Besides the Pym Particles, Hawkeye probably doesn’t have anything better.” Qin Lun looked indifferently at the two people lying prostrate on the floor. A flicker passed through his silvery pupils. “As for that girl, she seems to be only a half-finished Vampire. Instead of killing them, I have a better idea…”

…

“Integra, the last direct descendant of that person… died? Is she dead?” About two kilometers away from the HELLSING headquarters, Alucard, who was in the middle of a fight, suddenly felt a pang in his heart. He sharply turned his head to look in the direction of the manor. The expression on his face slowly twisted and contorted into something fierce.

“Alucard, where are you looking? You can’t lose focus during a fight!” a loud shout came from behind the Vampire.

Thud, thud! Two bright silver dinner knives stabbed into Alucard’s chest, one on the left and one on the right. They slashed quickly, almost cutting the Vampire’s chest into four pieces. Blood and shattered internal organs spurted out from the cross-shaped wound.

“Get away!” A crazed blood-red light flashed in Alucard’s eyes, as if he didn’t feel any pain from being dismembered. He kicked Father Anderson away forcefully. Countless slender flesh tendrils surged out from his ruptured chest, and the wound began to heal rapidly.

At the same time, the Undead Army, fighting fiercely in various parts of North London, suddenly stiffened. A bloodthirsty glow lit up in their pupils as they howled and charged toward Alucard’s main body. They quickly gathered into a group around the Vampire, surging toward the HELLSING headquarters like an army crowding around their emperor.

Originally, the Necro had been subconsciously suppressed by Alucard, deliberately avoiding most residential areas and shelters. This time, they had no more restraints and began attacking all living things along the way, friend or foe. Cries for help and wails of terror and despair rose from various districts of North London.

In the area where Alucard and Father Anderson were fighting, all the powerful figures momentarily stopped fighting as if sensing something. They observed the unusual movements of the Undead Army.

“River of Death is raging…” Watching the strange behavior of the Undead Army, a woman in red leather clothing quickly turned pale. She stared coldly at Captain America in front of her and said, “Mr. Rogers, I warned you before. Non-human creatures cannot be trusted. Are you still going to stop us?”

As soon as the woman in red finished speaking, three other beauties who had been fighting elsewhere on the street disengaged and jumped to her side. One of them, a white-haired beauty in a white suit and tight skirt, looking like a professional office worker, slightly frowned and looked at the superhumans from the Avengers Alliance in front of her with disgust.

“Liv, we can’t delay any longer like this. If this continues, at least half of London’s population will die! These Americans aren’t fighting on their own homeland; they simply don’t care about the lives of the people. Just like Casablanca back in the day!”

The woman in red’s face changed. The image of Casablanca under the bombardment of the battleship Gneisenau flashed before her eyes again. Back then, the U.S. 101st Division, responsible for defense, abandoned helping the civilians of Casablanca. Same old allies, same old enemies, same old innocent lives…

Thinking of this, a trace of anger appeared in the red-clad woman’s eyes. She slowly raised the Death Scythe in her hand. The other three women beside her also stepped forward simultaneously.