Chapter 63: Does Being Fed On Feel Good?

I followed her through the alleys, keeping to the shadows as she ran. Just as I’d expected, she was absurdly fast. Her physical strength easily rivaled mine, possibly double. Vampiric enhancement really wasn’t something to scoff at.

Lillith was already thirty paces ahead, a dark shape flitting between the narrow gaps of the buildings. Vampiric strength really wasn’t something you could scoff at.

The white-robed figures had split into two groups. Three continued toward Lucius’s window. Four broke off, circling wide through the rooftops, and they’d noticed her, but she didn’t.

I pushed mana into my legs and closed the distance, keeping to the shadows. The alley curved left, then opened into a small courtyard behind a shuttered smithy. Moonlight pooled on the cobblestones.

Lillith was in the center of it, cloak settling around her shoulders. She had likely followed the four who had split up, and was now led into a trap.

The four white-robed figures dropped from the rooftops and surrounded her in a loose diamond.

"You’re not the target," one of them said. A woman’s voice, flat and calm. "Walk away."

Lillith didn’t answer. She bit into her wrist, letting blood drip freely, then manipulated it into a solid spear.

These figures had been prepared to subdue Lucius, a Sage-rank mage. Lillith, despite her strength, wasn’t on that level yet.

I waited before intervening, curious to see how well she could fight on her own.

The first white-robe moved before her blood finished hardening. A blade of compressed wind screamed toward her throat, a killing strike from the start.

Lillith twisted. The wind blade carved a line across her shoulder instead of her neck, splitting fabric and skin. Blood sprayed, but she didn’t flinch.

The blood from her wound froze mid-air, then hardened into a second spear that launched itself at the attacker before he could recover.

He barely dodged. The spear clipped his hood, tearing it away to reveal a middle-aged man with a scarred jaw and eyes that didn’t blink.

"Blood magic," he muttered. "A vampire?"

The other three closed in. One from each side. They knew how to corner a vampire.

Lillith’s spear swept in a wide arc, forcing two of them back. The third, a woman with twin daggers, slipped under the swing and drove both blades toward Lillith’s ribs.

CLANG.

The blood spear collapsed into a shield just in time as sparks flew. Lillith stumbled back, her heels scraping the cobblestones, and the fourth attacker, the one she hadn’t seen, planted a boot in her spine.

She hit the ground hard. The shield splattered into red mist.

"Change of plans," the scarred man said. "Kill her, we can’t let a vampire get away."

Lillith pushed herself up on trembling arms. Blood dripped from her mouth, her shoulder, her hands.

"You four aren’t just normal assassins, are you?"

She bit her wrist deeper. The blood that poured out wasn’t red anymore. It was black, thick as tar, and it moved like it had a mind of its own.

The scarred man’s eyes widened.

"She’s—"

The black blood exploded outward in every direction. Tendrils, spikes, whips of it, lashing at all four attackers at once. They scattered, but the woman with the daggers wasn’t fast enough.

A tendril caught her ankle and yanked her off her feet, slamming her into the cobblestones with a sickening crack.

The woman definitely wasn’t getting up.

But the scarred man had already recovered. He appeared behind Lillith like a ghost, one hand clamping around her throat.

"Enough."

Lillith choked. The black blood collapsed, splattering harmlessly across the stones. She clawed at his grip, but her strength was fading, her face going pale.

"You should have walked away."

I’d seen enough.

"I’m ending this."

I stepped out from the shadows. The remaining white-robed turned toward me, and then something cinched tight around their throats.

Restriction. A simple spell, designed to constrict an enemy’s movements by summoning a ring of light around them.

But then I realized... nothing was really stopping me from summoning the ring straight at their necks to choke them.

The moment the spell materialized, all three dropped. The scarred man’s chokehold on Lillith went slack, and I was there to catch her before she hit the cobblestones.

"Lord Brimstone...?"

"If you wanted blood, you should have asked me."

I pressed two fingers together. The rings tightened. A second later, three heads separated from their bodies. If the novel was still accurate, they’d deserved it.

I glanced down at Lillith. Sunken eyes. Skin even paler than usual. She’d lost too much blood.

Half-vampire. That distinction mattered. Full vampires could weaponize their blood without risking their own survival; it was excess to them, a tool rather than a necessity.

But Lillith’s body still needed blood to function. Every drop she’d used in that fight was a drop her body couldn’t afford to lose.

She’d been fighting on borrowed time from the first cut.

Without hesitation, I tilted my head and offered her my neck.

"Feed."

The bodies beside us were still bleeding. They would have been enough. More than enough.

But that was boring. Why waste the chance to experience what it felt like to be fed on by a beautiful vampire?

As for Lillith herself, she was far too desperate to even consider drinking from the dead bodies when a neck was already waiting beneath her fangs.

SHLICK!

I winced as her fangs pierced my skin. Instinctively, my healing magic surged toward the wound, not to close the surface, which would only impede her feeding, but to work beneath it. Replenishing what she took, drop for drop.

Healing magic really was a cheat. It didn’t rely on traditional metabolism or any science my previous world had ever known.

BOOM!

An explosion rang out in the distance, from the direction of the inn. A white-robed figure was sent flying through the air above us, crashing onto what was likely another street.

The fighting had already begun.

It was time we got out of here before we got caught up in their plan for Lucius.