Chapter 28: A Taste of Wildfire

Chapter 28: Chapter 28: A Taste of Wildfire

The heavy, metallic thud of Silas’s unconscious body hitting the floor barely registered in Donald’s ears. The newly acquired power of Level 7 hummed warmly in his veins, but his eyes were completely locked on the blinding storm of red and blue magic raging across the cavern.

Donald raised the Type-3 Pile Bunker, his finger hovering over the trigger, ready to fire at the cloaked assassin.

But he couldn’t.

His [Valuation Eye] painted the cavern with glowing yellow trajectory lines, but the Lesser Vampire was moving entirely too fast. The Level 38 assassin was a blur of shadow and red mist, constantly shifting behind Evelyn, using her as a physical shield against Donald’s line of sight. If Donald fired the explosive spike now, there was a high probability the concussive shockwave would hit Evelyn instead.

[System Warning: Target ’Evelyn Vance’ Stamina critically low. Blood loss exceeding safe parameters.]

Evelyn was being slowly whittled down. Her breath came in ragged, heavy gasps. The cuts on her shoulder and calf from the Vampire’s blood-needles refused to close, leaking a steady trail of vital fluid onto the cold stone.

The Vampire glided backward, his feet hovering an inch above the ground, and laughed. It was a cold, arrogant sound.

"You fight like a caged animal, Vanguard," the assassin mocked, casually twirling a freshly formed blood-stiletto in his pale hand. "Wild, desperate, and ultimately pointless. Your body is failing. You have perhaps two minutes before you collapse from hypovolemic shock. Submit, and I promise to drain you quickly."

Evelyn didn’t answer right away. She stood her ground, her boots planted firmly in the gravel. She lowered the Bloodhound’s Fang. The crimson blade was glowing, but it felt heavy in her tired hands.

She was losing the war of attrition. The Vampire’s cellular regeneration was completely negating any minor cuts she managed to land, while his anti-heal magic was bleeding her dry.

Raw speed and physical cuts won’t work, Evelyn analyzed, her veteran instincts cutting through the pain and exhaustion. If he can manipulate his own blood to seal his wounds, I have to take that control away from him. I have to corrupt the medium.

She looked at the dark crimson metal of the Bloodhound’s Fang. Donald had purified the rotting curse from the blade, allowing her to wield it safely, but the weapon’s innate hunger—its desperate, magical need to drink and bleed its victims—was still fully intact.

Evelyn closed her eyes for a fraction of a second, drawing upon the deepest reserves of her recovering mana core.

"I have killed monsters ten times your size," Evelyn whispered, her voice dropping to a terrifying, absolute calm. "You are just a parasite."

She didn’t wait for him to attack again. She exploded forward.

The Vampire sneered, reading her aggressive push as a desperate final gambit. He didn’t retreat. He raised both hands, summoning a dense, swirling vortex of red blood-spears in the air, aiming them all directly at her chest.

"Die," the Vampire commanded, launching the volley.

Evelyn didn’t dodge. Instead, she flared her [Aura of the Vanguard], not as a defensive shield, but as an offensive kinetic wedge.

CRACK!

She slammed her aura-coated shoulder directly into the first two blood-spears, shattering them into useless red mist. The impact tore through her magical defense, and a third spear grazed her ribs, slicing a deep, agonizing gash through her leather jacket and flesh.

She ignored the blinding pain. She used the momentum of the charge to close the final few feet, stepping directly inside the Vampire’s absolute guard.

The assassin’s pale eyes widened in shock beneath his dark hood. He hadn’t expected her to willingly take a lethal hit just to gain proximity. He instinctively brought his blood-stiletto up to parry.

Evelyn was faster.

She swung the Bloodhound’s Fang in a brutal, two-handed upward arc. But she didn’t just swing the steel. She violently pushed every single drop of her remaining B-Rank kinetic mana directly into the weapon’s cursed channels.

The crimson blade shrieked.

It didn’t just cut the Vampire. As the blade sliced diagonally across the assassin’s chest, tearing through his gray cloak and pale flesh, the sword’s innate Bleed Effect was supercharged by Evelyn’s kinetic mana.

The Vampire immediately tried to use his blood magic to pull the spilling fluid back into his veins, just as he had done before.

He couldn’t.

Evelyn’s kinetic mana acted like a chaotic, vibrating frequency inside the wound. It disrupted the Vampire’s magical control over his own cellular structure. The Bloodhound’s Fang roared to life, drinking the blood violently, while simultaneously forcefully expelling Evelyn’s kinetic energy into the assassin’s bloodstream.

The Vampire let out a horrific, ear-piercing scream.

It wasn’t just a cut. The kinetic energy was aggressively forcing the wound open, tearing the flesh apart on a microscopic level faster than the Vampire could regenerate it. The blade’s curse had been inverted into a terrifying anti-heal effect of its own.

Dark, corrupted vampire blood sprayed across the cavern floor, sizzling as it hit the stone.

Across the room, Donald watched in absolute awe as his golden System interface updated the battle data in real-time.

[Target: Lesser Vampire]

[Status: Critical Traumatic Hemorrhage.]

[System Note: Target’s cellular regeneration has been completely neutralized by kinetic disruption.]

The Vampire stumbled backward, dropping his blood-stilettos. He clutched his ruined chest with both pale hands, his black fingernails digging into his own flesh as he desperately tried to manually force the wound shut. Blood poured between his fingers in a heavy, uncontrollable torrent.

His hood fell back, revealing a face twisted in absolute agony and sudden, paralyzing terror.

He stared at Evelyn, who stood tall despite her own bleeding wounds. Her blue Vanguard aura was flickering, but the sheer, overwhelming density of her killing intent felt like a physical weight in the cavern.

The Vampire’s highly attuned magical senses finally bypassed the chaos of the battle. He felt the true nature of the mana radiating from her core.

It wasn’t a stagnant B-Rank aura. It was shifting, expanding, and vibrating with an impossible depth. The core was healing. It was remembering.

"You..." the Vampire gasped, choking on his own blood. "Your core isn’t just stable. It’s expanding. You aren’t a B-Rank... you are returning to your prime."

Evelyn raised the dripping, glowing crimson sword, pointing it directly at the assassin’s throat.

"I told you," Evelyn said coldly. "You dug your own grave."

She stepped forward to take his head.

The Vampire didn’t try to fight back. Survival instinct, burned into him by his Guild Master, completely overrode his arrogance. An A-Rank Vanguard, actively regenerating her full power and wielding a cursed weapon that perfectly countered his blood arts, was a threat level he could not handle alone.

"The Guild Master must know," the Vampire hissed, his voice bubbling with blood.

Before Evelyn could swing the sword, the Vampire reached into his own ruined chest, grabbed a handful of his own corrupted blood, and violently crushed it in his fist.

BOOM!

A massive, concussive cloud of thick, blinding red mist exploded outward, completely covering the immediate area. The mist was highly acidic, hissing angrily as it ate into the cavern’s stone floor.

Evelyn instinctively raised her arm to shield her face, stepping back from the toxic cloud.

Donald aimed the Pile Bunker at the center of the mist and fired his last loaded spike.

The explosive projectile ripped through the red cloud, striking the solid cavern wall behind it with a deafening crash. But when the dust and mist finally began to clear, the space where the Vampire had been standing was completely empty.

Only a large, sizzling puddle of dark blood remained.

From the dark, echoing depths of the upper tunnel, a faint, disembodied voice drifted down into the cavern.

"Enjoy your borrowed time, Vanguard. The Wildfire Syndicate does not leave loose ends. We will come for you. And next time... we will burn the entire sector down to find you."

The voice faded away, leaving only the crackle of the glowing orange ore veins and the heavy, ragged breathing of the two Awakeners.

The cavern was silent. The threat was gone.

Evelyn stood frozen for three long seconds. Then, the adrenaline finally ran out. Her Vanguard aura shattered like glass, and the Bloodhound’s Fang slipped from her trembling fingers, clattering loudly against the stone.

Her knees buckled.

"Evelyn!" Donald yelled, dropping his heavy weapon.

He used his Level 7 speed to cross the cavern in a blur, catching her by the shoulders just before she hit the ground. He gently lowered her to the cold stone floor, his hands instantly glowing with the bright, warm green light of his [Soothing Hands] skill.

Evelyn leaned heavily against him, her face completely pale from blood loss, but a faint, victorious smile touched her lips.

"I think," she whispered, her eyes fluttering shut as his healing magic washed over her injuries, "we just made some very powerful enemies, kid."