(A/N): Okay, ladies and gentlemen. Unfortunately, I am now a jobless bum once again. Praise Mother and her unconditional love; therefore, I have some spare time till I find a new job. So, starting today and continuing till further notice, daily updates with shorter chapters, of course.
Discord Link: https://discord.gg/bgrFavafvR
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"I see you have an impressive ability via your Ichor; do you mind giving me a demonstration?" Show me your strength in a brief sparring battle. Between you and me, what do you say?"
Merciless glanced at Allani, inviting her to face her one-on-one, and Allani looked back at him. Her expression was filled with fear as she spoke, firmly convinced that she would win.
"Are you sure, master? After all, beating you to a bloody pulp on the battlefield is one thing, but I can't bring myself to destroy your pride as well."
"Beat me, haha... I respect the confidence; I adore a strong woman who takes great pleasure in herself, but beating me is virtually impossible. But, hehehe... you can try; maybe under normal conditions, but in this area, you have no chance against me. So don't be scared to hold back; in this prison environment, I'm virtually God."
"But first and foremost, let's take our fight to a satisfactory area, one more suitable to battle in, and fitted for mass destruction."
With those words spoken, the whole realm around Merciless, Substance, and Alanni began to morph and move about as the realm itself broke apart and was rebuilt anew. What was previously a steamy jail cell became an exact copy of the white chamber. In Sector 17.
The only difference was that there was no observatory, prison cell, elevator, or anything at all. There was simply an extensive chamber of pure whiteness, analogous to the inner realm of Merciless representation being manifested in physical form. And, like the place where Keziah lost her magical nature and vast amount of souls to Merciless, this one was boundless in size as well.
The mere shift surprised Allani, who began to glance around and wonder.
'This is just incredible; the sheer immensity of space is absurd; to make a dimension of such incalculable proportion, one must have complete control over both time and space. Is this one of his abilities? Does he also have a space-time manipulation type of Ichor like me? Or is this something entirely different? How intriguing; perhaps I should take notes so that I might follow in his footsteps and learn to do something similar in the future as well. But I can already see that the energy required to assemble anything of this magnitude will be ridiculously impossible for me at the moment; even making a dimension the size of a small room of equal proportion requires a lot of energy.'
'But anyway, I'm the strongest, the best, and the very greatest there is.'
Allani stated with a battle-hungry grin as she gazed at her opponent on the opposite side. She didn't know why she felt so full and confident in her victory; why was she so proud? She had no idea what had caused this sudden outbreak of unequal confidence to overwhelm her existence. She knew she couldn't afford to slack off; she wanted to transcend all barriers, reach the summit, and be the strongest person she could be, even if it meant going above and beyond her master.
However, Allani was unaware that she had not inherited any personality traits from Merciless or Substance. No! This pride of hers originally belonged to the previous owner of the Ichor she now possesses.
At that moment, Merciless turned to face his kilde and answered her as such.
"Allani was it, then, like my father had done for me before. I welcome you into the world of blood. You are now a nightwalker, a vampire, and a blood-dependent demon. And to commemorate my rebirth and release from the generational curse that had previously haunted my lineage, he gave me a new name."
"And it was up to me to establish my own purpose, and I will now do the same for you. Allani is now officially dead, leaving just Anastasia Merciless Eldenblood. I gave you my first name as your middle name to signify you are mine, and mine alone, and the Eldenblood last name represents your connection to the Elderblood bloodline, but you are not a genuine Elderblood, but rather something else."
"Your response, Anastasia?"
Merciless inquired of his kilde, and she simply grinned proudly and responded to her sire in kind.
"Anastasia Merciless Eldenblood, ha? Hehehe... I like it; but enough of the dull conversation, my master; I am ready for a fight; may we start now?"
Merciless grinned at her response. In the end, they were born Michellians; their desire for combat outweighed whatever joy they might derive from being a blood-sucking monster, who experiences immense pleasure from the act of sucking blood.
"Hahaha, of course... now die!"
*stab!*stab*stab*stab*
Merciless said with a large smile on his face. On the other hand, Anastasia's eyes widened in surprise as she felt an unbelievable amount of pain flood over her entire body and dazzling blue blood flow from her mouth. Despite this, her facial expression remained unchanged, and her hand was focused on the blood oozing from her lips as her attention was instantly shifted to her stomach.
'What kind of ability is this?'
Anastasia queried herself in her head as she looked down at her abdomen, only to discover a giant neon blue crystal exploding out of it. It's almost as if the spike pierced her from the inside rather than the outside. The spike was a meter long and a foot thick; nonetheless, these strange blue spikes punctured more than just her stomach. Instead, her knees, left eye, upper right hand, chest, and neck were impaled by varying numbers of these spikes.
The worst part was that she was starting to feel light-headed; what the heck was going on? Her adored master remained still and somehow inflicted a massive amount of damage on her body, mercilessly destroying her from within and outside as well at the same time. Her bones began to fracture from the inside, and her blood suddenly heated up from within, almost as if he was boiling it, and then that was when it happened. Her entire body began to swell up like a balloon to the point where the agony was so severe that words alone couldn't describe it. And she couldn't even scream to express herself.
Merciless on the other then said.
"So your blood and flesh are blue, egh? That's a fascinating body you have indeed; you're inside my power range, so I easily won the first round. And it only took me five seconds. Is this your so-called legendary power? Anastasia, weren't you the strongest? Well, heheh, anyway, this is my win; don't worry, I'll leave just enough cells left so you may restore your body."
Merciless snapped his fingers after saying those words, and what followed was a terrible display of gore at its finest and rawest form. Anastasia's body began to float in the air, her organs boiling in her own blood. Her bones crack as they stab and rip their way out of her body, while blue crystals drain her blood like a leech from within, and finally, after reaching the limits of her rapid expansion, she explodes in a horrifying fashion, with blue blood and organ fragments flying everywhere, leaving a big stain on the ground.
This sparring session comes to a conclusion, and Merciless emerges victorious.
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Or that's how it was supposed to end.
"Your response, Anastasia?"
Merciless inquired of his kilde.
Anastasia, on the other hand, smiled to herself as she said to herself in her mind.
'What an incredibly unfair power; he doesn't even have to touch me to kill me. Just being in his presence means a definite game-over. Fortunately, I peered into the future to see where I would stand if I were up against someone like him. And that was entirely my loss, although, from the looks of it, he appears to have the ability to exert significant influence over the bodies or blood of others. He even crystallized my blood, impaled me from within, and boiled my organs in my own blood, causing me to erupt from the inside out.'
'Tsk, thankfully, I know he can't do it on a whim because he specified conditions of usage via distance. As a result, near- and medium-range interactions are out of the question; instead, I must attack him at a distance.'
'But how much space do I need between me and him to not end up like I would have if I had attacked him head-on prior to now? It's presently unclear, but to be on the safe side, let's suppose his limit is somewhere around one hundred meters. Or perhaps it extends to kilometers, hehehehe. This fight is going to be a pain in the ass, but I can't help but be thrilled about it.'
Anastasia said while Merciless gave her a skeptical glance from a distance. He had an innate feeling something was amiss but couldn't put his finger on it. In this place, he is a godlike being. But he wanted to play fairly, so he chose to just employ his inherent baseline powers in the hopes of developing new attacks.
His first fight was with Finn, and he practically destroyed him. Ironically, his second genuine fight was with someone who has combat expertise and can also teleport wherever they want. In certain ways, her skill would be difficult to oppose in regular conditions.
However, when Merciless pressed for Anastasia's reaction, she eventually responded in kind.
"Anastasia, Merciless Eldenblood, ha? Hehehe... I like it; but enough with the tedious discussion, my lord; I am ready for a bloody battle; shall we begin now?!"
Anastasia announced, her eyes gleaming with a fierce fighting spirit and bloodlust. On the other hand, Merciless responded with a chuckle.
"Hahaha, I like your spirit. Now then, di... eghhhhhh!"
Merciless was astonished to see a brilliant flash of neon blue light illuminating the area where Anastasia was now located. When Merciless glanced forward, the connection he felt with all the blood around him vanished as Anastasia teleported away from him instantly rendering his one with blood useless. She did not intend to repeat her future self's mistake after all, so as soon as the battle started she tried to maintain her distance to get the upper advantage.
On the other side, what awaits Merciless in the distance is another burst of light. Anastasia was around 60 meters distant from him, but she quickly vanished once more teleporting again. This time, she is roughly 120 meters away from him and sixty meters away from the location where she is currently present.
Merciless was astonished since she had been acting as if she expected to die at that precise moment. And then he found out what Anastasia did and grinned to himself; this was exactly what he meant when he said she may become unstoppable if this power reached its peak and ultimate mastery.
"Clever little variant, she predicted the future before the battle even started. Ten seconds may seem like a modest number, but it could provide an enormous advantage in a battle to the death."
"Hehehe... knowing what going to happen; before it even happens is an envious ability to have indeed."
"And also an annoying one to boot."
But at that instant, he could hear the Shagoths' voices in his thoughts, as they spoke.
{Above... big hole... dodge now. NOW!!}
{Move... move, move... *sob*, hurt it will hurt.}
{Use your shield, that amount of pressure will tear you to bits.}
Merciless instantly leaps out of the path as a result of the warning and his feeling of danger from above. And then, just a fraction of a second later, a massive five-meter-thick pillar of water flew down at him at a speed many times faster than the speed of sound. The massive volume of water was basically a water jet, but much more powerful. The intensity of the strike tore and slashed the steel floors of the white room apart. As the pressure proceeded to bore downward at the steel floor with incredible speed, it created a massive hole in the location where Merciless had previously stood.
When Merciless glanced to see where the water was coming from, he was horrified to discover one of Anastasia's rings expanding above his head. Just looking at it, Merciless speculates that Anastasia caused a rip in a vast body of water or something to that extent since that amount of pressure could certainly attain this kind of destructive capacity.
Of course, Merciless was not far from the truth, since Anastasia had indeed done just that. You see when Anastasia was a little girl, she enjoyed diving in the ocean. She can easily hold her breath for up to fifty minutes at a time while free diving to the bottom of the ocean at Elaine's garden beach shores.
And, because her Ichor allows her to create spatial rifts between two places at once to places she has already seen or visited, she casually created a spatial rift at the center of the ocean to this location. As a result of the ocular pressure and narrow hole, the water comes from this side in the form of a water jet. This water traveling at tremendous speeds can readily shred both metal and steel as if a hot knife were cutting through butter. She used her inventive intellect to construct her first long-range attack that can kill even high-ranking vampires in one shot, as the attack is omnidirectional.
But what she didn't take into account was the fact that Merciless dodged this almost as if he knew it was coming ahead of time.
So she tried again, teleporting the ring that was thirty meters over his head and initially just behind him. However, what he did next stunned her; it was evident that he couldn't avoid this even if he wanted to as it was point blank in the literal sense. Instead, he confronted the perilous onslaught front on, as the massive volume of water shredded everything in its path without mercy, leaving the surface of the steel-plated round in shreds.
"HOWWWWW!?"
Anastasia exclaimed in surprise, expecting the rearrangement of her spatial rings to rip Merciless apart with such a powerful strike. However, she failed to consider the vampire race's core innate powers, one of which is the ability to be intangible. Merciless cannot interact with the physical world surrounding him as a whole, but the physical world cannot engage with him either, rendering the high-velocity strike ineffectual.
Merciless, on the other hand, kept his cool and answered with another attack, this one a basic counterstrike but one that was quite devastating.
He didn't do anything special; he merely utilized what she had learned so far to gain an upper hand in the dispute at hand. Anastasia was a teleporter; therefore, he needed a technique to counteract her mobility advantage.
As such, this was an ideal counter for these sorts of ability users; as a result, he glanced at Anastasia and spoke calmly, instructing his junior, who was two days younger than him.
"You have a lot to learn about our species, my child; you may be powerful, but you are too self-centered and egocentric. There is nothing wrong with that, but choose your opponents carefully if you are going to be so arrogant around them. You are strong, and your hax has the potential to kill several high-ranking vampires if you catch them off guard. But I know someone who is even stronger than you and can use teleportation more effectively. But after learning a few things from others around me, I worked out a means to cope with people with your skill sets; as such, watch carefully. I will only show you this once."
And with those words spoken, Merciless broke into a vast onslaught of thick, and rapidly expanding mist that began to stretch at a pace of 630 mph in all directions. Merciless was now at full power and range with this ability. And in only a few seconds. Anastasia was enveloped by mist that spanned 50 kilometers in radius. Compared to before or after his latest strength development, the range and speed of his mist have increased tremendously in comparison to an hour ago.
Anastasia was taken aback by this, as she said to herself.
"Damn, what a dense mist; is he attempting to obscure my view so he can sneak up on me? Well, I simply need to get rid of this thick mist before that happens. Yes, the present room has air in it. That could work; well, let us give it a shot. I have never been there personally, but I see it all the time, so it should count."
So, without further discussion, all four of Anastasia's rings began to move sixty meters apart from each other as they expanded to their present maximum size in this dense mist, each increasing from five to twenty meters in radius. North, South, East, and West, and what happened next was rather simple: Anastasia opened four massive spatial rifts that were connected to outer space itself. As a result, the air and dense mist along with it began to be sucked up, rapidly clearing the mist around Anastasia as they entered the vacuum of space.
However, there was one problem: when the mist exited into the vacuum of space, additional mist simply began to manifest in the place of the missing amount of mist; the amount being replaced for the amount now lost was far more, implying that the rate of production was quicker than the rate of extraction.
"What the hell is up with this weird ass mist, it cant get rid of it!"
But, to Anastasia's surprise, she began to hear Merciless' voice in every direction, perplexing her with his current location. It seemed as if his voice could reach the edge of the mist itself.
"It is pointless. Space girl, you're wasting vital energy; you can't get rid of my mist; what you should know is that being inside a vampire mist is the same as being in their territory. I have an edge since I know where you are and can hear your quietest whisper. As I already stated, watch and study; this is one of the vampire race's innate abilities. Normally, an average vampire cannot create such a large mist; however, as a true vampire, I, and you, are exceptions to this rule. Anyway, learn from this mistake, and now it's time to repay the favor; the water jet you used to attack me was brutal, and you were truly attempting to kill me; wonderful, amazing, I hope you have this much zeal when the exam begins."
"SPACE GIRL?!"
"Yes, Space Girl, that is what I will call you from now on until you can beat me. Respect is earned, thus your task is to earn my respect. You are incredibly powerful, but you are not beating me; you have just become a vampire, as have I. However, unlike you, I am built differently; I absorb techniques, and skills like a sponge absorbs water; I am always growing, adapting, and developing. Every second that passes, I get stronger than the previous second... but let me show you, after all, I have no problem with your pride, but before me, your pride is a joke."
With those words spoken, Anastasia began to glance about her, as vast amounts of water began to swirl, form, and compress rapidly and continually into a single point, resulting in a sphere of densely compact water floating around Anastasia, hundreds of them. The number was just rising by the second. Each of these spheres had enough water to flood a whole city block, and this amount of water was compressed into a single drop. Unlike before, Merciless' control over them improved significantly as well all thanks to his Ichor of course.
'What are these droplets? Shit, this isn't good. I have a nasty feeling about this; no matter where I teleport, it's everywhere.'
Anastasia internally muttered and asked herself, her face filled with genuine concern and fear.
Merciless, on the other hand, simply spoke to her in a bored and uninterested tone.
"Clench your teeth space girl this is going to hurt like a bitch; well at the very least be honored you will be the first to experience my new technique."
[Jet Snipe: Continuous Omnidirectional Onslaught]
What happened next was nothing short of extreme savagery, as Merciless named his new form of the Jet Snipe technique. And they all erupted at the same time, traveling at hypersonic speeds, and like a laser, they cleaved and sliced deeply into Anastasia's flesh, even tearing apart her diamond-like bones and skeletal structure, as they fired continuously in every direction. Her internal organs were all pierced from various angles, and her hands, legs, feet, nose, and other lips were either sliced apart or blown off her body, separating from her torso. Blue blood began to stream in all directions, and her skull had already been decapitated and viciously sliced to bits and chunks.
Even the air was mercilessly ripped apart. But, as one would expect from one of Merciless Kilde, Anastasia began to regenerate quickly, not as quickly as Merciless, but still unusual for other vampires outside the Michellian clan, who are coveted as a clan's with an unfair rate of healing. But even then, she was ripped, sliced, and diced quicker than she could renew her body, putting her in a perpetual state of constant pain.
This continued for another two to three minutes until Anastasia was nothing more than a pool of blood on the floor. All of her organs, flesh, and bones were merged into nothing. But, strangely, at the center of that bloody glowing neon blue puddle of blood was her blue crystal-like heart, and despite being attacked from various directions, the heart itself showed no evidence of being affected by Merciless' onslaught in the slightest, leaving Merciless to question if it was indestructible or simply extremely resilient.
Merciless eventually gave up on attempting to damage it and stopped his technique that reduced Anastasia to nothing, the enormous mist gradually evaporating and Merciless reappearing in front of the crystal heart. Gopnicking over it, his gaze now fixed on the four neon blue circles hovering in various places within the arena now dubbed the white room. They were also attacked, but they did not receive any kind of damage either.
The rings ultimately returned to their previous size, and they all proceeded to drift down towards the heart, arranging themselves. Merciless was surprised by what he saw next, though. Anastasia's blood immediately evaporated, but the heart started to float with the ring as it came to a halt in the center. From then, it began to beat vigorously, as did the rings, almost as if they were all alive in their own right. And from both the rings and the heart. Anastasia's body began to rebuild as if her Ichor and odd rings were the core of her being. Bones began to manifest, soon after the veins and arteries, organs, and blood, followed by flesh and skin, eyeballs, and hair. And once again, a lovely four-armed woman came before Merciless, hovering in the air. After the healing procedure was complete, the sexy naked woman collapsed limp to the ground.
Her eyes slowly opened, only to face a blinding white around her, and shortly after, the sound of footsteps approached her as she remained still and dejected. Her arms stretched out; on the other hand, Merciless came before Anastasia, as he looked down at her and said as such.
"You good space girl?!"
"... Master I...I... I loss."
"Of course you did, space girl; what did you expect the outcome to be?" I did not exercise my authority in this place. Those were just my typical everyday powers, and before you ask, yes, I did hold back quite a bit; if anything, you drew at least 35% of my present strength."
"Really only 35%?"
Anastasia inquired, to which Merciless answered in kind.
"Yes only 35%."
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"You good space girl?"
"Yeah, I am a good master, but I can't say the same for my pride, hehehe... however I have to admit you are darn strong as hell. But regardless of the outcome, I had a good time, so thanks I guess."
Anastasia said as she extended her hands for Merciless to hold, and he did, pulling her up as she stood, wiping herself off and stretching her arms and legs.
From there she looked Merciless, and kneeled before him as she said to him.
"Well a defeat is a defeat, my king, my lord, and my master, my portals are yours to use if you ever need them, I swear my absolute loyalty to you Lord Merciless Elderblood."
"Hehehe... I expect great things from you space girl."