I stuffed my pack with food and water, not knowing how long I would be in the portal. I put a few other things in there just in case, like a flashlight. I was wearing the academy's red and black robes with the vampire sect insignia on it. It was just an outline of fangs.
They were special robes only for higher ranked disciples, and I was the highest rank as a direct disciple of the lead Elder. Victoria was there to wish me luck. We kissed and hugged and I told her to stay cool with finger guns, like a dork.
My master, Elder Ravenkin didn't give me any information about what I'd find on the other side of the portal. He said it was best if I learned to think on the fly and adapt to new situations.
When I walked through the portal I ended up somewhere else. Obviously. It looked like Japan, but hundreds of years ago. I got a system notification as soon as I entered.
[Daimyo Nobuhiro has taken your family hostage! You must make your way to the stronghold to rescue them!]
[Main Objectives: Rescue your family and kill Daimyo Nobuhiro]
Weird. The environment on the other side of the portal was very much like a game.
'System. What's going on?'
[I'm not sure. I was forced to translate those dimensional messages by the rules of the portal itself]
Hmm. Since it was so much like a game, my first thought was that these portals were not accidental. They were designed by someone or something to train the 'players' to get stronger.
I deduced this from the fact that I knew the difficulty of the portals were linearly progressive. Meaning, they went from easy to hard, rather than all being a similar difficulty, which is most likely what they would be if they were random.
I also deduced it from the obvious fact that random dimensional portals don't have game messages built into them. That would have to be designed. The most important question was what were they training people for?
And that was something I didn't have time to think about. As I was standing here thinking, I saw some samurai and archers notice me from the bottom of the hill I was standing on.
The samurai ran up to me with their swords drawn, and the archers nocked arrows in their bows. Instead of pulling out my shitty, I mean, shiny sword as I would have done before the Vi Condensation training, I put Vi blades on the outside of my forearms and spikes on the outside of my fists.
There were three samurai and a three archers. I couldn't keep my eyes on the archers, so I just hoped they missed or the arrows wouldn't cause that much damage.
I blocked the diagonal slash of the first samurai's katana with my right forearm blade and performed a left hook to the samurai's face. The blow smashed and pierced the hell out of his face.
He fell to the ground clutching at his bleeding face. I grabbed his katana as he went down and stabbed him through the neck with it, into the ground.
[… Life essence extracted—Level 4 of the Lesser Vampire Duke Realm]
I moved on to the next samurai who was running at me for an overhand strike. He was around ten feet away. I leaped forward and threw out a kick into his stomach, catching him off guard and knocking him to the ground. I put a Vi blade on the bottom of my foot and stomped on his neck.
[… Life essence extracted—Level 2 Greater Vampire Duke Realm]
The last samurai I just tackled to the ground and mercilessly punched him in the face repeatedly with my spiked fists until I got a system notification.
[… Level 1 Junior Archduke Realm]
I looked over at the archer just in time to see an arrow coming right at my face. I narrowly dodged it. I ran up to the three archers while diving and dodging arrows. I slashed two of their throats with my forearm blades.
Then I slapped the bow out of the hands of the third archer and grabbed him by the head. I slammed his face into the dirt and stomped on the back of his neck.
[Lv. 5 Prince]
After that, I tore through dozens of samurai, archers, and even samurai archers. I stabbed, slashed, punched, kicked, and even bit my way through them. With the addition of biting, I was able to finally use my venomous bite ability to kill some enemies.
The notifications came in like crazy. I progressed through Vampire King to Emperor, to Sovereign, to Overlord, to Dominator, to Tyrant, to Supreme, and then finally to Transcendent.
Then I got to a bridge and another notification came in, but this one was from the portal.
[Secondary Objective: Defeat Karo Masanari on the bridge]
There was a samurai standing on the bridge but this one wore a demonic mask over his face. His breath turned to steam in the cool air and blew off the bridge.
It was a rope bridge so I had to be extra careful to grab onto it if it was cut. I stepped onto the bridge and approached my opponent warily. He had his sword drawn but he was holding it down, so I couldn't tell if he was in a strike position or not.
I put my hands up to guard my face and torso. As soon as I stepped within range, he swiped at my midsection just below my elbows' ability to block. I instinctively lift my leg to try to block it with my shin bone. And I did. It's just that when I did that he chopped off the bottom half of my leg.
My lower leg fell to the floor of the bridge. He tried to take out my other leg but I dropped down and blocked the blow with a forearm. I either needed to protect my legs with Vi or learn to fight with a sword so I could parry and block attacks better.