The air in the clearing felt thick, as if the purplish mist surrounding the four-armed anomaly was actively pushing the oxygen out. Virelle's silver hair flared with a brilliant, aggressive violet light. Her prismatic orb spun with such velocity it became a blur of lethal intent.
"I shall erase this entire settlement and be done with it," Virelle said lightly-already calculating the mana needed to wipe out the settlement without destroying the forest.
Clink.
A sound like cold iron against stone rang out. Suddenly, a streak of violet-purple light tore through the mist. Before Virelle could release her strike, a heavy, ethereal chain—glowing with a sickly amethyst hue—wrapped itself around her. It coiled around her torso and arms, pinning her translucent sleeves to her sides.
Virelle's eyes widened in genuine shock. She jerked her body, her mana surging in a violent attempt to shatter the binding. "A common restraint? You think a spell of this class could bind me? Shatter!"
Nothing happened. The chain didn't even vibrate.
Aiven reached out to grab the chain and pull it off her.
"Master, don't!"
As Aiven's fingers brushed the purple metal, a violent jolt of energy surged through him. It felt like grabbing a live wire. White-hot pain lanced up his arms, and he was thrown backward, his hands stinging and smoking as if he had touched a hot stove.
The chain tightened, the purple glow pulsing as it seemed to feed on the very mana she was trying to use. Virelle gasped, her feet touching the muddy ground for the first time as she was forcibly grounded.
"How touching," a voice remarked. It was a smooth, melodic baritone, dripping with a condescending elegance.
From the shadow of a large, twisted oak tree, a hooded figure stepped forward. He moved with a predatory grace that made the cowering Kobolds scramble into their huts. The figure reached up and pulled back his hood.
Aiven's breath hitched. The man was strikingly handsome, with sharp, aristocratic features and jet-black hair that fell over his brow. His skin was a deathly, pale white, making his eyes stand out—they were pits of ink-black with piercing, blood-red pupils. When he smiled, the tips of elongated fangs caught the dim light.
"A vampire," Aiven whispered, his clerk-brain instantly cataloging the creature's traits. High-tier undead. Rare. Lethal.
The man looked up at the pale shafts of sunlight filtering through the canopy and pulled his hood back into place, shrouding his face in shadow once more. "I would prefer to keep this brief," the vampire sighed. "I wouldn't want my mana to keep being drained by this tedious sunlight. Not that a former clerk could defeat me anyway... not without his precious little elf to hide behind."
Virelle's eyes burned with a murderous fire.
"You dare speak to Master that way?" she said coldly. "You blood-sipping relic. Crawl back into whatever coffin you leaked out of! Release me now, and I'll make sure the word immortality becomes deeply embarrassing for your entire lineage."
The vampire let out a short, dry laugh. "High words for someone currently wearing my leash. Don't worry, little star. It's only a matter of time before your power becomes ours."
Aiven stood up, his heart pounding against his ribs as he gripped his sword. "Who are you working for?"
The vampire turned toward Aiven. Even without seeing his eyes, Aiven could feel the weight of his disdain. "There is no need for a mere human to know such things. Especially a human who is about to be dead."
The vampire flicked a finger toward Aiven. A small, dark portal swirled into existence at Aiven's feet. Before he could react, more purple chains erupted from the void, binding his arms and legs. With a violent yank, the chains threw Aiven through the air, tossing him into the center of the Kobold settlement, right at the feet of the four-armed monstrosity. The chains retracted into the portal as quickly as they had appeared.
For a split second, Aiven felt weightless—then the ground slammed into him like a solid wall. The breath was torn from his lungs in a sharp, voiceless gasp as pain rippled through his back and shoulders. Dust burst up around him, gritty and choking, the taste of iron flooding his mouth as his teeth rattled together.
He lay there, stunned, vision swimming, ears ringing with a dull, hollow roar. The sky above blurred into a smear of motion and shadow, and somewhere beyond the pounding in his head, he felt the heat of eyes locking onto him.
Kobolds.
Aiven's fingers twitched uselessly against the dirt as the truth landed heavier than the impact: he wasn't just thrown away—he had been offered.
"I could have killed you right here," the vampire said, dusting off his sleeves with an air of profound boredom. "But I don't want to dirty my precious chains—or myself—with the blood of a lowly human."
"MASTER! RUN! GET OUT OF THERE!" Virelle screamed, her voice breaking as she struggled against her bindings.
Aiven scrambled to his feet, his swords haking in his hand. He looked toward the edge of the clearing, but the air shimmered. A ripple of distorted space formed a dome around the settlement—a barrier. He ran toward it and slammed his shoulder against the air, only to be met with a solid, invisible wall.
The vampire leaned against a tree outside the barrier, watching with an amused tilt of his head.
"Amuse me before you die, clerk," the vampire called out. "It's the least you could do for being the one to finally awaken the elf. Let's see if that sword of yours is worth the silver you paid for it."
Behind Aiven, the four-armed anomaly let out a glass-shattering screech. Its four obsidian claws clicked together, and it began to move.
The four-armed kobold stepped forward, its movements not jerky, but rather, terrifyingly fluid. As it moved, the dozens of standard Kobolds that had been cowering in the huts began to retreat. They didn't just run; they backed away with their heads bowed, a primitive display of subservience and terror.
Aiven gripped his longsword. He didn't wait for the creature to reach him. He lunged, driving the tip of his blade toward the creature's center mass.
Clang.
The sound was like hitting an iron anvil. The steel, which had sliced through normal Kobolds, barely left a scratch on the bruised, grey skin. The impact vibrated up Aiven's arms, numbing his elbows. The anomaly didn't even flinch. It swung one of its lower arms, a massive obsidian claw whistling through the air.
Aiven threw himself to the side, rolling through the mud. He scrambled up, chest heaving. His clerk-brain was screaming at him—calculating the speed, the reach, the impossibility of the math. He was an E-Rank novice with three days of experience. The creature was something beyond the charts.
"Master! Move! Don't let it corner you!" Virelle's voice was a ragged scream. She was thrashing against the purple chains, her silver hair a tangled mess, her feet dragging in the dirt as she tried to force her way toward the barrier.
Aiven tried to dodge again, but his legs felt like lead. The fatigue from the day's hunting was finally catching up, and the adrenaline was a fading spark. Every movement was becoming more sluggish, his parries growing wider and more desperate.
Virelle snarled, thrashing harder against the chains as her mana flared violently, violet light cracking and screaming around her.
"Release me, you embalmed blood-sock!" she spat.
Outside the barrier, the vampire leaned back against the oak tree, his red pupils gleaming with a cruel light. "Free you?" he mused, responding to another of Virelle's insults.
"Now, why would I do that? Your insults are quite melodic, little star. The more you scream, the less I feel like letting you go."
He turned his gaze toward the pit, cupping his hands around his mouth. "How does it feel, clerk? To be toyed with? To be the one cowering in the mud like the 'practice dummies' you used for your little lessons? It's poetic, really."
Aiven didn't have the breath to answer. He swung his sword in a desperate horizontal arc. The four-armed Kobold caught the blade in one of its upper hands.
Crr-ack.
Aiven stared in horror as the high-quality dwarven steel—the blade he had promised would take them to other islands—shattered into three jagged pieces. The hilt felt cold and dead in his hand.
Suddenly, one of the creature's extra arms began to glow. It wasn't the violet mist of the void, but a sharp, crystalline blue light that swiveled around its forearm. Aiven froze. He had read many monster reports, but he had never heard of a Kobold capable of casting spells or wielding combat-enhancement magic.
The anomaly didn't give him time to process the mystery. It moved with a speed that reality shouldn't have allowed.
Aiven tried to leap back, but he was a heartbeat too slow. The blue-lit claw swept through the air in a blur of light.
There was no pain at first. Just a strange, sudden lightness.
Then, the world turned red.
Aiven's left arm was severed just below the shoulder. The cut was impossibly clean, the bone and flesh cauterized by the blue energy.
He stood there for a second, staring at the empty space where his limb had been, before the agony hit him like a physical wall.
"MASTER!" Virelle's voice broke into a raw, primal sob. She threw herself against the chains with such violence that the purple links began to hum, but they held firm.
The vampire clapped his hands, a high, mocking sound that echoed over the screech of the anomaly. "Spectacular! A clean harvest! I almost feel bad for you, human. Almost."
Aiven collapsed into the mud, his vision tunneling. Blood poured from the stump, soaking his tunic and the earth beneath him. He moaned, a low, guttural sound of a man who realized he was dying for the second time in a week.
The four-armed Kobold reached down with its upper limbs and hoisted Aiven into the air. It held him by his remaining shoulder, lifting him until his feet dangled.
Aiven's head lulled back. He looked into the empty violet pits of the creature's eyes, then shifted his gaze toward the edge of the dome.
He saw Virelle. She looked like a ghost of her former self—her hair disheveled, her sophisticated bodice torn at the seams from her struggle, her face a mask of absolute, heart-wrenching desperation. She was screaming for her Master, her prismatic orb flickering out as the chains drained her.
Aiven opened his mouth. He wanted to tell her to stop. He wanted to tell her he was sorry for dragging her into a world of dust. He wanted to apologize for the promise he wouldn't be able to keep.
"Sorry..."
The words were barely a whisper, a faint breath of air that wouldn't have carried even to his own ears.
Virelle couldn't have heard it over the wind and the screeching. But she saw the movement of his lips. She saw the light fading from his grey-blue eyes. For a heartbeat, the fury in her face vanished, replaced by a look of silent, shattered pleading. She turned her eyes toward the vampire, her gaze begging for mercy she knew wouldn't come.
Without waiting for her to speak, the vampire clicked his pocket watch shut and gave a cold, final shake of his head.
"No," the vampire said, his expression utterly indifferent.