“Hehe, that was even faster than Kashi’s run,” Syèl remarked with a laugh as the invaders appeared in the lobby. He looked at Shokō, whose relaxed shoulders, subtle smile and tranquil gaze suggested she had undergone sothing significant. Unfortunately, with the handful of seconds they had, he could not dig out the truth.
Sensing Syèl’s gaze, Shokō chuckled and nodded at him. “I’m fine. Get a move on before the random teleportation starts up.”
Having confird that Shokō’s change wasn’t negative, Syèl gave a mock salute, and then confidently pushed open the door, revealing the portal. “Alright guys, don’t get too comfortable. We’ll be out soon!” With those extrely boastful words, Syèl walked into the portal with a sardonic grin.
Whoosh!
Syèl blinked as he shook the portal’s disorienting effects, and then took in his surroundings. He seed to have appeared on a giant desert plain. The scorching desert sun bore down unbearably on him, its judgntal light weakening his vampiric blood. Fortunately, Syèl was a Vampiric Prince or else, he wouldn’t have been able to confidently deal with the holy sun’s debilitating effects.
“Where can I find a couple of Elder Dragons?” Syèl could not wait until he advanced to Vampire King. By then, he would be completely immune to the sun. Well, it wasn’t like Elder Dragons would fall from the sky on command.
“HAHAHA! Twerp! Are you paralyzed from fear!? Don’t worry. I’ll play with you for a few hours before I kill you.”
Syèl’s brow slightly rose as he glanced at the abnormality within the sand ocean. A giant stone castle stood at the distance. A bronze-skinned, bear-like cerulean stood atop the tallest tower gazing down at the distant Syèl with a proud sneer.
The cerulean, with biceps larger than Syèl’s head, chuckled as he spread out his hand and gestured toward the vampire. “How do you like my Greed!? Your puny clans can never match a conqueror’s greed.”
Syèl cast a gaze across the hundreds of thousands of bear-like ceruleans who stood guard around the castle. That’s right, they were all clones of the cerulean Primate. Syèl guessed that the man had a cloning ability that was further augnted by Greed’s floor.
Syèl gained a rudintary understanding of the Sin Floor’s rules from Kashi’s explanation and the previous two floors. Each floor enhanced any ability that complinted the floor’s sin.
Wrath transford the goblin’s burning fla, Envy enhanced its primate’s illusion, transformation and mind-reading abilities to improve their ability to instill Envy in the invaders. Following this train of logic, it made sense that Greed enhanced the Primate’s cloning ability. After all, every conqueror was greedy for territory and soldiers above all!
On any other occasion, Syèl might have been apprehensive. However, faced with the unreasonable odds, the vampire’s lips slightly curled upward.
“Do you know why greed is very dangerous?” Syèl casually spoke despite being at least four kiloters away from the castle. Evidently, he was not concerned that the Primate would not hear him.
“Haha… It’s true, what they say. You Maggots are too arrogant.” The Primate’s amused response proved Syèl’s conjecture correct. “What, do you think you can defeat my clones because they are weaker than ? Indeed, my clones are usually only a tenth of my true strength. But, have you forgotten I am currently empowered by my doppelgangers battling your friends?”
The Primate flexed his chest and playfully wagged his finger at the distant halben. “Don’t shit your pants, but each of my clones are currently just as strong as my original strength! Do you know what that ans?” The Primate’s voice grew heated and more boisterous as he happily scread at the distant halben. “Right now, you are facing one hundred thousand Primates! Hahaha! Are you shaking yet? Don’t pass out now, the best is yet to co.” The Primate laughed sardonically as he revealed, “Thanks to the Greed realm, my clones have fully materialized in flesh and blood! They won’t crumble from a simple blow! Haha—”
“And there it is,” Syèl interrupted with a cheeky grin as he began walking toward the army. His steps looked simple, but each ti his feet moved, he seed to move across several ters at once. “The greatest downfall of greed. You just never know when to stop. You’ll keep striving for more until you destroy yourself or everything around you.”
“Have you gone made from fear?” The Primate sneered at the approaching halben. Chaos Order’s intelligence did not have too many details about Syèl. From the last report, he appeared to be a powerful mage that wreaked havoc in large armies.
However, the Primate was not worried. No matter how strong Syèl was, even he would quickly run out of mana if he had to fight off tens of thousands of Primates.
“It would have been enough to improve your cloning ability.” Syèl continued, ignoring the Primate’s outburst. “Even I would have had a rough ti battling thousands of clones. I’m not a fountain of mana, after all.”
“But, you did not stop there, did you?” Syèl’s yellow eyes hardened and his grin widened once he was within three kiloters of the nearest clone. “You just had to turn your clones into real flesh and blood. Your greed has destroyed you.”
Despite being four whole kiloters away, protected by thousands of clones and a giant castle, the Primate suddenly felt his skin crawl. Wait. Did he overlook sothing? Could Syèl sohow defeat his thousands of clones?
No. That was absurd! Not even their Queen could confidently take on these many clones, let alone a single halben.
Having shaken off his doubt, the Primate’s confidence soared. “Hahaha! Nice try!” The Primate’s voice bood across the desert with increased strength. “You almost made
lose faith for a second. But alas, you’re not intimidating enough. What now? If you go on your knees and beg, I might grant you a swift dea—"
As if taking pity on the Primate’s ignorance, Syèl galy explained, “I’m a vampire.”
“Vampire?” The Primate’s brow shot up in surprise at the unfamiliar term. Vampires, much like werewolves and dragons, were beings of legend. Pre-calamity scrolls told tales about these pridefyl beings that ruled over large territories.
Unfortunately, even the Chaos Order lacked full records on Vampiric abilities. Perhaps only the higher-ups had in-depth knowledge of these elusive species.
Even within the Hopeful Maggots, only Kashi and the most senior personnel knew that Syèl was a vampire. The dwarven battle only reinforced Syèl’s image as a powerful mage because he always used spells that talented mages could emulate. As a result, the various forces’ spies within the Maggots never uncovered this crucial fact.
That gap in intelligence could be very fatal in the right circumstances.
Just like now.
“Who cares if you’re a vampire?” The Primate chuckled. “Do you think that you’ll recover if you drink my clones’ blood? Haha! I’ll just crush you before you do!”
“I see. You’re actually stupid.” Syèl suddenly burst out in laughter. He did not bother to hide his ability as he raised his hand to the sky. “[Minor teora]!” The excruciatingly long spell he had been chanting in his mind suddenly ca to the fore!
Following his shout, Syèl’s skin suddenly shrunk, turning dried and desiccated as he lost over eighty percent of his blood at once. The weakened vampire resembled a mummy who would crumble to dust with a gust of wind.
Despite his precarious state, Syèl’s grin only grew wider and he kept walking toward the distant army even as a ten-ter mandala appeared in the skies above.
Vwoosh! Without any ceremony, a ten-ters long boulder shot of the mandala with the speed of a cot, toward the army below.
At that speed, there was no doubt that the impact would leave a crater at least a kiloter large. It would undoubtedly wipe out the massive army!
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Haha! Was this your best shot?” Surprisingly, the Primate burst out laughing as he looked at the falling teor. The ultimate spell, which was a nightmare to all forces only elicited a sneer. “Any other ti, I might have been scared of it, but now…”
The Primate waved his hand, and ten thousand clones leaped into the sky in unison. The clones gathered under the falling teor, and pulled back their left hands.
Syèl’s gaze twinkled with intrigue as he sensed a massive formation gather around the clones. It seed like they gathered their energies, synergizing as one to create a trendous force. Syèl could sense that the resultant energy was not as simple as an addition of their individual energies. Rather they seed to have joined into sothing greater than the sum of their parts.
In layman terms, rather than 1 1=2, the formation sohow produced 1 1=3.
It was an impressive feat that even Syèl respected. There was no way the halben could face that combined force head-on.
Of course, such an abominable skill had its downsides. First and foremost, it completely drained the clones, leaving them without any drop of ki. As a result, they would be useless for the rest of the battle.
The Primate did not commission any more clones precisely because he wanted to avoid exhausting his entire army. Besides, a punch from ten-thousand primates should be enough to stop even a natural disaster like a teor… right?
On the ground, just barely a kiloter from the army, Syèl revealed a smirk. “Wrong.”
?? The Primate’s combined ki created a giant fist that struck the incoming teor.
BOOM!
Wild winds buffeted the environnt, sending several clones flying. Clumps of sand rose from the desert and then hardened around Syèl’s leg, preventing him from getting tossed around by the wind.
The Primate on the tower erected ki-shield in ti, protecting him from the winds. However, he did not relax as an unbelievable sight greeted his eyes.
The great punch struck the teor head-on, but it failed to stop its descent!
However, the strike seed to shake sothing significant as the teor’s appearance blurred and then shattered like a glass screen had been shattered.
The Primate’s eyes widened with hatred and shock when he sensed several magical fluctuations around the revealed black stone. The Primate was no mage, but he recognized the magic fluctuations. They were Strengthening Magic from the Alteration school of magic.
Strengthening magic temporarily boosted the physical properties of an object. The spell’s potency was directly proportional to how much mana the caster imbued. Theoretically, this ant that with enough mana, one could strengthen a piece of paper to cut diamond.
Unfortunately, it was not so easy in reality. Not only did strengthening objects past a certain level require astronomical amounts of mana, but the spell’s effects only lasted for a few seconds. As a result, the Strengthen spell was not widely used.
However, to the Primate’s shock, the mana-guzzling spell covered the entire teor! He could not begin to fathom the amount of mana needed to accomplish such a feat. How could Syèl contain so much mana!? Was he so sort of god?
Syèl naturally did not allay the Primate’s curiosity. However, the reason was much more modest than the Primate feared.
As a vampire, Syèl converted blood to mana. Furthermore, Syèl’s recent evolution to Vampire Prince granted him the ability to store vast amounts of blood to for future use. The vampire spent the days since he parted ways with Kashi hunting monsters to build up his reserves. Currently, he could store almost triple his maximum blood as reserves.
One would assu this was enough to crown Syèl as the most powerful being amongst the Summoned. Unfortunately, this power ca at a great cost.
“Let
give you a history lesson,” Syèl leisurely spoke as he watched twenty thousand clones jump into the sky to intercept the teor. At their level, both Syèl and the Primate could speak several sentences in the span of a second. “Vampires were once considered to be one of the apex predators in the world. Yet, despite their strength, the vampires’ numbers barely reached a million worldwide at the peak of their existence. Of that number, over eighty-five percent didn’t even qualify as Vampire Barons. Do you know why?”
The Primate sneered, ignoring the rambling halben as he instructed his clones to launch another attack. Now that he knew the teorite’s true strength, he was confident they could stop it.
Syèl continued, seemingly unfazed by the Primate’s indifference. With a laugh, the vampire spread his arms as he laughed with ridicule, “Blood! You have no idea how much blood vampires need to sustain themselves! Every single day, we have to consu a lot of blood just to remain alive. If we don’t, we end up looking like this.” Syèl revealed a bitter smile as he raised his desiccated arm. “At severe levels, our bodies will even shutdown until we can supply our bodies with new blood. What’s worse, the amount of blood we need, just to survive exponentially increases with every rank.”
“I’m a Vampire Prince.” Syèl pointed at himself as he let out a sardonic laugh. “I’m only two ranks away from Vampire Lord. Do you have any idea just how much blood I need to live, let alone fight?”
The Primate frowned. He could not understand the point of Syèl’s rambling, but he kept his attention on the falling teor. By this point, the twenty-thousand clones had reached the teor and were pooling their strengths for a counter-blow.
“It’s astronomical!” Syèl’s yelled with widened eyes as he exaggeratedly waved his arms. “Astronomical, I tell you! I have to store a lot of blood in advance, or else I can’t even survive a single day, even with my fast blood regeneration. That’s why there were only a handful of Vampire Princes, even at the apex of the Vampires rule. There isn’t enough blood in the world to sustain many high-level vampires!”
BOOM!
The Primate revealed a complacent smile when the clones’ punch struck the teorite. Unlike the last ti, the strike managed to kill off ninety-percent of the teorite’s montum. Even though they did not completely stop it, the ‘teorite’ was nothing more than a heavy rock falling to the ground. At most, the ground would quake a little.
To be safe however, he sent another ten-thousand clones to replace the previous twenty-thousand. This ti, they would pool their strengths and utterly shatter the teorite to harmless chunks.
With his victory in sight, the Primate finally spared Syèl so attention. “So? Is therea point to all this rambling? Do you want to buy ti to regain so mana? Don’t worry, go ahead. I will let you do as you wish.”
“Heh, how kind of you.” Syèl sarcastically laughed. But then a dangerous light twinkled in his eyes. “What’s my point, you ask? Let
reply with a question of my own. Do you rember this floor’s Sin?”
“Greed.” Syèl did not give the Primate a chance to answer. “You already know the Greed floor empowers any ability or spell that shares affinity with that sin.”
Psh.
The sand around Syèl’s legs crumbled as the vampire took a step forward. His aura suddenly transford, turning incredibly malevolent and dark as indescribable bloodthirst blew over the desert.
“What!?” The Primate involuntarily trembled as hair along his arms and legs stood straight. It felt like a predator had locked onto him, and ran its sloppy tongue across his skin as if checking the quality of its al.
“My need for blood. Endless rivers of blood.” Syèl’s grin grew increasingly demonic as his steps slowly quickened. “Do you think there’s any being that’s greedier than I am right now?”
“Wait—Stop!” The Primate suddenly sensed a huge threat. He quickly ordered the clones in the sky to return post-haste!
“Too late.” Syèl eyes flashed as he snapped his fingers. “Explode!”
BOOOOM!
?? Blinding Light blasted over the skies, followed shortly by a thunderous explosion that nearly deafened every living being.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Several whistling sounds followed the explosion as tiny chunks of teorite scattered across the sky at breakneck speeds.
Puchi! Puchi! The initial thirty thousand clones who had expended their ki did not stand a chance. The unforgiving artillery strike turned them into honeycombs, causing the thousands of bodies to fall from the sky.
Tens of thousands of bodies rained down in tandem—a grueso sight to behold, but that was only the beginning.
The batch of ten thousand that wanted to blast the teorite also got caught up in the explosion. Barely half of them managed to erect their ki-shields in ti. Unfortunately, many failed, causing them to break down under the relentless assault.
anwhile Syèl leisurely raised his hand and chanted with a deadly smile, “[Dawn Pelmut!]”
Blurksh!
The world turned red!
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