“Let’s kill this monster!” Grim shouted. He couldn’t give away the demonic core, but he also knew just from his inability to understand Lewis’ aura that the vampire was much stronger and likely much faster than any of the knights; he didn’t think they’d get away if they ran, and that left one option. Given the vampire’s obvious reticence to fight them, Grim was betting that he wasn’t that skilled of a fighter and that he had nothing more than raw strength, so he was confident that the eight knights would be more than enough to take him down, even if he were a seventh-tier mage.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the knights who moved first.

Faster than any of their eyes could track, Lewis lunged forward and extended his right hand toward the closest of the knights, one of the water mages who had been trying to extinguish the fire he’d started. Demonfire burst from his palm, completely enveloping both the knight and his horse lying unconscious from the pressure of Lewis’ aura just behind him, killing the knight and his horse instantly. And yet, there was no satisfaction upon Lewis’ face, no sign that he was relishing the fight. Instead, there was only profound disappointment.

“It was a good deal, that one was foolish not to take it…” the vampire muttered, but before he could say anything else, a bolt of golden lightning exploded on his back while a pair of spears rocketed towards his midsection, one coated with sharp wind magic and the other with bright white light.

However, both spears bit into nothing but air, and Leon’s lightning bolt had little effect apart from tearing into Lewis’ animal skin shirt and leaving some superficial burns. But none of that mattered to the knights; whether it was due to anger at the loss of their comrade, their duty to kill the vampire, or a simple desire to not be themselves killed, they pressed on, regardless of the difference in power. There was no room for them to run away now, even if they wanted to.

Lothar appeared in a flash of light behind Lewis and slashed at the vampire with his arming sword, but a swift yet intense blast of demonfire left the knight a charred corpse on the ground. Lewis then pivoted and let loose with standard red-orange fire, which kept the knights at bay since they weren’t strong or suicidal enough to charge into the vampire’s fire. Lewis then spun his hands around himself, creating a small cyclone of flame that completely obscured his form within.

“Fire into that tornado!” Grim shouted as he conjured half a dozen ice spikes and fired them into the cyclone. Blades of wind from Fara, more ice spikes from another knight, and two of Leon’s lightning bolts soon followed. Olympia used her earth magic to telekinetically lift a stone about the size of her head off the ground by the road and caused it to explode, sending hundreds of sharp rock fragments flying into the cyclone like shrapnel.

Cyricus, however, was a fire mage, so he refrained from attacking to keep his magic from adding to the conflagration in front of him. Instead, he tried to wrest control of the fire that was rapidly spreading into the pastures and put it out, but the closest flames did little more than gently flicker when his magic passed through it. These flames were still Lewis’, through and through, and Cyricus couldn’t gain control.

Suddenly, Lewis burst out of the cyclone faster than any of the knights could react and arrived in front of Cyricus. The vampire wrapped his hand around the elderly knight’s throat and squeezed. Cyricus’ gorget strained against the pressure, but the steel soon snapped, quickly followed by Cyricus’ neck.

Upon hearing the snap, Lewis dropped Cyricus to the ground like a piece of trash, where the old man twitched and sputtered as he tried and failed to move or to draw breath.

Leon, Grim, and the others were beginning to feel real panic, now. Almost half of their number had been killed in less than a minute, and they hadn’t yet managed to inflict any serious wounds upon their foe.

Grim could feel nothing but fear and regret for not choosing to attack the vampire before when he had seemed distracted, but regrets wouldn’t help get him and his fellow knights out of this situation, so he forced them out of his mind. There would come a time for regret, self-hated, and self-doubt for letting his arrogance get several of his comrades killed, but while the vampire was still in front of him was not it.

‘This thing must be seventh-tier!’ Leon thought to himself. He, like Grim, had initially been hopeful that the vampire was only of the sixth-tier or had little skill in combat, but they had clearly been mistaken.

But Leon wasn’t going to stop here. This wasn’t the first seventh-tier vampire he’d faced, though the Legion was forced to utilize overwhelming power to kill Bran, and none of the knights here had such power at their command.

Then again, with all the demonfire around them acting as a reminder, Leon realized that he did actually have power enough to possibly deal with this monster. Xaphan had recovered enough power to reach the equivalent of the eighth-tier.

However, all it took was a quick glance at Grim and any thoughts of using demonic magic vanished from Leon’s mind, even in this situation.

Channeling lightning through his legs, Leon charged at the vampire’s flank. At the same time, Grim and Fara attacked his front, while Olympia and the last remaining knight went for the opposite flank.

With a quick blast of demonfire, Lewis blocked Olympia and the last knight’s charge, then swept his hand along toward his front, creating a wave of fire that blunted Fara and Grim’s charge. He then raised his other arm and effortlessly deflected Leon’s blade away from his body while ignoring the lightning that burned his arm. He followed through with this movement, swiping the back of his hand across Leon’s helmet, sending the young man reeling backward.

“Hmm? Why that one?” Lewis asked out loud with an eyebrow raised in curiosity. He didn’t have much time to listen for an answer, though, as Grim and Fara used their ice and wind magic to force a path through the flames.

Grim thrust toward Lewis’ chest with his two-handed sword, but the vampire took a single step and dodged. Fara maintained her distance and sheathed her sword, but she wasn’t giving up, she just wanted to free her hands so she could summon even more wind. This wind sped around Lewis, creating a more traditional cyclone in an attempt to trap the vampire and keep him relatively immobile.

Unfortunately, Lewis simply stomped on the ground and set the ground beneath him on fire. The heat warped Fara’s wind, wresting it from her control and quickly dissipating the cyclone.

The vampire spared no more thought for the knights, as it was now Leon that he targeted. He lunged at the young knight while using a wave of demonfire to force the other four back.

Leon regained his balance just in time for Lewis to grab him by the cuirass and raised him into the air.

“I have no idea what you did, but your death has been demanded,” Lewis said, giving Leon a look of pity.

But Leon wasn’t the type to sit around and wait for death. He let loose with a bolt of lightning right at Lewis’ head. The two were so close together that not even Lewis could move out of the way and ended up eating a face-full of golden lightning and earful of tremendously loud thunder. The vampire dropped Leon and the young knight sprang backward. Lewis’ face was badly burned, but it wasn’t anything he couldn’t recover from. The more pressing issue was the extreme disorientation he felt from having his ears blown out by the lightning bolt’s accompanying thunder.

Lewis groaned in pain for the first time, and the knights moved to take advantage of this. Grim and Fara launched more magical attacks at him, with wind blades and ice spikes. Olympia and the fourth knight conjured an earth spike and hurled a spear, respectively. Leon also got in on the action, hurling another lightning bolt at Lewis’ head.

But all these attacks were for naught when Lewis summoned another cyclone of demonfire. The magical attacks either dissipated completely or were weakened to the point of harmlessness as they hit the cyclone.

There was a moment where the knights were helpless to do anything, so they could only stand there and wait for the fire to die down, but Lewis wasn’t waiting. Without any warning, he burst from the opaque cyclone and gave Grim a blast of red-orange fire right to the face. Grim was wearing a helmet, but he was still blasted backward and didn’t move again.

Lewis then pivoted and fired off another blast directly at Fara. The brown-haired woman was tossed back like a ragdoll, her armor smoldering and her body limp. The vampire then turned his attention to Olympia and the other knight. He tossed a fireball at them like he was pitching a fastball, and it exploded in between them, knocking both to the ground. Neither made another move, even as the padding beneath their armor began to catch fire.

This left Leon and Lewis alone. The former shook, but he didn’t back down. The latter breathed deeply, as he wasn’t used to fighting and found it taxing, despite his power advantage and obvious skill.

“I just… wanted… my core!” Lewis grumbled as he took a few shaky steps toward Leon. His balance wasn’t the best after taking Leon’s lightning bolt to the head, but he was still more than capable of killing the younger man.

Leon, seeing that the other knights were down for the count, decided to hold nothing more back. It was always a risk doing so, but in this situation, keeping even a fragment of his power back was probably going to prove fatal. With a quick thought and some quickly channeled magic power, the runes on Leon’s black gauntlets briefly glowed white; the enchantments helping him mask his signature silver lightning were deactivated and he prepared to continue the fight.

He could feel a few bruises forming and he was pretty sure he had one or two fractured ribs, but he ignored the pain as he called upon his magic. He put everything he had into one last bolt, a glittering silver-blue lightning spear that sparked and crackled with furious lightning. He put so much of his power into it that he had nothing left to begin healing or to dull his pain. He didn’t even notice the demonfire around him shrink back from the spear’s brilliance.

As Lewis continued to stagger towards him, Leon could see the vampire begin to regain some balance, and he knew that he had no more time left. He hurled the lightning spear with all the force he could, focusing on his throwing arm and his aim so much that he felt more than he heard the thunderclap that came with it.

The lightning spear crossed the distance between Leon and the vampire in an instant, there was no time for the staggering Lewis to dodge. The demonfire in the way parted before the bolt like the waves before a warship, and the bolt exploded into a fountain of silver sparks as it hit Lewis in the chest. The vampire was thrown backward with extreme force, hitting the ground and rolling as if he had just been hit by a meteor.

Leon stood there, the last of the knights still on his feet, and watched the vampire. He could still feel the pressure of Lewis’ aura, and he knew that the vampire was still alive. He drew his sword with a wince of pain and began to advance on the fallen monster.

But before Leon had taken five steps, Lewis began to rise. He was even more unsteady than before, but he was still able to stagger to his feet. His clear grey eyes focused on Leon, and Leon could see all the fury of mankind within.

Lewis didn’t say a word. He just acted.

With what seemed like a single step, he crossed the several dozen feet between himself and Leon and slammed into the knight. Leon was thrown to the ground, and Lewis appeared crouched over him, his hand on Leon’s chest keeping him from moving.

And then the vampire began to press down on Leon’s armor. The Magmic Steel plates shuddered and groaned under the strain, and the air was pushed out of Leon’s lungs. His mind exploded with pain as first his cracked ribs were pressed upon, and then the rest of his ribs began to crack.

‘This can’t be it!’ Leon silently screamed to himself. If he had the air to spare, he would’ve bellowed for all the world to hear, but his lungs were empty.

He could see Anzu’s white body where the griffin had collapsed after Lewis let loose with his killing intent. The flames had already taken half of the horses, but fortunately, they hadn’t gotten to Anzu yet. Even then, Leon didn’t know if his little buddy was even still alive.

What was more, there was still so much that he hadn’t done, yet. He had to find out what happened to his mother, who ordered his father’s death, and Justin and Valeria Isynos’ connection to them. He still hadn’t yet spoken to the Thunderbird, and the mystery of what was in the Forest of Black and White was still unresolved. Xaphan wasn’t healed ye-

Xaphan.

As Leon thought about the demon, he pulled on the thread that bound them and found that the demon had already begun sending his power to him. He felt like he could hear something screaming at him in his mind, but it was distant and indistinct. Still, he felt like he knew who that voice belonged to and what he was trying to say

Leon felt his chest heat up and more pain went through his brain like a lance. He limply propped up his left arm and pushed on Lewis’s chest, the vampire’s translucent skin burned and slightly melted from Leon’s lightning, but he was so weak at this point that the vampire didn’t even bother shaking him off. Lewis just pressed down harder on Leon’s torso.

With as much strength as he was capable of, Leon invoked Xaphan’s eighth-tier power and channeled it as best as he could down his left arm. The demonfire exploded out of his soul realm and ravaged his muscles, arteries, and veins. The bones in his hand and arm were charred black almost instantly, and his skin slid off the bone like meat from perfectly cooked barbecue ribs. The Magmic Steel gauntlet, bracer, and pauldron kept his arm in shape, but the Skyflax padding beneath caught alight, and it was only then that the tired Lewis realized something was very wrong.

The vampire’s eyes widened in surprise as fire exploded from Leon’s hand, taking most of the meat in the latter’s palm with it. Skin and muscles were ripped from Leon’s hand, and the bones themselves fused together in the heat, but eighth-tier demonfire hit Lewis in the chest and the vampire was hurled backward in a terrific blaze.

Lewis was a fire mage and a user of demonfire himself, but this was the first time he had ever been on the receiving end of such a horrific power. He felt his skin melt and the fluids in his chest boil. Not even his innate resistance to fire helped him; Xaphan’s demonfire ravaged him as it would any other mage, and Lewis let out a ghastly scream of pain.

What remained of the vampire’s clothes were incinerated, his skin blackened and slipped off him like a loose robe, and his muscles tightened and forced him into a twisted fetal position. By the time the demonfire reached his bones, scorching and splintering them in the heat, the vampire was beyond saving.

Lewis’ body exploded with deep red fire, and a deep, booming voice echoed across the burning pastures.

“YOU HAVE FAILED ME, LEWIS. I WILL TAKE YOUR FLESH AND YOUR POWER AS PAYMENT FOR YOUR FAILURE.”

This voice was the only thing that kept Leon conscious. He saw the vampire’s body burst into flame, and within the dark red fire, he saw a pair of eyes, shining a sinister white, that were staring right back at him. Within those eyes, Leon could see nothing but hatred, malice, and the desire to kill, and all of it was directed at him. Or, perhaps more accurately, at Xaphan within his soul realm.

These were demon eyes. What’s more, Leon recognized them as the eyes of Amon, the demon that Xaphan had supposedly killed to claim his title as a Demon Lord, the same demon that had been contracted to the first vampire Leon had ever fought. They were more distinct than the last time he had seen them, but he wasn’t in any state to guess the reason why.

Almost as quickly as they had appeared, the eyes vanished. Lewis’ aura disappeared, and the demonfire that had been ravaging the southern pastures of the village winked out of existence, leaving a terrible scar upon the countryside. Nearly a full quarter of the village’s grazing land was now gone, dozens of acres of grass burned away in mere minutes from a few blasts of demonfire.

But Leon didn’t see this. As soon as Amon’s eyes vanished, Leon’s own eyes closed and he slipped into unconsciousness, his annihilated arm still raised upward. His bones had fused together and most of his skin and muscle tissue was little more than sludge that was spilling out through the gaps in his armor.