The heavy, jagged wood protruding from Dori’s stomach seemed to freeze the entire forest in place.
Warm, crimson liquid spilled past her pale lips, her glowing red eyes losing their fierce, predatory light as her knees buckled. She collapsed backward, hitting the wet mud with a heavy, lifeless thud. The scarred goblin leader ripped the makeshift spear free with a sickening, wet tear, laughing a guttural, sadistic sound that grated violently against the quiet night.
’No,’ Lucious thought, his mind going completely blank as he watched his first willing blood kin lie perfectly still on the damp earth.
Before he could even take a single desperate step toward her, the ethereal blue system flared violently to life right in his line of sight. The text was flashing rapidly, demanding his immediate, undivided attention amidst the chaos.
[System Alert: Willing Blood Kin critically injured.]
[Damage source identified: Wooden weapon. Wood is a critical weakness to the vampire race.]
[Additional status applied: Solar degradation detected. Target was heavily exposed to direct daylight earlier, crippling her natural regeneration.]
Lucious stared at the floating brackets, the missing pieces of the puzzle violently snapping together in his head.
That was exactly why she had been acting so quiet and submissive all day, hiding directly behind his broad back and clinging to his shadow as they walked through the bustling streets of Uranik city.
The bright sun had been slowly, agonizingly draining her life force from the inside out.
And now, combined with a fatal strike from a wooden weapon, her newly acquired S-rank vampire body was shutting down completely.
[Solution: The blood of a True Vampire can forcefully mend lethal wounds. Feeding the target your blood will purge the wooden infection and grant temporary immunity to solar degradation for a few days.]
[Requirement: Host must survive the current encounter to administer the cure.]
He needed to feed her his blood. He needed to save her. But to do that, he had to completely eradicate the laughing green monsters standing between them.
The cold, calculated predatory calmness that usually governed his mind shattered into a million jagged pieces.
In its place, a raw, unadulterated human rage boiled over, fueled by the terrifying realization that he was about to lose the only person in this miserable world who actually looked at him with loyalty.
He refused to die here. He refused to let her die here. The Kingdom of Eldia had thrown him into a dark dungeon to rot, discarding him like a piece of useless trash, and he had crawled his way back to the surface. He was not going to let his story end in a filthy goblin camp.
Lucious let out a deafening, terrifying roar that shook the surrounding trees.
The scarred goblin leader stopped laughing, its yellow eyes widening in sudden panic as the bleeding, pale demon charged forward.
Lucious completely ignored the sickening, green poison aggressively spreading through the veins in his own side. His Undead Vitality was working overtime, bubbling and trapping the infection, allowing him to push his body far beyond its normal limits.
He moved with blinding speed, his agility stat making his heavy boots glide over the mud. He did not have a sword or a wooden club. He did not need one.
Lucious slammed into the scarred leader like a runaway carriage. He reached out with both pale hands, his fingers digging deeply into the thick, dark green skin of the creature’s shoulders. With a violent, upward heave powered entirely by his massive strength stat, he lifted the hulking goblin off its feet and slammed it brutally down onto the hard, rocky edge of the roaring campfire.
The sickening crunch of the leader’s spine snapping was drowned out by its high-pitched screech of agony as the flames licked at its flesh.
[Target eliminated. F-Rank Forest Goblin.]
[10 blood points obtained.]
The remaining goblins shrieked in absolute terror and fury.
Seeing their scarred leader broken so easily, their crude intelligence told them to swarm the threat from all sides. Five heavily muscled monsters charged at Lucious simultaneously, thrusting their rusted swords and jagged wooden spears at his chest and legs.
Lucious became a whirlwind of brutal, calculated violence.
He side-stepped a rusted blade aimed at his ribs, grabbing the attacking goblin by its wrist and twisting violently until the bone snapped with a loud pop. Using the creature as a grotesque meat shield, he absorbed two incoming spear thrusts with the goblin’s body before kicking the dead weight away into the encroaching bushes.
Warm, dark blood sprayed across his face and ruined clothes, but he did not stop. His glowing red eyes traced the erratic movements of his enemies with terrifying precision. He ducked under a heavy wooden club, driving his knee upward into a goblin’s jaw, shattering its rotting teeth and sending it flying backward into the dirt.
Every strike he delivered was lethal. Every bone he broke fueled the burning wrath in his chest. He fought like a cornered beast, driven entirely by the desperate need to reach the dying girl bleeding out by the tree trunk.
But the sheer numbers and his own internal injuries were beginning to take their toll.
His vision blurred slightly, a wave of dizzying nausea washing over him as the trapped goblin poison in his waist flared with hot, agonizing pain. He stumbled, his heavy boot catching on an exposed tree root.
That single fraction of a second of weakness was all the surviving monsters needed.
A goblin managed to slide beneath his guard, slashing its rusted dagger across his forearm, while another leaped onto his back, digging its filthy claws into his shoulders. Lucious grunted heavily, spinning wildly to throw the creature off, but his muscles felt sluggish, weighed down by the potent venom.
As he wrestled with the monster on his back, the very last goblin in the clearing saw its perfect opportunity.
It was a smaller, cowardly creature that had hung back near the tents. Gripping a thick, violently sharpened wooden stake with both hands, it charged silently toward Lucious’s exposed back. Its yellow eyes gleamed with malicious victory, entirely prepared to plunge the wood directly into the vampire’s spine.
Lucious heard the squelch of mud behind him, but he was entirely pinned. He could not turn around in time. He braced himself for the agonizing impact of the wood.
But the strike never came.
A sickening, wet slicing sound tore through the humid air, followed instantly by a heavy, two-part thud right behind Lucious’s boots.
Lucious threw the goblin off his back, snapping its neck with a quick twist of his hands, and spun around rapidly, his chest heaving for air.
The goblin that had tried to backstab him was lying on the wet earth, completely severed in two distinct halves. Its internal organs spilled uselessly into the mud, the sharp wooden stake rolling harmlessly away.
Lucious traced the trajectory of the lethal attack, his eyes widening in absolute shock.
Over by the massive tree trunk, Dori was still lying flat on the ground in a pool of her own crimson blood. Her face was frighteningly pale, her breathing shallow and ragged. Yet, her right arm was outstretched toward the goblin camp.
Hovering just above her trembling, blood-stained fingers was the dissipating form of a long, jagged spear made entirely of crystallized, glowing crimson blood.
She had used the very last ounce of her fading life force, tapping into her S-rank blood master class, to manifest her blood into a physical weapon just to protect him from the shadows.
The magical blood spear lost its form, splashing harmlessly onto the wet grass as a puddle of red liquid.
Dori’s arm dropped heavily to the mud. She could not even lift her head, but her fading, glowing red eyes locked onto Lucious’s face. A weak, bloody smile touched the corners of her pale lips.
"Did I do good master?" she whispered, her raspy voice barely carrying over the crackling of the campfire.
Her eyes rolled back, and her entire body went completely limp against the cold earth.
"Dori!" Lucious roared, the sound tearing violently from his throat.
He ignored the burning poison in his veins and the remaining corpses littering the camp. He sprinted across the clearing, dropping heavily to his knees right beside her still, bleeding form. He reached out with trembling hands, pulling her cold, fragile body into his arms.