Lucius stepped over the groaning bodies of the two royal soldiers who had been crushed by the heavy metal door.
His boots made a soft, wet sound against the damp stone floor of the corridor. The hallway outside his dungeon cell was a chaotic symphony of sudden terror.
Wall torches flickered wildly in the draft, casting long, monstrous shadows against the weeping stone walls.
Up ahead, the guttural, rattling roars of his mindless blood servant echoed loudly, followed closely by the terrified shrieks of castle guards.
He walked forward with an unnatural, fluid grace. As he rounded a sharp corner, the stench of fresh blood and the sharp scent of raw magic hit his newly enhanced senses like a physical blow.
There, in the middle of a wider, connecting corridor, the undead witch was doing exactly as he had commanded. She had a fully armored knight pinned forcefully against the wall.
Her jaw unhinged with a sickening crack, and she sank her rotting, jagged teeth directly into the man’s exposed neck.
Lucius watched with mild curiosity, expecting a spray of crimson blood to paint the stones, but something far more horrifying occurred.
Where her dead teeth pierced the skin, the knight’s flesh instantly dried up. The healthy color drained completely from his neck, turning a sickly, ashen grey. The unnatural grey spread like a rapid, magical infection, traveling quickly up his jawline and down his collarbone beneath his armor.
As the man thrashed and screamed in agonizing, mind-bending pain, the grey flesh began to physically flake away, turning into a fine, powdery dust that drifted softly to the floor.
The witch ripped her teeth away with a grunt, leaving a gaping, bloodless crater in the man’s shoulder that continued to slowly turn to ash.
’That’s nothing like what I’d expect a vampire’s bite to be,’ Lucius noted in his mind, remembering his specific command for her to kill no one. ’But having your body slowly turn to dust is a fate far worse than death.’
He did not have the time to admire the gruesome loophole of his system command.
The loud clanking of heavy, armored footsteps and shouting voices echoing down the opposite corridor meant that serious reinforcements were finally arriving.
Lucius slipped quietly past the dusting guard who was writhing on the floor, moving deeper into the castle in search of an immediate exit.
He navigated the winding, opulent hallways, transitioning from the cold, bare dungeon stones to wide floors covered in rich, crimson carpets.
He was almost at what looked like a grand foyer, complete with towering wooden doors that led to the outside, when a massive figure stepped out from an intersecting hallway, completely blocking his path.
It was Oliver Wriker, the large, imposing student who had touched the black orb just before him in the throne room.
Oliver was already dressed in a lavish, custom-fitted leather tunic, a massive, steel broadsword resting casually on his broad shoulder.
His God hunter class was already becoming evident in his newfound, towering muscular build.
"Well, look who it is," Oliver said, his voice booming across the empty foyer.
He looked down at Lucius with a mixture of mild surprise and heavy, undisguised disdain.
"Where did you run off to? The maids were looking for you to clean up the mess in the dining hall. Not that anyone actually cares where the untalented guy went, but you really shouldn’t be wandering around while the castle is under attack by some monster."
Lucius stopped and stared up at his former classmate. The sheer, arrogant ignorance in Oliver’s tone grated heavily on his nerves, but he kept his pale face completely neutral.
"I was a bit tied up," Lucius replied smoothly, stepping slightly to the side to bypass the giant teenager. "I need to leave."
Before Oliver could reach out a massive hand to stop him, a tremendous explosion of magical light shattered the stained glass windows above them, showering the foyer in colorful shards of glass.
A large squadron of elite knights flooded into the foyer from the grand staircase, led by none other than the old king and the beautiful, blond-haired princess.
"There it is! Protect the King!" a knight at the front of the formation shouted, raising his heavy shield.
Bursting through the corridor right behind Lucius was the mindless witch. She dragged her decaying, ruined body forward, leaving a thick trail of dark, oozing mana across the pristine red carpet.
Behind her in the hallway, several guards were screaming, their bodies slowly flaking away into piles of grey dust.
"Kill the foul beast!" the king ordered, his ancient voice trembling with a potent mixture of fear and absolute rage.
Three elite knights charged forward in unison. The blade of the leading knight glowed with a blinding, pure holy light.
He thrust the weapon forward with all his might, burying the radiant blade directly through the witch’s chest, right where her heart used to be.
The holy magic violently exploded outward with a deafening boom, completely ripping the witch’s upper torso entirely off her legs.
She collapsed heavily to the ground in a sickening heap of rotting flesh and dissipating dark mana.
Yet, to the absolute horror of everyone standing in the grand foyer, the witch did not stop moving. Her severed upper half, that was slowly healing itself, began to aggressively crawl forward on the carpet, dragging herself with her one remaining arm.
Her glowing red eyes locked onto the elite knights, her jaw snapping wildly in the air as she desperately tried to spread her dusting curse to them.
"Father, look!" the princess suddenly shrieked, her voice piercing the tense air. She dramatically pointed a delicate, shaking finger directly past the crawling corpse and straight at Lucius.
Lucius froze in his tracks as every single eye in the room instantly snapped away from the undead monster and focused entirely on him.
"I tried to escort him to the guest quarters just as you asked," the princess cried out loudly, fat tears perfectly welling in her eyes and rolling down her rosy cheeks. "But he attacked me! He has the power of demons, father! He summoned that vile creature from the depths of hell to kill your guards and then he locked me in the corridor. He is a monster!"
Lucius felt a cold, sharp fury ignite deep within his chest.
’This manipulative bitch,’ he thought, his jaw clenching tight.
She had literally kicked him into a pitch-black dungeon with a monster, hoping it would kill him so the other heroes wouldn’t ask questions, and now she was effortlessly playing the innocent victim to save face.
Oliver immediately took a heavy step away from Lucius, his large hands gripping the hilt of his massive broadsword with white knuckles.
"I knew there was something wrong with you," Oliver spat, his face contorting in sheer disgust. "A vampire. You really are just a demon."
The whispers and shouts from the royal court erupted immediately.
The red-robed mages at the back raised their twisted staffs, and the knights readied their bloodied swords, quickly forming a tight, inescapable ring of steel and magic around him.
"Look at the creature! It survives a holy strike directly to the heart! Only supreme demonic magic could fuel such an abomination," a mage shouted, pointing a trembling hand at the still-crawling torso of the witch leaving a trail of black slime on the floor.
"He brought this vile curse upon our home!"
"Kill the monster before he summons more of the abnormals!"
"Execute him!"
The loud demands for his immediate death echoed off the high ceilings, creating a sickening repeat of the hostility he had faced in the throne room.
Only this time, they had physical, horrifying proof of his supposed crimes writhing mindlessly on the floor before them.
The overwhelming, suffocating sense of injustice finally snapped the very last thread of Lucius’s human patience. The predatory, calculated calmness of his new vampire nature completely gave way to raw, unfiltered human anger.
"Are you all completely blind, or just incredibly stupid?" Lucius yelled, his voice echoing with an unnatural, booming resonance that forced the entire room into a brief, shocked silence.
He glared directly at the princess, his crimson eyes flashing dangerously in the ambient light. "She kicked me into a dungeon cell and left me there to rot! I didn’t attack anyone. I just woke up and tried to leave this godforsaken place."
"Lies!" the princess sobbed loudly, burying her face into her father’s royal cape. "He wants kill us all, father! Look at his red eyes!"
Lucius scoffed, a dark, completely humorless laugh escaping his lips.
He looked at Oliver, who was looking at him like a pest waiting to be exterminated, and then at the old king, whose wrinkled face was turning purple with sheer rage.
"You know what? Go fuck yourselves," Lucius spat, the harsh profanity hanging heavily in the sacred, royal air of the foyer.
The entire royal court gasped in absolute scandal. Several mages took a step back, shocked by his utter lack of respect.
"I didn’t ask to be summoned to your pathetic kingdom," Lucius continued, taking a confident, threatening step toward the towering front doors.
The heavily armored knights actually flinched back, terrified that he would unleash his unseen demonic powers upon them.
"I don’t care about your demon lord, your blessed heroes, or your twisted politics. Just let me figure out how to return to my own world, and stop trying to screw me over at every single turn."
The king stepped forward, pushing his crying daughter gently behind him, his royal authority demanding absolute obedience.
"Silence, demon!" the king bellowed, raising a single, wrinkled hand to stop his nervous knights from attacking blindly. "You dare speak such filthy profanities in the grand house of Eldia? We summoned heroes to save us from the darkness, but the spell clearly pulled a foul beast from the abyss instead. You are no hero."
The old man glared down his nose at Lucius with ultimate, crushing finality.
"I should have my knights execute you right here and now," the king declared, his voice hard as steel.
"But doing so in this hall might spread whatever vile, dusting curse you have brought upon my loyal guards. Therefore, I formally exile you from the Kingdom of Eldia. You are to walk out those heavy doors and never return. If you ever show your cursed face within our borders again, you will be officially considered an enemy of the kingdom, and you will be hunted down and slaughtered without a moment of hesitation."
Lucius stared at the sea of hostile faces surrounding him. He saw absolutely no reason in their eyes, no logic to appeal to, only blind fear, hatred, and unyielding prejudice.
He didn’t bother to say another word to defend himself. He simply turned his back on the foolish king, the lying princess, and his heavily armed former classmate and walked directly toward the massive wooden doors leading to the dangerous outside world.
The undead witch that had been lying on the ground suddenly disappeared into thin air, the dark dust sweeping on the ground and right into Lucious body as he walked out, leaving the entire kingdom behind him.