Sorry no update yet on the website. But very attentive to it and working it. Thank you. Happy Easter also everyone! 

 

Chapter 178

In the Dream State continued…

“After everything else so far, now there’s a fucking vampire?!” Sylvie said while trying to get through it.

Sylvie is trying to get around it. When she goes left it keeps sacrificing pieces of its arm to prevent her from finishing it off with the massive blowtorch version mana sword. When she goes right it’s the same thing, yet keeping the rest of itself safe and only sacrificing tiny bits at a time. He would probably normally be able to block such a terrible weapon, except this is a freaking meltdown sword with epic energy.

“Ah, I hadn’t expected you to have something like that,” the enemy vampire, or is it a ghoul, said. It was clearly sizing us up while talking to us also, and didn’t hit it. This we could see with the enmity in its eyes, glaring at us.

Wait, I think its not a ghoul; but come to think of it ghouls do resemble vampires somewhat.

But is there some kind of relationship?

The amount of offensive power Sylvie is using can’t be maintained indefinitely though, even though it’s defensively impossible to hold off a huge pulse like that from that vampire(?) guy’s point of view too…except in the way this boss goblin shaman has done.

“Heh, I see you fully appreciate my power now,” the boss goblin shaman croaked in an old voice.

But like that we were surprised again.

From the ceiling another vampire also revealed itself and pounced at the same time, coming down with obscene speed and strength enough to kill.

Oh crap!

“There’s two of them?!” Sylvie is confused.

So am I.

So are all of us.

We have to adapt fast! Or else…!

They’d hidden so well we couldn’t even tell that they were there. There was obviously some form of magic involved, possibly using shadows.

Sylvie jumped back avoiding it, as it struck with no warning and with high speed. Its lucky that she also is a speed build or that might have been potentially fatal! She’s forced to retreat fast. There’s simply no other way to live. Her danger sense is better than Sunghee’s too, so she managed to avoid a slice that was aimed for her neck by one of the vampires but it happened so quick that I didn’t quite catch which vampire tried to do it.

Then something surprising just happened that made me freeze in indecision.

We’re shocked again that the second vampire doesn’t strike at us. It strikes the other vampire instead.

This is the strangest thing that we’d ever seen so far.

“What?!” the goblin shaman and I exclaimed both at the same time.

“What’s going on?” Ayumi said.

“I don’t…know?” I guessed.

It’s clear that the boss goblin shaman doesn’t know the second vampire? He looks as surprised as we are. This indicates the second one wasn’t with him.

How can that be? What’s going on?

“This is bizarre,” Asakura said.

“Yeah…” I coughed out.

The second vampire when landing stepped in and then stabbed its hand into the first vampire’s chest, landing what looks like a mortal injury! Then in a quick motion with her other hand she’d knocked away his one remaining hand from blocking her and ripped his ribcage open viciously with biological material splattering everywhere!

Within less than two seconds she’d ripped his heart out which is remarkably beating hard and a bit larger than a human heart. Then she severed his head with a follow up blow. Tons of gore and juice spill out exploding everywhere when she also smashed the guy’s heart with her fist that she’d been holding.

The first vampire sinks to his knees with a strange odd expression. He’s also seeing his crushed heart, no longer beating in another’s hands. “Don’t…” but then slowly his body is becoming lifeless and turning gray fast. Then he fell over as his body is actually starting to crumble into a column of dust and ash.

It happened so fast! I almost thought my eyes were playing tricks on me!

Strange, so that’s what happens to vampires when they die? They turn to ash?!

(Or maybe only in dungeons and pocket realms they’d dissolve, much like how monsters are eaten by the dungeon? Who knows, how many possibilities there really are?)

“I thought vampire’s hearts don’t beat or pump blood?” Ayumi said.

“Maybe they beat but just don’t do it the way ours does,” I said.

“Hurry! Finish him!” the second vampire girl said to us.

“She’s talking to us I think,” Ayumi said.

“Weird…this is confusing,” I said, now struggling to move.

Eh? She wants us to finish off the other goblin boss.

This won’t be easy. he’s formidable and powerful in magic.

But then we’re shocked again when there are other invisible shapes of other people appearing.

One after another, more vampires are popping out of nowhere while the boss goblin dude is trying to get away and dodge them.

The vampires aren’t all on the same team. It seems that this is like some battle royal, except for my team only. All the vampires are against each other, but in two main groups. But why they would fight each other doesn’t seem to make any sense to us. They would much rather kill each other than even face us it seems.

Or maybe its a struggle for territory or leadership?

They are wearing old clothes on a lot of them, but strangely have overly beautiful bodies designed for luring prey the easy way. There’s no way to identify them from our part or tell what factions or loyalties they have. Structurally they look a lot like high humans, because high humans also look perfect and beautiful like that. And not all of them have red eyes though some of them do. But yet all around us they appeared and somehow can dodge sinking in the quicksand while they fight.

At least they can avoid sinking until they are heavily wounded. Then they get snared pretty quickly in it. They are merciless to each other too; using their strength to rip off each others limbs, moving with both strength AND speed. We’re seeing torn limbs everywhere and blood spatter as we see a whole group of them moving.

“Sylvie over here!” I screeched.

I want to get her out of there. Of all of us Sylvie might be able to last for a little while against one of them but that’s not easy. She’s dodging too with all of her concentration and skill, not being able to do anything else but evade and move away from them towards us.

Somehow we’ve exchanged mess 1 for even bigger mess 2.

The vampires ripped the head off boss goblin dude that we still don’t know the name off. He’d been trying to slink away and retreat back to the little portal hole that he’d made to get into this place but that was an opportunity the enemy or enemies in this case decided they’d take advantage of.

Sylvie was attacked several times but is so fast and agile with her illusion and reality altering skill that they miss her. She managed to get over to us after several detours and near death experiences.

I got a circular mana barrier up caging Sylvie, Ayumi, and I within. It was pretty lucky I got it up in time. the vampires do have magic, but its also clear that they aren’t able to cancel it, so for the moment I think we’re safe as long as I keep the barrier up.

We’re surrounded by vampires that are spitting up goblin blood. I guess they were desperate enough to test if he tasted good with the younger ones but goblin blood must taste nasty enough that they are puking him up. The older ones already knew goblin blood tasted like shit, however.

Their fighting doesn’t stop either. For many long minutes we have to just observe them all thinning down each others numbers.

We’re lucky that the two factions hate each other so much that they would rather destroy each other than fight us. So whatever riled them up was pretty terrible!

But at some point they will turn on us too won’t they, I thought?

At some point they’d ripped off more than a few heads of their own people. But they don’t stop there; and it seems like they don’t even care about self preservation. Seeing a few ripped off heads instead of crushing their morale like would happen with normal people is making them more vicious and bloodthirsty than ever before. The fighting continues to escalate shamelessly and become more violent. Even with a ripped off arm, or being disrobed they want to kill each other.

First it was a child vampire that got his head ripped off after losing his legs.

“Eh there are vampire children? That’s so sad,” Ayumi said while leaning her cleavage against my arm.

“Um, don’t feel sorry for them. They are really dangerous. Vampires don’t really have children. Its an illusion. If you were to see vampires that look like children don’t believe they are innocent, because they aren’t. If you do, you will die,” Sylvie said.

“Hmm, they smell kind of like me. Why is that?” Asakura said.

!

“I don’t know…” I managed to say.

“That is weird huh. I always wondered what the ghoul race was connected to in terms of being related to other species. There must be a reason that you are similar to them,” Sylvie noted.

“That doesn’t make me feel better,” Asakura said.

Asakura is not a vampire!

But could it be ghouls are related to vampires?

“So ghoul isn’t undead but they are still related? How can that be?” Ayumi asked.

“We’ll find out later. For now just stay on your guard,” I said.

Asakura still seems really bothered by the fact that vampires smell like her somewhat.

Then another one looked like an imitation butler had both arms ripped off even while his suit stayed in pretty good condition. At that point he couldn’t defend himself properly and his throat was torn out. His body splashed in the quicksand without getting back up after that.

We watched in horror as a couple of beautiful but obviously murderous ladies were killed but in that they’d ended up killing the other team too.

The psychology affecting the battles was interesting. Because of probably remembering the whole hen pack mentality of how women are, the women vampires are more prone to team up more than the males do. And that seems to affect their survival rate for some reason. At least that’s how they seem to be. As a result they survive more.

While my barrier shield pulsed the vampires couldn’t attack us but about five of them were standing guard over us while the rest of them killed each other.

It still continued for some time.

I don’t know how to fight vampires. They move so fast I think it would be suicidal to try to win against them without having serious problems.

And even if I did know how, how strong are they? Can we take them? Or will it take all of us to take on one of them? They don’t move faster than you can see like in movies. But they are viciously strong and can grapple like crazy.

My observances of how fast they finished off that boss goblin makes me think I shouldn’t engage them yet, despite the fact that we’d created part of the opening for them to kill that boss goblin.

“What should we do?” Ayumi asked me.

She’s purposely staying as close to me as she can.

“For now I recommend waiting Shun. Hold back as much as you can,” Sylvie said.

“Yeah keep the barrier up as long as you can,” Asakura said.

“OK,” I said.

We kept watching.

Neither side is going after us yet. But that could change couldn’t it?

“Um, we have a problem,” Sylvie pointed to another end of the arena.

We all sucked in our breath.

As the battle starts to die down, we were shocked again when another portal started to open into this dream state. Looking close to the other one it kept trying to solidify itself but as soon as it did the vampires tore into pieces whatever was trying to get through so fast that we couldn’t even see who it was, with some kind of emergency team up maneuver with its own signal to start and end.

Was it more goblins? Or something else? All we saw was a murder dog pile.

And to have two portals plus a whole army of crazy vampires killing each other show up the same night is weird as hell. And now there’s something else? What could it be this time?

At length the number of fighting vampires decreased. First, it was still about eleven of them left still fighting. That was great considering it had been about thirty seven of them before. Then it shrunk to seven while they kept killing each other still.

The corpses and body parts all sank into the quicksand.

Then there were six.

Then four left…

This is insane!

Their hate and blood lust has made them totally destroy themselves! There’s almost nothing left of both groups!

The last guy took on those other two at once and was winning until an ambush from behind landed the whole mess of other vamps on him and they disemboweled him first making confetti out of his intestines. It was a fake out that only three were left, we suddenly realized.

In reality like five others had snuck up on him swimming under the quicksand and then came from below. Then they ate his heart to take his courage or some other weird bullshit or whatever they believe in.

“Shun?” one of them called out to me. She’s definitely approaching us with a cat like gait that screams of agility and strong battle sense. It’s a woman vampire in what was once an old woman’s suit of gothic style with black and white jacket with long lapels and nice pants but right now it’s a bit torn up and frayed, complete with one of her sleeves missing and even one of her big boobs is sticking out of a tear in the side of her blouse, with only the nipple just barely not visible. She’s also missing her shoes now, but I think she had them initially while her pants are also torn up, looking kind of similar to sliced up jeans which was a popular look years ago on our planet.

There’s a whole mess of them standing around of both men and women vamps all young looking and dressed in similar manner since they’d been fighting in their clothes. But they are demons and I don’t forget it despite their eerie beauty. The women vamps seem to outnumber the males two to one.

“Its nice to finally meet you, Shun,” she said. As I stare at her I realize she looks like a classic version of what someone might call an adult female that appears to be big breasted young woman, almost a loli but not quite, because of how young and innocent her face looks with a short very slender body, with the other traits.

Yeah that chest is super developed! Not a kid at all! But just looks a bit short actually.

“What the flying fudge, how do they know your name?” Sylvie is alarmed.

“I don’t know,” I said.

Ayumi is surprised too.

“Don’t worry we won’t bite yet,” the young woman said.

“Don’t trust her on that,” Asakura urged to me.

“Shun?” the woman repeated. She’s obviously looking at me and knows who I am. She raised an eyebrow.

Gulp…

“Which one of you is Shun?” she asked again. She’s still coming towards us.

For now the remaining vamps have stopped killing each other.

“They must not know which one of us is Shun. Someone must have sent them,” Ayumi said.

“I’m Shun,” I said.

The woman kept walking forward until she’s right before my barrier sphere cage that’s protecting us, but her followers stay back watching and waiting to see what she does. Come to think of it, this is the same one that ripped the heart out of the bodyguard vamp. So she’s formidable in many ways.

Her hand briefly touched the magic barrier as she felt it. “Oh? This is amazing! I see the rumors are true. You are a protection mage. That’s good. This is…a barrier right? You’ll forgive me for being fascinated since we don’t get to see such things often. This is really nice. Amazing, you can already cast this? You are ahead of schedule it seems. I like that.” She seems to be wanting in and even licked her lips in a sexy way.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“We want you Shun,” she chuckled. She doesn’t take her eyes off me. She winked at me and even blew a kiss at me; but having a demon vampire do that is probably not a good idea at all.

The girls with me frowned.

“Yo-you won’t steal my man,” Ayumi said.

The others murmured agreement right afterwards.

But there’s nothing nice about her. The beautiful eyes looking at me are full of neither malice, not anything good nor anything showing genuine interest to me. If she wants something then it’s to her advantage at my expense it seems.

“Let’s talk Shun,” she said again demurely with a seductive tone and gait. That still doesn’t make me want to put the barrier down. She also gave a quick curious glance to Ayumi of all things, which I’m not sure is good or bad yet.

“I’m surprised you have one of those for pets. She’s probably more dangerous than I am in some ways,” the young woman vamp said.

“…am not…” Ayumi retorted.

“And a ghoul too?” she asked Asakura.

Asakura flinched and is studying her in return.

“Hmm, is she part cowgirl?” the vamp girl asked me pointing at Asakura, in particular looking at her oversized swollen chests.

“Um…no.” Asakura is blushing and terribly embarrassed.

“Ah sorry my mistake,” the young woman said. “And a feral foxkin girl too. My you have interesting pets.”

“Who sent you? What do you want?” I asked politely.

“My, my, demanding aren’t you. We haven’t even introduced ourselves properly,” she said.

“Sorry, we’re just surprised. We don’t know you or who hired you,” Sylvie said for me.

“Oh trust me. I wasn’t hired,” she chuckled.

“But those goblins were hired to assassinate me. And you showed up the same time as them. I don’t understand what just happened, and why,” I said.

“Who are you? What’s your purpose here?” Asakura asked for me.

“Tsk, tsk…you know this is a give and take relationship. I’ll answer yours if you answer mine. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” she said right after that while looking at me.

“Shun, did you cheat on me?” Ayumi asked suddenly, her metallic voice rising.

“There’s no way I’d do that,” I said quickly.

“But who is she?” Ayumi looked angry.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Calm down little one. Don’t worry it will be OK,” the lead vampire short busty hotty said.

For several seconds we’re sizing each other up.

Sylvie is good at this kind of etiquette stuff. She even greets them in some kind of demon tongue with some sort of bows and salutes and stuff in some strange language. That seemed to impress the vamp girl. They seem to be impressed by it. It also adds to Sylvie’s mysteriousness and her unknown past. But the dwarven enchant necklace doesn’t pick up the demon tongue for some reason.

Why is that?

Is Sylvie knowledgeable in languages too? Or which languages, is what I should really ask and be precise about.

“You seem to have interesting company. I’m glad you have cultured, educated people that know the proper forms of respect. Perhaps you are worth negotiating with after all,” the lead vampire hottie said again.

“Thank you,” Sylvie curtseyed back to her.

Asakura and the rest of us are still afraid to move.

“You know I can’t help but be curious how soon you will drain your mana core holding up that barrier cage before we can close the remaining distance to you,” the vamp girl said.

Some of her friends laughed.

But the real joke is on them. I can keep this up forever practically with using mana leaching from summoning creatures.

“I can keep it up as long as I want,” I said.

They stopped laughing.

“That would be…impressive,” the vamp girl seductively winked at me again. “Won’t you come out and play with me?” she smiled wickedly.

“We don’t think that’s a good idea,” Asakura said.

“And how did you get a ghoul familiar? Those are hard to get,” the vampire hottie said to Asakura, looking at her directly.

I was a bit unnerved that she could tell that Asakura was also my familiar. It seems this person is very unnaturally alert and perceptive.

“Eh? She can tell what I am?” Asakura said in surprise.

“Your type of ghoul is very rare. Only really special or powerful people are allowed access to living ghouls. I didn’t know there was such a thing as a Kyonyuu version ghoul though,” the hottie vampire chic looked at me strangely impressed.

Asakura blushed again; afraid to say anything.

“But you should dispose of the demon girl. Too hard to control her species,” she said when looking at Ayumi next.

Ayumi’s arms raked and slammed against the barrier cage so hard that it shook and vibrated leaving claw marks too where Ayumi’s claws raked down.

The vampires laughed.

“My, my…so spirited…I like that,” the hot vampire girl kissed the glass, I suppose to mock Ayumi.

“They are just messing with us. Don’t let them rile you up, it could be a test,” Sylvie said to us.

“What kind of test?” I wondered aloud.

For a few seconds neither of us say anything as we stare at each other. Discovering vampires isn’t the highlight of my day. It’s hard to predict what they want too.

Ayumi pulled back, not liking to be laughed at.

“Easy…you need to keep your cool if you want any of us to get out of this alive,” Sylvie said to her.

“Your friend is right,” the lead vamp said again.

There are a lot of things that I don’t know right now. This could end any number of ways.

Why would a bunch of vampires be looking for me? Would they want to kill me or help me? And why would evil creatures of darkness help me except someone else compelled them to do so?

There’s also the unanswered fact of what will happen to the dream state if I start waking up with them still in here? Will it block my ability to go into the dream state next time? Or will it force a fight? And are they here because of another mage opening the portal or because of their own doing?

I also am not sure if they got here through the goblins’ portal. So that makes me confused too, and they weren’t here before the goblins got here.

The vampires also seemed to have a dispute of their own with that other vampire group I concluded. It seems that there must have been two rival gangs of vampires and somehow one group must have followed the other group here.

I doubt they were helping me willingly because it seems that the ones who lost the free for all brawl before are all being rounded up as prisoners. So was this also part of their culling their own weak? Or were they having an internal dispute of some kind?

With either way it meant more danger to me.

“I’m Mallory,” the young woman said while giving me a slight bow.

“Nice to meet you,” I said because it was polite. I also gave a slight polite bow, but nothing condescending.

I had almost wanted to shake hands, but remembered vampires are dangerous. Still, her smile was nice and warm, but was that fake too?

The vampires thought that was funny somehow. I guess they see Mallory isn’t nice. So someone saying nice to meet you makes them think weird things.

“I don’t understand what’s going on?” I said.

Mallory nodded. “Please excuse the yard trash for a bit while we remodel this place for you. It will only take a minute. We’re here to help you Shun. Or should I say, Prince Shun.”

“Prince? That doesn’t sound good for them to know that,” Asakura said stiffly.

“Crap…so that magic coding we read was right,” Sylvie said worriedly.

“Yes it’s right. And Shun is a top candidate. But the problem is that there are twelve other candidates. Thirteen in all. That means twelve people on this world that want Shun dead more than anyone alive and who will stop at nothing to accomplish it,” Mallory said sweetly.

The girls are looking at me oddly again. Strangely I realized that other vampire gang is very interested in me now.

Uh oh…

A bunch of murderous bastards calling me their prince makes me very alarmed right now. If they act wickedly or hurt people by trying to follow me then would that make me responsible for the death of innocent people?

What the frick do I do?

But some of it was also seductive also.

If you could control them, a pack of vampire minions does sound kind of cool!

But maybe you can’t ever control something like a vampire. Would you ever be truly safe with them?

Ayumi and Sylvie are giving me weird looks too.

‘What did you do?’ Sylvie mouthed to me.

I shrugged to her.

Mallory noticed the looks going back and forth between us.

She then clapped her hands. “OK, Prince Shun, if I may? I come bearing gifts from the other demon princes.”

“Uh oh. Does that mean they know who you are?” Asakura asked, looking at me.

“They suspect and believe there’s another prince. But they have no proof and don’t know who it is. I’ve been assigned to find out,” Mallory told us.

And what kind of gifts did she mean?

I don’t want to sound greedy either.

She waved her hands. “You can let down the barrier now.”

“Like hell he will. I won’t permit it,” Asakura said.

“Neither will I,” Ayumi said.

“What? But I do come in peace. I’m on your side! I’m coming to help you,” Mallory insisted.

To my surprise none of her people are laughing. They look sincere. Some of the other vampires even nodded.

“Um…can we have your blood oath that you don’t intend him harm?” Sylvie said.

“Wow, you really did your homework didn’t you? You shouldn’t be able to know about that,” Mallory looked amazed at Sylvie’s comment.

“What’s a blood oath?” I asked.

“Vampires use them to ensure safe passage of minions or allies provided certain conditions are met,” Sylvie noted.

“That’s correct. And they are not to be taken lightly,” Mallory said. She bows humbly.

The others bowed to me also.

Weird…

What a strange turn of events!

“What did you say about gifts?” Ayumi seemed to be still looking at them with narrowed eyes of distrust.

What’s going on here?

“Shun, I don’t have to tell you that any ‘gifts’ they bring will have tons of strings attached,” Asakura said facing me and said while leaning in to whisper.

“Actually Asakura may be right about strings attached,” Sylvie advised me.

“I heard that, insolent fool. Even if you are a special ghoul type race doesn’t mean you can make light of my generosity. You know with my superior hearing I can even hear what you say in that barrier cage. And you can’t keep up the cage forever,” Mallory said while trying to rake her sharp demonic fingernails on the see through barrier cage.

“Pardon us Mallory. I require the use of an adviser to help me understand your culture. I haven’t dealt with your kind before. But it doesn’t mean she’s against any policy decisions. She just is helping me understand you,” I said.

Mallory frowned. “Fine. I suppose that’s necessary. Our culture is quite long and complicated to learn.” She folded her arms.

This is going to be a long night.

“Shun? So it’s true? You are a demon prince then?” Ayumi looked scared.

“I thought it just meant a prince candidate?” Sylvie asked.

“Don’t worry about Shun. He takes care of us,” Asakura said to her carefully while placing a hand on Ayumi’s shoulder to calm her.

“Oh come on. You are in a demon race body. You have to trust him when you are more demon than he is,” Sylvie argued.

“Ahh that’s true, huh?” Ayumi blushed. “Sorry. I should have thought it through better. Wait I can’t believe I said that huh?”

“So the question remains what to do huh?” I sighed.

“If I may offer a bit of information its this, the other prince candidates have been relentlessly killing each other this whole time. If your status went from prince candidate to prince then it must mean the pool of prince candidates shrunk too quickly,” Mallory said.

None of us knew what to say about that.

Mallory is giving me an expectant answer.

Then there was a deep voice that rattled all of us including Mallory.

“So it’s true then. Another demonic prince has joined the forces of darkness. This is going to mess up my perfect day,” a deep and rumbling voice said.

The voice is coming from above us? What?

We look up.

Shit! This is bad!

I can feel tremendous mana coming from him!

There’s a dwarf standing on the ceiling looking down at us. He’s got his feet in the ceiling and has altered gravity somehow to support himself there like it’s nothing. I have trouble remembering these guys names too but this guy isn’t a small fry, he’s a boss archmage. I’ve met so many dwarves in the last few months that I can’t keep them straight. But if I do remember it right this guy is like a major player in not just the whole southern war front but all of the dwarven kingdom and possibly this continent too.

Two of them also, both dwarves...it can only be…

Those two...

I think they called these guys the War Twins?

Of the two of them the other one had flashy outfits and clothes and was an attack mage. This guy was more of a utility and crowd control type but not less dangerous since his actions affected the other one surviving more. That meant this guy had pretty much unstoppable courage and the ability to follow through with it.

It’s pretty clever really. By being up there the vampires can’t get him and with invisibility he’d also avoided areas where someone might be trying to sense hidden creatures; so he’d played us all. It also means he’s vastly more powerful than all of us put together probably; the dwarves had some crazy stories about the War Twins taking on whole goblin armies just by themselves and taking whole cities themselves too. And even worse, he’s able to see Ayumi, and the vampires, and me all together with them trying to bargain for me to join their side, even though I didn’t really even want to be on the side of darkness.

This is the worst thing that could ever occur.

“Ah…not good,” Sylvie managed to whisper. She understands the problem. She wasn’t in the reality part of the world when we met these two guys but she can feel how powerful he is. He could probably take all of this room by himself with all of us combined against it.

“How much of our bargain did you observe dwarf?” Mallory demanded scowling at him. I don’t think Mallory understands who she’s dealing with either because she’s pretty insolent and unwavering in defying him. And I don’t think just because Mallory resembles a pretty human woman that he would let her have her way so easily.

“Enough to understand what’s going on here,” he said to her.

“Anyone dealing with a vampire is no good anyway. We don’t need to know everything. That is enough,” the second dwarf said.

It could be worse. They’d probably missed the part where Mallory was calling me their dark prince. If they’d heard that they’d kill me.

“Shun. Is this the type of company you keep?” his deep booming voice echoes through the hall.

“I…” shit what do I say.

“Shun didn’t have anything to do with them showing up. We just fought the goblin mage boss in self defense who was trying to kill us, and we were on the killing blow when they decided to show up on their own,” Sylvie said.

Oh. That was clever to say.

She might have saved us from dwarven fury just now. He’d been about to execute us but now he seems to be considering what to do instead. I’m no dummy, I can see the way that dwarf is looking at us like he’s going to burn us alive for being mistaken as traitors which we’re not.

“Shun is on our side. You know he’s one of the foretold guardians. He is the one destined to win this war talked about in our scriptures and bring peace to this world,” Mallory said with full courage.

That darn Mallory can’t keep her mouth shut… though its strange that she already has some misguided sense of loyalty towards me.

“Oh we’ll see about that won’t we. Having the company of daemons and vampires doesn’t look good for you right now little mage,” the war twin in front of me is glaring at me.

Not Mallory…so unfair.

There’s no way of explaining this well is there.

“Ah….I’m…not with her! This isn’t my fault,” I said to try to explain.

“What are you saying? You can’t reject me! I want in on this too!” Mallory complained like a jilted lover.

“Well why do you have a demon woman next to you? And she said that one’s a ghoul? With other vampires in a meeting under blood oath? I think this isn’t going to be explained away so easily for you,” he raised an eyebrow.

“It’s a tactic called fight fire with fire. Really we intend no harm to anyone. You have my word. I am willing to swear it on my clan’s name,” Sylvie said calmly.

How does she do it?

She did manage to get them to not kill us. They’d stopped when they were about to attack.

This guy is a scary fucker and she’s acting like a secretary with no problems at all. She’s even trying to bargain with him still. But one false move and that archmage will toast us like marsh mellows.

“Well if I may ask how did you end up in here of all places? If you don’t mind my asking,” I hurriedly added.

The war twin snorted. He still is glaring at me furiously. “I can go anywhere I want to.”

Does this mean staying in the dwarven town …and kingdom is no good from now on?

He saw we weren’t satisfied with that answer and decided to indulge us however.

“Well I was following that goblin shaman boss around. He’s one of their big four see. And it just so happens that in following him I was puzzled when he suddenly started to dream walk with a small army. Not many goblins can, or dwarves for that matter; but this one had been alive for a long time. That is until you decapitated him just now but that saved me a lot of work actually. I can’t let you off because of that however. But then I find him in here fighting you guys. I should thank you for cleaning up part of the mess however. I still can’t let you go.”

So he basically admitted this was an enemy of my enemy is my friend situation, but is still throwing us to the wolves in a way.

Bastards...

“Ah so you know we aren’t doing anything bad. We were fighting evil,” I said.

Maybe he’ll give us a chance, I hoped.

His frown only got bigger. “You suck. No combat offense skills, only defensive stuff. And keeping demons as company, you really should know better. I should fry your ass right now. And fighting goblins for me doesn’t make it OK,” he scowled even further.

“If you’d had more offense power, we might have been won over,” the other one said.

Ah shit.

I can’t believe this guy?! Don’t actions speak louder than words?

“I think you’re scared of us. I can smell your fear fool. Shun will continue to get stronger and lift us to victory over your kind,” Mallory said. She sneered at him and appears to be baiting him. She obviously doesn’t know her place and is letting her victory go to her head. She’s also absolutely fearless and so are the rest of her crack troops.

Mallory seems to have trouble having her common sense tell her we’re outgunned here. I guess sometimes vampire blood isn’t always a good thing. She’d almost called me Prince Shun also, which would have been very bad.

“Um that’s not helping Mallory,” Sylvie said to her.

“Mallory I’d be quiet if I were you. This isn’t the time,” I said.

Mallory was about to shoot of her mouth when she suddenly gasped and backed up. She’s somehow burning up in blue flames on her right arm. To compensate she retreated and then cut it off with her own sword before plunging the arm down into the quicksand. Even then the flames didn’t stop easily.

Then she rolled the arm in the dirt.

“Damn you!” she said.

“Wow you escaped that? Not bad actually. I thought you were a goner. That skill mostly one shots vampires. But that was just a decoy for my real move,” the dwarven archmage said.

“Maybe they aren’t as weak as we thought? I’d like to study them as specimens later,” the one dwarf said to the other.

They nodded and whispered something briefly.

“What was that? I thought the other war twin was the one that used fire? Wait, we don’t want to fight lets just talk this out!” I said.

“Holy fire is different. That’s why it looked like something of ethereal flames,” Sylvie said.

“Fine I’ll give you a chance to be judged. You’re all under arrest,” the dwarven war twin bad ass hero who wants to kill us said.

I de-summoned Ayumi then. It probably wasn’t a good idea because he saw it and might know what it would mean. But if Ayumi is a demon and this guy is one of those ally of justice types he would believe it’s his conviction to kill her. And I can’t have him doing that. Then I did that to Asakura too. But I’m hoping keeping Sylvie out a tiny bit longer will help her keep Mallory from shooting off her mouth in stupidly defying the dwarven archmage.

Of course half the vampires died trying to resist arrest while this guy soloed them without a scratch on himself. He ended up wiping the floor with them with them all feeling helpless, though Mallory did put up a good show and even reattached her arm and healed it during the fight with some fancy moves, while we watched.

But even she was forced to surrender.

He’s a freaking monster…

“I see why you didn’t fight him though it was misguided to let him spit upon your demon prince title. I still forgive you and wish to follow you Lord Shun,” Mallory bowed and renewed her loyalty to me even while surrendering which made things worse for us with the dwarf archmage.

And we probably wouldn’t have been able to solo even one of the vampires was another scary thought. We’d only gotten lucky with the one because he was shielding the goblin shaman boss at the time. And then after that Mallory had shown up.

“I can see why you decided not to fight him. You have some foresight don’t you? You saw we couldn’t fight him now until we get stronger and take his head later,” Mallory said to me while we’re being bagged and tagged by other dwarven mages.

The dwarf didn’t like hearing that part. I kind of wish Mallory would shut up right now.

This totally sucks. The dwarves are now in my dream state. They fortunately can’t take the demon box from me unless they kill me.

But they might just do that.

How am I supposed to get out of this now?