You had to admit, vampire physiology was seriously tough. Especially when it came to blunt force trauma, what would leave a human with massive internal injuries was just a minor inconvenience to creatures with supernatural healing.
Frost went flying through the air, spinning like a broken pinwheel before smacking into the asphalt. His body bounced twice across the pavement. If he'd been human, that impact would have left him crippled or dead. But he just turned a shade paler and got up like nothing had happened.
Mario yanked open the car door and sprinted out, charging toward the nearest vampire with his silver blade and wooden stake ready. The hunt wasn't over yet.
He was going to wipe them all out.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
A spray of gunfire erupted toward him, but twenty-plus years of being single had given him reflexes you wouldn't believe. He whipped out a wooden shield just in time.
This shield's amazing... just burns through durability way too fast.
With the shield up, his mobility dropped significantly, exactly why he'd been avoiding it. But better slow than dead.
Frost scrambled to his feet and saw Mario somehow blocking his crew's firepower with nothing but a wooden shield.
"Kill them!" he screamed.
Without another word, he turned and bolted, abandoning his men. He wasn't thinking about capturing Blade anymore, he just wanted to get home, flee the city, and find other Daywalkers. Once he ascended as La Magra, he'd come back for revenge.
Mario saw Frost's retreating figure and felt his frustration spike.
Crouched behind his shield, he pulled out his pistol and aimed at the vampires, pulling the trigger. But instead of gunfire, he got nothing but empty clicks.
"No fucking bullets?"
This was the gun Blade had modified for him. Even with the expanded magazine capacity, he had burned through all the silver rounds during the earlier fight. He had other weapons in his inventory, but they all used regular ammunition, basically useless against vampires. Better to charge in with blade and stake.
Meanwhile, Blade was taking serious heat. Earlier, the vampires had been trying to capture him alive. Now they were shooting to kill. Bullets shredded his car, pinning him down with no chance to fight back.
Mario frowned. This wasn't working.
He pulled out some cobblestone blocks and quickly built a wall around himself, then grabbed his shovel and started digging into the ground. Thanks to Vampire Awareness, even underground he could see exactly where the enemies were above.
He spotted an unlucky target and dug out the dirt beneath the vampire's feet. With a terrified scream, the creature fell through, crashing down right in front of him. The vampire panicked at Mario's twisted grin and tried to scramble backward.
"Surprise! Bet you didn't see that coming!"
Thunk!
His blade and stake punched through the vampire's body. Mario scooped up the loot and quickly tunneled toward his next victim.
The vampires still pinning down Blade had no idea that the ground beneath their feet had started swallowing their comrades. There were no light sources except the faint starlight above, and the gunfire was too loud for them to hear the screams from below.
It wasn't until the enemy fire grew thinner that the surviving vampires realized something was wrong. Looking around, they were horrified to discover that their force of dozens had been whittled down to barely a dozen survivors.
"AHHHHH!"
One of the vampires screamed as he watched a comrade standing right next to him suddenly drop through the ground. The square hole that appeared beneath the victim sealed up instantly, and then... silence.
"Shit! The enemy's underground!"
The vampire opened fire into the dirt, but it was pointless.
"AHHHHH!"
Another vampire vanished on the spot.
Panic spread like wildfire. The survivors abandoned all thought of fighting and scattered in every direction, running for their lives.
Mario had made a killing, literally. Seeing the enemies flee, he burst out of his tunnel and sprinted back to the car. Looking at the bullet-riddled vehicle, he quickly asked Blade, "How is it? Can this thing still run?"
Before Blade could answer, Mario noticed the tires on one side had been completely shredded. Even if the engine worked, they weren't going anywhere. Blade grabbed the driver's side door handle and yanked, the door came off in his hand.
"Uh..."
He frowned. This car had been with him for years, and now it was dying like this. He climbed into the driver's seat and turned the key. The engine didn't even try to start.
Meeting Mario's eyes through the missing door, Blade shook his head.
He slammed his fist against the steering wheel. This had been his best chance at killing Frost.
But Mario didn't panic.
"Don't worry. I've got the cars those vampires drove in. Let me check if any still have their keys."
He silently prayed that some lazy bloodsucker had left the keys behind.
On the third try, he finally found one with keys still in the ignition. Overjoyed, he shouted, "This one's got keys! Get over here!"
Blade ran over and jumped behind the wheel, starting the engine like he'd been driving it for years.
"Get in!"
Mario slid into the passenger seat. The car shot forward. Soon they reached the highway, where they spotted Frost by the roadside desperately trying to flag down passing cars.
As they drove past, Mario stuck his head out the window and slapped the car door.
"Hey there, buddy! Need a ride?"
The arrival of Blade and Mario could only mean one thing, all vampires were dead.
Screech!
The car stopped right in front of Frost. Without a word, Blade leaped from the driver's seat and slammed his fist into the vampire's face.
Grabbing him by the hair, Blade hauled Frost off the ground.
"I finally found you!"
Seeing Frost's state, Mario suddenly remembered something important. Blade's mother had been bitten by this very vampire. After giving birth to Blade, she hadn't died, she'd become a vampire and stayed with Frost. Technically, that made Frost Blade's stepfather. What kind of fucked-up family dynamic was that?
Mario gave Blade a complicated look but said nothing. He just watched as Blade vented his rage, fist after fist slamming into Frost's face.
"Stop fighting! You guys, stop fighting!"
Mario said this while unconsciously glancing up at the sky, worried it might start raining. Classic movie trope bullshit.
Hearing his words, Blade also stopped his assault.
"He's very important to me. I need to take him out with my own hands, you should understand why."
"Alright."
Blade hesitated for maybe two seconds before agreeing readily. He knew damn well that without Mario's help, forget about turning the tables on these vampires, he wouldn't even have been able to protect Whistler. He wasn't the kind of man to forget a debt.
Casting a cold glance at Frost, who could no longer speak, he threw the vampire to the ground and turned to Mario.
"I just hope he doesn't die too quickly."
"Uh..."
Blade's request put Mario in a tough spot. If he had a potion table right now, he could brew some healing potions and feel confident about making this bastard wish he was dead. But being broke as hell, without even a single gold ingot, let alone brewing materials, there wasn't much he could do.
Glancing at the slowly recovering health bar above Frost's head, he sighed.
"Let's go. We'll deal with it when we get back."
He grabbed Frost off the ground, carried him to the car, and tossed him in the back seat. Then Mario climbed in beside him, pulling out an iron sword. Every time Frost's health recovered to 20%, he would stab him a few times, knocking it back down to 10%.
Back at Blade's base, he threw Frost over to him and said, "Hang him up first."
During the ride, Blade had watched Mario periodically jabbing Frost with that blocky longsword. What puzzled him was that despite the weapon being thick and brutal-looking, it never left any visible wounds. If it weren't for Frost twitching in pain even while unconscious, he would've thought Mario's sword was just an illusion.
At that moment, he began to suspect Mario might have awakened some terrifying hobbies.
"Uh... Suddenly I don't feel so much hatred toward him anymore. Maybe you should just kill him directly."
There was a big difference between liking to kill vampires and liking to torture them.
Mario picked up his pickaxe, planning to free the two people trapped in the iron blocks. Hearing Blade's words, he replied calmly, "Your mother isn't dead. She's still at his house, but she's completely turned into one of them, totally consumed by bloodlust. You still have anything else to say?"
As mentioned before, once someone became a vampire, they couldn't resist the hunger. Eventually, they'd become monsters, their minds completely assimilated.
Blade froze, trying to digest what Mario had just told him. The sound of breaking blocks interrupted his thoughts. Looking up, he saw Whistler and Karen emerging from their iron prison, and his expression darkened.
"Can you lend me your sword?"
Before he'd even finished speaking, an iron sword spun through the air and embedded itself in the ground beside him. Mario didn't even stop dismantling the iron blocks.
"Seven strikes, max. The eighth one will kill him for sure. I still need to run some experiments on him later."
Thud!
Before Mario had finished speaking, Blade picked up the iron sword and drove it straight into Frost's body.
Karen looked at Frost hanging there and frowned slightly.
"Who is he?"
Before Mario could introduce him, Whistler quietly explained, "Deacon Frost. He's one of the high-ranking vampires in New York."
Whistler didn't know yet that Frost had already become the sole leader of New York's vampires. All the other vampire elders had been imprisoned, awaiting use as sacrifices for summoning La Magra. He paused, then continued, "After all these years of investigation, we've confirmed, he's the one who killed Blade's mother."
Originally, Karen had thought Blade's actions were cruel. But hearing this, she immediately felt there was nothing wrong with what he was doing. Still, seeing Blade's pained expression, she stepped forward and gently took his arm.
"Stop for now. He's unconscious. Let me try to wake him up first, then you can continue..."
Hearing Karen's words, Mario couldn't help but marvel, "I've seen plenty of saints, but this is my first time meeting a living Queen of Hell!"
There was admiration in his eyes as he looked at Karen. A woman this decisive, with such clear moral judgment, high capability, and stunning looks, they were rare as unicorns. Most women would be complaining about how cruel it all was.
After a while, he had packed away all the iron blocks into his inventory. Whistler, who'd always been the researcher behind Blade, was overwhelmed with curiosity about Mario. He approached and asked, "While I was trapped in there, I noticed that the structure you built seemed to be made of high-strength iron... But with such massive weight, why didn't the ceiling collapse? They weren't even solid pieces, and there were no support structures."
"Is this your special ability? Are you some kind of magician?"
The barrage of questions gave Mario a headache. He could only shrug helplessly.
"Just think of me as a magician."
He patted Whistler on the shoulder, then said seriously, "Trust me, don't dig too deep into my business. It's better for everyone."
With that, he pulled out a cigarette, handed one to Whistler, then fished out his lighter and lit both their smokes.
Taking a deep drag, he walked over toward Frost. Blade had already stabbed the bastard several times. Though still seething with rage, he'd held back, remembering Mario's warning. If he killed Frost outright, not only would Mario be unable to carry out his plans, he wouldn't be able to live with it.
Mario glanced at Blade and said, "Don't worry. Leave it to me. I'll make sure his death is worth something."
Frost's health bar was recovering slower and slower, probably because the supernatural energy in his body was running low. Mario reached into his inventory and pulled out a human heart, then pried open Frost's mouth and stuffed it in.
After swallowing the heart, Frost's health bar began recovering at an insane rate. The wounds Blade had inflicted were healing before their eyes, flesh knitting back together like magic.
In less than fifteen seconds, his health had climbed back up to eighty percent, yet Frost kept his eyes tightly shut.
"Playing unconscious, are we?"
Mario didn't believe for a second that someone with eighty percent health could still be out cold. He blew a thick cloud of smoke into Frost's face.
"Go ahead then. Enjoy this delightful pain."