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Chapter 87: How's The Aftertaste? Still Divine
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"Sunlight," He croaked, latching onto the only weakness profound enough. "You… laced your blood with… concentrated light. A cancer of the sun."
Adam's theatrical posture relaxed. The pretense of divinity dropped, replaced by a more familiar, chilling amusement.
"Warmer," He conceded. "But still thinking too small. You're right about one thing: regeneration."
He descended until his boots touched the frost, the mechanical arms settling around him like a lethal iron maiden.
"I have a friend. Well, an associate. Calls himself Wolverine. Healing factor that makes yours look like a modest scab. Recently, I had the… pleasure of liberating a certain facility that held him for a while."
"They'd run extensive tests. Compiled petabytes of data on how his regeneration works, what stresses it, what disrupts it."
Adam's tone was that of a lecturer sharing a fascinating breakthrough. "I, naturally, devoured that database. And I came up with a little cocktail of my own."
"They already came up with some elementary means, so it wasn't difficult. A bio-chemical regime designed to overclock the healing factor."
"Think of it like this, it forces the healing factor into a state of perpetual, exponential overdrive. To make the body heal itself to death."
He took a step closer. Dracula took an involuntary step back, his leg cracking audibly.
"I pumped myself full of it before coming here," Adam said brightly. "Insurance. And now… It's in you. How's the meal tasting now? A bit… over-seasoned?"
Dracula's face was a mask of revolted horror and shock. What the fuck is wrong with this maniac? Who comes up with plans like that?
He sacrificed his arm, and he somehow knew he'd consume it, sealing the deal? Why go so far?
"But I'm a thorough host," Adam continued, as if sharing a recipe. "That's just the main course. I also saturated my bloodstream with microscopic garlic enzymatics and silver nano-filaments."
"And, as a fun collaborative project, Tony and I worked up some cute little nanoparticles. They love bio-energy; your kind has a lot of it. They absorb it, store it, and release it as short-range, UV-C radiation. Right inside you."
He laughed then, a sound of genuine, manic delight. "So I poisoned myself. I baited you. I knew you'd go for the blood. The theatrics, the arrogance… It's in the handbook."
"But you, Vlad… you went above and beyond. You ate me. I'll be honest, that was a bonus round I didn't fully expect. Bravo."
Adam raised his arm, the gesture encompassing his own armored form and the withering vampire.
"So yes, you're dying. But so am I! Probably. Pumping yourself full of this many tailored toxins and radiological agents isn't exactly a health spa treatment. Hahahaha!"
The laughter was sharp, unhinged, and utterly convincing in its carelessness.
He leaned in, the helmet's visor reflecting Dracula's crumbling visage. "So, my lord Dracula… how's the aftertaste? Still divine?"
Then, his voice shifted, lowering into an intimate, conspiratorial tone aimed at no one in the clearing. "And my lovely audience… tell me, Are You Not Entertained?!"
[I'm Fucking Entertained!!] [+1] [+1] [+1] [+1] [+1] [+1]
[DEFINITELY ENTERTAINED YOU FUCKING PSYCHO!]
[He just collaborated with Tony to make nanoparticles, wtf? They worked together for like a day? What's this insanity? Yeah, we just pushed engineering a few decades into the future in an afternoon, Ok dude!]
[Tf, I understand Dracula's shock now, Adam is unhinged!]
["Are you entertained?!" Ngl, that was kinda anti climaxic.]
[The only ones who climaxed there are Adam and Dracula, one pumped himself full of stuff and the other ate him out.]
[Ayoo?] [Pause!] [You guys have a way with descriptions.]
[Ngl, I climaxed too. That was one of the greatest, most unhinged victory speeches in history.]
The final question was a mystery. Blade stared, his mind parsing the brilliance and the sheer, suicidal madness of it.
The man had turned his own body into a Trojan Horse of apocalyptic toxins.
The mention of an 'audience' was just another layer of Cypher's palpable strangeness; they must be the 'imaginary friends' he sometimes muttered to.
Dracula, however, had no capacity left for parsing mysteries. The revelations were the final stones on the cairn of his humiliation.
He had been out-thought, out-prepared, and out-sacrificed by a mortal who treated his own flesh as disposable ordinance.
The rage that burst through the pain was incandescent, pure, and utterly devoid of his former regal control.
"YOU… WRETCH!" He screamed, the sound tearing his ravaged throat. Black blood sprayed with the words.
"I SWEAR BY THE DARKNESS THAT BORE ME! BY THE DRAGON'S BLOOD! I WILL HAUNT YOU! I WILL PURSUE YOU TO THE END OF ALL TIME AND BEYOND!"
"YOU THINK THIS IS VICTORY? I AM THE NIGHT ITSELF! I CANNOT BE EXTINGUISHED! I WILL RETURN! AND BEFORE THE END… I WILL MAKE YOU SUFFER!"
His burning eyes, now glowing with a final, desperate power, shot upward to the churning, self-made storm.
His body was breaking, but his will still gripped the atmosphere. He would not go quietly.
He would expend the last dregs of his soul to bring the sky crashing down on them, to bury them in a tomb of ice and despair.
They may survive, but that doesn't matter now, for he wants them to suffer more than anything else.
He raised his cracking, black-veined arms towards the oppressive clouds, a final command forming on his lips.
Adam didn't move. He simply whispered under his breath, "Alice. Scorched Earth. Now."
Across the battlefield, a dozen seemingly dead pieces of wreckage glowed with a sudden, fierce internal light.
It was the debris of the first Null-Suit. The shattered mechanical arms. The crumpled torso plate. The discarded leg guard. Each piece, scattered during the battle, now triggered.
They erupted.
The detonations were deafening, a simultaneous chain of thunderclaps. But the force was secondary.
The true horror was the light.
Pure, actinic, concentrated ultraviolet light burst from each epicenter, alongside shrapnel clouds of superheated silver particulate.
It was a sunburst born from a dozen points on the ground, a network of cleansing fury that engulfed the entire clearing.
The artificial night recoiled. The UV bombs were like white-hot needles stabbing into the heart of Dracula's darkness.
The vampire king's final roar of summoning transformed into a scream of absolute, soul-rending agony.
He was caught in the overlapping waves of lethal light. His skin, already cracking, blackened and smoked.
His magnificent cape ignited. He was thrown backward, a flaming, shrieking comet of despair.
Blade flinched, his vampiric half recoiling instinctively at the sudden, overwhelming UV bath.
But he was standing right beside Adam. Two of Adam's mechanical arms had instantly snapped together, their shields merging and angling to form a large, curved barrier between them and the nearest blasts.
The concussive force hammered the shield, and the reflected UV glare was blinding even from behind it, but they were protected.
As the light and thunder faded, replaced by the ringing in their ears and the sizzle of burning vampire flesh, Blade turned to look at Adam.
The assessment in his eyes was no longer just that of an ally. It was a cold, professional reevaluation.
This man had planned for this. He'd used his own dismemberment, his own discarded armor, as components of a final, horrific trap.
He was a strategist of a depth that bordered on prophetic madness. The thought was ice in Blade's veins.
If this man ever fell to the vampiric curse, with this mind, with this preparation… he would make Dracula look like a petulant child. He would be an extinction-level event.
Worse yet, Adam had already expressed the desire to become a vampire, so when he glimpsed the glistening realization of opportunity in Adam's eyes, he had to interfere.
"Cypher," Blade growled, his voice loud for Adam wasn't a man of hesitation. "Don't!!!!"
But he was too late.
As the smoke and light cleared, revealing Dracula's smoldering, nearly motionless form lying in a crater of scorched earth, Adam was already moving.
The thrusters on his four free mechanical arms ignited. The two shielding arms retracted.
"Worry not, my friend. I mean, what's the worst that can happen? I rule the world?" Adam said, his voice calm over the comms. "Jesus Chris can only hope to be me, so that's a good thing, hahahaha."
He shot forward across the clearing before Blade could even take a step.
Dracula was alive, but only in the most technical sense.
He was a ruin. His body was a charred, blackened husk, the cracking sounds now continuous.
He tried to push himself up, to curse, to spit, but only a weak gurgle emerged.
Adam landed before him with a heavy thud. Two mechanical arms shot out, their claws clamping with crushing force around Dracula's shoulders, pinning the vampire lord to the ground.
The remaining four arms angled their thrusters downward.
"NO! CYPHEEEER!" Blade's roar echoed across the clearing. He broke into a sprint, his body screaming in protest.
"DON'T YOU DARE! IF YOU BECOME ONE OF THEM, I SWEAR TO ALL THAT'S HOLY, I WILL HUNT YOU TO THE END OF THE EARTH! STOP!"
Adam didn't even look back. He looked down at Dracula's ruined face. The hellfire in the vampire's eyes was guttering out, but the hatred remained, an eternal ember.
"Tell me, Vlad," Adam muttered, "How long has it been since you've enjoyed sunrise?"
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