Chương 27

As he approached the castle, the sound of battle joined the thunder above. It grew louder and louder as he drew closer to the gates. Oliver crouched in the bushes and watched the final moments as two different factions he was all too familiar with tore one another apart. While he was gone, it seemed that things had come to a head with the vampire and werewolves. He'd thankfully missed all that drama these last few days. The last thing he wanted was to get tangled up in a mess like that.

Oliver assumed the werewolves must have launched their attack immediately after the sun set. Judging by the scene before him, it looked to not have gone their way. A dozen dead werewolves were scattered across the street, dirty and stinking of blood and wet dog. Alongside them were a couple headless vampires, but not even half the casualties the werewolves had taken. Several more vampires were missing limbs and stood with torn clothing. But they still remained standing and alive… or, unalive?

Regardless, the undead could take on far more damage without permanently going under. That was one of the main reasons vampires remained the ruling force in Oliver's biome. As he watched them, he noticed something odd about his vision. His Uncanny Sight activated and showed him a ghostly version of the werewolves' humanoid forms. That was new. But those ethereal forms dissipated as the werewolves died. It gave him further information about his skill.

It was like seeing into the very soul of an individual, despite how they attempted to hide. The last remaining werewolf, in its beast form, launched itself at one of the injured vampires. The bloodsucker dodged to the side, taking only a grazing rake of the werewolf's claws to the shoulder, and implanted a copper sword into the beast's side. Neither of them could hold iron or silver, so that limited their arsenal and made killing one another a great deal more difficult.

Despite the copper blade protruding from its side, the werewolf remained alive. The two of them traded blows back and forth. None of the vampire's peers moved to assist as the two creatures of the night dueled one another. Some spectated while others already started walking back through the castle gate. Oliver genuinely debated whether or not he should step in to steal some kills. So many of the vampires were harshly wounded. And he was at a decently high level now.

He went as far as to count his remaining silver bullets. It would be absolutely ridiculous though to give away his position. But those levels tempted him. If Kiki had been present, he had no doubt the [Neon Samurai] would have already charged forward, katana in hand.

"Mister… help me, please," a weak voice called out. Oliver spun on a heel and spotted a female werewolf child, caught halfway between its beast and human forms. Half of her left hand had been obliterated. And the right side of her face was drenched in blood, the eye swollen shut. He marveled at the fact that the vampires hadn't already smelled the fresh blood on her and sucked her dry. But he supposed that with so many dead werewolves in the street, this one's scent might be masked.

A new quest icon popped up in his peripheral vision. He mentally brought it up and scanned the details. He blinked when he reached the final line.

"Damn," he muttered.

"That's a really nice reward."

"Please help me," the werewolf girl said again. Then she fell into a fit of coughing. Oliver winced at the noise, but it didn't seem to draw any attention. When she finished, there were specks of blood on her lips like a dog that had just finished messily gobbling up a plate of spaghetti.

"Fine. I accept."

"Thank you, mister." The girl's chest heaved and she tried to smile. She was dying. Oliver thought back to what Ben said about these people. The adults were mutants with brain implants. But what were the children? He'd been trapped in the Nightmare Biome for five years now, what were the children who'd been born here? Were they still granted agency and autonomy? Were they puppeted by the experimenters like the adult muted clones? The quest said nothing about keeping the child alive.

It required him to break into the castle's dungeons and free her little brother. The quest's synopsis mentioned that this whole attack was due to the vampires kidnapping werewolf children to perform experiments on. Reading between the lines, Oliver assumed this meant developing some sort of vampire-werewolf hybrid. Which would be an absolute terror of a monster to deal with. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

He'd completed enough quests over the years to immediately suspect that some hybrid monstrosity, of course, would serve as a boss and obstacle for the quest. Still, he only needed to free the brother, there was no strict requirement for him to fight the boss monster. Since Oliver already planned to search the castle for Ben's server, he figured this dungeon with the imprisoned werewolf might be on the way. After all, what place better to hide the server than a secure underground dungeon?

The reward made the slight added risk beyond worth it. It would grant him an enchanted bracelet to allow him to assume the form of a wolf. Without the actual lycanthrope disease's usual debuffs to his life. Insanely powerful. After a moment's hesitation, Oliver started bandaging up the wounded werewolf girl. It was probably an idiotic move. Better for her to die and not be a resource of information for the vampires to use against him. She'd probably not survive much longer even with his help.

They'd track her down and devour her blood until she was nothing more than a husk of skin and bone. And they might not leave even the bone intact if they were particularly hungry and went for the marrow. Also, if he killed her himself, that would be a bit more exp for himself. Still though, he felt better after his quick first aid, like a weight had been removed from his shoulders. The werewolf girl now stood a chance at survival. Perhaps not much of one, but it was a chance all the same.

He sent her on her way, stumbling down the hill through the bushes. Meanwhile, in front of the castle gate, the vampires had finished their battle with the final werewolf. The beast had been stabbed with two more copper blades, one in the ribs and the other in the eye. The werewolf's opponent was kneeling to the side, now missing an arm. Two of the vampires were hard at work dragging off the bodies. They seemed to be putting them in piles.

An outsider might think the piles looked random, but Oliver knew the dead were likely organized based on their blood types. He'd heard that they all tasted different and that some vampires were picky about which they drank.

"What happens when the five experimentees find the hidden biome and escape?" Oliver asked in a whisper.

"Will that girl get killed with the rest of us still down here?"" I don't know,"Ben replied from his bag." There's no data on their future uses. Perhaps they'd be recycled for future experiments. But that would likely require their minds to be wiped. If it's deemed too much effort, I doubt our captors will bother with it. And it's even less likely the artificial people would be permitted to remain here unsupervised.

They'll likely have the chips in their brain activated and drop dead upon the completion of the experiment." Oliver frowned but said nothing else. He activated Shadow Slink and stalked one of the vampires retreating into the castle. The bloodsucker held a torso and head of werewolf meat, the limbs having been claimed by his peers. Vampires had acute scenes and normally he wouldn't risk passing so close to them.

However, just as the abundance of blood had kept the werewolf girl from detection, Oliver now had the chance to use it to mask his presence as well. They were currently covered in blood from their fight outside. It was a gamble to rely on it as camouflage without knowing the exact extent of their senses, but it was a gamble that was actively paying off as he slipped into the castle grounds. The vampire he was following turned left into the gardens.

Oliver debated continuing into the main building of the castle, but instead veered to the left as well to continue stalking his current vampire. It was weakened from the battle and Oliver was nothing if not an opportunist. The garden was filled with gnarled, black vegetation. There were more poisonous plants than not. And those in the 'not' category still were pricklier than most cacti. It required Oliver to tread carefully.

The vampire stopped in front of a large, squat tree with stone obsidian leaves and red veins in its black bark. The vampire heaved the werewolf corpse's remains at the roots of the tree and began to chant in an unknown tongue. Some sort of religious ceremony then. The vampire's body language went stiff after the first few lines of the chant and his attention seemed laser focused on the base of the tree. Oliver decided to test the vampire's focus.

He tossed a small stone, rustling a fern a few feet to his enemy's left. No response. Lost in a trance, the vampire was at the most vulnerable moment Oliver could hope to find. Deciding he'd rather not discover what the ceremony might result in, Oliver decided to strike a quick and deceive blow. Unsheathing his shovel, he snuck up behind the vampire. The bloodsucker remained utterly oblivious to him right up to the moment when Oliver removed its head from its shoulders.

The lopped off head tumbled through the air and landed in the soil next to the werewolf body. The fanged mouth opened and closed, as if still attempting to get out the words of its chant, even without lungs. A few seconds later, the scarlet eyes rolled to the back of its head and the vampire's body deflated and its skin turned gray, as if aging a hundred years in a few seconds. Oliver let a slight smile touch the edges of his lips. One less vampire to terrorize his biome.

After years of living in fear of the undead bloodsuckers, the kill vindicated him and granted him a spiteful confidence. A pulsing red light cut off his revelry and interrupted his body looting. With the abrupt end of the vampire's stream of words, the scarlet veins on the tree throbbed. One of the roots poked out of the soil and pieced the werewolf body. In a matter of seconds, the tree had drained the body of blood and left behind a husk of a corpse.

Oliver scrambled back, narrowly dodging one of the other spear-like roots. It instead latched onto the vampire's head. The root pierced through the eye socket and out the neck. It pumped that blood into itself as well. Then it stopped. Shuddered. And went berserk.