The Vampire’s Templar

After resting with Kagriss on the cave floor by the shore, letting her hair dry with the help of a little magic, Camilla got to her feet.

By now, she managed to do most things like getting up without doing stupid things like hitting her hand on the floor. As with all things, improvements came quick at first, quickly slowing to a crawl afterwards. Right now, her recovery was still in its honeymoon period, so she was improving her motor skills by leaps and bounds, adjusting to her new size.

Effective combat may have to wait for a few more days, but Camilla was quite confident that she could overpower most things she came across on the way back. She had never felt such power within her before. The current her without any magical enhancement was close to the level of strength she had while being supported by Kagriss. That was the difference an entire tier of evolution made.

She stretched and yawned. “Do you think we can leave now? What do you think happened to the others while we were inside that strange place?”

“I’m honestly not sure. I still haven’t figured out what exactly that place was, and I don’t think I will,” Kagriss said, sighing in disappointment. “If I could, I would like to study it in detail. I don’t know if I’ll ever get the chance again.”

Camilla patted her back, consoling her. She made sure to control her strength so that she didn’t accidentally hit Kagriss. That would make things awkward.

“Let’s go then.”

With a burst of magic, she blew off the rest of the water droplets still stuck in her hair. For her damp clothes, she messed with her blood bond to expel the moisture from the lake. In an instant, she was completely dry, as if she had never fallen into the water. That kind of embarrassing moment will just have to remain a secret between her and Kagriss.

The only exit in this huge cavern was a large door a size smaller than the one they saw in the hall with all the structures yet having the same style of design. When they approached it, the door opened by itself, pushed along by an invisible force that reminded Camilla of the way the doors in the castle opened for them in that strange place.

In other words, the power of the flugel was not completely restricted to that place, but actually encompassed the entire dungeon.

The huge double doors led to an unlit tunnel which Camilla and Kagriss entered without hesitation. It was a really long tunnel that winded and bended like a snack until Camilla lost all sense of direction and could do no more than follow it.

“How long is this going to keep going? It’s almost as long as the tunnel Beitra dug on our way in!”

No sooner did they say that, did her sensitive ears pick up a small sound that wasn’t the echoes from their footsteps from further inside the tunnel. It didn’t sound like the source was too far away, but thanks to how well sound traveled in an enclosed space like this, the sound source was probably still a decent distance away.

Camilla and Kagriss exchanged glances before picking up their speed, no longer on foot but were instead flying through the tunnels to eliminate the sound of their footsteps.

Kagriss was entirely silent while Camilla’s wings were almost as quiet as an owl’s. Without any more extra noise that jumbled the echoing sounds and the rapidly shrinking distance between them and their source, Camilla managed to make out what they were.

Fighting. Most obvious of them, and the sound that traveled most clearly, was the clank of metal striking a hard object. Under the clamoring of metallic weapons were the duller thuds caused by blunt impact, as well as the cries of warriors screaming to be heard by each other over the ruckus.

It was still too far to make out the words, but that soon changed. At the same time, the tunnels ahead of Camilla and Kagriss brightened, and they could see a small orange hole at the end where the tunnels opened up and were illuminated with fire or some other orange light.

“Group C, switch out with Group D and take a break. Group A, prepare for battle in fifteen minutes! Be ready to support if needed!” a female voice shouted. The higher pitch pierced through the air, standing out from the other sounds.

“That’s Cadaelia’s voice. She’s there?”

“Seems like it. They’re fighting something. Will you be okay?” Kagriss asked. Her eyes filled with concern as she looked Camilla up and down, as if searching for a potential problem.

Camilla laughed. “It’ll be fine. I’m not a complete cripple, and even if I make a mistake, I have you helping me. Blades are forged in fire, and I have a feeling that if I fight for real, I’ll get used to my body faster, so don’t worry!” She winked.

However, Kagriss didn’t react to her wink and still looked reluctant to let her join. Only when Camilla looked up at her with big round eyes did she finally give in.

“Fine, I’ll let you join. By the way, the new you also look really cute with that expression.”

“…Okay, thanks.” It worked and she was still cute, so why did it feel so embarrassing…

Camilla pursed her lips and concentrated on flying. Luckily for her, flying didn’t change much even after she evolved, or she’d be flying into the walls over and over. All she had to do was adjust to her new weight while flying.

The orange light at the end of the tunnel grew larger while the sounds grew louder.

Camilla made a gesture to stop and a few meters away from the entrance, Camilla and Kagriss landed and hid their mana, creeping toward the orange light. Now that they were this close, Camilla realized that the light wasn’t from a fire at all.

There was a thin, transparent film that shimmered with orange light that wrapped over the opening.

Camilla reached out to touch it but Kagriss grabbed her hand and pulled it back. “Don’t do that. It has spatial magic weaved into it.”

“Oh…okay…” Camilla muttered, looking sheepish. “Formations again?”

“Correct. If you touch it, you’ll be affected by the spatial magic hidden within it. I think it’s a teleport spell, but I’m not sure since spatial magic is new to me.”

“So what does it mean if there’s spatial magic?” Camilla asked. She peered through the transparent film, trying to make out what was happening beyond.

“My guess is that the space here is disconnected from what we’re seeing in the film. Even though sound and light can reach us, that’s only because of the magic,” Kagriss said. “If we touch it, we’ll probably be teleported to the location we’re seeing, and since they made it a teleport and did not physically connect the places, it’s probably a one-way teleport.”

“One-way, huh…?” Camilla sighed. “That’s a shame, but that flugel probably has her reasons.”

“Let’s see what’s going on first before we go in.”

“Right; let’s see… For starters, I see Cadaelia,” Camilla said, focusing on the elf.

The vice-captain of the Regalius Litha detachment was standing close to the middle of friendly lines with a clear view of the battlefield. A shield shimmered in front of her, protecting her from stray attack. It was obvious that she was the director of the battle. But where was the captain?

“There’s Beitra. He’s awake and fighting.”

“Oh?” Camilla looked where Kagriss pointed and quickly found her target. The stone elemental faced off with one of the enemies alone when the other hunters outnumbered their enemies. The terrain and the enemies’ size worked against them because the cave provided a bottleneck where the hunters could lock down the frontlines and not have to worry about being flanked. At the same time, Camilla noticed that should the frontlines collapse, they had nowhere to retreat, at least from what she could see. There were some blind spots from her vantage point.

But as long as she wasn’t wrong, the hunters were cornered and seemed to be making their last stand.

As for the enemies, they were easy to spot. They were angelic knights of stone—well, they were probably more like stone flugel knights—that resembled the titan that fought them in the sculpture hall, only much smaller, only twice as tall as a human. Even so, they were still on par with the already massive skeleton knights that Camilla once faced.

Although they now lacked the sheer power that the titan possessed, they gained speed, agility, and numbers in exchange. Perhaps the only flaw was that the smaller knights recovered slower from damage than the titan, but overall, it was much more efficient to deploy so many smaller knights than having one huge titan.

“By the way, Camilla, don’t you think there’s too many people there?”

“Really? There’s…wait, around two hundred? I see Ismelda!” Camilla said, pointing at a familiar figure sitting against a wall. She had her teeth around the neck of a small female elf that looked suspiciously like Victoria. Camilla’s finger jerked and she became speechless. “What is she doing?!”

“What do you think she’s doing?” Kagriss shot back. “She needs blood to go on, remember?”

“Oh…right. But that girl looks—” —Like Victoria…

“Why do you think Ismelda picked her?”

“I know why. But if I were separated from you, I wouldn’t look for a replacement!” Camilla muttered.

“You wouldn’t look for a replacement, but say you were really hungry and on the verge of going berserk. Would you rather drink the blood of someone who looks like me, or someone who does not?”

“…Fiiine. I get it, I get it,” Camilla said with a sigh. Why was Kagriss defending Ismelda all of a sudden anyways?

While they were talking, Ismelda finished her meal and pushed the elf girl back. She healed the wounds on the blushing elf girl’s neck and stood up. Despite her smallish frame that was even shorter than the elf girl she had been snacking on, she looked reliable and the whole atmosphere of the battle shifted, changing from a defensive fight for survival to an offense.

The Group D hunters rushed forward without warning, their sudden ferocity pushing back even the heavy stone knights. The mages standing in the backline fired with renewed vigor, blasting heads and limbs off the knights with persistent, pinpoint strikes.

Only then did Cadaelia’s order come, being a second late for once. “Group D, create some space for Ismelda to work with. Group A, step up to support. Once we demolish this group, we’ll be able to rest for a bit.”

“Yes ma’am!” the members of the two groups cried. There were hunters from all three teams that split at the three gates, but right now, they were fighting side by side. Somehow, they had all come together and were working together to survive the onslaught of stone knights.

From the size of the lithic debris piled up in the cave, the hunter coalition had already defeated dozens if not hundreds of knights. Now, a handful more were about to join their friends in the debris pile.

Group A and D focused their firepower, knocking the stone knights back. Beitra grabbed a knight and tossed it into its comrades, sending them crashing to the ground. An instant later, a bright pink light filled the cave. Although the light went as fast as it came, a mere flash, Camilla still shivered.

Kagriss noticed it immediately. “Is something wrong? Are you cold?”

Camilla shook her head. How could she, an undead, be cold? No, she was shaking from…fright. Or was it excitement? The nostalgia was getting to her and she sighed, her shaking stopped. “It takes me back to the first time I saw that very same flash,” she said. “And then it kept coming. Every time, it meant that one of us would die.”

The source of the flash was none other than Ismelda.

With her custom-made blade, there was little that she could not cut through with pure strength. But that brute force was not the limits of Ismelda’s power. Using her sword as a catalyst, she could use a powerful blood magic with immense cutting power, and each time she used that spell, a pink flash would result from it.

Camilla looked over at the stone knights and found Ismelda standing next to one of them with her sword already out of her sheath. The flash had been so bright and unexpected that Camilla missed the moment Ismelda moved, and the only evidence that Ismelda ever used the spell was the wisps of pink smoke that rose from the blade. 

A moment later, the upper torso of a stone knight fell to the ground. A clean cut. Something flew through the air and landed in Ismelda’s waiting hand.