' Let's finish this. '
Seeing, Jay with a sword in his hand.
"A magician with a sword is just a kid with a toothpick." The Vampire muttered with a mock. He then grinned and screamed. "Let's me teach you how to swing!"
The Vampire lunged, his body becoming a streak of crimson. Jay swung the massive blade in a wide, desperate arc to intercept.
CLANK
The collision sounded like a hammer hitting an anvil. Jay had successfully parried the strike, but the feedback was brutal. The weight of the Vampire swing and the sword itself was immense, and Jay's lack of formal training showed immediately.
His grip faltered, the hilt nearly sliding through his fingers as the Vampire's superior physical strength sent a jarring shock through his shoulders.
CLANK
The Vampire didn't give him a moment to reset. He pivoted, his claws coming in a low, horizontal sweep. Jay didn't have the footwork to dodge, so he slammed the flat of the blade into the dirt, using the massive sword as a makeshift shield.
The claws raked across the blue steel with a screeching sound that set Jay's teeth on edge. He was being pushed back, his boots carving deep lines in the mud as he struggled to maintain his balance against the sheer weight of the weapon.
CLANK
The friction of the battle was a brutal teacher, and Jay was a fast learner.
The initial clumsiness, the staggering weight of the blade and the jarring shock of the parries began to smooth out into something terrifyingly efficient.
Each time their weapons collided, the physical gap that separated a human novice from a Vampire Noble grew thinner, erased by the cold and relentlessness of Jay.
Jay felt a jolt of electricity run up his arm. It wasn't the searing burn of the Church's light, it was a cadenza of pure focused energy.
The sword felt... right somehow. It felt as though his own mana, usually cold and resistant, found a resonance in the ancient steel. He felt his body become lighter as his perceptions sharpening until the world seemed to move in slow motion.
Xenovia watched, her heart thumping against her ribs. She saw the stranger nearly lose the blade in the first two exchanges, looking like a total amateur. But by the third, the rhythm changed. And suddenly, it's as if her sword is his naturally.
'This is a crazy sword,' Jay thought.
The Cadenza of the Purplish-Blue
The Manthar Noble felt the shift in the air immediately. The advantage he had in physicality and speed seemed to evaporate in an instant. Jay moved. It wasn't the jagged, mechanical teleportation from before.
From a heavy swings, It was turned into a fluid sweeping dash. He swung the massive blade, and it felt like an extension of his own arm.
CLANK.
The Vampire tried to block with his reinforced claws, but the impact sent him skidding back thirty feet. His eyes widened in pure disbelief.
"What the fuck... you were just a kid swinging a stick a second ago! How are you-"
Jay didn't let him finish. He felt the sword harmonizing with his Incinerate Anthem. The bluish aura of the blade began to shift, swirling with a dark, purplish tint. The holy light of Durandal was being dyed by Jay's unique mana, creating a terrifying, violet-blue flame that licked the edges of the steel.
Xenovia watched in absolute awe. "Durandal... it's changing. It's... transforming?"
She had never seen the blade react this way. She knew that Durandal could transformed into type of Excalibur, but this is different.
Jay let his instincts take over. He didn't think about the sword techniques Sister Andrea had shown him during her fight, he simply allowed the connection to the sword to guide his movements. He became a whirlwind of purple afterimages.
Slash. Parry. Riposte.
The Vampire was being pressed hard, his wings shredded by the violet-blue aura. He tried to fly away again, but Jay swung the sword into empty air.
The purplish-blue arc of energy didn't travel through the air as it suddenly vanished and reappeared directly behind the Vampire's back.
"AGGGGGHHHHH!" the Noble screamed as the holy energy, combined with Incinerate Anthem aura carved a deep cauterized canyon into his spine.
The Vampire was in a state of pure fury and terror. He realized he wasn't fighting a priest or an assassin. He was fighting something that defied the natural order of the supernatural world. He spread his wings wide, trying to make a final desperate dash for the clouds.
He didn't care about his pride anymore, he just wanted to survive this disastrous night. A night that supposed to be an enjoyable dinner, a farming season.
"I will be back, human!" the Vampire yelled as he climbed.
But Jay didn't chase him. He stood calmly, a flicker of purple embers blazing from the hilt of the sword.
Then he didn't swing his sword, instead he charged his elbow and then throw the sword towards the flying Vampire like a hunting Caladbolg.
The sword left Jay's hand with incredible velocity, tearing through space and spinning like a propeller of violet light.
"Stupid! You thought that would hit me!" the Vampire yelled as he flung.
But mid-flight, the sword vanished into a spatial rift.
A split second later, the Vampire felt a cold, sharp intrusion in his chest.
The purplish-blue sword had emerged from a rift directly behind him, piercing through his back and out through his sternum. The force of the throw, combined with the spatial momentum, launched him down toward the ground like a pinned insect.
He was impaled to the earth, the blade buried deep into the soil.
"AGGGGGHHHHH!"
The Vampire Noble of the House of Manthar thrashed, but the holy aura of the sword acted like a divine anchor, paralyzing his nervous system.
Xenovia and Irina couldn't move. They had spent years training, being told that vampires were the apex predators of the night. Yet here was a nameless man in a cloak, who had just used a Holy Sword to pin a Noble like a specimen in a jar. Impaled him like a kebabs.
Jay walked toward the screaming Vampire. Each step was deliberate. With a flicker of purple embers, he activated a wide-range teleportation circle as the purple embers engulfing himself and the impaled Noble.
In a flash, they were gone from the clearing, reappearing on the desolate moonlit shore of Lake Balaton.
The Vampire was still screaming, his blood staining the white sand of the beach. He looked up at Jay, his beautiful, doll-like face now a mask of weeping sores and terror.
"Please!!!!" the Noble shrieked, his voice breaking. "Don't kill me! I have everything you want! Money! Ancient artifacts! The most beautiful women from every races! I can give you immortality! Anything you want, Human!"
Jay stood over him, the moon reflecting in his dark hazel eyes. He was silent for a long time, the only sound the gentle lapping of the lake water against the shore.
"What is a 'human' to you?" Jay finally asked, in an empty tone.
The Vampire blinked, his mind racing to find an answer that would save his life. "Human... yeah, they are our neighbors! We live and share this beautiful world! It was a mistake, a misunderstanding! We can coexist—"
A purple ember flickered on the Vampire's left leg. It didn't activate a spell. It just burned.
"ARGHHHHHHH!!!"
"Try again," Jay said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Speak your mind."
The Vampire's eyes glazed over with a mixture of agony and realization. He looked at Jay, and for the first time, he saw the hollow void behind the boy's gaze piercing from the shadow of his hood.
He knew there was no mercy coming. If he was going to die, he would die with the truth of his kind.
"Humans..." the Vampire spat, blood bubbling in his throat. "You are food. You are livestock. You are filthy, short-lived creatures that exist only to fuel our greatness! Does a farmer care for the plea of the cattle he slaughters for his dinner? No! There is no evil in survival! It just so happens that your race is at the bottom of the food chain! You are nothing but walking blood-bags!"
He laughed then, a crazed, rattling sound. "Kill me! But remember that for every one of me, there are a thousand others feasting on your kind right now! You are prey!"
Jay stared at him. The silence stretched.
Then, Jay began to laugh.
It wasn't a hero's laugh. it was a dry, hollow sound that came from deep in his chest. It was the first time Jay had laughed since his world had been reduced to ash in Romania. He laughed for a good ten seconds, the sound echoing across the dark lake.
"Thank you, bat," Jay said.
The Vampire looked up with a glimmer of hope.
"Yes... you understand? You see the logic? Please... spare me."
Jay's laughter died instantly. His face returned to that cold, static mask.
"I understand perfectly," Jay said. "But I've never seen a human plead for their life to their cattle."
The Vampire's eyes widened to the size of saucers. "Wait-!"
Jay didn't wait. He didn't use a spell. He didn't use a sword. He simply released the Incinerate Anthem at full output.
A pillar of violet flame erupted from the Vampire's body, reaching toward the sky. There was no smoke, no smell of burning meat.
Only the sound of a soul being erased from existence. In a single second, the Noble of the House of Manthar was reduced to a handful of grey ash that the wind immediately scattered across the surface of the lake.
Jay stood alone in the dark. There was no sense of triumph. No happiness. Only that familiar, heavy hollowness. He looked at the reflection of the moon in the water, his mind drifting back to the library, to the blood on the floor and to the silence of his own heart.
He looked down at the sword. The purplish-blue aura had faded, returning to its original state. A beautiful, golden-edged blue blade.
He picked it up and vanished.
Back in the clearing, Irina had successfully stabilized and heal the drained young Exorcists.
None of them had died, though they would be bedridden for weeks. Xenovia sat in the dirt, her head in her hands, her mind reeling from everything she had witnessed.
CLANK.
The sound of metal hitting the earth made both girls jump.
Stuck in the ground between them was Durandal. The sword was clean, the mud and gore seemingly washed away by its own holy aura.
Xenovia looked around wildly, but there was no one there. The man in the black cloak had returned her weapon and vanished without a word.
"He... he gave it back," Irina whispered, clutching her chest. "I thought... I thought he was going to steal it."
Xenovia stood up, her fingers closing around the familiar hilt. The sword felt heavy again. Cumbersome. Not like it had felt in the hands of that stranger when she saw him wield it.
"Who was he?" Xenovia asked the empty forest. "Who could use Durandal like that and then just... walk away?"
She looked toward the trees, but only the wind answered her.
Hidden in the deep darkness of a high oak tree, Jay watched them for a moment longer. He saw that they were safe, that these young human exorcists would live to see another day. He felt the weight of his own mana exhaustion pulling at his consciousness.
A flicker of purple embers blazed at his feet.
"Time to go back," he whispered.
In a flash of violet light, the clearing was empty, leaving only the sound of the wind and the two young girls staring into the night.