Luke couldn't stop running his fingers along the High-Frequency Murasama.
The blade was gorgeous. Deadly. Everything he could have hoped for from a top-tier weapon drop.
There was just one problem.
"Where the hell do I charge this thing?"
He'd examined every inch of the hilt, the sheath, the trigger mechanism. No port. No slot. No obvious power source.
"Wireless charging, maybe? But that would waste massive amounts of energy..."
The Murasama wasn't some infinite-power anime weapon. Without juice, it was just a very sharp sword—impressive, sure, but not the reality-cutting monster it was supposed to be. The high-frequency mode was what made it special. Vibrating at the molecular level, disrupting atomic bonds, slicing through materials that should have been impossible to cut.
With power, this blade could cleave through almost anything. Adamantium? The supposedly indestructible metal bonded to Wolverine's skeleton? The Murasama would cut it like butter. Because adamantium, however hard, was still made of atoms. And atoms could be separated if you hit them with the right frequency.
Vibranium was the exception. That stuff had a weird molecular structure that didn't move—couldn't move—no matter how much kinetic energy you threw at it. The Murasama's vibrations would just... stop. Bounce off. Do nothing.
But vibranium was rare. Everything else? Fair game.
If I could charge it.
Luke sighed and stored the sword back in his inventory. He'd have to shelve it for now. Maybe once he saved Tony Stark, he could convince the genius billionaire to figure out a charging solution. The tech levels shouldn't be that different between the Metal Gear universe and the MCU, right?
And Tony Stark could basically invent anything if you gave him enough motivation.
"I Am Iron Man" energy should handle it.
The good news: the vampire bar hadn't had any security cameras. Their identities remained secret. The reinforcements had searched for hours and found nothing.
The better news: Luke had time to prepare properly for round two.
He purchased a signal jammer—industrial grade, wide range, expensive as hell. Worth every penny if it meant cutting off vampire communications during a raid.
But he didn't rush into the next attack. The vampires would be on high alert after losing an entire bar. He needed to let them relax. Get complacent. Forget that something had hunted them.
So Luke trained.
"Ninety-seven... ninety-eight... ninety-nine... one hundred..."
Sweat dripped onto the floor as Luke collapsed after his final pushup. His arms burned. His core screamed. Every muscle in his upper body felt like it had been dipped in acid.
When he'd started, he could barely manage fifteen pushups a day. Now he was doing two hundred. His arms had actual definition. His abs were starting to show. The transformation hadn't been painless—those first few days, he'd been in so much agony he'd actually cried—but his body was finally adapting.
"Still not enough," he muttered, forcing himself to sit up.
He'd tried lifting Riven's runic greatsword once. The thing had nearly crushed his foot. Riven swung it around like it weighed nothing, all fluid grace and deadly precision. In Luke's hands, it was an immovable anchor.
He estimated the blade weighed somewhere between a hundred and two hundred pounds. No wonder Riven was so strong. You didn't swing something like that without building serious muscle.
"Luke, I finished scouting." Riven pushed open the door, not even slightly out of breath despite having just returned from a reconnaissance run. "The church basement. There are at least three hundred vampires inside."
"Three hundred?" Luke raised an eyebrow. "That's a lot more than the bar."
"Yes. Should we proceed?"
Luke considered. He'd made some upgrades since the Queens raid.
Silver bullets, for one. The UV flashlight worked, but it was slow. You had to hold the beam on a target for several seconds to fully ash them. In a combat situation, that was an eternity. Silver was different. One hit and they were done.
The bullets weren't solid silver—too soft for actual ammunition—but he'd acquired a bunch of spent casings and replated the projectiles. Silver-coated rounds loaded into fresh cartridges.
His primary weapon: an M9 pistol with an extended magazine. Twenty rounds per mag. He'd also brought a Remington M870 shotgun loaded with silver slugs for when things got messy.
"Absolutely we proceed," Luke said. "Three hundred vampires means three hundred chances at good drops."
Waifus, here I come.
A church, of all places.
Luke found it almost funny. In a universe where Ghost Rider existed—where Heaven and Hell were confirmed real—vampires had decided to set up shop beneath a house of God.
Ballsy. Stupid, but ballsy.
About a month had passed since the Queens raid. Long enough for the vampire community to lower their guard. There might have been other hunters operating in that time—Blade was definitely active somewhere in the city—but Luke had Riven. Whatever heightened security the vampires had implemented wouldn't matter.
The infiltration was clean.
Riven slipped in first, silent as shadow, and disabled the four guards at the entrance. Didn't kill them—just snapped their necks. They'd regenerate eventually, given enough time, but "eventually" was measured in hours for that kind of damage.
Luke followed up with the UV flashlight, reducing the paralyzed vampires to ash before they could heal.
Then Riven opened the main door, and Luke charged through.
The vampires inside weren't partying this time.
They were feeding.
Bodies—human bodies—lay scattered across the basement floor. Some were clearly dead. Others were still being drained, too weak to scream. The vampires crouched over their victims like animals, faces buried in throats and wrists, lost in the ecstasy of consumption.
Luke didn't hesitate.
BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG—
The M9 roared in his hands, muzzle flash strobing through the darkness. Each silver round found a target. Each target dissolved into ash before they could process what was happening.
The vampires scrambled to react, but bullets traveled faster than supernatural reflexes could compensate for. By the time they understood they were under attack, twenty of them were already dead.
Luke burned through his first magazine in under a minute. Way faster than UV. Way more efficient.
Reload.
His hands moved automatically—muscle memory from hours of practice at home—but seeing vampires charging toward him sent a spike of panic through his system. Fingers fumbled. The fresh magazine didn't seat properly.
Shit shit shit—
He drew his backup M9 instead.
The lead vampire's eyes widened as Luke raised the second pistol and fired point-blank into its face. It died confused, having just noticed that Luke had holsters on both hips, and two more under his arms.
Four pistols. Eighty rounds before he needed to actually reload anything.
The charge faltered. Luke used the breathing room to properly seat his first magazine, then advanced with a gun in each hand.
But the vampires had learned.
These weren't the unprepared ravers from the Queens bar. These were survivors of multiple hunter attacks—Blade had apparently been busy this month—and they'd adapted. They took cover. They drew their own weapons. They started shooting back.
"Fuck!"
Luke dove behind a stone pillar as bullets sparked off the floor where he'd been standing. His body armor could stop some rounds, but he wasn't interested in testing its limits. Getting shot hurt even when the bullet didn't penetrate.
He was pinned.
Dozens of vampires had him zeroed, and more were repositioning to flank. His silver bullets were great for offense, but they didn't help much when he couldn't stick his head out without eating a lead salad.
If only I had Cú Chulainn's Protection from Arrows...
The Fate servant's signature defensive ability would have been perfect right now. Supernatural deflection of all projectile attacks. But the System hadn't blessed him with anything from FGO yet.
What he did have was Riven.
She'd already moved to the church's utility room, where she found the junction box and activated the signal jammer Luke had given her. The vampires reaching for their phones discovered they had no signal. The ones trying the landlines found dead air—Luke and Riven had cut the cables before breaching.
No calls for help. No reinforcements incoming.
This place had just gone dark.
PLZ THROW POWERSTONES.
300 , 500 , 1000 for each milestone 1 Bonus Chapter.