Chapter 5: Survival at any cost

Without the spear piercing my body, I was still capable of casting spells and thus I quickly sealed the stump that was all that remained of my left arm, stemming the bleeding. Breathing heavily, I continued to glare defiantly at Vincent Lucard, determined to fight to the last.

To my surprise, the lord of vampires threw his spear aside. My eyes widened and I watched the weapon clatter away, clearing a bunch of ice as it skidded across the frozen surface.

"What…?"

"Oh, the Blood Spear of Longinus is truly an amazing weapon," Vincent assured me when he saw the shocked expression on my bloodied face. "Its ability to nullify all spells and seal the target's magic is unparalleled."

"Then why…?"

"However, it has its weaknesses," Vincent replied with a shrug. He raised a finger. "Firstly, in order to seal the target's magic, it must pierce the target."

He then raised a second finger and continued.

"Secondly, the Blood Spear of Longinus cannot kill. Oh, it can leave fatal wounds, but as long as it remains embedded in the target, the target cannot die. The cursed weapon will keep its target alive for as long as possible, slowly drinking its blood until all of its essence is drained. It can take weeks, it can take months, depending on how much blood the target possesses."

He then smirked.

"However, I don't intend for you to live for that long. I still need my spear to chase after the Hero and your other comrades, after all. But…you're not going to get away with killing my subordinates! I will definitely kill you!"

He clenched his hand into a fist and suddenly several dozen blood stakes burst from the ground and impaled my ruined body. I coughed out blood and jerked, my glasses dangling from my face, one of its lenses shattered from a blood stake. Writhing in agony, I nearly passed out.

Vincent leaned closer and grinned.

"I would like to drink your blood, but you don't deserve that honor."

I didn't reply, at least not verbally. Instead, I closed my eyes and focused the last of my energy into a couple of spells.

Since I was going to die, I was going to bring this guy down with me.

The lord of vampires had gotten careless. Discarding his spear like that, despite its magic nullifying properties. That was going to be his downfall. Absolute Zero ensured that this ice domain remained firmly under my control.

So I clenched my right fist.

"Ugh!?"

This time, it was Vincent's turn to grunt in pain when several hundred icicles erupted from the ground and pierced through his body. One particularly large icicle punched through his chest, destroying his heart and exiting through his back.

For a moment, Vincent hung limply on the forest of ice. His blood slowly dripped along the length of the numerous icicles, staining the translucent, crystalline structure red.

And then he jolted upward and smashed the ice apart with blood magic, his stakes lancing out of the ground and shattering the ice. He groaned as he dropped onto the ground and held his chest. The blood that had left his body was slowly returning to his body. It was taking a while, but his regenerative abilities were kicking in.

He was truly on a different level from his subordinates.

"That was an impressive attack," he admitted, tilting his head in respect. "If I were any other vampire, you would have killed me with that spell."

His hand dropped to his chest and I watched his heart reform and slowly began beating inside before the skin knitted together and healed. There wasn't even a scar from my last-ditch attack.

Vincent grinned and rubbed his now fully healed chest. He slowly approached me with a smirk before tapping the side of his head.

"You should have gone for the head."

"Yeah, I know." I slowly raised my remaining hand and snapped my fingers.

A gigantic icicle smashed into Vincent Lucard's head from behind and obliterated it. the headless lord of vampire staggered for a moment, as if not realizing that he was already dead, and then toppled.

Silence filled the air for a moment. Then the blood stakes vanished and I crashed onto the frozen ground. Even so, I was not taking anything for granted. I continued watching the headless corpse of Vincent Lucard for a few moments, but he never got up again. His head never regenerated.

Even the lord of vampires couldn't recover from the complete destruction of his head.

Honestly, I was lucky. I had no idea if my strategy would work. Double-casting was quite the risk, given the condition of my fatally wounded body. Fortunately, as I had intended, Vincent was distracted by my first spell and so did not see my second spell coming.

He had gotten careless and let his guard down when he thought I didn't have any cards left to play. Honestly, I was hoping that my first spell would kill him or at least trap him, but the lord of vampires had gotten complacent and allowed himself to get hit by my first spell so as to drive me into despair or that sort of cliché villain nonsense. To show off how whatever I do wouldn't kill him.

What an idiot. This was why you shouldn't waste time with grand villain speeches or showing off.

I let out a sigh of relief and then allowed my head to flop back down. Pain and exhaustion was burning through my body and I didn't have much time left to live.

"Damn it."

Was I going to die here?

I didn't' want to. I felt frustration. I felt rage. I felt despair. While I had defeated Vincent Lucard, he wasn't the one who had cut off my legs. He wasn't the one who had betrayed me. He was an enemy and he had fought me directly, without resorting to despicable schemes, heinous tricks or backstabbing.

Unlike my comrades, who I had fought alongside for several years now…only for them to plot my death in this final assault.

Comrades, my fucking ass!

My fury and frustration overwhelmed my despair. Those fuckers…! I will never let them get away with this! I was going to get my revenge on them, even if it was the last thing I would do!

"Fuck!"

I cursed, especially when I felt my life leaving me. My ice spells might have stopped the bleeding, but they weren't proper treatment. My body was weakening and I could see the darkness shroud the edges of my consciousness. It wouldn't be long before I finally expired.

Death had come to claim me.

Now that my mortality hung over me like a cloud, for the first time I felt fear. Not the usual kind of fear, but real actual fear, mixed with panic. I was going to die, and I had no idea how I was going to prevent death from claiming me.

I didn't want to die yet. I needed to take my revenge, no matter the cost!

But how…?

Rolling onto my front, I began crawling. Not toward the breached gate. The boulders that buried the entrance had sealed the exit, and with my current condition, there was no way I could summon enough ice to punch through the massive boulders.

That fucking Miranda had been thorough. They really wanted to make sure I was dead. Well, if I was more rational, it would have occurred to me that part of why she sealed the gate so tightly was to ensure that Vincent Lucard and his vampires wouldn't be able to pursue them unless they went through the trouble of clearing the rocks.

However, I was not in a rational and forgiving mood.

I was going to kill that bitch. I was going to kill all of them.

But in order to achieve that goal, first I ought to find a way to survive.

Looking around, I saw Vincent Lucard's corpse still lying motionlessly on the ground not very far away. Blood had pooled around his body, especially at his neck – where the precious fluid continued to leak out. The bleeding was gradually coming to a stop now that his heart had stopped pumping, but nonetheless there was a lot of blood.

At least he was dead. I shuddered to think of what would happen if his regenerative abilities were powerful enough to regenerate an entire head. Most likely, I would be screwed.

Wait a minute…

Shaking my head, I tossed away my half-broken glasses that continued to dangle from my battered face, and then slowly and painstakingly crawled toward Vincent's headless corpse with my final, remaining hand. It was an excruciating slow and painful process, with my fingers rubbed raw as I pulled myself forward one inch at a time. My stumps flailed about occasionally, but they did nothing to propel my movement.

Vampires were known for their incredible healing prowess. And I had heard legends about vampires, how they could transform humans or other sentient creatures into vampires by feeding them their blood.

If that was true, then my only chance lay in making it to Vincent's corpse and drinking his blood. I would be transformed into a vampire, but at this point, I didn't care if I was reincarnated as a spider as long as I survived. I'm a vampire, so what?

I didn't know how long I took. Vincent was about twenty meters away from my position. A distance I could easily cover in seconds if I was still whole. Having lost not just my legs, but also my left arm, I could only crawl literally singlehandedly toward his headless corpse over what seemed like hours. And that was on top of losing more blood. Fear continued to pound throughout my body when I noticed the darkness at the edges of my consciousness growing larger.

The effect of adrenaline was wearing off too and I could feel my right arm losing strength. I was glad that it wasn't my right arm that I had lost – it was my dominant arm, and if I had to rely on my left arm, I would have died long ago, before making it halfway. Even so, there were times when my arm just gave out on me and I collapsed exhausted after clawing myself several centimeters forward.

Gritting my teeth, I forced myself onward. Painstaking inch by inch. No matter how long it took, I refused to give up. But I knew my time was running out. By now, I was half-blind.

And then I reached Vincent's body. By some kind of providence, he had toppled forward, and this his stump of a neck was facing me. Breathing heavily, I scooped whatever blood I could from the ice and brought my shaking hand to my mouth.

The blood was thick and was more viscous than water, sticking to my hand and fingers. It wasn't something I could scoop up in mouthfuls and drank, so I desperately licked my hand, ignoring the sand and dirt that clung to the blood. I could feel my throat burn from the foreign fluids, but I didn't care. I continued to swipe at the blood and lick it off my fingers, desperately hoping that it would work.

For a moment, I thought it didn't. To be honest, I wasn't thinking much at that point. I was scooping and licking, swiping and smudging my hand before bringing it to my lips and tongue. My exhaustion was momentarily forgotten, and I indulged myself, almost like a man dying of thirst in a desert who had stumbled upon an oasis.

And then the pain struck.

"Kuh!"

Almost as if molten lava was flowing through my veins, something scalded through my body. I shrieked as I went into convulsions, feeling like a hundred burning knives were stabbing my insides. My bones creaked and protested before they snapped, and my muscles tore themselves apart from the violent spasms.

I let out another agonized scream before darkness engulfed my consciousness. Then…oblivion.