A thunderclap. A coin-sized hole where the vampire’s nose had been. A splattering shower of pink brain matter decorated the wall of the buildings.

  For a second, nothing happened. Adarin noted the angle, noted that the entire head behind the fa?ade of the face was just gone, torn to pieces by the slug. Then the vampire blinked. Slowly. Adarin gasped.

  The blinking sped up. Adarin channeled all his will into living wood and let the energy of his alteration core course through his body, regenerating connections and muscles. The vampire’s blinking quickened, his body shuddering like a man seizing on his feet. Why isn’t he falling over?

  It took five painful seconds for Adarin to regain remote control of his body. As soon as he could move, he went for the incendiary grenades without hesitation. He hurled them at the vampire. The mixture of napalm, quicklime, and magnesium fragments ignited into a bright white fire. The hiss of the flames and their searing heat warped nanites on Adarin’s computronium core surface, despite him being nearly five meters from the infernal statue. Yet the vampire merely stood there, shivering as if in the middle of a blizzard. Its flesh wasn’t burning so much as deforming—twisting droplets of meat sloughed off, forming bats; but in an instant they were incinerated.

  Adarin ordered his body to pick his core up, and the manipulator extended. At the same moment he bit his tongue. I should have— “Gavin. Gavin, get me all the alchemy supplies you can. Caustic, acidic, incendiary. I don’t care. I need it now.”

  Soldiers approached from all directions, carefully holding pikes, spells, and muskets at the ready, and Adarin gestured to a small group of colliers. “Get firewood. Pile it on him—now, now, now!”

  He barked several more sharply worded orders. As the grenadoes burned out, a pyre began entombing the vampire. Its face—its whole body—lost all human features and turned into a pillar of dark crimson wax that slowly churned and melted. Adarin stepped up close, grabbed a musketeer’s musket, and shot the creature in the face again. All the brain mass that had regenerated splattered out of the fire.

  He looked around the circle. “Every ten seconds, one of you puts a ball through his skull. If the brain isn’t pulp, fire again.”

  Two minutes later Devin and Gavin arrived and began enthusiastically throwing more interesting substances into the fire. The flames turned from orange back to white, then to green. A shrill keening emerged from the vampire as mages began laying a formation around it. Adarin grabbed pistols from people and tried shooting where he guessed the heart would be. But apart from damage to the brain, the creature’s natural state appeared to be a constantly churning column of regenerating flesh.

  A hectic quarter hour passed to the steady staccato of gunshots.

  Adarin, Devin, Gavin, Liora, and Ashfield exchanged looks as Adarin called them together next to the rune-encircled pyre. Expressions were somewhere between triumphant and deeply worried. “It’s not dying,” he hissed.

  Mage Captain Krislov emerged at a run, from the direction of the ent that had remained in the old beech. “Krislov, any ideas?”

  The mage shook his head. “I… anything I’ve heard from the locus suggests they’re immortal.”

  Adarin ground his teeth. Immortality wasn’t complicated—it was merely a matter of enough backups, or something pouring ridiculous amounts of energy into the biology, supercharging wet nanotechnology with enough power to regenerate. Adarin sneered. “A fucking kingdom for a nuclear bomb.”

  He got strange looks, but made a cutting gesture. “No matter. Ideas?”

  Gavin cleared his throat. “One of the best reactions we’ve gotten was from throwing sulfuric acid at its body. It eats right through it. But its regeneration speeds up the less of the body left over.”

  Devin shoved his adoptive brother to the side and spoke, boredom practically dripping off his voice. “The brain. The regeneration nearly ceased as soon as I emptied a sack of quicklime into his skull.”

  Adarin hummed. “Aren’t we low on quicklime?”

  Gavin gave a sheepish grin. “Well, you wanted a big bomb.”

  “Yes, I wanted a big bomb,” Adarin repeated, bitterness in his voice.

  But Devin shook his head. “Gavin had a stash.” He dodged a quick fist jab from the goblin and continued. “A handful of quicklime an hour will keep him down for three weeks.”

  Liora stepped up. “I think some of what’s happening to him is my doing. When he touched me, I felt his body. It’s as if it’s hundreds of different entities.” She smiled, her hand without conscious thought going to her back. “I gave all of them a pretty nasty case of blood cancer.”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  Chuckles erupted around them.

  Devin tipped his head. “I heard they like to rest in sarcophagi. So we make one. Drag up one of the stone coffins, line it with lead, flood it with sulfuric acid, and keep cramming quicklime into his skull. Rüdiger might know what to do with the thing.”

  Adarin looked around, but smiled already. Oh, I do love some poetic justice. “Commodore, any ideas?”

  Ashfield merely shrugged. “Conjure a magical stone around it and drop it into the deepest part of the ocean.”

  Adarin tsked. “Maybe a decent long-term plan, but let’s see what Rüdiger has to say. I think he’d be mad if we didn’t bring him this thing.”

  Gavin’s smile broadened, and Adarin shivered. Whatever he and his disciples are going to do with it.

  Soon the pyre was replaced with a magical stunning array, and a stone sarcophagus was set onto a wagon and lined with lead. Gilded iron rods held the pillar of flesh suspended in the bathtub of sulfuric acid, the acrid stink of sizzling flesh a constant byproduct of the containment. Only its head was held above the liquid, regularly dusted with quicklime. It reeked like a tannery fire in an open sewer.

  Adarin rejected all suggestions of attempting to blow the vampire up. Better to keep the thing contained, instead of failing to destroy it and distributing it over the landscape. He failed to suppress a shiver. And having to capture it all over again.

  Five tense yet productive days followed. The town took shape. Restoration work began in the temple, and the catacombs were fully looted. Large rafts of felled beeches were prepared, and merchantmen were loaded with French charcoal. With a heavy heart, Adarin ordered Mage Captain Krislov to take command of the town’s garrison, taking only a third of the druids with him. Those he considered most loyal to himself.

  Day by day, departure came closer. The sarcophagus was placed in the magical circle of the Magnolia, guarded by mages and soldiers at all times. Their minds were checked at random intervals by mages—sometimes even rotated in from other boats—as the flotilla set off down the Dray-River.

  The last round of looting happened when they reached each town, as they contacted the garrisons who hadn’t been idle: they had been testing the children and young adults for magical potential and drafted them all into the Order's ranks. Both Oakridge and Timberlanding threw measured feasts for the flotilla as they sailed by, and as they reached the Great River, nearly a hundred new novice mages had joined the expedition.

  At some point Adarin found a break in staring at the sarcophagus to look over his gains.

  You have defeated a greater Nosferati Level 47!

  Normalized strength difference 516%

  Number of Levels gained: 5

  He shook himself from brooding and found Liora at the bow. They spoke of nothing in particular until a smile crept back onto Adarin’s face. He studied her features as she looked out over the landscape in a lull in the conversation. “How are you handling what happened?”

  A shadow passed over her face before her lips curled into a vicious smirk. “I got nine levels for giving him cancer.” Her chuckle was too loud and shrill, but before Adarin could ask anything else she pulled up her status. “So, where do you think I should spend my free points?”

  Level: 40 [F]

  Class: Acolyte of Ishna, Cycle of Life

  COG: 130 MOV: 118 RES: 130 PER: 189 SOC: 112 FREE: 20

  Adarin studied her face. Do I push her into sharing more? He shook his head. Better to let her deal with it in her own way.

  “You can reach two hundred perception. For the last nine points… I guess you have to choose a new path to develop.”

  She nodded eagerly and assigned points into perception before pausing. “I guess I should improve my cognition for better spells.”

  Adarin met her bright eyes and took a deep breath before nodding.

  Together they studied the rest of her status before moving on to his, as little had changed.

  Adarin nodded in satisfaction as he saw his progress. “Apart from the blessing of the beeches, little has changed.”

  Liora chuckled. “Little has changed? You’ve grown so fast that few would believe it.”

  Level: 52 [F]

  Class: Tactician, World Tree Guardian

  COG: 220 MOV: 201 RES: 215 PER: 139 SOC: 116 FREE: 28

  Adarin looked at his reflection in the murky waters of the river. Yes, I am growing powerful. But it is the system’s power, not mine. He shook himself and focused.

  “I guess there is little to consider. I’ll try to get my perception up so I can get an implant there as well.”

  Liora pursed her lips then nodded with a smile.

  As the days on the Great River passed, soon Portguard came into view. Adarin studied the distant, busy port of the city—the smokestacks of the chimneys and its white walls—as they sailed by the willow island. Another grove of druids I’ll have to establish. He felt a heaviness settle on his soul as he saw one man clad in black leathers decorated with silver bones and skulls and a feathered tricorn hat standing at the docks as the ships came into port.

  Adarin swallowed hard. All of this, and this was only the first of three expeditions I’m slated to lead.

  They reached the pier, and the gangplank crashed down with the inevitability of a guillotine.

  Thank you for going on this adventure with me. This is the end of book 2. Sadly, this story didn't get the follower count I was looking for. I'm working on becoming a professional writer, and even if it hurts to kill my beloved stories, I need to focus on writing a new one to have a chance to achieve what I want. I'm hoping to continue this story one day if that is fated.

  Stay tuned for my next story, it's coming soon.