Free Web NovelChapter 85: Vlad vs the Kidnappers II
Vlad was about to bring his focus to the mage when several drilling rocks descended upon him from the ceiling.
He rolled across the floor, narrowly avoiding the drills as they slammed into the marble, cracking it apart with explosive force.
He grabbed a table and placed it above him to block the incoming strikes. Naturally, the drills pierced through the wood, reaching straight for his torso. He managed to dodge two of them, but the third struck his shoulder, its rotating shaft digging inward, splattering his blood out. The drops splashed on his neck, the floor, and the table.
His eyebrows twitched from the pain, his jaw tightening as the drill slowly stopped its rotation.
He slammed the table away, finding Jenny’s body glowing with auburn mana, dozens of rock drills spiralling around her. freewebnσvel.cøm
She had not moved from where she stood. The drills orbited around her slowly as if waiting for the right moment to strike.
"The thing for whom you are risking your life is not even a human," Jenny revealed, her eyes filled with hatred as Vlad slowly rose to his feet, throwing the table away.
The fire burned violently behind him, the flames raising their limbs towards the hall from the counter of the kitchen. The heat pressed against his back like a hand. The smoke was thickening, curling low, darkening everything above knee height into a shifting black haze.
"I have no enmity against you," she continued, her breathing ragged from the smoke covering the whole floor. "Give up on that monster, and I will let you live."
Vlad’s face turned unreadable, the expression of pain that he was carrying from the injury completely vanishing.
He slowly took a step forward towards her, ignoring her words as if he had not even heard them.
"Do you not understand? The girl you are trying to protect is a v—"
"I don’t give a fucking damn about who she is," Vlad muttered, his heavy step echoing on the marble floor as he jutted out the rock from his shoulder. A spray of blood followed, hitting the floor, yet no expression formed on his face. "She is a friend I must save. I refuse to lose someone again simply because they’re different from the standards of the world."
His arm hung limp, blood streaming from his shoulder down to his fingertips before dripping onto the floor.
Jenny’s jaw tightened. Her drills shifted in their orbit, spinning fractionally faster, and yet she said nothing. There was nothing left to say to a person who had already decided.
’Ren, activate the Foresight Eye,’ he ordered inwardly.
His eyes began glowing with a deep crimson, a flicker of crimson lightning appearing at irregular intervals in his iris, the only thing visible in the black smoke of the hall as he slowly moved towards Jenny.
[Foresight Eye activated.]
Every rock drill around her split into two images in his vision. One solid, one ghost.
"You have made your choice then," Jenny mumbled as she released the spikes towards him.
From his vision, Vlad saw two images of each sharp rock coming at him. One was the original one, while the other was their predicted path 0.5 seconds into the future.
He moved sideways, bent his head backward, dodging those aimed at his shoulder and head. As for the one coming straight for his torso, he punched it upward in an uppercut, the rock breaking into small debris flying everywhere.
The fragments scattered across the marble with a sound like broken glass.
As the distance between them shrank to barely a foot, a razor-sharp stone pillar erupted from the floor beneath his heel. It speared through his leg, tore through his body, and burst out from his shoulder in a spray of blood. Or at least, that was what he saw 0.5 seconds into the future.
He immediately moved a step back from his place. The moment he did, a spear-like sharp rock jolted from the floor, reaching the same height as him.
The air where his chest had been was now occupied entirely by stone.
Jenny’s eyes widened in disbelief, her lips parting from the shock.
"H-how did you d-dodge tha—"
Her words stopped mid-sentence as Vlad suddenly appeared before her face, piercing her with a terrifying gaze.
"Where is Seraphina?" He demanded, clutching her throat with a tight grip, her body striking the glass behind her, her feet leaving the ground. fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com
"Y-you think I will tell you?" Jenny muttered while struggling to breathe. "Y-you are just a kid. You can never make me talk."
Vlad pushed her against the glass, cracks spreading across it with a light sound of cracking.
The web of fractures bloomed outward from her body, reaching toward the edges of the frame like frost spreading across a windowpane in winter.
"Y-you..." Jenny’s eyes widened, her complexion darkening from the choke.
The heavy glass behind her shattered, jagged fragments seeping into her skin. Her body suspended hundreds of feet high in the air with the support of only Vlad’s hand. The smoke that had gathered inside burst out from behind Vlad, reaching upward into the open sky.
The wind arrived all at once, rushing through the ruined opening and pulling the smoke outward.
Somehow, darker than the smoke itself was the hair of Vlad fluttering with the wind entering through the broken glass.
Jenny looked at his murderous gaze and murmured, her tone barely above a whisper, "Y-you have killed someone before. B-but how... you are just a k-kid."
From her words, a vision played in Vlad’s eyes, one he had kept buried deep within his heart.
Drip... drip... drip...
The first thing he heard was the sound of heavy rain striking damp, dark soil.
"Vlad... stop... please... stop," a voice reached his ears, one he had never forgotten, not even for a single day. His limbs felt short, small, as though he had shrunk back into the body of a child.
Bam!
Bam!
Bam!
He was hitting something, repeatedly, a large rock gripped tight in both hands. Each strike landed with a wet, unsettling crack, followed by a fine spray of liquid whose colour was nothing like the colourless rain washing over him. His face remained emotionless, yet a seething hatred raged within his heart.
Vlad looked down at his hands. They were slick with something crimson.
His eyes widened slightly. He drew a slow breath and pulled himself together, returning to the high floor of the restaurant once more.
"I ask you one last time," Vlad demanded, his voice turning terrifyingly low. "Where is Seraphina?"
