Vampire With A System

Chapter 34: Nightmare Thoughts

The tremor within Hannah’s aperture wasn’t a sudden burst of raw undisciplined Qi, but rather it was the awakening of a nightmare.

When they had visited Abraham’s Blood Worms, Hannah hadn’t chosen a standard elemental path.

Drawn by a strange, chilling resonance, she had purchased a rare, permanent asset of the Nightmare Path, the Nightmare Thoughts Blood Worm.

Unlike the basic, limited-use items common among fledglings, a permanent blood worm could be activated as many times as the user desired, of course until their Qi runned out.

The utility of the Nightmare Thoughts Blood Worm was terrifying, it could force an opponent to plunge into their own deepest, most agonizing nightmares uncontrollably, shattering their psyche from the inside out.

However, such a potent psychological weapon carried a strict, binding restriction.

To trigger the worm’s curse, the target had to inflict enough physical trauma on the user to draw genuine blood.

It was a weapon designed specifically for a desperate counterattack and it worked for ten minutes after activation.

And right now, looking down at the crimson pool splattered across the sand from Kyle’s brutal kick, the condition was completely fulfilled.

Hannah stared at the blood on her hands.

A final, fleeting wave of hesitation washed over her.

She didn’t want to unleash something so inherently twisted on a classmate.

But as she gripped her stomach, her eyes drifted up to the competitor stands.

The sharp, intense gazes of Evan and Santiago cut through the haze of the stadium.

Their words of encouragement echoed in her mind, a solid anchor against her swelling fear.

’I have to do this,’ she told herself, her jaw tightening.

’For them.’

With a surge of absolute resolve, Hannah directed her consciousness inward.

Resting at the bottom of her turbulent, peak-stage aperture was a slender, emerald-green serpent.

Its scales shimmered with an eerie, hypnotic luster, it was the Nightmare Thoughts Blood Worm.

’Activate,’ she whispered internally.

The green serpent instantly uncoiled, opening its maw as it began to greedily drink from her Qi.

The cost of awakening a permanent Nightmare Path weapon was staggering.

In a matter of seconds, Hannah’s highly condensed, 64% filled Qi aperture violently drained, plummeting all the way down to a mere 20%.

The sudden, massive expenditure made her vision swim, her body feeling momentarily hollowed out.

However, her peak-stage foundation didn’t fail her.

The aperture’s natural, robust capability for Qi recovery immediately kicked into overdrive to combat the problem.

Furthermore, the passive rhythm of her secondary asset, the Qi Nourishing Blood Worm, vibrated in tandem, rapidly nourishing the Qi produced by the aperture.

The moment the emerald serpent finished consuming the required Qi, its physical form vanished entirely from her aperture, dissolving into a spiritual form.

Across the arena, Kyle was laughing, his muscular chest heaving as he bounced on his heels, thoroughly enjoying his own clever bluff.

’What’s the matter, peak-stage genius?’ he mocked, taking a heavy step forward to deliver a finishing blow.

’Can’t even stand up after—’

He stopped dead in his tracks.

The invisible spectral form of the green serpent slithering directly into the deepest place of his subconscious mind.

Within a fraction of a second, the Nightmare Thoughts Blood Worm locked onto his greatest, most repressed psychological terror and dragged it screaming into his active consciousness.

Kyle’s cocky smile instantly vanished.

His eyes widened, the pupils in absolute unadulterated horror.

To the crowd, nothing had changed.

The sun was still shining, the arena sand was still dry, and Hannah was still recovering on the floor.

But in Kyle’s reality, the world had plunged into total darkness.

The stadium vanished, replaced by a suffocatingly familiar, dimly lit room.

A towering, monstrously distorted figure loomed over him, wielding a heavy, spiked wooden cane that whistled through the air with agonizing familiarity.

’N-No...’ Kyle whimpered, his voice dropping into a high-pitched, childlike tremble.

’Please... I promise I’ll practice, I’ll try my best... don’t hit me...’

His knees began to knock together violently.

The dense, muscular physique that had just overpowered a peak-stage cultivator completely failed him.

He began to shake from head to toe, tears streaming freely down his bruised cheeks as he slowly sank to the ground, burying his face in his hands to shield himself from an invisible tormentor. freewёbnoνel.com

The spectators went dead silent, completely bewildered by the sudden breakdown of the core disciples’ son.

’Stay away from me!’ Kyle suddenly shrieked, snapping out of his paralysis.

Driven by pure terror, he scrambled backward, stood up, and began sprinting away from the center of the ring.

He didn’t care about the tournament, his parents’ reputation, or his own pride.

He threw himself against the heavy iron exit gates, desperately pounding on them until they swung open, fleeing the arena grounds entirely like a man chased by demons.

The referee blinked in utter shock, looking from the empty doorway back to Hannah, who was calmly wiping the remaining blood from her mouth as she stood up.

Clearing his throat, the commentator’s voice finally crackled back, he was completely stunned, and so was his voice.

"Uh... an unexpected... psychological capitulation! Kyle has forfeited the match! The victory goes to Hannah!"

The crowd erupted into a mixture of stunned murmurs and hesitant applause as Hannah turned and walked back up the stone steps toward the competitor ranks.

The heavy, dark pressure of the Nightmare Path receded, leaving her exhausted but triumphant.

As she stepped into the shadows of the tunnel, Evan and Santiago walked up to meet her.

The cold, disgusted look on Evan’s face had completely vanished, replaced by a smirk of genuine amusement.

’A permanent Nightmare Path worm,’ Santiago noted, a rare, brilliant smile breaking across his face.

’Incredible. What on earth did he see, do you know? He looked like he had witnessed the collapse of the sect.’

Hannah let out a soft, tired laugh, leaning against the stone wall as her Qi Nourishing worm continued to nourish her Qi.

’He was thinking of his grandma beating him with a cane,’ she giggled, shaking her head.

’That was his absolute deepest nightmare. The guy is terrified of his own grandmother.’

Santiago burst into a rare, hearty laugh, and even Evan couldn’t help but chuckle, the tense atmosphere breaking completely.

’A fitting punishment for a lazy elite,’ Evan said, nodding in approval.

Before they could celebrate further, the commentator’s voice boomed once more, resetting the tension of the colosseum instantly.

’Clean the arena floors! Moving directly into the fourth match! Step forward, the silent Evan! Facing off against the Singer... Bruce!’

Evan’s laughter stopped instantly.