The Countess dashed forwards at a speed invisible to the naked eye. Adam could barely parry the attack with his arms, suffering a long slash down the side of his arm. The attack was so quick that Adam could barely discern that the damage inflicted was caused by a series of long claws which extended from her fingernails.

After the short exchange the Countess leapt back and licked the blood from her hands, only to stop when the blood entered her mouth and take on a serious expression.

"This much abyssal influence... How is this possible?"

Adam took advantage of the pause in combat to check his wellbeing, his health was down by about a quarter and his mana was down to fourth fifths due to using shadow form earlier.

This would be enough to keep fighting, he leapt backwards and began casting shadow bolts on both hands. His mana could easily afford to cast a few dozen shadow bolts and it's strength was comparable to that of a firearm. The rationale behind this move was that the Countess possessed great melee capabilities, enough to put Adam at a disadvantage in a close combat scenario. Therefore, if he couldn't engage in close combat he may as well fight from a distance.

However, for all his planning, Adam couldn't understand how the Countess reformed from blood once she had died. Was it an ability? How many times could she do that? Was she free to manipulate her body into blood at a moment's notice? The uncertainty behind this eerie ability unnerved Adam as he prepared to fight.

In the moment of his hasty retreat, the two formed shadow bolts at his hands were sent in an arc across the room. The two bolts made a straight arc into the heart and right lung of the Countess respectively. The Countess attempted to sidestep the two projectiles, however, the nature of the bolts made her misjudge the trajectory and distance at which the bolts were from her and resulted in one tearing through her forearm.

A chunk of flesh was torn off and the wounded area took a slightly green tinge. The Countess was momentarily surprised at this turn of events, however she merely grabbed the slumped figure of one of the trainees and drained them of their blood. This made her body glow slightly red and reformed the torn flesh so as to make it look like no damage had been sustained at all.

Adam stood dumbfounded, she could recuperate damage like this? How was he meant to fight against her? The Countess rushed against him, swiping with her claws and attempting to grab hold of him. Luckily, Adam could maintain a pace at which she found some difficulty in doing so. This resulted in a momentary stalemate between the two.

Adam was struggling to find a way to win this fight. Chipping away at her health in a battle of attrition wasn't a viable option since she would just heal it away. Killing her outright in one attack was impossible since she was currently forcing Adam to go on the offensive, this resulted in a situation in which if Adam wanted to attack the Countess then he would have to let on of her strikes hit him. Furthermore, from the sheer strength behind her attacks, Adam would be torn apart before he could even initiate a counterattack.

No, there was a way. If he used [Shadow Form] at the precise moment in which she would strike him, he could allow the strike through and land a fatal strike on her. This manoeuvre would require timing which was precise to the smallest denomination of time. If he was off by even a fraction of a second then he would be immediately torn apart under the relentless attack from the Countess.

Having a plan in mind, Adam thought about which organ to strike. He had to take into consideration the fact that any damage given could be replenished through drinking blood, therefore it would have to be quick and fatal.

Adam sharpened his gaze as he mentally committed to this strike. His mind went into the same accelerated cognition which he used against Toshihiro because he would need every millisecond of precision which he could muster. His feet slightly shifted to the side so as to stop retreating backwards. The Countess was only a step behind him and caught up in an instant, unleashing a deadly strike from her right hand towards his neck. If this attack hit then it would essentially anchor her hand into his spine, allowing her to grapple him to the ground and cannibalise him.

The strike seemed fast even in Adam increased cognition. Before he knew it the strike was already before him with a mere thirteen centimetres between them. It was about to hit his shoulder blade when he activated [Shadow Form] at the last possible moment.

To Adam's surprise however, the Countess' claw began glowing with red light just as it struck Adam's shadowy form, cleaving a line through him. This was a measure of pain which Adam, or any other human for that matter, had ever experienced before. His soul felt as if it had been ripped apart, sending a crushing headache into him and shaving away the majority of his mana.

Nevertheless, this pain was nothing compared to the prospect of death. Thus Adam managed to concentrate and strike out at the Countess. His hands formed two different claws and tore into her throat, capturing her trachea and wrenching it from the neck.

Without the frontal part of the neck then the Vampire wouldn't be able to heal and thus he could control her in a battle of attrition. However, that plan had been scrapped since he just found out that she could harm him whilst in his [Shadow Form], therefore Adam was sent spiralling backwards in a dance of evasive manoeuvres which became increasingly harder to execute. Cold sweat began forming at the nape of Adam's neck, not because the short fight was physically strenuous but rather because he was out of trump cards to pull against this adversary. It was only a matter of time before he died against the Countess' onslaught, and his time was running out.

An unyielding gleam arose in Adam's eyes as the Countess kept pressuring him into a corner. He wasn't the type to stay and fight to the end, and thus he suddenly used the last of his mana to activate [Shadow Form] once more and attempt to escape the battle.

The Vampire Countess simply smiled at Adam's attempt to escape and swiped her sleeve at the thin air, allowing the entirety of the residual blood within the crystal to gather in front of her and flood the room in ambient light. This forced Adam out of his [Shadow Form] and violently thrust him to the wall, causing him to cough up a mouthful of blood.

Once again, Adam found himself slumped against a wall. The first time it had been against his teacher and now it was against someone who would likely kill him. The Countess in the middle of the room was slowly walking towards him while mouthing something. Her lips moved but Adam couldn't hear what she was saying, the rush of blood coursing through his veins and bleeding into the floor from his wounds alongside the rapid contraction and expansion of his lungs were the only sounds which his throbbing eardrums could discern.

In fact, he could faintly hear her in the background, like a buzzing fly within a raucous marketplace. Utterly insignificant. His eyes hung listlessly, emptily gazing at the silver frame of the young man stitched to the flesh statue, not taking in the detail but rather listening to the dying sounds of his body.

The Countess was approaching him, words rolling of her bloodied tongue as naturally as breathing. He could even make out some of what she was saying. Something along the lines of 'Abyssal Power' and 'Absorption' and 'Resurrection'. Either way, he knew that today would end badly.

Then, a faint and hallowed voice spoke to Adam through the side of his consciousness. 'Or would it?' He thought as he turned his attention to what Adam had to say.

'Adam, I have a way for you to live past this day." The hallowed voice of 'Adam' seemed extremely enticing at this moment, not any different to that of a sweet promise. 'But...' He continued. 'We will need to become closer, much closer than what we are now."

"What... Do you mean?" Adam mumbled beneath the constant pain in confusion, apparently interrupting the Vampire's soliloquy at this moment.

"Right now, there is me, and there is you. We may be one but right now we are separate." Adam didn't understand what 'Adam' was trying to say, he wasn't making any sense. However, his line of thought was cut-off as he saw from the corner of his bloodied sight that the Countess was once again advancing upon him, murderous intent clearly displayed in her eyes.

"Whatever you need to do, do it now!" Adam shouted within his consciousness, however he could only mumble the words through the intense headache he was suffering. The only thing that Adam could make out was the terrifying face of the Countess advancing towards him with a wicked smile plastered upon her face. That and the small smile which Adam let out once he received Adam's approval.

"Don't worry, just relax and trust your instincts." These were the last words which Adam could hear being softly uttered by 'Adam' before he felt a strange sensation wash over him. It was similar to that time in which he took the [Awareness] trait, however fundamentally different. Instead of pain and a loss of sensation, Adam could feel a refreshing fell overtake every organ in his body. Almost as if before he had been shackled beneath a million iron chains and now he had been set free.

Every organ in his body felt as if it could cut through steel just like a hot knife going through butter. The sheer potential power which Adam could feel around his fingertips made him intoxicated on this sensation. He lifted his hands, only to see a mass of white tentacles which resembled that of a horsetail whisk, the very same one which he had seen on the night when he first awakened.

...

In this moment, the approaching Countess had stopped dead on her tracks. Her usual malicious grin had contorted into a mask of terror as she took in the monstrous appearance which Adam had adopted. The ball of blood hovering beside her faltered and splashed to the crystal floor, tainting it a crimson shade.

However, she wasn't afraid because of Adam. No, she was afraid because of the change which had been wrought about by Adam. The Countess could sense the concentration of abyssal influence within an area, which was how she could tell that Adam had a disproportionate amount of such influence in his body. The reason she became afraid was because she witnessed a catastrophic change in the flow of abyssal influence, suddenly congregating inside this room.

The effects of the abyssal influence were making their mark inside the room. The shapes within the room began distorting and changing into a green hue of colour. This included the red pupils of the Vampire Countess as they slowly began to glow into an iridescent green colour.

She saw that the prey wasn't doing anything after the change and was about to finish him off when a cacophony of ear screeching screaming rang out from behind her. Turning around, she saw that the huge mound of flesh began twisting and turning and from every orifice was ejected a putrid stream of bile and corruption. All the mouths sown upon it were twisted in a horrifying manner as they hoarsely screamed sounds which were impossible to utter for mortal creatures. Furthermore, the silver portrait was being slowly incorporated into the body of the mound of flesh.

"NOOOOO! MY HENRY!" The Countess ear-splittingly screeched as she dashed in his direction, tearing apart at the flesh in an attempt to save the portrait. An endeavour in which she succeeded at. She grasped the portrait and swiftly jumped backwards to tear away from the rotting mound of flailing flesh. However, when her hands grasped the edge of the portrait they burst into white fire and began to melt away at the skin, a burn which elicited a white smoke to rise from the wound. Were the Countess in her normal state, she would quickly retrieve her hand and nurse the inflicted injuries. But right now she was crazed by the influence of the Abyss, reacting only to her innermost desires and ignoring all pain.

Her hands melted away and dropped the portrait on the floor, cracking the frame and allowing the painting to catch on fire as well. The Countess hysterically screeched as she saw the man depicted in the painting becoming no more than a pile of ash. She futilely attempted to pick it up with the stumps of her arms but only managed to extend the extensive burns across her body.

Only when the entire portrait had turned to ash did she quiet down, two streams of tears running down her pale angular face. Her green iridescent eyes listlessly hung on the spot in which the ashes remained, not even budging when a bloodied boot which was padded in black fabric stepped on them.

The blank look upon her face was replaced by a cloud of blood as countless white tendrils tore apart through her flesh. She knew that the prey had began moving towards her, but she didn't worry. She was far more concerned about losing her precious Henry than fighting with some petty mortal. This was because she was an immortal, someone far beyond the reached of mortality and surpassing the limits of death. This was her privilege as a Blood Lord, a High Vampire amongst the ranks of the Blood Nobility and the threshold of a second tier class.

Her method to immortality lay in two things. Firstly was the unlimited lifespan granted to all complete Vampires, a lifespan unlimited due to their nature of absorbing lifeblood as a survival staple. Secondly was the immortal body granted to her by the Blood Lord class, a body which could indefinitely revive with full health, mana and stamina as long as a drop of blood was present in the vicinity.

The second nature of her immortality was why she was so confident that the prey couldn't harm her, therefore she waited patiently until he killed this body so that she could finally grant this thing the death it deserved for causing her to lose Henry. She felt the tendrils invade her body and tear apart her insides, therefore she knew that the body was dead and was currently awaiting her resurrection.

'Any time now' She thought. However, seconds turned to minutes and minutes turned to hours. Eventually Angelica tried to open her eyes. Only to stop in shock. 'Angelica... Who is that... Why did I call myself Angelica?' The Countess had lived for centuries, long having forgotten her mortal memories. And yet, here was a fragment of her past resurfacing. "It's nice, at least I now know my name." Angelica thought as she once again willed her eyes to open. The flood of colours shocked her very soul. This was a scene she was very familiar with. It was the morning of her wedding.

She was currently in the courtyard of the keep. Joyous guards lined the parapets of the citadel in ceremonial attire, celebrating the wedding of the young mistress of the citadel. Red and white flower arrangements lined the white stone walls of the main courtyard as rose petals littered the gleaming marble floor. On either side of her were dozens of merry nobles, all of them with gleaming smiles upon their faces and they would have been chatting uproariously too were it not this certain time of the ceremony.

In front of her was a white pathway carved into the marble, leading up intricately carved steps and towards a mesmerising white pavilion which housed a tall and solemn figure dressed in the ceremonial attire of a bishop. She took one step after another while her left arm was linked against the one of a tall and handsome young man, the very same one which was depicted in the picture!

Everyone was looking at Angelica and Henry with a gleam of approval within their eyes, encouraging them on to take the few more steps onto the altar. However, beneath her veil two streams of tears had formed at the corners of her eyes. It wasn't because she was dissatisfied with the marriage to a commoner, or because she didn't love Henry. Quite the opposite instead, she was thoroughly infatuated with him during their very first meeting. It was because she knew what would happen next, the end of the wedding would come soon. Sooner than anybody here would know.

Before she knew it she was standing atop the elevated platform, gazing into the face of her beloved Henry from behind the thin satin veil. The bishop be their side mumbled words which couldn't be heard above the Henry's dazzling face. The only thing she heard was a short word which seemed sweeter than anything in the entire world as they parted Henry's delicate lips.

"Yes." He uttered, not in a proclamation to everyone in the wedding but just to her.

Her heart felt as if it was soaring high above the clouds, only to plummet below the deepest of hells as a sounds of scuffling in the entrance could be heard. She closed her eyes in resignation as the sounds of the nobles abruptly standing from their seats filled the main courtyard accompanied by shouts demanding what was going on.

The clash of steel could be hear both near and far as the guards in flowered uniforms were downed by masked assailants in the distance and the nobles and elite guards in the courtyard drew their blades from their scabbards. Flames burst in the distance and magicians engaged in combat and a concentration of mana gathered inside the courtyard as the nobles called upon the power of their classes to gather strength around them, eliciting a response and raising a spell formation inside their area of the keep.

Soon, everything was silent as the nobles and elite guards nervously brandished their weapons looking towards every entrance to the courtyard. Henry held her with one arm as he protectively brandished a cutlass with the other. Her father, the King, raised his Warhammer far above his head and issued a royal decree to call all the remaining guards to the courtyard. However, nobody came, not even the royal magicians which had been heard fighting outside earlier.

Eventually, a cohort of masked figures dressed in black flooded the courtyards from all the windows and doors facing it, putting great pressure into everyone there. The assailant were greatly skilled and could easily defeat the average Barons within the nobility, all of which were at least level five in their class. Before long majority of nobles within the kingdom had been butchered alongside the rest of the royal guards, leaving only the three grand dukes, the King's personal guards, the bishop, three paladins, the King himself and both Henry and herself. All of them apart from herself could be called influential and powerful figures in their own right, able to defeat scores of men single handedly. However, they were now surrounded by unknown assailant.

Angelica felt a great sorrow overtake her as she knew this was then end, this was when she dies back in her life, and doubtlessly this nightmare which she had dreamt far too often would end the same. An arrow would make it's way from the window overlooking the keep and pierce her heart, instantly killing her. Then, a century after, she would awaken as a true vampire and grant unlife to the dead bodies of all the inhabitant of this ruined castle.

She awaited the fate arrow, only that it never came. She saw the King desperately shout to Henry and gave him a magical item. "Henry! Take this and run away with my daughter! We will hold them off for as long as possible!"

Henry took the magical talisman and cracks it, surrounding them with blue light and leaving only a fading image of the courtyard for Angelica to see. A fading image of a swordsman bringing his sword across her fathers neck.

Then, everything white as the teleportation ended. Looking around herself, she saw that she was atop the summit of the local Cathedral, it's highest point. It overlooked the entire cityscape which was currently in the middle of being sacked. Citizens were being run down and impaled upon the spears of men clad in black. Currently the area around the cathedral was devoid of the pillagers, however it was deserted as the city guards had already been broken and fled into the alleyways of the city. The only friendly faces nearby her were the faces of the solemn temple guards and Henry standing alongside her.

Angelica was still in shock at having averted death, so much so that she looked at the sky and straight into the blazing sun shining overhead. It was a clear day devoid of clouds, allowing the sun to shower even the darkest corner of the cityscape with light. Were it not a dream, Angelica would currently be turning into dust and scattering into the wind, however, now she was human. If only temporary.

She turned to look at Henry, wanting to urge themselves on in their escapade when she suddenly felt a great pain clasp her heart. She looked up to see the shocked faces of the temple guards as they attempted to draw their weapons before being cut down under a hail of arrows which seeming appeared from nowhere. Then she saw Henry smiling, the smile comforted her before she something amiss. His delicate lips were curled slightly too much, enough to give a foreboding feeling deep within Angelica's heart.

She looked down again, to see a familiar cutlass running into her body. 'That isn't right' she thought as the blood being pumped through her arteries began leaving her body. 'That isn't right' she thought as the sun began burning up her skin, causing it to ashen up and disperse in the wind. 'That isn't right' she began to see as Henry's insidious face was burnt into her memory. 'That isn't right' she saw as a mass of white tendrils surrounded her, until she was no more.

...

They felt an inexplicable exhilaration as they gave in to their instincts. They saw a woman in front of him, and she seemed so very enticing, something which was perceived to be so irresistible that they began going insane from not having it. Therefore, they took her. It was incomparable to that time in which they took the office lady or the possum. This time the sheer magnitude of her feelings seemed incomparably vast. They sheer amount of insanity hidden deep within her brain became a delectable dish, a dish which became even better once he seasoned it properly.

They could sense her terror, her fear building up as they consumed her. To them these things were like music to their ears, much in the same way as when a restaurant hires musicians to play for their customers as they are enjoying their dish. The conclusion to her nightmare was in particular so very great that it resembled a magnificent dessert to finish of their full meal.

Of course, once one finishes eating their dish, it is only good manners to wipe the dishes clean and discard the disposable cutlery. However, whether it was unfortunate or not, it seemed like all of their favourite dishes were sealed in disposable packaging.