From the crater, a man covered in flames flew out. He was so battered that even the closest kin wouldn’t recognize him.

The blood that flowed out of his body was burned to cinders by the fire covering him.

I looked on with interest. I knew that my clone had done it best while taking it easy.

I was thinking about what I should do with this Alucard. Should I kill him? Or just enslave him?

I didn’t know what to choose.

“Let’s just kill this bastard.” I heard my clone saying.

I nodded. The true reason was that I wanted to stretch my limbs a little bit…get a feel of [dark empowerment].

I realized that I could fly if I willed it. Something to do with the [darkness] rune. It seemed that as my body could be transformed from corporeal to ethereal darkness, my mind could control that darkness as effortlessly as breathing.

For Alucard to fly, I could see that he had to burn the air around him and even used wings made of flames to move.

He looked shocked that there were now two of us.

He didn’t look our way for long as he turned around and fled.

Then we chased.

My clone was faster somehow. I knew he only had the [darkness transmutation] rune as compared to me who had the entire set of the [darkness] runes.

Logically speaking, I should be the fastest, but I only had just a little mastery over my runes.

I wondered if my clone was more of a genius than I was when we were the same person.

My clone reached Alucard who had no choice but to turn around and send a torrential fire towards my clone who went through it without a care in the world. When he emerged on the other side, my clone’s right arm turned into a blade that impaled the terrorized Alucard whose eyes bulged out from the sheer shock.

I think he never imagined that he would die so easily.

It seemed that my clone could’ve killed him a long time ago but was just taking his sweet time waiting for me to come out.

As my clone yanked out his blade, a river of blood could be seen coming out of the pierced heart. Alucard's eyes then lost their luster as he just fell from the sky.

When his body collided with the hard ground he had turned into meat paste from the impact.

I thought of undoing my [dark empowerment] and then felt my body literally exploding in a puff of black smoke that reconverged into my four-year-old self.

“Just like that?” I said as I looked all over my body trying to look for anything unusual. Nothing abnormal was seen.

The immense strength that I was feeling a few seconds ago was gone and I felt like I was holding a piece of paper instead of holding several hundred kilograms of metal.

That feeling was addictive, to say the least, and I couldn’t wait to use it again.

“Now that it is over, how do you plan of explaining your absence. I don’t know about our father, but our mother should have woken up by now. She’ll lose her mind if she doesn’t see you around.” My clone said.

“I already know how we’ll going to explain everything. With you in the equation, it becomes easy. I can just dump all the credit on you and none will be the wiser.” I said with a grin.

“Oh? Do tell…” He said with the same grin. He was no longer a three-meter tall mini giant. Instead, he had taken some random adult man’s form and had made a cloak made of the dark elements. Suffice to say that his black obsidian body color would attract a lot of attention. Not that anyone would care as mages were known for their weird behavior.

I explained, “When we arrive, you’ll just say that you were commissioned to kill Alucard Firestorm by someone whom you cannot divulge the name. You’ll say that you’re an up-and-coming Assassin who caters to the most powerful. That as the chief of the Dark Guild, your target range is from C rank to A rank magicians and Paladins. In the end, you’ll ask for a reward for rescuing me. That’s all.”

My clone looked like he was pondering something, “There’s just one thing… for what reason would Alucard kidnap you when he was only interested in our brother?”

Yes, for what reason indeed.

My mind worked on overdrive as I searched for a believable lie that wouldn’t end up exposing my wielding of the dark element that my supposed savior had. Even from up close, despite all my clone did to be inconspicuous, he still exuded darkness around himself.

If I also came out and said that I had the same unheard-of element, it would raise a lot of eyebrows.

“You still have a rune that can be shown to the world without any repercussions but that is still rare enough to arouse the curiosity of Alucard…your [summoning] rune. ” My clone said.

“Yes. Let’s use that for now.”