Chapter 132: Hounds of the Decasus Family (1)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 132: Hounds of the Decasus Family (1)
"You must be the one called Kang Jinhyuk."
"He's quite good-looking. And, ooh, what's this? Why does his blood smell so sweet?"
A cold, low voice contrasted sharply with an excited, high-pitched one.
Emerging from among the Ice Trolls was a man and a woman, both sporting dazzling white hair and crimson eyes.
Even without being told, it was obvious who they were.
Vampires.
To be precise, they were undoubtedly the members of the Decasus Family that Melena had mentioned during the shareholders' meeting not long ago.
Vibrate...!
Braham's Ring vibrated violently.
[Don't stop me! Those bastards...! Those Decasus pests! I'm going out there right now to kill every last one of them!]
It was a good thing she was sealed. Otherwise, Alice would have lunged out immediately.
However, letting Alice out here would introduce too many variables.
If he loosened the seal enough for her to fight the vampires, his mana consumption would spiral out of control.
'Until I know how prepared they are, it's better for me to handle them directly rather than letting Alice out.'
A direct head-on clash wouldn't be an issue.
But if the battle dragged on or if they decided to flee, it would become a headache.
He had to conserve his mana as much as possible.
Jinhyuk slowly scanned the two of them from head to toe.
'Gluttony's Eye' had a relatively low mana consumption, but even so, he couldn't afford to use it recklessly.
This was especially true because the required mana cost increased the wider the level gap or the stronger the opponent was.
Yet, he couldn't just not use it at all, as he needed to grasp his opponents' information.
'Which of the two should I look at...?'
The relatively stronger one versus the weaker one.
The one with a skill worth copying versus the one without.
His hesitation didn't last long.
Jinhyuk chose the man.
'Gluttony's Eye' penetrated his status window.
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Name: Liorda Bertion
Gender: Male
Age: 1,082 years old
Level: 108
Strength: 32 / Agility: 36 / Stamina: 33 / Magic Power: 45 / Dark Aura: 50
Unallocated Stat Points: 0
Unique Ability: Blood Cancel
Skills: Lv16 'Blood Spear', Lv16 'Blood Prison', Lv15 'Blood Shield', Lv15 'Memorize Teleport', Lv15 'Dark Aura', Lv14 'Mana Vampirism'
——————————————————
[Copy Condition: When it comes to vampires, sucking blood is the ultimate pleasure! If you insert a straw into the target's neck and consume more than 100mg of their blood, you will be able to copy their unique ability.]
[If you survive after uttering 4 or more death flag lines, you will be able to copy one of the target's skills. However, the lines will only be recognized if they fit the situation, and each time you utter a line, one of your own unique abilities or skills will be sealed at random. (Time Limit: 96h:00m:00s)]
"Damn it."
Reading the status window, Jinhyuk's face crumpled.
Getting the general information was fine, but the copy conditions were absolute bullshit once again.
How on earth did these conditions keep getting more and more mind-boggling?
'I'm not even a vampire. Sucking 100mg of blood?'
Sure, sometimes old folks drank things like deer blood for their health, but that was only for people with iron stomachs.
'No thanks. Besides, I don't even want the Blood Cancel ability, which uses blood as a medium, that badly.'
Above all, he'd rather bite his own tongue and die than bite another man's neck.
But...
The other copy condition was quite tempting.
There was one highly useful skill among Bertion's arsenal.
A skill that would be of immense help in chaotic brawls or prolonged battles.
Jinhyuk's eyes narrowed.
'Four death flag lines, huh...'
It certainly wouldn't be easy to spout those kinds of lines while cornered and still survive.
Moreover, the condition where a unique ability or skill was randomly sealed every time he spoke a line was incredibly annoying.
Yet, even if he had to endure all of that, he absolutely wanted to get his hands on that skill.
It was just as Jinhyuk was weighing his options.
"Why aren't you answering? Don't tell me you've frozen solid out of sheer terror?"
Bertion spoke again.
He assumed Jinhyuk had frozen in fear, when in reality, Jinhyuk had just been distracted checking the copy conditions.
"Ah, sorry. I was checking something for a second. So, what was it you wanted to say again?"
"I asked if you are Kang Jinhyuk."
Hmm.
Would it work if I lied and said I was Cheon Yu-seong? Honestly, selling that guy out would be the easiest way.
After a brief moment of deliberation, Jinhyuk shook his head.
He had to draw the line somewhere. If he kept using Yu-seong as a scapegoat, the guy might actually hunt him down in the dead of night.
"That's right."
Jinhyuk shrugged.
At that, the corners of Bertion's mouth curled upward.
"My name is Liorda Bertion. I am a vampire belonging to the Decasus Family. I believe you humans commonly refer to us as vampires, so perhaps that term is more familiar to you."
"I'm Ophelia. I belong to the same family as this gloomy fellow."
The two briefly introduced themselves.
Bertion and Ophelia.
Both of them were far stronger than the Ataraxia Family vampires he had encountered in the Corridor.
From their individual levels and stats to the mana naturally radiating from their bodies, they were on a completely different level. Comparison was utterly impossible.
In the first place, Alice and the vampires who followed her had been weakened by their long exile, and the sheer difference in power between the two families also played a part.
"Vampires of the Decasus Family..."
"You don't seem particularly surprised."
"It's not my first time meeting a vampire."
Inside his ring, he was raising an incredibly wicked vampire.
If ordinary vampires were regular mosquitoes, Alice was more like a black-and-white striped 'Adidas' mosquito.
With a proboscis capable of piercing even denim jeans, she was truly the absolute peak of the vampire world.
"I knew it...! You really were harboring the traitor exiled to the Corridor!"
"Don't act smug like you just made a lucky guess. Preparing to this extent means you were already certain, not just suspicious. Why are you smirking and acting like 'Ah, my prediction was correct'?"
"...W-what? You... you bastard! How dare you speak to...!"
Bertion stammered heavily.
Was it because Jinhyuk had hit the nail on the head? Or was it because he had never been so blatantly insulted by a mere human before?
The only certainty was that his pale, jade-white face had flushed bright red.
"Fufu. What a cheeky human. He'll definitely be delicious to devour."
This time, Ophelia chimed in.
Her crimson eyes sparkled continuously, as if her interest had been piqued even more than before.
That expression...
He had seen it somewhere before.
It vividly brought back the memory of when he first met Alice, and she threatened him while saying his blood tasted delicious.
Damn it, why did every single one of these vampires treat humans like packed lunches?
"How about it? If you come with me, I'll at least spare your life."
Ophelia gently extended her hand.
Her long, slender fingers unfurled.
Needless to say, taking that hand would be a one-way ticket to hell.
"Does that mean I get to live as your personal blood pack?"
"Still, wouldn't that be better than dying?"
"I'll politely decline. Personally, I prefer taking things over being given them."
"You'll regret this..."
"I don't know about that. I received a similar offer before, and the one who ended up regretting it wasn't me, but the other party."
The one who made that offer used to live in a thousand-pyeong imperial palace, but now she's reduced to renting a tiny corner room of barely 0.01 pyeong, right?
"What a pity... Then there's nothing to be done. I wanted to keep you around and savor you for a long time, but I'll just have to settle for a one-time meal."
Ophelia took a step back.
The atmosphere began to grow heavy.
A silence like the calm before a storm hung in the air.
Once someone made a move, a massive slaughter would ensue.
Gulp!
"Ugh..."
"Damn it."
The faces of the players waiting with bated breath turned pale with dread.
They were so paralyzed by fear that they couldn't comprehend a single word of the conversation.
But the moment the conversation ended, everyone present instinctively realized one thing.
That their lives would come to an end in just a few moments.
'We can't survive.'
'It's over.'
'D-damn it. Why are monsters like that in a place like this...?'
The murderous intent radiating from these vampires, who possessed triple-digit levels, was not something B-rank players who had just entered the 7th floor could withstand.
They were going to die.
Without a doubt, they would die.
Even if Jinhyuk, standing right in front of them, was an S-rank, he wouldn't stand a chance against those monsters.
The pressure weighing down on their entire bodies was heavier than anything they had ever encountered before.
* * *
Jinhyuk watched as the Ice Trolls slowly tightened their encirclement.
Then, he slowly spoke.
"Before we begin, can I ask you one thing?"
"I see you're the type who can't die without satisfying your curiosity. Fine. Ask your final question."
"Was hunting down the players of the Dangun Guild one by one in the forest also your doing? And carving those symbols on the rocks?"
"We heard you know a great deal about the Tower. So, we laid a trap."
The more outstanding someone is, the more they blindly trust the information they possess.
And if they believe others are ignorant of that information, the effect multiplies.
"We figured you would enter this forest to obtain the 'Phoenix Feather'. After all, acquiring that feather is one of the most reliable ways to clear this floor."
Bertion calmly continued.
"However, you must have felt a strange sense of incongruity immediately upon arriving in this land. Since high-level players were wiped out without leaving a trace, you naturally assumed an anomaly had occurred. And to prove that hypothesis, you would have rushed into the forest."
"And finding the trolls' symbols would add weight to that hypothesis, making me let my guard down even further. Is that what you mean?"
Jinhyuk finished his sentence.
"Exactly. To prove the hypothesis that an outbreak would soon occur, you would call other players here. Naturally, that would prolong your stay in the forest. In the end, it bought us enough time to completely surround you."
"Ah! And you'd better abandon any hope of other humans joining you. The Demonic Humans agreed to handle that side."
So they left no loopholes.
"Not bad. You actually used your brains a bit."
He had to admit, the trap was well-crafted.
On top of that, they had formed a three-way alliance including the Demonic Humans and the Ice Trolls, making their forces incredibly formidable.
No matter how strong a ranker was, being caught in a situation like this would inevitably drive them to panic or despair.
But did they know?
In truth...
"I already knew you guys would make contact."
He had already heard all the internal information through Melena.
He knew that the hounds of the Decasus Family had descended to the lower floors of the Tower, met with Lancelot, and what kind of backroom deals had transpired.
Although he didn't know the exact time and place...
...he had anticipated that the time was near.
"Above all, a trap only holds meaning under the absolute premise that it can actually kill the target."
"Oh? And what is that supposed to mean?"
"It means thinking a pack of puppies could defeat me... was your first mistake."
With those final words...
Rumble, rumble, rumble!
The mana he had suppressed to its absolute limit was unleashed.