Chapter 1005: Born Anew
Chapter 1005: Born Anew
Chapter 1005: Born Anew
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The dragon froze as the ship he destroyed slowly emerged out of the silent sea. The countless cracks on it pulsed with a burning red magic like a beating heart. The sea turned red and the sun burst into a crimson flare.
With his powerful eyesight, the dragon could see him, a large man standing on the bowsprit's tip, looking toward the shore with a passive face and burning red eyes.
DING! DONG! DING! DONG! DING! DONG! DING! DONG! DING! DONG! A man stood atop the crow's nest, ringing the ship's bell with a large smile on his face. All the sailors stood on the deck, some of them climbing the nets and mast while chanting.
"A man? Wasn't Akasha a woman?" The dragon looked confused for a second, he was certain that the man standing on the bowsprit was a vampire as was everyone else on the ship. But something was off about that man, his power as a vampire far outclassed everyone else and it had a strange hint on it, a wild smell, wet fur...a werewolf.
Arad jumped from the bowsprit, gracefully floating toward the water. The moment his foot touched the water he blasted forward running on all four. There was no magic, just the raw power and agility of his lycanthropic blood had allowed him to run on water.
The dragon pulled a large crystal from his magic pocket and crushed it in his claw, fully healing all of his wounds and restoring his magic and stamina. He had a whole week to prepare for a potential fight with Akasha, of course, he's brought some powerful healing items.
With now back at full power, the dragon pointed his claw toward Arad and shouted, "Die! Evil!" Lightning crackled from his wings and into his claws, pulling water from the sea, breaking it down into oxygen and hydrogen, and then releasing everything toward Arad in a beam of rampaging blue inferno.
It was at that moment that the girls realized that the dragon wasn't taking them seriously at all. He was just trying to kill them without wasting any resources or pushing himself too far, he could've blasted them alongside the whole warship if he wanted from the start.
But...Arad didn't even bother dodging, in fact, he rushed straight through the stream of fire like a stone through a water stream, splashing the flames everywhere.
Seeing that Arad was charging at him like that, the dragon stopped his spell and swung his claw forward, aiming to smack Arad back to the ship he came from. No matter how powerful he gets, the weight difference is still going to favor the dragon and Arad would be blown away.
The moment the dragon's claw was about to hit Arad, Arad's body burst into a swarm of bats that flew all around the dragon, spreading into the city right on the shore.
The beach was about 150 meters wide of pure golden sand and after it was the coastal city of Napolin. The port was around half a kilometer to the right and it's where the warship was supposed to dock.
"Running into the populated city?! I should've expected such shamelessness from..." The dragon roared as he glared back to the city, but he soon went silent as a massive tentacle wrapped around his neck and body.
He looked back in surprise, seeing a massive brown vampire Kraken dragging him into the depths of the sea. "The bastard! He turned a monster into a vampire?!" The dragon growled as he was getting dragged back. But he didn't just sit and take it, his massive jaw was enough to rip the Kraken's soft tentacles apart.
It was useless against a Kraken with vampire-level regeneration. The tentacles would grow back faster than a hydra's head regeneration.
Realizing that cutting the tentacles wouldn't help, the dragon had no other option than wasting his precious mana on a lighting discharge to knock the vampire Kraken down. But before he could cast it, a massive maw lunged at him from the sea, biting him from the side.
The dragon coughed blood, looking aside to see a massive Megalodon dragging him back. "And a vampire Megalodon?! Was he feeding down there?!"
Inside the largest church in the city, the father was praying beneath Yog's altar with all the nuns and priests praying behind him. With a dragon rampaging at their shore, nothing could save them besides Yog's mercy. All the hunters and soldiers present in the city had refused to go fight the dragon, saying it was a suicide mission and that they should evacuate the city instead.
Who can blame them? Dragon stands at the peak of all living beings and there was no chance that a fight with such a creature could end without death. Even the strongest and bravest of hunters still fear the doom-bringers.
TAP! The father heard something and he opened his eyes, slowly lifting his head, and looked up, seeing Arad latching onto Yog's statue. The father instantly realized that the one there was a vampire, which didn't make sense in his head.
Churchs and temples are sacred places, those monsters shouldn't be able to even get close, let alone step inside. Touching the goddess's statue without being burned to ash wasn't something that should be possible for such an evil.
"You should be dead!" The father gasped.
The priests and nuns looked up toward Arad, stunned.
Arad smiled, "Now this is a good handful, you're coming with me." Bats engulfed the whole church. The windows shattered in the blink of an eye as a black storm of dark magic flew out.
One of the nuns opened her eyes, finding herself being carried by a single bat through the sky. She wasn't alone, everyone in the church was transported to the battlefield in a matter of seconds.
"Heal them." The bats dropped the father and everyone else besides the injured Ann and Mesharra. Arad stood behind them, looking straight at the struggling dragon. "I'll go slay that dragon."
Arad pulled a large great sword out of the small pocket strapped to his hips, it's there where The keeps all the weapons he collected.
You can't use high magic without a powerful body that can endure its stress, and you can't exert too much physical power without magic to empower your flesh with superhuman power.
Vampires are mainly spell casters, using their blood magic and powerful magic to wipe down hordes of foes. Their bodies are durable and can regenerate but at the cost of blood. Physical combat isn't the best skill.
Werewolves are the exact opposite, they are mainly physical fighters with the ability to use a bit of magic. They are nearly immortal as long as they are well fed, their bodies can exert far more physical power than any vampire could but their magic falls quite short. Summoning spiritual wolves, or casting effects tied to their roar is the best they could achieve.
In the past, Arad's powerful draconic body was able to endure the burden of the two curses and forced them to coexist by force. That didn't allow him to fully merge, but he could still use both at the same time.
Now, something had changed, the two curses had perfectly mixed inside Arad's body, and they had become one. The world never forgets, Arad killing Vlad, Alaric, and now even Akasha. He had topped the demon lord of lycanthrope and stepped over two blood lords, one of them being none other than the daughter of the goddess of undeath Akame.
With Arad being himself and the accumulation of his achievements, when the curses were forced to mix into him a new thing emerged. He started as a human, but now, a whole new race was born.
The father and priests could see it, Arad had turned into something new, something beyond vampires and werewolves, and that is why he didn't get burned inside the church. They were half wrong, Yog didn't wish to burn him, but even if she didn't do anything he wouldn't have
gotten harmed anyway/
The thing standing before them was no longer a human, no longer a vampire, and no longer a werewolf. He's been born anew as the first of a new race, a Pricolici.
None of those standing there knew what Arad was now anymore. They could sense the hints of vampirism and lycanthropy out of him, but those curses, those smells were rapidly fading away as if they were nothing but lingering remains of something that already stopped
existing.
Pricolici combines the best traits of both vampires and werewolves into something far stronger than they could ever be. They feed on flesh and blood, prowl through the night, and raise hell under the sun.
As Arad lifted his sword in a stance, he could see beneath the dragon's scales, see his muscles,
see his blood and bones pulsing and twisting. By seeing the inners of the bodies he could read and predict the moves of living beings before they could even start. While most fighters could predict moves, that ability only extends to thought moves like attacks and predetermined
skills.
For thousands of years, fighters managed to get over each other's move prediction by varying their attacks and attacking in an unpredictable manner. All of that now doesn't matter to Arad, he could see blood flowing toward the muscles, see the nerves pulsing and the lungs
expanding.
Arad could see and predict all moves, even the involuntary reactions. But that wasn't the limit of his senses, now he could see mana far better than he could do in his draconic body. He could
see it flowing everywhere, carrying magic in and from living beings.
He could see the dragon's innards, hear his blood flowing, feel his heart pulsing in the
ground, smell his fear and worry, and see him attempting to control mana and jolt the
vampire sea monsters.
But something scared him, Arad couldn't see one thing, inside Ann. No matter how much he looked at her, he could see nothing but endless darkness inside her body.
The father who was scrambling to heal her shook his head, "It's too late...she's dead." He looked at Arad, "Kill everyone if you want...but I cannot bring the dead back to life."
"She's stable!" A nun smiled as Mesharra's wound seemed to stop bleeding.
Arad's eyes silently shifted toward the dragon. He lifted his sword up, and swung it down,
releasing a massive fire slash that flew toward the dragon and exploded at him. Those were the dragon's flames, Arad had thrown them back at him.