Either the amount of XP I get from monsters is much lower now, or some other factor is lowering my XP gain.
But, the other girls were doing fine as they were about to fully max out their levels again, and only then will they reach my stage of evolution.
Hopefully, they don't surpass me… That'd be embarrassing.
We then moved on to a few more drug lords who were selling the exact same drug… but none of them else had dark red blood like the ones cloaked in white.
And they stood out the most because everybody but that group basically wore the normal almost steampunk-like outfits down in this shithole… except for them.
So, we decided to have a little talk with the members.
"Who the hell are you guys?" I ask the members cloaked in white robes.
They all glanced at each other, unsure if they should say, but after feeling our combined bloodlust, they immediately spoke up.
"W-we are a newly formed cult!" They shout.
"Cult? And… what do you worship?" I ask.
I had no intention of joining said cult, but this could potentially help us grow closer to one of the multiple questions we had.
"We worship the Vampire Lord," They all say in unison, their eyes glowing a bright red before their bodies imploding.
Flesh splattered against the walls, but I covered us with a wall of ice, causing the blood to slide down it.
"Phew, that was close," Nell says, just bȧrėly managing to keep one of them from imploding, but both of his hands and feet were gone.
He showed no sign of being in pain, even as we sat him down on a chair, but before he died of blood loss, Astra sealed each hole with his own blood.
The blood covered the holes and hardened, serving as a replacement for the time being… as he was eventually going to die… or that's what I thought the man was thinking.
Clio and Celestine immediately began to heal the shut wounds, causing the man's face to warp in terror.
"NOOOOOO! I WILL BE PUNISHED BY THE LORD!" He shouts hysterically as if he had utterly lost his mind.
Astra shut him up with some of his blood, and once he exhausted himself, she ripped the dried blood off his lips, causing him to wince in pain.
"Now, who is the Vampire Lord?" Charna asks, but the man stays silent.
So, she quickly took action by kicking him in the balls, completely knocking the wind out of him, and just as his lungs filled with air again, he felt a searing pain come from his groin region.
"Who is it?" She asked once again, but he stayed silent, whimpering to himself in pain.
"What do we do now?" Sophia asks.
"What do you think we do?" Charna responds with another question before her face warps into a sadistic smile.
She had a wide ear-to-ear grin plastered on her face before she peeled one of the fingernails from the man's freshly regenerated hands.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHH!" He screamed, his mind completely ignoring the man's exhausted body.
His freshly regenerated feet stomped on the ground as he was unable to get up from his position.
"Oh yeah, I gave him a bit more energy so he could actually respond," Clio says.
Oh, I guess his mind isn't ignoring his body then…
"Very nice… That means we can hear his screams a bit more,"
Charna's words and expression sent chills running down all of our bodies, and we decided to just think that she developed this because of her new evolution.
This isn't how she normally is… right? Where's the calm, collected, and cold Charna that we all know?
"AHHHHHHHH!" The man screamed once again, and when he glanced down at his right hand, he noticed Charna had ripped off three fingernails.
This process continued until he had one fingernail remaining on his left hand.
"I-I'll talk! Please stop!" He shouted, his eyes already dry of tears, but the shaking in his voice was that of somebody pouring tears.
"Okay… So, who is the Vampire Lord?"
"T-The god of our cult and the being we worship! He is to descend upon the end of the world with the demon king in front of him, and they will both completely crush the remaining humans! We are all destined to die but worshiping him will give us a better chance at survival!"
So it's a cult made of fear.
"Where is this… Vampire Lord?"
But the answer we received was completely different from the answer we had all expected.
"HERE! HE IS THE RULER OF THIS CITY, SO PLEASE! JUST MAKE SURE HE DOESN'T FIND ME! IF HE KNOWS I EXPOSED HIM THE- gghhhhh,"
Blood poured from his eyes, nose, and mouth, signaling his death.
"Hmmm… Who are these fine humans with such sweet-smelling blood… stepping into my territory. I actually had to wake up from my century slumber for humans? How surprising?" A deep voice comes from behind us.
We all slowly turn around to see a man about as tall as Ethel with deathly white skin, blood-red eyes, and long dark red hair that flowed to his shoulders.
"Astra, weren't vampires supposed to be handsome devils in the fairy tales? So why is this guy… so ugly?" Nell asked but clearly meant to taunt the man that reeked with the smell of blood.
Suddenly, a wave of black bats flooded the room, attacking us but a pink flame quickly burnt them to a crisp.
"You dare insult the Vampire Lord?!" He shouts before lifting up his hands, completely flattening the house around us.
Our bodies were strong enough to withstand the impact, but the real attack were the balls of blood being conjured above him.
Kshhh Kshhh
Charna appeared behind him, stabbing deep into the back of his head… but as if it was straight out of a horror movie, he snapped his head around to Charna, scaring her as she fell back into the shadows.
But, just before her entire body could fall in, he grabbed her ankle, crushing it and inserting a rod of blood that stabbed straight through the bottom of her foot, all the way to her hip, rendering her immobile.
"Don't want you tasty treats dying on me,"
The man snapped his head back towards us, the deep slits in the back of his head quickly healing with no blood being drawn.
"HAHAHAHA!" His laugh boomed through the air, shaking the entire underground city before the balls of blood pierced straight through our hearts in an instant.
We coughed up a large batch of blood as he said,
"Whoops, guess I'll just drain you from here,"
All the blood in our body was suċkėd out, leaving us to fall limply to the floor while Charna cried out to us, desperately crawling towards our corpses.
"HAHAHHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHA!"
"Is that what he sees?" I asked Mia as she showed us a wave of illusion that revealed what the vampire saw.
"HAHAHA- W-what the hell," The vampire muttered as he was able to somehow escape Mia's illusion.
"Oops… Guess I didn't make the illusion strong enough," Mia muttered, but he was already tied up with my icy chains, and Nell held his body captive with her ability to control the blood within him.
"Wow, Lucy's plan actually worked…." Charna muttered as everybody stared at me with a bit of fear.
They all wondered how I was able to come up with such a plan in just a moment… but in reality, it was just a gamble.
I didn't know how strong the vampire was, and if he were able to resist Mia's illusion, then it probably would've played out how Mia's illusion went.
"But first of all… How the hell is a monster here?" I asked the vampire in front of me.