“Alright, are we all ready?” Zankoku stood up first and inspected the rest of the party.

Everyone else nodded in response and stood up. Merlin resummoned his ball of light so that he’d get the maximum duration on it, and Alvira grabbed a torch from her inventory and lit it.

With their weapons drawn, everyone waited in anticipation as Tiny and Zankoku worked together to push open the large stone double door.

As expected, the inside of the next room had next to no light outside of what looked to be a single brazier hanging in the centre of the room.

The brazier was letting out a fair amount of smoke that was visibly gathering near the ceiling. Seeing as the room wasn’t completely full of smoke, it seemed as though the room wasn’t entirely sealed as it first appeared. There must have been some ventilation system that the smoke could escape from.

Dotted around the room were an assortment of cages, and within these cages seemed to be a large group of humans left in a strange state of delirium. None of them reacted as the two ghouls that were roaming around the room clawed at their cages.

Two more vampires seemed to be working within the room, one was handling vials full of an assortment of liquids, while the other seemed to be writing on various sheets of paper that were strewn across its desk.

At the very back of the room, barely illuminated by Merlin’s orb of light, was a much larger vampire sitting on what was essentially a throne. On the vampire’s lap was a motionless pale woman wearing a bloodstained white dress, the source of the blood stain appeared to be coming from her neck.

The vampires all noticed the doors opening, and they bared their fangs when they saw Merlin’s party appear on the other side.

“What the.” Alvira mumbled,

As the party slowly started entering the room, Merlin noticed that his body suddenly felt somewhat lethargic, but he didn’t know why. He finally got a good whiff of the plant that was burning in the brazier and he immediately recognised the scent.

“Nora, shoot the brazier.” Merlin yelled as he stepped back out of the room. “The smoke is a powerful sedative, don’t breathe it in.

Everyone followed his actions, quickly stepping out of the room and covering their mouths. Nora drew an arrow back and sent it flying. She barely hit one of the chains suspending the brazier, causing it to frantically shake around and spill hot coals around the room.

The ghouls were the first to react, they began a sprint towards the group and both pounced on a target. The two vampires doing tasks dropped what they were doing and started making their way over, while the larger vampire remained seated on his throne.

Zankoku and Tiny intercepted a ghoul each, while Nora shot another arrow, sending the brazier crashing to the ground, causing the rest of its contents to spill out as it rolled around the floor.

Zankoku wedged his blade into the ghoul’s shoulder, while Alvira slid underneath it to stab at its heart before retreating. 

The ghoul that was pouncing onto Tiny barely dodged his war hammer. Allowing it to dig its sharp claws into Tiny’s chest.

Nora sent an arrow into the shoulder of the ghoul attacking Tiny, and Merlin charged at it, plunging both his daggers into the ghoul’s eye sockets, using the leverage they provided him to rip the creature off of Tiny.

Merlin began chanting when he noticed one of the vampires running towards him. As the vampire pounced on him, Merlin slammed his palm into its chest while finishing his chant, “Ignite.”

「Skill ⟪Ignite⟫ Activated.」

Small embers formed on the vampire’s clothes quickly spreading as the vampire moved around, focused more on plunging its claws into Merlin’s shoulder than putting out the fire. Merlin ripped his daggers out of the ghoul’s head and thrust them towards the vampire, causing it to leap backwards. The ghoul Merlin was on was quickly finished off by Nora with a single headshot.

The other group had made short work of the other ghoul and were now fighting the second vampire. Tiny had gone to help the other group with their vampire issue as Merlin pounced on the vampire that had only just realised it was on fire.

Merlin parried the vampire’s panicked claw strike, leaving a deep gash on the creature’s neck in return. The smoke hadn’t yet dissipated, so Merlin was beginning to feel its effects as he chased this vampire down into the centre of the boss room. The scent of burning flowers was slowly being overpowered by the scent of burning flesh, so now he was feeling lethargic and nauseous.

  The vampire allowed Merlin to plunge his daggers into its chest, but in return managed to sink its fangs into Merlin’s neck as a last resort, its flesh was still slowly burning away and Merlin could feel the heat of the flames.

Merlin felt his life force being slowly drained away, but it seemed the vampire didn’t enjoy the taste of his blood. A few seconds after it bit into him, the vampire tried to pull away, only to find that strange vines had burst out of Merlin and wrapped around it. As the vine thorns stabbed into the vampire’s pale flesh, a familiar notification appeared before Merlin.

「Passive skill ⟪Rose Blight⟫ has triggered, target’s stats have been reduced.」

The vampire seemed startled at this development, it panicked and tried to struggle out of the vines, only to find that an arrow was coming right for it. Unable to dodge, the vampire was helpless as the arrow pieced its skull. Merlin finished it off with a quick flurry of dagger attacks, followed by a final stab to the heart.

Merlin’s head was spinning, the smoke had taken its toll on his body. He retracted his vines and dashed towards the rest of his party, leaving the vampire corpse there to continue burning. He arrived near the group just as the party finished off the last vampire.

Before anybody could say anything, the boss finally started moving. It reached for the corpse of the woman it had on its lap and wrapped its large hand around the corpse’s neck. With only one hand it threw the corpse away like she was useless garbage. The woman’s corpse hit the back wall before landing on one of the cages.

Everyone’s attention was quickly brought back to the vampire itself as it stood up, showing that it was at least three heads taller than the other vampires.

“Oh lord, he’s massive.” Alvira, the shortest in the party, remarked. She appeared to be somewhat intimidated by the vampire’s size.

The vampire began shouting at Merlin’s party in a strange language. Nobody seemed to be able to understand what it was saying, and even Merlin was having a hard time trying to figure out which language it was. Even though he couldn’t understand it, there should still have been some familiarity if he had heard it before, but this language just felt alien to him.

“Any idea what he said?” Zankoku asked, but he received a negative answer from everyone in the party.

The party all rushed forward into the room with their weapons draw, Merlin stood back for a moment. He made sure nobody was watching him before he sneakily cut a chunk of of forearm off of the vampire corpse next to him and shoved it in his mouth, allowing him to start regenerating his health faster.

The flesh tasted rotten and almost caused him to throw it back up, but Merlin forced it down and kept it down. He immediately regretted his actions, wolf flesh was one thing, but vampire flesh was clearly crossing a bar. Unfortunately he wasn’t equipped with potions just yet, so this was the only option he had for healing.

The vampire lord seemed to be struggling against the four of them. It managed to dig its claws into Zankoku, but as a result it lost its left arm.

A red tinted arrow flew through the air, embedding itself in the centre of the vampire’s chest, causing its body and clothes to spontaneously combust.

At it struggled to put out the flames with a single arm, Alvira had snuck up behind it and plunged her new knife into the vampire’s back, slicing its flesh from the neck down to the tailbone.

As Merlin watched the party fight the vampire boss, his body suddenly received a surge of energy, seemingly out of nowhere. The sedative smoke’s effects had finally run out and he was ready to rejoin the fight.

Merlin picked up both his daggers and sprinted towards the vampire. He watched as Tiny chanted and slammed his hammer into the vampire’s back, sending it stumbling forward where Nora put two more arrows into its chest. Zankoku and Alvira took a leg each, leaving a deep gash and causing it to fall to its knees.

Seeing this perfect opportunity, Merlin chanted his heavy strike skill as he lunged towards the vampire.

「Skill ⟪Heavy Strike⟫ Activated, your next attack will do an extra 5% damage, and has a 10% chance to trigger the stagger effect.」

He plunged his wolf’s fang into the vampire lord’s head, causing a loud cracking noise to echo within the room as his dagger broke through the vampire lord’s skull.

The vampire stopped moving.

“Wait, seriously that was it?” Alvira asked with a smug expression. “The ghouls were harder than that!”