The Fallen Vampire

The army of invaders ran at the members of the Drifting Snowfall Sect with their weapons and magic already glowing with icy blue energy.

They weren't running for very long however before Duncan realized that there was a huge problem.

No matter how far he and his army ran, the distance between them and the opposing forces never closed.

And by now, his men were also beginning to realize it.

"H-Hey, what's going on!?"

"I-I'm running as hard as I can, but why does it feel like it's not enough?!"

"It's a damn trick!"

Duncan ground his teeth together as his eyes razed Abbess Setsuka hatefully. "You old witch! What is this!?"

The old elf cackled madly as she tapped her cane on the ground. "Wouldn't you like to know? Are you so utterly foolish of you to think we would allow you to come into our home and attack us? Rubbish!"

Suddenly, all of the warriors standing behind the Abbess disappeared without a trace.

"We have better manners than that here. We'll come to you."

Duncan suddenly stopped dead in his tracks and scoured the entire area for any sign of the 100 plus women who had just gone missing.

"Above!"

Almost as soon as one of the soldiers realized their position, the women descended upon the invaders like bewitching birds of prey.

In an instant, the group were under siege from the highly trained members of the sect who easily drew first blood as they cut into the soldiers nearest to them with zeal.

Though they were outnumbered by a wide margin of 2,000 to 149, they seemed to be undaunted by the drastic difference in forces and gladly took on multiple enemies at a time.

Duncan was alarmed to actually see his men being subjugated by these women in a dramatic fashion.

Because he valued the life of every subordinate who was entrusted to him, Duncan felt a need to even the odds however he was able.

"Arcane Ice : Snow Marionette!"

A fierce wind wrapped up around Duncan that started to produce chillingly cold air.

Small, white bundles of ice swirled around the body of the human before they were scattered among the battlefield.

The Sect members who failed to anticipate the threat could not react in time to avoid it, and were touched by a small flake of snow.

A single second was all it took for the lone snowflake to spread across the bodies of the women and encase them in a thin yet sturdy layer of ice from the waist down.

With their movement limited and having no way for them to free themselves, they were just like lambs who had no choice but to be slaughtered.

"Don't let these bitches catch you off guard!"

"The Hero is generously providing us aid, do not disgrace him!"

With morale rising, the fight started to become more of an even effort with neither side seeming to gain a discernible advantage.

And with there still being such a large gap in numbers between them, that was a feat that was nothing short of incredible.

As soon as he had a moment to himself, Duncan spun around to search for the Abbess but found her gone instead.

'That damn bitch... I need her!'

It was already very clear to Duncan that this entire cavern was subject to the whims of the Abbess to a certain extent.

If it was up to her, he and his men would never be able to reach the actual Sect building lying up ahead, nor could they extract any of the secrets and treasures that were just waiting to be collected.

He had to somehow strip that woman of her ownership of this space and transfer it over to himself instead.

Suddenly, the cavern rumbled loudly as the water within the lake started to churn aggressively.

There was a loud booming sound and several pillars of icy blue water sprang up from the lake like they had come alive.

Suddenly, the pillars started to produce skeletons made of water and qi that roared like vengeful damned souls.

They leapt onto the bridge and started to swarm the incoming invaders like bees defending their home.

A few of them could also be seen dragging the deceased bodies of their members into the water, and pulling them down into the depths below.

'What is this..? Why do so many annoying things keep happening today?!'

Duncan was currently surrounded by a large brigade of watery skeletons who were rushing at him from every angle.

"Arcane Ice : Garden of Ice and Thorns."

A hard stamp on the ground produced a surge of sharp icy pillars that impaled all of the skeletons without letting a single one escape.

But because they were made of water and qi, they continued their movement as they tried to remove the pillars impaling them from their mass.

'How annoying... all that life energy is making it harder to freeze them at my current output... What the hell are these things anyway?'

His intuition had never once failed him, and Duncan Stone firmly believed that these things were not as simple as they seemed, nor were they a trick of the area like before.

The Hero made a clenching gesture with his fist, and switched his piercing attack into a simple encasement, trapping the bodies in icy glass cases.

"I can study them later, but for now let's-"

BOOOOOMMMMMM!!!!!!!

Before he knew what was happening, Duncan received a hard swipe across his jaw that made him feel like his brain had been rung like a bell.

His bottom teeth were cracked, he was struggling to hang on to his consciousness, and he was pretty sure his jaw would never be straight again.

Just before the momentum from the blow carried his body into the air, his eyes saw the culprit of this unprovoked attack; an old woman who was holding a cane and wearing a smug smile.

Previously, she had been largely unreadable to him, but for right now at least she was not making any real strides to hide her aura.

'Sovereign Realm...!'

No doubt, this woman could be considered a top powerhouse in today's word, especially when no one had managed to reach the last three realms of cultivation in thousands of years.

And the smug smile on her face just proved that she knew it.

It pissed him off terribly.

Over the silhouette of Setsuka, he saw a man in flaming red armor with matching red hair and that same smile of unrelenting arrogance.

'You damn cultivators... You all think you're so superior... that you can do whatever you want because your bodies are stronger... I'll show you..! I'LL ENSURE YOU DON'T THAW FOR AN ETERNITY!!'

In his mind, Duncan finally snapped and released the restrictions he'd placed on his powers.

While airborne, he brought both of his arms together in a praying gesture as he channeled the power given to him by the Great God of Ice.

"True Arcane Ice : Frozen God's Domain!!"

An absurd amount of chillingly cold energy started to drift off of Duncan's body in horrifying amounts.

Immediately, there was an alarming change on the battle field.

"H-Hey...!"

"H-Hero! W-We can't-"

"I-It's too cold!"

Like lone leaves hanging from a tree, the soldiers that were engaged in a struggle that was consuming them a mere moment ago were suddenly stopping dead in their tracks.

Their skin was so cold that it burned like the hottest fire, and every breath inhaled felt like it was drawing needles into their lungs.

Even the watery soldiers that had been summoned were turning into giant ice sculptures as the temperature continued to drop lower and lower.

Abbess Setsuka was also struggling, as she had slowed the pace of her breathing so as not to ingest so much of this freezing cold energy.

But the problem was her sect members.

They were faring just about as well as Duncan's own soldiers; some of whom had already begun to freeze from the inside out.

Setsuka knew that she had to figure ut some way to help them just before it was too late.

However, she felt like her problems were only about to further accumulate as she heard Duncan call out another spell.

"True Arcane Ice : Aspect of Winter's Wrath!"

-

On the roof of the sect residence, the entire group had been watching the battle with anticipation as the seemingly one sided conflict became much more like a tug of war.

It actually seemed like things were going to continue to be even, when Duncan activated his first True Ice spell and the entire battlefield was thrown into a frenzied standstill.

As the temperature dropped lower and lower, Aveena, Lucia and Vermeil showed the most signs of being affected by the dastardly cold weather.

In seconds, the skin of the girls had practically turned blue as they fell to their knees defenselessly.

Not even needing to be told what to do, Taira changed into an enormous nightmarish fox and pulled the bodies of all of the girls as close to his as he could get.

In the next moment, he set himself ablaze with blue flames and staved off the cold like a furry space heater.

Lucia and Vermeil were still shivering, but they were slowly showing signs of improvement.

On the other hand, Aveena had taken the attack a lot harder than them because she was currently no different from a normal person, and her mental state had already begun to wane as her eyes lost their clarity; the first telltale sign of hypothermia.

But still, she maintained the strength to make one last request. "Tai...ra.."

"You shouldn't be talking right now. Conserve your energy, Aveena."

The oni woman ignored him as she pointed to the battlefield that contained all of her freezing sisters. "Sa..ve ...them.. t-too..please..?"

Her last objective completed, Aveena fainted right on the rooftop and let her body sink into the unfairly warm fur of the large fox she had entrusted herself to.