I Awakened The Ancient Vampire System

Chapter 151: Chapter 151: Into the Dark

The group entered the Black Forest and immediately understood the name.

The canopy above was so dense that no light penetrated — not sunlight, not moonlight, not even the ambient glow from the city behind them. The moment they crossed the tree line, darkness swallowed them whole. The air was thick, humid, and carried the smell of rotting vegetation and something chemical underneath — the faint acrid scent of the Green Plague.

Lucian raised his hand. "Light Weaving."

Dozens of light bulbs materialized around the group — softball-sized spheres of soft white light that hung in the air at regular intervals, illuminating a radius of thirty meters in every direction. The light pushed back the darkness just enough to reveal the forest floor — dark soil, thick root systems snaking across the ground, fungi that glowed faintly blue and purple.

"Keep close to the light," Lucian said.

He reached out to the system internally. Start directing.

"Go straight," the system replied immediately. "The plague signature is directly ahead. Approximately three kilometers."

Lucian turned to the group. "We go straight."

They moved out. The two Peak Core Realm officers took point and rear positions, spear-woman in front, axe-man behind.

Minor obstacles appeared within the first kilometer. E-Rank forest creatures — the mutated four eyed rabbits, salamanders with corrosive skin — lunged from the underbrush.

The spear-woman took the first rabbit through the skull without slowing her stride — thwuck — and the axe-man split a salamander down the middle with a single downward swing — crack — as it leaped at Sarah from behind a rotting log.

D-Rank toxic plants tried to grab at their ankles with thorned vines. Sarah noticed the subtle tremor in the soil before the roots moved and created a localized quake — boom — that shattered the underground network before the vines could tighten. A section of ground turned out to be unstable — a thin crust over a sinkhole hidden beneath fallen leaves. Mickey’s foot broke through first, sinking to his ankle before Lucian grabbed his collar and yanked him back. They redirected around it, the officers testing each step with mana pulses before the group advanced.

All handled quickly.

But Lucian noticed something else.

The forest was eerily empty. No C-Rank beasts. No B-Rank predators. Nothing larger than E-Rank anywhere in their path. The Black Forest was supposed to be one of the most dangerous beast territories in Europe — home to creatures that could challenge Core Realm cultivators, territories that even Grand Core masters approached with caution.

"It seems all the powerful beasts left to attack the city," Lucian said quietly.

Clara glanced at him. "That makes the path easier for us."

"Yeah." Lucian’s eyes scanned the darkness beyond the light bulbs. "We better move quickly. This forest is giving me the creeps."

An hour passed. The trees grew thicker, the roots more tangled, the air heavier. The faint green shimmer in the atmosphere intensified — they were getting closer to the plague source.

Lucian’s Blood Sense picked up the signatures.

Three of them.

Directly ahead. Roughly three hundred meters. Past a dense thicket of mutated trees.

The first signature was enormous — dense, powerful, radiating the pressure of Early Grand Core Realm.

The second was smaller — Peak Core Realm. Human.

And the third was different. Plant-like. Rooted in place. Pulsing with the same green energy as the plague — a slow, rhythmic throb that Lucian could feel in his blood like a second heartbeat. The source of the plague.

Lucian raised his fist in a signal to stop.

Everyone halted. The officers tensed, hands on weapons.

"We’ve found it," Lucian murmured.

Starveil Tower

Vice Master Yelena sensed them.

Three signatures. Mid Grand Core Realm.

She stepped out of the tower’s main entrance, ice already crystallizing around her fists.

"Identify yourselves."

The three figures stopped twenty meters away. Dark clothing. White handprint masks covering their faces. They didn’t respond.

Then one of them — a woman with crimson hair visible beneath her mask — smiled.

"Distract her."

The other two moved.

Fast.

Fast.

They split apart in a blur of motion — one darting left, the other right — and attacked simultaneously. The left one formed a blade of condensed shadow in his hand, black as ink, sharp as a razor, and swung at Yelena’s neck. The right one cocked his fist back, earth mana crystallizing around his knuckles until his hand looked like it was carved from stone.

Yelena raised both hands.

"Glacial Fortress."

Ice erupted from the ground — crack-crack-crack — walls, barriers, spikes, a defensive formation that enclosed her in a dome of frozen barriers in the space of a single breath. The shadow blade struck the left wall and shattered against it — crack — fragments of dark energy scattering like broken glass. The earth-reinforced fist hit the right wall and dented it two inches deep but couldn’t break through.

Yelena counterattacked without hesitation. "Frost Lances."

A dozen ice lances launched from the dome’s interior surface — fwish-fwish-fwish — each one aimed at a vital point on the attackers’ bodies. The shadow user dodged three, deflected two with his blade, and took a fourth across his shoulder — schlik — the ice piercing flesh before shattering. He grunted but didn’t slow down. The earth user raised a stone shield that absorbed three lances, then punched through the remaining ones with his reinforced fist, shattering them into harmless ice fragments.

The third figure — the one with crimson hair — wasn’t fighting. She had sprinted past the engagement the moment it began, moving toward the tower entrance with speed that matched a Mid Grand Core Realm cultivator at full sprint.

Yelena’s eyes widened. A summoner — she could feel it now, the familiar resonance of a summoning ability activating. Not like the Chinese boy from the tournament. This was vastly more powerful. The mana output was staggering.

The crimson-haired woman burst through the tower entrance and disappeared inside.

A heartbeat later, the sounds of combat erupted from within the tower — screams, roars, the crash of bodies and furniture. The woman placed her hand on the floor as symbols appeared and a gate opened. C-Rank and D-Rank beasts materializing in corridors and rooms, attacking officers and staff who had no combat capability.

Yelena’s jaw clenched sensing what was going on inside the tower.

She engaged the two attackers with full force — abandoning defense for offense. Ice storms erupted from her palms — whoosh — freezing the ground in a thirty-meter radius, ice spikes impaling the shadow user’s shadow clones as he tried to create distractions. She formed an ice sword in her right hand and a frozen shield in her left, then charged the earth user directly.

"Frost Crescent."

A wide horizontal slash of concentrated ice — sharp enough to cut through steel — caught the earth user across the chest. His stone-reinforced body cracked but held. He countered with a ground slam that sent stone spikes erupting at Yelena’s feet. She jumped, ice forming beneath her feet to create a moving platform, and rained ice lances down on him from above.

The shadow user reappeared behind her, blade aimed at her spine. She didn’t turn — she simply expanded a wall of ice backward from her body without looking. Crack. The blade embedded in the wall inches from her back.

She was Mid Grand Core Realm fighting two Mid Grand Core Realm opponents. She could hold them. She could even win if she committed fully — her ice was superior to both their elements, and her experience was greater.

But she couldn’t pursue the summoner.

Every time she tried to disengage and move toward the tower, one of the attackers would press the assault with suicidal aggression — the shadow user throwing himself in front of her with blades spinning, the earth user collapsing the ground beneath her feet to slow her movement. They were stalling. Buying time. The summoner only needed minutes to turn the tower’s interior into a slaughterhouse.

Yelena shattered the shadow user’s latest blade with a punch, drove an ice spike through the earth user’s thigh — schluk — and tried again to move toward the tower.

The shadow user dissolved into darkness and reformed directly in her path, blade already swinging.

"Glacial Prison."

Ice enclosed him from neck to waist — a frozen block that locked his arms and legs in place. He snarled, his shadow claws tearing through the ice from the inside.

It bought her three seconds.

Three seconds wasn’t enough.

The earth user collapsed the ground beneath her again. She leaped to stable footing, and by the time she landed, the shadow user had shattered free and was between her and the tower once more.

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