I Awakened The Ancient Vampire System

Chapter 161: Chapter 161: Unleashing The Beast

Rose, Clara, and Ryan attacked with everything they had.

Clara screamed as she launched a relentless volley of lunar ice spears, each one screaming through the air with SS-Rank energy behind it. Ryan’s suit thrusters fired at maximum output, lifting him twenty meters into the air as both gauntlet cannons unleashed a torrent of compressed ice. Rose dropped to her knees behind her barriers, pushing Aegis to its absolute limit, her Bastion bloodline glowing green beneath her skin as she funneled every drop of mana into shielding Clara and Ryan from Hoffman’s inevitable counterattack.

Hoffman didn’t even blink. He swept his hand sideways, and a wall of light deflected Clara’s spears. He raised the other hand, and a light shield materialized above him, absorbing Ryan’s ice cannon blasts with a screeching hisssss.

Clara’s breathing grew ragged. Ryan’s suit mana reserves dropped visibly on his visor display.

Hoffman walked toward them slowly, untroubled. "You’re wasting what little mana you have left."

Clara gritted her fangs and fired a gravity orb. Hoffman slapped it aside. The sphere detonated against a building, collapsing the entire structure with a groooan and a thunderous craaaash.

Ryan dove from above, aiming a point-blank ice blast at Hoffman’s face. Hoffman raised a light barrier without looking, and Ryan slammed into it. His suit cracked on impact.

"Ry—!" Clara cried out.

Ryan tumbled through the air, his thrusters sputtering as he crashed into the rubble below. Coughing, he struggled to his knees, the suit’s integrity warning flashing red on his visor.

Hoffman loomed over them, light blade reforming in his hand. "Enough."

He raised his blade.

Deep in the crater, darkness.

Then —

A heartbeat.

Thump.

Dust shifted. A hand emerged from the debris, pale and burned, fingers twitching.

Thump. Thump.

Lucian rose from the crater slowly. His clothes were shredded, his skin scorched from the Dawnbreaker collision. Burns covered his arms and hands. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

And his injuries were healing. Eternal Regeneration knit his burnt flesh back together layer by layer, cells regenerating in real-time. His hands, blackened and blistered, faded back to pale white as new skin crawled over the burns.

Mid Core Realm against Mid Grand Core Realm.

Three full realms.

Lucian’s crimson eyes stared through the dust at Hoffman’s distant figure, looming over his friends. Clara was on her knees. Ryan was struggling to stand. Rose was running out of mana.

Conventional tactics will not close this gap. Not this time. Not before he kills everyone I care about.

Rose. Ryan. Clara.

The orphanage. Hollow Creek. Louisa’s dungeon. Years of blood and torture and loneliness. And then — somehow, impossibly — he had found people again. People who mattered. People who made the nightmare feel distant. Something fragile and precious and rare. Something that could be taken away in an instant if he was too weak to protect it.

No.

Not again.

Never again.

I won’t let anyone take them from me.

His crimson eyes darkened.

Lucian activated Predator Form.

The transformation began.

His silver hair lengthened, flowing past his shoulders, the tips darkening to a deep, blood-stained black. His canines elongated — stretching past his lips into full fangs. His fingernails extended— Schlikt, Schlikt, Schlikt — curving into black claws that gleamed like obsidian. A crimson haze radiated outward from his body, distorting the air around him in visible ripples, bending light like heat shimmer. His muscles swelled, his frame widening, his posture shifting from upright to something slightly hunched.

His aura transformed. From controlled precision to feral, overwhelming presence. The air itself seemed to recoil.

[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]

Predator Form Activated.All Physical Stats +80%.

Crimson Haze Suppression: Active.

WARNING: Predatory Instinct Override begins at 10:00.

Timer: 10:00

A countdown appeared at the edge of his vision, red numbers ticking.

Ten minutes. That’s all I have.

Hoffman froze mid-step. His light blade hung in the air above Rose’s trembling barriers. His head snapped sideways, eyes widening as a heinous, oppressive aura washed over the battlefield like a tide of blood.

"What —" His brow furrowed deeply. "What is that?"

The crimson haze rolled across the ground, distorting everything it touched. Hoffman’s light armor flickered as the suppression effect pressed against it. His instincts — honed over a century of combat — screamed danger.

Rose, Clara, and Ryan turned toward the crater.

The sight that greeted them was terrifying. Lucian’s silhouette stood in the dust cloud, but it didn’t look like Lucian. The elongated hair, the claws, the fangs, the crimson haze warping the air around him — he looked like something out of a nightmare.

Clara’s voice came through the telepathic link, shaken. "Lucian? Is that still you?"

A pause. Then Lucian’s voice — deeper and rougher. "It’s still me. But we need to end this fast. I have just ten minutes."

"Understood," Clara responded.

Lucian moved.

The speed difference was immediately visible — night and day. Before Predator Form, Hoffman was faster in every exchange. After Predator Form, Lucian’s Agility jumped from 260 to over 468. The gap narrowed instantly.

BOOM!

Lucian’s feet cratered the ground as he launched. Light Steps activated simultaneously with his enhanced vampire agility, and the combination created a burst of speed that turned him into a silver-and-black streak. He closed the thirty-meter gap between the crater and Hoffman in a blink.

Hoffman barely raised his light blade in time.

CLAAAANG!

The impact created a shockwave that leveled every standing structure within twenty meters. Walls collapsed. Rubble flew. The ground beneath both of them splintered into spider-web fractures.

Hoffman was pushed back.

For the first time in the fight, Hoffman’s boots skidded backward across the ground. His eyes widened with surprise. The boy who had been struggling against a single light bolt was now matching his physical strength enhanced with mana.

"What —" Hoffman started.

Lucian didn’t give him time to finish. He pressed forward with Aethon, swinging in rapid, feral arcs. Each strike carried the weight of his boosted Strength — now sitting at over 700. Hoffman parried, blocked, redirected, but he was being forced onto the defensive for the first time.

Ting! Clang! Craaack!

Hoffman’s light blade cracked under the third strike. He reinforced it with more mana, but his expression had shifted from amusement to sharp focus.

He fired three light bolts in rapid succession.

In his normal state, Lucian had needed the second form of the Eclipse Sword Art to stop a single one. Now, in Predator Form, he swung Aethon through all three in succession — one swing, two swings, three. Each bolt was split apart mid-flight, dispersing in harmless flashes of light. His raw physical speed compensated for what he lacked in technique refinement.

"Impossible," Hoffman muttered. "That physical strength —"

Lucian pressed the advantage. Clara and Rose and Ryan moved to support.

Clara fired a barrage of lunar ice blast from the right flank. Ryan charged his ice cannons from the left. Rose fired a force blast ahead to cut off Hoffman’s retreat angles.

Hoffman dodged. He weaved between Clara’s spears with contemptuous ease, sidestepped Ryan’s cannon blasts, and shattered Rose’s force blasts with flicks of light mana.

Lucian exploited every single one.

He appeared at Hoffman’s flank after a dodge — slash. He materialized behind him after a deflection — stab. He closed gaps before Hoffman could reposition, his claws raking across Hoffman’s light armor whenever the blade wasn’t ready.

Schlikt!

Sparks flew as claws scraped across light armor.

Clara’s ice blades forced Hoffman to twist left — Lucian’s blade was already there. Ryan’s ice blasts drove Hoffman backward — Lucian was waiting. Rose’s barriers blocked Hoffman’s escape routes — Lucian filled the remaining space with steel and fangs.

"You pests —" Hoffman snarled.

He cast Radiant Guillotine again. The massive vertical blade of compressed light materialized above Lucian, descending with devastating force.

This time, Lucian did not block.

He sidestepped.

The compressed light blade crashed into the ground behind him, carving a trench thirty meters long through the earth and rubble with a deafening shhhhhkrrrrr.

The ground split open, dust erupting from the wound in the earth.

But Lucian was already inside Hoffman’s guard.

His left clawed hand — raked across Hoffman’s chest.

SHLIKT!

The black claws tore through Hoffman’s Light Armor like paper. Four deep gashes opened across his chest, light armor cracking and falling away in shards. Blood sprayed.

"Argh—!" Hoffman staggered backward, hand clutching his chest. Blood seeped between his fingers, staining his white shirt crimson. His eyes widened with something he hadn’t felt in decades.

Pain. And with it — panic.

He reacted on instinct. A concentrated light explosion detonated from his body like a raw release of light.

BOOOOM!

The blast caught Lucian point-blank, launching him backward. He crashed through the wall of a half-collapsed building, disappearing into the structure with a craaaash and a plume of dust. The building groaned, shifted, and partially collapsed on top of him.

Hoffman stood in the open, breathing hard. He looked down at his chest. Four deep gashes, bleeding steadily. His light armor had absorbed most of the damage, but it had been breached. By a Mid Core Realm cultivator.

His mind raced. That physical strength in this form — it rivals a B-Rank beast. No, it’s more refined than that. If he hits me like that again without the armor —

He didn’t finish the thought.

[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]

Predator Form Timer: 5:00 remaining.

Lucian rose from the collapsed building rubble. Dust cascaded off his shoulders. Blood trickled from a cut on his forehead, but it healed as it appeared.

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