Blood Awakening: The Strongest Hybrid and His Vampire Bride

Chapter 718: Blood Oath

Ivan pulled his hand back through the broken glass and let the officer’s body slump against the console. Blood smeared across the switches, dripping between the buttons as sparks crawled through the ruined panel.

"Communications are down," he said.

Elizabeth landed beside him, frowning as she wiped her hand against a dead soldier’s coat.

"How long does that buy us?"

"It gives us a few minutes at least, depending on who they send out."

Dimitri had already reached the fuel line.

The Nosferatu soldiers around him tried to form a firing line, but Nagisa’s black foxfire rolled across the wet ground in a thin veil. Their eyes lost focus. One soldier shouted at an empty corner and fired three rounds into stacked crates. Another swung his rifle toward his own shadow.

Nagisa walked between them with a soft smile.

"Wrong way, baby."

Dimitri’s body swelled as golden light crawled across his shoulders and arms. The Fenrir golden blood art empowerment sparked across him in an instant, turning his eyes bright and his muscles denser beneath his coat.

Then he drove both fists into the main fuel pipe.

The metal screamed like a maiden on her first night.

The pipe folded inwards and burst, spraying black fuel across the concrete and pier. Dimitri grabbed the broken valve, tore it free, and hurled it into the ammunition lift. His hulking form was close to seven feet tall, easily destroying the massive fixture as he lifted Nagisa with a single hand.

"Let’s go."

"Mhm~ Kabooom!"

Beneath them, a deep, ugly whump shook the pier.

Then fire rushed upward through the rain.

The lift tower split apart, throwing steel plates and burning crates into the harbour. Soldiers vanished inside the orange blast. Water smashed against the pier wall as debris fell smoking into the sea.

"Wow, they really made a huge scene..." Elizabeth sighed.

She moved before the first piece of shrapnel reached Ivan.

Her hand caught his sleeve and pulled him aside as a jagged plate cut through the space where his head had been.

Ivan glanced at her, unable to complain when she smiled back.

"Be careful, darling. I can’t have you losing your head."

"...funny," Ivan said bitterly.

Two Nosferatu mutants burst from the warehouse doors with red eyes, holding WVYRN rifles. Ivan crossed the distance before their fingers tightened. His claws cut through the first rifle, then the wrist behind it. His shoulder struck the second knight in the chest and drove him through the doorframe.

Inside the warehouse, rows of chilled containers lined the walls.

Preserved blood.

Lifeless, patchwork bodies.

"Damn, these things are disgusting..." Ivan snapped his head away, but Elizabeth kept examining them, her eyes studying the stitches.

"I think these are the same ones..."

"W-What?"

"Hm? Nothing, honey."

Nagisa stopped at the entrance, her smile fading.

"Oh, that’s disgusting."

Dimitri looked over her shoulder and spat to the side.

"Burn it."

Ivan gave a short nod.

"Give me a minute, let me gather some samples... don’t forget that we need to protect our grandchildren against that psychopath."

Elizabeth began checking the chilled containers, removing packs of blood and other items from the boxes.

Her fingertips stroked across the glass canister with a young woman inside.

She hesitated, "Forgive me. I cannot help you..." But eventually returned to the entrance with Nagisa, Ivan and Dimitri.

Ivan and Dimitri brought in huge oil tanks from outside and began dumping them onto the various pieces of equipment and the massive canisters. Then, lighting two pieces of wood alight with their lighters, they tossed them into the factory.

"These are what they were sending to that island."

Ivan’s expression did not change.

"Well, none of it will leave now."

The warehouse burned quickly.

Too quickly for the Nosferatu to recover.

By the time the surviving soldiers understood the eastern supply line was gone, half their fuel had spilt into the harbour, the ammunition lift was broken, the communications booth was dead, and the replacement containers were melting in black fire.

Dimitri rolled his shoulder.

"That was easier than expected."

Nagisa’s ears twitched.

"Don’t say that."

Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed before anyone else reacted.

Her hand rose.

"Stop."

Ivan stopped at once, his eyes snapping to the same direction.

The rain appeared to shift slightly, changing direction and intensity...

"I wondered why he didn’t answer our calls...Ptuuuuh!" Dimitri spat as he saw the approaching trio.

A pressure consumed the pier, cold and refined, nothing like the Nosferatu, it was a familiar aura that carried the intense cold of the north.

Ivan focused on the leading figure.

Vladimir Tepes walked in front, tall and severe, with dark hair brushed back from a face that looked carved from pale stone. His long coat moved around him in the sea wind, lined in deep red. His eyes did not avoid Ivan’s.

Behind him, in her bridal gown, was Selina... much like her daughter, she was beautiful and buxom, with blonde hair and red eyes. Beside her was Claudia, Anya’s mother, her gaze lowered toward the burning warehouse before returning to Elizabeth.

Dimitri’s golden aura flickered like a jolt of lightning.

"Calm down, Dimitri." Ivan tapped his shoulder, watching his old friend standing on the opposite side, masked by the burning piers’ smoke.

Elizabeth’s lips parted, being the same vampire... she couldn’t help but understand.

"Vlad..."

Ivan said nothing for a moment.

Then he looked at the burning supply line behind them and back to the Tepes’ head.

’There’s no way...’

"Did you wait for us to finish before appearing... isn’t that breaking your oath...?"

Vladimir’s expression remained steady.

"What else can I do? My foolish friends and the father of my son-in-law are doing something completely idiotic."

"Vlad! Don’t you dare!" Dimitri shouted.

"Calm down, honey... this isn’t the time!" Nagisa’s elbow swiftly smashed into his stomach before she wrapped around his arm and gently kissed his cheek.

A soft pink hue blew from her lips as Dimitri’s eyes became slightly dilated.

"Continue, Vlad. But I don’t have the same patience as my husband...!"

Ivan never once changed his expression, because he already knew before it was said... all because of Vlad’s mistake eighteen years ago. Every vampire knew what it meant. A blood debt was not a favour but a binding contract with their lives on the line... a chain that would bind oneself to the owner for a single request.

Vladimir exhaled slowly.

"Even if I know they tricked me, and that she would’ve been fine even without their help. I signed a blood oath back then... and the Nosferatu, Alucard, saved Luna."

He slowly raised his right arm, his pale face facing the sky.

A flicker of purple twirled atop the surface before a burst of flames appeared from nowhere.

"Don’t take it personally, Ivan. I never wanted things to come to this, if not for your outstanding boy... maybe we’d never have had to fight like this."

Ivan looked at his old friend.

"Yet now they ask you to stand in our way."

"They did not ask." His voice stayed flat. "It was an order to fulfil my oath. Dog."

Ivan’s ears twitched, and then his eyes narrowed.

"Careful with your words, Leech."

Vladimir’s purple flame twisted around his wrist, burning without smoke despite the rain. "I still remember when that insult was enough to make you lunge at me, and cause chaos through the campus... How about now?"

"I matured."

"Really? I wonder if it’s different. That you just became better at holding yourself back."

Elizabeth stepped beside Ivan, her eyes faintly clouded as fragments of possible movements crossed her sight.

"Three seconds, darling." She whispered.

Ivan’s eyes widened slightly before his lips curled.

’I see.’

He counted inside his head before jumping to the left.

The purple flame snapped forward like a whip exactly three seconds later, carving across the pier where his chest had been. Wet concrete hissed and split open, steam rising from the cut.

Without hesitation, Ivan closed the distance in a blur, claws aimed for Vladimir’s throat.

Vladimir raised his left hand.

A wall of blood-red ice erupted between them.

Ivan’s claws struck it and shattered the surface, but Vladimir had already stepped back, his coat snapping as purple flame gathered again around his fingers.

Dimitri roared and rushed forward, golden empowerment swallowing his body.

"VLAD!"

Selina quickly took action, though not in a fast or powerful way.

She simply stood between him and Vladimir before Dimitri reached them, her bridal gown barely stirring, and placed a single hand on his chest.

There was a delayed impact, as Dimitri’s force rebounded on him.

Dimitri flew backwards, smashing through a burnt loading crane and landing hard enough to break the pier beneath him.

"Nagisa!" Elizabeth shouted.

Nagisa’s black foxfire scattered into a dozen copies of herself, each one darting around Claudia in different directions.

Though shes showed no aggression, the moment Claudia glared at the illusions, they all froze in the middle of the air.

Like insects trapped in amber.

Nagisa’s smile vanished.

"So that’s your trick... after all these damn years, you finally show off now, hah!"

Claudia’s lips barely moved. "One of them."

Ivan glanced once at Dimitri climbing from the wreckage, then at Nagisa retreating beside Elizabeth.

Vladimir lowered his burning hand, his expression tired.

"Leave, Ivan. I waited because I did not want to stop you from crippling them."

Ivan’s claws lengthened.

"And now?"

Vladimir opened his jacket, showing a bizarre red sigil painted, almost seemingly gouged into his flesh, forming a strange pentagram and various symbols.

To everyone present, it was obvious why the trio fought back...

He would die if he didn’t take action.

"I cannot break my oath further..."