My Ultimate Sign-in System Made Me Invincible

Chapter 765: Taking Out The Hunter

Clone One stood by the tall window of the guest room and watched the four pale moons hang over the dark roofs of the city. Below him, the estate had gone silent.

A moment later, he was hovering in the air beyond the guest room window. He turned toward the ridge that overlooked the basin and flew toward it.

He reached the black ridge and stopped on top of it, then looked down into the basin.

The huge black manor sat below, surrounded by its high walls of polished stone and its silver iron gate. Its tall spires rose cold and dark against the starless sky.

Clone One walked straight down the slope to the main road that led to the front gates, not bothering to hide himself this time. He walked right up the wide stone road in the silver moonlight.

Two guards stood outside the tall iron gates in dark leather and black metal armor, with curved daggers at their waists. When they saw a lone human walking straight at the entrance, they frowned and stepped forward with their hands on their blades.

"Halt," the taller guard said with a flat voice. "Stray humans are forbidden near the high walls. Turn back before we take your tongue."

Clone One kept walking.

The two guards exchanged a sharp look, drew their curved daggers in a flash of dark steel, and lunged at him.

Clone One raised his left hand and flicked it outward as he walked between them.

Thud! Thud!

A wave of dense Primordial Essence slammed into both guards like an invisible wall. Their armor caved in with a crunch, and both of them flew backward. They crashed into the black stone pillars of the gatehouse and slumped onto the ground.

Clone One didn’t even glance at them. He reached the iron gates, put one palm against the thick bars, and pushed.

Crack!

The heavy latch snapped clean out of the stone. The hinges shrieked as the massive gates swung inward and slammed into the walls on either side.

Boom!

The sound rolled across the whole estate like thunder.

Clone One stepped through and walked calmly into the wide outer courtyard.

Alarm bells began to ring from the upper towers. Within seconds, doors flew open all along the covered walkways and the main building, and dozens of figures poured out into the silver light. Armed guards in black armor ran down the stone steps with their swords and daggers drawn, while pale nobles in fine dark coats stepped out onto the upper balconies to see who had dared to break in.

Human slaves in rough gray clothes froze at the edges of the courtyard. They dropped their buckets and brooms and pressed their backs against the stone pillars in terror.

"An intruder!" a guard captain shouted, pointing his sword at Clone One. "A human! Kill him!"

Twenty armored vampires charged across the courtyard in a tight group, moving with blinding speed, their crimson eyes flaring in the dark.

Clone One stood in the middle of the yard and let a small part of his Primordial Essence roll out of him.

The pressure hit the courtyard like a falling mountain.

Crash!

The stone floor under him cracked in a spiderweb. The twenty guards ran straight into the pressure mid-stride. Their knees buckled at once and slammed into the stone hard enough to shatter, their swords clattered out of their hands, and their pale faces were pressed flat against the ground.

Up on the balconies, the nobles staggered back and grabbed the stone railings to keep from falling. Their crimson eyes went wide as they stared down at the dusty human standing untouched in the middle of their yard.

Clone One swept his senses through the manor. Nobody inside was strong enough to stand up under his pressure, let alone stop him. And it seemed whoever ruled this place wasn’t home.

He ignored the pinned guards and looked over the crowded balconies and doorways. His eyes moved past the trembling nobles and stopped on a figure standing by the main doors.

It was the leader from the canyon.

He was wearing fresh dark armor. The moment his crimson eyes met Clone One’s across the courtyard, his face went even paler than it already was. He knew those torn robes and those calm eyes at once.

"No..." the leader said, stumbling back a step. "It’s him! He followed me!"

He spun around and tried to run back through the open doors of the main hall.

Clone One flicked two fingers.

Swish!

A thin crescent blade of white Primordial Essence shot across the courtyard like lightning. It tore through the stone steps right in front of the main doors and blasted a deep trench across the doorway in a shower of sparks and broken rock.

Boom!

The leader threw himself backward to keep from being cut in half and tumbled down the stairs onto the courtyard. He scrambled to his feet, trapped between the ruined steps and the human walking steadily toward him.

With nowhere left to run, he gave in to desperation. He bared his fangs, let out a hiss, and drew his curved dagger. He forced his way through the heavy pressure with everything he had and lunged in a low, frantic blur, aiming straight for Clone One’s throat.

Clone One stepped into the strike, matching the rhythm of the desperate lunge.

Clink!

He caught the dark steel blade between his thumb and finger. The dagger stopped dead in the air, shivered once, and snapped in half.

The leader stared at the broken blade in his hand.

Before he could pull back, Clone One stepped in, drove his open palm into the center of his chest, and sent a sharp pulse of force through him in perfect time with his movement.

Thrum!

The leader’s armor shattered from the inside out. He flew twenty feet backward and crashed onto the stones in the middle of the courtyard, right in front of the watching household. He coughed up thick black blood and tried to drag himself away as his body struggled to heal.

Clone One walked over and stood above him.

"You tried to take my head in that canyon," Clone One said with a calm voice in their language, loud enough for every noble on the balconies and every servant in the yard to hear. "You shouldn’t have missed."

He flicked his right wrist.

Swish!

A blade of Primordial Essence flashed down, and the leader’s head rolled across the gray stones. A moment later, the body twitched once and crumbled into a heap of fine gray ash that scattered across the cold stone.

Silence fell over the whole estate.

The alarm bells had stopped. Up on the balconies, dozens of pale nobles stood frozen like statues, staring at the pile of ash in their courtyard. Not one guard dared to move.

Clone One turned around and started walking back toward the broken gates.

As he passed the stone steps that led down to the cellars, he paused for a second and sent a thin thread of his senses down through the thick black rock under his boots.

Deep below the courtyard, behind heavy iron doors, he sensed dozens of faint heartbeats in the dark. He could hear weak, tired voices murmuring to each other through the stone, and they spoke the common tongue of the magic universe. They were humans, taken through the secret door.

Clone One looked down at the stones for a moment, and his face gave nothing away.

He could break open the cellar doors and pull them out right now. But the door back to their world was closed, and without a way to open it, leading dozens of weak humans out into a city of vampires would only get them killed in the streets.

’I’ll come back for them once I know how to open that door,’ he told himself.

He turned away from the cellar stairs and kept walking across the quiet courtyard.

He stepped over the broken latch and walked out through the ruined gates onto the moonlit road. Behind him, hundreds of eyes watched from the balconies and doorways. They had just seen a lone human walk into one of the strongest houses in their city, kill one of their own, and leave without a scratch.