NOVEL NEXT Chapter 97: Invasion
He looked at the head beneath his feet.
"So in the end, your goal was to get inside me, huh?" said Louis.
"Heh." The hoarse voice came out again from the same mouth that had just spoken Louis's words. "I did it because I realized you're just like me."
"Just like you?"
"Our madness is our greatest weapon. Who would have thought I could destroy myself just by invading your body? Hahahaha! Now, I'm going to take control slowly!" he roared.
But Louis scoffed.
"Just like me? Don't make me laugh." Louis raised his gun and put it to his temple once more.
"You little piece of trash..." A sinister smile appeared on his face.
It was so terrifying that Laura felt afraid. It looked like the smile of a demon.
His voice sounded again.
"You bet on one certainty. I bet on one probability!"
BAM*
"LOUIS!"
BAM*
Two shots rang out in succession from the gun.
It was the first time he had managed to shoot so quickly.
Suddenly, blood fell to the ground.
Laura had turned her head away so she wouldn't have to watch. The odds he was betting on... were too slim.
Slowly opening her eyes, she looked at him again. His hand was hanging down.
But his posture was upright.
She stared at him in shock.
"You..." Her heart raced.
There was no expression on his face. There was only... blood.
Was he dead?
But then he turned and smiled at her. "I won." He said.
There was a bullet lodged in his temple, which had failed to penetrate, and another bullet had made a small hole in his forehead that went through to the other side.
Terrifying screams rang out behind him as a strange smoke rose from his body.
"YOU—YOU'RE-CRAZY AGHHHHHHHHHH!" It was the last scream that could be heard from the vampire.
She didn't know what to say. She didn't know how to react or what to do.
What had just happened was... unprecedented.
Without realizing it, mental exhaustion struck her, and she fell to the ground, on the verge of falling to the bottom of the castle.
"You..." She uttered those words again and seemed to smile. "You're... crazy," she said, before dropping her weapon.
She couldn't even hold it.
Louis smiled and touched the wound on his forehead. It was terrible. It crossed his entire forehead.
He took some bandages from his inventory, dried the wound, and then bandaged it himself. Then he took some potions for a slow recovery. Meanwhile, Laura watched from below, biting her lips slightly, helplessly.
"You... Did you know that bullet wouldn't kill you?" she asked carefully.
He looked at her. "What do you think?"
"I don't know." She shook her head. "I just know you're crazy. That's why I'm asking."
"Hahaha, well, as I said before, it was a possibility." He laughed. "I had seen the construction of that spirit that entered me before, and it was similar to what I had seen before. That's why I fired. It was a possibility."
She frowned. "What if all spirits are the same in structure?"
He shrugged. "Maybe all spirits are like that and don't have the same function, but I still had to try. I couldn't sense it inside me, which was a danger to my existence."
"You're crazy." She took a deep breath after speaking and stood up.
He nodded and wiped the excess blood from his face. "When you face a madman, you have to be crazier. Madmen will do anything outside of sanity to achieve their goals. If you don't have the power to defeat him head-on, then do things outside of sanity. That's why life is complex, Miss Laura."
"Tsk." She clicked her tongue. "The worst part is that I can't argue with you." She shook her head, and they both jumped toward the throne, where the cube they sought was located.
Louis looked at a message from the system telling him that he had leveled up.
'Already level 30... not bad.' He smiled and stopped looking at the system to focus on the cube.
It was floating. The sides of the cube were jet black, the corners light gray, almost white.
It had two openings for a key, one at the top and one at the bottom. But it was a little peculiar. When they both saw it, they frowned.
It was a little... mystical, the feeling it gave off.
"I feel like some kind of energy emanates from it," said Laura.
Louis nodded. He didn't just feel it; he saw it. Curious, he grabbed the cube in his hands, just as Laura was thinking of grabbing it, too.
When the two touched the cube, their vision suddenly darkened and then cleared to reveal a blood-red landscape.
Before them lay a mountain covered in blood and corpses everywhere.
A wounded man was walking among all those corpses, toward the top of the mountain. An unknown mountain, from which blood was emanating.
The man who was walking... was somewhat familiar.
'The Ancient Vampire?' they thought.
His image and his 3-meter height reminded them of that man's figure. So wounded that he looked like he was going to die, but his step was so firm that he exuded authority.
As he walked, the blood flowing from the mountain like streams of water hit him terribly, but he resisted as much as he could until he reached the top of the mountain.
"You..." The Ancient Vampire spoke as he looked at a book on top of a black cube with gray stripes. "I've been looking for you... for a long time."
His hoarse voice sounded dying, but he took several steps forward before falling to the ground. He had no strength left.
He had no choice but to crawl.
There were only two meters between him and his target.
"It doesn't matter if I die... I should have died long ago." He whispered as he crawled a few more inches closer.
"But I won't die... without first understanding your secrets... Bloody Grimoire of the Ancient Cube..."
All the blood flowing from the mountain actually came from the Grimoire and the Cube. It seemed like there was magic constantly at work there, a Bloody Magic.
As he crawled, more blood flowed from his body, sticking to the rocks and splattering on the ground beneath him. But he didn't care.
Soon, thanks to his long arms, he was within reach. Almost without strength, he raised his hand, drawing strength from where he had none, and his hand rested on the Blood Grimoire.