Seeing Rei charging straight toward him, the Vampire lightly waved his hand.
In the next moment, a red rapier made of blood materialized in his grip.
Manipulating blood. That, too, was probably one of his abilities as a Vampire.
"But do you really think you can handle my attacks with just a weapon like that!?"
Shouting, Rei unleashed a strike with Death Scythe—mid-swing, he forcefully tilted his body aside.
The next moment, fifty Ice Arrows sailed through the space where Rei had just been standing and flew toward the Vampire.
Set's skill, Ice Arrow.
Having reached Level 5, it was a skill whose power had been dramatically enhanced, but against a Vampire, landing a head-on hit was difficult.
That was precisely why they had been fired from behind Rei.
Rei and Set had made no particular arrangement beforehand.
Even so, both understood how the other would act in the current situation, displaying coordination that could truly be called breathing in perfect sync.
However...
"Hmm."
Seeing the fifty Ice Arrows rushing toward him, the Vampire lightly waved his free hand—the one not holding the blood rapier—and released a magical shockwave.
The shockwave easily deflected the incoming Ice Arrows.
Each individual Ice Arrow possessed enough power to split a rock on impact, but for the Vampire, dealing with an attack of that level was not difficult.
"But...!"
Rei, who had been using Ice Arrow as a feint, was surprised by the Vampire's response but did not halt his own movement.
In the first place, the opponent was someone with at least A-Rank Monster-level strength.
No, not only that—on top of having the strength of an A-Rank Monster, he possessed intelligence comparable to a human's, or greater.
Given that, it was only natural for Rei to recognize him as a troublesome opponent.
No matter how much raw power someone had, if they were the type who could not fully utilize it, Rei would have no trouble defeating them.
Rather than such an opponent, someone with slightly less power who could fully exploit it would actually be harder to fight.
And the one Rei was currently fighting was a Vampire who possessed great strength and the intelligence to utilize it to its fullest.
If he could have defeated the opponent with an attack meant merely as a feint, Rei himself would have been the one surprised.
That was why, without being thrown off by the Vampire's attack, Rei converted the evasive movement he had made to dodge the Ice Arrows directly into an offensive.
Death Scythe was swung from the Vampire's side, and he caught that strike with his blood rapier, but...
"What!?"
The weight of Death Scythe and the destructive power behind its swing were probably unexpected even for the Vampire.
Though he managed to catch Death Scythe's strike with the blood rapier, the rapier was easily destroyed by the scythe's blade.
A shaken voice slipped from the Vampire's mouth.
For Rei, the opponent's bewilderment was nothing short of an opening to exploit.
With the blood rapier destroyed by Death Scythe's strike, the Vampire currently held no weapon.
As if exploiting that opening, Rei unleashed a strike with the Twilight Spear.
However, the moment the Vampire thought the Twilight Spear would land, he transformed into countless bats and moved away from that spot.
"Tch!"
For Rei, who had been fond of novels, anime, manga, and games when he was on Earth, the Vampire's abilities were roughly understandable.
Of course, that was knowledge he had gained on Earth, and whether it applied here in Elgin was uncertain.
In fact, even among the knowledge he had acquired on Earth, Vampires were such an attractive subject that countless variations existed, each with a wide diversity of abilities.
Among those various abilities, transforming one's body into bats was a common one.
Of course, there were slight differences, such as turning into a single bat or, as in this case, turning into multiple bats.
Facing the Vampire who had become a multitude of bats, Rei activated a skill.
"Flying Slash!"
When it came to the skill with the widest attack range among those possessed by Death Scythe, it was this one.
Next would probably be Multi Slash, but Multi Slash was merely a skill that unleashed additional slashes supplementary to a single Death Scythe strike, and its attack range was confined within Death Scythe's normal reach.
Blizzard Slash also widened the attack range in the sense that it cloaked Death Scythe's blade in ice, but only slightly.
Or perhaps, if the level went up further, the story would be different.
"Fufufufu, it's useless. All of these bats are me. Destroying a single one means nothing. That was the case on your way here too, was it not?"
At those words, Rei had a question.
He did not understand what the Vampire was talking about at all.
What he did understand was that, from the sound of it, the Vampire had known they were coming here from the start...
Thinking that far, Rei suddenly recalled something.
"Are you talking about when Set attacked back then!?"
On the way here, Set had sensed some presence and fired Ice Arrows.
But even Set had not seemed to know whether he had defeated the enemy or not.
Recalling that, Rei judged that the target of that attack was probably a bat familiar released by this Vampire... no, one of the bats he had split into like now. And the next voice he heard proved it.
"It seems you have remembered. However... that does not mean I intend to let you go alive after you ignored my mercy."
Along with those words, the bats gathered at a spot a short distance from Rei and Set and transformed back into the Vampire.
Returning to his original form, he swung his arm with a smile befitting the expression "noble prince" and once again created a blood rapier.
(Troublesome. Should I use magic? Vampires should be weak to fire.*)
Vampires were an extremely powerful race, but in proportion to that strength, they had many weaknesses.
Sunlight, silver, crosses, garlic... in slightly more unusual cases, there were also vulnerabilities to things like flowing water.
Of course, there was no guarantee those weaknesses applied to the Vampire in Rei's line of sight.
(Anyway, silver... silver, huh. Would the Mithril Knife be effective?)
The Mithril Knife was also called magic silver by another name.
Rei did not have a weapon made of ordinary silver, but he did carry a Mithril Knife for dissection purposes.
(Or rather, since he's Undead, would it be better to attack with the Magic Items Death Scythe and the Twilight Spear...? Hard to decide.)
While Rei was still hesitating, the Vampire watched him with an expression full of composure...
"Grrrrrrr!"
The moment the Vampire's gaze locked onto Rei, Set opened his beak wide and unleashed Fire Breath.
Since Set had inherited some of Rei's knowledge from his time in Japan, he must have judged that fire was effective against Vampires.
Fortunately, this was the clearing where the Dark World Tree had grown, within the Forest of Magic.
Even if they used fire-based attacks, there was no risk of the flames spreading to the surroundings.
"Oh my. It won't be that easy."
Against Set, who had used Fire Breath, the Vampire pointed his free hand toward it and created a shield of blood.
Fire Breath and a blood shield.
Thinking normally, the blood shield would evaporate and that would be the end of it.
However, the blood shield the Vampire created possessed extremely solid defensive power and blocked the Fire Breath.
Or perhaps, if Fire Breath's level had gone up one more to five and been dramatically strengthened, it might have been able to break through the blood shield.
But in the current situation, saying that was pointless.
Above all, for Rei, regardless of whether Fire Breath was effective or not, it was enough that it had occupied one of the Vampire's arms.
"Magic Shield!"
Using Magic Shield, which would block any attack exactly once, Rei closed the distance between himself and the Vampire, who was immobilized by Fire Breath.
Since he had brought out something as conspicuous as the Shield of Light, the Vampire naturally glanced at Rei for just an instant while still blocking the Fire Breath... and was slightly surprised to find that the distance between them had closed considerably.
Even so, the fact that he immediately thrust his blood rapier toward Rei was probably because he had the confidence to deal with even such a situation.
(He's underestimating me!)
Certainly, the Vampire possessed extremely high combat ability.
In fact, seeing him turn into bats to evade Rei's attacks or continue blocking Set's Fire Breath with a blood shield made that obvious.
But whether that meant he could block Rei's attacks was another question, and the answer was no.
(Will he turn into bats and escape again? But if I know he has such a means, there are plenty of ways to deal with it.)
Last time it had been sudden, so Rei was caught off guard, and the swarm of bats exploited that opening to escape Death Scythe's attack range.
But if he knew about the transformation into multiple bats, he could use Multi Slash to destroy a large number of bats in a single attack.
Destroying one or two bats would not deal damage to the Vampire.
But what if that number became ten, or twenty?
Most likely, that would without a doubt become significant damage to him.
Even so, the opponent was still a Vampire.
It went without saying that he should unleash the most powerful strike possible.
"Multi Slash!"
Perhaps sensing something dangerous in the slash unleashed along with those words, the Vampire sharply thrust his rapier forward, even while still blocking the Fire Breath.
The speed of that thrust was truly first-class.
However, the Death Scythe Rei swung made nothing of the blood rapier's strike, slicing through it... and simultaneously slicing through the Vampire's body that had been holding the rapier.
"Wha!? ...Gahhhh!"
Perhaps not expecting the blood rapier he had newly reinforced and created to be destroyed so easily again, he let out a bewildered scream... but the effect of Multi Slash unleashed additional slashes into the Vampire's body, making him cry out in pain.
Whether the pain disrupted his concentration or not, the blood shield that had been blocking Set's Fire Breath vanished, and the Fire Breath engulfed the Vampire.
"Whoa!"
The Vampire being engulfed in flames was fine.
But to think he would launch an attack from that state... and since his blood rapier had been destroyed, he attacked by extending his fingernails into claws. Rei almost took the hit... and in the next moment, the Shield of Light received the claw strike and shattered.
"Here's a bonus, take this!"
Without even needing to see that the Magic Shield was gone, Rei unleashed a strike with the Twilight Spear in his left hand.
With Magic Shield, Rei had the confidence that no matter what kind of attack the Vampire made, it would absolutely be blocked.
That was why the moment he thought he was being attacked, Rei had half-reflexively unleashed a strike with the Twilight Spear.
"Gah... gahhh..."
His entire body sliced apart by Death Scythe and Multi Slash, his body burned by Fire Breath, and his solar plexus pierced by the Twilight Spear.
Originally, Rei had aimed for the Vampire's heart, but whether by chance or by skill, the Vampire broke his stance the moment he received the Twilight Spear's strike, avoiding a direct hit to the heart.
Even so, under normal circumstances, it would have been an attack that could be called a fatal blow... but from the area pierced by the Twilight Spear, his body began turning to mist.
Did he take him down?
For a moment, Rei thought so, but immediately dismissed the idea.
He could not possibly believe that an opponent suspected to be an A-Rank Monster would be defeated by an attack of that level.
As if confirming Rei's expectations, the area where his body had collapsed into mist moved away, putting distance between them.
"Just as I thought."
As if to prove Rei's murmur, the mist took on a humanoid shape.
However... unlike when he was in bat form, there was no doubt that his body had sustained damage.
The Vampire was no longer wearing the prince-like expression from before; he glared at Rei with his gaze filled with anger, irritation, and humiliation at having shown such an unsightly state.
In terms of dealing damage to the Vampire, it was not just Rei but Set as well... but even so, Rei was probably the more obvious target for the Vampire to direct his hatred toward.
"For a mere bloodbag of prey to wound me... I shall drain every last drop of your blood!"
And along with his anger, he shouted those words.