I managed to block a hit meant for Rossetti, and I then lashed out with my swords. Bai Ri and Hei Yue sliced through the blood whips and sent azure mana sparkling across the ground. Ice expanded rapidly across the concrete and engulfed the vampires, but they managed to break the ice.

While I was distracted by them, Rossetti whirled around and cut through blood whips with her chakrams. She danced in the midst of the vampires, fending off their blood magic. I froze the blood with a couple of swings from my swords, and then yelled out to her.

"Rossetti!"

"Got it!"

She jumped up when I kicked out with one leg. Landing with a foot on mine, she launched herself high up and unleashed her spell from above.

"Flaming Phoenix Kagura Dance!"

Fiery feathers rained down on the horde of vampires around us. Several of the vampires shrieked as they were caught by the flaming feathers and immolated, their bodies turning into blackened husks before toppling over. The rest managed to scatter, wisely evading the flaming projectiles. Despite not being killed by the powerful spell, they were forced into a retreat, choosing to escape rather than remain and get incinerated.

Landing on the ground and slicing through another vampire with her chakram, Rossetti's eyes widened slightly.

"I can't believe it…this is the first time I've fought so well alongside someone else before!" She turned to stare at me. "Just who are you?"

"What the heck?! Didn't you fight as a team with Kufa, Miura and the rest?"

"I…I did! But this is the first time I gelled so well with somebody else! As if our skills complement each other perfectly! And it's like only the first or second time we've fought together! Even with Kufa and the rest, I've had lots of practice and training with them!"

"Huh. Okay then. Well, more importantly…"

This wasn't the time to be having idle talking about teamwork and cooperation. We just needed to focus on eliminating the enemies before us. Whatever mysteries there were behind our strangely complementary fighting styles, we could worry about them later.

For now, I concentrated on drawing the fiery mana that Rossetti left behind. As a dancer or maiden, her main role was to buff her teammates, to increase the fighting efficiency of her party and boost their power. The crimson mana that Rossetti left in the air in the aftermath of her Inferno Phoenix Avalanche, I absorbed quickly and summoned my Celestial Guardian.

"Vermillion Phoenix!"

"!!!"

The vampires recoiled when the majestic vermillion bird sprang to life, spreading his blazing wings. An inferno erupted and consumed yet more of them, reducing those unfortunate enough to be caught by the conflagration into ash. Being vampires, they had preternatural speed, and more than a few of them succeeded in evading.

"We should go after them," I said. Rossetti nodded. Behind us, Kufa and Miura followed, cutting down the vampires with a katana or disintegrating them with black magic.

"Did you just absorb Rossetti's mana to summon your Vermillion Bird?" Miura demanded as she pulled up alongside me.

"Yeah. Why?"

"Heh…you two are getting pretty intimate, aren't you?" Miura's eyes had seemed to lose their color for some reason, turning into dull black orbs. What the f.u.c.k? Was she turning into a yandere or something?

"There's no such thing!" Rossetti snapped, her face turning red slightly. I ignored the farcial conversation between the two girls and focused on the predicament before us. Now wasn't the time to engage in high school romance drama. Not when we had an entire clan of vampires ma.s.sacring the students of Saint Teresa Academy.

"That's…"

I suddenly recognized the mana signature of someone familiar. A person I had encountered before.

"This is…Yi Shen? d.a.m.n it, he really is alone."

Using the enhanced view option in my gla.s.ses, I tracked his location and caught sight of him. Good thing I found him first, rather than Kai Lin or Zhao Yan, otherwise I would be accused of stalking the girls. Because in shoujo manhua, logic didn't matter and the characters were always more concerned about relations.h.i.+p matters than they were in actually fighting to survive. Don't ask me why.

Good. I could get close to him and yell at him for his stupidity and instruct him to regroup with the others instead of splitting up.

"This way!"

"Huh? Really?" Miura sulked, but she obeyed. Kufa and Rossetti didn't question me, trusting that I had a good reason for leading them there. Our path ended up being cut off by the surviving vampires from earlier, who moved in to bar us.

"b.l.o.o.d.y vampires!" I snapped, drawing a dry glance from Miura.

"Are you serious?"

"You get used to his pun jokes after a while," Kufa told her. "You should have heard him when we were out hunting Chiropterans."

"I'm not sure I want to," Rossetti giggled nervously.

The mages who had devoted themselves to blood magic surrounded us, licking their lips and baring their fangs. Blood-red mana swirled through their hands as they prepared to lash out once again with their spells.

I dodged the first blood whip that arced through the air, a lethal manifestation of crimson mana that could cleave through metal. I say that, but Kufa sliced through the second blood whip with his katana. Then again, he had mana wreathing the blade of his weapon, so…

Miura conjured a shadowy barrier to block a third blood whip while Rossetti danced away from the others, her chakrams parrying those she couldn't avoid.

Then Vermillion Phoenix soared above. Boosted by Rossetti's Phoenix Kagura Dance, he sent a torrent of flames that roasted a couple of vampires and scattered the rest.

While my friends and I were distracted by these persistent and tenacious vampires, Yi Shen was rapidly firing off badly-colored bullets from his guns. Seemed like the artist was too lazy to draw anything more detailed and convincing than a couple of random splotchy, terribly colored blobs instead of actual smoke and gunfire. For some reason, even though he was firing with two guns at the same time, he was able to hit a vampire who was about to chow down on a poor student to suck his blood. The victim slid out of the dead vampire's grasp and scrambled to relative safety.

That was the only shot Yi Shen scored. The rest of his bullets missed. That was what happened when you tried to shoot with two guns. Sigh.

Meanwhile, high above, Xu Wu Cheng watched behind the ledge that was atop a bunch of stairs. He didn't seem affected as the cannon fodder vampires were felled to a few lucky gunshots (while the majority stood still and allowed the badly aimed bullets to whizz harmlessly past them). More amused than annoyed at Yi Shen's pathetic efforts, he raised his hand and gave the order to end the silver-haired dude's misery.

"Surround him in four directions," he instructed the more elite young vampires he had under his command. Before he even lowered his hand, those elite troops disappeared behind him.

As Yi Shen stood in the middle of the few corpses of vampires he killed, the four elite vampires emerged from four opposite directions and converged on his position. Studying his enemies, Yi Shen raised his dual guns and fired at them unflinchingly, standing his ground in determination. True to form, he missed every single one of his shots even as they closed in.

Why can't I hit any of them? He wondered as his shots missed. Why is my combat skill so weak?

Well, dude, if you stopped simultaneously firing with two girls from the hip and actually take the time to aim, you would have hit at least one of them before your demise. As it was, I watched helplessly from afar as one of the vampires reached Yi Shen and drove his clawed hand through the latter's chest.

"Demonic Blood Claws!"

Yi Shen was unable to react as his enemy's hand pierced through his his chest and exited from his back, his blood spraying the already crimson marble floor. He let out an agonized cry as both his guns spun out of his grip, clattering onto the ocean of expanding blood.

Well, the first one had just bitten the dust.

"We're too late!" Rossetti cried. "Yi Shen is gone!"

"That's too bad." I sighed and shook my head. "Oh well. I never liked him, anyway."

"How can you say that?!"

"Uh, of course…his death is tragic. If only we can prevent it! But there's no point feeling guilty over it, we have to look for those people still alive and save them."

"…you have a point," Kufa admitted as he slashed at a vampire with his katana. "There's no point brooding over this. There are plenty of other people who need our help. Let's go."

At a signal, I had Vermillion Phoenix blow the place up, and the four of us quickly used the cover of the smokescreen to flee the place. There were just too many vampires for us to deal with right now.

"Good job," Xu Wu Cheng complimented his subordinates, suddenly appearing on the ground floor and posing coolly behind Yi Shen's corpse. With a flick of his coat, he stalked off stylishly through the scene of the ma.s.sace. Huh? When did he…? Never mind. "We have only one person left."

He wasn't referring to any of the four of us. I buried my face in my palm and disengaged. With Yi Shen dead, there was no reason for the four of us to remain, so we moved under the cover of Vermillion Phoenix's smokescreen and toward someplace where surviving students continued to resist defiantly against the growing tide of vampires. Thanks to my gla.s.ses, I could see through the smoke, the outlines of our enemies marked out in infrared vision.

A vampire lunged into the smoke, also using some sort of esoteric spell to track us. Instead of slas.h.i.+ng him with my swords, I spun around and kicked him in the chest. The blow sent him hurtling into his comrades, and the whole lot of them went down like bowling pins. I ran off without any hesitation, making sure that my friends were with me. I had no intention of being embroiled in a long fight against these monsters, not when my priority was saving people.

Fortunately, my friends appeared to agree with my sentiment. Unfortunately, it didn't seem like we were doing a good job of it so far.

Ironically, Kai Lin was doing a far better job than I was. She was slas.h.i.+ng vampires with her whip and saving a bunch of students who were under a.s.sault.

"Hurry up and run away. I'll take care of them."

Despite her high heels, she was actually having more success than Yi Shen in slaying vampires. Countless b.l.o.o.d.y corpses lay at her feet. That was actually why I rushed toward Yi Shen's location first, because I knew he was more incompetent and in greater need of saving than Kai Lin.

Unfortunately for Kai Lin, Xu Wu Cheng had already arrived on scene. While she danced a deadly tango with vampires, her whip las.h.i.+ng out in multiple directions, he calmly sat atop the roof of a nearby school building and watched her, his legs hanging off the edge freely. Behind him, his loyal minions stood, defying gravity and awaiting his orders.

However, Xu Wu Cheng waved them back. Grinning, he licked his lips and wiped his mouth.

"I'll deal with her."

He then jumped down from the rooftop. For some freaking reason, the school building literally vanished behind him, replaced by a night scene that featured a gigantic moon. Hey, artist, I know you're trying to do some thematic thing here, but at least have better transition or consistency between panels. If he was jumping off from a school building, then it should be a school building that should be standing behind the descending vampire, not an open ground featuring the freaking moonlit sky! Like…what the f.u.c.k, man? Buildings did not simply disappear at the characters' convenience!

Similarly confused, Kai Lin looked up, probably wondering the same thing as me regarding how a huge building could simply disappear just like that.

"What?" she murmured, but she managed to raise her whip to counterattack.

Xu Wu Cheng grabbed her golden whip with his hand and jumped behind her, taking her completely by surprise. For some reason, he was able to tie Kai Lin up with her own whip just by jerking on it. No, I had no idea how that worked either. Did he infuse her weapon with his own mana or something? But Kai Lin should have a counterspell in store to prevent an enemy from taking control of her personal weapon, right?

Whatever the case, Xu Wu Cheng merely smiled triumphantly.

"Hmph!"

He tightened the whip and yanked the bounded Kai Lin toward him. She let out a soft cry as she was reeled in. I sprinted toward them, but his four subordinates dropped in between us, forcing me to skid to a stop. At least they didn't surround me like they did with Yi Shen. Good thing they were taking me lightly. Unfortunately, I was cut off and unable to help Kai Lin at all.

"Vermillion Phoenix!"

Despite my command, the four vampires scattered and escaped effortlessly from the flames.

"They aren't called elite for nothing," I muttered under my breath.

"Huh? How do you know they are elite?" Rossetti asked, close behind me as she fought off another vampire. We naturally fought back-to-back as the four elite vampires surrounded us, while Miura and Kufa dealt with another horde. As much as I wanted to unleash Vermillion Phoenix's flames on them again, we would get caught in the blast.

"Plot convenience," I replied sarcastically, and then glanced at the person we were supposed to be saving.

"Uuhn!"

Kai Lin choked and struggled against her whip while Xu Wu Cheng tightened it, but she was unable to escape. Xu Wu Cheng then bit deeply into her neck and sucked her blood. She shuddered and convulsed, her skin growing increasingly pale while the vampire drained her completely. Her mana faded totally and her body went limp.

…and so the second Hunter died, and my friends and I failed to save anyone yet again.

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