Swordsman's Regression: Reawakened as a Necromancer-Chapter 116: Spectral Memory

His gauntleted fingers traced the cold steel of her breastplate. There were no gashes or punctures he could find.

Only superficial scratches and deep dents, as if she had been battered by a giant’s fist, not pierced by a blade or fang.

He moved to the others. A Mage, a Barbarian, and another Knight. The story was the same with all of them. Apart from the bites, no mortal wounds. Just... emptiness.

A cold, professional curiosity warred with a deep-seated instinctual dread. How did these vampires take all of them down so easily?

An idea hit his mind. He remembered the skill he had unlocked that morning, ⸢Spectral Memory⸥.

⸢Spectral Memory: Access residual memories imprinted on a corpse. Clarity and duration depend on time since death. Mana cost scales exponentially with corpse age⸥

Quietly, he knelt before the female Knight, holding her face to keep her head in place. Then, he gazed into her eyes as he activated the Skill.

Blue lines of burning energy burst out of his eyes and into hers, creating a bridge of knowledge exchange.

Percival felt his sensors overload, and in a sudden moment, he was no longer seeing with his eyes. He was seeing with hers.

The Knight’s name was Willow. Willow Lockhart.

He could feel her panic like it was his own, a live wire in his chest.

He saw the foyer as she had seen it. It was the same, yet utterly alien. He watched as they walked in, talking amongst themselves about how unique this Gate World felt.

Then he saw sickly, emerald beings attack from hidden corners in the ceiling.

"Shield wall! NOW! Anchor the flanks!" he heard the leader, the male Knight command.

"On it!" Her own voice echoed in his/her skull.

Through her eyes, he watched her team set a wall against the green mist pouring in from the ceiling, the slashed portraits, and from the deepest shadows under the stairs.

The mists gathered themselves into tall, vaguely humanoid shapes with too-long limbs and faces that were just smooth, blank ovals with two burning emerald pits for eyes.

Vampires.

They didn’t look like the ones Percival recognized from movies. But undeniably, they were bloody vampires.

He saw their names floating above their heads. Manor Vampires (Lvl 40).

"Lyra, scorch them!" the leader yelled.

A bolt of incandescent fire screamed from the Mage’s hands. The Vampires dissipated and reformed in a burst of movement, then glided forward.

The Vanguard tried to keep up but how they moved was almost impossible to follow.

One was upon the Barbarian. He roared, swinging his axe in a decapitating arc. The axe passed through smoky nothingness.

The Vampire’s hand, however, solidified into a claw of condensed emerald light as it reached for his face.

It grabbed him by his chin and pushed its face into his neck. Then sunk its teeth.

The Barbarian’s roar cut off into a wet gurgle. Percival/Elara watched with horror as the life force was sucked out of the Awakener.

"It’s drinking his blood," Willow muttered, terrified.

"Not just his blood. It’s draining him. What the hell are these things?! FALL BACK!" the leader cried.

Chaos. The disciplined line shattered. Willow spun, trying to cover the supports who had joined them from Hollowcreek’s small Awakener army.

But they were already breaking. Percival saw their faces, contorted by a fear greater than loyalty. They turned and fled, scrambling for the portal, abandoning the Vanguard to its fate.

The Barbarian fell to the ground. The Vampires multiplied. One became three, three became ten, swarming over the armored forms.

The leading Knight barely had the chance to use any of his powerful Skills. His sword could do nothing against the Demons. They took him next.

The Mage tried her best to push them back with her Fire Shields and Balls. The Arcanist, who had been quiet, hid behind a mana shield.

Willow was left to fend for herself.

She did her best to escape the Demons relentless assault, using Skills that even impressed Percival. But as a Knight, most of her Skills depended on raw combat, on her steel sword.

The Vampires killed the Mage first, then they finally got a hold of her.

It was a larger one. Its form was denser and its face had no features save for two eyes that were like collapsing stars, pulling all light and hope into their green fury.

"Mine."

It loomed over her, a void of hunger given shape. Then it leaned down, opening its mouth, sharp teeth glinting with hunger.

Willow looked over to the Arcanist who could have helped her but instead ran away. She closed her eyes and accepted her fate.

GASP!

Percival recoiled violently, tearing his hand away as if burned by dry ice. Willow’s dead head hit the wall as he scrambled backward on the floor, boots slipping in dust, until his back slammed against the cold wall.

His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. He clutched his own throat, fingers pressing into his pulse point, a frantic, physical confirmation that he was still here, still whole.

The ghostly sensation of those sharp teeth sinking into his neck, the draining of his blood and his soul; it clung to him like a filthy web.

He dragged in ragged breaths, forcing the panic down, locking it away. Analysis. He needed analysis.

"Green," he rasped, the word scraping his dry throat. "Demonic mana. Like Demonspawns, those Vampires, they were green."

His eyes narrowed. "But they had no real flesh unlike spawns. Spawns were flesh mixed with mist. But those Vampires were just... most."

The Hybrid’s warning echoed in his head: Green is the color of the Oldmother.

Now, it was safe to presume that everything Drigurd had said was true. Everything.

This was no longer a game.

His gaze, now sharp and calculating despite the lingering tremor in his hands, swept the foyer. The ceiling, under the staircase, and the pictures. That was where they had come from.

He had to be ready.

Percival pushed himself to his feet. The momentary weakness was gone, burned away by a cold, focused resolve.

This was no longer a dungeon clear. It was an extermination within a hunting ground. And he was both the hunter and the bait.

He lifted his hand over his shoulder. But rather than summoning a sword, he reached for his War-Scythe.