Swordsman's Regression: Reawakened as a Necromancer-Chapter 152: The Vampire Lord

Almost immediately, the Vampire Lord thrust his fractured rapier toward the ceiling, summoning dozens of the various Demons the trio had survived from prior Encounter Zones.

The Manor Vampires (Level 70), the Revenants (Level 80), and even Vampire Bats (Level 40). They gathered behind the Vampire Lord, glaring at the challengers.

The Vampire Lord raised a crooked, emerald finger and pointed it at them. The Demons attacked in unison.

"Skeletons!" Percival called upon his bone men. Once 30 of them burst out blue flames, he commanded them to take formation.

"Mercius! Lead them!" he added, drawing the Basilisk Blade from his Swordcase.

Mercius took his position at the front of the Skeleton Soldiers and slammed his Paragon Shield into the frozen floor, his Descending Steel Lotus Armor bracing against the sudden, overwhelming tide of green mana-flesh.

Three Vampires hit his shield instantly but we’re thrown backwards by the holy light of the equipment.

"Again with the Vampires!" Lewis shouted. He threw his hands forward, condensing raw ambient mana into a kinetic brick and hurling it at an advancing Revenant.

But halfway to its target, the kinetic brick vanished.

Lewis gasped as the spell reappeared two seconds later, striking empty air. "It’s the ⸢Stagnation Domain⸥! The boss has laced the room with delayed mana pockets! My timing is completely—"

Lewis didn’t get to finish.

The Vampire Lord had suddenly drifted forward, his emerald body gliding effortlessly over the frozen blood lake.

He raised his empty left hand toward a massive chunk of a fallen stone pillar. As Lewis watched, the Vampire Lord lifted it into mid-air, then shot across the crypt like a railgun slug, hurtling directly at the Arcanist.

"Move!" Percival snarled, lunging forward. He grabbed the Arcanist by the collar, hauling him backward just as the colossal stone pillar smashed into the floor where Lewis had been standing.

KRABOOOMMM!

Shockwaves followed as shattered rock and frozen blood erupted into the air.

Before Percival could regain his footing, the Vampire Lord’s glowing emerald eyes locked onto him.

Percival felt something heavy slam into his chest. It was like being hit by a speeding carriage. Except his awakened body somehow wasn’t strong enough to stop it.

Percival was violently thrown backward, his greaves skidding across the lake. He dug the Basilisk into the floor to arrest his momentum, the blade screeching against the frozen blood.

"He doesn’t even have to touch us!" Lewis yelled in terror, scrambling to his feet and throwing up a localized mana shield as a Vampire lunged at his throat.

"Mercius, lead the Skeletons and clear the vanguard!" Percival ordered, eyeing the Vampire Lord.

’My Swordsman Skills are best equipped to deal with this guy. But with his telekinesis, he’s going to keep me at a distance. And a melee Class is only efficient in close combat.’

Meanwhile, Mercius brutally murdered through Revenants, Bats and Vampires. He had killed so many of them now that he was disgusted at the sight of them.

But as Mercius stepped forward to engage a Revenant, the Vampire Lord noticed him and pushed his palm in his direction.

The undead Knight was hurled backward, crashing through a pillar that toppled over in halves and collapsed on him.

Percival saw Mercius’s HP tank low from the corner of his vision. When he looked up, his eyes shot wide with shock.

The Vampire Lord had materialized directly in front of him. So he wasn’t scared of distance after all?

He raised the fractured, crystallized blood-rapier and Percival, fast as he was, reacted in time to uplift the Basilisk Blade in a two-handed guard.

CLANG!

A shockwave of green and blue mana rippled across the crypt. Percival could tell from the collision of blades that he was far stronger than the Vampire Lord.

The Demon Boss seemed to rely on his magical energy rather than actual muscular mass. Percival wasn’t sure if that was a disadvantage or not.

The crystallized rapier on the other hand, was a quite unique weapon.

When the Vampire Lord attacked with the weapon, it grazed the steel of Percival’s gauntlet. But rather than marking the steel, it caused it to rot, turning grey and flaking away into dust.

Percival backpedaled as he inspected the damage to his armor. ⸢Temporal Bleed⸥.

It was one of the Skills the Vampire Lord had. Percival swore. If that blade so much as touched his skin, the flesh would age decades in a single heartbeat.

Percival gritted his teeth, using the heavy counterweight of his Swordcase to pivot and deflect the rapier’s downward thrust.

He spun, driving the pommel of the Basilisk toward the Lord’s emerald chest. But the Vampire Lord simply opened his palm.

A telekinetic blast erupted from his center, catching Percival squarely in the torso. The Necromancer was launched through the air, crashing hard into the stone base of the colossal hourglass.

Pain flared up his spine, stealing his breath as his health bar took a massive hit.

"Percival!" Lewis screamed, expanding a sphere of raw mana inside a Revenant’s chest, popping the Level 80 demon like a balloon before turning toward the boss.

"This boss is too strong? Is this how all Demon Bosses are?! Just his aura is throwing off opposing mana in the room!"

The Vampire Lord hovered in the center of the chaos, a god among the green-smoke swarm. He raised both hands, his face twisting in rage.

Hundreds of jagged shards of stained glass that had been floating above the coffin suddenly turned downward, aligning like the tips of executioner’s spears.

He was preparing to carpet-bomb the entire chamber.

Percival forced himself up to one knee, coughing heavily. His grey eyes, cold and analytical, darted across the battlefield.

He watched the Lord. He watched the floating glass. He watched the green mana bleeding from the fissures in the Lord’s obsidian skin.

Then, the stained glass spears launched.

A torrential rain of razor-sharp glass bombarded the crypt. Mercius, now on his feet, raised his Paragon Shield, weathering a storm of shattering impacts.

Percival activated ⸢Radiant Guard⸥, the glass hammering against it until the silver energy began to fracture.

When the glass barrage ended, Percival noticed something. The Vampire Lord had stopped using his telekinesis.

Not only had he stopped, but he was no longer floating on the air. He had landed on the frozen blood lake, as if he had suddenly decided that flying wasn’t his thing.

He gripped his rapier with both hands, and approached them slowly, moving like a swordsman rather than a Demon god. He was inviting Percival to fight.

Why? He had been fine using telekinesis earlier. Why the sudden change of mind?

It was like he had ran out of battery and was doing other things to buy himself some time.

Percival half-smirked when he realized. Cooldown.

Telekinesis of that magnitude wasn’t a passive trait. It required massive mana cost. Even at Level 110, manipulating the physical and temporal laws of the room overheats his core, and cooldown would be more frequent than normal.

Percival tracked the seconds in his head.

One. Two. Three.

The Lord parried a stray kinetic blast from Lewis with his rapier, his movements lightning-fast, but entirely physical.

Four. Five. Six.

The Vampire Lord continued to approach. Percival wanted to fight him, yes. But now, even though he always hated it, math was more important.

Seven. Eight.

On the ninth second, the emerald light in the Lord’s obsidian fissures flared blindingly bright again. He raised a hand, and the broken stone pillar around Mercius rose to the air and was hurled at Percival.

The Necromancer ⸢Grave Stepped⸥ away from all of them, evading like a dark ninja.

He rolled to a corner and stood, long hair falling down the sides of his face as he watched the Vampire Lord.

He was floating again.

’Nine seconds,’ Percival pondered. ’I had counted nine seconds. Based on how long it took me to figure it out, I’ll say 20 seconds overall."

The Vampire hurled another stone at him that he sliced into two halves, standing firmly with both hands wrapped around the Basilisk’s hilt.

"Mercius! Lewis! On me!" Percival commanded, his voice cutting through the shrieks of the Demons.

Lewis scrambled backward, panting heavily as he joined Percival’s flank, while Mercius brought his massive shield around to form a barricade against the advancing swarm.

"We can’t get near him!" Lewis gasped, clutching a bleeding scratch on his cheek. "He can hurl us anywhere and he has very strong entropy powers!"

"I know. But he is bound by the system, just like everything else," Percival said, eyeing the Vampire Lord as he drifted toward them, surrounded by a legion of green-flesh demons.

"Listen to me carefully," Percival said, sending his Skeletons to buy them time. "He has a cool down of twenty seconds before he can use his telekinesis again. What we have to do is find out how long his telekinesis lasts before cooldown."

Lewis’s eyes widened. "So he’s most vulnerable in those twenty seconds."

"Yes," Percival said coldly. "Before we do anything, we have to survive his next onslaught. Then we must start counting exactly when he stops floating."

Percival looked at Mercius. "Mercius, no more holding back. Unleash your Skills and get rid of all those Demons so they don’t come in my way."

"I understand, Master," Mercius nodded.

"In those twenty seconds, Lewis you have to do everything you can to bypass his Stagnation Domain so my Skills aren’t mistimed."

"And what are you going to do?" Lewis asked, excited and terrified.

Percival’s eyes narrowed on the vengeful Vampire.

"I’m putting an end to this story."