Villion, the towering bruiser, moved with a sudden burst of speed, his massive sledgehammer a blur of righteous fury. The initial swing, wide and predictable, was precisely what the R-variant mutant expected.
The creature, unnervingly swift, ducked beneath the descending weapon, its movement so fluid that Villion's massive implement seemed to be moving in agonizing slow motion. The mutant's sense of its own superiority was palpable; to it, Villion was little more than a strong, but fundamentally sluggish gorilla, easily circumvented.
But Villion was a veteran, an elite warrior whose wealth of experience compensated for his lack of mutant velocity. Even as the head of the hammer missed the floor, Villion's powerful legs and core initiated a violent, twisting rebound.
With a guttural roar, he didn't let the hammer fall. Instead, he snapped his body back, driving the opposite side—a solid, massive square of wrought iron—with devastating force directly into the center of the mutant's exposed, protruding ribcage.
The impact was instantaneous and deafening—a sickening CRACK that sounded like stone crushing gravel. It was the sound of bones being pulverized and cartilage violently shredded.
The R-variant, struck mid-leap by such a concentrated kinetic blow, collapsed instantly, as if its internal structure had been simultaneously detonated. It hit the ground limp. Villion, seizing the microscopic window of opportunity, didn't hesitate.
He dropped the heavy hammer and, in the same motion, drew a long, practical greatsword he carried strapped across his back. He drove the blade down hard, burying it into the mutant's chest cavity. The creature shuddered violently, its mutilated body twitching a few times before settling into a state of absolute stillness.
A tense, cautious sigh escaped Villion's lips. He had done it.
Operating on an ancient, professional instinct—the same instinct that separates a hunter from a mere killer—Villion crouched down to examine the prize.
This habit, developed over a century of tracking and eliminating enemies, often yielded crucial tactical information or, occasionally, valuable artifacts. He placed the sledgehammer carelessly to the side, then focused on the corpse.
He first took in the horrifying visage—the sickly, hairless skin and the exposed, fused ribs. Then, driven by curiosity, he dipped his fingers into the warm, slick fluid that oozed from the mutant's massive chest wound. He brought his fingers to his nose and inhaled sharply.
An immediate, acrid stench—a repugnant mixture of concentrated ammonia, stale bile, and biological decay—assaulted his senses, instantly turning his stomach. The smell was so profoundly foul, so antithetical to the clean, metallic scent of blood he was accustomed to, that Villion recoiled violently, wiping his hands furiously on his trousers.
"Filthy, vile pestilence!" he cursed under his breath, his disgust overcoming his professionalism. He stood up, refusing to look at the grotesque carcass again, his mind reeling from the sickening odor.
That moment of primal revulsion—that single, unnecessary second where Villion turned his back on the kill—was the precise instant the R-variant had been waiting for.
The creature's "death" was a terrifying, tactical feint.
With a speed that defied physics, the mutant exploded off the ground, shedding its temporary corpse-like rigidity.
Villion heard the desperate scramble behind him, but the reaction time required was beyond even a pureblood's capability. He managed only a frantic, partial turn before the creature launched itself, a pale, deadly missile, wrapping itself around Villion's broad back.
The mutant clung to him like a frenzied, old ape scaling a tree. Its five fingers, like cast-iron rakes, dug deep into Villion's flesh, the claws hooking under his shoulder blades and biting into the bone beneath. The pain was immediate and paralyzing.
Simultaneously, the mutant's terrifying, petal-shaped maw, dripping with an unknown, viscous fluid, opened wide.
Villion roared, thrashing wildly, using every ounce of his massive strength to try and peel the monster from his back. It was futile. The R-variant, despite its shattered sternum and the sword-wound to its core, possessed a fanatical, suicidal tenacity.
It clung tighter, its internal devastation merely fueling its singular mission. Its neck extended with impossible, rubbery force, stretching its muscles to reach its target, even as the movement must have torn its wounded shoulder muscles further.
It was an act of pure, grotesque desperation.
And it succeeded. The mutant's specialized tongue-like appendage—thin, rigid, and needle-sharp—latched onto the back of Villion's neck. There was a sickening, brief surge of pain, a rush of cold venom, and then a profound, immediate rupture of the carotid artery.
Villion felt his strength instantly evaporate, the world rushing away in a dizzying torrent of sensory deprivation. He collapsed to his knees, his massive body suddenly lifeless, the mutant still clinging to his back and feeding from the fountain of his life force.
Just as the lights began to dim in Villion's eyes, the service door burst inward.
Vilian—his partner and lover—stood framed in the doorway, a look of desperate horror twisting her face. She saw the creature still feeding, and without hesitation, she raised her submachine gun and began firing a furious, panicked burst of silver rounds at the mutant's body.
Already sated and critically wounded, the mutant was not willing to risk a drawn-out battle with a second pureblood. It issued a guttural roar of frustration, released its prey, and in three impossible bounds, vaulted up the wall and vanished into the ceiling's dark infrastructure, leaving only the sound of its frantic retreat.
Vilian rushed to Villion's side, dropping to her knees. She hauled his heavy, inert body upright, her eyes scanning his obvious wounds. Seeing the claw marks—the deep, mangled gashes across his back—she cried out in pain and quickly began to apply pressure.
"Darling, how are you? Where is the worst pain?" she sobbed, her hands slick with his blood.
Villion's voice was a barely audible whisper, thick with fading consciousness. "M-my back… my back hurts…" As he spoke, his hand weakly tugged at the thin fabric of his tunic, carefully covering the tiny, insidious fang puncture at the base of his neck—the true, venomous cause of his collapse. The fatal secret was sealed in silence.
Upstairs, the chaotic, violent energy of the downstairs was replaced by the confined, humid intimacy of a small, unused storage stall. The vampire girl, whose name Zhou Yi still didn't know, pulled him inside and immediately pressed him against the back wall.
She was frantic, a tangle of limbs and desperate energy. She cornered him, stood on her tiptoes, and with a rush of possessive desire, captured his mouth. She reached for his massive hand, forcing it onto her slender waist, pulling his hips against hers and guiding his movement—an attempt to dictate the intimacy.
Zhou Yi was initially surprised by her savage, untamed initiative, but he quickly realized the truth: her passion was clumsy. Her kiss was an act of hunting—too much force, too much teeth, a desperate, vampiric bite disguised as affection.
She lacked the patient, knowing finesse of a true lover. She initiated the action, yet she had absolutely no initiative, constantly trying to use force where seduction was required.
She is just a child playing at being a woman, Zhou Yi thought, his internal assessment softening his amusement. She understands only aggression and consumption.
With a sudden, powerful shift, he pulled her fully into his arms, crushing her against his warm, impossibly solid body. The girl's inherent, chilling vampiric coldness was instantly overwhelmed by the radiating heat of his body. Her frantic rigidity melted instantly, her body softening against him like water under heat.
Zhou Yi's fingers were not just strong; they were agile and deliberate. As his hands moved with precise, controlled expertise along the curve of her waist, the girl's body responded with minute, involuntary tremors, like she had been touched by a low-voltage electrical current.
The pale skin of her cheeks flushed a deep, rose-red—a color of deep, vulnerable beauty she rarely, if ever, allowed to surface.
The girl broke free, her chest heaving, her sky-blue eyes filled with a new, honey-like moisture that spoke of profound, unexpected pleasure. She raised a slender, trembling hand and caressed the side of Zhou Yi's jaw and neck, admiring him like a child admiring a priceless, newly acquired treasure.
"You belong to me forever now," she whispered, her eyes dark with a possessive, absolute devotion.
In the next instant, her face twisted with sudden, feral resolve. Her sharp, perfect fangs extended, and she lunged, driving them with full force into the side of Zhou Yi's neck.
This was not a playful bite; this was the crucial, immortalizing action—she was making the most important decision of her young, rebellious life: to make this powerful human her kin, her permanent, eternal protector.
As a creature of the night, she had fed countless times, yet she had never experienced a sensation like this. Instead of the satisfying, easy rupture of human flesh, her fangs met an unyielding resistance.
It felt, impossibly, like she was tearing into a piece of soft, impossibly delicate metal, not flesh. Her teeth failed to find purchase, and she felt a worrying, minute erosion on the very tips of her fangs.
She pulled back in confused surprise, checking her teeth, then tried again at a different, more vulnerable spot on his neck. Same result. The hard, impenetrable surface was everywhere.
Zhou Yi found this moment of baffled, stubborn confusion utterly endearing. Had this foolish, beautiful vampire not yet realized the impossibility of her task?
He reached up, his movements calm and impossibly gentle, stroking the unruly, golden braids she wore. Sensing his touch, she finally stopped her frantic, fruitless biting and looked up, her sky-blue eyes now wet with genuine tears of frustration and confusion.
"Why can't I bite you?" she complained, her voice thin and plaintive, sounding less like a terrifying vampire and more like a child denied a toy.
Zhou Yi stretched out his fingers and gently, carefully, clamped the tips of her exposed fangs between his thumb and index finger, rubbing the sharp points with a controlled pressure that sent a tingling, agonizing sensation through her.
"Girl," his voice was a low, velvet rumble that made her tremble, "tell me honestly. Why do you want to turn me? Why this compulsion to make me a monster like you?"
She shrank back slightly, looking down as if she had been caught committing a terrible crime, yet she did not pull away. The question was too direct, too gentle to be a threat.
"I… I love the feeling of you protecting me," she confessed, her voice barely above a whisper. "And I want you to be there. Always. To protect and to guard me."
"And why is that so important to you? Why do you need this protection so badly?" Zhou Yi insisted, his fingers still cradling her fangs, probing gently for the root of her story.
Her composure finally broke. "Because I am an outcast among vampires! I am nothing!"
She began to pour out her history in a torrent of shame and pain. She was a mixed-blood, the daughter of a pureblood father and a half-blood mother.
When her pureblood father was killed in a bloody factional war among the noble houses, her mother was left exposed and alone. For years, they endured humiliating persecution, culminating in her mother's eventual murder—not by a hunter, but by other vampires.
She was neither fully accepted by the purebloods—who saw her as a polluted inferior—nor by the half-bloods—who saw her as a haughty pretender. She was condemned to a life of constant discrimination, a survivor clinging to the edges of both worlds.
She continued, the shame and rebellion battling in her voice. "This place… this den of blood you see as hell… for me, it is the best heaven I know. I do not have to risk my life hunting humans, and I am mostly safe from the others. I can take food freely. I am a scavenger in a place of plenty."
Zhou Yi's appearance—his unmatched strength, his audacity, his complete indifference to the danger he represented—was a profound anomaly.
Since her mother's death, she had chosen the path of violent rebellion and self-reliance, never receiving a single moment of genuine, non-threatening affection. Yet, from this human stranger, she had found a startling, intoxicating sense of warmth and complete security.
She knew, deep in her heart, that the morning sun would inevitably separate them. Her attempt to turn him—the most selfish, desperate, and irreversible act—was her only way to permanently preserve the unique warmth and unwavering strength he represented.
Zhou Yi listened, his gentle fingers never leaving her mouth. He stroked her head, his movements now controlled and deeply sympathetic.
He was here as a killer, but before him was a damaged, lonely child whose cruelty was merely a desperate coping mechanism. He had come to eliminate a plague, but he had found a victim of a cruel, dying society. He felt a profound, unexpected pity for the terrible fate of the vampire girl.