Chapter 303 A Vampire’s Leisure
The night was like daytime to Asra.
After Jay had been sleeping for a while, she scouted the area. Really, she just wanted an excuse to run, to stretch her legs.
She blinked away into the night like a preying shadow. Heavy, who was still guarding her, could not keep up as she weaved through the trees.
Still, the armored skeleton clunked through the forest, creating a noisy racket as it followed her as best as it could. Asra, strangely, enjoyed the feeling of being chased.
Asra was enjoying toying with the skeleton, showing a glimpse of herself by one tree, disappearing when the skeleton drew near and appearing somewhere else.
After a while, the skeletons near Jay moved around in the forest. Curious, she went to investigate.
One of them had brought back a skinless animal of some sort. It appeared to be a type of river sloth; where the skeleton found it, she had no clue. As for its skin, Lamp had already incorporated it into the fur cape slowly growing on its back.
Sweeper had gathered sticks, and was venturing out for more, while Blue had just made the first embers of a fire, which it nurtured into a flame.
Lamp dumped the corpse and disappeared into the forest again, probably to hunt more creatures of the night.
Red butchered the corpse, handing pieces of meat to Blue who held them near the fire with its hand, leaving the cooked meat in a pile nearby.
"He won't like it if it goes cold." Asra whispered, and stored them in her inventory.
Perhaps Blue didn't understand and seemed to look at Asra with shock as she stole Jay's meat, yet it couldn't do anything about it. Jay ordered them not to slay her.
Before Lamp could come back with another corpse, all Blue could do was tend to the fire, though periodically it ripped out some bone from Jay's platform and munched on it.
Red, similarly, ate parts of the platform.
"Hmm, I wonder why Sweeper and the other skeletons aren't eating."
The only difference she noticed was that Red and Blue were level five. As they ate away at Jay's platform, their bones seemed to get thicker and grew taller, reaching 6'2 (188cm). The spectral armor grew larger to suit their bodies, and each took on subtle differences.
Blue's T-visor helmet became more angular and two triangle points poked up from each side of the ear area.
Red's helmet merged the front T-visor part into a normal visor, leaving no gaps for its teeth. The jaw guard also went lower, covering more of its neck and ending in a sharp triangle point.
"I wish my undead were as useful as his." She thought.
After a while she grew bored with the skeletons, and headed into the cave Jay came from. She found the savage lands dungeon entrance, and seeing that it was now unlocked, she and Heavy disappeared into it.
Asra found herself lying in a stone shack on a pile of withered branches. Her body felt slow and tired, and standing above her were two figures - one was Heavy, and another was a skinny human.
The man had a dagger raised and was about to bring it down into her guts.
Heavy moved to block him, but before the jagged stone dagger met its shield, Asra's eyes suddenly glowed.
"You dare attack me?" she scoffed.
The man froze in place. His face turned to terror, and he didn't know what was going on.
"Protect me." Asra ordered.
Yet she was not speaking to Heavy, but to the cannibal.
Immediately, he dashed to the door, right as another malnourished cannibal opened it up.
*Slice!*
The newcomer received a hand on the shoulder and a jagged rock in the throat as he pulled him into the room.
For a moment, blood gurgled as their eyes turn dull and empty.
"So this is the dungeon Bob conquered. How could he have been stuck here for ten years?" she wondered. "The enemies are so… weak."
She analyzed the cannibal, seeing it was level four.
Asra got up to walk outside, but the cannibal put his hands up, beckoning her to stop. She fully compelled him to protect her.
"Don't you dare try to touch me." Asra glared. "I'm going outside."
The cannibal looked conflicted for a moment, like he was struggling to come to terms with what it was about to do. Perhaps it was trying to fight back against Asra's vampiric control.
He clenched his jagged stone dagger and began breathing faster while he clenched his jaw.
Suddenly, he slammed the door open, exiting first.
Curious, Asra walked into the doorway and saw a crowd of cannibals holding torches, stone daggers, and bows.
The cannibal Asra compelled sprinted away from her while a man in the crowd spoke. Someone named Grundel, the village elder.
"Lay down your weapons and you death will be painless. I pro-" He said, but he paused mid-sentence.
The cannibal under Asra's control had sprinted towards him. None of them had their guard up, none suspected their own kind to attack them - until he drove his bloodied jagged stone into the village elder's throat.
Seeing a dead body, the entire crowd of cannibals fell into a hungry rage.
Most of them focused on Asra, the outsider. She was not malnourished and skinny like they were, and her skin was pale, but pristine.
Asra watched as a crowd of filthy husks came running at her with drool dripping from their mouths.
"No thanks." She thought and stepped back into the darkness of the shack.
The cannibals came charging in with their torches, but all they found was a heavily armored skeleton, bracing against their charge. The girl, however, had disappeared as if she had never been there.
Somewhere nearby, Asra watched. Looking bored as she leaned on a nearby hut, she watched from the shadows.
"I better leave before they kill Heavy." She thought, seeing them rush into the house. None of them were aware of her presence.
Yet before leaving, her fingers turned to long, slender claws. Her footsteps were silent as she went closer.
No one noticed as she snatched someone from the crowd, pulling them quietly back into the darkness.
Asra sunk her teeth into their neck, and her face instantly twisted in disgust.
"Ugh. Filthy." She spat.
Throwing the struggling villager down like a bag of trash, she willed to leave the dungeon. A capsule of roots formed around her, turning everything to darkness, and she found herself in the real world again with Heavy.
Heavy stood by her side, having a few dents in its shield from the pathetic sharpened rocks they had battered against it.
"Hmm, we better fix that before Bob realizes." She thought, tracing her fingers across the shield.
She stood on the bone platform and pointed down, "Come on, Heavy."
In a few moments, the skeleton happily ate as it guarded her - yet suddenly, something attacked her. Claws slashed across her leg.