The Reincarnated Vampire Just Wants to Enjoy Her New Life

Chapter 183: The Final Frontier

It's been a few weeks since my meeting with the teachers.

Since then, I've talked to Peithos, as well as several other elders and some of the staff of the other schools. In the end, rather than setting up all sorts of extra curricular activities solely for our school, instead we set up coordinated activities between multiple schools.

Each school was specialized in its own way. Like how Alvaldi's was for teaching the crafting arts, how Harja's was for those who wanted to advance their martial skills, or how the fairies' was for teaching those who had short attention spans.

Of course, my own school had its own specialization, even if it wasn't apparent on the surface; broadening one's perspective by having a wide variety of knowledge and experience was how the school under my name was organized.

Together with the Hunter's Guild, the various schools of the Hourai Commonwealth came to an agreement and we started to feature various extra curricular activities, some of the staff of each facilities teaching students things that were outside of their normal studies.

Alvaldi's teachers coming to my school to teach the basics of the crafting arts, or specially commissioned hunters escorting students to the dungeon much deeper than they could normally. Some of my own teachers went to the other schools after classes to give lessons on topics which weren't covered in those other schools.

Especially the sciences, which wasn't something normally taught in this world as far as I could tell. Even the idea of breaking down physical phenomena into numbers to represent them was something quite foreign. Though the slow teaching speed of it meant that the limited amount of material I could supply wasn't exhausted quickly fortunately.

Teaching these sorts of things was difficult, since it was quite difficult to confirm how much of the sciences I knew from Earth still applied in the world of Terheim.

Either way, these extra lessons seemed to be received quite well, and the demand for them was quite high. Exchanging teachers for the sake of these sorts of classes also strengthened the bonds between differing groups of the Commonwealth, further increasing the benefits of this arrangement. And of course, the teachers were paid extra for these additional lessons, making them especially happy.

Overall, it seemed like all of this was a success, though I hadn't had the chance to ask the dhampire kids directly, what I heard from their parents sounded promising.

As for myself, I spent my remaining free time in the dungeon.

Thanks to the new weapons made by so many people working together in the Commonwealth, I was making good progress despite having most of my time consumed outside of the dungeon during these last few weeks.

Floor 150.

I had finally reached this milestone.

Whether it was actually a floor of significance or not, I had no idea. But this floor itself was quite remarkable regardless.

The floor's layout was not like any I've seen before. There was no floor, no walls, nothing. At least, not of any conventional form I could recognize. I walked through a white fog, yet I could see a few dozen meters in all directions despite how thick the fog seemed. My feet purchased on black smoke as if it was solid ground, yet from all appearances it was as fleeting as the white walls around me.

And above me was the clear, endless blue sky. At least at first. No matter how I walked, I was always climbing upwards, like I was always at the bottom of a crater making my way out of it. Eventually the blue of the sky gave way to blackness as twinkling stars peeked their way through once the blue sky faltered in its attempt at obscuring them.

And the monsters as well, they were not like those I was used to.

From the ground, pitch black shadows would rise, vaguely humanoid, yet moving in ways which belied their lack of a skeleton. Their limbs stretched out many fold while attacking, their torsos bending and folding like paper cutouts that had the rough shape of people.

From the walls, pure white figures slipped out, also in a similar shape and moved like the black forms. But unlike the black monsters, the white ones seared my flesh every time they touched me.

Most likely, the black ones were composed of dark mana, and the white ones light mana. But the density of their energies was to the point that the resistances offered by my clothes didn't give me any noticeable benefits against these creatures.

The obvious solution was to simply avoid all their attacks the best I could and take out my enemies as fast as possible.

Without worrying too much about my mana consumption, I blew through the floor practically chugging jars of blood I had stockpiled through the floors before this, I managed to reach what appeared to be the boss room.

The doors here were finally at least a little normal. Doors made of something that resembled obsidian framed and reinforced with silver.

(At least the theme is consistent, I guess.)

After one final check of myself, I pushed the door open.

Before me was a wide room of a similar style to the hallways up until this point.

Standing there in the middle was a humanoid figure. Unlike the monsters up to this point, this creature had proper depth, yet wasn't like any monster I've seen before. If I had to say, at a glance it looked like a muscular man carved out of a marshmallow, bound by black belts as if the muscles would bulge uncontrollably without them.

Though the black and white pattern vaguely resembled those old prison uniforms, the impression given by the monster was far different. Even without doing anything, I could feel an overwhelming pressure coming from the centre of the room.

A white and black haze rose from its body, licking its surroundings like a flame.

An aura that visibly extended from a monster's body was quite common and virtually expected at this point, but one that extended out a good meter, yet thick enough to obscure its origin wasn't.

[End]

A quick [scan] gave me an unusual response for its name. Its level and stats were impressive, but not so much so that I wouldn't be able to beat it. Its list of skills was absurd though. Too many to read through in a short time, though all of it was maxed out in rank.

And to top things off, the boss held a large sword in its hand. A silver edged blade with a wide black fuller, as long as it was tall.

While the sheer possibilities caused by the excessive skill list was worrying, the thing which I was most concerned with though, was all the white parts on the boss's body and weapon. Following how the floor worked, there was a high chance that those white parts were all infused with [light magic]. Corresponding with that, the black parts were probably infused with [dark magic], but to me that meant little more than that it was magical.

All the monsters on this floor fell under that dichotomy, making half of them a breeze and the other half a great pain to deal with. Considering the way this boss seemed to be made to be a combination of the monster archetypes, I couldn't see this fight being anything but a huge pain to deal with.

But a pain or not, this boss wasn't about to stop me from continuing my conquest of this dungeon.

Tightening my grip on my weapon, I took steady steps towards my opponent.

The moment I saw the boss start moving in reaction of my approach, I thrust out my shadow. A black streak raced across the soft-looking black floor, almost perfectly blending in with it. Just before it reached the lumbering body opposing me, the tip of my shadow sharpened to a point and thrust up into the creature's body.

But as expected, the attack didn't result in much if any damage. The boss simply kicked at the shadowy blade before stomping on it. Even from this distance, I could feel the light aspected mana erode my extended dark aspected aura like a flashlight on a shadow.

But, like a flashlight against a shadow, it could only erase my aura where the whites of the boss's body touched my weaponized shade. Salvaging what was left of my attack, I thrust the tangled black blades into the monster's leg where I could before releasing my spell.

Those leftover attacks in the end did very little. Some left superficial scratches on the black parts of the monster, others evaporated the moment they touched the white parts. But at the same time, the fact that the attack confirmed my suspicions made it worthwhile.

Though, as the attack had hardly done any damage to the boss, it had also done little to slow its charge towards me.

Raising its weapon high in both hands, the moment it came in range of me, the heavy blade rent the space between us. The air screamed more than it whistled as a cone of white vapour raced down the blade's length. But the shock wave that expanded from the blade as it lacerated the sound barrier was nothing compared to what came next.

Spinning my scythe in my hands, I slammed the adamantium tip into the side of the blade, catching the pitch black fuller. The shock of the impact vacated the air itself from our immediate surroundings as if the atmosphere itself was terrified by the ferocity of the impact we had just created.

But even then, with all the strength I had put into the parry, the weight of my opponent's swing overcame my own efforts, and the hulking sword's trajectory changed only by a few degrees.

"Tch!"

I was hoping to divert the attack by a larger margin, but I could only take what I was given.

Turning my body to the side, I let the white and black blade glide a fraction of a millimetre from my body before throwing the orihalcum blade of my dual bladed scythe into the boss's body in one continuous movement.

Mana charged forward from my body as it raced through the magical conductor. To avoid clashing elements unfavourable to me, the mana swiftly changed alignment from its normal dark state to water, before the shimmering blade bit into the monster's exposed side.

The moment the orihalcum scythe blade found purchase inside of the boss's body, the mana contained within exploded, tearing at the condensed energies that made up the creature's flesh.

Unfortunately, the density of the boss's body meant that a lot of the mana escaped out of the shallow wound rather than run havoc inside of it. The uncontrollably expanding cloud of mana filled our immediate vicinity, delaying my notice of the monster's next attack.

A white and black fist rushed up through the blue tinted cloud of mana in a quick backhand punch.

"!!!"

Late to seeing the attack due to my mistake, even with my best efforts to throw my upper body backwards despite my spine screaming in protest, there was the distinct feeling a light graze against my chest. Of course, while the attack had barely made any contact, not even enough to seriously damage the front of my enchanted robes, the elemental match up had grave consequences on my body.

Even before the boss had finished its swing, an intense heat rippled across my chest as I was forced to grit my teeth. It had been a while since I was in pain like this, but I couldn't slow down because of it, not even to check what sort of damage was done to me.

Kicking off the ground, I desperately made some space between us to buy myself a little bit of time to reevaluate my situation.

At the same time, the air had decided to make an about face and rushed in, abhorring the vacuum almost as much as power tended to. In its hurry the fill the void, the air smashed into the boss on all sides before exploding against, releasing a thunderous roar that shook the room itself, not to mention throw my body even further back.

As my feet finally touched the ground while the shock waves continued to bounce around the room, I raised a hand to check the damage done to me.

My status screen had shown my HP had fallen more than twenty percent all at once, a bone chilling amount for how slight the impact was. My hand groped at the bloody mess the chest of my robes had become. But even excluding the pain, the foreignness of the feeling made me check again and again, and even made me take my eyes off of my enemy to confirm what I was feeling.

The front of my robes hung loosely, practically the first time ever since it had become a habit of mine to wear robes in the first place.

"Wha...?"

My hand groped around just to make sure, but everything I tried only confirmed what my brain refused to believe.

That my prided chest armour had been take away from me.

Despite my complaints, despite my attempts to hide or at least mitigate how much they stood out, I had grown fond of and even prideful of those fleshy bulges of mine. A part of me even recognize that this was why I was so reluctant to properly wean Alicia and Fate despite their age.

And despite the fact that I well understood that I only had to drink some blood to restore the physical embodiment of my womanly pride, it did nothing to stop my teeth from being grit so hard that my jaw ached. To stop my eyes from glaring at my nemesis as I blinked away tears, not of pain, but of resentment.

"You~!!!"

Uncaring about the strategic faults of it, I charged straight towards the boss to bring about its End.

The boss raised its sword in a quick swing, but I lowered my body so far down that if I had restored my body before launching my attack, I may have hit my chest against my knees. But even changing my posture so drastically, it wouldn't be enough to dodge the white blade. Instead, I spun my scythe, and throwing much of my strength into my arms while planting a foot firmly into the solid ground.

Once again, the adamantium blade of my scythe connected with the fuller of my enemy's great sword, bending its trajectory. But with the proper bracing and against a weaker swing, I had little trouble shifting the sword to create enough room for my to breeze past it and get into position.

And along with my body clearing the sword, so did the air around us vacate our surroundings from the deafening shock wave.

Continuing my swing, I once again charged mana into the orihalcum blade and followed up my parry with another slice. Unlike last time though, I opted not to dig the tip of the blade into my opponent's body and instead landed the inner blade against the creature's torso.

Hooking the shimmering blade against the white and black block of a body, I kicked off the ground, throwing myself past under the monster's right arm while dragging my scythe blade across its tight belly.

Channelling a bit more mana into the orihalcum scythe, I separated the two parts of my weapon and gave the orihalcum half a parting slap on the shaft. Charged with the imparted momentum and water aspected mana, the parted weapon continued to cut into the boss as it drew rings around it, revolving around the boss's torso hundreds, thousands of times a second.

With my head a little cooled off, I made a quick check with [scan] which revealed something interesting.

While the boss's HP was hardly dropping from my attacks, its mana was rapidly diminishing, something I could confirm with my own sight without the aide of my original skill. The aura surrounding the boss was distinctly being cut away by the spinning scythe.

Up until then, I hadn't really targeted an opponent's aura as it was always easier to simply attack the body, but this boss's body was surprisingly dense and difficult to damage. And that presumed that there was any weak points worth targeting. All the monsters on this floor were mana based, so no parts was particularly weaker than any other.

Being beheaded was no different from losing a hand as there were no organs inside of the body. It was likely the same for spirits like Claret, and maybe even us vampires, though both were things I was obviously reluctant to test, but at the very least, it was easy for us to recover missing body parts, while non-mana based life forms found replacing body parts quite the challenge.

On the other hand, we mana based life forms had a different weakness, and that was the mana which made up our bodies in the first place.

"If that's the case..."

Opening a gap through space itself, I shoved my shadow through folded space and retrieved my weapon before the boss grabbed and broke it. As I closed the dimensional fold, I also opened another one and retrieved the blood from one of the many jars I had stored away and floated it behind me.

With my weapon in hand, I channelled mana through it and fired off a spheres of blood like a rapid fire machine gun. Each projectile was small and weak, but the numbers were being sprayed at a ridiculous rate.

A thousand rounds per minute, ten thousand, a hundred thousand.

Accuracy didn't matter, only quantity. Crimson bolts of life fluid flew like a horizontal waterfall towards my enemy, exploding in sanguine mist upon coming in contact with the target's aura. It didn't even bother try to stop my attack and it simply raised its weapon and charged right at me.

Without letting up with my barrage, I broke into a sprint as I started kiting the boss.

The hulking black and white creature doggedly chased after me like some weird cat and mouse game as I continued to use [scan] to keep an eye on the situation.

80% MP.

70%.

60%.

50%.

40%.

30%.

Slowly but steadily, the boss's MP was being cut down as I shaved off bits and pieces of its extended aura with the sheer number of magical projectiles. My ammunition source quickly dwindled, forcing me to pull more out from my stores on a regular basis, but my MP was being perfectly preserved at least.

Unfortunately, the boss wasn't so stupid as to let me whittle it down to nothing without any further resistance.

Giving up on its chase, the monster planted feet into the ground before giving a great swing of its weapon.

The air itself buckled before being rent in two as a blade of condensed mana shot out faster than the air could evacuate its path.

"Shit!"

Caught in between steps, I did the only thing I could think of and thrust my weapon one way while I quickly kicked off the ground, throwing my body the other. Using the mass of a weapon that weighed almost as much as I did, I was able to avoid the worst of the projectile.

The worst of it, but not its entirety.

My fingers lightly grazed the condensed projectile, but it was enough. Everything up to my palm had evaporated in an instant, leaving no more than my thumb sticking out from the fleshy stub beyond my wrist.

My evasion paused for a slight moment, it was more than enough for the boss to take advantage of it, and it once again kicked off the ground, zooming towards me with its weapon raised.

Of course, I wasn't about to receive its attack without my weapon, so I broke into a sprint once again.

Now that I was wary of more sudden projectiles, my speed had decreased, allowing the boss to close in on me here and there. Every time it managed to close the distance a little, a quick thrust or swipe came at me. But with the timing being as predictable as it was, dodging these shallow attacks wasn't a big deal, even without my weapon.

But constantly dodging while doing my best to keep my distance wasn't going to win me any prizes.

The next thrust came, but rather than simply sidestepping it before regaining some distance, I turned my momentum around and charged the boss. Extending a claw from the remaining thumb of my left hand, I scratched at the monster's aura and arm as I ducked under.

As expected, directly attacking the monster with my own body burned my hand, and in an instant I was left with nothing but a bloody stump where my wrist was. But my goal wasn't to simply claw at the boss.

The monster quickly swung its fist at me as I got dangerously close to its torso. But rather than taking any direct action against it, I simply dropped my body and fell under the fist. My legs, my body, and soon enough my head, all of it fell faster than what gravity could accelerate me.

Of course, that was if I was actually falling through space. Instead, I warped space itself to make it fall through the floor, bending and sliding. Gravity had a limit to how fast it could accelerate a mass, but space itself had no such natural limit, and it could be reshaped and moved around as quickly as one had the capacity to move it. A trick I had picked up that proved to be far more powerful and versatile than simply creating a portal to a different location.

Moving the space I occupied down and past the boss, I arrived where I had dropped my weapon.

Having bought some time with the gap I created between us, I picked up my scythe as well as pulled out some preserved blood, restoring my body as I drank some. While the amount wasn't enough to fully restore my body, it was enough fix my hand and stop the rest of my bleeding.

But in that little span of time I spent fixing myself up, the boss was able to turn towards me and threw another blade of condensed mana at me.

I kicked off the ground while simultaneously shifting the space I occupied to the side, easily avoiding the attack.

Now that I had a good feel for this boss and felt like there was little more for me to learn, I rushed towards it, shifting my body erratically left and right using [dimensional magic]. The boss swung down its sword down towards my head, but I simply expanded the space between the blade and myself, increasing the distance it had to travel to reach me many thousand fold.

The white and black blade creaked as differing parts of it experienced vastly differing levels of force as the space it occupied drastically changed. But such things wasn't of my concern, and I simply swung my adamantium scythe blade into the monster's free arm. Though severing it wasn't possible, I had managed to dig into its flesh sufficiently, disrupting the monster's ability to use it.

While carefully controlling its arm through my weapon's blade, I separated my weapon once more before thrusting its tip into its torso.

Channelling my mana, I sent a torrent of icy energy through the orihalcum blade, tearing right through the remains of its aura like a pressure washer against dirt on a driveway. In its already weakened state, it didn't take long before the boss ran out of MP. With only a little more, my spell bore right through the weakened body and the boss crumbled in heap without anything to sustain its power.

I retrieved my weapons and took a few quick steps back to watch as the monster known as the [End] had met its demise.

Authors Note:

Hi everybody! It's your usual furball! (^^)/

Sorry for this late release. There's been an event going on in one of the games I've been playing and it's been eating into a lot of my free time. I've managed to farm the most important items I've been wanting, so I won't be so obsessed with my daily farm anymore. m(_ _)m

That said, I've been reading what's been talked about in the comments last chapter. Sorry for not responding immediately there, so I figured I'd respond here instead.

I do understand both sides of the concerns regarding the recent chapters. On one hand, I understand that the feeling of adventure and story progress has been quite lacking lately. As an author, it's easy to get too into world building even to the detriment of the story.

On the other, there is the fact that this story is fundamentally a slice of life story. But while that is true, I don't want to use that as an excuse to go ham on these mini-arcs that don't progress the main plot. A balance is needed, and these last two arcs have been leaning heavily towards the SOL side while the story has been grinding to a halt.

I apologize for not balancing things out very well lately. m(_ _)m

Hopefully everyone can tell that this chapter is progressing towards some of the story elements which I had been building towards. Some important elements that I have been dropping here and there will be involved next chapter, and I hope it is to everyone's liking. (^o^)

Hope everyone's doing well then!

'Till next time! ()/