Chapter 67: A Dance In Darkness (Part 1)

Abgere: "Alone in a dark room with a vampire? Doesn't sound like my kind of thing!"

The fact that he can still make such jokes could be a testament to how strong his will is, but it actually is a testament to how less of a threat he deems this vampire.

After the instant reaction anyone would have on seeing a big, creep, bloody vampire standing behind them and looking at them with hostility, there isn't much salt Abgere would put in a thing like this.

Abgere: "So, like, did you kill all the people in the church or are there still some alive?"

With no intention of saving them if anyone was alive, this question is asked by him only to aggravate his opponent by showing him how lightly he is taking the situation he is in.

Vampire: "You piece of shit! You are not getting out of here alive!"

With a voice so predictably crooked that Ethan Kales would laugh at it calling it 'generic', the vampire with a bloody as hell mouth says those words. And Abgere replies calmly,

Abgere: "I beg to differ."

The wall Abgere had been thrown to before, the wall he was still standing against, breaks like it was made of glass. And just as that happens, the vampire freezes for a moment in confusion and Abgere run into the room that the broken wall leads to.

Abgere: "What's wrong, lackey? You aren't going to stop me."

He taunts the vampire, causing him to come out of his trance and start chasing Abgere.

The room Abgere has entered has three paths for him to take - one leading straight to another room, one leading diagonally to another room and one leading to the upper floor through stairs. He chooses stairs as the ground floor would be much easier to fight on.

However, he realizes soon enough that was his mistake.

Abgere: "Oh crap!"

He says that as he tries to life the manhole-type cover that should be leading to the ground floor but that doesn't even budge an inch. He realizes that it is completely sealed and trying to open it has given enough time for his pursuer to close up on him and be standing at a dangerously close distance.

Vampire: "Scared now, you half-pine-"

Abgere : "Nope!"

Abgere, still, does not fear this opponent.

He just uses an electrocution device built in the shape of a hair trimmer right at the vampire's knees, causing it to bend over as an immediate reflex.

That allows Abgere to punch him right in his teeth and get the chance to jump off the stairs and get back to the basement floor.

Now that he knows the stairs are useless, he has to decide between one of the two rooms there are to go to.

Calculating the direction he came from, he knows that the straight road leads him to, well, he doesn't know.

But, the diagonal one leads him in the direction that he didn't take when he first entered the basement. Additionally, the room that the straight road leads to is very dark while the diagonal one has some light coming from it. And so, he runs to the dark one.

Vampire: "Wrong choice again!"

The vampire says like a 5-year-old teasing another 5-year-old over some stupid decision that the later made.

However, Abgere is anything but a 5-year-old. He knew very well the room that is dark would be the worse choice to go to. The reason for that is that even if there was a way leading from this room to somewhere else, which is not really the case, it would still be hard to find it in time.

Because his pursuer is a nocturnal, he would have no problem navigating in the dark. But, now that his night vision goggles are a bit damaged, thanks to the vampire throwing him at a wall earlier, he would have plenty of trouble navigating through it.

That, and there's also the fact that his abdomen still has blood spilling from it, despite Abgere's best attempts to stop it. The blood trail left behind would easily be a way for the vampire to follow him so he wouldn't even need to see where he was going to reach Abgere.

Or, maybe, that is the reason he came to this room.

Vampire: "You are dead now!"

The vampire says as he starts running in the direction the smell of the blood leads him to – which ends in him hitting himself on a wall.

Abgere: "Too bad you are a birdbrain, huh?"

Abgere says as he runs out of the room from the other corner.

He knew the vampire would blindly follow the smell to take less time in finding him so he left his blood's trail in the wrong direction.

Still, shouldn't the blood still be flowing and the vampire should be able to detect that Abgere had gone from there to the other direction? Yes, it should, except that somewhere along the line, Abgere had torn and put a cloth on his wound which ended up lessening the blood flow and also the smell. The vampire obviously followed the thicker smell.

While that little trickery helped him get out of there and back to the place where he had three options earlier and now should only have one, he still actually has two options.

He could run in the diagonal direction or he can trace back through the broken wall to where he came from.

And he decides it's better to be on a path that he knows at least something about, so he traces back through the broken wall.

Abgere: "Good that I had a few supernatural tricks up my sleeve."

He murmurs to himself when he looks at the broken wall, which broke because of a little trick psychics proudly call 'psychokinesis'. It's the ability to control substance and substance like the wall can be removed in parts through 'controlling them', making it look like some explosive blew up the wall.

Abgere: "Can't revel in my genius forever though, need to get out of here."

Abgere is a mysterious individual.

Very few except Ro Garland know anything about him at all. They don't even know if this guy is a spirit-user, a psychic, an aural or something else.

But, the reason they don't know isn't because Abgere has been able to keep it a mystery. It's because it really is a mystery.

Even Abgere and Ro do not know what he is. He is somehow able to pull of psychic abilities, and also is able to pull off a few Aural abilities. With much concentration, he can make contracts with spirits, and he can even use one or two abilities of the ghosts, believe it or not.

What is he?

Maybe no one knows. Or maybe the one who knows has just not met him yet.

Regardless, the important thing at the moment is that he can use various abilities to help him against this vampire and also the psychic he came to kill.

And, of course, he plans to use them in any way possible.

He traces back to where he came from and sees the wooden stairs that he needs to climb to get out of the basement. However, on the other side of the road he had followed back on, the vampire pursuer of his also appears. It's of not much worry though. The stairs are a meter away and the vampire is about 20 meters away.

Well, at least he thought there was nothing to worry about.

Abgere: "What the-"

Vampire: "Don't you"

The vampire, within a blink of an eye, appears a foot away from him and kicks him hard enough to send him flying in the path he didn't take at first, the passage at the left.

Vampire: "ever"

As he Abgere tries to get up, the vampire grabs him from his legs and throws him at a wall diagonally from where he had been thrown earlier.

Vampire: "dare"

Abgere tries to get up as soon as possible, ignoring the pain as much as he can, but it doesn't work as his bone trips and he falls on his face.

Vampire: "underestimate"

The vampire stomps his foot on him.

Vampire: "A FREAKING VAMPIRE!"

With that, the vampire had thrown this man's chances of winning down the drain.

Well, at least, he thinks he has.

Abgere: "Yeah!"

Abgere says so as he electrocutes the vampire's legs again.

Abgere: "Don't you either"

The vampire doesn't even budge, fighting through the pain, not realizing what's really going on.

Abgere: "ever"

Abgere then increases the voltage.

Abgere: "dare"

He increases the voltage further.

Abgere: "underestimate"

He increases the voltage beyond what should even be possible from a little machine like that.

Abgere: "ME!"

The vampire falls as he feels his legs melting and tearing apart. He falls on his back as he questions what happened. And Abgere stands above him, looking down his nose at him, telling him,

Abgere: "I knew the stairs back there were not leading anywhere. I climbed them anyway just to get you close enough to me without my guard up so I could electrocute you."

That's a lie to make the vampire panic more.

Abgere: "When I electrocuted you earlier, I got just a bit of your filthy blood on the device. I used that blood to figure out what component of your blood is the weakest. And yes, I am that smart."

That's part-lie too. He used an Aural ability called 'Analysis', basically the same thing as the psychic ability 'Aura Reading', to figure out the weak component of the blood.

Abgere: "And since I have studied biology of every supernatural kind of fiend on Earth, I knew where which component will be present in heavier quantity. So I just had to electrocute that part with the highest voltage possible, which was the backend of your leg."

That – is completely the truth though.