First Hunt - A taste for Blood!
Nikolai closed his eyes, taking a moment to adjust himself.
He felt the adrenaline increasing with each powerful pump of his heart. The blood flowing in his veins surged as his muscles tensed and relaxed, testing and limbering himself up, ready for what was coming.
'Seven people, the leader is violent, eager to prove himself and rise from a thrall to a squire or fledgling.'
The sound of footsteps echoed in Nikolai's powerful ears, the scraping of gravel, crushing of stones and rubbing of their rubber like a bell ringing in his ears. 'Vampires...'
Without speaking, his breath calmed down, though his heart seemed to be beating at a speed past 200 bpm, making his entire system filled with uncontrollable excitement.
'I can't control myself... focus, Nikolai!'
[Werewolves and vampires are the most ancient of enemies.]
[This act of hunting them in the dark is what your oldest ancestors did to survive.]
'Will I ever get used to this?'
[Definitely, your father hunts them in the moonlight! Don't let your guard down and show these lowly thralls who couldn't even become real vampires whose son you are!]
'Ok, Moth... Eliza!'
[...]
***
The leading thrall rushed forward, Nikolai heard a metal clang and could smell the scent of anxiety from his body.
"Hurry, that bastard doesn't have any Blood Arts! So even us thralls can take the dog down! How dare a filthy wolf kill Lord Faust's Squire!"
"You two take the left exit. You three circle around the right! I'll take Milos and cut him off down the middle!"
'Thank you for the information, leech.'
An evil smirk came to the lips of Nikolai as he climbed and began to limber and relax his muscles, reminded of the old training missions in the army.
Two sets of feet echoed, their tapping like a sonar in the ears of Nikolai, who crouched less than a metre above them.
"Where should we go, boss?" The goon, assumed to be Milos, asked with a low voice.
"Are you an idiot! Of course, we're going too--Argh?!"
Without giving the leader a chance to recover, Nikolai dropped from the sky and drove his knee into the face of the leader. His brutal force, like a train hitting a baby at 357 mph, crushed the leader's bones with a sickening crack.
Nikolai landed with a thud, pushing his legs off the deceased thrall, lunging at the stunned Milos.
"Eh?!"
He opened his mouth to reveal a layer of wicked fangs before tearing out his jugular with a sudden bite.
"Urgh?!"
Milos could only grasp at his throat, unable to breathe let alone call for help, while Nikolai's eyes glowed brightly in the dim apartment, placing a hand on the face of Milos.
The taste of his blood was disgusting before he smashed the thrall's head against the wall four times, crushing, breaking and smearing his skull and brains along the stone.
"Two down..."
[Strength: 22 (+2), Dexterity: 19 (+1)]
Nikolai felt the warm sensation of their blood flowing into him, not because he began to drink their blood.
Instead, it formed a strange swirl in his hand before forming three small crystals of blood that floated above his hand for a moment before sinking into his body with a light pinching sensation.
This caused his muscles to tighten and his eyes to become clearer when looking from left to right, and his hand-eye coordination felt more accurate.
'What... this didn't happen before, and I got more than when I killed that Squire, how come?!'
His body moved as if by instinct, rushing towards the apartment opposite, with two walls with no cover and fewer places to hide.
He slipped into a small storage room toward the right where three thralls headed.
"There was a sound and the scent of blood!" A thrall spoke, the distance several metres close to where Nikolai was a moment earlier.
Excitement and bloodlust filled Nikolai's mind as he crept closer to the thralls searching for him.'I want to crush their bones...' His evil grin grew wider while a black mist began to swirl around his right hand, the bones cracking and deforming, the sharp claws like blades growing from his fingers.
Inside his ears, the beating hearts of the thralls made him feel exhilarated. Tapping off the ground with a burst of momentum. His speed seemed to have doubled the moment his right hand transformed into a claw.
The slow, almost unbeating hearts of the three thralls reverberated in his mind, allowing the feral Nikolai to track them, his body low to the ground, crawling towards them using musty walls, broken tables and chairs.
A sudden bang caused the trio to turn around—holding baseball bats, they spun and swung with all their strength at the wooden table that shifted.
"Fucker!"
"Die!"
The trio called out and began to attack the area with violent blows, crushing the wooden table and broken chairs, a memory of the once beautiful apartment.
With an eerie smirk, his eyes were a strange mixture of golden iris with a red ring around them. Nikolai stood behind them, smiling. His body stood tall, holding his right arm in the air, the huge claw disproportionate to his body.
[If this is his partial transformation, how big is his full form?!]
Nikolai's shoulder tensed, the muscles in his arm all contracting, before exploding with a power far beyond his current abilities as the wind began to howl like a wolf.
His monstrous black claws, long and terrifying, cut through the air, tearing apart the thralls like a blade to paper, their bodies in pieces by the time their brains even realised they had died.
[Strength: 24 (+2), Dexterity: 22 (+3), Intellect 16 (+1)]
"Hahaha...."
Nikolai's body was covered in blood, yet he no longer wore his expensive clothes. Instead, he was almost completely nude. Like a natural-born hunter, the blood covered him like warpaint.
[I don't understand... What is causing his bloodlust to be so powerful? It's far beyond anything I've ever seen... Ivan, what have we created?]
His body lowered, the crystals no longer taking as long to form, or maybe a side effect of using his right arm, which seemed to devour the crystal immediately.
He moved towards the opening, able to feel the last two thralls approaching, their scent, movements and heartbeat... He could even tell what type of people they were, yet his mind couldn't focus on that information now.
Nikolai only wanted to kill.
Stealth no longer mattered—he stepped out of the doorway in a pair of black designer boxers covered in vampire blood.
He turned to face the two thralls, a twisted smile on his face while dragging his massive claw across the ground, creating sparks and a grinding sound that made the thrall's eyes widen, covered in darkness and blood.
They felt fear!
And Nikolai could smell their fear!
"SHIT RUN!"
"Ahhhh, a fucking monster!"
The two broke the most dangerous rule when hunting a werewolf, no matter how strong a vampire was.
He must NEVER turn his back to the wolf.
****
From the nearby entrance, only the screams and wails of two thralls echoed, nobody even taking notice of their death knells as Nikolai carved them up like a
[Strength: 25 (+1), Dexterity: 23 (+1), Intellect 18 (+2)]
Two hours later, Nikolai returned to himself, wearing some black pants and no shirt, his upper body covered in blood, and the strange feeling of hunger and thirst he felt sated.
'Eliza... I...'
[It's okay, you didn't know what you were--]
'No, you're wrong... I was in control and loved every moment of tearing them apart, hunting them... even being able to read their light thoughts of terror. Like when I knew that information about Sarah, the shop assistant...'
[I see, well I know what it is, but for it to develop in this way is quite interesting]
'Please tell me...'
[Okay, get yourself cleaned up first. You look like a bloodthirsty thug!]
"Yes, Ma'am!"