Chapter 118 - 117 A Town Freed

After he finished off the vampire that had ambushed him and wanted to convert and then kill him, Marcus collapsed onto the ground unable to make even the slightest movement.

He had used up all of his mana and stamina by casting nearly every spell at his disposal during the fight and the fact that he had chained his two embodiment unique skills one after the other.

'Augh, next time I am not going to switch my embodiment skills, using them one after another takes too much out of me.'

Having exhausted himself from overexerting both his mana and stamina Marcus simply laid on the ground trying to recover as fast as he could when he saw Blitz coming over towards him with Lilia riding on the carriage.

Seeing that both of them were okay a smile creeped onto Marcus' face since he had been a bit worried that one of them could have gotten injured.

Getting off the carriage Lilia ran up to Marcus and said, "Marcus, are you okay, why are you just laying there and is the battle over."

Marcus could see that Lilia was moving her head around looking to make sure that the threat was really over, and Marcus could not help chuckling a little seeing her reaction.

"Yeah, I managed to win but it was a hard fight. What happened on your side are all the spawn dead?"

Marcus saw that after he asked if the vampire spawn had died a sour expression appeared on Lilia's face and she said, "They are not dead, no matter what Blitz or you golem did they would not die, but they have all been beaten down and are unable to move. Your golem is currently watching over them and continues to stomp on them when they try to get back up."

Marcus nodded his head slightly, understanding that this was what truly made vampires dangerous, and that was their inability to be killed by most methods. You could hack them to pieces, but they would eventually pull themselves back together, you had to put them down permanently by burning them with fire or exposing them to light magic or sunlight.

Unfortunately, Marcus was the only one of the three of them with the ability to use fire magic or light magic, but he was currently too exhausted to stand let alone use magic.

'My golem should continue to keep them immobilized for a few more minutes until it runs out of the mana I gave it, but after that they will slowly put themselves back together.'

Sighting Marcus took out a mana recover potion he had received from the necromancer he killed in Loursend and looked at Lilia and said, "Lilia could you open this bottle and force the contents down my throat, I would do it myself, but I currently can barely move."

Hearing Marcus request Lilia quickly grabbed the bottle. pulled the cork off, leaned Marcus' head back. and poured the mana recover potion into his mouth.

Drinking the potion Marcus could feel that his empty mana reserves began to fill up a bit and the exhaustion that was being caused by his lack of mana began to wane slightly.

However, his stamina was still at an all time low, but now that he had refilled his mana slightly Marcus reverted to his ghost form since he did not need to use any physical albites and could move around simply using his spiritual powers.

'Now then I can float over and deal with those remaining spawn, if I have my iron golem round them up and put them in a pile, I should be able to burn them all with a single fire shot.'

With his next plan of action figured out Marcus began floating over to where his iron golem was currently smashing vampire spawn, and he sent a mental message to Blitz to head back over to his iron golem along with Lilia.

It was not long until Marcus could see his iron golem moving around stomping on the vampire spawn that were slowly regenerating but unable to move as long as his iron golem continued crush them whenever they got close to being able to move again.

Sending his iron golem a new command, he told it to gather up the vampire spawn and to stack them up in front of him, but Marcus was soon interrupted when he saw a number of lights begin to appear all over the town.

Of course, how could the people of the town not wonder what was happened outside when they could hear explosions and see bright flashing lights outside.

'I guess that I should have expected that they town folk would come to investigate when they heard that the sounds of fighting had ended. I had kind of hoped that they would just continue to stay inside their houses but, my fight with the vampire did level a small part of their town.'

Marcus then looked back at the dozen buildings that had collapsed during the final stages of the fight he had with the vampire.

Marcus had tried his best to avoid causing collateral damaged but when two beings at level thirty and above fought, the surrounding were bound to get caught up in it since both parties could unleash devastating attacks.

Sighing Marcus finally realized why people were so cautious of intelligent monsters, just him and the vampire had already caused devastation comparable to a small natural disaster and this was when they were fighting each other. If the two of them had been working together they could have leveled the entire town without too much trouble.

'Oh well, judging by the fact that the people in this town were all hiding inside, they probably knew about the vampire, so maybe they will overlook the damage since I did kill it. Though I wonder why the kingdom did not dispatch someone to deal with it.'

As Marcus pondered the response he was going to receive form the town's people, and why the kingdom had not dealt with this situation, he soon saw over six dozen men and women with torches coming towards his iron golem.

With a bit of reluctance Marcus resolidified making sure to take the form of Irene once again since he could not take the chance that he would run into someone that knew about the bounty on his head. He nearly fell right over again since the repercussions from exerting his unique skills were still effecting him, but he gritted his teeth and continued to stand.

It was not long until the group of town's people arrived in the area where Marcus was and many of them stopped in there track when they saw Marcus' iron golem throw the last vampire spawn into a pile and Marcus use a magic spell to set them ablaze.

Of course, Marcus had planned this so he could have witnesses that saw him killing the vampire spawn just in case they doubted him.

When all of the town's people saw this many of them gasped and some of the ones with a weaker constitution nearly threw up and had to avert their gaze.

After a few moments one of the town's people who was an old man with an air of authority about him walked forward and said, "I am the mayor of this town, Fredrik Crawn, could you tell me who you are and what you are doing here."

Marcus looked at this old man that had identified himself as the mayor, and he could see a mix off emotions on his face, from anger, fear, and even a tinge of hope.

Racking his thoughts together for a couple of moments Marcus thought about what he was going to say and when he had it figured out, he said, "My name is Baronetess Irene Geist, and I was on my way to the kingdom's capital when I was attacked by a vampire and its minions. Could you tell me what is going on here, why have you allowed such a dangerous creature to inhabit your town, did you make a deal with that monster giving it free rein within your town."

The town's folk hearing Marcus' response were at a loss, they were surprised to hear that Marcus was a titled noble, and that he was still alive after being attacked by the vampire. They were also angry that Marcus was accusing them of being in league with the vampire since they had been tormented by it for a number of months unable to do anything about it.

However, this was a part of Marcus' plan, he wanted to see their reaction since he thought there might be a small possibility that the people of the town were in league with the vampire. But seeing the looks of anger on their faces when he had said as such, Marcus could understand that this was not the truth.

The mayor after thinking for a bit opened his mouth and said to Marcus, "I have to know did you kill it; I no longer feel its hold on me, you killed that monster didn't you."

Marcus could see the pleading almost desperate look on the mayor's face and the town's people behind him and Marcus nodded his head yes and said, "Yes I killed it and its spawn, now would you tell me what has been going on here."

After the mayor and the town's people heard Marcus' answer, they knew that it was true and not just some cruel trick, and many of them began crying since they had finally been freed from the vampire's tyranny.

Once the town's folk and mayor had finished getting their emotions out, the mayor walked up to Marcus and got on the ground and bowed followed by the other people, and all of them began thanking him profusely.

Marcus was a bit taken aback by their response, but he figured that they must have been through something incredibly difficult to show such a reaction.

"There is no need to bow down on the ground and thank me, I just want to know what was going on around here before I showed up, could someone tell me how that vampire came to be in your town?"

Hearing his question, the mayor of the town slowly got up and said, "It happened around six months ago, one night a well-dressed man came into town and bought up a lot of property. At first, I thought that a wealthy merchant had decided to set up shop here, but it was not long before we realized that something was wrong. The people of the town had begun to slowly disappear, and when I asked the guards to investigate, they would come back to me that there was nothing wrong, but later I found out they had been hypnotized by that vampire. I still felt something was wrong and asked the nearest city for help but the knight who came to investigate was controlled by the vampire as well, and left, reporting that he found nothing. After that I tried to leave the town and visit my grandnephew who is a viscount and get his aid, but the vampire stopped me. He put the suggestion in my mind that I could not leave the town or talk about him during the day. It was then that I realized that he had already given this same suggestion to almost everyone in the town keeping us trapped like cattle. Many people tired to leave at night, but he would not let anyone get away and killed or turned them into his puppets. I felt so helpless and the only way I could try to keep people alive was by enforcing a strict curfew, but this hardly helped as the vampire already had full control over a number people who he used to drag others out of their homes."

The mayor at this point stopped his explanation shacking a bit from anger that he had been unable to express up until to this point.

After hearing the mayor's story Marcus was beginning to feel quite bad for the town's people, since they had been mind controlled and forced to live in a hopeless situation where they could only wait to die at the hands of a vampire.. However, now that Marcus had killed the vampire his hold on the people of the town had ended, and the town was finally freed of their nightmare.