The bolt whistled through the air with a sharp hiss. Dio barely managed to raise his arms to protect his head before it pierced right through them and stopped inches from his face.
"That was silver-tipped, it should've gone right through him!" A voice exclaimed.
"Then hit him with another one." Another hunter said.
Dio searched for the voices' origin and caught sight of five hunters currently blocking off the entrance of the cave. Two had crossbows, one of them male and the other female, and the rest were men with silver swords. The pain in his arm burned, but he swiftly removed the bolt without so much as a sound.
So these are the hunters that the vampire cultists had mentioned... Their faces were seared into his brain. Their death would come slowly- he'd make sure of it.
Dio swiftly ducked behind the altar as another bolt clipped his ear; his arms were very slowly beginning to heal, but it wouldn't help him through this. I need to think rationally. Currently, they outnumber me, and I'm not physically strong enough to match them either.
"What if he isn't a vampire?" The first hunter, the woman, argued.
"Then he'd already be dead; those things are ruthless. Look at him, he hasn't even said a word." The man turned to yell at Dio. "Hey, you! Are you ok? Are you a vampire?"
"You bastard! You shot me! I get kidnapped by those foul things, and you shoot me for it? How on earth would I be ok?"
"If you're not one of them, then why are you still alive?"
Dio scrambled for a way to reason with the hunters, and his mind drifted back to the picture on the altar he was hiding behind.
"Look at that picture on the altar here! Those vampires claimed I was their Messiah, their god, Malvros. They attempted some kind of ritual with my body, but after it failed, they were planning to pack up and leave."
The woman with the crossbow glanced towards Dio with apologetic eyes. "James, he's probably telling the truth. Cut him some slack, he's probably been through a lot already. His arms are gonna need some attention too."
"Why is he this deep in the forest anyway? Gwen think about this-"
"James, we've already shot him once. With a silver-tipped crossbow bolt at that. Any other vampire would've been writhing on the floor, waiting to be put out of its misery, so why don't you think about this instead?
Dio peeked out from behind the altar and saw that she had put down her crossbow. "We mean you no harm."
James looked at her and sighed.
"Alright then, come on out, we're not gonna hurt you." He lowered his own crossbow.
"Do you have any clothes?" Dio asked.
One of the other hunters who had been quietly watching for the duration of the confrontation tossed Dio some leather boots, a pair of trousers and a brown leather tunic. "There, now come on out so we can talk."
Dio quickly dressed behind the altar and vigilantly approached the hunters.
"Drink this," James said. "You're probably quite thirsty. You look like you haven't eaten in a while either."
James handed him a cup of water. His eyes screwed onto Dio's face to study his reaction or a hint of change. Dio ignored him and drank it unhurriedly as they all sat down in a circle at the entrance of the cave.
Although they're stronger than me at the moment, I can work around that. The larger issue is that they all have weapons. The second they fall asleep is when I'll kill them.
The hunters watched as Dio drank the whole cup and sighed in relief, but Dio had been carefully examining their response despite his seemingly unknowing attitude.
This water... It must have been some sort of detection method or poison for vampires native to this world. It's fortunate I only have one weakness, although soon enough I'll overcome even that.
Dio thought back to the vampire cultists and felt a pang of sadness. No, attachment is a weakness too. Squash it. It will only make things harder in the future.
"You really aren't a vampire, huh? What's your name? You look young, barely twenty. How'd you end up in a place like this?" One of the older hunters asked as he rummaged through his bag.
"My name is Dio Brando."
"You're a noble?" The hunter probed, startled.
Dio slowly nodded.
"Brando... I don't think I've heard of that name around here." The hunter mumbled as he tightly wrapped Dio's gradually healing wounds, although he didn't seem to notice.
"Sorry about this, by the way," he said, and the other hunters muttered in agreement. "Where you from, kid?"
Dio shook his head. "I'm... from a far place. I was walking through the forest when those vampires kidnapped me."
The hunters all shared a look, then turned back to Dio.
"You know this forest is infested with vampires and werewolves, right? It's called the Dark Blood forest for a reason. We've been tracking this particular group of vampires for a few weeks now." James said.
"I wasn't aware when I entered, a mistake on my part. Thank you for rescuing me, injuries aside. Especially you, darling, if I may know your name?"
The female hunter smiled. "Guinevere Nightbane. You can call me Gwen."
She gestured to her right. "This is James, the one who shot you-"
"Gwen..." James groaned.
"-And has yet to apologise for it. To my left are Brock and Creel. Jajo went outside to keep watch." She concluded.
Dio smiled. "It's a pleasure to meet you all."
Brock, the only one there who had yet to speak to Dio, simply grunted in response. Creel nodded and finished bandaging Dio's arms. "Pleasure's all ours."
I need to be sure of something first.
"Have any of you heard of the name Joestar? Or Speedwagon?" Dio asked.
They all shook their heads, "Why? They important?" Creel inquired.
"They're of no concern to you," Dio said, but inwardly he felt conflicted. His lifelong enemy was gone, but he hadn't really defeated them; he had simply managed to escape. Dio wasn't at all against using underhanded means to defeat his opponents, but his escape still left a bitter taste in his mouth.
"I'm sorry for shooting you, Dio," James muttered.
Dio simply smiled. I will ensure your death is the most painful.
A feral roar in the distance startled them, and the hunters all rose to their feet as their fifth companion, Jajo, dashed inside the cave.
"Lycans, there'll be at least a dozen or more. We've got a few minutes." He said. His eyes briefly locked onto Dio, but he didn't question his presence.
"Lycans?" Dio asked.
"A type of werewolf, more monster than man. They can't be reasoned with. Don't worry, though, they won't come near you as long as you stick with us. We have powdered wolfsbane for situations like this." Gwen quickly explained.
She tossed Dio a ritualistic dagger from the altar. "This thing is pretty sharp. Hold onto it, and don't panic. They can smell fear."
Dio caught the dagger swiftly and followed close behind as the hunters filed out of the narrow cave entrance.
The pungent smell of rot wafted through the trees from all sides the moment they stepped into the surrounding forest. Dio recognised a few of the cultists he met earlier were left in a pile on the floor. Their bodies looked as if they'd been severely burned, yet their clothes were relatively untouched. Did they fall victim to the sun? But the dense canopy overhead doesn't allow for even a single ray of sunlight. I wonder what methods these humans used to kill them.
For a reason Dio couldn't quite grasp, he was seething with rage, seeing how this uncouth group of hunters had killed the first people he was able to talk to in years.
Perhaps a normal person would have a similar reaction, but in his past life, Dio wasn't a stranger to seclusion, and he couldn't exactly be described as normal. It struck him how he'd changed.
Moreover, he was shocked that the group of cultists had been overpowered by these five, as just a single one of them could have matched two of these hunters.
The putrescence was strongest near their corpses, and Dio could still hear their flesh sizzling from whatever they had been afflicted with. But where are the others? There were thirteen in total, but there are only 8 here.
"It's best you don't look at them, it's not the prettiest sight," Gwen said. "You're probably wondering what happened to the others, right? A few of them got away, but it's not too much of a problem. With their numbers, the Lycans won't hesitate to pick them off; chances are they'll all be gone in a day or two."
Dio nodded, but his expression grew cold. He locked eyes with Jajo, who had been silently watching, with little to no attempt to hide his scrutiny. The chill in Dio's face deepened. Has he grown suspicious of me?
Gwen frowned at their interaction. "Would you not glare daggers at him, Jajo?"
"And would you ALL get a move on? We can't stay here much longer," James said, returning from the cave.
"What were you doing in there, lad?" Creel asked.
"Taking what little I could find, those vampires had sh*t all. It smells like sh*t in there too. Now let's f*cking go, I hope you can run Dio."
Dio's vampiric sight allowed him to see multiple pairs of eyes glaring at them from a distance, or more specifically, they were glaring at him as they quickly made their way through the forest.
The Lycans' howls attracted more and more of their kind until Dio could see a dozen of them trailing his group at a distance.
They weaved through dead trees and thorned bushes, with the Lycans still following close behind. It wasn't until an hour later that the beasts finally lost interest, though there were a few who remained watching from afar.
"At this pace, it'll still be a few days until we make it out of the forest, but we've covered decent ground," Creel said.
"They don't usually target hunters like this. We must have done something to piss them off." James groaned, sitting down on the forest floor.
"I'm positive that they were tracking that group of vampires we killed as well. Maybe they think we stole their prey," Jajo reasoned. "What do you think, Dio?"
Dio's eyes found Jajo's, with a hint of scepticism. He suspects me. He doesn't know what, but he knows I'm hiding something. Dio twirled the knife in his hands and quickly crafted a response.
"I'm not sure, but I can't keep running like that. I haven't eaten in a while. Do you have any food?" He had redirected the question to return their attention to his physical health, in an attempt to reduce suspicions in favour of sympathy.
Jajo remained unconvinced, but Gwen cursed and nodded, reaching into her backpack for something.
Dio summoned The Passion, and slowly, purple thorned vines slithered towards Gwen's hands as she finally retrieved a sandwich, and pricked a small but deep cut on her palm.
Gwen yelped, and Dio quickly approached.
"Are you ok?" He asked, his hands closing around hers, as he absorbed all the blood from the wound before she could notice. Her blood tastes far better than the blood from the chalice. Dio shivered.
"Yeah, I think so. Sorry, I dropped your sandwich. I must've cut myself while we were running earlier." She said, examining her hand.
She glanced at him and the way his hands held hers. "Your hands are really cold, Dio."
"I apologise," His grip loosened, slightly taken aback.
"No, it's okay, I didn't mean it like that. Should we light a fire, guys?"
"-And attract every other creature in this forest? Yeah, I think not, just give him some of your gloves." Jajo scoffed, but his eyes never left Dio's.
Gwen nodded and went to fetch some from her bag. She turned back and handed Dio the gloves, which he accepted with a smile as he took another bite out of the sandwich.
"Oh, you're eating it... You don't have to do that. I have another one. Just wait, let me get it."
"Such a thing shouldn't just go to waste, Gwen. It tastes great, so thank you," Dio flashed her another smile.
'How can he look so charming when he's as thin as a stick?' She thought. "It's nothing, don't worry about it."
James grimaced at their interaction and interrupted with a question. "Who's taking first watch? We move at dawn."
Jajo moved to grab his sword. "I'll watch the first hour."
"Alright, I'll take second. Brock you take third, Creel takes fourth and Gwen, fifth. Dio, you just sleep tight, alright?"
Dio nodded as Gwen handed him a blanket. He thanked her and lay down, but he knew now wasn't the time for him to rest. Dio had many questions. What kind of vampires had he encountered earlier? How did they pull him from another world into this one with their ritual? But most importantly-
Dio's hand subconsciously shifted to the purple-red star that stretched across the majority of his back. Each second, it faintly pulsed with a wave of cold that permeated throughout his body. Why can't I summon The World?