Kaneki stopped walking. He stood perfectly still, his eyes darting rapidly to assess the perimeter. Light Inksworth had given him a very specific directive: 'If you are dealing with ordinary humans, try not to reveal any signs of being a Ghoul to avoid S.H.I.E.L.D. scrutiny. But if you encounter something non-human? Let loose and fight without holding back.'
Kaneki's dark pupils suddenly dilated. The sclera of his eyes turned pitch black, the irises glowing a violent, brilliant red.
Schhlik.
Six dark red, scaled Kagune tentacles ripped out of his lower back, thrashing violently in the air on both sides of his body like a nest of angry vipers.
The approaching figures recoiled in pure surprise. They hadn't expected this seemingly ordinary human boy to be a completely different, horrifying kind of monster.
"It's a disaster to be caught in the wrong place at the wrong time," Kaneki said, reaching up and cracking his index finger with a sharp pop. He stared coldly into the depths of the alley. "But if you want to kill me, you'll have to try harder than that."
As soon as the words left his mouth, Kaneki exploded forward like an arrow released from a bowstring. Blurring into a series of black and red afterimages, he crossed the distance in the blink of an eye, materializing directly in front of one of the pale figures.
The creature didn't even have time to react. It only felt a sudden, freezing chill in its chest before a crimson Kagune violently pierced straight through its sternum.
"GAAAAH!"
A horrific scream echoed through the alley. The creature's heart was completely obliterated. It collapsed heavily to the asphalt, dead before it hit the ground. The other figures froze, visibly startled by the sudden, overwhelming brutality.
"Hm?"
From the absolute darkest corner of the alley, a puzzled hum sounded. Footsteps slowly approached from the shadows. A tall, strong man stepped into the faint street light. He had a pair of glowing scarlet eyes, slicked-back black hair, and wore a sweeping red and black cloak with a high, structured collar. Two thin trails of blood ran down his chin. He had sharp, pointed ears and elongated, inhuman canine teeth.
'A vampire?!'
That was Kaneki's first thought. The visual signs were far too obvious.
"I am the Lord of Vampires, Dracula," the man announced regally. "Who are you? I have lived for nearly six centuries, and I have never seen a species quite like you."
Dracula observed Kaneki carefully, his eyes tracking the six Kagune floating menacingly in the air. He was genuinely interested. He possessed perfect night vision, and he had clearly seen that the boy's speed and raw strength far exceeded those of his undead servants.
Kaneki stared at Dracula, his face a mask of cold indifference. He spoke slowly, emphasizing every word. "You don't need to know my name."
Kaneki had absolutely no desire to get involved with irrelevant supernatural beings. Unfortunately, the vampires didn't share his sentiment.
"How dare you be disrespectful to my Lord!" A vampire snarled, stepping forward aggressively. It seemed the presence of their master had emboldened them, making them entirely forget the gruesome sight of their comrade being skewered just seconds ago.
The momentary hesitation on the faces of the other vampires vanished, replaced by fierce, bloodthirsty malice as they all locked their glowing eyes onto Kaneki.
Dracula's aristocratic grin widened further, as if he had just heard an incredible joke. He threw his head back and laughed. "Hahaha! No need? You think I am not qualified? Boy, you are truly arrogant."
Dracula pointed a pale, elegant finger. "Tear him to pieces, my servants."
Following Dracula's command, which radiated an abyssal coldness, nearly ten vampires surged forward simultaneously like a pack of rabid wolves.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
The vampires moved significantly faster and hit much harder than ordinary humans. But for Ken Kaneki, a Half-Kakuja Ghoul born in the crucible of extreme torture, they were nothing more than trivial fodder.
Kaneki stood perfectly still in the center of the enclosing circle. He seamlessly guided his dark red Kagune, the sharp, spear-like tips weaving defensively around him, quickly piercing outward to strike vital points.
A Kagune ripped cleanly through a vampire's arm, tearing it off completely. Blackish blood spewed from the stump, but almost immediately, the torn muscles and tendons began to stretch and weave together, rapidly healing the wound.
The vampire grinned maliciously, sensing victory. However, just as his face lit up with arrogant joy, another crimson thorn violently pierced straight through his skull. His head burst into pieces like a dropped watermelon.
Kaneki, moving at blinding speeds, smiled thinly. Having seen the signs of their regeneration, he immediately switched tactics, aiming exclusively for decapitations and headshots.
Without an intact brain, the vampire's regenerative abilities stagnated entirely, and the creature died for good.
Squelch! Splash! Crack!
With a sickening symphony of popping heads and crushed hearts, countless sprays of blood splashed into the air, blooming outward like incredibly gorgeous, macabre roses.
Kaneki stood in the center of the carnage like a bloody Asura. He looked at the blood misting the air and twitched his nose, taking a small, experimental sniff.
Thump!
Kaneki's Kakuhou suddenly throbbed violently in his lower back, beating like a secondary heart. His Rc cells rapidly became highly active and aggressive.
He squinted his eyes. He only ever felt this specific sensation when he consumed the blood of his own kind. He didn't expect vampires to possess such an incredibly high concentration of Rc cells in their biology!
Unlike Ghouls, vampires didn't possess a centralized, organ-like Kakuhou. Instead, the potent, mutable cells flowed freely throughout their entire bloodstream.
Compared to consuming a Ghoul's localized Kakuhou, harvesting evenly distributed Rc cells from a bloodstream was a highly inefficient process. It wasn't worth the effort to drain the blood of a low-level vampire just to synthesize a small fraction of power.
However, there was a significantly stronger vampire standing right there.
Thinking of this, a slow, terrifying smile crept onto the corner of Kaneki's mouth. His single crimson eye exuded a weird, hungry light. He looked at Dracula as if he had just discovered an exquisite, gourmet meal.
Dracula wasn't overly surprised to see Kaneki slaughter his servants in seconds. What unnerved the ancient vampire was the look the boy was giving him.
It was a look of pure, unadulterated hunger. Pure desire, bloodlust, and rage.
Dracula had never been looked at like prey before. He had always been the apex predator, toying with mortals.
His massive aristocratic ego deeply humiliated, Dracula's composure shattered into pure anger. His handsome face twisted hideously, revealing his elongated, monstrous fangs. "Boy! How dare you look down on me!"
Utilizing a speed that far surpassed even his enhanced servants, Dracula blurred into a black shadow, hiding entirely within the darkness, approaching silently and lethally.
His sharp, manicured nails elongated into vicious claws, flashing with cold light in the dark alleyway. Tearing the air with a high-pitched shriek, his thin, powerful hands attacked Kaneki from a blind spot.
Seeing this, Kaneki remained entirely silent. He smoothly moved four of his Rinkaku tentacles into a defensive formation, while the remaining two coiled tightly, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike.
The four Kagune twisted into a thick, sharp cone, colliding violently with Dracula's descending claws in mid-air. A harsh, ear-piercing scream echoed through the alley as visible rings of concussive air pressure erupted from the impact point.
Swish!
Kaneki seized the momentary stalemate. He unleashed the remaining two violently writhing, python-like tentacles, whipping them around the side in a sharp arc, aiming directly to pierce through Dracula's shoulders.
Slash!
Kaneki violently pulled the two tentacles outward in opposite directions. Two massive blossoms of blood erupted in the air. Dracula's arms were completely severed from the upper bicep, falling uselessly to the dirty pavement.
"Guh!"
Dracula grunted, stumbling backward from the agonizing pain.
Blood gushed furiously from the stumps of his arms. However, what stunned Kaneki was what happened next.
Out of thin air, specialized cells began to rapidly synthesize, forming thick, fleshy threads that aggressively wove together faster and faster. Within a few seconds, two completely pristine, fully functional arms had grown back right in front of Kaneki's eyes.
This level of cellular regeneration was vastly superior to anything Kaneki possessed.
"This is why I live forever," Dracula chuckled, shaking his newly formed arms to stretch the fresh muscles. He laughed mockingly. "I am the Immortal Lord of Vampires."
His entire aura flared like a dark rainbow. His godlike regeneration allowed him to face any lethal attack with absolute confidence.
Seeing this, Kaneki simply snapped his fingers, a weird, unsettling smile forming on his face. "Is that so?"
As soon as the words fell, a small crater exploded beneath Kaneki's feet. The concrete cracked in a massive cobweb pattern as Kaneki violently launched himself forward, turning into a blurred, rebounding afterimage.
BOOM!
The air burst, a muffled explosion ringing out.
Kaneki swung all six of his Kagune upward like a cluster of dark red pillars, aiming directly for Dracula's head with a relentless, rapid-fire sequence of six consecutive, lethal spikes.
Moving at a speed far surpassing the limit of human perception, the six consecutive piercings drove straight through Dracula's skull almost simultaneously, with less than a microsecond between each strike.
Splat!
Dracula's head was entirely obliterated, wiped away as cleanly as an eraser rubbing pencil off a map. It completely disappeared. The next moment, gallons of blood poured out from the stump of his neck like a ruptured fountain.
The headless corpse staggered aimlessly, leaning heavily against the brick wall before going limp and sliding down to the pavement. Kaneki slowly stepped forward, his dark left eye staring intently at the remains.
Squelch...
A highly grotesque, disgusting sound of tearing meat echoed softly. Kaneki's eyes flashed with genuine shock.
A single, manic eyeball suddenly bubbled up and materialized directly out of the severed stump of Dracula's neck, staring directly at Kaneki. It was a cold, shudder-inducing sight.
Then, another eyeball formed. The two scarlet eyes extended outward on stalks of raw muscle as human tissue began to rapidly multiply. Blood vessels violently pulled themselves out from the severed neck, frantically rebuilding a skull.
"This is the true immortality of Dracula. 'Rebirth' cannot adequately describe this abomination. It is the curse of eternal life."
From the shadows of the alley, an exhausted, heavily bleeding middle-aged man limped into the light, leaning heavily on the wall for support. It was Blade, the Daywalker—Eric Brooks.
Blade watched Dracula's head gradually, horrifyingly heal itself. His eyes burned with deep, unquenchable hatred. He gripped a sharp silver stake tightly in his hand.
His human mother, Miriam, had been bitten by a vampire just as she was going into labor, dying shortly after he was born. As a result, Blade possessed a unique half-human, half-vampire bloodline. He had grown up with one singular, driving purpose: to become the ultimate vampire hunter.
His lifelong wish was to eradicate every single vampire from the face of the earth.
"Only pure silver can slightly slow down this level of recovery," Blade rasped, raising his weapon.
Just as Blade lunged forward to drive the pointed silver stake directly into Dracula's regenerating chest cavity, a pale, incredibly slender hand snapped out and clamped down onto his wrist. The sheer, overwhelming physical strength forced Blade to a dead halt, though he refused to let go of the weapon.
"I knew it. You always try to take advantage of my momentary emptiness to kill me," Dracula grinned, his newly formed head snapping back to its original, handsome shape. "But you can never succeed."
Dracula's slumping body suddenly stood perfectly upright, as if entirely violating the laws of physics. With a fierce, backhanded wave of his arm, he slammed Blade brutally into the adjacent brick wall.
The crashing impact shattered the masonry, burying the already crippled Blade under a pile of heavy gravel.
"So what if you know my weakness? I am the Undead King! No one can kill me!"
Dracula haughtily patted the dust off his fine clothes, striking an elegant, gentlemanly pose with his hands spread slightly outward. With his flowing cape and this breezy, confident demeanor, he looked completely different from the headless corpse that had been bleeding out seconds ago.
"Not dead? This is really excellent news."
Kaneki's expression remained perfectly flat, his tone sounding almost like a polite compliment. But internally, his heart was singing with dark joy.
Rc cells existed in both humans and Ghouls, but the concentration within Ghouls was vastly higher. If this immortal vampire could endlessly regenerate its flesh... didn't that mean he was an infinite, inexhaustible supply of Rc cells?
Kaneki licked his lips. He had high expectations for this meal.
Crack!
Kaneki abandoned any intention of simply killing Dracula; doing so offered no benefit. Two of the Kagune dancing in the air behind him began to violently mutate and deform. The blue veins on his face bulged noticeably.
Crunch.
The massive, heteromorphic limbs positioned on both sides of his waist began to shift. Sharp, white, centipede-like legs burst outward from the edges. The surface of the tentacles crusted over with a thick, heavily armored carapace, completely distinct from his other four Rinkaku.
Looking exactly like two massive, armored centipedes hovering menacingly at his waist, the sharp claws flashed with a cold, metallic glint. Kaneki let out a low, stern snort, staring at Dracula with an unabashed, ravenous hunger, viewing the immortal lord as a buffet that could never run out.
Dracula possessed a terrifyingly keen instinct. Seeing the naked, predatory desire in the boy's eyes—the way the human was actively looking forward to devouring him—caused Dracula's heart to burst with magma-hot rage.
"BOY!!"
Dracula threw his arms wide. His pale skin rapidly darkened into a sickening, leathery grey. His fine clothes tore apart as his body violently mutated, his arms fusing with sudden, massive membranes of flesh. In the blink of an eye, his body soared in size, transforming into a gigantic, monstrous bat.
Two wolf-like fangs burst from his jaw. The hands at the joints of his wings elongated into dead-grey, lethal talons.
"ROAR! I AM GOING TO SUCK YOU DRY AND LEAVE YOU AS A WITHERED CORPSE!"
The monstrous bat, Dracula, unhinged his jaw and roared like a primordial beast, spreading his massive wings to blot out the fading dusk light.
Squeak... Squeak... Squeak!
From the distant rooftops, thousands of normal-sized bats formed a massive, swarming cloud. The black tide of flying rodents blotted out the sky, crowing and hovering frantically around Dracula.
"Suck him dry, my babies!"
The massive swarm of bats dove downward like a localized hurricane, aiming to tear Kaneki apart with thousands of tiny fangs.
Seeing the incoming tide, Kaneki simply shook his head and sneered. "Cheap tricks."
Kaneki whipped his six Kagune violently through the air. The sheer velocity and power of the massive, armored tentacles caused a catastrophic wave of death and injury among the swarm. After a few seconds of rapid, relentless slashing, the air was entirely emptied. Only the severed, bloody limbs of thousands of bats rained down from the sky.
WHOOSH!
"Don't ignore me!"
Using the bat swarm as a distraction, Dracula flapped his massive wings, stirring up a violent cyclone as he tore through the air directly toward Kaneki.
"Foolish!"
Kaneki effortlessly executed a backflip, dodging the heavy swipe. In mid-air, he whipped his armored centipede Kagune downward, slamming it brutally into Dracula's jaw with the force of a wrecking ball.
With a target that massive, and with Kaneki's current speed, he didn't even need to aim. However, Dracula's defense and raw strength had significantly increased in his monstrous form.
Kaneki landed lightly, glancing back at the three deep fissures his tentacles had carved into the asphalt, calculating his next move.
Immediately after, Kaneki launched himself forward like a bullet, engaging Dracula in brutal close-quarters combat. His scaled Kagune repeatedly stabbed and slashed, turning the giant bat into a blood-spurting pincushion, unable to counter the overwhelming speed.
"Catch."
Blade pushed himself out from the pile of rubble. Using the last of his strength, he hurled a cone-shaped silver stake directly toward Kaneki.
A small, surviving bat flew out from under the eaves, attempting to intercept the weapon, but Kaneki effortlessly batted it into a bloody paste with a flick of his Kagune and snatched the silver stake cleanly from the air.
"Hey, boy! I won't let you get away with this!" Dracula, the giant bat, bellowed. Seeing the silver weapon, a flash of genuine fear crossed his eyes. Kaneki's speed was simply too fast, and his explosive power was too high. He couldn't win this brawl.
But relying on his eternal regeneration, he was a cockroach immune to death. He wouldn't stand his ground and die. He just needed to retreat, fly outside the city, and hide for a while to recover.
As Dracula desperately fluttered his massive wings, preparing to launch himself into the sky and escape, a black and red blur bounced violently off the adjacent rooftop. A cold, metallic light flashed in the dark.
A silver blade pierced straight through the monster's chest cavity, driving perfectly into its heart.
The giant bat, Dracula, felt an icy, paralyzing chill wash over his entire body. His boiling, cursed blood began to freeze solid in his veins. His limbs went completely limp, and he plummeted heavily to the ground.
A cruel, psychotic smile touched the corner of the red and black figure's masked mouth.
"So... what is 1000 minus 7?"
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Word count: 2943... Long chapterssss
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