I kept watching Jeremy fight and fight more and more. I started finding older vampires for him to battle and kill.
Of course, I had some popcorn in my hand while watching the fight in slow motion. Yes, literally — I see the world in slow motion ever since I became a vampire.
Yaaay.
He barely knows it, but he's already at the level of at least a hundred-year-old vampire and is managing to outmaneuver vampires that are three to four hundred years old.
My boy is evolving like crazy.
I kept observing while he slammed a vampire to the ground with a judo throw and drove a stake straight through its heart.
"Yesss! That's it, my boy!" I shouted, jumping from side to side. "Jeremy 100… Vampires 0!"
"This isn't fun… if I lose once, the story ends," Jeremy grumbled irritably. He looked down at his own body, and we could see it completely covered in tattoos.
"Now I look like some weird junkie."
Jeremy whined while staring at the markings.
"I'm a married man. I can't keep looking like this," he complained, stomping his foot in a childish protest. "How am I supposed to be normal?"
"My friend, you're married to two five-hundred-year-old vampires, and they're mother and daughter. You are not normal," I said with a laugh, not even touching the ethical implications.
But at least the map was complete now.
As much as I wanted to go kill Silas and return home to my beautiful girlfriend — and finally stop running from Jeremy's wives — I still had a problem.
I had to strengthen my mind to survive Silas's psychic powers.
Even though I'm a half-vampire, and vampires are the beings with the greatest psychic abilities in the world…
We're still just copies of Silas.
He could easily walk into our minds.
Jeremy had the tattoo that was designed to protect him from psychic powers.
So he was fine.
But me…
Not yet.
Jeremy was still staring at his tattoos like he was confronting some existential problem carved into his skin.
Black lines crossed his arms, chest, and neck. The map was complete now. Ancient. Alive. Magic that seemed to breathe.
I studied it carefully.
Silas.
The guy wasn't just strong. He was the kind of creature that turned people's minds into puppets.
Vampires already have absurd psychic power — compelling humans, touching the surface of thoughts — but Silas was on another level.
We were imperfect copies of what he once was.
Trying to fight that with brute force would be… stupid.
So I did what any ancient creature does when facing a problem that big.
I cheated against my own brain.
I spent days training something simple and incredibly annoying: splitting my attention.
Repeated movements, constant noise, controlled pain, overlapping sensory stimuli.
The brain has a processing limit — a biological bottleneck.
If it's too busy balancing twenty small things at once, it becomes much harder for another mind to slip in and take the wheel.
It's not immunity.
But it's like trying to hack a computer that's already running a hundred programs at the same time.
Jeremy watched all of this with a silent, judgmental expression.
"You look like a walking wind chime."
The small bells attached to my clothes rang softly when I shrugged.
"Science."
"That's stupid."
"That's survival."
Then we followed the map.
The tattoo on his body reacted as we walked. His skin warmed when we were heading in the right direction. It cooled when we strayed.
Ancient magic has a strange sense of humor like that.
After hours crossing forests, rocks, and forgotten ruins…
we arrived.
A deep valley, almost hidden from the world itself.
Black stone formed a natural circle. At the center stood a massive stone tomb carved with symbols so old they seemed older than language itself.
And guarding that place…
were them.
Greater demons.
Physical bodies. Tall, broad, skin like solidified lava. Eyes burning like ancient embers.
They were not chaotic monsters.
They were kneeling.
Praying.
One of them lifted his head when we arrived.
His voice echoed low and heavy.
"Pilgrims."
Another demon slowly rose.
"You have reached the tomb of the Lord."
Jeremy glanced at me.
"…Lord?"
I sighed.
"Let me guess."
I looked at the demons.
"You think Silas is Lucifer."
The largest of them smiled, revealing sharp fangs.
"He is the first immortal. The first who defied death. The first who deceived the gods."
Jeremy muttered quietly,
"…they really believe that."
I shook my head.
"History always gets worse when it turns into religion."
The leader of the demons spread his arms.
"You will not profane the body of our Lord."
Jeremy looked at me.
"…plan?"
I stepped forward.
The bells on my clothes rang softly.
"Yes."
I cracked my neck.
"I distract the fanatics."
I looked at him.
"You save the world."
The first demon attacked.
Their speed was absurd — not quite equal to an ancient vampire, but their strength made up for it.
His fist smashed into the ground where I had stood a second earlier, opening a crater in the stone.
I appeared behind him.
Grabbed his neck.
Twisted.
The sound of vertebrae snapping echoed through the valley.
But greater demons don't die easily.
He roared and threw me into a stone pillar.
The impact cracked the rock.
Behind me Jeremy was already sprinting toward the tomb.
Three demons tried to intercept him.
Jeremy slipped between them, using speed and technique — a spin, a throw, a kick to the knee that sent one crashing down.
Meanwhile I was busy.
Very busy.
Four demons against me.
One tried to impale me with a bone blade that grew out of his arm. I grabbed the wrist and ripped the entire arm off.
Another struck me with a blow that hurled me twenty meters back.
I stood up laughing.
The bells rang again.
My mind remained an organized chaos.
Good. Let Silas try entering that.
Jeremy finally reached the tomb.
The stone lid was enormous.
He pushed.
Nothing.
He pushed again.
The stone shifted a few centimeters.
Across the battlefield I ripped a demon's heart out with my hand.
Black ash began to scatter in the air.
"Jeremy!" I shouted. "Move!"
He roared and shoved with everything he had.
The lid slid open.
Inside…
Silas.
The perfect body of a man who had cheated death two thousand years ago.
Jeremy pulled out the vial of the Cure.
The one thing capable of destroying immortality.
Meanwhile a gigantic demon tried to rip my head off.
I ducked under the strike and drove a stake through his heart.
Another one fell.
Jeremy grabbed Silas's jaw.
"Time to wake up, you bastard."
And poured the Cure down his throat.
Silas woke instantly.
His eyes opened.
The psychic pressure exploded across the valley like a silent thunderclap.
His mind tried to invade everything around him.
I felt the touch.
An ancient presence trying to push into my mind.
It found…
noise.
Bells.
Movement.
Pain.
Crossing thoughts.
My mind looked like a chaotic marketplace.
Silas hesitated.
That was enough.
Jeremy didn't wait even a second.
Stake.
Straight through the heart.
Silas's body froze.
His eyes widened in pure shock.
Two thousand years of arrogance… ended by a single strike.
The body began to crack.
Ash.
Dust.
At the same moment I tore through the chest of the last demon.
Its heart turned to ash in my hand.
Silence fell over the valley.
Jeremy stood staring at the tomb, breathing heavily.
"…is it over?"
I looked at the ashes of Silas being carried away by the wind.
Then at the bodies of the greater demons scattered across the stone.
"Yes."
Jeremy collapsed onto the ground.
Exhausted.
The tattoos on his body began to disappear slowly.
Line by line.
As if fate itself were erasing the map.
I watched the silent valley.
The first immortal in history… dead.
Sometimes the universe is strange like that.
Creatures that lived for millennia… defeated by two exhausted idiots on a random afternoon.
I looked at Jeremy and saw the tattoo fading.
But I didn't feel the magic leaving him.
The magic that made him a hunter was still there.
The mark kept shrinking until it became a small tattoo on his wrist.
Like a collar.
Jeremy finally spoke.
"…I just want to go home."
I laughed.
"Then get up."
I looked at the darkening sky.
"Because now comes the truly dangerous part."
Jeremy groaned.
"…what part?"
I started walking.
"Explaining to your five-hundred-year-old wives why you spent months fighting vampires and demons."
He stayed silent for a few seconds.
Then muttered,
"…maybe facing Silas again would be easier."
And honestly?
He was absolutely right.
Because he was completely screwed.