Chapter 0024: An Enemy Blocks the Path

“Mary? You’re Mary!” Grim finally realized and shouted in surprise.

The enormous humanoid bat bared its fangs in an almost human gesture, then swooped down and tossed Grim to the ground. He tumbled several times across the damp, soft earth before finally staggering to his feet, gritting his teeth in pain. By then, the giant bat had circled around and landed right beside him.

Astonishingly, as the bat’s form approached the ground, its bizarre body began to twist and contort in an uncanny transformation. The fiery red fur receded, morphing into a delicate, dazzling scarlet gown. The sharp, protruding features rapidly contracted, reshaping into the enchanting visage of an alluring woman.

When she gracefully stepped up to Grim, that familiar figure in red, Mary, had returned once more.

Bat Demon Transformation!

This… this was the legendary secondary transformation ability of vampires.

A vampire’s first innate power upon its birth is bloodsucking regeneration—a truly fearsome racial trait. But if a newborn vampire advances further, it awakens the bat demon transformation: the power to turn into a giant bat and soar through the sky, or to split into hundreds of tiny bats for swift escape—both excellent means of survival.

Upon reaching maturity, vampires begin to create blood thralls in droves.

So, to battle a mature vampire, one must first contend with the host of blood thrall bodyguards painstakingly gathered by the fiend.

Fragments of knowledge about vampire-related sorcery flashed rapidly through Grim’s mind, leaving him in awe at Mary’s swift progress. She had become a vampire only days ago, and already she had awakened her second racial ability.

“That little girl—who is she? Why is she hunting you?” Mary, in her scarlet dress, did not look at Grim but instead gazed unblinkingly at the distant, chaotic battlefield.

They were now five or six miles from the center of the swamp. Thick mists obscured everything from sight, but even at this distance, the heart-shaking elemental surges were plain as day.

The battle in the distance had grown even fiercer!

“They’re outsiders! Three apprentice sorcerers, each one a high-level apprentice. The little girl is called Alice—she has spatial talents, frighteningly powerful…” Grim was quietly explaining when suddenly the void in the distance began to tremble, mingled with the shrill, wailing cries of the witch hags.

“This is bad, we need to go!” Grim’s face changed dramatically. “That one is about to break free!”

He had once sensed such terrifying spatial fluctuations before—when Alice unleashed her nearly indiscriminate, map-wide spatial attack. Though the toll was high, Grim was certain that once Alice let loose that move, the hag leader Simba would never be able to stop her escape.

“Do we stand a chance of killing her if we work together?” Mary suddenly turned toward him, a vivid red gleam flashing in the depths of her emerald eyes, fixing Grim in a tight stare.

“Well… uh… if we cooperate well… maybe… possibly…” Grim was caught off guard by Mary’s abrupt shift in thinking. Facing a powerful high-level apprentice, his mind had been entirely preoccupied with escape, never once entertaining the thought of turning to bite back.

After all, with his strength, even if Alice were gravely wounded and on the brink of death, she could snuff him out as easily as crushing an insect.

Keeping at least fifty meters between himself and Alice, Grim was eighty percent confident—thanks to the chip’s assistance—of dodging her spatial attacks. Within thirty meters, that confidence dropped to forty percent. Any closer, within twenty meters, Alice could kill him in an instant.

The chip’s feedback always needed a split second to process; without any buffer, Grim was as fragile as glass before Alice.

He certainly didn’t have the bizarre resilience of Entik the Corruptor, who could survive even with his heart gouged out. If Alice locked onto him mentally, death would be a certainty! So his instinct was to refuse Mary’s proposal.

But in Mary’s presence, he never seemed to have a choice.

Her form twisted and shrank once more—this time, she transformed into a palm-sized, pocket bat, flitting her wings as she slipped into Grim’s embrace. As she burrowed beneath his clothes, she shot him a warning look over her furry little shoulder: “You’d better play your part well later! I’m getting that idiot’s blood, no matter what!”

Seeing the “threat” clear on her transformed, fuzzy face, Grim could only nod numbly.

“Don’t worry. If she really tries to kill you, I’ll find a way to protect you!” Mary’s tiny, almost inaudible voice murmured from within Grim’s arms, allowing him to relax—if only a little—as he began to ponder how he might secretly locate Alice.

But when he turned around, his pupils involuntarily contracted, and shock and terror filled his face.

A hazy, illusory figure was coalescing just ten meters behind him. From the outline, it could only be that terrifying little girl—Alice.

“Alice!” At that moment, Grim’s mouth went dry, and he could barely breathe.

Alice was truly relentless; no matter how far he ran, she hunted him without pause. She had just been forced by the hags to unleash another massive spatial spell, yet instead of finding a place to recover, she audaciously pursued him further. Did she not know the meaning of death?

His terror quickly gave way to the instinct to flee.

But before he could move a muscle, a cold, childish voice rang out.

“If you move, I’ll make sure to stuff your heart down your throat… Don’t believe me? Go ahead and try…”

Grim raised his eyes to the spatial phantom, now close enough for him to make out her features, but he couldn’t summon the courage to take a step.

Damn, he was far too close to her!

But then he was startled by Alice’s current state.

Her earlier battle with Entik had already cost her an eye and left her body battered. But now, the little girl looked even more wretched.

The gaping hole of her right eye was still empty, but now three horrific claw marks stretched from the bottom of her right socket to the corner of her left mouth. The flesh around the wounds was black and curling, the exposed tissue visibly rotting. Whenever Alice spoke through clenched teeth, black, tainted blood oozed slowly from the wounds.

Her injuries had multiplied, and some areas of exposed skin still bore the marks of hag bites. Where once she had been a petite, adorable girl, she was now a voodoo doll straight out of a midnight nightmare—a sight both pitiable and grim.

A faint spatial ripple enveloped the entire scene. After much struggle, Alice finally broke free of the spatial shackles and shifted her body from some alien dimension. Normally, such a simple spatial jump would be effortless for her, but now it had taken every ounce of her strength.

As soon as she emerged, Alice’s remaining eye, blazing with fury, glared viciously at the stunned Grim. She barely reached his chest in height, yet the ferocity of her presence left him struggling for breath.

Yet what chilled him even more was the human head hanging from her waist. The mouth twisted in a ferocious snarl—surely that was Simba, the unlucky hag leader. It seemed even Simba had not escaped Alice’s deadly hand.

“Well done… very well done…” Alice muttered through clenched teeth, her voice brimming with vengeful hatred and deep resentment.

She recalled how, upon entering the magic swamp, she had been brimming with confidence, her ambitions soaring. In her eyes, aside from those lofty sorcerers, everyone else was mundane and beneath her notice, not even worthy to polish her shoes. With her impenetrable spatial defenses and unpredictable cutting powers, she had the right to be proud—even in the presence of would-be sorcerers.

Who could have imagined that in this unremarkable swamp, at a mere third-class family resource site, she would suffer such a devastating setback? At this moment, her frustration and rage were beyond the comprehension of any outsider. She was like a primordial beast, thirsting to devour, yearning to flay this wretch and grind his bones to powder, to pulp his flesh into a bloody paste and swallow him whole.

Perhaps only such carnage could cool the fire in her chest.

“Speak up, boy. How did you discover the flaw in my spatial barrier?” A twisted smile crept over Alice’s ravaged little face. She flexed her hands, and a serpentine spatial fissure writhed obediently between her fingers. “Tell the truth, and I promise not to harm you further today. I, Alice, always keep my word!”

As if! She might not kill me herself, but if she tosses me into a nest of monsters, I’d be just as dead. Hmph, I have plenty of tricks up my sleeve too…

Grim raged inwardly, but looking at the docile, snake-like spatial fissure in her pale hands, he dared not utter a single extraneous word. Outwardly calm, he was inwardly in turmoil.

Good heavens—truly a genius, to hold a spatial fissure in her hands like a plaything! That was a spatial fissure—a weapon as deadly as any ever forged! Steel shields, tempered bones—it mattered not; without magical protection, a spatial fissure would cut through them like paper.

Yet here was this little girl toying with one as if it were nothing, underscoring the crucial importance of innate talent for apprentice sorcerers.

“I can’t actually see the spatial energy by your side,” Grim hesitated, but finally confessed.

“Liar!” Alice nearly lost her composure. “If you can’t see it, how did you find the flaw in my defenses?”

“You must understand, spatial energy has no fixed elemental property; it’s more like a part of the laws of the planes themselves. Without the talent, one can hardly perceive it with the naked eye. But don’t forget—elemental particles are intensely exclusive, and the spatial power you wield is more domineering than any other. So…”

“So you deduced the shape and location of my spatial barrier by the elementless void it left behind? Then…” Alice, quick-witted as ever, instantly traced the flaw to its source. “Damn, I should never have filled the gaps with wind element. I ought to have used a force field with no attributes at all.”