I Awakened The Ancient Vampire System

Chapter 87: Chapter 87: Interrogation

The first wave hit them.

Forty Neophyte rebels charged from the western buildings. Twenty more came from the south. The rest were mobilizing inside the compound, but these sixty were already in motion.

Declan laughed.

He stepped forward and drove his fist into the lead rebel’s chest. Golden light exploded on impact. The rebel’s ribs shattered. His body left the ground and flew backward through two of his comrades, all three crashing into a wall in a heap of broken limbs.

"Come on!" Declan bellowed. "Is that all you’ve got?"

Amira raised both hands. The sand beneath thirty rushing rebels erupted — roots, buried for years beneath the desert, shot upward like spears. Twelve rebels were impaled through their legs. Eight more were tangled in thick vines that wrapped around their arms and throats. The rest scattered, tripping over the root network that turned the ground into a trap.

Lucian didn’t move from his position. He raised one hand. Blood Needle Rain.

Forty crimson needles materialized in the air above the scattered rebels and rained down. Each one found a target — throat, spine, femoral artery. Rebels dropped in clusters. Some fell silently. Others screamed.

The entire exchange lasted fifteen seconds.

Sixty rebels. Forty-seven dead or incapacitated. Thirteen fleeing back toward the compound.

Then the heavy ones arrived.

The compound’s main door slammed open. Three figures emerged, moving with the weight of Core Realm cultivators. Their mana pressure hit the battlefield like a wall — heavy, oppressive, enough to make the remaining Neophyte rebels drop to their knees.

The leader was a tall man with a scarred face and wild eyes. Hasaan’s lieutenant, maybe. His mana signature was the brightest — peak Early Core Realm, pressing against the boundary of Mid Core. Golden light flickered around his fists.

"What the fuck is going on?" he roared.

The second was a bald man with pale skin and sunken eyes. His hands glowed with a strange reddish light that Lucian recognized as he used eyes of the eternals on him immediately — laser emission. B-Rank.

The third was a woman with short-cropped hair and muscular arms. Earth mana swirled around her feet, cracking the ground beneath her stance.

Declan cracked his neck. "Three bosses. Three of us. Just perfect."

The scarred man pointed at Declan. "You. You’re mine."

The bald man’s eyes locked onto Lucian. The reddish glow in his palms intensified.

The earth woman faced Amira. "Plant bitch. Let’s see how tough you are."

Three fights. Three separate corners of the ruined square.

Lucian and the bald man circled each other.

The bald man fired first. A concentrated beam of red light — hot enough to melt anything in range— shot from his palm. Lucian Phantom Walked through it. The beam carved a trench in the sand behind him, still glowing cherry-red.

"He’s fast," the bald man muttered. He fired again. And again. Three beams in rapid succession, each one tracking Lucian’s movement with frightening accuracy.

Lucian dodged the first two with Light Steps. The third he deflected with a Light Shield — the beam hit the flat disc of hardened light and split into two harmless streams that scorched the sand on either side of him.

His tracking is good. But his reaction speed is too slow for a Core Realm cultivator.

Lucian closed the distance. The bald man tried to backpedal, firing beams from both palms. Lucian weaved through them — left, right, under, phantom walk through — covering twenty meters in three seconds.

He appeared in front of the bald man. Blood claws extended from his fingers. One slash across the chest. The bald man raised a mana barrier, but the blood claws —having a S-Rank durability — punched through it like paper.

Blood sprayed. The bald man stumbled backward, clutching his chest.

"My turn," Lucian said.

He didn’t give the bald man time to recover. Light Steps carried him inside the man’s guard. A Crushing Palm to the solar plexus. The concussive shockwave hit the bald man’s internal organs directly. His eyes bulged.

Lucian followed with a knee to the chin. The bald man’s head snapped back. A blood-clawed fist to the temple. The man’s legs buckled.

One final strike — Lucian’s palm against the bald man’s forehead. He pushed just enough mana through to knock him unconscious without cracking the skull. The bald man’s eyes rolled back. He dropped like a sack of sand.

All this happened in just thirty seconds.

Lucian turned toward the other fights.

Declan was having the time of his life. The scarred man was strong — peak Early Core Realm, enhanced by some kind of earth aura ability — but Declan’s S-Rank Golden Body was something else entirely. Every punch he threw sent shockwaves rippling across the square. Every hit he took barely left a mark. His skin gleamed like polished bronze, and his grin hadn’t faded once.

The scarred man was bleeding from a dozen cuts. His earthly aura was flickering. He was losing.

Amira was struggling more. The earth woman was tough — her ground-based attacks were relentless, stone spikes erupting from beneath Amira’s feet, earthen walls blocking her vine attacks. Amira’s plant manipulation was powerful, but the desert environment gave the earth user a natural advantage. Sand and stone everywhere. Roots and vines scarce.

Lucian moved to help.

He appeared behind the earth woman in a flicker of Phantom Walk. She sensed him — barely — and tried to spin. Lucian’s blood claw raked across her back before she could complete the turn. She screamed in pain as she stumbled forward.

Amira seized the opening. Massive thorns erupted from the ground — mutated cactus spines that Amira had found buried beneath the sand. They wrapped around the earth woman’s arms and legs, pinning her in place.

The earth woman struggled. Stone spikes erupted around her, trying to shatter the thorns. Amira reinforced them with thicker vines. The two abilities clashed — earth against plant — grinding against each other in a stalemate.

Lucian ended it. A single Crescent Moon Slash across the back of the earth woman’s head. Not deep enough to kill. Just enough to knock her unconscious.

She slumped. The stone spikes crumbled. The thorns held.

"Thanks," Amira said, breathing hard.

Lucian nodded. He looked toward Declan’s fight.

It was over.

The scarred man lay on his back in a small crater. His face was a mess of blood and bruises. But he was breathing. Barely.

Declan stood over him, rolling his shoulders. His golden light faded. "Took you long enough. I was getting bored."

"You could have helped us sooner," Amira said flatly.

"And miss out on a good fight? No way."

Amira knelt beside the unconscious earth woman and pressed her palm to the sand. Thick roots coiled out of the ground — dense, fibrous, strong enough to hold a Core Realm cultivator. She bound the woman’s wrists, ankles, and torso. Then she moved to the bald man and did the same.

Lucian walked to the scarred man. He was already unconscious, but Lucian added restraints anyway — Scarlet Threads wrapped around his limbs, reinforced with hardened blood. No normal rope could hold a peak Early Core Realm cultivator. Blood threads could.

The remaining Neophyte rebels had fled into the desert. The square was silent except for the crackle of dying fires and the moans of incapacitated rebels scattered across the ground.

Amira stood and wiped sweat from her forehead. "That was messy."

Declan sat on a piece of rubble. "Messy but I will say effective. Three bosses down in under five minutes. I guess we have quite the team, don’t we?"

Lucian looked down at the scarred man.

Declan leaned forward. "So. How do we interrogate them?"

A dark smile flashed across Lucian’s face.

"Leave that to me."