Broken Possessors of Infinite Regression Academy

“Do you think you can keep running away forever?”

The situation was taking an odd turn.

As I dodged the blood raining down from above, the droplets hit the ground and scattered a dark red mist. The floor began to visibly corrode where the mist touched, black smoke rising clearly into the air. The entire area was covered in dark red blood and signs of melting, all thanks to his indiscriminate attacks. While I had managed to dodge all of them so far, getting hit even once would be disastrous.

Despite this, the situation wasn’t entirely against me. His speed and power had surged, but I could still dodge his attacks. It just required significantly more focus.

‘Conventional attacks won’t work.’

The real issue was finding a way to kill him without destroying the dungeon. I glanced at a deep crater nearby, at least ten meters deep, created when he smashed the ground. That was the limit. Any stronger attacks and the entire space might collapse.

I had considered using teleportation magic to escape, but the coordinates weren’t aligning properly. If this place collapsed, I’d be stuck here and die.

I had no intention of dying a meaningless death. Without understanding the cause of the disrupted coordinates, I wasn’t about to gamble on the hope that killing him would fix it.

“Where do you think you’re looking?”

He was right in front of me in an instant. I counterattacked immediately. I severed his closest left arm, twisted to dodge the right, and a vivid dark red streak passed right next to my face.

The tentacle-like appendages coming from all directions were momentarily stalled by a burst of mana, giving me the opening to slice them apart. Finally, I infused Eternity with mana and stabbed it into his chest.

The hyper-distortion struck his chest accurately, tearing through his torso. Dark red blood splattered everywhere. I surrounded myself with a barrier to block the droplets. Even one drop could be used against me, nearly costing me my left leg earlier.

“Do you truly not understand the futility of your actions?”

He pushed back Eternity from his chest. Despite being shredded by the hyper-distortion, his body continuously regenerated and healed faster than it was being destroyed. It was an absurd regeneration ability. I kicked off the ground and retreated. Instead of immediately chasing, he stood laughing maniacally, drunk on his power. It was perplexing how he had discarded all semblance of composure in his euphoria.

“Mira Crate? Do you have a moment?”

Professor Jaina’s voice came through the brooch-like magical device she had given us before the mission. I drove a mana pillar into the vampire lord’s body to hold him in place and quickly answered.

“Yes, Professor. What’s the matter?”

“From earlier, we’ve been detecting a significant and unusual power continuously emanating from the dungeon you entered. Could you tell me what’s going on? It’d be a big problem if I interfere while you’re combat, so I was going to wait until things settled down to contact you, but thinking about it, I figured you could handle it, so I’m contacting you now.”

Given my past behavior, I couldn’t argue with her confidence in me. I thought hard. What kind of monsters were said to appear in this dungeon?

After some contemplation, I opened my mouth to speak.

“I encountered a high troll variant wandering around and decided to test my swordsmanship a bit. It’s rare to meet an opponent with such strong regenerative abilities.”

A high troll variant. The name sounds funny, but such a creature really existed. Among monsters, high trolls possess particularly high intelligence, and if they join the Demon King’s army and receive demonic energy, their physical abilities significantly increase.

Upon hearing my answer, I heard a deep sigh.

“You went after the one we specifically placed there to make you run away… Seriously, you never change…”

So it was a monster placed there to avoid fighting.

“Anyway, got it. Just be careful and don’t get hurt.”

“Understood. Thank you.”

With these customary words of farewell, the communication ended. Although surveillance magic tools were scattered around, it seemed they couldn’t provide visual confirmation if one went too deep.

This was fortunate for both me and Professor Jaina herself. If she saw this situation, she would have rushed in to save me, even at the risk of getting herself fired.

Frankly, if my level of firepower was insufficient, having another professor join wouldn’t make much difference.

“This crude technique won’t stop me!”

As if on cue, the creature smashed the mana pillar and emerged.

I gripped Eternity once more. The battle would be prolonged, but it couldn’t be helped. The Demon King hadn’t shown up yet, and I couldn’t just keep fighting here forever.

First, I’d try every possible attack, and if that didn’t work, I’d have to consider whether to use that or not—

‘…?’

For a moment, I felt as though one corner of the creature’s mouth lifted slightly.

As soon as I realized this, another change began to occur in the Vampire Lord’s body. What had been merely dark crimson droplets turned completely black. At the same time, black veins bulged grotesquely on its skin, and its eyes were no exception. The whites of its eyes were filled with numerous black blood vessels.

It was an extremely strange sight.

Even as my mind sensed the oddity, my body was parrying attacks. As Eternity tried to block an attack, my arm twisted sharply.

‘What?!’

Ignoring Eternity, the creature targeted my blind spot. I twisted my arm as fast as I could, bringing Eternity’s edge to the right spot just in time.

—Crunch!

Eternity parried the creature’s arm but was flung back by an enormous force.

My wrist twisted along with it, producing a horrible sound as the bone contorted into an impossible angle. It twisted twice before returning to its original position. Before my limp wrist could even fall, my right arm was ripped off from the shoulder. A black mass erupted from the ground, piercing my right arm and shooting upwards.

The lower part of my vision turned red as pain surged from where my arm had been torn off, but I ignored the familiar sensation and focused on how to respond. I held Eternity in my left hand—

‘Damn. Too late.’

I realized it was too late as I saw the bloodshot face of the creature right in front of me. I tried to stab Eternity as quickly as possible, but its cold fangs sank into the right side of my neck faster.

—Crunch!

Instead of merely sucking my blood, the creature bit into my flesh with such force that chunks of my shoulder were torn away. The Vampire Lord chewed and swallowed the flesh before biting my neck again. I began to feel something being drained from me. My last desperate thrust with Eternity only managed to lodge in its side.

My vision turned white. Paradoxically, as my sight whitened, the searing pain from my severed arm and torn neck lessened. The sensation in my extremities started to fade.

.

.

.

Having drained the last drop of blood, Rakul roughly discarded the corpse. The pale body rolled on the floor, devoid of blood. As the battle ended, Rakul regained his sanity. He wiped the blood from his mouth with his sleeve and looked down at his own body.

His body, covered in bulging black veins, contrasted starkly with the overwhelming sense of power he felt.

‘…Something’s wrong.’

As his excitement and elation subsided, Rakul first noticed that something was off. No matter how excited he had been in battle, he had never lost control like this. The black veins on his skin were another anomaly. The power given by the Demon King had been red, but now Rakul’s veins were all black.

‘Was the power from the Demon King really this strong…?’

No, he had a more fundamental question to consider.

‘Is this truly the power bestowed by the Demon King?’

At the time, I thought it was an astonishing level of power, but it wasn’t this overwhelming. Rakul, taking more time to carefully examine his own body, concluded with certainty that this was not the power bestowed by the Demon King. It was something much deeper and broader. The mere fact that such power existed inspired a sense of awe.

It was like a fool who had always believed a lake was the largest body of water suddenly seeing the ocean for the first time. The disparity between the power given by the Demon King and the power now within Rakul was that immense.

‘Blasphemous.’

Rakul chastised himself for his blasphemy, but the thought once arisen did not easily dissipate. In fact, the more he tried to erase it, the more it filled his mind.

The thought that with this power, he might be able to defeat the Demon King. If that were possible, the vampire clan could dominate the entire demon world, and Rakul himself could ascend to the throne of the Demon King. His heart began to pound again with that thought.

“…Still alive, are you?”

The daydream was short-lived. Rakul lifted his head, detecting a faint scent of life. It came from the corpse he had just drained and discarded. This human was full of surprises. Despite draining what should have been the entire blood volume of an average adult male, the human was still alive.

“In that case, I’ll tear your throat out and see if you survive that.”

Rakul began to walk over with the intent to decapitate, but he stopped in his tracks, his jaw dropping in shock. The severed right arm was beginning to regenerate.

Soon, the scent of blood far greater than before filled the air. It meant blood was rapidly filling that body. The once pale skin began to regain color.

“…How?”

Rakul muttered involuntarily. The only known human methods of healing were the white light used by clergy and the strange red liquid known as potions. This had been the truth for centuries.

“…Really. It reminded me of the past, so I tried not to make it come out..”

However, that truth was being denied right before his eyes.

“If there was a third phase, you should have told me. I can overlook most things, but not this.”

The human, whose arm had fully regenerated, mumbled incomprehensible words as he slowly stood up. In his left hand was a spear of light.

As the human’s body healed, the light from the spear grew stronger. Rakul instinctively shielded his eyes.

‘…The sun?’

And then he saw his skin smoldering and burning.

The ultimate nemesis of all vampires, even one as powerful as Rakul, was the source of all life—the sun, which was blazing from that spear. Rakul staggered back, taking a step away from the blinding light.

“You! What are you? How can you wield the sun’s power?”

Rakul shouted, caught between the shame of retreating and the odd excitement at the prospect of the fight reigniting.

“None of your business. Why should I explain it to you?”

The human dismissed him simply and assumed a throwing stance with the spear. Rakul knew instinctively that he couldn’t dodge it. He heard a grinding sound from his clenched teeth.

Impossible. Accept defeat to a mere human? A vampire lord like himself? No, that couldn’t happen. It shouldn’t happen.

“Come on then! I don’t need your neck! I’ll tear your entire body apart!”

Rakul charged with explosive speed, his eyes filled with nothing but hatred for Mira Crate. Unfathomable rage and excitement filled his mind.

The light spear, now fully drawn back, was launched with force. A beam of light flew toward Rakul.

Rakul gathered his blood to form a massive barrier, a wall of unprecedented thickness and strength that he had never seen before in his centuries of life. But the blood wall melted like dry straw before a blazing fire.

“Arghhh!”

The spear of light struck Rakul’s shoulder directly. The point of impact burned rapidly, destroying both the demonic energy from the Demon King and the black power enveloping his body.

The light spear pierced through his shoulder, melting the ground below, but Rakul’s body continued to burn without stopping.

‘That light… I’ve read about it…’

As his body turned to ashes, Rakul’s final thought surfaced. It was not the indignation of his end, but a recollection.

‘The ancestral vampire… the holy… sword… similar to…’

Rakul’s thoughts were cut off.

The last remnant of his being disintegrated into light, leaving nothing behind.