Suddenly Nova's eyes looked in one direction.
*Hah? Does... does he know I'm in here? Can that boy sense my presence even though I've hidden myself so thoroughly? No... impossible. I've concealed my spiritual presence perfectly. This camouflage technique can't even be detected by B-rank Sages. This must just be coincidence. He must just be guessing.*
But the bad premonition gnawing at his heart turned out to be correct.
Nova had indeed sensed the creature's presence very clearly. Without hesitation, Nova immediately jumped from the tree trunk and ran toward where the vampire was hiding.
*IMPOSSIBLE! How can this child know my exact position?! Is he a human born with natural hunter instincts?! Does he have the ability to see presences that shouldn't be visible to ordinary eyes?!*
KRAAAAAAAK!
Nova's right leg kick struck the ground directly above the vampire's head with force truly absurd for a child his size.
The hard ground shattered into pieces like glass. A perfectly circular crater two meters deep and five meters in diameter formed in an instant.
Fist-sized fragments of earth flew in all directions. Several trees standing around the attack area were pierced by the shooting earth fragments, their trunks cracked, some even collapsing because their bases were destroyed.
The vibration from that devastating kick traveled through the ground like seismic waves, spreading to a radius of a hundred meters. Trees still standing swayed violently, leaves falling.
*I have to get out NOW! If I stay here, I'll be buried alive!*
Quickly, the vampire leaped out from his hiding hole in liquid form which then reformed into a solid body upon reaching the surface. He landed on the ground then immediately turned to look toward Nova.
Nova was already behind him, not in front as the vampire had expected.
*This boy! How can a child this small have physical strength like a monster?! Judging from his body posture, his height, his still childish face—he must be eleven or twelve years old, no more. But how can he possibly possess strength like this?!*
*And... wait. That kick just now—wasn't it stronger than the previous kicks? I think his strength a few minutes ago wasn't this strong. Or am I too tired that my perception is distorted?*
The vampire stared at Nova who was now walking casually toward him, appearing unhurried.
*If even now—at his current age—he's already this strong, what if he's an adult later? How strong will he be when he reaches his peak growth in his twenties? What will happen to this world if there's a human with strength like that walking free? And he clearly hasn't awakened his power yet, I can't sense any energy inside his body at all!*
*Rather than keep running like a coward and living in the shadow of fear, constantly chased until I die of exhaustion, I'd better face him directly with all my remaining strength!*
"TAKE THIS, CURSED BOY!" the vampire shouted, raising both hands high to the dark night sky. The movement was full of energy.
From both his palms, thick dark red blood—almost black—began seeping out slowly through his skin pores. Not just a few drops, but a heavy flow. The blood didn't drip to the ground following gravity like normal liquid, but instead rose upward, gathering in the air while spinning to form a beautiful spiral.
In seconds, the blood transformed into hundreds of thin needles about fifteen centimeters long. Each needle had a sharp point.
"I will fight you with all my strength from now on! THERE'S NOTHING LEFT FOR ME TO HIDE!"
The hundreds of blood needles—exactly about three hundred needles—immediately shot downward at speeds approaching that of machine gun bullets. They fell like heavy rain, targeting Nova from all angles so there was no gap to dodge—front, back, left, right, even from diagonal angles.
But Nova only watched that rain of deadly needles with a face that remained flat—not the slightest change in expression.
SYUUUUNG! SYUUUUNG! SYUUUUNG!
When the first needles touched the ground around where Nova stood—
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
A series of explosions occurred. Every needle that hit the surface exploded with force equivalent to a mini grenade. The ground around Nova was scattered and destroyed, creating small craters. Thick white smoke billowed from each explosion point, creating a dense fog covering the entire area.
Small fires began burning in several places where the strongest explosions occurred. The sound of explosions echoed endlessly—BANG BANG BANG BANG—
But the vampire wasn't finished with his attack yet.
With a movement full of determination, he bit his own left wrist deeply—so deep that his fangs penetrated the main blood vessel. Fresh bright red blood immediately gushed heavily from the bite wound.
But that blood wasn't allowed to fall wastefully to the ground. The vampire collected it in a pool in his cupped right palm, forming a small blood pool.
"Come out, all of you, my blood creatures! Show your strength!"
The collected blood—about two liters—began moving, rippling and spinning in organic patterns. The blood transformed into hundreds of small different creatures.
Blood spiders with eight sharp legs, the size of an adult palm. Blood snakes slithering one meter long. Blood scorpions with barbed tails, as large as cats. There were even strange creatures without clear form.
All those creatures—numbering in the hundreds, moved quickly toward where Nova was, surrounding him from all directions.
And just like the previous needles, each of these blood creatures could also explode upon contact with the target or at the vampire's command. But their explosions were far more dangerous because they could move independently, chase moving targets, and even change attack formations.
But what happened next made the vampire's mouth gape wide with an expression of disbelief.
Nova walked out from the thick smoke billows with casual steps—as if the hundreds of massive explosions around him were just ordinary fireworks. Even when explosions occurred right next to his body, less than half a meter away, Nova wasn't scratched at all.
No new wounds. No fresh blood. Even his already tattered clothes weren't further damaged.
*What is this?! How can he pass through all my attacks so easily?! Explosions that big should at least injure him again! Can he really not feel pain at all now?!*
Nova, who had been walking casually, suddenly changed his speed. He immediately ran fast toward the vampire.
And his speed—his speed wasn't reduced at all by the explosions or blood creatures trying to block him. In fact, it seemed to get faster over time.
The two hundred meter distance between them—a distance formed because the vampire emerged from the ground at a different location from his initial hiding place after Nova destroyed the first spot—shrank at an insane speed for a child his size. In just five seconds, that distance had already reduced to only fifty meters.
*Impossible! Fifty meters in five seconds?! That's a speed of almost forty meters per second! Is he now faster than me!*
The vampire immediately jumped high into the air using all his leg muscle strength. That leap carried him flying vertically to a height of twenty-five meters—as high as an eight-story building.
From his back, a pair of wide black bat wings with a total wingspan of about four meters unfurled. The wing bones moved with strong muscles, creating powerful wind gusts when flapping, allowing him to hover stably in the air.
"BOY! IF THAT ATTACK DIDN'T WORK, HOW ABOUT YOU TRY FACING THIS!"
Above the hovering vampire's head, spiritual energy began gathering. That energy formed a thick black vortex spinning at high speed, absorbing the surrounding light until the area above the vampire looked like a mini black hole.
That energy absorbed almost all the blood from the vampire's body.
The collected blood—an extraordinarily large amount, immediately transformed into a hundred giant blood spheres. Each sphere was the size of a sedan car, with a diameter of about three meters.
The destructive energy radiating from those spheres was so strong it made the surrounding air vibrate violently.
Nova standing below showed no change in expression, his eyes looking up calmly. Even when the hundred deadly spheres had fully formed—floating in the air.
"FEEL MY STRENGTH, BOY!" The vampire shouted with a voice already hoarse from losing too much blood. "IF EVEN THIS ATTACK CANNOT KILL YOU, THAT MEANS YOU ARE SOMEONE WHO IS FAR—FAR—STRONGER THAN ME! THAT MEANS YOU ARE A MONSTER BEYOND MY UNDERSTANDING OF POWER!"
Both hands lowered—the vampire immediately dropped all hundred giant blood spheres simultaneously. They fell with a combination of gravitational speed plus spiritual energy propulsion that made them fall twice as fast as normal free fall speed.
From Nova's perspective below, the sky seemed to collapse—a hundred red meteors falling simultaneously.
But just before Nova prepared to move—something strange and unexpected happened.
The ground beneath both his feet suddenly changed consistency very quickly. From hard and solid, it transformed into soft like mud in an instant. Both Nova's feet sank about ten centimeters into the suddenly softened ground.
But before Nova could react to pull his feet out—the ground immediately hardened again with the same rapid speed, becoming extremely hard. Both Nova's feet were gripped tightly by the hardened ground.
That grip was very strong—but not impossible to break free from.
And at that moment—without time to free himself the normal way—a hundred giant blood spheres struck exactly at the point where Nova stood trapped.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The explosion that occurred wasn't just an ordinary explosion. This was a combined explosion from a hundred destructive energy spheres detonating simultaneously within the same radius. Its force was equivalent to a large conventional bomb.
The first shockwave swept the area, destroying everything within a hundred meter radius. Dozens of giant trees fell instantly. Some trees even burned instantly from the extreme explosion heat.
A giant crater formed at the explosion point. Flames licked from inside the crater. The temperature at the crater's center reached over a thousand degrees Celsius.
Meanwhile, thick black smoke billowed high up to a hundred meters above. The smoke was filled with hot particles.
The heat wave from that explosion was so intense that the vampire flying at a height of twenty-five meters—far from the explosion point—also felt the heat. His facial skin felt like it was burning even though no fire touched it.
But the vampire wasn't seriously injured because it was his own blood that was made into a weapon. As the creator of the attack, he had immunity to effects originating from his own body.
After thirty seconds passed—the smoke began thinning slowly.
The vampire could begin seeing the damage he had created.
*Is... is it finally successful?* The vampire sighed long. *There's no way a child that small could survive an attack that big, right?*
Tap... Nova was still standing upright in the exact same spot.
Not only still alive, he hadn't even moved one centimeter from his original position. Both his feet were still embedded in the ground.
His facial expression was still flat without any change at all.
Around him, the ground was totally destroyed forming a giant crater still smoking. Fires still burned at several points. But he—he was still standing there.
"Hah? You... you're joking, right? How can you still stand like nothing happened after being hit by that attack?!"
No answer from Nova.
"ANSWER ME!" The vampire shouted with frustration. "WHAT ARE YOU REALLY?! ARE YOU STILL HUMAN?! WHY DO YOU KEEP BEING LIKE THIS?! CAN'T YOU JUST LET YOURSELF DIE RIGHT NOW LIKE NORMAL HUMANS SHOULD?!"
Nova only stared at him with cold empty eyes.
But when their gazes locked—when the vampire's red eyes met Nova's cold eyes—the vampire felt something.
DEATH.
That word appeared suddenly in his head clearly.
Both the vampire's hands trembled uncontrollably—a shaking that couldn't be stopped.
In the blink of an eye—even faster than a human's blink, faster than a heartbeat—Nova was already right in front of the vampire still hovering at a height of twenty-five meters. The vertical distance that should have taken several seconds to cover was already gone.
*How can he be that fast?! He's not using wings! He's not using flying power! He jumped purely with leg muscle strength?!*
The vampire didn't even have time to react consciously. His brain had just begun processing the information that Nova had already moved and then—
BUGH!
Nova's right hand punch hit the vampire's left ribs with precision exactly at the point where eight ribs meet the sternum. The punch's force surpassed all previous punches—this was no longer a punch from a human without power.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
The vampire's eight left ribs were instantly crushed—not just broken, but truly crushed into small fragments. The shattered ribs pierced the left lung, tearing organ tissue from within.
The vampire was thrown back fifty meters.
His body slammed into three large trees still standing in succession—CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!—their trunks cracked with some collapsing with roots torn from the ground.
Finally he fell face-down on the hard ground, his body flung several more meters before stopping due to friction.
*It hurts... it hurts so much!* The vampire groaned in pain while clutching his chest with trembling hands. *Why can it hurt this much?! I've never—NEVER—felt pain like this!*
*What's happening to my body?! Why isn't my regeneration working?! This is the first time I've felt pain to this level!*
His entire left ribs were totally destroyed, left lung punctured and beginning to fill with blood, several other internal organs—spleen, left kidney, even part of the stomach—suffering serious internal bleeding. His wounds wouldn't heal even though a vampire's regeneration ability should be able to heal any wound no matter how severe in seconds.
But now, his wounds were still open, still flowing black blood to the ground.
Nova walked slowly toward the vampire lying helplessly. When the distance between them was only two meters, Nova stopped.
He stared at the battered vampire with an expression still just as flat.
Nova slowly raised his right foot, then stepped on the vampire's stomach with pressure enough to make the target feel pain but not immediately kill.
CRACK!
Additional ribs broke—two bones on the right side that were still intact also crushed. The vampire screamed in pain, his mouth opening wide while vomiting more black blood.
But Nova wasn't finished. Not even close to finished.
He raised both hands—a slow movement. Then he began hitting the vampire's body that could no longer move.
Punch. BUGH!
Right fist struck the vampire's left shoulder. Collarbone broke.
Punch again. BUGH!
Left fist struck the chest. Sternum cracked in the middle.
Punch again. BUGH!
Back to the stomach. Internal organs shifted from their normal positions.
Punch. BUGH!
Punch. BUGH!
Punch. BUGH!
Each punch created a small crater in the ground with the vampire as the crater's base—his body slowly sinking deeper with each impact. The ground around him cracked in increasingly wider radial patterns. The vampire's body sank further into the ground with each of Nova's unceasing punches.
Nova seemed to give absolutely no opportunity for the vampire to speak, to move, even to breathe calmly. The vampire was now completely under Nova's control.
Ten punches. Twenty punches. Thirty punches.
The vampire tried to scream. Every time he tried to gather energy to regenerate, the next punch came and destroyed the healing process before it could begin.
Forty punches. Fifty punches.
After receiving fifty consecutive punches—In a near-death condition, with consciousness beginning to fade, his thoughts actually became very clear.
*Oh... so that's it...* A realization emerged in his cracked head, a thought forming amid the incredible pain. *Turns out it's not me who's been weakening all this time. But this boy who keeps getting stronger every second that passes.*
*Every time I attack him, every time he withstands my attacks, every time he moves and reacts—he develops. He learns. He adapts. He becomes stronger than the version of himself one minute before.*
*I'm... I'm nothing more than a training dummy for him! A sparring partner who unknowingly helps him develop! The longer I fight, the more attacks I launch, the stronger he becomes! I'm... I'm a whetstone for his sword!*
*If from the beginning—if from the first moment when I pulled him into this dimension—I had immediately killed him with my strongest attack without playing around, maybe he wouldn't have had time to develop this strong. But I was too arrogant, too confident, too enjoying this cat-and-mouse game.*
*And now... now it's too late. He's already developed into a monster that even I can't stop anymore.*
Sixty punches. Seventy punches. Eighty punches.
*This is the first time in my long life... I've been made to feel this afraid by a small child. And this is very—VERY—humiliating! Defeated by a boy who hasn't even awakened his special power!*
Ninety punches. One hundred punches.
The vampire stared at Nova who still kept punching with a flat face.
*He's fighting me with pure physical strength only. No powers, no special weapons, no spiritual techniques. Just bare hands, speed, and his body's strength, that's all he needs to destroy me.*
*While me? I've already brought out all my best abilities. All the techniques I learned during my time as a vampire human.*
*But all that means nothing in the face of pure physical strength that has surpassed the limits of logic and human common sense. My regeneration ability that usually can heal any wound in seconds—even loss of vital organs—is now completely useless. In fact, every time I try to activate it, my body becomes more injured because the regeneration process is disrupted by the next punch.*
*My spiritual energy is already completely drained from that earlier attack. My blood is almost dry—I've lost maybe seventy percent of the total blood in my body. My consciousness is beginning to fade...*
After the hundredth punch, the vampire had already sunk three meters into the ground—buried in a crater formed by his own body as a buffer for Nova's punches. His body was totally destroyed—almost all bones broken, almost all internal organs crushed or torn, even his skull cracked in several places until the brain inside was compressed.
But strangely—his brain still functioned despite being damaged. And in the last seconds of his life, with his remaining consciousness, he made a final decision driven by a mixture of rage.
"HAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHA!"
Suddenly the vampire laughed—laughed crazily with a hoarse and broken voice, filled with blood filling his throat. Thick black blood poured from his mouth every time he laughed, creating a pool around his head. But he didn't stop laughing—even when that laughter clearly hurt his already destroyed body.
Nova stopped punching for the first time since the hundred punches ago. His hand raised high—ready for the 101st punch—was slowly lowered. He stared at the vampire with an expression that changed slightly—no longer an empty gaze, but a gaze showing a bit of... curiosity?
"HAHAHAHA! Exactly right!" The vampire laughed while staring at Nova with eyes already half-blind—his eye lenses cracked, retinas damaged, but still able to see Nova's silhouette above him. "You are an extraordinary child! Too extraordinary for an ordinary human! Too dangerous to be allowed to live in this world!"
The vampire coughed, blood sprayed out again, but he continued with an increasingly weak voice.
"In my long life—lived as a vampire—I've already killed so many humans. I've already fought dozens of people who have power in this world—THERE'S NONE—who could make me feel fear like this!"
"You who are still a child are already this strong. You who haven't awakened your special power can already defeat me. What will happen when you're an adult? What will happen when you reach your peak physical strength in your twenties?"
"What will happen if you suddenly awaken a special power and keep developing without limits like you did today?"
The vampire grinned with teeth already broken, blood flowing from between his teeth. "You... you will become the greatest threat to the balance of this world. Not for humans—but for creatures and monsters that will appear in the future!"
"That's why..." His voice dropped to a hoarse whisper, "precisely because you're too extraordinary, precisely because you're too dangerous—you MUST NOT be allowed to live and develop any further!"
"NOW LET'S DIE TOGETHER, BOY!"
At that very moment—in that final decision that had been planned since the conversation began—Nova felt a major change in the spiritual energy around him. The night sky that had been pitch black suddenly changed color to blood red.
Not just the sky—trees still standing, the ground beneath his feet, scattered rocks, even the moon floating above—everything also changed color to red.
The entire forest—no, this entire vampire dimension—began shaking violently with increasingly rapid frequency.
The vampire was sacrificing his soul and entire existence—to create a dimensional-level spiritual explosion that could destroy everything existing within this realm of his creation.
This wasn't just an energy explosion. This was a collapse of reality—the collapse of an artificial reality that would pull everything inside it into the void.
Every cell in the dying vampire's body began glowing red with increasingly bright intensity—from dim to bright, from bright to blinding. That light wasn't ordinary light—this was a manifestation of a soul being burned.
"EVEN IF YOU HAVE PERFECT PHYSICAL DEFENSE, I DON'T BELIEVE YOU CAN STILL SURVIVE THIS DIMENSIONAL-LEVEL EXPLOSION!" The vampire shouted with a voice already distorted, becoming an unnatural echo as his soul and body began decomposing into pure energy.
"THIS IS MY FINAL ATTACK! THIS IS THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE! NOW LET'S DIE TOGETHER AND DISAPPEAR FROM THIS WORLD!"
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The explosion that occurred surpassed all previous explosions on an incomparable scale. This wasn't just a physical or energy explosion—this was an explosion involving the destruction of the fabric of space-time within the vampire dimension.
Space began cracking like glass—black cracks appeared in the air, spreading like a giant spider web. Through those cracks could be seen absolute void—darkness darker than anything, an emptiness containing nothing, not even the concept of time or space.
The explosion destroyed everything existing within the vampire dimension—every tree burned to ash instantly, every rock melted into lava, earth evaporated into gas, even the air itself burned with invisible fire.
The explosion's light was so bright—brighter than the sun—that Nova who stared directly at the source could only see absolute white filling his entire field of vision. But despite that blinding light, despite its intensity being enough to burn normal human eye retinas—Nova still didn't close his eyes, didn't look down, showed no pain reaction.
The shockwave from that explosion swept this entire dimension at speeds exceeding the speed of sound. When that wave hit Nova, his body was forcibly thrown back.
Nova was thrown very far—his body floating in the air. He crashed through dozens of trees still standing, piercing their trunks, before finally slamming into the dimension's wall—the boundary between the vampire dimension and normal reality.
In the midst of that devastating explosion, the vampire's body was truly annihilated—nothing remained, no ash, no blood, not even a spiritual trace. He disappeared completely.
The explosion lasted for a full forty-five seconds. The explosion sound was so loud it exceeded the hearing threshold.
After forty-five seconds passed, the explosion began subsiding. The blinding light slowly faded. The deafening sound began diminishing.
And at ground zero of the explosion—in the giant crater dozens of meters deep that formed—nothing remained but boiling magma and toxic smoke.
But several hundred meters from there... Nova lay on the ground with a body finally showing serious damage. He was unconscious—for the first time since the battle began, his eyes were closed, his consciousness gone.
His wounds were very severe—burns covering almost his entire body, bones cracked despite being reinforced, internal organs shaken by the shockwave. But he was still breathing. His chest still rose and fell with a weak but stable rhythm.
He survived. Against all odds, against an explosion that should have destroyed anything—he survived.
And at that moment—this dimension began collapsing.
The sky cracked—large cracks spread in all directions. Through those cracks, absolute void began seeping in like black ink spreading in water.
The ground began crumbling from the dimension's edges like paper burning from its edges. The destroyed area transformed into small light particles floating upward before disappearing completely.
In seconds, that light became very bright—and then—
FLASH!
Nova returned to the real world—to the point where he was first pulled into the vampire dimension.
Nova lay in the middle of an empty road—the same road where he had been walking to school that morning. His body still full of wounds, his clothes tattered, but he was there. In the real world.