"What do we do? The skull is much harder than the body bones, we can't cut it at all," she asked Rosen helplessly.
Viken scoffed, "Little girl, it's useless. Don't bother with that cunning little thing, he can't do anything about it. It took me a full 300 years to grow this head, it's not something that can be dealt with by trickery."
Rosen chuckled, "Viken, your head's pretty hard."
Viken rolled her eyes and scoffed, "If you're not blind, what just happened proves that."
This bloodsucking beast, still putting on airs even in its dying moments.
Rosen turned to Annie and said, "This head is indeed troublesome, but luckily it's not too big. If all else fails, we can just throw it in the fire and burn it. Come on, let's burn these bits of flesh first."
The bits of flesh on the ground were no simple matter either. These finely chopped pieces of flesh were constantly wriggling, visibly gathering together, and judging from their movement, they were trying to recombine into a body.
"Let's get the fire going," Rosen urged.
"Okay!"
The two worked together, constantly adding firewood to the fire. Five or six minutes later, the fire in the cave was blazing.
Rosen took Annie's silver sword, and together with her, they pushed the scraps of meat into the flames.
"Sizzle…squeak…"
The meat, roasted by the fire, made a sound like screaming, then wriggled like worms, trying to escape the flames.
Rosen didn't react much, but Annie, seeing this, exclaimed with delight, "It's hurting it! It's hurting it! The fire is working!"
With confidence, she worked even harder, quickly pushing the scraps of meat into the fire. The pieces of meat desperately tried to escape, but their wriggling speed was ultimately no match for Annie and Rosen's. In the end, Viken's entire body was inside the fire.
"Sizzle... Chirp... Sizzle..."
In the flames, bits of flesh struggled frantically, struggling and struggling. Finally, under the intense heat of the flames, some of the flesh stopped writhing. Their color changed from white to fleshy red, then to blackish red, and finally into tiny black beads the size of a little fingertip, motionless.
Annie asked, "Are they finished?"
"It's not that simple." Rosen took out a stick, poked a black bead out of the fire, and poured some water on it. A strange thing happened.
Nourished by the water, the surface of the black bead slowly changed color, first black, then blackish red, then red, then fleshy red. In less than ten minutes, the black bead had transformed back into a writhing piece of vampire flesh, exactly the same as before.
"Hiss~" Annie's teeth ached from watching: "Can't they even be burned to death by such intense fire?" During this time, Viken's head had been coldly observing from the side. Seeing this, he arrogantly declared, "How could mortal flames possibly destroy my body?"
Annie turned to Rosen, waiting for him to come up with a solution.
Viken's mouth continued to chatter.
"Torture me! Torture me all you want! You've succeeded in your evil scheme for now, managing to torment my flesh, but I will eventually recover, and you will face the cruelest punishment in the world!"
"Pathetic ants!"
"Burn, keep burning, burn with pleasure! This is the last bit of happiness in your lives."
Annie was unsettled and at a loss.
"Rosen, what do we do?"
Rosen pretended not to hear anything, kicking the chunks of flesh back into the campfire to burn, explaining, "The bodies of high-ranking vampires possess astonishing vitality. Even if you chop him into pieces and throw him into the flames, at most he'll only burn into this black substance. If it happens to rain, the high-ranking vampire will take the opportunity to revive." "This is probably the biggest reason why vampires are rumored to be unkillable."
'Gulp~' Annie swallowed, then turned to look at the flames. In the flames, black beads lay motionless, looking like inconspicuous black pebbles.
"What will happen if we keep burning them?" Annie asked Rosen.
"They'll stay in this state indefinitely, without any new changes. The only advantage is that the vampire flesh in this state will completely lose its ability to move and won't offer any resistance."
This is why Rosen wanted to burn the flesh into black beads first.
Annie only half understood: "Then what should we do? Crush these black beads into powder?"
Rosen shook his head: "No use. The black beads are extremely hard; you can't cut them with a knife or smash them with a hammer. Try it if you don't believe me." He picked out a bead and handed it to Annie. Annie took out her dagger and tried to cut it, but the bead remained unharmed, while the dagger chipped.
"What should we do?"
"This thing can't be burned or broken. At this rate, the firewood will eventually run out."
Before Rosen could answer, Viken spoke up again: "Of course, give up. Little girl, I can promise you, if you give up now, then for the next three days, I will absolutely not lay a hand on you, nor will I interfere with your freedom. You can go wherever you want."
Roshen almost laughed: "Annie, don't listen to his nonsense, I have a way to kill him completely."
Annie's eyes lit up: "How?"
Viken was furious: "You little brat, I've lived for 500 years and seen countless humans. In terms of sheer boasting, you're in the top three!"
"It would be an honor." Rosen bowed to Viken's head, then turned to Annie and said, "Now, we must find every last piece of vampire flesh left in the cave. Not a single one can be missed, or Viken will be reborn."
"Yes," Annie nodded.
To avoid missing any pieces, Rosen began using his alchemical talents to search the entire cave, while Annie relied on her keen senses as a mutated hunter to search carefully.