The Misadventures of the Man Formerly Known as Victor Heart

I spent the morning walking around the city collecting negative emotions to temporarily power up my mask for the first part of my plan. I picked up this along the way, it was quite handy being able to sacrifice small permanent growth for a short-term power boost. This gang war created an all you can eat buffet of negative emotions. So much so that it caused a permanent boost in addition to the boost I was storing. The yellow of fear and the red of strife mixed to create two large, twisted horns of orange gemlike material growing from the mask’s temples. These new accessories raised the artifact’s tier to three.

Just goes to show you how small Fredrick the doll was thinking. I got more strife over the course of three hours than he got over the centuries.

After my proverbial meal of energies and my literal meal of a breakfast sandwich, I met up with Brogan and then headed to one of the local “Crypts”. “Crypts” were buildings that the titular gang used to hide during the day. They were typically guarded by human members and lower ranked vampires completely covered by clothes with both carrying automatic weapons.

This one was an abandoned mansion that had been vacant for a number of years due to being borderline condemned. The Crypts came in, set up some supports and made the house a home. Admittedly this home was coated in the blood of the innocent, but then again home is where the hearts are.

We arrived just outside the observation range of the guards. I grabbed my laptop and a device I had created using my more mundane skills from the backseat. I started up a program I had devised to accompany the device.

Brogan gave me a weird look, “What are you doing?”

Without even looking up from my computer I said, “Looping every camera in the area that sends its data to the city’s central security hub and blocking every cellphone in the area.”

“How are you doing that?”

“The device collects the ID numbers of surrounding city cameras. The program utilizes a backdoor I created in the central hub’s cybersecurity to loop them.” I explained.

“I mean it’s been month since we met and I’ve yet to see you not have just the skill you need in every situation.”

With an eye roll, “Its simple math, Ability to take skills plus homeless people plus rice sacks and water jugs or something else they want equals pretty much any skill that I care enough to find.”

She gained a weird look at that, “You feed off homeless people?!”

“I do not feed off them, you are thinking of society. I trade something they want for something I want. I get valuable skills and they get food or warmth. It says something about society that expert level coding skills only cost me five rice sacks.” I said looking offended.

“That’s how you got Jeb’s number.” She stated with a look of realization.

“Yep.”

After saying that I got out of the car and headed towards the mansion.

I spotted three vampiric lookouts in the surrounding buildings that was a simple matter of teleporting behind them and putting a wooden stake through their hearts. While they were faster and had better response time, they were undisciplined and unfocused.

The next order of business was the humans that had assault rifles on lookout around the house. This would be more difficult as they were actually disciplined unlike the newer vampires that were constantly distracted by their urges.

The guards were rarely out of sight of at least one other member. There were nine guards total as they did not want too much attention on the house: two stationary guards on the roof, two at the front and the back, and three doing rounds constantly.

Now was the time to use all that juice I got for the mask. I breathed out a cloud of black mist around the house so thick that I effectively blotted out the sun which put the guards on high alert. I then caused every member to look like a werewolf using hallucinations. The mist put their fingers on the triggers and the werewolf illusions made them pull them. It also covered the flash and bang of their rifles so that the “beauties” inside the mansion did not awaken from their sleep.

While I was tempted to burn the house down, that would lead to a bunch of flaming and angry vampires scattering all over. Potentially leading to the fire spreading and the runners tearing anyone they find limb from limb. Even if it worked, I would have to spend hours identifying bodies making sure I got all the higher ups.

The vampires could see through the mist and were strong enough to resist any hallucination that was too large or noticeable. Tier three was high, but conceptually powerful creatures like vampires were able to resist it. So, the mist’s only purpose at this point is to hide what is happening from anyone who happens to walk past.

Now was the time for my newest toy, Matthew’s Water. This artifact was made from Holy Straight Razor and the kraken components I previously picked up. The kraken components contained a water authority which was the name I gave to a type of abilities that encompassed the traits of all three hybrid energies and allowed the user to do anything involving their type only bound by potency.

While the kraken was quite potent, I intentionally weakened it by mixing in Holy Straight Razor. This was done for multiple reasons. Firstly, holy water was a specialized concept that really worked well in this world. Secondly, the kraken raw power was beyond my skill level to control at the moment. Thirdly, I had outgrown the holy weapon. Lastly, Holy straight razor was the weapon I used for almost half a year and thus shared a connection with it that would carry over to the new artifact.

_

Matthew’s Water

“Wash away your sins.”

Tier Three

A ring containing a holy water authority

_

The holy water artifact was a thing of beauty with a silver band shaped like crashing waves with a center piece of a tear drop shaped gem, blue with a golden shimmer.

“Nothing to it but to do it” I say to myself before running the hand that held Matthew’s Water through my hair and heading inside. When my hand passed through my gold hair, it turned the same color as the gem. My mana sleeve also gained golden wave markings.

As I pushed through the door it set off an alarm waking up every vampire in the house. Seeing everything does not mean paying attention to everything.

“Sh*t”

The first vampires I saw were a group of five that rushed out of the living room to the left. I launched a fire house of holy water aura at the group, they turned to ash almost immediately and mixed with the water turning it into a greyish sludge.

The next two came from the kitchen and dining room to the right. Looks like they wanted a midnight snack. I for one was a believer that the only thing you should have before bed is a glass of water. You know what comes next: holy water fire house, ash, grey sludge.

I looked up at the second-floor balcony that overlooked the central staircase and entranceway. Said balcony had twenty pale white faces contorted in a snarl, forty red eyes alight with malevolence, and eighty fangs sneering.

They all came down simultaneously but did not train out the impulse to fight one at a time like a movie. They were trained as hunters and soldiers, but not fighters.

The first was taken out with a simple jab that created a hole in its torso due to my acid like touch resulting from my current imbuement.

The second went with a kick that took its left leg, leaving it open to my finishing blow.

The rest were dispatched similarly to the first two. While they were stronger and faster, my holy water authority was a direct counter to their existence.

After I was done my entire body was caked with ash and my suit was grey.

I did not find Reggie though, so I went up to the upstairs office that had psychic traces leading into it. It was shielded from my sight though, which I did not know was possible.

The second I breached the door I saw the laser light interrupted by my ankle and knew what came next. The whining increasing in volume and pitch was another sign. I promptly tackled Brogan and covered us with the thickest holy water barrier I could on such short notice.

The next second our world turned into one of heat, light, and sound. Those things breached the barrier I erected, tore off the back of my shirt, and seared away all the skin on my back exposing gray fruit surrounding a black stem with crimson gems hanging off it. the red gems promptly evaporated.

A cloud of rot came out of the new hole and started to spread. Thinking quickly, I wrapped my remaining skin around Brogan turning her into a living golden statue and banished all my artifacts to my storage. Without any of my skin the rot turned into a storm that rampaged across the house across the entire house causing anything biological to rot and all metal to rust.

“Are you okay?” Brogan asked while taking in my current form, a man made up of purple and yellow rotten muscle.

“I’ll live.”

“Can you take your skin back?” Brogan asked a little uneasy.

“Hey, it’s literally the skin off my back, you could be a little appreciative. Or at least all my skin except the back.” I said before we started looking at each other in awkward silence.

And then we both laughed our a*ses off in relief and excitement.

“Well let’s go find ourselves a Reginald and then dinner.” I said, getting up off the ground and reaching down my hand to help Brogan up taking my skin back as I do it.

“You know you have lost and are paying right.” She told me while grabbing my hand.

“Yeah. I’m aware and I’m gonna to take it out on the hide of Reggie.”

I unleashed my senses to find Reggie’s trail and off we went.

Current Equipment:

Head:

[The Black Wasp Jackal’s Face]

Earrings:

[]

Necklace:

[The Energy Baron’s Stomach]

Clothes:

[]

Rings:

[The Mentalism Ring]

[Succubus’ Kiss]

[Mena’s Book]

[Matthew’s Water]

Bracelets:

[]

Shoes:

[]

Armaments:

[Sense Cane]

Storage:

[Various Essences]

[Chi Organ]

[Spirit Shards]

[Various Murder Weapons]

[Green Thumb]

[Glass Eye]

[Werewolf Blood Essence]

[Howl Technique]

[Ruined Dress Clothes]