Chapter 248
Vlad III had never been a vampire.
That image was nothing more than slander spread by the enemies he had fought during his lifetime.
Because he imposed the horrific punishment of impalement upon invaders who threatened his homeland, those enemies came to fear and hate him.
In retaliation, they branded him a blood-drinking monster and spread stories claiming that he was a vampire.
And as the saying went, repeat a lie often enough and eventually people would begin to believe it.
The story spread farther and farther with each retelling until, in the end, the legend of Dracula, the vampire, was born.
Within the rules of the Nasuverse, however, legends were not merely stories.
For those who became Heroic Spirits, the way later generations remembered and described them could have an enormous influence upon their manifested form, their abilities, and even their Noble Phantasms.
And because Vlad III had become so deeply entangled with the legend of Dracula, he had acquired the Noble Phantasm known as Legend of Dracula.
Its power was simple in concept, yet horrifying in practice.
It forcibly materialized the image of Dracula that later generations had passed down through legend—
In other words, it transformed Vlad III into an actual vampire.
While in that state, many of the Skills and Noble Phantasms belonging to Vlad III as a heroic king would be sealed away.
In exchange, his physical abilities would increase tremendously, while he gained the supernatural powers associated with vampires: transforming his body into animals or mist, extraordinary regeneration, charm, Mystic Eyes, and various other monstrous abilities.
The overall enhancement was comparable to the boost granted by Mad Enhancement.
When all of those advantages were combined, Vlad III in his vampire form was, in pure combat terms, even more powerful than the kingly Vlad empowered by Demonic Defender of the State.
That was precisely why Darnic had regarded this transformation as their final trump card for turning the battle around.
Of course—
Vlad III himself despised this Noble Phantasm more than almost anything else in existence.
He loved Romania.
He had lived and fought openly for his homeland, yet because of the malicious slander of his enemies, history had saddled him with this hideous monstrous image.
How could he possibly accept such a form willingly?
Darnic, however, did not care.
As a magus, he had abandoned the moral standards and ethical restraints of ordinary society long ago.
If something could bring him closer to his goal, then no method was beneath consideration.
Vlad’s disgust, pride, and unwillingness were utterly irrelevant to him.
Even the respect Darnic had previously shown his Servant had largely been a performance—something made easy while the Greater Grail was safely in his hands and everything seemed to be progressing according to plan.
Now that the situation had become desperate, he had no patience left for such empty courtesies.
"You bastard!"
Vlad III stared at his own withered, grotesque hands.
Rage burned fiercely within his chest.
Then his figure vanished.
He appeared directly in front of Darnic and thrust his spear forward.
Squelch!
The weapon pierced straight through Darnic’s heart.
Before the magus could even fall, Vlad lunged forward and sank his fangs into Darnic’s neck.
Blood poured into his mouth.
"Hahahahaha!"
Yet Darnic did not seem to care in the slightest.
Rather than screaming in terror, he burst into delighted laughter.
"Yes!"
"That’s it!"
His eyes burned with madness.
"Nowthat is a vampire!"
With Vlad still drinking his blood, Darnic raised the right hand bearing his remaining Command Spells.
"By my second Command Spell, I order you, Vlad III Tepes—"
"Until the Greater Grail is obtained, you are forbidden from dying!"
The second Command Spell disappeared.
Then Darnic raised his hand once more.
"By my third Command Spell—"
His expression became utterly fanatical.
"Engrave my existence into your soul!"
This was the final command.
And it was also Darnic’s desperate attempt to realize the obsession he had pursued for decades.
The field of magecraft Darnic had devoted himself to concerned the fusion of a human soul with a Heroic Spirit.
His ultimate objective was to achieve immortality through that fusion, and obtaining the Greater Grail had always been the most important foundation necessary to make such a goal possible.
When he had summoned Vlad III, Darnic had already investigated the compatibility between them.
Their spiritual wavelengths were sufficiently similar that fusion was theoretically possible.
Now that the Greater Grail had been stolen and Vlad III had completely lost control, Darnic decided to gamble everything on one final attempt.
His obsession.
His memories.
His thoughts.
His beliefs.
His very sense of self—
All of it was forcibly engraved into Vlad III’s soul through the last Command Spell, merging the two existences together.
And with that—the fundamental nature of Vlad III changed.
The side of him that had once existed as a heroic king disappeared completely.
What remained was no longer the Impaler Prince.
It was a monster in the truest sense of the word.
Dracula.
For Vlad III, such an outcome was absolutely intolerable.
For Darnic, it did not matter.
He was a magus in the most orthodox sense of the word.
If a method offered even the slightest possibility of bringing him closer to his objective, then he was willing to try it.
"AAAAARRRRGHHHH!"
The being now called Dracula threw back its head and roared.
Then it turned toward Jeanne and the others.
Scarlet eyes burned with a distinctly inhuman hunger.
A craving for food.
For blood.
And, more disturbingly, the instinctive urge to create more creatures like itself.
Faced with that monstrous gaze, every Servant present immediately tensed and raised their weapons.
Whoosh!
Dracula dissolved into a black shadow.
In the next instant, he appeared directly before Karna, one clawed hand sweeping toward the son of the sun god’s throat.
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
Karna raised his golden spear to defend.
Yet the sheer force behind Dracula’s assault drove even him backward.
Karna slid more than ten meters before finally stopping.
"What extraordinary strength."
His expression became grave.
And raw power was not the only problem.
The wounds Karna’s spear had just opened across Dracula’s body were already closing.
His regenerative ability was monstrous.
"In that case..."
Karna lowered his stance.
"Let us try this."
He surged forward again.
His spear thrust repeatedly, moving like a venomous serpent striking from impossible angles.
Combined with support from Chiron and Jeanne, the coordinated attack quickly opened several deep wounds across Dracula’s body.
Then flames erupted from those wounds.
[Mana Burst: Flames!]
BOOM!
The flames of the sun swallowed Dracula completely.
For the first time since the transformation began, the surrounding Servants relaxed slightly.
Surely that had to be enough.
But then—
"ROAAAAAR!"
Dracula spread his wings violently.
The force of the movement blasted the flames apart.
At the same time, the wounds across his body continued healing at an astonishing speed.
"It still didn’t work?"
Several Servants stared in disbelief.
No.
It would not be accurate to say the attack had no effect at all.
Dracula seemed to realize that Karna was an exceptionally troublesome opponent, and rather than stubbornly continuing to fight him head-on, he immediately changed targets.
His crimson gaze swept toward Jeanne—
And toward the nearby homunculus soldiers.
His body broke apart into a swarm of demonic bats.
They scattered through the corridor.
With his tremendous speed, ability to transform into mist, and other vampiric powers, Dracula moved in a way that was almost impossible to predict.
One moment he was there.
The next, he was somewhere else entirely.
Jeanne and Chiron, as Heroic Spirits, could still respond to such movements.
The homunculus soldiers were not nearly so fortunate.
Several screams rang out in rapid succession.
Within moments, the homunculi collapsed into pools of blood.
But that was not the end.
Soon afterward—
The bodies began moving again.
One after another, the fallen homunculi staggered back to their feet.
Fangs protruded from their mouths.
Their fingers had twisted into claws.
Their faces had become distorted into the same monstrous appearance as Dracula’s.
The expressions of everyone present became even more solemn.
"We have to stop him."
Jeanne’s voice rang clearly through the battlefield.
"If he reaches the Greater Grail in this state, there is a very real possibility that his wish will be to transform all of humanity into his kind."
Her gaze swept across the Servants from both factions.
"Until Dracula has been defeated, I ask everyone here to suspend hostilities."
No one objected.
Each of them had entered this war with their own wishes and motivations, but they were still legendary heroes.
None of them could simply stand aside and watch while a threat capable of endangering the entirety of humanity ran rampant.
Sensing the Servants gradually surrounding him, Dracula hunched his back like a cornered beast and released a threatening growl from deep within his throat.
"It is regrettable."
Karna raised his spear.
"But under these circumstances, you must leave the stage."
"Agreed."
Jeanne raised her right hand.
Her expression became solemn as the authority of Ruler gathered around her.
"In the name of Ruler, I hereby command all Servants present—"
She stopped halfway through the sentence.
Because another voice suddenly entered the battlefield.
"Whoa."
"That looks lively."
Jeanne spun around.
The surprise on her face instantly became delight.
"Kiriya!"
"Jeanne."
Kiriya grinned and raised a hand in greeting.
"Long time no see."
He paused.
"Well... not really. It hasn’t actually been that long."
"Him?"
Karna and Chiron both froze.
If they remembered correctly, Kiriya had been dragged away by Achilles for a one-on-one duel.
If Kiriya had appeared here unharmed, then that could only mean—
’You were defeated as well, Achilles?’
Chiron’s emotions became complicated.
Achilles had been the opponent he had most wanted to face in this Holy Grail War.
His former student.
A warrior he knew better than almost anyone.
And yet now—
It seemed he would never receive the opportunity.
Karna’s reaction was entirely different.
A faint spark of excitement appeared in his normally tranquil eyes as he looked toward Kiriya.
’So you were strong enough to defeat Achilles as well.’
The anticipation within him rose another level.
’I find myself looking forward to our battle more and more.’
Seeing everyone’s attention immediately converge on Kiriya, Astolfo became unhappy.
He stepped forward with his spear in one hand, puffed out his chest, and proudly thumped it several times.
"Hey, don’t forget about me!"
He struck what he presumably believed to be a heroic pose.
"Astolfo of the Twelve Paladins of Charlemagne—has arrived!"
Then something appeared directly in front of him.
A hideous, blue-faced monster with sharp fangs, crimson eyes, and batlike features.
Dracula.
He had taken advantage of the brief distraction created by Kiriya’s arrival and launched an immediate surprise attack.
Naturally, he chose the person who appeared to be the weakest target—
Astolfo.
"UUUUUWAAAAAAAHHH!"
Astolfo’s heroic pose shattered instantly!
He screamed twice and desperately tried to retreat.
But Dracula had already closed the distance.
There was no chance of avoiding the attack at such close range.
The monstrous claws swept toward Astolfo’s throat.
Just before they could tear it open—
A sword flashed.
Slash!
Blood sprayed from Dracula’s arm and his movement abruptly stopped.
Then a piercing howl of agony tore from his throat.
---------
Read 40 Chapters ahead and support me on patreon.
patreon (.)com/Newbietranslator