Chapter 890: Double cross Navigating their way through the battlefield, both Cia and Layla were running as fast as they could to reach one one gate in particular. Cia’s hands couldn’t stop trembling at what she had seen not too long ago, but at the same time, the sight of wounded vampires, their own side’s and that of the enemy, as well as the cries of pain were distracting her, but not for the better. Cia gripped the whip in her hand a little harder and swung it towards one of the vampires who came to stop them. The man had tried to block it with his left arm, but it got cut off and he immediately dropped the weapon in his right hand due to the sheer pain the loss of a limb and the still burning fairy blood caused him. During this attempted attack, Cia had learnt a bit more about her weapons and why they were going to Alex, and now she was feeling even more terrible. ’All of this is my fault! This whole nonsensical war has started because they found out about Alex! If I had stayed quiet and not gone to visit Cindy, none of these people would have been hurt.’ She blamed herself. ’After my parents died because of the war, didn’t I join Pure because they kept preaching about peace? And now my selfish d.e.s.i.r.es led to this horrible outcome!’ ’Why does the answer always have to be to fight each other?’ Seeing Cia’s hand shaking after hurting the vampire, Layla embraced and grabbed her hand, to stop her from shaking. "I know you don’t want to hurt them, but if you hadn’t stopped him, he would have hurt us. We are just defending ourselves." Layla reassured her. "So thank you for protecting me." Alas, this all made it worse for Cia. She knew that Layla only meant well... but would she still think that way if she knew what Cia had done? Cia’s dislike of fighting had never been much of a secret and it was also why Pure had made her be an agent instead. When she was assigned the task to keep an eye on Layla she had wanted to get to know her better. For once she was going to be with another agent, that would understand what they were going through. Since they were experiencing the same things together. Through watching Layla, and ’pretending’ to be friends with her, she had actually felt like the two were starting to get on. Perhaps, because Layla was the first friend she had made, Cia had regarded Quinn as someone who would get in the way of that. However, right now she truly realised how foolish she had behaved. Simply put she had been jealous. Jealous that her only friend would pick Quinn over her and it was quite clear. Because she couldn’t swallow her pride, she had caused all of this. These were the thoughts that were going through her head. ’Layla, whatever happens, I promise, that I will make sure you survive all of this... no matter the cost!’ ——- Erin had been pierced in the stomach and although most would have felt pain at this point, instead she was feeling a new energy rise in her. Against a Vampire knight she couldn’t afford to hold back, so she let the energy take over her body. Her eyes took on a yellow sheen, and power was being sent to her blade. She swung it and with it activated the Blood swipe, the usual red color also changing to yellow. The knight stepped back a few steps and raised a Blood wall, but it got smashed through easily. With no other choice he had to use the Blood hardening on his forearms blocking the attack, but when Erin’s attack touched him, it cracked through that as well. It was too late to stop it, so he did the only thing he could by falling to the side and sacrificing his left arm over his body. "A dhampir in a place like this! Not only are the tenth family hiding a Blood fairy but you as well! Have you gone crazy or do you intend to rid the world of all vampires!" The knight shouted angrily while he lost vast amounts of blood. Normally the wound on his remaining arm would have at least started to heal but something was preventing it from doing so. This wasn’t an effect he knew the dhampirs had, it had to be something else. Still, placing his other hand over his arm, soon the arm started to reappear where it once was. ’He’s healing again, no this isn’t a healing ability, it’s something else. A different ability.’ Erin thought, since she knew the effects Qi should have had on vampires. It looked like their advantage of using Qi to stop the healing was being countered by the second family’s own ability to heal these types of wounds. Although they should still be very useful against the other families, that knowledge didn’t help Erin in the current situation. "Everyone, form a line inside the towers’ range, your attacks will be stronger than theirs! Remember what Leo taught you, they won’t be able to heal forever with their ability!" Erin ordered, and the rest followed nearly instantly. The ten soldiers that Leo had been training how to use Qi, started to run past the knight in a line. The knight wanted to intercept them, but Erin wasn’t giving him any chances. He might be able to heal such a wound, but he had a bad premonition that turning his back on her might lead to a fatal outcome for him. She moved directly in front of him, and swung her sword down barely missing him as he pulled back. ’I feel stronger, and faster. I can do it this time!’ Erin thought to herself, as her strikes accelerated with each clash. The Qi users form the tenth family fired out their Blood swipes infused with Qi. The others raised Blood walls, only to be surprised when the attacks turned out to be stronger than they had expected. Some of them lost limbs or were greatly injured and that’s when they noticed. Not everyone in the second family had such a great control of the ability, they were only partly able to reverse the wounds, in several cases they turned out to be too great and this caused the tenth family to gain confidence. However, there were still around a hundred or so from the second family, and they started to retaliate with their own attacks. They were coming from everywhere and it was impossible to block them all. Thankfully they had equipped best gear armour which increased their defence, so the injuries they sustained weren’t too great, yet they would lose if things continue this way. Eventually one of them suffered from a deep cut to the stomach. Not knowing what to do, they were wondering if they should fall back, but at that moment, three green flames came out shooting towards them. When it landed on the soldiers, their bodies started to feel better and the wounds started to heal. "We’ll try our best to support you!" Layla shouted a short distance away, but she didn’t look like her usual self, for her bottom half of her body now looked like that of a serpent. Feeding on the negative emotions, she had succeeded in evolving into her third form. With this, her arrows could give out buffs, heal her allies and she could cause damage at the same time as well. Usually seeing such a thing would scare the soldiers that were originally human, but it wasn’t the case for these. That was because they had seen scarier things while they were locked up. In her snake form, Layla had grown to a height of two meters , and Cia was riding on her back. She did her best to protect her friend with the whip, blocking incoming attacks and punishing anyone that got too close to her, because now the soldiers eventually no longer cared about the tower and were charging forward. Aiming three arrows with red flames, the group were getting ready for another battle. Once Erin saw that Layla had joined the battle, she stopped wasting any more time and let loose. So far the knight had been blocking many of her attacks, but now as she had gotten used to her newfound speed, her superior swordsman ship was showing. The wounds on him were piling up faster than he could heal himself, not to mention that he would run out of MC cells eventually. And that time had come sooner than he had wanted it to. Feeling and knowing his time was coming to an end he used his last chance to warn his family members. "This DHAMPIR will be the death of all of the vampires!" He shouted, letting his hands go, giving up. Eirn had already vertically swung her blade, and couldn’t stop the momentum before slicing off the vampire knight’s head clean off. The strange thing was that despite having fought a Vampire knight, Erin didn’t feel tired the least bit. On the contrary, after killing the knight, the energy inside her only grew and she needed some way to expend it. "Regretfully, it looks like I was a bit late." A female voice said in a neutral voice. At that moment the vampires that had all been charging forward and attacking fell back to where the voice had come from outside the towers’ range. For a brief moment the fighting by the gate stopped. "Leader, what are you doing here?! It’s dangerous, you should head back!" The vampires next to her cautioned the woman while quickly bowing down. Dressed in her large black gothic dress was none other than Cindy Cha. "You’ve already defeated one of my knights, so how about we end this fight here? After all, it would pain my heart to ruin your pretty faces, girls?" Cindy suggested, and at that moment her eyes had laid on Cia who had climbed down due to Layla cancelling out her transformation. Something she had learnt to do now. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞 "Oh Cia, I’m surprised to see you here. How about you tell them that there’s no need to fight? We can even pretend to not know about the dhampir cutie. All we want is the Blood fairy... and you should know who it is." "After all, you were the one who told us about its existence!" *****