How Long Is Temporary?

As I stood watch at the outside of Elizabeth's room, I looked at Shapios and formed different things out of boredom. Maybe Matthew was onto something. This is kind of boring.

Let's run through the master plan in my head real quick:

The entire manor is like a Rubik's cube. Parts of it can move and shift at any moment on Elizabeth's command. The plan is to make the manor stay stationary until either Matthew or Violet spots anyone while scouting. Once they spot someone, they'll DM me and Elizabeth will start shifting the manor if they get close to us. They'll be in an endless circle of fighting with Violet and Matthew while I guard Elizabeth.

I'm starting to sense a common theme in our adventures...

"Why am I always the one being left out of the action?"

===

As I came across an intersection of the manor, I ran into Violet.

"Oh! Fancy running into you, Violet!"

"Oh! Uh...right!"

"That was a joke Violet. This is the fourth time this happened..."

"I know..." Violet hung her head low.

It's not that difficult to patrol this place. The hallways are long and based on the colors of the scenery, you can tell what wing of the manor you're in. I guess she just doesn't like walking around such a huge place alone.

"You can patrol with me if you'd like. It wouldn't make much sense for our healer to run into an assassin and have the potential to die first anyway." I said as I began to walk off.

As she began to catch up to me, a large crash could be heard down the hallway. As we looked to see who exactly it was, we were greeted with the presence of a large, red-scaled dragon. As the dragon gave us an intimidating glare, it exhaled and I could feel the temperature of the room rising.

On the dragon's back were two people: One was a burly, tall man with iron armor, a mask that covered the top half of his face, and an obnoxious smile. The other one was guy with a mask and dark hair that covered the eyes of the mask. He hid behind the obnoxious person, but it was as obvious as day that he was there.

"WE'VE DONE IT, LANCE! WE'VE FINALLY FOUND THE GORNWELL ESTATE!"

"It only took us two tries..."

I told Violet to stay with me at all times. As she got close to me, I sent Aegis a short DM. I'm certain of it. These guys are the assassins. I'll dispatch of them so we can close this quest out quickly!

"I'm gonna give you one warning and one warning only: Ms. Elizabeth Gornwell is protected under ME! Matthew of the guild Diligence! So I suggest you get running unless you want these walls to have a nice shade of red on them." I pointed to myself as I gave them a cocky glare.

"SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT: YOU WANT US TO RUN WITH OUR TAILS BETWEEN OUR LEGS BECAUSE SOME NOBODY NAMED 'MATTHEW' ASKED?! HA! TRY AGAIN!"

"Well tell the devil that the 'nobody' named Matthew sent you!" I yelled as I began to charge him.

Before I could even get ten steps closer to him, the dragon that he came in on opened its mouth and shot out a ball of fire the size of the entire hallway. As it sped towards me, I had no other thoughts than to tank the damage and keep moving. But I looked at the level and noticed that the dragon was level 30.

Taking the brunt of a blast like this could kill me...

"Life Saver!" I heard a voice say and I was immediately pulled to the right.

As I was being pulled, I broke through a door and ended up crashing into Violet. She must've ran into the room as soon as she noticed the dragon's attack.

"Excellent move, Violet."

"Thanks."

Before we could even think, we heard a loud grinding sound and noticed that the estate was moving. That means that Aegis and Elizabeth got the message. We're not gonna be able to handle that dragon, though. We have to options: fight and kill the dragon somehow, or separate the two from the dragon.

"Violet, can you do Life Saver on enemies?"

"No, only teammates."

Damn it. This isn't looking good. No matter how I look at this problem, we're gonna have to fight the dragon.

Without any time to think, the room we were in became lighter and I felt like we were being suspended in the air. As I looked out of the window, I noticed the scenery below in front of us began to lower until it was out of sight.

Or rather, we were floating.

Every room in the estate began to stack on top of one another like blocks in the shape of a square, leaving the dragon and intruders boxed in at ground level. The room that Violet and I were in was at the very top. We could see birds fly at the same level we were at. Once the estate was finished rearranging itself, a purple magic barrier was put around the dragon.

"This isn't a damn rubik's cube! It's more like a Jenga tower!" I looked out of the tower and smiled as a began to break a sweat.

Regardless, this newfound obstacle didn't deter the beast. The dragon raged and put all of its strength into ramming its head back and forth between the walls of the barrier. Breathing fire and swinging its enormous tail around. After seeing it try and fail all of its moves at every turn, the assassins decided to step off of the beast and enter the estate themselves. They faced no problem stepping through the barrier. I can't tell if that's because they were trained with dealing with barriers, or because the barrier is only meant to keep out monsters.

"Well, the good news is that the dragon isn't a problem for now." I told Violet.

"What's the bad news?"

"They've infiltrated the estate again and if one of them can control a level 30 monster, they're probably level thirty or higher. Let's move to greet our guests properly." I motioned Violet to followed me down the newly made steps.

As we descended, I received a message from Aegis saying:

[Top floor green room]

I glanced outside of a window and saw the green room that Aegis was referring to. That must be the room they're in. Now matter what, I'll make sure the assassins don't make it past me.

As we got closer to the base floor, I began to wonder: maybe I have a new skill that'll come in handy. I am level sixteen, after all.

When I looked at my hotbar, I noticed a new skill that had an icon with a set a teeth that had vampire fangs in them. The fangs were making a forward biting motion and had a red aura around them. I then began to read the skill.

[Passive skill Feast of Essence: When the user gains vampire fangs at level 15, they are now able to bite and suck the blood of others and temporarily gain a boost in all attributes. They higher the level compared the user, the better.]

If I can get a bite out of one of the assassins, I'll be that closer to evening the playing field. but first...

I looked at Violet and noticed she was level 18.

Two levels above me.

"Yo Violet. Let me bite into you real quick." I told her.

"E-excuse me?!" Violet was stunned for some reason.

"We have to do it fast! Before the assassins get to us!" I stopped on a set of stairs and Violet followed.

"I-Im just gonna assume this is a skill of yours or something..."

"What? Of course it is. Why else would I ask? To cop a feel?!"

Violet reluctantly revealed her neck to me and using my fangs, I bit into her. As my fangs sunk into her, she let out a short squeal.

"Hngh!"

As I extracted her blood, I felt inside me a newfound power. I felt like I could run faster and jump higher. I felt way more energized than before. As I released myself from Violet, she gave me a wide-eyed look.

"Are you...ok?" I asked her.

"Y-yeah! I just read a lot of books about this kind of stuff and... are you falling for me?"

"What?! No! I told you it's just a skill!"

The nerve on this girl these days!

"Besides, I think of you more like a cousin or a little sister."

"Oh, thank goodness..." Violet let out a sigh of relief.

As she let out that sigh, three lizard-like onyx-colored monsters came from the shadows to attack and kill her. They were moving too fast and I had no other choice but to use Diverging Claw to stop them from hitting her. The problem however is that I ended up sending her flying across the room. As soon as she hit the wall, she moved as fast as she could away from the monsters and back to my side.

I eyed down the monsters and found that their levels were mostly in the late twenties.

These monsters are definitely with the assassins. They move fast, so my attacks need to move just as fast as them.

"In that case..." I unequipped my weapon and put my fists up.

The three lizards snarled and bared their teeth to me and in a flash ran along darker parts of the room at heightened speeds to close the distance between us.

"Greater Buffing!" Violet applied a buff right before the beasts reached me.

The first two bit my legs and latched on, instantly deleting half of my health. I caught the third one by the neck when I saw it go for my throat. It went for that vital spot the first time so it was a fair guess to say they would go for it again right?

I wasted no time. I drew the lizard close to me and bit a piece of the monster off. As I threw the stunned monster out of the window, I could feel even more power surge through me. I swung both of my feet and sent both of them flying.

As the both of them recovered, they gave menacing glares to me as I said "Let's see how long 'temporary' is!