Chapter 8 : Enhanced Heretic

It was past midnight when Harper went to the odd item store where he found Rosalie with another woman, a witch to whom he was introduced and they took him to the very large basement of the strangely large and it looked like catacombs.

Harper was taken to what looked like a gathering, there were more than a dozen wizards and witches there who saw them arrive in silence, there were about ten coffins on the ground and Harper looked at Rosalie curiously and She asked him to stand in the center of the large room while the other wizards stood in a circle.

 Harper, believing it was part of the reversal ritual, trusted her and moved as she asked to put himself in the center.

He looked closely at the 10 coffins and 9 of them had bodies inside.

 Harper: Are these coffins there for the ritual?

 "You seem like such a nice boy, (sighs) I'm so sorry Harper…" Rosalie replied with slight regret.

 Harper: I don't understand...What the-*AAAAAAAAAAARGH*

 He screamed as he grabbed his head which felt like he was being pierced by hundreds of needles, the pain was so unbearable that he found himself kneeling on the ground and looking towards Rosalie as three witches near her They recited incantations while joining their hands.

 Harper: Lady Rosalie...Lady Rosalie, why?! You promised to help me with the ritual…Aaaaaarkgh…mercy…

 Rosalie: There will indeed be a ritual but not the one you are thinking of. There's no way for you vampires to become human again, it's not me who'll help you with a ritual but rather you who will help us all.

 Veins started to appear under Harper's eyes and angrily he tried to charge towards Rosalie but this woman was a very powerful witch and Harper had been seriously weakened, she flicked her wrist and Harper's neck shattered, killing him temporarily.

 "We must begin immediately, we have been waiting for years for an opportunity like this to capture a tenth vampire so there is no time to waste..." She ordered the others who stripped Harper down to only the clothes of the down.

 When he woke up, Harper was tied up with things that completely burned his skin and a burning sensation in his veins not to mention the pain in his chest.

He was tied with ropes soaked in vervain and a large dose was injected into his veins. As for his chest, a strange magical symbol was engraved on his skin and the wound did not seem to heal.

 "Welcome back to us, Harper…" Rosalie said, caressing his cheek while in her left hand she had a dagger.

 Harper: What did you do to me ? 

 Rosalie: (shows the dagger) 3 years...for almost 3 years I worked on this dagger and giving it the ability to permanently harm immortals like you and yours, that's why what I engraved on your chest has not yet disappeared. I am extremely proud of my work…

 Harper: WHY ? Why did you do this to me?

 Rosalie: (sighs) I guess I still owe you an explanation by way of apology. You see, my life and my community have been in the middle of a war for this city against werewolves and those of your kind since the arrival of the fathers of your race, the original vampires. Over the past 20 years, we have been particularly weakened to the point that the leaders of our community have concluded a truce with the vampires. The problem is that many of us are not happy with this truce and we have decided to act in secret, they have chosen me to lead them and I have come up with a plan to help us turn the balance.

 Harper:…

 Rosalie: I had the idea of ​​creating a reserve of powerful and inexhaustible magical energy for us. Guess which spell creates infinite magic? The immortality spell that created your species. Infinite magic courses through your veins and that's why you live forever. You are inexhaustible sources of magic but rather weak sources compared to the originals. So I had the wonderful idea of ​​combining several weak inexhaustible sources to create a single one that will be strong enough to match the power of the originals. We'll draw on it to expand our powers and regain the advantage.

 Harper: Tilly trusted you to-(interrupted)

 Rosalie: Tilda knows very well that we are hostile to vampires here, if she sent you there it is to get rid of you, my poor friend.

 "She…Tilly betrayed me…?!" He muttered as he realized this point.

 Rosalie: It was really lucky for us. Capturing a vampire is far from an easy task and over several years we have collected 9 members of your species. You are the last one we needed for the spell, we will gather their immortality curses in your body to combine them and make you our powerful inexhaustible source of magic.

 Harper: You're crazy...

 Rosalie: No, I'm desperate and angry. (to the others) Let's start, it's going to take us time and for you Mr Harper it's going to be painful...

 They immediately began reciting incantations again as Harper's body began to dry up in great pain, he was fully conscious but his body was draining of the blood energy he had been feeding on recently as his skin became grayish and black veins appeared on his body.

This drying spell kept him fully conscious and not in a coma but it was to weaken him to the highest point by keeping his body active, it was the same thing they had done to the other captured vampires.

It was extremely painful and effective, Harper no longer had any strength.

 For several weeks, Harper remained in this state while the witches transferred spells from one vampire to another.

The process was extremely delicate, Rosalie's spell consisted of concentrating all the magic contained in the vampires' bodies in their almost coagulated blood and transferring the blood into the body of the next vampire.

Rosalie had shown immense talent in developing this process, it definitively killed the empty vampire but the extractions required more and more time and magic because the combination of vampire energies gave an increasingly powerful power and difficult to extract.

 After 4 months in this state of permanent agony while being 100% conscious, Harper's turn had finally arrived.

He was going to be the final receptacle of these transfers and the battery of infinite energy that Rosalie and the others would use to effectively face the originals.

The transfer had begun and Harper realized that he had never experienced pain since he was born compared to the pain inflicted by the transfer.

He was so weakened that he couldn't even scream but the pain was horrible, several lines of vampires had been mixed and their fusion was not gentle.

 The voices in his head, the memories of the sacrificed vampires, their anger, his own anger, the feeling of having been betrayed by Tilly.

He was frustrated in this pain, in his human life he was marginalized because of his skin color, as a vampire the monster in him pushed his creator to abandon him to certain death and even among wizards he was rejected.

Why him ? Harper has always been gentle in character but this was his reward, rejection, abandonment, betrayal and now torture.

He was in pain but above all, he was angry but that was not all, hunger was unleashing the beast in him because despite his weakening, he was mentally struggling to maintain a stable mental state.

 For two whole weeks, the transfer took place in him and these emotions swirled in his head to become a psychic and powerful energy not from his vampire side but from his witch side.

As the ritual soon came to an end, something happened. Harper had emitted a powerful psychic impulse, unconsciously creating a psychic dimension to escape from all the emotions that were ravaging his soul and his thoughts.

 The witches, completely intrigued by this wanted to speed things up and suddenly, before their eyes, the blood of the other vampires began to be absorbed much more quickly by Harper and the wound on his torso began to heal.

He opened his eyes and the witches were particularly frightened, his iris was no longer brown but bright red like embers and his sclera was no longer white but completely black while dark veins appeared on his lower eyelids.

 Harper had been transformed, there was a complete fusion between his original personality and the beast within him.

There was no longer a mental struggle between his two personalities, he felt stronger and the word that could define him now was "Free".

He felt light and freed from certain constraints but he also felt a powerful power in him, a power that could grow further but above all, he felt hunger, he was terribly hungry and intended to feed himself.

 "Something's wrong, something that we didn't expect happened…" Rosalie said with some fear looking at Harper who was staring at her emotionlessly.

They had foreseen everything except the fact that Harper was a Heretic, a vampire capable of using magic and in his agony, he had unconsciously used his abilities to siphon energy from the withering spell to regain his strength.

 Harper looked at the dagger in Rosalie's hand and thought, the dagger left Rosalie's hand too surprised to react and she cut the ropes that bound Harper's hands.

The witches were quick to react and in panic they attacked Harper, triggering violent headaches in him.

It worked for the first few seconds where he was clutching his head and groaning in pain but after a few moments his groans of pain turned into small chuckles as a slight glow was visible on the palms of his hands, he was in the process of absorb the spell cast against him. Immediately, horror was visible on the witches' faces.

 With his vampire speed, Harper cut all the ropes on him as the witches began to want to leave in fear.

He rushed towards Rosalie at superhuman speed but before he even reached her he was blocked by an invisible wall.

 "Don't be afraid, he won't get out of here. The restraining spell will not be broken so easily…" She told the others who were slightly relieved.

 "Are you sure of what you're saying, Rosalie…?" Harper said smiling as with his bare feet he absorbed the magic of the restraining spell at a monstrous speed.

Rosalie and the others saw the glow at his feet and this time it was horror, they all turned to run away but Harper was already there, blocking the only exit from the large room.

 "I definitely would have said I was sorry before but...not anymore" He said as his canines lengthened several millimeters before jerking his wrist and with a *crack* everyone's knees in the room broke to limit their mobility before smiling to start his meal, he fed on each of them biting them brutally before Rosalie's eyes which he saved for last.

 They had tried casting spells but he was absorbing all magic and magic sources at an excruciating rate, a wizard was completely powerless against him for the simple reason that Harper had become an enhanced heretic, his siphoning had practically no more limits as long as it was magic and that made him more and more powerful.

 Furthermore, with the magical dimension he had created, he directly sent the souls of everyone he fed on there. If he was a vampire, he absorbed part of his strength and his memories, he could do this thanks to the blood of the vampires of the sacrifice.

If they were witches, he consumed their souls and sent them to his dimension, absorbing their memories, knowledge and magical potential. He had become an extremely dangerous being with infinite potential.

 Rosalie saw him walking towards her with genuine fear in his eyes looking at his bloody mouth.

 Rosalie: I'm not afraid of dying, me and mine are joining the ancestors...

 "I wouldn't bet on that if I were you. Don't worry, I'm not doing this out of revenge, feelings like resentment no longer have any hold on me, to take revenge on you I would have simply transformed you into a vampire but I'm reserving this fate for someone else. If I'm going to sink my canines into your neck just because I simply want to feed on you." He said crouching down in front of her caressing her face before biting her hard on the neck savoring Rosalie's blood and magic in an intoxicating frenzy.

 He heard the voices in his head, the whispers of his victims as he absorbed their knowledge and their potential, it gave him a great headache but he would get used to it, the dimension their souls were sent to was a hell where they were permanently subjected to the same torment that they had put him through for months, infinite hunger, thirst, pain and weakness.

 For seven whole minutes he sat with his eyes closed absorbing all this knowledge and it was with a satisfied smile that he opened his eyes Before wiping his mouth on Rosalie's dress apologizing for the inconvenience . He felt strong, very strong and physically, he had the strength of an almost 400 year old vampire.

 An immense portion of the infinite magic that vampires possess is devoted to maintaining their immortality, warding off wounds and resurrecting them from the dead which is not final for a vampire. The rest of this magic goes into increasing their physical prowess as well as their psychic powers.

Harper was no exception to this rule, a large part of the magic he absorbed was attributed to his permanent magical power and the rest strengthened his vampire powers.

 He came out of this crypt and realized that he was almost naked, he immediately went to Rosalie's clothing store, he had already been invited so he opened the door by magically manipulating the lock and he entered.

He dressed in elegant and very chic clothes, Harper was very handsome and his new personality gave him... more confidence. He went out and asked someone on the street for today's date to find out how long he had been detained.

 Noting that he had been there for several months, he returned to his hotel to discover that his horse that he had raised and trained himself had been sold in the belief that he wouldn't return.

It was the horse of a missing negro, what would be the problem with selling it? Harper took a deep breath upon hearing this and walked out of the hotel, wiping his mouth of the blood of his latest victim.