Out Cold

Luci stares at the woman, now having fallen asleep after receiving what seemed to be a brutal hit to her body.

Luci's eyes then fall to the woman's head. Her dark hair a complete mess, mostly covering the front of her face after dozing off. Blood still slowly pouring out of her head, flowing down the side of it.

'This might be a little distracting for now', he tells himself.

Luci has not eaten for quite some time as of now. He has been scouting for so many hours, taking over for his entire unit, he hasn't taken rest in a bit.

'Better make this quickly then', he says, turning his head to the terrifying creature, now glaring at him with disdainful eyes. It's mouth open wide, revealing it's menacing fangs. The creature puts both his hands on the ground, gripping it so hard the land beneath him shatters.

A distinct change in the creature's appearance can be seen now. Immediately after he received a big right hand to the face from Luci, a small crack is now present at the left side of his bony face. The creature seems to still be feeling the impact of that punch as it now appears to be twitching its left face up and down, trying to shake off the feeling of numbness from the blow.

'This guy is really tough,', Luci says to himself, now looking down at his right fist.

Just like the creature, a change has happened to Luci's body. This time, not quite as the same as the previous times, where he had his shadow cover his entire body in darkness.

Luci's right hand has taken on a similar look to the of the creature, albeit significantly less grotesque in appearance. He holds his right hand up a bit, looking directly at his right knuckles.

It is now covered in bony structure as well. The entirety of the back of his right hand now has bones coming out of his skin, fully covering the back of his hand and fingers.

He continues to stare at it for a few moments.

After that, he once again looks at the creature. It was now bent so far down onto the ground, both arms and legs fully stretched downwards. It's eyes focused on the man in front of him, looking at him with hatred, but also a tad bit of hunger. Its mouth stays wide open as thick streams of its saliva flow to the ground endlessly like waterfall.

'Here he comes.'

The creature then lunges at Luci, its speed now significantly increased compared to his last lunges at the woman earlier. Luci steps to his right side quickly, just barely avoiding the creature's sharp nails coming for his throat.

Luci then rolls on the ground a couple of times, then pushes himself off of it, now managing to stay in a crouch position. His eyes doesn't leave the creature's body.

The creature then turns around, trying to get a look at its prey again.

"KKKKRRRRGGHHHHH", as his eyes land on Luci, he lets out a loud growl, shooting even more of its saliva down to the ground.

It moves towards Luci's direction once again, this time not lunging, simply just sprinting at him. Possibly just trying to hit him hard with its body at full force.

Luci quickly notices this and jumps into the sky, once again barely avoiding the creature. His hair brushing past its bony face as he flips into the air. He presses his hands onto the creature's back and pushes off it, launching himself on a nearly tree branch about ten meters high up from the ground.

Once again, he had managed to escape the creature's grasp.

And once again, the creature did not seem to be very pleased of his actions.

"KKKRRREAAAAGGHHHH!", it turns around one more time, now screaming loudly, mainly due to annoyance.

"Up here", Luci says to the creature.

It then looks up at him, its eyes filled with pure rage by now.

It crouches low down to the ground, and jumps into the tree branch.

Luci jumps off the tree branch and lands on the ground as the creature lands on the branch. But this time however, the creature was quick to move.

By the time it landed on the branch, it was already ready to charge again. Now focused its attention to Luci on the ground, it lunges at him with ridiculous speed, as it pushed off the tree branch. With thst amount of force, the branch breaks apart and falls.

Luci was ready for the creature though.

Just as the creature was about to make contact with him, he immediately crouches down to the ground, almost as if imitating the creature before. He turns his right hand to a fist, with his left side facing the creature coming at him.

He turns his upper body to the right as he bends down even lower, the creature's stretched hands now passed over his head.

'This will do it.'

Luci then twists his upper body to the left while moving upwards. His right hand, curled into a fist swung wildly, cutting through the air with ruthlessness.

Luci's fist makes full contact onto the left side of the creature's chin.

He was able to land a beautiful uppercut.

"Graawww", the sound of bones breaking accompanied by the sound of a loud boom, echoed through the woods.

The creature was sent flying to a tree, several meters away from Luci, digging into it upon impact.

Compared to its state earlier, the creature has now become silent as falls unconscious immediately. The left side of its bony face now turned into a mess. Several cracks appeared on it, and the left side of its jaw now hanged loosely from its mouth, with blood trickling down from it.

Then, the sounds of cracking could be heard from the creature. The bones outside its body was shifting. Moving slowly, the bones started getting smaller and smaller. Some of its bones, the ones that were shattered and damaged simply fell into the ground.

The skull, ribs, knuckles, joints, tendons, everything was shrinking by the second, now retreating into its body.

After a few more seconds of this, the bones were able to fully enter the body, the skin tied itself together, turning the surface even, covering the bones completely.

What used to be a horrifying creature, now turned into a normal looking man. Long beard, brown hair, big refined muscles.

The hideous entity from just several seconds ago has now taken the form of an adult man.

Luci stares at the man for a few moments then sighs.

'There you are'

He then looks down at his right knuckle, the blood of the creature present on top of it.

Not just that, but the bones on his knuckle were also slightly damaged. Very small cracks and crevices can be seen on its white surface.

Luci notices this then sighs again. 'I maybe should have rested for a bit'.

He then takes a deep breath.

With this the bones outside of his knuckles started to disappear as well, retracting back underneath his brown skin. Cracking sounds could be heard from this scenario, accompanied by a soft grunt from Luci.

Vampires can undergo this type of transformation almost always, giving them lots of experiences and knowledge about this form. Yet despite all that, the pain of doing and undoing the transformation, remains as strong as ever, and is something that they will never stop feeling.

Luci makes his way to the man. He holds the man by the back of the neck with his right, and slips his left arm underneath both legs of the man, carrying him from the tree.

Luci then jumps on one of the tree branches, and lays the man in a sitting position on top of it. The man's back leaning on the tree, and both his legs stretched.

He analyzes the condition of the man. the left side of his chin seems to be a slightly hanged from his mouth, and a small stream of blood was running down the left side of the man's lip.

Luci sees the blood, and wipes it off with his right thumb. For a second he was tempted to have a taste of it, as he now felt a bit of strain on his right hand. He manages to fight off the idea, and continues to analyze the man.

'In a state like this, he should still be asleep for many hours.'

While vampires possessed extreme healing capabilities, there are still limitations to it.

Especially when on the receiving end of a beating from a vampire of Luci's caliber.

Luci jumps off the tree branch and now turns his attention to the woman.

'Now, what to do with you', Luci begins to ponder.

Killing her or letting her go are both out of the question.

He knows that he has to get some information about why the angels are making deals with vampires, and what exactly the play is for them.

Luci continues to think about the situation at hand.

No doubt she could be a useful asset to us.

He then closes his eyes and commits his entire being to coming up with a plan.

He remembers everything that had just happened and everything that was mentioned during the entire transaction. All that, along with the statements of everybody involved, trying to use some of that information to craft his own plan that would benefit him and his people.

He stays standing there for several seconds, until he finally opened his eyes.

He stares at the woman once again. Now, a look of curiosity beaming from his eyes.

'So..', he says to himself.

'...you also wanna be useful huh?'