Slowly, I realized that I was not the only person looking out past the shield. If anything, there were few people focused on not at least getting a glimpse of the damage on the other side. Which was odd.

  I don’t mean that their attention on the damage was odd, but the fact that they were only just now showing any signs of a desire to look. Most of these people were higher level than me. This meant that, even with all that experience, they likely got only a level, if that.

  Sure, a few of them might have gotten more and quite a few were likely hurt enough to be down for a bit while they got healing, but that didn’t explain why I was the first to take an interest. Seeing as how everyone here looked enthralled at the damage, I focused on the two people more enthralled in each other than anything else.

  As I approached the vampire and his snack, I let out a short, harsh, cough. His eyes popped open to look for the source of the sound. The moment they caught sight of me, they narrowed to slits. At that point, the nurse let out a grumble of frustration as she spun around just enough to glare at me.

  “Can I help you?” Her voice was as brusk as it was breathless.

  I gestured back to the crowd. “I was just wondering if you might know why no one paid attention to the other side of the shield until now?” I asked, not expecting a useful answer given how she looked. If not for the fact that we were surrounded, I had a feeling that she would have killed me for stopping what had been building between the two of them.

  “I cast some illusion magic.” She scoffed. “Now scurry off little fox.” The way those last words came out of her mouth was all wrong. Instead of being spoken with any form of caring, they were filled with scorn and what I was pretty sure was pure hatred.

  As if that was my dismissal, she turned back toward the doctor. Before they could resume their activities, I interrupted them a second time. “Last thing.”

  Even before the words fully left my lips, a growl of frustration erupted out of the two of them. “What?!”

  “Can I get that bone you extracted from me? Also the discharge paperwork?”

  The nurse huffed while the doctor rolled his eyes but they helped each other stand as he spoke. “Fine. Would you go get her paperwork?”

  Her lips met his in a light kiss. As she pulled away, she shot me a glare. “Follow me.” For a second, I debated saying no. Telling them that I was not going to let the doctor out of my sight, but something told me that I was already pushing it. With a resigned sigh, I followed her. Watching her wings rapidly vanish as we crossed the room.

  “Why do you hide what you are?” I asked, curious.

  “I don’t.” Her clipped answer irked me. It wasn’t my fault that the doctor had been about to kill me.

  “Then why would you hide your wings?”

  “Personal preference.” Yeah, I wasn’t going to get anywhere with this woman. Then again, did I want to? I doubted I would see her again after this. At least, not unless I was given no other choice.

  A long counter took over a small section of the far wall. While she walked around it, I stayed on this side. The desk on the other side was in complete disarray. Papers, boxes, and even a few clearly magical items were scattered about. It looked as though someone had been looking for something and didn’t care that they made a mess of the place. The nurse grumbled as she dug through multiple piles before finally pulling out a sheet of paper.

  “Here you go.” She passed it over to me along with a sharpened piece of metal. “Read it over and place a drop of blood at the bottom.”

  My eyes narrowed at her. “Blood?”

  “Blood given freely can serve as a better signature than a signature, at least when it comes to the system. Given that this is a legal document, the city system has jurisdiction.”

  That made some semblance of sense…Wait, no it didn’t. Who in their right mind would use blood as a means of signing a medical document? Whatever god thought this was a good idea needed a swift kick to the head.

  Not knowing what else to do, I read over everything in the document. In short, I was agreeing that I was leaving without the doctor's consent and against their recommendation. As such, I was taking full responsibility for any injuries and illnesses I might incur as a result. Of course, it was worded with a mix of medical jargon and legalese, so I had to guess at some of it.

  Still, I wasn’t going to stay here. Not with how many people were being killed. So, with a prick of my index finger, I pressed a drop of blood into the designated box. As soon as I removed my finger, the document glowed a faint white and a popup appeared before me.

  Legal document detected.

  Medical release form signed.

  Performing mental check.

  No foreign mental magic or influence detected.

  No coercion detected.

  Legal form declared valid.

  Moments after I read the last line, the window vanished. The document's glow went from a faint white color to a subtle blue-green before fading out. She snatched the document out from under my hand and gestured for me to go away. “Go wait for your bone somewhere else.”

  With an annoyed sigh, I turned and looked out at the room. I debated where to go. There were chairs set up all over the place but most were either destroyed or in use. Hell, most of the floor was taken up with those who were hurt or simply passed out. The only place that looked clear was the spot we had just vacated.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Shugging, I returned to the spot. Using the wall to support me as I slid to the ground. All the while thinking about the spell I had used against the vampire. While it had cost some mana, it had didn’t cost nearly as much as it should have. Almost as if a small chunk of mana used in a spell was spent on doing the work outside the body or something.

  Or at least that was the theory. A theory that failed as I tried to create the balls of fire a second time. Sure, they formed and floated in my blood without issue, they just cost nearly four times the mana. Which meant that I was nearly out of mana holding just a small handful of them. At least every drop of mana returned to my mana pool when I canceled the things.

  With a furrow of my brow, I tried to think back on what exactly I did to create the things the first time. It had been a mixture of feelings, wishing for it to work, mana, and willpower that created them. Most of which were from the fact that I was fairly sure I was about to be killed by a vampire so what did I have to lose in trying something, anything, to stop him?

  I let a breath leave me slowly as I tried to mentally recall everything I had done. Every line I had created. Everything I had pictured, thought and felt as I cast the spell. The moment I felt the fear for the second time, I recreated the spell. It formed without issue. Little balls of compressed magic floated in my veins where it was pulled along by my blood. Each of the little things used just as little mana as they had the first time.

  Which confused the hell out of me. They looked and felt the same as when I had tried to cast them the second time. So what made these ones different?

  Gritting my teeth, I focused on one of the orbs. Feeling its mana and the lines making up its structure. The shell that kept the mana contained was not solid. In fact, it seemed to be made of gossamer thin strands. Which made no sense. The structure amounted to a piece of cloth being used to keep a liquid from flowing through. It shouldn’t work, yet here it was, holding back a pressurized damn of liquid from bursting forth.

  With a mental nudge, I pushed some of the strands to the side. The mana contained inside gushed out of the slightly larger gap with enough force to rip the piece of magic out of my mental grip. As if in imitation of a rocket, the sphere rocketed away from me until it collapsed, the mana inside exhausted. Mentally, I grabbed onto the scraps of the spell just in time to watch the spell finish unraveling.

  Mentally reaching out, I yanked another orb toward me. Its structure was the same as the first. As with the first one, the second I moved one of the strands making up its shell, the orb took off, confirming that the thread was somehow doing something that it shouldn’t be capable of.

  With the third orb, I tried something slightly different. This time I created a shell of mana around it before messing with the thread. As expected, mana came bursting out of the gap in threads, pushing the orb toward the wall. What was not expected was how it reacted with said wall. Instead of simply coming to rest against the wall or blasting through it, the orb went splat.

  The threaded shell flattened itself against the outer shell and stuck there for a moment. Then the hole I had created forced itself open, pushing threads to the side as the mana rebounded off the solid wall. And so, just like a paintball hitting a wall, the orb exploded outward, flinging mana across the inside surface of my spherical shell.

  A bit irked at the failure, I released the shell and grabbed two orbs. Or at least I tried. The closer the two got, the more they bucked against my hold. Almost as though they didn’t want to be near each other.

  The closer they got, the harder I had to fight and the more their spherical shape distorted. The entire sequence reminded me of magnets, albeit made of some squishy liquid rather than metal.

  That thought gave me pause. Could the solution be so simple? Without care, I released the orbs. They raced away as I focused on forming a pair of threads. All the while trying to will them to repel other forms of mana. Yeah, they refused to form. No matter how much I willed them forth, the mana refused to condense. As I moved to grab one of the orbs, a hesitant cough brought my attention back to the real world.

  Standing there, looking a bit sheepish and worried, was the doctor. His eyes darted every which way but toward me. His hands also seemed strangely empty. Narrowing my eyes, I asked him a single simple question. “Where is my bone?”

  “I…I don’t know.” His voice quivered and stammered. IT almost sounded as though he was afraid of me, or at least of how I would react.

  As well he should. My voice dropped lower as I slowly got to my feet. “What do you mean you do not know?”

  “The lab it was kept in was destroyed. It and a few other reagents are missing.”

  “Whatever happened to the security you had in place? You claimed it was a secure research wing after all.” I shot his reason for not wanting to take me with him back at him.

  He visibly winced at my words. “That’s just it, it was secured. I don’t know how someone could have taken it.”

  “What about the researchers and doctors? Could they have taken it?” Why did I feel I needed to point out the obvious? Then again, maybe he felt that everyone on that list was trustworthy.

  “Why would they?”

  “Maybe because I was about to take it back?”

  “No one but you and I knew that.” He insisted.

  With a lift of my brow, I asked a question I knew the answer to. One where he would either lie or not yet both would still give the same answer. “Are you saying that you stole it?”

  Both of his eyes widened until it looked as though one wrong move would cause his eyes to pop out of his head. “I would never steal from the lab.”

  “Yet you were fine hiding what you were from me?” I pointed out. “I mean, what would you have me think when you, a vampire who thirsts for blood, are in a job where you are constantly surrounded by said blood?”

  As if my accusation was one that he was used to, his body relaxed a bit. His voice came out a bit annoyed, as if he had had this argument many times before. “I was a doctor before becoming a vampire. Hell, I was a doctor on Earth before the hospital I worked at got shut down. As for my need for blood, I get my fill from Zhou…” Seeing my confused look, he gestured at the nurse who was at the counter helping people. “My mate.”

  “Yet you nearly drained me.”

  He cringed at the reminder. “Yeah, I am sorry about that.” His voice stayed relaxed as he returned to the initial topic. “Anyway. I have no idea who could have taken your bone. While it would have made great research material, it isn’t something that we could live without. Not now that we know such a thing exists. Plus, the little data we managed to get is enough to form quite a few theories and experiments.”

  The doctor must have seen how little I believed him because he let out a sigh of resignation. His pale yellow irises met my gaze as he spoke. “I, Irvine Yandre Montgomery, swear on the system that I did not knowingly steal from the lab or anyone currently in the building. Nor do I know of anyone who has. I also swear that I am not withholding any current or former patient's material goods without their consent. I do this knowing the consequences of such an oath.”

  Someone has made an oath in your presence. The system bears witness to this oath.

  Wait, what the hell was an oath and what did it mean to make one? Unfortunately, I only managed a “Huh?” instead of actually asking the question.

  While the doctor slash vampire shot me an odd look, he answered me. “An oath given on the system comes with a sudo guarantee to all those that it is for. The consequences for breaking an oath range from the crippling of a skill or ability, all the way to a permanent death. No idea who or what decides on the consequence though. I also don’t expect to ever try my luck. So, if there is nothing else, I have to get back to my mate and our patients.” His head bobbed a little before he spun and moved toward the growing crowd of people.

  As if it had been waiting for the right moment, the exhaustion from everything washed over me. The weight of it pulled me back to the ground. Maybe I would just rest here for a minute. After which I will find a place to go. Surely the guild would have a few cheap rooms available.