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  “Helena! What is the meaning of this?! Are you seriously attag me out of nowhere, IN MY OWORY?!”

  Vd’s mother roared with fury, her aura exuding a powerful storm of freezing winds of crimson and azure color.

  The person in front of her, with long blue hair and sharp crimson eyes, smiled mischievously, overflowing with a powerful aura of silver and blood.

  She was holding a silver spear made of liquid metal and surrounding her were several of these silver-colored metal pieces floating around.

  “Do you know why my Family is called Silver Mooeressa~?”

  The reason why Teressa had not been able to reach the walls and help her son and Alitheus defeat the invading bandits was because of her.

  “What nonsense are you talking about now?! Is this how things are going to be, Helena?! If our husband finds out what you’re doing, he’s not going tive you f to kill another e!” roared Teressa, gathering spiraling spears of frost around her body.

  “Oh my, is that so?” ughed Helena, her aura of silver and blood color overflowing, growing rger and stronger. “Dear, have you fotten the RULES of our family already? Was sleeping for all those years making you lose your memories, perhaps?”

  “Rules…?!” Teressa’s eyes widened as she realized that such Rules applied to everyone and that not even she and her family were absent from them.

  “Seize power with your own hands, be it with violence, schemes, or traps,” said Helena, the cold wind making her long blue hair flutter. “Oh dear, did you think that because you were the Emperor’s favorite whore, you were absent from these rules? As long as we win, the Emperor, MY husband, will not care. These are the rules of the Imperial Family of Iron Blood.”

  “So you’re truly serious about this…” Teressa muttered, feeling pletely shocked. “Hah, maybe you’re right... I’ve grown softer; I had imagihat, as low as I was, the rest of you wouldn’t envy me anymore. But even when I am given scraps and thrown into the trash, you’re jealous that I have those scraps and that I have a p your trash, right? You’ll op harassiil you take everything I care about, everything I love... and then my life, huh?”

  “Teressa, dear, I don’t care about your melodrama,” Helena ughed.

  FLASH!

  And then, within a split sed, she disappeared from where she was. Teressa’s eyes widened as she sensed a presence rushing behind her and then the sharp pain of etal pierg her stomach.

  CLASH!

  “Ugh?!”

  Hena appeared behind her, whispering to her ears as she pierced her stomach with a silver spear, overflowing with blood power.

  “You’ve grown weak~”

  “HELENAAA!”

  Teressa twisted her body and maniputed the blood c Helena’s silver spear, freezing it and then shattering it with a powerful blow.

  CRASH!

  “Ungh?!”

  Helena tried to pull back her hand, only to find it stuside Teressa’s wound, which was freezing rapidly, c the wound.

  “Having trouble getting that arm out? Let me help you!”

  Teressa said that, making Helena think she would cut her arm at most—nothing a vampire couldn’t regrow.

  But that wasn’t the case.

  Within a split sed, Teressa materialized a huge spear of frost and u at Helena’s face.

  “Ah!”

  Helena panicked, quickly using the spheres of metal in her body to cut her arm off and push her away, enpassing her in a spherical barrier of steel.

  BOOOM!

  The spear of ice shattered into pieces o hit her, but she remained mostly unscathed. Well, with a missing arm, that’s it.

  “Your rea speed and the power of your Metal have bee strooo,” said Teressa, taking out Helena’s arm from her stomad then freezing it until it shattered into tless crimson-colored fragments. Her stomach quickly regeed back to normal too.

  “And you’ve bee weaker and slower,” said Helena. “But that damned ice is just as troublesome as before!”

  FLASH!

  FLASH!

  Both vampire women cshed against one another, moving across the air at lightning speed. Their cws impacted, releasing explosive shockwaves of crimson-colored energies and frost and silver.

  CLASH! CLASH! CLASH! CLASH!

  Teressa stantly attempted to touch Helena and freeze her body, while also distrag her with icicle spears and powerful freezing winds that pushed her back.

  Meanwhile, Helena slowly began to overwhelm Teressa using her metal, turning it into hundreds of needles and pierg her body stantly, aiming to shred her apart so it would be hard for her oppoee.

  Her metal was not limitless, ueressa’s frost, but she could manipute it even if it was taken away from her, frozen, or shattered. This art of her family’s strength, the Silver Moon Family of Vampires’ special ability {Ferrokinesis}.

  This power allowed this family to slowly build their own innate amount of bined metals inside of their blood and body, which they ter manipute as they please and ent to tremendous levels of power.

  However, because it takes many years for them to grow in power due to the nature of their abilities, they are often looked down upon by other vampires.

  And Helena, too, suffered such abuse back then.

  Perhaps now that she has accumuted enough power, she feels fident enough to enact herself as someorong within the family.

  And kill Teressa and her children to take over Elderbridge, the home of three Instance Dungeons, which could bring her family great wealth and status if used well.

  Her ambitions were big, very big, but she wasn’t going to stop now that everything had begun.

  She was going to do everything she could to kill the womaed the most!

  “You, you, you, YOUUU!”

  With a furious roar and while tearing apart her frozen skin, Helena roared, unleashing a shockwave of silver energies that released sparks of magic electricity.

  TRUUUM!

  “Ugh!”

  Teressa had to quickly gee a powerful barrier of frost to resist the endless explosions of electricity rushing towards her.

  Not only had Helena mao increase her pool of Inner Silver, as their family called it, but she was also tapping into a mostly unknown power within their family.

  Magism.

  “I have never seen anybody in her family trolling this power, though…!” Teressa thought, grittieeth. “How did she bee so powerful in just less than seven years?!”

  “Hahahah…! HAHAHAHA!”

  Teressa’s eyes widened as she g Helena again, her frost barriers shattering into pieces, seeing what the Silver Moon Vampiress had bee. Her long blue hair was static, resembling tless needles that flowed into the skies, glowing with white color, and the rest of her body was enpassed in silver armor, with several spikes releasing staromagic sparks.

  “I’ve achieved incredible power, haven’t I, Teressa?!” ughed Helena. “I will no longer be looked down on! Even less by YOU! Let’s see if you freeze me NOW!”

  With a furious and maddening scream, Helena zapped towards Teressa at lightning speed, unleashing a shockwave as she moved in an instant, the shockwave blowing up the ceilings of several houses beh.

  CRAAASH!

  With a sirike from Helena’s metal-covered hands, Teressa ummeling into the ground below with a huge explosion of frost and lightning, geing a huge crater. The cattle that were in that area were all spttered into pieces, leaving behind a bloody se.

  “Hahhh… Hahhh…!”

  Teressa slowly stood up, feeling the electricity burning her insides and then finally reg. For a short amount of time, this electricity slowed down her regeion, a rather dangerous painst a Vampire.

  “How… There’s no way she could have bee s so quickly!” Teressa thought, gring at Helena slowly desding with a cocky smile.

  Helena’s crimson eyes had turned pletely white, releasing lightning from them. She seemed to be able to release these eleagiergies not only as she pleased but in rge quantities too.

  “That power...” muttered Teressa. “She’s defiier 8! But I am also Tier 8… Our power shouldn’t be so far from one another… Unless she’s using something else?”

  Vd’s mother was sure that Helena had used something, be it the help of someone else, an item, or something else entirely, to bee as strong as she was.

  After all, there were no records at all of the Silver Moon Family ever awakening such strange powers in her!

  “I ’t waste my time with you, Helena! I o go save my people!” Teressa roared. “And my son, I heard he went there to fight those ord-”

  “Oh, your son? You shouldn’t be w about your crippled bastard son; my dear Asthartez shall dispose of him!” ughed Helena. “Isn’t that nice? I’ll take away all of the responsibility of having to take care of him for you!”

  “W-What?! You shoved Asthartez intht too?!” asked Teressa. “Are you doing this because of the butlers he killed? They were poisoning him! You were trying to kill my son from the start; why do you act as if I am the oo bme for everything?! We’ve been trying to mind our own business, you crazy delusional bitch!”

  “I don’t give a single damn, dear!”

  FLASH!

  Helena, pletely drunk in power, rushed down towards Teressa, swinging her legs covered by her metal aricity and unleashing a barrage of powerful, explosive kicks.

  Teressa desperately waved her hands and created several frost walls and golems, which attempted to take on Helena for her, only to be all shattered into pieces.

  CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!

  “Hahahaha! Too easy! You’re so weak, Teressa! Stop hiding behind your id fight me head-on already!” ughed Helena. “Didn’t you alride yourself on being an honorable warrior?!”

  The blue haired Vampiress swung her hand down, hitting Teressa in the head and aiming to slice her into two halves, shapeshifting the metal c her arms into a huge bde.

  SLAAASH!

  “What a nightmare I’ve created; now there’s two of you! Hahaha!”

  Crack, crack…!

  “Huh?”

  CRASH!

  As Helena ughed, suddenly, the two halves of Teressa gained tless cracks, shattering and revealing themselves to be ice.

  “A doppelganger?!” Helena muttered. “When did she...”

  FLASH!

  Before she could look for Teressa, she appeared right behioug the back of her head, a small area that wasn’t covered with metal, and imbuing all the frost she could inside.

  “{Freezing Coffin}”

  “Ugh! You bitch!”

  FLUOSH!

  Helena screamed as she suddenly froze instantly—blood, flesh, bones—everything was frozen instantly. Her metal, for a moment, stopped moving, falling to the floor.

  “I have to quickly shatter her head a before she unfreezes herself!”

  Teressa quickly imbued Blood Power into her cws, aiming to pierce Helena’s chest and head with them and blow her heart and brains into pieces—a sure way to kill vampires aside from soul destru.

  CRASH!

  Her hand touched her head, blowing it up into bloody pieces of frozen brain and skull. Teressa didn’t celebrate yet, though, quickly moving towards her heart and grasping it tightly.

  “Now- Ahhh?!”

  However, in that very moment, Teressa felt a sudden sense of dread. An endless, powerful, and cursed darkness like she had never faced before surged from Helena’s froze, unfreezing it instantly before releasing a huge shockwave of cursed energy.

  TRUUUMMM!!!

  “Uuaagh!”

  Teressa was sent flying, hitting a building behind her and making it colpse. She was thankful the citizens had already evacuated the area, so nobody should have been harmed.

  However, she couldn’t calm down, not when her whole arm was missing, calated into bck ashes, and the wou behind over her shoulder, bd purple-colored, wouldn’t regee back.

  “Agh! W-What is this?! Such a strong curse!”

  “A-Aahhh…! T-Tere… ssaaaaa…!”

  “Helena?!”

  Vd mother's eyes widened as she saw the half-frozen body of Helena beginning to move, her electricity aal ing around her head and half-shattered body, giving her a horrendous, chimeric appearance.

  Her chest was broken, for a moment revealing her beati, ed around five bck-colored rings of pure abyssal and cursed energies, keeping her somehow alive, before her metal and flesh melded together to cover that wound.

  “Helena… What have you done?!”

  Teressa couldn’t help but feel utter disbelief and disgust as she saw the thing Helena had bee, and the disgusting cursed powers c through her body, which didn’t belong to any Evil God at all.

  It was something pletely fn!

  “Kill…! I’ll kill... KILL YOUUUUU!!!” Helena screamed, her head fragments fusing back together to reveal a horrendous, disfigured face, opening her jaws wide in fury. “THEN HE’LL BE MINEEEE... THE EMPEROR’S LOVE... WILL ONLY BE FOR MEEEEE!”

  “To think you would go so far for his false love...” sighed Teressa. “Helena, that man o longer love… He’s bitter aionless!”

  “SHUT UP!”

  Helena’s chest opeo reveal a mass of metal and flesh, shapeshifting into a monstrous jaw, and gathering purple-colored electricity, before unleashing a massive thunderous on towards Teressa.

  BOOOMMM!!!

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  Pach