"Clink."
The blade and its sheath met with a crisp chime. Murphy, still holding his sheathed-sword pose, canceled the effects of Astral Slow and Celestial Haste. Behind him, a scarlet storm formed from drawn blood whirled through the air like five or six intersecting crimson dimensional slashes, clearing out more than thirty ordinary gnoll brutes in a single strike.
It was a perfect recreation of the "ultimate move" from the players' challenge during the Blood Festival. But this time, bolstered by ancestral power, it looked even more sinister and intimidating.
Most importantly, it looked cooler!
Of those three advantages, Murphy cared most about the last one.
After all, as a distinguished main-quest NPC, he had to show off a few signature skills when he appeared before players. How else was he supposed to win them over?
Still, if you looked closely, this move was less efficient at killing than simply using Celestial Haste to cut down enemies one by one while they were slowed by Astral Slow. In fact, shaping the crimson dimensional slashes so dramatically had wasted some of its destructive power.
But as the saying went, for an NPC, combat prowess was only the second thing that determined their standing in players' eyes. The first was whether they looked cool enough.
This simple truth had been proven time and time again ever since Sephiroth—the man nicknamed "Little Sa"—had appeared.
As long as you were cool and handsome enough, plenty of players would let their eyes overrule their morals. More importantly, Murphy considered himself a vampire lord with a rather high standard of ethics.
He would never do something as outrageous as destroy the world.
Murphy turned around, holding the budget Yamato the players had gifted him. In the small clan's camp behind him, most of the gnoll warriors