Right now, I am in a very shitty position. At the moment, I can't feel any part of my body. (I have no luck with my vital mana as well. I can't even sense it, let alone move.) My vision is completely black, as if somebody has tied my eyes with a very thick cloth.

  There are not many days that I find myself this helpless. As if this weren't enough of an issue, I am in the middle of a fight. I don't even need to be able to see to tell that I am in the middle of an intense conflict right now.

  I can tell that from the smell of sweat and blood that has completely taken over this place. The sound of swords and magic clashing is another thing that clues me in. The question that I have right now is, who are the two factions that are fighting each other?

  Figuring that out could mean the difference between life and death. One of the forces has to be the snake and the Bloodfire gang. After all, the man would not have left me alive unless he planned to take me as a hostage.

  Well, I am to blame for my present situation if I am honest. I knew that I should have struck the other party with my full force the instant that he showed his face. If I did that, there would have been a pretty decent chance that I could have killed him. It was pretty stupid trying to fight a battle of attrition with a poison mage.

  Fuck, now is not the time to waste my time on figuring out where I went wrong. Right now, the question is who the other party is that the vampires are facing right now. You would think that question would be pretty easy to answer. After all, the only people here who have any reason to fight them are us.

  Let me assure you that it is not so easy to answer that right now. Let's just say that today the casino is going to be a chaotic little place. The first is that it could be somebody from the strikeforce.

  I don't think there is much chance of this happening. After all, everybody had a role in this little plan of ours. None of them are meant to be fighting the snake this quickly.

  The snake was always the odd one out in our plan. That is why I was sent to deal with the man. Well, deal would be a strong word. I was sent to distract the man and make sure that he won't wreck too many of our plans.

  I am not the strongest person in this strikeforce, but I am certainly the most durable. With how weak he seemed to be, I might have gotten rid of him, too. If only I had bothered to fight seriously from the beginning.

  By the way, this reminds me of another question. Just how long has it been since my fight? Well, I have no actual way of knowing that, so I will have to leave it for later. It could be a couple of years right now, and I would have no way of knowing.

  The second and more likely option is that they are fighting the rebels. We have been making sure not to speak about these rebels in our logs.

  After all, they were a vital part of our plans, and if they were revealed, it would have made them useless. I don't know much about them. All of this has been the searchers and the aegis.

  To put it simply, the "rebels" are an alliance of criminal organisations. They have been convinced that the Navok family has been at the top for too long. Well, calling these folks rebels would be a bit wrong. After all, rebels make these people sound like they are doing this for anything but profit.

  They have been convinced that the best way to harm the Navoks family is to attack them where it hurts the most. The timing of their attack is not accidental at all, of course.

  We can thank Anthony and the Aegis for that. Turns out that they have been contacting all of the criminal organisations of the town. They have been going to everyone and convincing them to go along with this attack. They have been coordinating all of these organisations together. Without the aegis, it would have been pretty likely that they would have attacked each other.

  Well, they have had a significant amount of assistance from the searchers to do this. The searchers were the ones who located all of these organisations for the aegis. After all, they have all been taking care to stay away from the popular view.

  Well, all of that is not important, right now. What is important is what I can do if it is the rebels. Well, all I have understood about these rebels comes from the searcher Amelia. So it is not as detailed as it could have been. The one thing that is pretty clear to me is that the folks here are not too worried about collateral damage.

  That means falling into the hands of the rebels is not going to be better than falling into the hands of the vampires. Now that I think about it, it will be worse. After all, I have a certain value for the vampires. They could have used me as a hostage to escape should things get bad.

  This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

  With the rebels, I have no guarantee like that. They might kill me if they feel like it. If anything, they should kill me on the spot. After all, they don't have a lot of time to waste. They certainly won't waste it on a nobody.

  That means that if the vampires are defeated, I will have to act quickly. I will have to prove to these people that I am more valuable alive to these people than dead.

  To do that, I will first have to be able to speak. On that front, I have bad news. At the moment, I can't even feel my tongue.

  That is not going to be the case for long, though. I can feel my vital mana again. I grasp onto my vital mana and steadily cycle it. It is slow enough that nobody will discover it. (Right now, I don't want to attract any attention to myself.)

  I can feel my vision light up as well, as my vital mana fights with the poison that the snake has left in me. Things are still too blurry for me to make out who is fighting whom. It is still an improvement, though, as I can see the colours of this room. Meanwhile, the sound of swords clashing has been resounding across the room.

  Finally, it could be the Navoks that are out there. If that is the case, then I have to hope that the vampires win this fight. With all of the other factions, there is at least hope that I will survive. With the Navoks, I will likely die.

  The navoks are going to be at their most militant right now. After all, they are under attack from all sides. They also did not manage to detect any of these attacks. That means their nerves must be pretty sensitive. First, there is an attack of monumental proportions happening on their casino. All of their enemies are suddenly attacking them with their full forces.

  Then, there is the fight between the vampires and the strikeforce. (That was seriously a massive security failure of the Navok family.)

  Finally, you should not forget that the Navok family is also fighting the undead at their wall. They must have committed a significant chunk of their forces to hold back the death.

  Anyway, all of this means that the Navoks must be pretty trigger-happy at this moment. Thankfully, the chance of the vampires attacking the Navoks is not very high.

  After all, the Navoks can be considered to be the only allies of the vampires presently. Things would have to go bad for them to be fighting right now.

  Anyway, it turns out that I did not need to think too much about who the other party is. I think that I have an idea of who they are.

  My vision has finally recovered to a certain degree. I still can't see things clearly, but I can at least make out shapes. Of these shapes, there is one that has to be Lauren. There is simply no one else here who is large enough to be compared to her.

  Looks like the sentinels have come to save me. That means that they are presently breaking our plan. After all, they are the most important part of the plan. They are supposed to be attacking the void inside the barrier.

  Well, I should focus on manipulating my vital mana right now. After all, if it is the sentinels here, then I can afford to be a bit more aggressive with my vital mana. As I begin to cycle my mana, my vision continues to get better.

  That finally gives me a bit of an idea of what the hell is going on. I am in the middle of a massive room here. Even with my limited vision, I can see that the place has been decorated to be as gaudy as possible. Gaudy enough that only a drunk man would be able to appreciate.

  We are clearly in the casino right now. The table full of playing cards and massive mugs of ale also helps narrow things now. Well, I guess that I should pay attention to the fight that is happening around those tables.

  To describe the vampires' side, we have about six to seven folks from the Bloodfire gang. Of these folks, at least two them are vampires. (Vampirehood is usually dangled as a price when you deal with vampires.)

  Leading them is the twisted form of the snake. Fighting against them, we have sentinels. Lauren is standing in front of the poisonous monster as she blocks every strike of the creature.

  Meanwhile, John and Emilia are attacking the remaining bandits. The fight is presently going on our side. The vampires are being crushed completely by the sentinels. John and Emilia have already halved the enemy numbers, if all the corpses in the room are of the bloodfire gang.

  Well, Lauren is the best enemy to fight against somebody like the snake. Her massive physique and her strong vital mana mean that most poisons don't take affect on her. Even if they do, they don't tend to be as potent as, say, it would be for me.

  Also, Lauren is completely armoured up. It will be very difficult for the man to pierce her defences.

  Damn it.....

  (After a couple of minutes.)

  Sorry about that. I had been distracted by a massive wave of pain. Turns out that the asshole snake had tied me up. His binding is tight enough that it is cutting into my skin in many places.

  The only reason that I had not felt it was the poison that was numbing me to the pain. My vital mana has managed to counter most of the negative effects of the poisons. The only problem with that is that since I am using my vital mana to counter the poison, I can't use it to strengthen my body. That means that I can't strengthen my body to tear through my bonds. I am stuck like this until one of the sentinels bothers to open up my ropes.

  Anyway, the sentinels have finally taken over this room. Well, the vampires are still in here, fighting for their lives. Even as I am recording, the creatures are retreating outside of the place.

  In the last couple of minutes, Emilia has been decimating the bloodfire gang soldiers. Each kill of hers has been quite impressive in this melee.

  Her most impressive kill was the person whom she stabbed in the eye. Just as he fell behind in the panic of the strike, the lady kicked the dagger right into the man's brain.

  The result of that came in an instant as the person slumped to the ground, dead. That is when the battle finally began to fall in our favour. Even as I am recording, the duo has been slaughtering their way through the underlings.