Vampire Attack

"Vampire Attack" (襲撃のヴァンパイヤ) is the tenth chapter of the Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign manga series, written by Takaya Kagami and illustrated by Yamato Yamamoto.

Synopsis
As the Shinoa squad continue their way to Shinjuku, they run into the vampire noble, Thirteenth Progenitor Crowley Eusford. The squad attempts to fight him off, but Crowley overwhelms the young soldiers with his power.

Shinoa prepares a strategy to defeat the noble, but his vampire aids, Chess Belle and Horn Skuld arrive to reinforce him. Now with three nobles to deal with, the team prepare to battle to the death, although the vampire trio shrug them off. The nobles then return to the front lines under the orders of Ferid Bathory.

Full of both relief and anxiety after the vampires’ departure, the squad resumes moving forward to Shinjuku.

Summary
On the tattered outskirts of Tokyo, Yu watches with chatty admiration as Kimizuki hotwires a hummer. Apparently, Yu had not been in a car since he was little, and even in present-day Shibuya gas was a treasured commodity that allowed for very few people to own a car. He's even more impressed that Kimizuki knows how to drive it too, but Kimizuki just finds himself a bit awestruck at Yu.

Yu quickly boarded the driver's seat, tearing around the block with the hummer and getting a feel for how it moved. He screeches to a halt, nearly hitting Kimizuki, at which the two start bickering. Shinoa eagerly hops into the seat next, but is too short to see over the driver's wheel. Kimizuki and Yu laugh at this just a little too hard for her liking, and she gives them a sound thrashing with her Cursed Gear.

The drive to Shinjuku proceeds in an awkward silence, with Kimizuki and Yu seated in the front with bruises all over. However, the silence is broken by explosions rumbling from an unknown location. The crew became tensed and alert, awaiting any kind of surprise that may leap out. As they approached Shinjuku's gates, it turned out the explosions were coming right from where the squad was heading, and in the middle of the road stood a somewhat wild looking vampire with an athletic, broad build: Thirteenth Progenitor Crowley Eusford.

It was a vampire noble, the first one the squad had encountered. Without hesitation, Kimizuki floors the gas pedal till they were close enough to all pile out of the moving hummer, and the vampire, smirking, watched the jeep crunch itself against the flat of his palm. He then draws his weapon, letting it drink his own blood like Mikaela's sword and uses it to deflect some arrows Yoichi fires at him. He then casually waves his blade upward, cleaving a rift all the way down the street, just from the pressurized force of air from his swing. Shinoa and Mitsuba just barely manage to deflect it with their weapons. The vampire swiftly closes in on Shinoa, but Kimizuki dives between them to deflect any attacks while Yu follows up with slicing the vampire's weapon arm off, which earns a mild applause from the noble.

Just as Shinoa starts hatching a strategy to deal with this one noble, two vampire maidens drop in to back him up. The team readies themselves to fight to the death, but the vampires just sort of brush them off and inform Crowley that Seventh Progenitor Ferid Bathory is calling him to the front lines. Crowley picks up his severed arm and turns to leave. Yu openly taunts him, and in a motion too fast for human eyes to catch, Crowley gives Yu a light, harmless tap behind his shoulder, skipping off through the ruined buildings with his assistants.

The party breathes a collective sigh of relief. Their opponent, as well as his gear, were individually in a class far superior to the group. Yu can't help but feel mortified that there is still such a huge difference in strength and ability, but the group begrudgingly accept this as a lesson to why teamwork and picking their battles more cautiously could mean the difference between life and death. They were about to rush to a battlefield where even just blinking could invite death. They shake off their anxieties and push forward to Shinjuku.

Characters
List of characters in order of appearance:

Gallery
Manga panels provide a visual overview of the events of Chapter 10 with depictions of the characters, Seraph of the End world and scenarios.