-----

  RUMBLE!

  A loud sound echoed from above as the ceiling of the underground hideout trembled lightly. The thugs that were resting and st products underground suddenly looked up, w what was happening.

  “Did you feel that tremor?”

  “I heard it!”

  “What’s going on outside?”

  “Maybe ahquake?”

  “No way it could be that simple, you moron!”

  The group, mostly posed of goblins, orcs, werewolves, and the occasional blood elf, stantly discussed angrily with one another while their boss, who was managing a rge quantity of products, gred at them furiously.

  His fiery red eyes immediately shut them all down as his long cws grew longer and sharper. His long, furry ears twitched as his huge nose allowed him to easily sniff something wrong.

  “You bastards, stop wasting time! It’s obvious that someone’s ing here!” he roared angrily. “And it smells like blood—rotten blood. That’s the only smell Vampires have!”

  “V-Vampires?! Don’t tell me that brat… Vd is here already?!”

  “With Teressa?”

  "But we haven't even moved out of everything we have here!"

  As the thugs started to panic, their boss sighed.

  “Quickly call everyone else! We have to defend our turf!” said the huge bck werewolf. “Take these with you; eat them when you front them.”

  He shared with all of them small, purple-colored beads the size of a pill.

  “These are the…?”

  “The experimental drugs,” said the werewolf angrily. “We have yet to test them, but… if they work properly, yoing to get a good ce to bee strohey’re produced by the main branch!”

  “Alright…!”

  “Everyone! We’re utack!”

  “You bastards, take out all your ons and armor!”

  Uhe previous time where Vd ended up surprising the thugs, their boss was a much sharper and smarter man; immediately realizing the ining danger, he decided to properly prepare.

  “Don’t think it’ll be the same as before, you shitty blood sucker.”

  The werewolf walked through the corridors and quickly waved his cws, geing dozens of bd purple magic circles that spread through the floor, ceiling, and walls.

  Then he dropped the same beads everywhere, and as the magic circles began to absorb them, the beads started growing rger, suddenly mutating.

  They resembled monstrous fetuses, which quickly grew bigger, rapidly evolving into full-fledged adult monsters.

  As this happened, a bck bracelet embedded with red and purple jewels equipped on his left wrist glowed brightly, releasing an aura resembling tless grains of sand.

  “{Soul Artifact}: {Cursed Bracelet of Anubis}”

  And the monsters before him began growing rger as they absorbed whatever strange, cursed power dwelled within his artifact.

  FLAAASH!

  .

  .

  .

  CRAAASH!

  Vd was surprised as Camil crushed the thugs like bugs; s was her attack that it made the floor tremble quite a lot!

  “They’re done f brother,” said Camil with a smile. “Hmm, but I ’t let their blood go to waste.”

  She pointed her hand at the corpses, and then rge quantities of blood started ing out of them, ing the streets from their red tinge.

  Then, Camil drank all the blood, leaving behind dried-out corpses.

  “Big bro eat these, right?”

  “Yeah… I’ll save it for ter.”

  Vd stored their corpses, which also came with valuable ons or armor, although now broken into pieces. Still, they were valuable metals he could melt and then make into ingots, so it didn’t matter that much.

  “Y-Your sister… the sister they gave you... She’s a bit insane, isn’t she?” Queetered at the side of Vd.

  “She’s not insane…” Vd gred at her annoyedly. “She’s an i vampire girl… Uh, I guess Vampires are just this naturally ruthless. I don’t think we’ve ever taught her any of this. It just es naturally from their kind.”

  “E-Eh?” Queenie felt shocked.

  “Despite her ruthlessness, she’s a good girl, yeah,” nodded Chris. “I-I think… I mean! She wouldn’t harm is, right, Camil?”

  “Of course not…” Camil said. “I people are citizens, and they are people we must protect, right? I’ve learhat from Mama.”

  “Yeah, that’s right!” nodded Vd, petting her head. “See? She’s an angel.”

  “A-A bloody a that, eh…” Queetered, her eyebrows twitg.

  The group quickly made their way underground, breaking open the small house the thugs were proteg and findi aaircase leading down.

  “Alright, same as before, I suppose,” said Vd. “We’ll enter a special dungeon full of bandits and the like. Queenie, you got good distra abilities, so yoing to be bait again.”

  “Whaaaat? Bait again?!” Queenie screamed.

  “e on, we’ll save your ass when you’re almost dead, so don’t worry,” Chris smiled cockily, teasing her. “I’ve got a knack for healing, so leave it to this cute nurse boy!”

  “A-Ah, Alitheus, you might be cute, but this doesn’t ge that I might die!” Queenie blushed a bit after seeing Alitheus ag all cutesy. “And even if I revive ter, when I die I lose a couple of my equipped items and also items in my iory. And also some of my progress, and sometimes skills also lose levels! It’s not the best thing to die, you know?!”

  “I know, I know, that’s why we’ll protect you; don’t worry,” Vd sighed. “Look, pretend these are torches.”

  Vd quickly assighree Bzing Doppelgao Queenie, putting them over small wooden sticks he found along the way.

  In a way, they could camoufge as just any fire.

  This way, Queenie would carry just torches and look i or weak, despite carrying these Bzing Doppelgahat possess 50% of Vd’s Stats.

  Even if it was 50%, it was without the debuffs, so the Bzing Doppelgangers actually had higher stats than Vd himself, who only had 30% of his inal Stats.

  Meaning that with three she had one Vd and a half proteg her at all times—what a bargain!

  “Y-you've got to be kiddiorches? Do you think this’ll work?!” she screamed.

  “It’s dark down there!” Camil nodded. “Go Queenie, you do it!”

  “Ah, Camil…” Queenie sighed, feeling a bit healed by Camil’s cute cheers.

  “If you don’t go, I’m crushing you like a bug, hehe!” she giggled cutely.

  “Eek! Okay, okay, I’ll go!”

  Queenie ran away downstairs faster than ever before. It seemed that Camil was scarier than her own brother by quite a lot; she vinced her of doing this without even making her hesitate or pin anymore.

  “Brother, I think I have a talent for ving people!” Camil smiled cutely.

  “I-I guess you do… But don’t threaten people like that, Camil,” said Vd. “You must never abuse your power… Uhey’re cocky people like Queenie, maybe it’s ok.”

  “Got it! I abuse my power if the person is cocky or evil!” nodded Camil.

  “She’s a fast learner; I hope she doesn’t bee like the other Vampires we’ve met so far…” said Chris.

  “Nah, there’s no way; Camil is still different than them,” Vd nodded.

  Well, he hoped.

  The trio walked downstairs as they followed Queerace; using his Doppelgangers, Vd could see where she was going.

  He couldn’t quite share his senses with them or something, but there was a e he had with them, helping him easily detect where they were at 100% accuracy.

  “She has already gone far too deep; let’s hurry!” he said.

  As they ran behind her, Queenie flew with her wings, rapidly fpping them as she looked around nervously.

  Eventually, she noticed something weird.

  “Huh?”

  Two dots of red light far into the corridor, within the darkhat her “torches” could no longer illuminate.

  “Um… Hi? I’m lost here… someone…”

  “Grrrhhh…”

  “Eh?”

  “Graaaarrrr…!”

  Queenie’s face progressively grew more horrified as the creature, the silhouette, approached her.

  “Eek! Wait a sed, this is not just a bandit, a monster?!”

  “RAAARRR!”

  The creature leaped out of the darkness as Queenie swiftly evaded its bite, realizing it was a huge, humanoid creature.

  “The hell is that thing?!”

  It stood almost three meters tall, barely fitting ihe tight corridors by walking on all four… Despite that, it clearly had a humanoid body.

  With bck, metallic skin covered on bck jewels and the head of a furious jackal, with four crimson eyes, and wearing golden garments.

  This thing was… a monster like nothing she had seen before.

  It was much more bizarre and unnerving to see than werewolves or other non-humans, mostly because of how it was made.

  It was as if someone had beheaded a person and repced their head with a jackal’s head; its ck of fur in the rest of its body made it even more strange.

  “Raaggrrrrhh!”

  The half human and half jackal creature roared, swinging his muscur arms and trying to slice Queeh two golden harvesting scythes it carried.

  SLAAASH! SLAAASH!

  “W-What the hell is this thing?!”

  As she screamed in terror and shock, the monster leaped towards her after seeing how she mao evade his attacks, opening his jaws to bite her head off the moment it got closer to her.

  “No way, get away, you damn thing!”

  She quickly threw the torches at the monster, as she called the Doppelgangers.

  “Help me out already!”

  FLUOSH! FLUOSH! FLUOSH!

  The torches exploded, turning into three Bzing Doppelgangers in the shape of Vd, who attacked the half-jackal human monstrosity with bzing swords they created from their bodies.

  Using the Dual Bzing Sword Arts Skill from Vd, they unleashed several swordsmanship teiques against the creature.

  “Greeaaeergh?!”

  The monstrosity tried to catch them with his huge harvesting scyhes, only managing to slie of the Bzing Doppelganger’s legs before it was covered in slig attacks.

  Its arms were sliced, flying away as bck blood spttered into the ground; this was followed by its legs being cut away, and then as it fell, its head!

  SLASH! SLASH! SLASH! SLASH!

  As the dismembered monster fell into the ground into pieces, Queenie g the thing while gasping for air.

  “Ah, they got it… You guys are super strong! What the hell? Nicely done!”

  She was rather happy, sighing in relief as she saw the monster’s body on the floor, which was still bleeding a bck miasmic goop from its wounds.

  Queenie ig a moving forward, looking around, ultimately finding herself within a wide, open area, pletely dark.

  “Uhh… What’s this pce?”

  As she wohat dozens of red dots appeared across the darkness in front of her…

  “Grrrhhh!”

  “Graaarrr…!”

  “Graaaerrrgh!”

  Queenie’s smile twitched in disbelief as she raised her eyebrows. The Bzing Doppelgangers lightly illumihe faces of at least seven more of those huge, strong creatures.

  “D-Don’t fuck with me… e on!”

  …

  Vd, Camil, and Alitheus rushed through the corridors, keeping up with Queeil suddenly…

  “GYAAAAHHH!”

  They heard her scream of horror.

  “Looks like the bait finally found something,” said Vd. “Let’s go!”

  Vd grabbed Chris and Camil, enpassing his entire body with spiraling winds through the Soar Spell and rushing towards the battlefield at lightning speed.

  BAAAM!

  As he nded on the floor, he found Two Doppelgangers being crushed by several giant monsters, while Queenie was juring barriers and beams of light to defeat them.

  However, these creatures were so damn tough her magic had little effe them…

  No, it was more as if her magic wasn’t w!

  “What the hell are these things, Vd?!” Queenie cried. “They’re everywhere!!!”

  As she cried, Vd, Camil, and Alitheus noticed that there were even more of these jackal-headed creatures ing from the end of the corridor, already making dozens of them!

  [The [Cursed Spirit Guardian of the Underworld (Tier 4)] have e to defend their territory!]

  [The {Cursed Ward of Anubis} protects them from most Magic Damage, nullifying it almost pletely.]

  It was dozens of powerful Tier 4 mohat were almost pletely immuo magic!

  “GRAARRRR!”

  Before they could do anything, seven of them rushed towards Vd and pany, as they had to desperately pull out their ons and fight.

  “Dammit, there are more than I imagined!” Chris said. “Did they set us up?!”

  “Most likely.” Paul said. “Whatever the case, we have to take care of them anyway." Don’t use magic. Use on Teiques instead. Camil, stay behind us!”

  The Vampire rushed forward, swinging his sword and unleashing a barrage of attacks against the Anubis-like monstrosities, pushing them several meters away.

  CLASH! CLASH! CLASH! CLASH!

  At the same time, a loud sound echoed behind them.

  RUMBLE!

  The route where they had e from was suddenly blocked by its own ceiling crumbling down.

  They were trapped.

  -----

  Pach