Chapter 7:The Smoke Settles

As a full moon shone over Vandara, twenty or so figures could be seen jumping from roof to roof as they headed for a building that had smoke coming out from the top, as though from a chimney.

What was strange was that it was currently the warmest season of Vandara, where residents could be seen roaming around in half sleeved shirts and kakhi shorts with sweat covering every inch of their exposed skin.

In such hot and humid weather, smoke was anything but good; Because of this fact, when a night-owl saw smoke rising from the local orphanage, he ran to the Adventurers' Guild to report this.

The twenty or so figures rushing toward the orphanage were some of the strongest adventurers in Vandara, with the weakest of them being Silver rank 3;They had been given the night-watch duty today and were quickly informed by the guild receptionist handling the night shift about the foreboding event.

As the first of the adventurers reached the roof of the orphanage, he peered inside the hole in the roof, to see silhouettes right under the hole becoming slowly visible as the smoke began to settle.

By the time the last of the adventurers arrived, the smoke had almost settled, and right under the smoke, 3 cloaked figures and 5 matrons could be seen, alert of each other, yet not attacking, as if worried about some unseen threat; Some adventurers began climbing down the ropes still attached from the roof, while two or three of them just jumped into the hole and some of them still stayed on the roof, wanting to wait for the smoke to settle completely.

As the first adventurers reached the ground, the smoke completely settled and the three cloaked figures raised their hands, signifying their unwillingness to continue the fight, and the matrons, still suspicious of deception, slowly grouped together.

The adventurers on the scene first noticed the dried up corpse of the matron on the ground, their attention then went to the hole in the wall that was close to where they had just descended, then, following the pointing of the matrons, they noticed a body on the floor, in a corner not so far from where they were, in the middle of some cribs; Behind the cribs, a hole in the wall could be seen.

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The body was that of a slim man wearing a black full sleeve shirt and black pants, He had a steel dagger sticking out of his neck, and a small pool of blood could be seen under his head coming out from his mouth and the injury in his neck.

As the adventurers were about to head to the body, one of the matrons stepped forward and began explaining the situation to them, warning them about the still wandering blue haired man.

This put the adventurers on high alert, as 10 of them secured the perimeter of the orphanage, 2 of them used mana-restricting cuffs to prevent the invaders from running away or causing any chaos, three of them began examining the body and the rest spread out through the orphanage to look for the blue haired man in packs of 3.

One of the matrons realized that the baby that had been giggling in the crib next to the now dead invader was no longer there, not even as a body.

As this matron reminded the others of the missing child, they all tried to recall its features but found that they were unable to, they then just informed one of the adventurers about the disappearance of the infant.

Although they were matrons, they did not interact much with the infants as they usually handled security; They were also not that affected as they had been through a few battles in the past and had seen death occur in front of them quite a couple of times.

They did however feel pity, pity for the infant who had first lost its parents, and was now taken by the cruel man that had killed their head matron and his own comrade.

The adventurers searched the entire orphanage and expanded their search to the houses nearby, wondering how the residents had not been awoken by the fighting.

When a team of adventurers received no response on knocking at the front door of a house, they tried the door only to find it unlocked; But what they found inside sent shivers down their spine, All the residents inside the house were dead, with their bodies having pools of blood under them as they lay on the floor lifelessly; The same happened to the teams that went to different houses.

When the sun finally began rising over the city of Vandara, the adventurers finally gave up their search for the blue haired man and the missing infant.

That was the day the city of Vandara, and many other Tier-one cities in the surrounding area went into lock down.

If marked on a map, One would see that these cities would create a figure that represented a circle around the Tier-2 city of Aries.