The front row along with Captain Tasius raised their halberds like a spear to the incoming wereboar while those behind them slowly organized themselves to quickly surround the beast once it made contact. The wereboar did not slow its advance and swung its hooved arm towards the small army before it as it ran forwards, but instead of finding easy prey it felt several of the small shiny sticks pass through its hide and into its flesh drawing blood.

The design of the halberd that each of these elite guards used function similar to a boar spear in this regard by preventing the wereboar from simply pushing forward while the spear part would do. The curse of the werebeast only took the instincts of a boar and brought them to the absolute limit.

The wereboar screeched out in anger when it found its prey to be just out of reach from ten or so halberd tips sticking into its chest. The wereboar swung its hooved arms a few times towards the halberds breaking a few in the process, but there were more than enough to quickly replace them and leave more gaping wounds. Those that were not facing the wereboar head on circled around behind it and began stabbing the wereboar in the back with their own halberds. Around ten kept their halberds stabbed into the werebeast on each side at all tiles while those remaining continuously stabbed the beast wherever and however they could manage until the wounds and blood loss brought the werebeast to the ground.

Captain Tasius looked over the corpse of the beast as he ordered his men to spread out and look for more that might be in the area. He also ordered his lieutenant to take two others with him and contact the mages guild and the other districts of the city to warn them of the possible danger.

Unlike the stories he was told by his uncle that kept him up at night as a child the corpse of the werebeast did not revert into its original form when it died, it remained in its horrific beast form as blood slowly pooled from its wounds that covered its lower body. During this inspection Arthur slowly climbed down from his makeshift earth scaffolding and walked up to the corpse of the beast to take a look at it. Even in death its eyes were still the hollow white color that he recalled from when it first saw him, and its breath could almost kill a man on its own. It was very hard to imagine just how such a monster could exist and what could even cause it.

“This is the first time I have seen one of these things.” Captain Tasius said as he turned to face Arthur. “They have protocol and tactics for dealing with them, and I honestly wasn’t even certain that they would work. Guess it wasn’t just hot air after all.” Captain Tasius then took out a small cloth and began cleaning the tip of his halberd which was covered with the beast's blood.

“Yeah, that was a pretty stressful situation. The spells that I used against it while standing on that scaffolding thing I quickly conjured up did little damage to it despite some of them being tier two spells. How exactly did you and your men take it out so quickly?” Arthur asked as he gave a small demonstration of the spells he used for reference.

“There are two reasons why we performed so well against the wereboar, first we have steel weapons made by some of the best dwarven blacksmiths in the city, and second we targeted the lower stomach area for the first blow. Like any animal the underbelly area is by far the most vulnerable area of it, by targeting it we were able to deal a lot of damage quickly and create an opportunity to strike it from behind and trap it. From there we just kept our teamwork up and trusted each other until it was dead.” By the end of this explanation Captain Tasius was done cleaning his halberd and was giving out a few more orders to the members of his unit that were unoccupied.

“I should also thank you once again Mr. Arthur for helping with the situation, if not for you we might not have learned of the threat until it was far too late.”

“Pff, you all did most of the work. I barely did any damage to it while you all killed the damned thing.” Arthur felt quite useless given how little impact he had in killing the werebeast.

“Well if you feel bad about your contributions in killing this werebeast I assume you would be happy to help in fighting any more that may still be within the city. Typically when there is one werebeast there are more, and even then if a werebeast bites someone but does not kill them for whatever reason then on the next full moon they too will transform as well. If you still feel bad then you can help us and patrol the streets with us for anyone that might not show up when ordered to.” Captain Tasius said as he began to walk and gestured to Arthur to follow him.

Arthur followed the captain up the side of a nearby building that was apparently owned by a friend of his. The building was two stories tall and the roof gave the two an excellent view of the area. Arthur was even able to point out the half eaten corpse of the small dog that was killed by the wereboar. Another member of the unit followed them as well and used some sort of thin metal tube to look around, Arthur noticed it had a few inscriptions along the sides that resembled those he used on his failed flesh golems.

For several hours the three remained on top of that roof while Captain Tasius gave the occasion order through a communication orb he had with him at all times, upon questioning him upon the fragile of the orb Arthur was told it was a lot harder to break than it appeared. Regardless no other werebeasts were sighted throughout the entire city, even several mages from the guild were dispatched and helped with the search to no avail.

“I am not certain if we are lucky or unlucky that we only found the one.” Captain Tasius said as he rubbed his eyes. It was evident beforehand that he wasn’t getting enough sleep, but now that he was forced to stay up it was clearly affecting him more and more with each passing hour.

“You think there are others who might have gone unnoticed?” Arthur asked as he offered the captain a sandwich he made just a minute ago. He was going to eat it himself, but it looked like he needed it more.

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Captain Tasius smiled and took the sandwich but shook his head no. “No, I think this was a targeted attack on us to test our reaction time. The only problem with that is why we were being tested in the first place, if it is just a small criminal organization then they are likely to scatter and or give up. But the odds of a small criminal organization finding a cursed werebeast is not likely, that leaves a larger organization or an outside force such as a rival country, the Yolam empire for example would easily have the manpower to find a werebeast, the only hard part would be smuggling it into the city.”

“Could it have been possible for the person to become cursed while in the city?” Arthur asked the one other option that might be somewhat plausible. But despite only being a passing thought the captain paused for a moment and tried to remember while taking a few bites out of the sandwich. Though he couldn't recall if any of the temples or shrines within the city had been desecrated within the month it was something that he should look into.

“I will look into all the temples within the southern district, and I will ask the other captains about looking into their own districts. If possible could you help me with that by going around the southern district and asking on my behalf? I have all my men currently focusing on keeping order within the district that it might take some time to get around to, then could you speak with the other captains, they will likely have similar problems with manpower.”

“Of course captain, I would be more than happy to help you and the other captains. When do you want me to start?”

“Come and speak with me first thing in the morning, I have to deal with the situation here but unless something comes up which I am currently in doubt will happen we will be fine. Even if something were to happen we should be able to kill a second werebeast.” The two quickly said their goodbyes before Arthur left and returned home and went to bed. Though Arthur did not sleep all that well, the image of the hollow dead eyes of the wereboar were burned into his memory and kept him up for a good potion of the night, he only managed to get around four hours of sleep before eight o’clock arrived and he was forced to get up and work.

********

Arthur dragged himself inside the southern district barrack and told the secretary that he had an appointment with the captain, after a few minutes of waiting for the confirmation he was allowed to enter his office and speak with him. Inside Captain Tasius could be seen with a large pile of documents and large bags under his eyes, he was in the middle of a large sip of a brown liquid from a cup when Arthur walked in.

“Ah, there you are Arthur. I have the documents that you need just in case right here.” Captain Tasius smiled despite looking like he needed several hours of sleep and opened a nearby drawer which contained the few documents that proved Arthur was operating with legal authority. “Here they are, and I recommend you act quickly as that legal proceeding regarding mages working with the law is apparently almost due for completion. It would be a shame if you didn’t quite get around to it by then.”

“Of course sir, do you know of any shrines or temples locations I should look into?” Arthur asked, religion had not exactly been a priority of his since he arrived in Antium so he did not know of any temples with the only religion he knew by name was the circle of fire.

“Speak with Lieutenant Goldenshield, he is just outside my office. I had him look up those things while I did all the paperwork regarding the incident last night.” Arthur nodded and quickly exited the room to find a dwarf waiting for him with a map in hand.

“Good morning sir mage, I marked all the temples and shrines to all the gods that I could think of within the city. The temples have been marked with red and the smaller shrines with blue for your own convenience.” The dwarf smiled despite the exhaustion just as evident in his eyes as his superior.

“Thank you Lieutenant, I will do my best with this information.” Arthur said as he looked over the map. The map itself was nothing special aside from the colored markings, it didn’t even specify the differences in districts and only showed the streets and a small portion of the outside that partly included some of the fields. Overall there were ten temples and twenty smaller shrines scattered throughout the city and this was only those that Lieutenant Goldenshield remembered. ‘This might take all day.’ Arthur nearly sighed as he saw just how spaced out all these places were.

*******

Temple after temple, shrine after shrine none of the priests or followers of their religions reported anything regarding their place of worship being desecrated or vandalized, until the second last temple in the southern district located just a few blocks from Arthur’s own neighborhood.

“My apologies detective but why exactly is it important that someone dumped a bucket of paint on the statue of lord Justicar? It was very rude to do so but it didn’t take very long to rectify the issue, we only needed to pay someone to remove the pain and they only took an hour to do so.” The highest ranking and only priest asked Arthur upon being questioned.

“Are you aware of what happens when someone does something like that to a temple or shrine dedicated to a god?” Arthur asked as he sneakily looked around the room. The temple was quite small and simple compared to some of the others he had been to while searching, it was dedicated to a god known as Justicar the berserker. Apparently Justicar was wronged while he was still mortal by a corrupt government and single handedly killed everyone involved in the process in the name of vengeance as shown by the simple and graphic mural on the walls.

“I am sure that lord Justicar would deliver swift divine retribution upon them, they likely would live a life of constant suffering from then on for such a transgression against him and those who follow him. He is a rather vengeful god after all.” The priest said while looking rather unconcerned by the possible fate of this individual.

“Are you aware of what a werebeast is sir? Do you know how they are created? Because one had a little rampage throughout the southern district last night and the only way one could find its way into the city would be by either smuggling itself into the city or by becoming one while already inside.” The priest was a little startled by the change of tone on Arthur’s part. “Now answer, do you know how a werebeast is created?”

“I am sorry but I do not.” The priest took a step back out of instinct as he was half worried about the answer and half worried that the ‘detective’ before him would get angry again.

“They are created when someone is cursed by a god for desecrating a temple or shrine dedicated to them. When this happens on every full moon they transform into a werebeast and become worse than a mindless animal. Now I want every detail about the vandalism that happened here.”