Sounds of relief were heard from the Bureau team. Tension visibly dissipated from one side of the room as the rest were left confused.

Aiden was confused. The six heroes were supers too? Incredibly powerful ones at that?

I mean, if you see it like that it’s obvious. In an era of abilities, would ones without it be given so much fame? If it was some normal person, they would have to have made incredible contributions for the oh-so powerful supers to acknowledge them as important.

Hellen smirked as she replied, “I had my doubts about their identities but no wonder.”

Outside field agents weren’t given much information apart from the ghost they were told to deal with, so it’s obvious they wouldn’t know much. Whatever knowledge Hellen had up to this point, it could thus be inferred that it was either through her connections or some other means.

The Bureau was as tight lipped as one could be about anything regarding supers.

Aiden asked Cedric, “Did they give no clue as to who might be coming?”

“Nope. They themselves weren’t sure about it.” Cedric replied with a firm tone. He wasn’t hiding anything.

“Well, that’s good to hear I guess.” Aiden chuckled and looked at Valeria. The investigator got the clue as she showed her phone to the room and announced.

“I got a message from one of the teams working under me. We were finding clues about the murderer, which is obviously the ghost now that we know about it. We then switched to any patterns we could find in its murder. As

“I’ve already informed you earlier, our team was able to find the pattern in which the ghost committed the killings. So we told our team to evacuate the people from the next few homes which had the possibility of being murdered. Of course, I didn’t disclose the truth to them. Just warned them about there being a psychopath killer on loose.”

Valeria’s face fell as she came to that part.

“But the ghost directly skipped all those emptied houses. It committed murder in the house which was next in line.”

She took a deep breath, clearly feeling pressured by not being able to bring any results. Continuing with a low but firm voice, she explained.

“But I’ve already ordered my team to at least get a picture of the ghost. They will also be doing something I told them because I wanted to test something.”

At the last line she looked at Aiden who quickly realized and softly spoke, “Windows.”

“Yes.”

She placed the phone on the table for anyone who wanted to take a look. “This is the picture of that ghost. And as you’ve heard just now, Aiden had a hypothesis when he visited the victim’s house.”

She explained his hypothesis, which wasn’t just that anymore. She didn’t tell this to anyone before because she first intended to see if it was true. Unfortunately it was.

“So you’re telling me that when the ghost entered the house, it became something like a fortress which can’t be breached?”

Alastair asked to confirm what he was hearing.

“Yes.” Valeria affirmed. “When the ghost enters the house, the entire house, including all openings like windows, becomes extremely solid. By solid I mean immovable, like fixed in place.

“My team used a variety of items including even the pointy items but they couldn’t break into the house even through the windows. At most only a few marks were left.”

What hope was brought about by a hero possibly coming to rescue was once again destroyed as color drained from Cordelia’s face.

“We are supposed to stall a ghost like this? How? There isn’t even any chance to escape once the ghost enters the house. The entire structure gets locked in.”

Aiden’s lips were pressed thin as he thought hard about how to combat the ghost. He went through the conditions of the ghost, trying to find what could be the missing condition.

Shoes.

He knew it had something to do with shoes. Or any footwear. But what could you even deduce from that?

Yes, from the pattern which Valeria found out, I could check out the houses which were spared by the ghost. But would they let me? What will I tell them? I am here to check on your footwear? Chuck it, that should be handled by Hellen and Valeria.

Aiden could understand what Hellen meant when she said the helping ghost was extremely weak. And even weaker against who it has targeted unless the activation period ends.

At least the helping ghost hasn’t been able to kill him yet. But what about the special ghost? An entire house is murdered every fucking night with no way out.

Aiden expressed his plan to aunt Hellen who looked at Valeria. The investigator was quick to nod, these types of requests weren’t new in her line of work.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Suddenly everyone heard sounds of crunching. They turned with fear in their hearts.

Only to find Lucas munching on chips. At some point, the light oriented super had gone off to find some more snacks to eat. When everyone looked his way, he simply spread his hands.

“What? I am hungry. I haven’t had dinner. In fact none of us has had any dinner and it’s already approaching midnight. Why not eat when you have food in the house?”

Aiden lightly chuckled as he gazed at his friend.

Everyone really does have different concerns.

“We should name this something.” Aiden tapped on the screen of Valeria’s phone which still displayed the image of the special ghost.

Unlike the helping ghost, it had nearly no clothes on, only red shorts. Aiden didn’t know if it was the color of the cloth or the blood. His doubts were valid, as its entire body was covered in dried blood, looking all red with brown spots. Far fewer flesh hung loosely from its body compared to the helping ghost, it was also considerably bulky.

A shoe could be seen in one of the pockets of the shorts. From its design he could see that it was a female’s shoe. Talking about a female, there was also a necklace on the ghost which weirdly stood out in the picture.

He looked at the crowd, who didn’t give any reply and spoke again.

“If no one has any opinions, should I name it? I just thought of one in fact.”

“Go ahead.” Hellen spoke with a smile.

“The Crimson Devil.”

*****

Arastel, Damar, Modegan and Peleria. All the past borders were erased and countries were merged in order to form the current four big nations. The four huge countries each had numerous towns spread across their lands, each having their own independent government to take charge of the respective nation.

The Bluris town, residing on the edge of the south west of Peleria was just one of the many towns across the largest country. Arastel was in the west of Peleria, while Modegan was situated above them, forming a triangle of sorts. Damar was small compared to the rest of the countries. It was an island situated southeast of Peleria.

All the four countries were divided by water. Each country had plenty of tiny islands but the two of top 3 biggest islands come under the territory of Modegan. The biggest island was the smallest country, Damar.

Each country had their own individual government which managed the country but above all of them was the Bureau, managed jointly by the 4 governments, a group of supers, the ancient families and the academy.

The headquarters of the Bureau was located in the center of Peleria. Surrounded by mountains on all sides, it had a natural barrier from external threats. At this point a car left the encirclement of the mountains, riding smoothly on the seclusive road covered by a dense canopy of trees.

In the car, a middle aged man was on a call, speaking to the prison warden of the city he was the overseer of. Recently, one of the six heroes has demanded death row inmates to be sent to her.

Apparently it wasn’t the first time. He already knew from being in contact with several other city overseers that she had also asked for death row inmates from them.

Along with a few conditions, only an Adept super can qualify to become city overseers. Naturally, being an Adept super meant he was eligible to visit the Bureau headquarters if he faced some difficulties.

Now, the problem was that his city had too few criminals which were sentenced to death. And he wasn’t comfortable being strict on the people of his city, or those of surrounding towns. But could he dare not be able to satisfy the demand of one of the six heroes?

So, he asked the Bureau for some solution. Who simply asked him to visit the headquarters and lent him a few such criminals from the prisons under their control.

He got a call from his prison warden as soon as he left the Bureau’s headquarters, informing him about how he had already prepared the space for the new prisoners he would be bringing to settle in. Now he could only hope he would reach the city before the hero.

*****

In the north of Peleria where the land met the ocean

“Mad woman, are you eating them?”

A bulky man asked as he sat on the ground. There were six people sitting in a circle on an array of lines.

The lines pulsed once in a while, glowing for a brief second where the pulse was carried over away from them. The line met a huge dome in the distance.

Looking from afar, the huge dome was completely pitch black, with no way to see what was inside. The semi circular dome was so huge that from the place where 6 people were sitting, they could only see a minor arc of the entire circumference.

Its height reached the clouds, where their sight could no longer reach, making it an absolute behemoth of a structure.

The person whom the bulky man was referring to was a beautiful red haired woman who was similarly sitting on the ground. Her middle age did nothing to cover the charm in her smile as she replied,

“What I do has nothing to do with you. We agreed not to interfere with each other years ago if I remember correctly. We’ve only gathered here because of the emergency, don’t mistake it for a get-together.”

The red haired lady stood up, and dusted her clothes as she told them, “I’ll be heading towards the place where the possible Master ranked special ghost was found as I’ve already made preparations to get more of what I need on the way. Anyone else want to go?”

One of them, who was an old man who looked like he had one leg in a coffin, chuckled as he lightly spoke, “It’s in Peleria. I don’t think anyone would want to help out. You are the only hero who emerged from Peleria, it’s only right that you go, we’ll handle things here.”

Turns out that they were the legendary six heroes who stood at the forefront of disasters during the Great Smog as depicted in the books.

“I expected as much.” The red haired lady nodded. By now, it was obvious that she was Eleanor Vermillion, whose statue was placed in the town of Bluris and possibly across all of Peleria. It was expected, given that she was the only hero from this country.

Similar to how she was depicted in the statue, Eleanor wore a large overcoat, had a book in her and a round hat which fully covered her forehead. Saying nothing else, Eleanor turned and calmly walked away as the rest of the 5 heroes engaged into discussion.

“What does she need so many death row inmates for?” A youth asked. He seemed to be the youngest of the group, but those in the group knew that it was only his face which was blessed. His age was pretty much in 40s.

“I don’t know either. My informants only told me she has been taking criminals from each major city.” It was the old man who spoke earlier.

A black haired lady, equally as beautiful as Eleanor, had a mechanical mask on her face. A second after she moved her mouth, everyone heard a mechanical voice from the mask. Judging from her actions, it seemed like she had an ability which had likelihood of activating if other’s heard her true voice.

“Could it be her second ability?”