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RUMBLE!

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

“Did you feel that tremor?”

“I heard it!”

“What’s going on outside?”

“Maybe an earthquake?”

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

The group, mostly composed of goblins, orcs, werewolves, and the occasional blood elf, constantly discussed angrily with one another while their boss, who was managing a large quantity of products, glared at them furiously.

His fiery red eyes immediately shut them all down as his long claws 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 coming 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… Vlad 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 black werewolf. “Take these with you; eat them when you confront 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, you’re going to get a good chance to become stronger. They’re produced by the main branch!”

“Alright…!”

“Everyone! We’re under attack!”

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

Unlike the previous time where Vlad ended up surprising the thugs, their boss was a much sharper and smarter man; immediately realizing the incoming 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 claws, generating dozens of black and 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 larger, suddenly mutating.

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

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

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

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

FLAAASH!

.

.

.

CRAAASH!

Vlad was surprised as Camilla crushed the thugs like bugs; so strong was her attack that it made the floor tremble quite a lot!

“They’re done for big brother,” said Camilla with a smile. “Hmm, but I can’t let their blood go to waste.”

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

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

“Big bro can eat these, right?”

“Yeah… I’ll save it for later.”

Vlad stored their corpses, which also came with valuable weapons 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?” Queenie muttered at the side of Vlad.

“She’s not insane…” Vlad glared at her annoyedly. “She’s an innocent 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 comes 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 innocents, right, Camilla?”

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

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

“A-A bloody angel at that, eh…” Queenie muttered, her eyebrows twitching.

The group quickly made their way underground, breaking open the small house the thugs were protecting and finding yet another staircase leading down.

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

“Whaaaat? Bait again?!” Queenie screamed.

“Come 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 change that I might die!” Queenie blushed a bit after seeing Alitheus acting all cutesy. “And even if I can revive later, when I die I can lose a couple of my equipped items and also items in my inventory. 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,” Vlad sighed. “Look, pretend these are torches.”

Vlad quickly assigned three Blazing Doppelgangers to Queenie, putting them over small wooden sticks he found along the way.

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

This way, Queenie would carry just torches and look innocent or weak, despite carrying these Blazing Doppelgangers that possess 50% of Vlad’s Stats.

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

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

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

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

“Ah, Camilla…” Queenie sighed, feeling a bit healed by Camilla’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 Camilla was scarier than her own brother by quite a lot; she convinced her of doing this without even making her hesitate or complain anymore.

“Brother, I think I have a talent for convincing people!” Camilla smiled cutely.

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

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

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

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

Well, he hoped.

The trio walked downstairs as they followed Queenie’s trace; using his Doppelgangers, Vlad could see where she was going.

He couldn’t quite share his senses with them or something, but there was a connection 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 flapping them as she looked around nervously.

Eventually, she noticed something weird.

“Huh?”

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

“Um… Hi? I’m lost here… Can someone…”

“Grrrhhh…”

“Eh?”

“Graaaarrrr…!”

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

“Eek! Wait a second, 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 inside the tight corridors by walking on all four… Despite that, it clearly had a humanoid body.

With black, metallic skin covered on black 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 replaced their head with a jackal’s head; its lack of fur in the rest of its body made it even more strange.

“Raaggrrrrhh!”

The half human and half jackal creature roared, swinging his muscular arms and trying to slice Queenie with 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 managed to 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 Blazing Doppelgangers in the shape of Vlad, who attacked the half-jackal human monstrosity with blazing swords they created from their bodies.

Using the Dual Blazing Sword Arts Skill from Vlad, they unleashed several swordsmanship techniques against the creature.

“Greeaaeergh?!”

The monstrosity tried to catch them with his huge harvesting scyhes, only managing to slice one of the Blazing Doppelganger’s legs before it was covered in slicing attacks.

Its arms were sliced, flying away as black blood splattered 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 glanced at 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 black miasmic goop from its wounds.

Queenie ignored it and kept moving forward, looking around, ultimately finding herself within a wide, open area, completely dark.

“Uhh… What’s this place?”

As she wondered that 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 Blazing Doppelgangers lightly illuminated the faces of at least seven more of those huge, strong creatures.

“D-Don’t fuck with me… Come on!”

…

Vlad, Camilla, and Alitheus rushed through the corridors, keeping up with Queenie until suddenly…

“GYAAAAHHH!”

They heard her scream of horror.

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

Vlad grabbed Chris and Camilla, encompassing his entire body with spiraling winds through the Soar Spell and rushing towards the battlefield at lightning speed.

BAAAM!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was dozens of powerful Tier 4 monsters that were almost completely immune to magic!

“GRAARRRR!”

Before they could do anything, seven of them rushed towards Vlad and company, as they had to desperately pull out their weapons 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 Weapon Techniques instead. Camilla, 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 come from was suddenly blocked by its own ceiling crumbling down.

They were trapped.

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