Chapter 1

After travelling north for many hours, Alicia thought that perhaps she may have been lost. The organisation told her that there should have been an isolated town nearby, but there was no sign of it. No sign of civilisation whatsoever. There was only the mountainous scenery and the wild overgrown plant life that filled her field of vision in this deep and rather uncharted looking area of the island.

It was all rather disappointing as it was her mission to cleanse this town from an angel, and not the holy angelic kind either. Angels were the names given to horrid monsters who's origins were unknown. They were said to appear out of no where hundreds of years ago, terrorising and feasting upon helpless villagers and townsfolk with no remorse or sense of guilt. Alicia had slayed hundreds of them throughout her nineteen years of life. She had become quite the veteran in it.

She was a SWORD, and SWORDs were the only ones powerful enough to hunt and kill the Angels. They were warriors that were infused with the blood of angels while they were still in their mother's wombs, making them many times faster and stronger than even the best human. The process was cruel and heartless, and would often result in the death of the birth givers, including that of her own mother, who died like all the rest due to complications from labour as a result of the hybridisation.

Due to this, Alicia had obviously never met her mother, and never knew her father either. Much of how the organisation worked was clouded in secrecy, and any line of questioning about their origins or family tree were met with harsh discipline. SWORDs were trained to be as emotionless as possible, although that high bar wasn't always easy to meet. Though they were reminded as children that they were not entirely human, most of them still felt like it on the inside despite the daily reminders to the contrary.

For whatever reason all SWORDs were only one gender. It was said that males were unable to survive the hybridisation process due to the fact that they couldn't hold back the incredibly powerful urges that came about being what they were. Their lives were a constant battle of holding back the monster side within them, and sometimes, the battle was too much even for the best of them to handle. The intense pain and pleasure involved was simply too much for most to handle. Everyday was a struggle for dominance between her human and Angel side, and every day her blood boiled with a powerful desire to succumb to their inner savage and consume human flesh just like the monstrous Angels.

Usually SWORDs would hunt in groups, but today she was alone on a high ranked mission where failure was not as option. Her handler would often send her to places that were willing to pay a lot of gold for her services. She would t collect the money but would complete the job and then tell the villagers to wait for a man in black to come by later and collect the payment. That was how it always worked. She herself would not be payed as she had no use for such things. The organisation provided her with everything she needed. Her utility belt that she used to carry her food pills, a small canteen of water, a small knife as well as various small tools, as well as her trusty great sword that was sheathed against her back. The sword was almost as tall as she was, and as she walked the hilt of the weapon actually stretched higher than her own head.

All SWORDs were given these things as well as a full black bodysuit made from a thin layer of a very strong but also very elastic fabric that was tailor made specifically for her body that went every every twist and curve to upmost perfection. Alicia often marvelled at how durable the price of clothing actually was. She wore nothing else besides it, but there was nothing else needed. It provided high mobility

Her handler had mentioned that the town was willing to pay a lot of gold to get rid of the this specific Angel, and if she couldn't find it, there would be no payday. Of course the pay wasn't for her. She was merely an employee of an organisation who was expected to and treated like a soldier whose only real purpose was to slay monsters for a living.

Sometimes the missions she was given were difficult and sometimes they weren't. In this case, this would be the first time she actually came close to failing a given mission not because the enemy was too powerful, but because she couldn't find the damn town she was supposed to find.

Am I going in the right direction?

Alicia looked up into the sky and judging by the position of the sun, she figured that she was indeed on the right path. The town should have been here. Perhaps it was just over the horizon. She made her way to the top of the mountain she had been walking across for and when she reached the top there she finally saw her destination. Down below in a deep long valley was the evasive town at last.

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Her concerns were quenched. She would not be disciplined for failing to complete her given mission. As she approached it she noticed it was quite small, and easily missable if she chose a slightly different path. It was small, likely only housing a hundred or so people. Definitely below average. This island wasn't known for its large settlements. Besides a great city at the very center there were hundreds of smaller villages and towns scattered around randomly as if no one had any real plans to ever connect them. Commerce was usually done by travelling merchants who would make use of clear roads that were man made, but not in this case. This place was totally lost in the wild.

It was still midday, and the sun was high in the sky. Not that it really mattered as she had no problems hunting at night as well. She could see in the dark better than an ordinary human, but unlike some animals with night vision, she could not see if in near absolute darkness.

She approached the town and when she did she tried to ignore the residence who stared at her with trepidation. Women grabbed a hold of their children while the men would look at her scour fully. Alicia was used to it. SWORDs were never really classified as people. They were objects of fear and were only called in moments of absolute necessity when there were no other options.

The villagers stared at her neon bright features that was unique to all of her kind. All SWORDs went through a bleach like process where their hair and eyes would turn into a colour that most considered to be a white gold. Due to this her pupils were hard to see from a distance as they were somewhat white like the rest of her eyes, and she figured that lack of an ability for others to see where she was exactly looking likely contributed to the mistrust of her kind.

She walked through the town, scanning the area for any signs of the Angel. Like all of her kind she could sense the presence of angels when they were nearby. Angels were clever in the sense that they would hide amongst human populations, killing one of them and then morphing themselves into almost perfect copies of the original. They were shape shifting creatures, and tended to avoid exposing their real ugly selves whenever it wasn't necessary. Despite their names, angels were incredibly cruel. Some of them could even a mimic the memories of its human victims after eating them whole, and when that happened, it was almost impossible tell them apart, even for family members. It was often the case that a single angel would exterminate an entire town slowly over the years as it killed people on by one while replacing itself with a new look each time.

Alicia had seen it all before. In fact, she had seen it so much she became desensitised to it all. The reality of this world broke any liberal mind very quickly. she still felt sorry for the people who were victims to the cruelty of the angels, but after doing this for so long this simply felt like a job for her. And like all jobs all that mattered was completing the mission, even if that meant she ended up inadvertently killing an innocent if it meant extermination of the target. The angels were smart. Smart enough to take hostages in times of desperation and that was something Alicia always had to be ready for.

she flicked her long silvery white hair as she scanned the people of the town. None of them moved, and all of them appeared to be equally as nervous. She watched for certain types of behaviours that would give her a clue as to which one of them was the angel. Sometimes they would even try to run but that wasn't always. The ones that tried to fight were the most fun. When it came to a contest of pure strength, she loses, but in terms of speed, agility and wit, she was superior. A combat by fist would be very difficult to win, but since she was armed with a great-sword, the angels never really stood a chance.

The townsfolk stood still as she walked through their town, inspecting each house closely looking for anything off. Not one one said a thing, such was the protocol for when a one of her kind would drop by unannounced. Her senses tingled when she went by a certain household. The front door was already half open, and so she helped herself inside without asking any permission from the owners. Inside there was a nuclear family sitting across their living room table. A man and a woman, as well their two young sons remained in trepidation, praying that the precious person next to them was who they thought they were.

Alicia approached each one of the family members so she could have a closer feel to see if they were indeed human. She spent a few seconds across each, but finding non of them conclusive. She could smell the scent of an angel as well as sense its distinctive aura, but these four people were't it.

"Does anyone else live here?" Alicia said.

The father, turned over to her. His face was white with fear. "No...there's nobody else. We are a family of four..." He said with a shaky voice.

Alicia was sceptical. Not just in the way he said it but by the strange and unaccounted for reactions of the whole family. The organisation had trained her to be an expert in more than just combat. She was trained to deal with a range of situations, from combat, to understanding human psychology, to spotting a liar or even using her sex appeal to get her way if need be. In this case, it didn't take an expert to know something was up. They were hiding something from her, but she couldn't be certain about it.