Venis sighed as he evaporated yet another demonic servant. Lately, the demonic presence has tripled near Vampirneck, one of the smaller underground cities of the vampires. The vampires weren’t quite at war with demons although the situation wasn’t looking good. They were persistent in trying to find Vampirneck and refused to give up.

Thankfully, the demons had no clue where the city actually was otherwise it was likely they would already be dead. To a normal human, the death of a monster such as Venis seemed to be impossible. Unfortunately, on the grand scale of things, Venis was actually quite weak. Sure, he was in the C tier but anyone in the B or A tiers could kill him with a single thought. Unfortunately, his main enemies, the demons, had the most A and B tiers out of any country.

Truthfully, there was usually a B-tier ruler for each vampire city but the previous ruler of Vampirneck had died at the hands of a mid B-tier demon. Thankfully, he had at least managed to curse the bitch before he died. The curse was quite powerful and sealed away the demon’s powers. This wasn’t without a high cost though, as the vampire ruler gave his life to cast it. Still, it was worth it in the end as nipping the bud of such a powerhouse would be a great loss for the demons. They may have had most of the B and A tiers, but that didn’t mean they were common. There were only around ten A tiers and forty B tiers out of the millions in the demonic army. They were truly rare.

This meant that the demons were currently throwing everything at them to find the demon girl they had captured. Currently, they kept the girl alive because killing her would net the wrath of the entire demon race which would most definitely result in a war. At that point, Venis could just kiss his life away because he would have no chance of surviving. Still, having kidnapped her wasn’t much better, and tensions between the countries were extremely high right now.

Thankfully, the girl wouldn’t be in his hands for much longer as some higher-ups from the capital city would be coming to take her away soon. They said she would be useful as a bargaining piece in case any conflicts arose.

Having completed his goal, Venis walked back inside the city. He was keeping a close watch as a demon successfully finding the city meant death for its hundreds of thousands of civilians. Not only that, but the loss of humans would be truly immense. They only became a rarer resource by the day and many countries had resorted to summoning them from other worlds. Still, this process was costly and could only be done every now and then.

Still, the leaders of the vampire country, Velica, decided on such strict measures when dealing with summoned humans. Any with a class were instantly killed. Any with higher-than-normal stat points were instantly killed. Any who tried to leave their designated area was instantly killed. To Venis, it was truly ridiculous! The humans would never become strong enough to fight back, let alone overthrow the vampires! He could only shake his head at such decision-making in times of crisis. The vampires needed humans to live as the blood of monsters or other races was insufficient.

Venis entered his office and sat down with a grumble. The times were stressful and were only getting more so. Besides just the demon problem, he had been getting reports of murders in the tenth and newest sector of the city. A mafia hoodlum, five guards, and three torturers were all killed with little evidence of who did it. To make matters worse he hadn't heard from one of his training barracks recently. Since this was the same sector where the girl was kept, Venis was terrified that a demon had snuck their way into the city. As time went on, he began to think that wasn’t the case. He highly doubted any demon would wait so long to extract the girl and absolutely destroy the city. Still, this left him with the mystery of who this attacker was and why they were doing this.

It wasn’t impossible that it was a vampire as there were plenty who had lost their mind. However, Venis couldn’t think of any who would be strong enough to do what the attacker had done, even if all the victims were still D-tier. Each of those who had been killed had only a single wound on their body, all besides one anyway. He was actually able to find out a little information about that case but it wasn’t useful. All he was told was that some mafia guys beat some vampire named Menoth but didn’t kill him. They still wanted their payment after all.

Stolen story; please report.

Yet, Menoth was found dead by some passersby who quickly reported it to the guards. Besides his beating, there was a single wound in the heart, a vampire’s biggest weakness. Despite common belief, vampires could die from other means beyond just getting stabbed in the heart. That being said, it was incredibly difficult to do so. One would have to beat them so fast that it outpaced their excellent regeneration rate until their HP hit zero. Ultimately, that made the heart a much easier goal.

There was also a human that had been seen with Menoth but Venis scoffed at this idea. He truly didn’t believe that any human they kept would have a chance in hell of killing one vampire let alone nine!

Venis groaned as he got no further in his mental investigation. If this shit kept up then he would be forced to up the security in sector ten which would just be a pain in his ass.

A frantic knocking at Venis’s door only made him groan louder as only a fool could realize it likely wasn’t good news.

“Come in,” he said annoyedly.

The door opened up and in walked a vampire wearing expensive-looking battle armor. Xeruf was Venis’s right-hand man and one of the few he trusted to come directly into his office. Xeruf quickly kneeled as he entered and bowed his head.

“Sir,” he said with a slight nod.

“Speak,” Venis commanded.

“Er, one of the guard barracks in the tenth sector was…” Xeruf paused to think about his next words carefully.

“Well, spit it out!” Venis shouted in irritation.

“Well, they’re all dead sir. Not one of them was left alive. To top it all off, each one of them was killed with a single strike to the heart.” Xeruf audibly sighed as he saw Venis about to explode.

“What the fuck!” Venis slammed his fists into his table, smashing straight through it.

A million things started running through Venis’s head as he realized the situation may be much worse than he originally thought.

“Fuck! I want the security in sector ten to be raised threefold! No fivefold! We need to catch this bitch before he causes more damage!” Venis angrily started pacing back and forth.

“Yes, sir.” Xeruf nodded his head and thought for a moment. “I will personally ensure the security of the tenth sector.”

Upon hearing this, Venis visibly relaxed. “A wonderful idea. Due to sector ten’s… exclusive situation, I will allow you to eliminate any threats without worry. Any complaints can come directly to me,” Venis sneered.

“Sir,” Xeruf nodded and promptly left the office.

Venis slumped back into his chair and groaned. This situation was much worse than he thought it was. Whoever was causing these deaths was strong and had the ability to sneak around undetected. He would ensure that a few vampires with signal skills would be on site as an added precaution. However, now that Xeruf was on the job, he was much less worried.

Xeruf was still a D tier but was relatively high and had strong abilities. He was truly a unique specimen who had a large chance of growing to be a powerhouse.

Usually, he wouldn’t have cared nearly as much about all of this but sector ten contained the captive demon. He didn’t want any trouble to take place there before any of the higher-ups came to take her. It would truly be awkward to have to explain that Venis can’t keep the peace in one small sector of one small city.

Plus, there was just a fresh summon of humans in sector ten. He didn’t want the killer to do anything to them as they hadn’t had time to mate and grow their population. He had his ways of keeping track of and protecting all of the various human groups in the city. Still, as the ruler it was his job to worry about such things no matter how small the chances were.