Hektor and Epagogia almost collapsed the entire building as soon as they came.

The Vermillion Tyrant had carried the Devil himself since she couldn’t yet fly. They had both perceived a third person in Jacob’s company and instantly thought of the worst.

Hektor smashed right into the outer wall of the apartment and was ready to cook any threat in sight.

What they found was a bored Jacob on a bloody couch, a man smiling from a comfortable armchair and a sulking Juliet staring daggers at said man.

“Jaji-boy!” Epagogia jumped to her lover and embraced him, squishing his head in her bosom.

“Oh, wow, that’s the Devil Queen, Epagogia,” Bob said while looking at the intimate exchange. “And you, you are the Vermillion Tyrant, aren’t you?”

Hektor, not perceiving any threat from the man in front of him, relaxed.

“Yes, I guess you have heard of me from the other inhabitants? I don’t remember meeting you, I’m sorry,” Hektor extended his hand with a charismatic smile.

Bob stood and shook it with pleasure.

“You truly are an egomaniac who almost ran humanity into the ground with his own stupid ambition, aren’t you? You almost did the job in my place. It’s incredible what stupidity can do, huh? Sorry, I’m just not your biggest fan. I like extroverts, but you just look like an idiot to me.”

Bob kept the Vermillion Tyrant’s hand in his while talking and exhibited the purest smile through all the speech.

“What?” Hektor’s eyes went wide.

He had never heard someone talk to him like that in this life so far.

And those words…

Was this man another returnee?

“He’s the Plague Doctor, Hektor,” Jacob said as soon as Epagogia released him, hinting at their joined hands.

Hektor immediately released his handshake and jumped back, summoning a flaming spear.

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“Let him be. I decided to cut him a deal. Eppy, we are going to work on a Soul Contract for the Plague Doctor. Hektor, you keep an eye on him, please. If he tries to escape, kill him with the strongest fire you have. Killing him will probably release something very nasty.”

“Well, that’s my Jaji-boy,” Epagogia laughed, uncaring about the Plague Doctor, at least on the outside. “He goes to cure people, captures the guy and then he makes him sign a Soul Contract! Always the overachiever.”

Epagogia bent and stamped a long kiss on Jacob’s cheek.

“What about Nerea, Jacob?” Hektor didn’t comment about the Plague Doctor’s insults.

“Nerea’s in Greece, apparently. We are going to attack her empire as soon as we can. We need to weaken her as much as possible. We are going to take her goddamn head. I don’t want her to become even stronger. I’m not sure what Realm she’s at the moment. Her two warriors had no idea. But she most likely has the memories from her past life. I’d say that she’s at least at your level, Hektor, if not stronger.”

The Vermillion Tyrant usual bubbly self was now dead serious while he looked at Jacob with his fiery eyes.

“She’s probably stronger.”

Silence came upon them, filled with doom and bad thoughts.

And Bob.

Also filled with Bob.

“There are more Tritons and Sirens hidden among the population. She probably sent some to every single coast around the Adriatic Sea. Her empire should be already vast. Those fishes came with the numbers on their side. It’s probably going to take no more than a few weeks for The Eater to consume every single human being in Greece. Her biology probably puts her at the peak of the Hound Realm, I would say. And that’s a conservative estimate. If we are unlucky, she’s already crossed the threshold.”

Everyone stared at Bob and he simply smiled.

“I can put some plague on the Tritons and Sirens here while we send them back to their city. It won’t spread that fast, but it will surely give them a huge headache.”

Jacob started thinking about the best course of action.

“You are our trump card in dealing with such a monster. Her hordes of soldiers are a huge problem given the small size of our settlement. She could have hundreds of thousands of warriors,” he turned toward Hektor, “we have no idea when she will attack here. She could very well do that as soon as she’s done with Greece. Or maybe she’s going to storm off to Eastern Europe. But we can’t let her do that. To avoid getting killed off like nothing, we need a change of plans. We can’t be slow. She’s too big of a threat. We will avoid the larger Italian settlements, but we are going to war. It’s going to be messy and we are going to have many problems down the line. We are going to unite all the survivors we can find. We are going to have to improvise for food and resources. If The Eater is so close and already marching to war at such speed, we don’t have time to perfect every single detail of our plan.”

Hektor nodded, this time with a smile of his own.

“Oh, Jacob, I always dreamed of going to war together.”

“Yeah, but this is going to be a nightmare.”

Jacob looked at each person in the room before looking at the hole in the wall, staring off into the distance.