Not all monsters were as famous as the Necromancer. No, some loved to hide in plain sight. They did enjoy destruction and death, but they couldn’t be bothered with pious hunts led by the heroes of humanity.

There were some monsters that had contributed to slaying a great deal of humans and other creatures like the Necromancer had, but with less ripples and often with no one suspecting them.

Among the great legends that had infested Earth after the apocalypse, one of the greatest certainly belonged to the Plague Doctor.

Many even doubted of his existence.

Only the one who slayed him and few others knew that the Plague Doctor was certainly not a myth.

Oh no, definitely not a myth.

The Plague Doctor had been one of the monsters that humanity should have feared the most. Many plagues that had been believed organic in nature had instead been manufactured by one person. Many pestilences that people waged war with other races over had not been instigated by one of the two sides, but just by the one person.

Wars, crimes and even more.

Families turning on each other, Kingdoms toppled in a fortnight and Empires starting to crumble from the inside.

And it was all a one-man show.

This man really didn’t like attention. And even though he enjoyed suffering, he was much more voyeuristic in nature compared to the Necromancer.

He loved to see people die and it made him exhilarated but didn’t dangle in the limelight. Death was a spectacle in itself to be revered and respected, not a circus to put up for others. It was an intimate experience that the Plague Doctor loved watching happen without making a fuss.

Humans were a bunch of double-faced monsters to him, not unlike the rest of the races on Earth or the Demonic Beasts. He had been betrayed multiple times before he had decided to turn to Evil once and for all. And after being stuffed of lies by those who had been self-proclaimed allies, he had hidden away and let Empires fall while watching from the shadows.

…

St. Liam

The Vermillion Tyrant had housed a small contingent in L’Aquila, but most of the people had stayed in St. Liam, the first town he had liberated. Some families had been torn apart; some others had been lucky enough to survive.

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There were also certain families and individuals, who were not natives of the city and had only be there in passing; those had needed a place to stay and, thanks to Hektor lead, people had offered to bunk up together with other individuals in some hotels, and some families had offered to take in whomever was in need.

One of those families housed three strangers.

They had an eleven-year-old child and they had really feared they would lose him during the apocalypse. But those three strangers had fought off one of the weakest beasts and saved him. To thank them, the family had offered to house them in their huge villa by the sea.

One of the men was a salesman that had just closed a nice deal right before the apocalypse. Talk about luck, huh? He had been close to the harbor of the city and had seen terrifying monsters with one or two hundred too many teeth on their body. Not in—no. On.

Robert, or Bob, as he went by, had almost pissed himself there and then. Salesmen had a strong stomach for weird things and people. Closing a deal sometimes was a filthy affair. But he had never imagined that monstrous creatures like the ones that had started sinking ships in seconds could exist.

“Bob, are you coming to hunt with us?”

Bob turned toward Russell, the sailor.

“No, Russ, I’m going to help the Moretti family clean up the place. If you go out again in the afternoon, I’ll join you.”

Bob didn’t like to hunt.

Hunting usually meant going either at the beach and getting in the water up to your waist, using yourself as human bait for some monster; or it meant going toward the countryside, where monsters were weaker, but also sneakier. There were an awful lot of Demonic Wolves around.

Bob, Russel and Oscar, the third man, were all at the 9th level of the Cockroach Realm, but it didn’t really matter when some Mantis Realm creatures could pop up from the sea in an instant. And if there was no special patrol around, people would die.

Bob was a bit paranoid, to be honest. It had happened three times out of an entire month. And only once there had been casualties. Considering the mass slaughter that most of these people had assisted to, one person dying was a day as slow as Sunday post family lunch.

“Maybe go play with the kid,” Russel said, “I think he’s lonely. Not sure if he’s all there with his head. I don’t know. He could be still scared to death like the first day. But he really likes when you go play with him”

Bob nodded. His personality had been tailored for his job. As a salesman, he had to be cheery and entertain. Hell, he had thought about becoming a stand-up comedian or even an actor.

And if he hadn’t met the apocalypse, who knows, he might as well have.

“Don’t be mean to the kid, Russ. He’s gone through a lot,” Bob said.

“Yeah, so have we.”

“Russ, tell Oscar to get some more water from the river,” Bob said. He had never thought there would be one day they would need to get water from a small river and boil it to avoid any disease.

The man who had rescued them, the one going by the nickname of the ‘Vermillion Tyrant’ told them that after the 3rd stage of the Cockroach Realm it was basically impossible to get anything from contaminated water, but Bob was paranoid like that.

“Yeah, we are running a bit low, aren’t we?” the sailor nodded.

Bob and Russel had known each other for a while, since the former used to come to St. Liam all the time for deals. But the current small talk was pretty much the extent and depth of their conversation.

Bob started walking toward the room of the child, knowing he would find him here playing with some toys or just reading some children books.

He knocked gently and prepared his best smile.

It was time to get down to work.