Tian Xi opened her eyes to find herself in a dark and dilapidated room. The ceiling was practically nonexistent while the wallpaper was peeling away, and there was only a large inverted crescent moon eerily shining down on her with virtually no stars surrounding it. The sky was pitch black aside from that moon. She was sitting on an old wooden bed with a ragged and dusty mattress; there was no blanket or pillow. Debris was strewn all over the bare dirt floor.
Looking down at her own attire, she was wearing a black leather jacket with a large collar and lapels, the zipper was at the side and arched towards the center as it went upward. There were stylish belts with silver buckles linked onto her cuffs, and buttons were economically placed along the front of the jacket. Under the jacket she only had on a similarly black corset that accentuated her curves and boosted her cleavage. Both the corset and the jacket were cut slightly high, as her navel was on display for all to see.
On her hands were silver knuckles with retractable blades and the left knuckle had a long silver chain whip connected to it as its body wrapped around her wrist. The head was a sharp pointed dagger that was slid securely in its sheath under her jacket sleeve.
Black leather shorts wrapped around her bottom tightly, with two belts one crossing over the other. A holster was hanging on her thigh snugly connected to one of the belts on the shorts. She had on over-the-knee chunky heel platform leather combat boots with a sharp toe cap and hidden blades.
The Sword of Oblivion was in her right hand, shining ominously under the crescent moon's dim lighting. Its amethyst gems complimented her lavender eyes greatly.
Tian Xi conveniently had a sword back holster and a spare common silver sword hanging from it. Replacing that silver sword with her legendary kill-all sword, she asked 001 for the world information and mission details.
[Got it, host! Listen well!] 001 really liked the dark setting and his host's current attire ah! She seemed so ready to murder!
This was a Level 3 world.
In the fictional Kingdom of Grethien there was an overarching social hierarchy from the most powerful to the weakest - royalty, nobles, knights, and the peasants. The humans were ruled over by the king and governed by the king's nobles; guarded by the knights. The peasants were the commoners who worked for the nobles and knights as slaves and farmers, and took up other menial jobs that the knights and nobles didn't dare to lower themselves to do. However this social hierarchy was only for the humans who were unaware of the power and existence of the underworld.
The Kingdom of Grethien had more than just humans roaming the streets. There were terrifying and fierce creatures, the werewolves, or lycanthropes. These humans had the ability to shape-shift into unfathomably large wolves. Their bites could curse and turn other humans into werewolves at a slight chance, their claws and fangs were deadly, and they had enhanced strength, agility, stamina, and senses. They were carnivorous and they particularly favored human hearts, but they generally ate any meaty life-form. Normal weapons did not inflict much damage if any, and their regeneration capabilities were unrivaled.
After the witch hunt from a few centuries back that resulted in many deaths of their kind as well as the disappearance of many of their pure bloods, the werewolves began to lie low and preferred to act undercover. They had their own social structure similar to the humans who lived in the light.
The werewolves ruled by fear. Their kings were the most powerful of the clan. After the witch hunt, only four pure-bloods remained to be known and were crowned as the Four Kings that governed and ruled the four directions; North, South, East, and West. Each king was powerful in their own right, but the Eastern and Western Kings were always passive and gradually faded from the common werewolves' sights and minds as they divided their rule to the Northern and Southern Kings equally.
Hugh Noir of the South and Valentine Argent of the North were always at odds and their conflict naturally affected the rest of the clan, throwing the underworld into unrest. They led their own factions against each other in order to unite the clan under one rightful ruler.
Eventually, the scale of their internal conflict exploded and reached the humans when they wanted to expand their own manpower and territory. They began creating more werewolves by inflicting the curse upon those who lived under the sun. Also, many believed themselves to be stronger if they killed more humans and ate more hearts. Violence ensued and escalated rapidly.
This of course did not go unnoticed by the human royalty and nobility. The king ordered the knights to heighten their security and strengthen their guard, however that proved to be fruitless. Nevertheless, there were some under-the-table deals between the royalty of the humans and the werewolves, so the knights were just for show. The king wanted more power and wanted to use the werewolves to maintain his position. He exchanged his people for his throne.
After being suppressed for so long and the number of victims piled up, the peasants and even some nobility had decided to take things into their own hands. They became hunters.
These hunters never considered themselves as knights because most were peasants to begin with and did not qualify to become knights, who were mostly the legitimate and illegitimate sons of nobles and royalty. Similar to the werewolves, they were part of the underworld and had two identities - a normal human and a hunter. They trained themselves and created their weapons made of silver. Silver bullets and swords were their choices of weapons.
The werewolves had initially been negligent of the existence of hunters in the beginning because they were truly too weak. The hunters kept their growth and operations highly covert and under wraps so as not to draw too much attention and aggro from their prey and predator. It wasn't until the werewolves noticed the anomaly that it was too late for the werewolves to truly hinder the growing underworld power of hunters.
Some werewolves who unwillingly became werewolves had attempted to join the ranks of the hunters, but most were scorned even if they managed to get in. Furthermore, when they were faced with their progenitor and the kings they would be compelled to unconditionally obey whatever command was asked of them. In short, they were double-edged swords.
As to the mission information, the world revolved around Hugh Noir of the South and his becoming the Ruler of the Night. Hugh was the second eldest pure-blood in existence even before the witch hunt from centuries ago. He was also the most powerful. Somehow, after the witch hunt, however, his powers had drastically weakened and that did not go unnoticed by his competitor, Valentine Argent of the North, the sly and cunning oldest pure-blood in existence.
As the "eldest brother," he always felt that it was only right that he should lead the clan as its sole leader. Unfortunately, his siblings did not agree hence the existence of the Four Kings even after most of his pure-blooded brethren had already disappeared into nothingness. After pulling some strings, he eventually got the Eastern and Western Kings to agree to handing their power over, but Hugh managed to convince them to split it equally, irritating Valentine to no end.
Anyway, the key point was that the two were at odds with each other and it had been a long-standing battle since the beginning of time due to Valentine's greed and Hugh's righteousness. That's right, Hugh had no real intention to become the ruler. He only wanted to maintain order by keeping Valentine from becoming the ruler because he knew that Valentine was greedy and would throw the entire werewolf clan into chaos once again by waging a war with the humans. He was convinced that Valentine would not be satisfied with only ruling over the werewolves.
Hugh was one of the rare werewolves that, while he did enjoy human hearts as they were simply delectable, he refrained from killing humans unjustly. He only killed those who threatened his clan and even other humans. During their faction war, Valentine's Northern faction was the one creating new werewolves at an unreasonable pace as well as feeding on the humans. Hugh kept his faction in check, and passed down an order shall anyone feed or curse a human they may as well defect and get out. Despite his golden rule, his faction consisted of many noble and powerful werewolves. In short, Hugh had quality and Valentine had quantity.
How did the werewolves view the hunters? Hugh wanted to get in touch with the leader of the hunters association, Urian Lavande, Cecily Lavande's grandfather. The Lavande family was a family of nobles in the Kingdom of Grethien. Was. Cecily's parents and siblings were slaughtered mercilessly by Valentine, who framed Hugh for their deaths. Urian was not one to believe everything he heard, but Cecily was young and hot-blooded and immediately set off on her vengeance against Hugh. She hated her grandfather for colluding with the murderer of his own family and disowned her rank and name to become a true hunter of the underworld.
For the next couple of years, Cecily openly killed many werewolves from both factions, uncharacteristic of a typical hunter. However, it didn't matter to her whether or not the werewolves knew her name and face. She simply wanted to kill each and every one of them in order to raise her strength so that she could go up against Hugh and kill him. Of course, she didn't plan on leaving Valentine just because he was the one who "kindly" told her that Hugh was the murderer. She sobered up from her hot-blooded youth sometime along the bloodbath and also figured that Valentine could have been lying. But she really didn't care because if she wasn't sure which one was responsible, why not just kill them both?
Eventually, in a crucial battle between Hugh and Valentine, she had attempted to launch a sneak attack against Hugh after Valentine had been immobilized and it succeeded. Weakened and pushed to the limit, Hugh was enraged and gauged out her heart and ate it, regaining some power and managed to finish off Valentine in his rage. Hugh was furious when he woke up from his rage as he never intended to kill off Valentine because of his status as the eldest and the leader of the enemy faction. With a living Valentine, it would have been easier to clean up the leftovers of his faction by using his influence. However, with a dead Valentine there would only by avengers and loose stragglers.
Nevertheless, he got the job done and united the clan under one ruler. He also deposed the corrupt king and established a just human ruler and maintained a stable relationship where the werewolves keep to themselves in the underworld and occasionally helping to get rid of human criminals in exchange for those criminals' hearts and meat.
Tian Xi was currently in Cecily's body. She was really relieved she didn't have to deal with three romantic worlds in a row, since they were truly a bore. She was even more relieved that she had invested in her Taekwondo mastery as well as some basic sword skills, at the same time wondering if Wen Ren had foresight or some shit because damn. He gave her the Sword of Oblivion and it could literally kill almost anything so he virtually handed her a cheat for the price of her name and a thank-you.
Tian Xi vowed in her head to pat his head in gratitude when she next saw him.
'001, send me the mission details.'
[Aye, host!]
[Main Mission: Become the Ruler of the Night. Reward: 5000 points]
[Side Mission: Avenge Cecily's family. Reward: 2000 points]
[Side Mission: Kill Hugh Noir of the South. Reward: 2000 points]
[Side Task 1: Kill 100 werewolves. Total Reward: 5000 points (50 points per kill)]
[Side Task 2: Reconcile with Urian Lavande and reclaim Cecily's name and rank. Reward: 3000 points]
[Side Task 3: Depose the human king. Reward: 500 points]
[Side Task 4: Appoint a worthy king. Reward 1500 points]
'DAMN, 001, ease up on the spam!' Tian Xi took in a deep breath and couldn't hide her smile at the number of missions and tasks upon entering the world and especially at those drool-worthy rewards. imagining the other tasks that could pop up at any time during her stay in this world got her excited. As expected of a higher level world, though it was just a level 3, it was still the highest she could get into at the moment.
[Apologies, host. I got carried away.]
'It's all good, bruh, keep 'em coming ah!' Tian Xi shamelessly looked at the rewards and calculated everything over and over again in her mind.
She went through the original body's memories and found that it had already been two years since Cecily had left home. She was now 19 and had already made a name for herself in the underworld and was currently in an abandoned village that was owned by a small pack in the Northern faction, waiting for them to return from their hunt.
Sure enough, she soon heard some growling, panting, and the howls of wolves from afar as they made their way back to their hideout.
The corners of her lips crept up in a sinister way as a ruthless light flashed through her beautiful lavender eyes.
Let the hunt begin.