Sean and Wendell sat at a corner led by the beautiful waitresses while another beautiful attendent brought a menu card relieving the waitresses who went back to the front ready to greet other incoming guests. Wendell ordered a bunch of dishes after looking at the menu, while Sean looked around to see other guests. Most of the guest in the restaurant were around the age of Sean and Wendell clearly looking around with curiosity while other guests were a bit older and were in group of five to seven and sometimes even ten as they occupied larger tables. Wendell who saw that Sean was looking at the bigger groups he said "They are mercenaries. There is a Mercenary guild in this city. Every medium and large cities have a mercenary guild where missions will be issued". Sean who heard this nodded and listened to the conversation that these mercenaries were having while waiting for their food to arrive.
Most were talking about their missions while some were talking about women while others were joking around telling tales of their bravery. Since these mercenaries were loud enough, their conversations were heard by people nearby and like Sean most kids who came to the city for the first time were watching with curiosity. Soon another group of seven mercenaries entered the restaurant and Wendell who saw them was surprised as he called "Alex,Billy over here" while waving his hand. The two guys leading the group of seven turned to look at Wendell, smiled and waved back while calling a waitress to get a bigger table. Wendell who saw them get a bigger table also got up while telling the attendant nearby to bring their food to the bigger table while asking Sean to join him. Soon a group of nine sat at the big table and Alex who lead the team in asked Wendell to introduce me. Before Wendell could say anything Sean said "Hi, I am Sean Walker. I am Wendell's brother and have come to enrol in four leaves Academy".
" Oh, well I am Alex. I am your brother's teammate and this is Billy,.... " said Alex as he introduced all seven of them. There were a total of 5 men and 2 women all around 17-18 years of age. Wendell then proceeded to explain that from the third year of Academy the students are required to join a mercenary guild to get practical experience. Then Wendell turned back to Alex and asked "Didn't you guys return to your hometown?".
" Well we planned to return, however we received an escort mission to the capital from the guild and the pay was good as we had to escort a merchant caravan, so I had no real reason to refuse. I had all the members who remained in the city round up for this mission. The merchant caravans were many and so many mercenary teams accompanied along with us. During the mission we barely had any work to do apart from regular scouting and guarding along the route"
"Oh, well looks like I missed a good chance to earn some more money" said Wendell as the dishes they ordered arrived one by one. To the right side of them, a group of 4 were seated. There were two men and two women and one of the men who had blond hair said "Did you hear? Another warrior went missing. It is the same as other missing warriors, all of them were from small clans or from normal families".
"What are the officials doing? This has been going on for many months, are there no clues" asked the girl who was sitting on the opposite side of the blond guy.
"The mercenary guild has placed a mission asking for clues while giving high reward and many had taken the mission but as of yet no one could find any clues. It is as if they had vanished into thin air" said another guy who had black hair.
Sean who listened to this had his interest piqued and continued to listen. Since they were loud enough Alex and company heard it and had a solemn look on their face. Ellie, a member of Alex team said "We also took this mission to investigate the missing warriors. It seemed to have begun around 3 months ago when two level 1 warriors had gone missing on the same day. As they were low level warriors it had not garnered anyone's interest, however after a month of quiet again warriors have started to go missing, only this time it was second level warriors. Till now a total of 11 level 2 warriors have gone missing. All of them were Academic students and were reported to be missing by their roommates in dormitory". Ellie was one of the persons who investigated this case till the trail went cold. Sean who heard this asked "Where did the missing students go before going missing?, At what time did they go missing?".
Ellie who heard this said that the students were mostly first and second years and had gone out after they had finished their classes. They would return at night to their forms, however failed to do so during the night when they went missing and continued that she had already asked around to their friends where the students went after their classes and heard that some went to their part time work while others were simply out to have fun.
Meanwhile in a rather rich neighbourhood a big mansion surrounded by walls and barbed wires was present. In the night with just the presence of starlight to illuminate the mansion, it stood eerily without any lanterns hanging out like other mansions in the locality. The mansion did not have any guards and looked like it was devoid of human activity. This mansion belonged to a medium sized clan which has been on a decline till only a father and son the only ones being alive in the family. The lack of guards in the mansion is because of lack of money and most of the family members died strangely one after another that rumours of death curse have been circulating which prevented the other families to obtain the family's properties for fear of bringing destruction and death to their families. Inside the mansion two people were wearing black robes which had their front side exposed. The room which they were using was filled with red candles with weird symbols placed on their walls, floors and even carved in the stone marble. On the stone marble there were four cuffs at each end and a person had been stripped naked and tied on his hands and legs spread apart. One person who wore the robe was clearly older than the other and both looked emancipated with many strange carvings on their bodies. The older man had a bowl while the younger man had a carved knife and was chanting a magical incantation as he moved towards the stone marble.
The chant was both mysterious and powerful as a portal appeared in the middle of the room and the younger man who saw the portal moved faster towards the person they tied in the marble and raised his knife above the leg of the person while continuing to chant and after every syllable he moved to different body part starting from his leg and finally to his heart and gouged every part and placed it in the bowl which was held by the older person before reverently moving towards the portal and placing the bowl inside the portal.
The younger person who had the aura of level 1 warrior till now suddenly had a strange increase in his Qi as he entered the level 2 warrior. This all started when the younger person found an old book in the library which was inside a heap of other old and useless books and this younger person took the book back to his home to read. The younger person was from a medium level clan but was born without talent in training as a warrior, knight or mage and after training for three years he still could not break into level 1 warrior and was bullied by his brothers. The situation worsened when his mother who was married to clan head was found to be having an affair with a guard of the family which resulted in death of his mother, however they could not find the identity of guard. After the guard stealthily approached him he introduced his identity which turned out to be his father. Though both father and son harboured hatred towards the clan head and the entire family they could not do anything to get revenge until the son found the book.
After reading the book which mentioned of a shortcut way to obtain power through sacrifice of warriors to devils and raising one's own level both father and son hatched the plan to kill every member of the family and increase the father's power which reached level 8 and by the time all the members of the clan were dead, the father and son duo did not stop and continued by killing others in the city stealthily and this time to increase the power of the son. The entire process of sacrifice to devil to obtain power is called Shamanic training which was one of ancient method of training eradicated due to the cruelty of the technique.
After the rise of power both father and son started laughing in the room like maniacs while the son said to the father that they should move onto level 3 warriors for next target.