Four months later...
Training has been the regular activity for Yuria, Tezariah and Mikasa. Both Yuria and Mikasa have improved leaps and bound within the past few months. This was even more evident on Yuria who's bloodline was now showing signs of awakening. Whenever she was training, she would unleash heat to her surroundings. Luckily it was winter within the past few months and Yuria was still attempting to awaken her bloodline.
During the last month though, she nearly burned the grass from the heat she had been releasing and thus caused a concern for Yuria. Tezariah decided to relocate their training area to the abandoned factory as the area was made of metal which were more resistant to heat. Also, because the place has been contaminated with the holy magic and demonic aura from the contract summoning, it also slightly caused a restriction to the heat Yuria was releasing.
Another thing that improved in Yuria was her battle skills and senses. After breaking through as a Chosen, her bloodline seemed to impart to her a collective set of battle skills know as the [ War Arts of Eastern Sun Dragon]. Surprisingly, it complimented well with her kendo which made it a lot easier to learn. It was like the battle skills were handmade for her.
On the other hand, due to the pressure of Mikasa and Yuria, Tezariah has also grown stronger and officially enter the ranks of Overlords a month ago. For the past few weeks he had been consolidating his aura while also upgrading his original spells. In fact from this, a 7th Original Spell was slowly coming into form All he needed was time.
Recently though, Yuria was having lesser time for training due to work...
...
Yuria arrived home from work very late at night. Seemingly to be very tired, she directly went to her room. This has been the case for two weeks already. In fact even Tezariah has started to get curious as to why she always came home late but because he also knew that her job contains sensitive information, he held back from asking.
Three hours later... An hour past midnight.
Yuria came out of her room, and arrived at Tezariah's room.She knocked at his door but got no response. She was about to leave when Tezariah opened the door.
"Can we talk for a minute?" Yuria seemed to feel nervous and tired at the same time.
"Sure" Tezariah replied. Yuria sighed and immediately entered Tezariah's room after he gave way. Yuria slowly walked and sat on the bed seemingly wanting to sleep so bad but was rejecting the call of the bed. Tezariah took a small stool and sat directly in front of Yuria waiting for her to speak.
"Have you heard of any news from the neighborhood recently?" Yuria asked nervously as if the answer Tezariah was going to give would decide a lot of things. Tezariah started to think back of any relevant news he had heard recently from the neighborhood and the local news. There were so many things that happened within the past few days but there was one news that stood out among them to him. The cases of disappearance in a certain street...
" The disappearance cases?" Tezariah said with questioning eyes.
Yuria once again sighed and nodded. She started to explain how weird this case was. According to her there was no leads, no patterns, to evidence aside from they disappeared from the street. Furthermore, when they tried to guard the area, one of her colleagues went missing. For the past three weeks, 17 people have disappeared and not a single trace was found.
Then how did the police know that people were missing? Because someone has been tipping them information. The problem was they couldn't track it as it was either encrypted or ended up being a burner phone. The case was even transferred to the Violent Crimes Division just to get it solved but to no avail. What was even more bothering was the media has finally sniffed something and disappearances are now starting to gain public attention. This infuriated both the police chief and the mayor. This more as election was around the corner with such an event occurring, his position as mayor was starting to look shaky.
What baffled Yuria more was when she tried to send out her perception, she felt something but it immediately disappeared. Then within the past few days, she felt someone watching her when she went around that specific street. She knew that whatever it was, it was stronger than her and that is why she wanted to ask Tezariah for help.
Tezariah approached Yuria and asked her to relax her aura and just allow Tezariah's soul to enter her memories. Tezariah started to see the past few days of her memories and noticed the weird event. After a minute, Tezariah returned back. He told Yuria that he had a speculation but he said he needed to be in the spot to determine his speculations. Yuria nodded and told him that tomorrow they can both go to the area.
Luckily there were no civilians as the whole street has been barred of entry with police guarding every possible entrances 24/7. The reason why Yuria could say so that Tezariah could enter was that, in the past few months, aside from training, she had invited Tezariah on may occasions. Her colleagues now know him as a "specialist" in specific crimes. Even their police chief has started to notice Tezariah. Also, the case was bizarre and the police were already in their last strings in finding evidences. All these factored, assured that they might allow a "specialist" to help in the case.
In fact, Tezariah wasn't the first type of specialist they have invited. Various criminal experts and specialists have been invited but resulted in no results. Thus, they wouldn't mind adding just another "specialist".
The next day...
Tezariah and Yuria arrived at the street. Immediately when Tezariah came out from the car, the colleagues of Yuria, especially the women started to swarm him. He had a good reputation among Yuria's office. Tezariah greeted them all nicely. On the other hand, those from the other stations looked at him weirdly. Some even had a sign of wariness towards him. When Tezariah approached the police line they barred him from entry. Luckily, Yuria first got clearance from their chief closed the ordeal.
They approached the area where Yuria spread out her aura perception. This time it was Tezariah who spread out his aura. Unlike Warriors, Wizard's Aura was more attuned to mana thus was harder to detect, furthermore Tezariah was an Overlord meaning that his control over his aura was fine-tuned. His aura blanketed the whole area up to the police line itself. It was well controlled that if one were to look at the outline of his aura to the millimeter, one would notice that his aura was 5 millimeter from the police line. After 30 minutes or so, Tezariah finally had a clue. From one of the buildings in the area, an abnormal mana disturbance was detected by his perception...
They both arrived at the building searching from the floor upwards and they did it silently as to not alarm what Tezariah felt. When they arrived at the floor where Tezariah felt the disturbance, he immediately noticed the moving shadows. He also immediately ran towards the shadow which was moving away from Tezariah.
The chase led them to a dark room. What was weird was even if the light was opened, the whole room was dark. Both Yuria and Tezariah entered the room and the door immediately shut leaving them standing in a room without an ounce of light. Both of them seemingly to understand the situation did something.
For Yuria, she immediately released her aura which cleared a feet around her. Her heat seems to cause the shadows to retract. On the other hand, Tezariah charged used a spell known as [Illuminating Strike] hitting the wall. Aside from being a holy magic, it also causes a blinding light to fill the area. After the strike, Yuria and Tezariah managed to see an outline of a shadow person just beside the area where Tezariah's hit landed. It immediately disappeared before Tezariah could further act.
The darkness disappeared. The light soon returned to the room as if nothing happened. Yuria stood silently contemplating. Although she was slightly used to magical stuff, after all she was a modern person and would need a few moments to digest what she saw. A LIVING SHADOW!
Meanwhile, Tezariah frowned. His speculation was indeed true and it was the worst case scenario. Yuria looked at Tezariah and saw the deep frown in his face. She asked him about it.
"Baleforce, futhermore it is a very specific type of Baleforce. I never thought that this world had something so evil in it." Tezariah mumbled. Yuria was about to further ask something when Tezariah knelt and started inscribing something.
"What are you doing?" Yuria asked. She now became more nervous as Tezariah was asking out of character.
Tezariah looked at Yuria. He seemed to have forgotten about Yuria due to the sudden flow of events.
"This place is too dangerous. In fact, this whole city... Is in danger." Tezariah said. Yuria was shocked.
"The Dark Ones seemed to have started to move." Tezariah mumbled once more but this time, Yuria heard it.
Yuria began to wonder...
Who were the Dark Ones and why they made Tezariah alarmed..?