"That certainly looks like the work of a vampire" spoke a man as he stood up, moving away from the dried up corpse he had been examining.
"Don't some succubi and incubi types also leave their victims in a dried up state like this one?" questionned another one a bit further away.
"Well, you are right but I am fairly certain it's neither actually" responded the first man, making the second one raise an eyebrow.
"And what would it be then?" then asked the confused man.
"No idea but these corpses were all stabbed with irregulars amount of things, this one there had ten small puncture wounds while one over there only has a single one, the locations of these puncture wounds are also highly random, the back, stomack area, head, neck, arms, legs there are some everywhere" spoke the man.
"Also considering the arrangement of some of these wounds, I would say that our blood-sucker uses its claws to siphon the blood of its victims" he then added afterwards.
"I see..." answered the second man as he noticed the approach of someone, the person spoke a few words to him which he then relayed to his colleague.
"More victims were found at a nearby mineshaft" he said and they both immediately went on their way toward the new crime scene.
Upon arriving there and taking a few looks at how things were looking, they both turned to each other and said the same thing.
"Everything is exactly the same" both of them spoke, the corpses shared the same wounds, the same irregular amount of puncturation points and of course, the same dried up state, it was truly impressive how not even a speck on blood had been dropped on both the crime scenes, one would expect at least a drop to fall to the ground in the initial struggle but it wasn't the case.
Looking at placement of the corpses, it seemed obvious that these people fled inside of the mineshaft, meaning that the threat had come from outside.
One of the two picked up a pickaxe from the ground, noticing puncture holes in the handle as well as on the head of the tool, clean holes, it seemed like their culprit had some powerful claws to punck through steel as if it was butter.
"AAH!" suddenly, the sound of someone yelling resonated throughout the mineshaft, ending up exiting it and notifying the two men that not all had fallen prey to the unknown creature yet.
Yet, none of the two moved a centimeter, not even appearing a tad bit surprised or nervous, they remained fully composed as though they had heard nothing.
"There is no other exit to this place, is there?" questionned one of the two.
"From what I saw, there is but this passageway to both enter and exit this" responded the other calmly.
"Then let's get the armed force here to blow this shit up" casually spoke the man who asked the question, the other simply nodded and they walked away.
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'Goddamnit! Is no one hearing me scream like a pig having its throat slitted?!' thought the man whose scream had indeed been heard but promptly ignored.
He was running through the unlit tunnels of the mineshaft at high speed, bumping his feet and toes in rocks and scraping against the stone walls in his hurry.
'Why did I think it would be a good idea?!' he wondered as he recalled the plan he had tried to put to the test a few moments before he had screamed at a volume he didn't know he could reach.
He had tried to use his measly but useful light magic to blind the monster and run past it but he had forgotten a crucial detail, the monster had no eyes.
'If it doesn't have eyes, then why does it keep on looking at me?!' he wondered as he slapped hos forehead a few times, the monster was indeed turning its head toward what had its attention, it should have been a clear sign that it was looking at them and thus had eyes but nothing made sense today.
Thankfully for him, he wasn't completely unarmed in this situation, he may be a dirt poor, uneducated peasant with slight alcoholism but he was the best miner around!
He had the luck of possessing night vision as a skill since his birth and with the various crystals and stone that emmited even a slight bit of light, he could see rather clearly in the dark and with his crappy light magic abilities, he may be able to do something or not since he could only think of blinding stuff and using it to light the way.
Apart from that, he had nothing but his body, which was already covered in bruises and cuts, the man turned his head to look behind him for a moment as he had been running in a straight line for while and as expected the monster was right there, peeking its red and bloated, featureless head around the corner, he thought that he was safe as the monster was still far away from him and didn't seem eager on running after him.
However, as he saw its head slightly cave in as if it was about to spit and its whole head light up a bit, his mind went blank and he tripped, falling face first on the stone ground.
A small but shiny as wall as warm, even from this distance, line of a red substance went right through were his nape would have been.
"Ah! You missed dumbfuck!" let out the man as he got up, his face covering in bruises after sliding across the stone ground.
However, he didn't say any other words as his head suddenly detached from his body, without any blood pouring out, the look on his face clearly tell that he didn't realise that he had died as in his last moment of consciousness as a decapitated head, only an expression of mild surprise appeared as if he was wondering why his neck itched so much.
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The cave was blown up and the whole thing collapsed on itself, a big hit to the locals as the mine was a big source of revenue, the venerer didn't even have to burst out of the rumbles to kill them as the angry mob had already done it.
One is almost always scared of the big bad monsters but they shouldn't forget that a pitchfork could probably end them, especially when there were hundreds of said pitchforks and that the wielder of the pitchforks lack education.