A storm raged outside an old mansion. Thin pellets of water assaulted the aged slate roof, creating a loud, omnipresent hum within its walls. It was unfortunate for those inside as the lack of upkeep on the aged structure didn't do it any favors against nature's indifferent siege. Already, puddles of water formed within, especially near cracks within the windows and walls. The resulting humid air didn't just carry the dull stink of rain, but two other unusual smells: one was the faint odor of rust, while the other was a pungent odor that could only be compared to a furious skunk.

Step. Step.

Resonant, creaky footfalls could be heard as a duo walked down a poorly lit, dilapidated corridor.

"These thralls never learn, do they?" a confident, playful voice asked. "Hiding in these hovels to escape persecution. Hmph~ Pathetic.

"No, but isn't that to your taste Illya? I mean, we can do whatever we want here without the threat of property damage." A baritone voice calmly questioned.

"True. True. It's nice not needing to expect any paperwork at the end of this little hunt. Good to cut loose every now and then."

He turned to her with a raised eyebrow. "Is that before or after you remember how weak they'll be? Ghoul hunts aren't exactly known to be challenging."

She shot him a challenging smirk. "I don't know what you're talking about. The task before us is a necessary tragedy. I'm offended you'd think a 'challenge' is something I'd be concerned with."

"Hmph." He snorted.

His eyes sharpened.

Sniff. Sniff.

The previously mild scent of rust assaulted his senses with newfound power. It'd been there before but the density of the foul odor increased significantly. It was also joined by the pungent smell of feces and decay, a ghastly combination that promised a miserable sight ahead.

"You smell that? We're close."

Illya snorted derisively at that. "Yes, ask the vampire if she's smelt blood before the human. What a wise line of inquiry."

His thoughts paused for a moment. "…Good point. It's easy to forget how strong your species' senses are. Bloodhounds the lot of you."

"Hehe~" She giggled with stifled amusement. "There are perks to being the master race."

"Of course there are…" He replied with a subtle undertone of sarcasm, humoring her blatant bragging.

Reaching the end of the long, expansive hallway, the two stopped before a large set of double doors engraved with bloody, sloppily written runes; all were organized into a simple circular spell matrix. The wood was rotten with rust marring almost the complete surface of the knob and hinges.

He leaned in to inspect the inlaid barrier. "Hmm… I wouldn't have expected ghouls to be capable of reinforcing a door, basic as this lock is."

"It's certainly not common…" She muttered with narrowed eyes. "It's always possible that a more experienced, strong-willed ghoul is among them, but I doubt it. The trail leading here was sloppy and far too easy to follow. I doubt someone capable of overcoming such powerful instincts would make such mistakes."

"Just because they're good in one area like willpower, doesn't mean they know how to cover their tracks. That said…" His eyes noticed something strange in the ward. "Illya… can you look at this a little closer? Specifically, can you look its energy flow?"

She shrugged uncaringly. "Sure."

Her black pupils glowed crimson, lighting her amethyst irises. The second she focused on the door in front of her, she lost her causal posture, standing a little straighter.

"That's odd…" She muttered. "The energy powering this barrier is much too rich for this ward to handle. There's barely any protecting this side of the wall, so it's as fragile as we think it is to us, but…"

"Let me guess." Michael sternly interrupted. "It's meant to keep the ghouls inside."

She wordlessly nodded, still studying the energy structure guarding the door.

"This changes things…" Her eyes narrowed as the picture she'd painted of the situation collapsed like sand under the auspice of this revelation.

Michael continued, "…the clues that led here implied ghouls coming in and out, but the signs inside paint a much different picture…" He dryly concluded, failing to contain the anger at the implications.

"We were led here." She growled. "They wanted to fool us with party tricks."

Michael wordlessly glanced at her growing ire. He couldn't let her get worked up here, not over something like this.

After a moment, he let a smile rise to his face. "Well, why won't we find out what they wanted us to see then." Michael lightheartedly suggested. "Carefully, of course; surprises can be fatal."

"Agreed. I'll take point. Back me up." Silence met her, compliance.

She wasn't in the mood for games anymore. They'd come all the way here at the direction of some banal trickster and they hadn't suspected a thing. If it weren't for her eyes conferring on her certain abilities, the ward trick may have worked. If it weren't for an ability completely unrelated to her own effort, she would've been fooled.

Once again, she was excited to cut loose, to let out this frustration on whatever poor sods lay behind this fragile ward.

She raised her right hand. Its veins bulged as a faint amethyst miasma seemed to ooze out of her pores. A crimson bolt of lightning arced steadily within, tinting the cloud in its colors. Her nails grew into short, sharp claws tinted with the previous amethyst. With a quick swipe, the door shattered without noticeable resistance.

As the pieces fell, the two were met with silence and a horde of beady, bloodthirsty sanguine-colored eyes looking right at them. It wasn't just their irises that carried the bloody color either, but their entire sockets, sclera and all.

The fiends were abominations. Eyes aside, they were all ghastly pale. Not necessarily a shade of alabaster mind you, but the palest shade their respective skin colors could get, something that should only be expected on a corpse. Their postures were hunched to a grotesque degree with exposed veins squirming along their skin visibly pumping blood at irregular intervals. Most weren't even clothed, content to wallow in their nudity, while others wore the rags remaining after a long period of insanity.

"So many…" Michael mustered, astonished. "How could they survive long enough to reach this state with these many mouths to feed?"

Ghouls, while normally sitting at the lowest stratum of vampire, still had a modicum of intelligence; at least. They were closer to a far-gone meth addict; barely functional, but still lucid enough to make plans, misguided though they may be. That's to say they were more than capable of procuring food, even if their methods were crude and often led them to being caught.

Illya didn't respond, simply pointed at the walls housing the fiends.

His eyes slacked with lament at the horrific answer to his question, an awful, yet unfortunately expected clue.

Chained to the walls were groups of shivering victims. Some were inebriated vampires; others were probably human. They were thin, frail, and in one case, morbidly obese. The last one was likely a recent addition considering the condition of his fellow victims, though his eyes were no less vacant than his senior victims. While it couldn't be confirmed without personally inspecting them, neither felt any ambient mana emanating from them nor any mana on their restraints. At most, they looked like starved, anemic civilians. It wasn't a very nutritious food source for ghouls, but considering they were left unattended here, it's the only feasible one.

If that wasn't bad enough, their bodies were wedged between piles of crudely disposed of corpses. Some were clearly from half-eaten ghouls, while others were likely their former, fellow captees. It wasn't difficult to realize that most of the foul odors that continued to assault their senses were the unfortunate result of the tragedy piled before them.

One of the chained victims looked up and screamed, or at least tried to. Their throat couldn't form the words, it was incapable. Others had similar reactions having heard the door being busted.

It wasn't hard to understand why either. The ground was caked in both dried and wet pools of blood. It was an uneven surface, one that bore the scars born of battering victims against it. Blue welts and, in most cases, exposed fractured bones were visible on the victims. The horror this invoked was amplified by the litany of corpse parts littered across the floor, painting a morbid picture of their ravenous way of eating. There was no discrimination; both victim and ghouls were represented among the scattered, shedding light on their fate just prior to being added to either the pile or the menu.

Unfortunately, these findings only confirmed the irritating speculations they'd derived. These ghouls had clearly degraded enough to be almost incapable of rational thought. Sure, ghouls can think, but that depended on them being in the earlier stages of their development before they became dumber than most rabid animals. Like addicts, there were stages, and these abominations were visibly beyond any they'd ever seen. The fact that they, degraded as they were, hadn't torn everyone here into bacon strips was a contradiction to their expected behavior.

These observations only took seconds to take in, and it was a good thing too; the ghouls only needed that long to process their next dinner's arrival.

Illya didn't get a chance to comment as the closest ghouls lunged at them with their jagged jaws opened unnaturally wide.

Claws still bared, she extended her hand, releasing an invisible force that blew the midair ghouls back, crashing into many that'd stayed back. She lunged forward and ripped out the nearest ghoul's throat with her clawed hands.

"Hmph~ Weak." She dully uttered, disappointment written on her face.

The next closest ghoul lunged with its jaws open, while another took a different angle to take a brutal swipe with its gnarled claws.

She shifted back with causal ease, moving out of the way of the oncoming jaws. Without missing a beat, she seized the oncoming, outstretched arm with causal ease and used its momentum, plus her own enhanced strength, to hurl the offending ghoul over her shoulder and into the other's jaws.

The outcome was predictable. The two slammed into each other with the jaws of one ripping into the other. The jaws didn't flinch or retreat from the unintended meal; they worked with relish.

She didn't miss the opportunity using her empowered fist on the exposed back of the one she'd thrown. It practically exploded from the sheer force. She didn't stop, using her other hand's claws to tear out the throat of the other. Three more joined and were dispatched with similar ease.

She quietly groaned at how easy they went down, concluding, much to her discontent, that she needn't expend so much effort. Clearly, whoever had made these hadn't put too much effort into their development.

They weren't in the same weight class. These abominations were starving creatures of the lowest strata of her race, while she was amongst the noblest. Sure, their bodies were powerful, but that was all they could use. Hers possessed similar strength plus the finesse to take it even further beyond through magical means. It was crude instinct vs honed instinct, trained magic, and actual combat experience; there was no competition.

A punch was all that was needed to shatter their vitals. She settled into a rhythm of quick, devastating jabs. Instead of redirections and clever tactics, she put more effort into simply out-speeding and overpowering them.

Behind, Michael took it easy. Around him, floating spell circles extended into cylindrical barrels. Within each, separate circles rotated independently at increasing speeds.

One ghoul looked toward him with narrowed eyes, noticing his less aggressive approach and something else.

"Human. I smell Human." It growled out.

"Human!" "Human!" "I eat!" Nearby ghouls cried out excitedly, completely forgetting about the massacre that proved their frailty to these foes. After all, this was a human, that was a vampire. Naturally, there was no comparison in their strength.

Believing him to be easier prey, the first ghoul charged him with the intensity of a raging bull. Others broke off from the groups laying siege on Illya and followed.

"It's like this every time. I'm always the 'weak one'" He jokingly despaired. "Well, you can't be cute and scary at the same time, so I guess that's a point for me."

The charging ghoul didn't even make it halfway before his head exploded, blown off by a bolt of iridescent, white light. The following group paused at that, having seen the light round fired from one of the many now-glowing cylinders floating behind him. They were all raised in the air, all angled down to prevent friendly fire on the chained victims.

Before the ghouls could even process it, a hail of light fired from the airborne barrels, tearing through the crowd with ease. They weren't as thick nor as powerful as the first one fired; to a trained vampire, they would leave serious burns at the worst. For ghouls though, the weakest of their species who're the most vulnerable to light-based attacks, not even mentioning their lack of experience, the weak rays were like molten rods burning through butter. Each ghoul hit was littered with small holes of burnt flesh. Thankfully, the strikes mostly landed in lethal places, making their deaths effectively instant.

Illya, seeing Michael's assault, decided to speed up. Her mouth curved into a vicious smirk as her eyes briefly scanned the enclosed room, the one now steeped in a very shallow pool of blood. She raised one of her clawed hands and pulled. From the ground, the blood that once belonged to her victims rose into the sky. Her hand flexed, prompting the blood to harden into spikes. Her fingers swung out to full extension.

And it rained.

On one side, beams of light tore at the pathetic creatures. On the other, bloody spikes did the same. It was a blood bath. Where her spikes targeted anything on their body, his were precise. Where she left one to suffer, he would finish. In this cycle, the two quickly cleared out the formerly packed room.

"Sigh~ May your next lives be free from this misfortune." Michael lamented, looking on at the gory sight before them.

"Hmph. If they'd been of stronger mind, this wouldn't have even been necessary; they'd have conquered this madness. These chaffs were so incompetent, I wouldn't be surprised if the reason they were so densely packed was so they could feed on each other."

"That implies evidence of enslavement rather than an inability on their part, something that aligns strongly with our new suspicions…," He paused, disturbed at the implications that came to mind, "… it's unlikely they had a chance to begin with."

"… that's true…" She grumbled as she quietly pondered the scenario. It was an unfortunately common practice at every level of their caste system. They had urges, and ghouls were a convenient outlet for them. They were also an easy way to test out certain… products. Just as easily as this is some sick countesses' pleasure den, it could also be a major part of a hospital's 'clinical trials'.

Of course, it wasn't. Someone led them here deliberately. They didn't know if this was a trap from the countess herself, or a political rival trying to use their hands to butcher her. Either way, they only knew one person who could definitively answer this question, and she wasn't present.

Deciding that any further pondering would be pointless without evidence, she refocused her attention to the task at hand, turning her focus on the blood around her. Like she'd done earlier, she raised her hand and clenched, bending the surrounding blood to her will. At her command, it rose and rapidly streamed into a central point in front of her. The streams pulled together, flowing around her as they did so. They congregated, and forcefully condensed into a head-sized sanguine blob.

Then, a charged, amethyst miasma covered it. Inside, the blob boiled. Sanguine smoke rose from the liquid as it shrunk further and changed color to match the miasma around it. Finally, it settled into a pristine amethyst gem that was incomparable to the tainted liquid that birthed it.

Without much care, she slipped it into her pocket.

"With all the minds here, I'll have to read this when we get back. It's going to take hours to get them sorted out. Hopefully, we can get a clue from their collective stupidity."

Michael shrugged and moved toward the chained-up victims. Their bodies were battered, and their throats were severely inflamed from trauma. Although they tried to speak, to express gratitude for saving them, they were unable to; the damage done was too comprehensive.

His teeth ground as he examined their broken forms. "These people… ghouls as far gone as them certainly couldn't have had the finesse to beat them so thoroughly without killing them. It looked crude on the surface, but… the damage's scale implies something else altogether." Michael growled out, clenching his fists to restrain his anger.

"Sigh~" Illya shook her head with lament. "This was supposed to be a simple cleanup operation in some careless noble's territory. I was hoping her majesty was overreacting…"

"Yeah… it looks like we're working for our paycheck this time." He flatly joked, unsuccessfully trying to lift his spirits.

"No. This won't be anything notable." She sharply denied. Though, from the tense tenor in her voice, he knew for certain she didn't believe that herself. "Now, let's get to it. You free the prisoners while I see what information they have available."

Michael nodded and turned to regard the prisoner in front of him. He raised his hand to the shackles and focused.

"Good, they're not enchanted. This should be quick then." He reached into his pocket, pulling out five onyx bands, each with an assortment of faintly, glowing, golden runes engraved on the outside.

"It'd be nice if transmutation didn't need so many stored processes…" He grumbled his displeasure as he slipped it on his right hand.

He placed his hand on the metal restraints. The runes on the rings glowed in a soft white light. Then, moments later, the shackles slowly broke down into dust that settled into a circular orbit around his hand. While not immediately useful now, the floating dust can be reused in other construction.

While he worked on that, Illya went to the center of the room.

"Prisoners!" Her voice boomed throughout the room, immediately drawing their attention. She let her voice echo across the chamber, swiveling her eyes horizontally to confirm that their eyes were hers. Sure, their earlier appreciation vanished like a dream, replaced by a crippling fear of her magnificent form, but that was fine. She'd settle for the minimum in this case.

"We're here for two things: to find you and for the villains who did this to you." Her volume was much more reasonable; it was soft, yet resonant. "Who is the poor sod with the best recollection among you. Nod your head if you feel like you know something important. If you don't, simply direct your eyes on someone you know does."

The prisoners were shocked at their words. Turning to see them, she noticed a couple nodding their heads, while the others pointed toward a singular prisoner, a battered young man.

Illya's eyes narrowed at the sight of him. He was a fair-skinned teenager with black hair and hazel-colored eyes. Like the others, he was battered and bruised, his body broken beyond imagination. Unlike them though, his eyes still had fire in them; they weren't deadened from the trauma.

"Impressive…" She casually muttered under her breath. "He doesn't even look like the most recent of the group."

Her gaze shifted to the obese victim, visibly the most recent victim. Just like the rest, his eyes were hollow with no fire in them. She looked back and forth between the two. "… how pathetic…" Her tone dripped with disgust.

It probably wasn't fair to compare victims she was saving, but she honestly didn't care. It was pathetic to give up so quickly when a kid half his age could hold out this long.

Her gaze shifted to the other two witnesses. "I'll start with this boy first." She pointed toward him. "You two will be next. Take the time to recall what you remember while I'm doing this."

They nodded hurriedly.

Turning back, she walked to the boy, using the distance to pay more attention to his features. Her brows furrowed as an unusual musk reached her strong nose. Focusing on it, she realized, to her annoyance, that it came from the boy she was approaching.

'His blood smells differently than any human born on Umbra, and Michaels' too... He may be from the source.' She thought to herself. 'Unlike the others, he's not a human from our realm. If that's the case, whoever owns them may be committing a far worse taboo than we expected.'

She stopped in front of the boy.

"Boy." Her voice was firm, causing him to shiver far more than he already was. Even if he saved her, his fear overrode his gratitude. He'd literally just watched her tear through those things like butter. It was a massacre the likes he hadn't seen since… he shuddered.