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nGrim, Leon, and the knights returned to the village as quickly as they could. They were so quick, in fact, that they even beat Clodio on their return. The old knight and the villagers he had taken with him had turned around to go home once Grim’s team had gone off into the forest in search of the werewolf, but with most of the villagers being mortals, they took far longer to return to the village than Leon’s team.

nUpon returning home, Clodio dismissed his villagers, sending a few off to fetch the rest of the villagers who were searching in other directions and bring them back to the village, he walked through the gates of his villa and instantly froze in shock. Waiting for him in his courtyard was Grim and the rest of the knights. Grim was speaking with Odulf, the old guard captain, while Leon quietly meditated in a corner with Anzu at his side, and the rest of the knights chatted amongst themselves.

nGrim noticed Clodio’s return immediately, and he chuckled a bit to himself at the man’s astonished expression.

n“The werewolf’s dead!” Grim shouted to the elder knight. “We burned its corpse so the curse wouldn’t spread!”

n“That’s… good news,” Clodio said as his brain processed both the knights’ presence and the news they brought back.

n“Huh… I was expecting something a little more enthusiastic, but I suppose that’s fine,” Grim said with a shrug as he approached Clodio. “I guess it doesn’t matter. We’re done, so we’re going to head home now.”

nThe sun was setting, and no one in Grim’s team wanted to spend the night out in the rural village.

n“Uh, thank you, Good Sir,” Clodio said, momentarily forgetting Grim’s name in his shock.

n“If you have any more trouble, be sure to let the capital know. We…” Grim said, pausing for a moment as he debated about telling Clodio about Leon’s suspicions of someone else being involved. In the end, he thought that having Clodio be at least partially informed would be safer than simply not telling him anything, so Grim continued with, “… we’re happy to have been of help. We picked up some circumstantial evidence of demonic activity, not enough to warrant a full investigation, but be sure to keep an eye open for anything suspicious.”

n“Demonic activity?!” Clodio asked in shock.

n“Yes, we found a weak fire demon’s core on the werewolf’s person. Wasn’t any stronger than the third-tier, but I still recommend staying alert and cautious for the foreseeable future.”

n“I understand,” Clodio said as he ran his hands through his gray hair.

n“Good day, Sir Clodio,” Grim said as the team’s horses were finally brought out of the stables and he took a few steps toward them.

n“Oh, where are my manners?” Clodio suddenly said. “Your team has done a great service for the village, you would be most welcome staying the night in my home and sharing in my dinner.”

n“We appreciate the offer, but we’re going to have to decline,” Grim said with a smile. “I’d personally like to get these guys home to their families and their own beds as soon as possible.”

n“Can’t argue with that,” Clodio said with a smile.

nThe two knights clasped each other’s wrists, and then Grim and the rest of his team finished getting ready to leave and began mounting their horses.

n—

nLewis stared at the village in front of him. He wasn’t going to get too close. Being around other humans had always made him feel like an outsider, like an other, as if he didn’t belong, even long before he left human civilization for the wilds.

n“No, I can’t get too close…” the pale man muttered out loud. “I’ll wait for them to come to me, instead. They have to go south to go back to the capital, anyway… If that’s where they’re going… If they don’t come this way, I can always catch up…”

nHis anxious rambling continued. Despite the noise he made mumbling to himself, none of the villagers noticed him as they returned home. A few of them even passed by his hiding place, but still saw nothing. He had hidden in the tall grass by the road and was keeping an eye on the village with his prodigious magic senses, but he didn’t want eyes on him until he was ready to be seen.

nThere he sat for what seemed to him like an eternity until he finally heard the sound of beating hooves, but a quick glance upward at the sun showed that he’d only been there for half an hour at the most.

n“It’s about damn time,” Lewis grumbled as he rose to his feet, just barely poking his head above the grass.

nHe sighed as he saw the knights leave the village. It had been long enough that his determination to attack the knights had begun to waver, long enough for him to think over the consequences of what he was about to do and to begin to think that nothing was worth the trouble it would bring.

n“This is a mistake,” he thought out loud. “If I kill them, then there will be more to investigate their disappearance. I would have to pack up and leave! I would be hunted! I don’t want that kind of attention!”

nDespite this rambling, Lewis didn’t make any moves to leave. In fact, in the time that he had spent thinking out loud, the knights had come close enough to see his head sticking above the tall grass. For a moment, he made eye contact with the knight in the lead, and Lewis knew that his opportunity to turn back was gone; he could see the light of recognition in the knight’s eyes. With that one look, the knight knew what Lewis was.

nLewis clenched his fangs and leaped out of the grass directly into the path of the knights. He raised his arms to the side and let loose with a blast of intense dark red demonfire, setting the dry grass on either side of the dirt road ablaze and bringing the approaching knights to a skidding halt and terrifying their horses. The lead horse even reared up and almost threw the knight in front onto the ground.

n“Hello!” Lewis said with a dissonant closed-lip smile on his face as the other knights summoned their weapons and armor from their soul realms. Two even conjured a blade of light and half a dozen ice spikes, respectively, but Lewis was unfazed.

n“Identify yourself!” the knight in the lead loudly demanded, projecting an air of power and authority—plus a healthy dose of killing intent—but Lewis could see the fear in his eyes.

n“You may call me Lewis if you must call me anything at all,” the pale man calmly said, as if he hadn’t just set a raging fire in a pastoral village. His fire burned hot, so much so that the knights’ horses were panicking, and the inferno was already spreading across the dry grass, through the fencing that was only designed to keep predators at bay, and into the pastures of the village.

n“Be careful, this one’s a vampire!” the lead knight shouted, and the rest of the knights formed up into a more defensive formation. Even the white griffin that was accompanying them got low to the ground and began to wiggle like a lion preparing to pounce on prey.

n“I don’t think it matters how careful you are, given that you’re all only fifth-tier mages,” Lewis responded, still with a strange, dissonant smile plastered on his face. “But we don’t have to be enemies, I simply want you to return my property!”

n“I don’t have anything of yours!” the lead knight replied as he fought to regain control of his horse. Lewis saw with his magic senses the knight make a subtle gesture to two of his comrades behind him, and they instantly sprang into action. They started to summon big globes of water in the air—one of them letting his ice spikes fall to the ground as he redirected his magic power—and then began to toss them into the blaze that Lewis had started.

nUnfortunately for them, demonfire wasn’t so easily extinguished, and the water vaporized on contact with the fire and had little dousing effect.

n“You have my core, and I would like it returned, please!” Lewis shouted back, his face the picture of polite entreatment, but the effect was ruined somewhat with the continued spread of his demonfire.

nDemonfire was incredibly hard to put out unless the mage or demon that conjured it specifically didn’t want it to spread—only if it encountered something nonflammable would it stop, but few things couldn’t burn in demonfire. At the very least, the knights would have needed a mage as strong as Lewis that was dedicating their power to extinguishing the inferno, but Lewis was also aware that if he died, then the demonfire would quickly go out.

nAnd yet, he wasn’t worried. In fact, he barely even cared that his fire was still burning, which was why it hadn’t vanished by now to conserve the magic power he was expending to keep it under his control.

nThe lead knight seemed momentarily conflicted, as if he were deliberating on what to say. In the end, after staring at Lewis for a long moment, he decided not to lie and asked, “That demon core was yours?”

n“It is mine, it took a lot of effort and resources to acquire, and I would appreciate having it back!” Lewis responded as his gaunt face contorted in irritation, finally dropping his veneer of congeniality.

n“I can’t allow you to have it!” the knight shouted.

n“Come now, Sir, you don’t have to be that way!” Lewis exasperatedly responded. “All I want is my property returned to me, not so unreasonable a request, is it?”

n“That ‘property’ of yours was found within a werewolf!” the knight replied. “What connection did you have with it?!”

nLewis sighed in dejection. He wasn’t great with people, but he could see that as the knight kept talking, the others in his party were spreading out and summoning their magic. Already, they had surrounded him as best as they could with Lewis’ demonfire continuing to advance across the pastures on either side of the road.

nThey wanted to keep him talking while they got in position to attack him.

nTo a certain extent, Lewis could understand, but it just aggravated him.

n“Why isn’t he just accepting?” he wondered out loud as he stared off the side. “Can he not see how outclassed he is? Is he overconfident? There’s no need to risk his life for such a small thing as a demonic core…

n“What is your justification for not returning my property to me?” Lewis demanded to know.

n“Because you’re a vampire!” the knight replied with a look of disgust and hatred.

nLewis grimaced in distaste, briefly flashing his fangs in the process. He was about to respond, but his eyes glazed over for a moment as if hearing a voice from far away and tuning out everything else around him in order to understand it.

n“I have exposed myself because I didn’t want things to progress to the point of violence,” he said with his eyes still unfocused and wandering around, making it clear enough that he wasn’t now speaking to the knights. “If I were to kill these knights here, then the Bull’s response would be overwhelming. I don’t want to invite that kind of attention, I would prefer to simply take back what is mine.”

nHe paused for a moment as he listened for a response, and the knights glanced at their leader as if asking him what to do. The leader gestured for them to wait, he was reasonably confident that they could take the vampire if they worked together, so he took the risk of not attacking at this moment even though the vampire was distracted.

n“I know what I said, but I don’t care about that!” Lewis bitterly spat. “If I don’t do this, then you simply don’t give me the reward! It’s my prerogative to act upon the offer, not my duty!” Lewis then suddenly turned his eyes back toward the lead knight and stared into his eyes from across the fifty feet or so between them. “I want my core returned!”

n“What is your intention in regard to its use?” the knight asked again.

n“I’m experimenting with how demonic power can be used to stimulate blood! That ‘werewolf’ wasn’t such a thing at all, it was simply a man I spliced with a Canid Wolf!” Lewis shouted back.

nWith his magic senses, Lewis could see the knight’s face contorting in shock and horror at the implications of what he had just said.

n“Probably shouldn’t have said that. That was a mistake, stupid mistake, stupid mistake,” the vampire whispered in growing agitation. Suddenly, he turned his face skyward and roared, “SHUT UP!” His aura exploded out of him, submerging the knights in his killing intent and causing their horses to collapse from the pressure. One of the horses even outright died, it’s heart simply stopping from fright.

nThe knights fell off, but they were still able to stand, and if they could stand, then they could fight. The griffin, though, joined the horses on the ground, to the obvious anger of the young knight in black armor next to it, who began to spark and crackle with brilliant golden lightning.

n“THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE!” Lewis bellowed at the lead knight in a voice that shook the ground and noticeably caused the air temperature to rise. “RETURN TO ME WHAT IS MINE!”

nThe knight seemed unfazed, though Lewis could see the subtle wobble in his knees that betrayed the truth. Still, the knight, mustering as much confident serenity and poise as he could, raised his sword and shouted, “Let’s kill this monster!”

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