“I can’t believe you let Brianna do that to me! I thought I was going to die!”
Anthony winced as Secilia shouted in his ear, even as he dodged to the left, avoiding a massive ghoul that looked like it had once been a bearkin. Her voice was loud, shrill, and grating. She was really tearing into him.
After dodging to the side, he swung his tonfa. Despite his weapon not being sharp, the tonfa cut straight through the bear ghoul. A thin line appeared on his body, and then his body slid in two.
Space manipulation really was a great ability. Out of all his abilities, it was probably his most versatile.
“Hey! Are you listening to me?!”
“Honestly, I am trying not to,” Anthony said. Two more ghouls were barreling toward him, but he took care of them. It was easy.
“That might be the cruelest thing you’ve ever said. You know I’m not a huge fan of heights.”
Anthony dodged an attack, then split the entire area in front of him with space manipulation. The tear in space tore apart the wolf ghoul that had leapt at him.
“And? You know we had no choice. Better to get the hard part over with quickly, then prolong it.”
The ghouls here weren’t much trouble. They were stronger than the average ghoul certainly. In fact, they were much stronger than the average.
Ghouls were vampire thralls that were essentially like zombies. They retained none of their former intelligence. However, in exchange, all of the limiters on their body were released. This granted them access to their full power. Although it tore apart their bodies as a result, all ghouls had a basic regeneration that kept it from hampering their fighting capabilities.
However, ghouls were normally human.
Humans were by far the weakest among all the races. What they lacked in strength, they made up for in numbers and ingenuity. Magic had in fact come from humanity. They created magic to combat the supernatural forces threatening them. Other races had adopted magic once they realized it's convenience. However, none could harness magic to the same extent as humans.
Beastkin were the strongest race, physically speaking. This actually made them exceptional ghouls.
Of course, they were still weak compared to Anthony and the people with him.
Marianne was not straying far from him. She watched his back, attacking enemies in the distance, though there weren’t many of them. Brianna, Trinity, and Sasha were demolishing the forces that weren’t around him.
Trinity was using her nature magic to entangle enemies with vines, and then she slashed them apart with her sword. It was very impressive. Her sword skills were particularly noteworthy because she had no actual techniques related to the sword. All she had was pure skill, and the way she was able to bisect a ghoul with nothing but skill was incredible… and a little scary.
“HA ha ha ha! Another one! That means I am t fourteen! What of you, little warrior?” Sasha asked Brianna.
“Don’t call me little!” Brianna snapped even as she cut through two more ghouls in less time than it took to blink. “...And i’ve killed seventeen.”
“What?!” Sasha looked shocked, though that didn’t stop her from crushing the skull of another ghoul. “No way I can lose to some lowly human!”
Brianna rolled her eyes. “If you don’t want to lose to a human, then you shouldn’t have arbitrarily demanded a contest with me.”
“HA ha ha ha! I like your spunk! You’ve got guts!” Sasha laughed at Brianna glib comment.
It seemed they had entered a contest to see who could kill the most ghouls. He didn’t know why or when. He’d only realized it when he heard Sasha begin loudly counting and taunting Brianna who, despite not saying anything, was clearly invested in winning. She might be an even greater sore loser than Secilia.
There were quite a few of the ghouls, but it wasn’t long before they petered out. Anthony stared at the massive amount of bodies strewn across the dock before the warehouse. He grimaced at all of the bodies missing parts. Blood so thick it looked almost black had pooled along the ground and then hardened in the freezing cold temperature.
“All right. That’s all of them.” Sasha clapped her hands.
“Secilia, we’re going to need your expertise,” Anthony said.
“Oh, so you need me? I’m not sure I want to help you now. MAybe when you’re a little nicer to me, I’ll lend you a hand.”
Anthony rolled her eyes. Despite her words, there was no heat in her voice. He supposed he could indulge her.
“You’re right. I really have been a bad boyfriend. Why don’t I take you somewhere after all this is done.”
“A date?”
“Yeah. A date. With just the two of us.”
“Hmmm. You’ll spend an entire day with me. Doing whatever I want.”
Anthony smiled indulgently even though she couldn’t see it. What a spoiled woman.
“Yes, I’ll spend a whole day with you.”
“Then we have a deal. I’m coming over--hey! What are you doing?! DOn’t pick me up like this?! WHat do you mean this way is quicker?! I don’t wanna--aaaAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
Anthony tilted his head when the scream in his ear and the scream from a distance almost synchronized. He looked over to see the hawk woman running over to them with Secilia thrown over her shoulder like she was a sack of potatoes. Anthony almost snickered at how frazzled his bondmate looked when the woman set her down.
“I hate you all,” Secilia declared.
“That is not good, comrade, especially if we are bound to become sisters,” Sasha said very seriously.
“She doesn’t actually hate you,” Marianne said.
“Really?” Sasha raised an eyebrow. “Then why would she say something like that?”
“Because she’s grumpy,” Brianna muttered with a tired sigh.
“I am not grumpy,” Secilia griped. “I am understandably upset because people keep handling me like a ragdoll! I am a delicate flower! Treat me like one!”
Anthony slid an arm around the humunculus’ waist and pulled her close. He nibbled on her ear and then whispered in it. “Maybe i could tie you up to look like a flower. I’ve been practicing my tying techniques.”
Secilia went completely red. He had in fact been practicing his tying, and she had been subject to several of his new techniques. Not all of them were, uh, that great. However, Secilia seemed to be getting into it as much as he was lately.
“Ahem. You, uh, said you needed my expertise?”
“Sasha?” asked Anthony.
Sasha grunted as she eyed them. “THere is control center inside of warehouse. We need you to hack into control center and find out what information you can.”
“And you want to know where these ghouls are coming from?” Secilia guessed.
“Their origin would be nice, yes. We also want to find out where they were being shipped to,” Sasha said.
“Got it. Weeeeeell…” Secilia cracked her knuckles. “Just leave all this to me.”
***
The control center really didn’t have much. Nothing was destroyed. It was just very threadbare. The only thing present to hack into was a single port that granted them access to ship logs and security cameras. However, Secilia was an expert at information gathering, and she soon had far more than Sasha and her team could have found themselves.
“It says here that these… products were being shipped to France and Italy,” Secilia said.
Sasha nodded. “That matches what we have found ourselves.”
“However, these are false reports.”
Sasha blinked. “Really?”
“Yeah,” Secilia said, biting her lip as she continued studying the information. “All ships have tracking on them. You cannot disable the tracking either. This is so, in the event that the ship is sunk, someone can at least come along to re-acquire the cargo.” She tapped into her IDBand and pulled up a holographic map that projected itself into the air. “You see this red line? This red line is where all this cargo is being sent.”
“That’s Britannia,” Anthony muttered with a frown.
“Yup.” Secilia said. “Do you remember how we found that ghoul nest back on Academy Island? They were also coming from Britannia. We can assume Lucius Alfoy had a hand in this operation, though I don’t think he was the ring leader. More than likely, Britannia was merely the first destination. If we’re going to find out more, we will need to find out what other transports they were loaded on, and then track those transports.”
“That will not be easy,” Sasha said with her arms crossed. “We have already tried to track the transport vehicles like that. We were able to discover nothing. Every transport vehicle vanished.”
“Because you were tracking the dummies,” Secilia informed her. “You saw the destination log and assumed it was correct. There’s a good chance those transports didn’t vanish but were simply destroyed while you were tracking them. If we get someone who can track the real cargo, we can figure out where they are going.”
“Hmmmm.” Sasha murmured for a moment. “Very well. I will get people on that.”
“You have something else… don’t you?” Anthony said when he saw the look in Secilia’s eyes.
She smiled. “I can’t get anything past you. I managed to hack into the security cameras and saw something. Take a look.”
The holographic map was replaced with a recording from several security cameras. It switched between a couple of viewpoints, then rewound time, before stopping when a figure suddenly appeared. Anthony squinted. The figure was… blurry. Security cameras these days showed everything in 4k so there was no way the figure would be blurry unless some sort of magic was involved.
“Can you remove whatever is blocking our view?” asked Anthony.
“Doing that now. And… there,” Secilia tapped away and suddenly the figure snapped into almost painful focus.
Anthony’s breath caught in his throat when he saw the figure whose head was only slightly turned. He looked different than Anthony remembered. His eyes were red, his face was paler, and he had sharp fangs protruding from his mouth, but Anthony would still recognize him anywhere.
“Calvin…”