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“I swear, I felt some disturbance in this direction,” Julies said, peering around, though the obscurity provided by the wilful mist made it harder to see even past five metres.

“It could be some wild animal,” Eran said, behind the baldie.

Both of them were in enchanted adventurer wear, from leather jerkins, mountain boots, and enchanted cloaks to the weapons they were carrying. Julies had a dozen daggers on his body, along with a quick bow and quiver full of arrows. Where Eran, the burly one contrasting to Julies' skinny figure, was carrying a spear. Apart from that, both of the two were carrying a .44 revolver, not enough to kill any powerful spirit beast, but it could scare them away easily.

Other than the burly dark man, there were two other mercenary men with pale faces and cut marks all over their bodies. They stayed in a half-conscious state, eyes impassive like fools as if all strength had been drawn out of their body, leaving one a hollowed shell. It wouldn't be wrong to say they had been through shit in the last couple of days to look this bad.

“Perhaps,” Julies said, though the frown remained on his brows. He was almost sure he felt some dark energy undulating, but if it couldn’t be found, then they had to get on with their task. “I wanted nothin' wrong in this operation, but if it couldn’t be helped, then . . .”

“Nothing wrong?” Eran repeated the word while giving a glare at Julies. “This plan of yours is wrong, to begin with. If boss learns about this, you know he wouldn’t going to like this.”

“I’m aware,” Julies said, “but do you have any better idea?”

“Kish’s Mercy, Juls,” Eran sighed. “You know you can get expelled from the academy if anything goes wrong, and that’s the best-case scenario. Compulsion is an offensive crime directly breaking the third law of magic. You’ll be thrown in prison if they find out.”

“It's ain't compulsion,” Julies grunted as they strode, the two mercenary men following impassively. “At least not the corrupting type.”

“If only there’s a thing like that,” Eran said.

The matters were like this: Before this boss left for Victoria, he gave them a task. Their task was to get to the root of all the disappearances of young children. To complete that task, the two of them scurried all over the outskirts of starlight city, Manas, and even part of Endus to finally find some leads. But all of them ended with some small fry mercenaries. After lots of interrogations, all paths ended with: they didn’t know shits.

All they did was kidnap the children, move them to another’s hand and those guys move them elsewhere, and so on, creating a large chain of events under the noses of all legal authorities. Well, there were some developments they had found in the past few months. Many of these mercenaries with such business found death, which stopped their advances in the surrounding areas of Starlight city, however, it was never stopped in the other regions. Not even nearly enough to stop.

Even though these killings were brought to light, the legal authorities weren’t still sure who was doing it. Perhaps someone on the other end is trying to keep their secret safe, or some rivalry between the vampire houses. Things are very hairy here, much more than Julies knew, but they can’t let go of this, since bloodsuckers were related to this. They were the very plague of society, that needed to be eradicated as soon as possible. Julies thought. Well, maybe not every one of them, but the number would definitely be on the higher end.

“This is going to work,” Julies said and moved towards the captives again. He had enchanted them before, well, a couple of times, but to have a surety of success, he needed to once again. His Enchantment worked like charm, and like a charm, it has some shortcomings. In substantial amount of time, the effect wore off on its own, quite quickly for practitioners proportional to their spiritual and mental fortitude, but to some spiritually weak or even non-practitioners it would work for a couple of days without rest.

Julies always thought of temporary shortcoming as a blessing, knowing full well what a full compulsion could do to a man’s mind, and even to a caster. Still, Julies always used it as a last resort. Well, he did thin out the line more nowadays, but like he had other options. The days were changing.

Under the watchful gazes of Eran, Julies removed the thick-framed goggles, and he was a different person entirely. “Don’t look at me, Eran,” he commanded, well, yeah, his voice changed too. There was a slight vibe of compilation in it. Well, not the real deal, but enough for Eran to look away.

Sighing at the look of his friend, Juiles attended to the two captives. Now, he needed to be very careful with this, since it was the third time he was going with the enchantment within the last twenty-four hours. Even though these two were no better than human garbage, who sell innocent kids to fatten themselves, he couldn't just break their mind while doing it. Even though he said otherwise to Eran, it was very much possible, too easy fro him to do it he wanted, easier than making them do what he wanted for all that matter.

But Julies couldn't do that. Ignoring everything about the nature of these garbage beings, compulsion was morally wrong, and what he was doing to them could coerce his head as well. These things were just too common to happen in the long run.

If you become ever dependent on this ability, for even minor inconvenience, then you're on the path of no return. Fortunately, Julies was far from that. Well, lets;'s get this over with.

“You will tell me your name,” Julies asked, eyes staring blankly at the two human garbage.

“Ada Kision.”

“Thom Iarin.”

Both of their voice was subservient, eyes shuddering in daunting fear. They had been defiant before, well, at the first time, but once they gave in, there was no turning back.

“Tell me what I am to you,” Julies asked.

“Master.”

“Master.”

“And what is your duty?”

“Obey master’s every command.”

“Alright.” Julies felt a lurching draw at her pool of spirit power, sucking in like a starving sponge. “Now let’s go over our game plan for the last time. . . .”

Eran sighed, watching the development in weakness. He couldn’t do anything, even though unsure it was harming both parties. Compulsion was hardly good anything to the victim, but it was not so enduring for the caster as well. It twisted the head of the caster, the more he used it, the more he got intoxicated at the drunk fervour of power and domination.

Eran didn’t like to see magic enslavement first-hand, so he crept into the obscurity of the mist. Since it would take Julies to go over the instruction a while, he might as well scout around, though they have done that before already. Well, Juiles was so sure about the undulation of energy flow a few minutes ago, maybe he would check on that.

At this hour of the day, anything would—even wild animals—would like to venture outside, not to mention this area was eerily vacant with stuffy air. Well, if vampires ran their black business around this area, there’s no reason not to be this eerie. Now all they had left to do was contact the vampire under the pretext of being mercenaries, followed by understanding the scale of their operations, gaining their trust and finally eradicating it from the root. Well, to do that, they would likely need more help from the academy, but as far as they were concerned, there were several people who wouldn’t mind cleaning some filth.

The sun rose, almost infrared through the obscurity, as wilful mist churned a little faster, struggling against the rising light. Still, the projected light wasn’t enough. He could barely see a few metres ahead, and that was with his keen senses. If it were normal folk, he would have lost within the first two minutes.

Eran kept on marking the way with his boot, while also he had a general idea of which direction he was turning. However, he finally noticed the thing Julies implied, he could barely believe his senses.

He wasn't even a couple of hundred metres away, as the mist churned with intensity as beaming fire scorched through a few dozen metres ahead of him. Eran's mind chilled, and he withdrew without thinking, however, his leg stopped finding a figure flying by in the air, the opposite direction of his.

A knight? He wondered. Even though he couldn't see clearly, he was pretty sure that the silhouette was of a knight, using the dominion of Gravity, well unless he had other ways to do the same, though that's hardly available in the empire. But since it was a dominion of gravity, that means it was a human, a knight, since power like dominions were heavily guarded, and also the old sinners were forsaken to tough the power.

The party chasing after him were . . . seemed to be vampires. Quick, he needed to alert Julies and see what they could do to help this knight. Eran turned and rushed only to find Juiles running in his direction, his purple misty eyes still open, peering all around as if they could pierce the obscurity of the mist.

"Bloodsuckers?" he asked, turning his head to not look at Eran.

"Yes."

"Told you," Juiles said, and moved. "Stay on my back, with my eyes open, I can deliver more than you can imagine."

Eran abided without any issues as Julies led him through the rocky terrain, paying full attention to the batter going on between the vampire and the knight. On second thought, they shouldn't need to worry about that. The sun was rising, and the vampires would be powerless in time. However, the next word from Julies mouth alerted him once again.

"That's Zane," Julies said, louder than he intended. "What the hell is he doing here."

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