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“What the fuck!”
Thomas’ outraged voice echoed through the front entrance of Thomas’ Private Investigator Office for the Supernatural and Mundane just as Senna opened the door, overpowering the sound of the antique bell on the back of the door that rings as it is opened.
The demi fallen fae sighed in exasperation as she found Thomas lying sideways across the single seater couch in the waiting area, one of his feet perched atop the arm rest of the larger sofa that appeared much more comfortable to lie down upon.
“Senna? You’re back? Come here, have a look at this!”
Despite her better judgment, Senna traversed over to where Thomas lay with his head facing the ceiling whilst holding his smartphone directly above him. The latter abruptly tilted up his phone for her to see what was displayed.
“Look at this, that bastard Gϋnther has two Queen Sneewittchens! Two! She was only released several weeks ago as a part of the Winter Kingdom arc. She attracts all aggro, comes back to life three times, and any attacker is inversely poisoned with a stackable deadly poison that does percentage damage! Do you understand how unfair this is!? That’s 42 copies of her to max her out, let alone gear, how does he have so many credits??”
Senna placed a palm over her face in frustration as Thomas rambled on and on about a topic she was highly volatile over due to his extreme spending on the game.
“Any vampire who has been alive as long as him would be a pathetic waste of space if they weren’t rich. Speaking of which, how old are you again?”
Her barbed words rolled off her tongue with a thinly veiled venom. She would have smashed his phone if she didn’t know he would simply go buy another and waste even more credits in the process.
Instead, she snatched his phone with lightning fast reflexes and forced herself to not crush it in her grip as she closed the game.
“What are you doing? I was in the middle of playing!”
Despite speaking in an outraged tone, Thomas made no attempt to get up and reclaim his phone. When tilted his head to look at her however, his jaw dropped.
Senna was covered in paint and other old oils and stains from her battle with the demon. Her hair was a mess and her displeasure was extremely obvious.
“What the hell happened to you?”
“I met a demon this afternoon.”
“A demon? As in the 72 Legions or more biblical Lucifer? Was it a hot woman?”
“Succubi are supernatural creatures, not demons.”
“Strictly speaking, they often are found under the same terminology of being de-”
Thomas was abruptly interrupted by Senna shoving her socked foot into his face, ironically the only piece of clothing visible without paint stains on it as her shoes had received all the damage.
“Stop getting sidetracked! This demon appeared in a hidden basement below the property of Mr. and Mrs. Reeds, and was the source of their curse. You ignored it and the problem only got bigger, eventually costing the two their lives.”
“…Ahem, I gave them a solution, did I not? Since when have you cared about humans, Senna?”
“What I want is for you to be successful and do your job properly. Your solution was extremely cheap, poor quality, and even led to me being disturbed at school. The humans there may be trash, but I still don’t want trash spreading rumors about me getting into older mens’ cars in exchange for credits.”
Thomas choked on his own saliva as he stifled a laugh at imagining how such a situation played out.
“So that’s why you are upset~ Well, you already gave the reason yourself.”
“What?”
Thomas rolled off the chair and held Senna by her shoulders, casually pushing her down so that she was sitting on the main couch before leaning forward and placing one upraised finger before her eyes. Even if the stains on her body hadn’t dried, he still was unlikely to care about damaging the furniture.
“Cheap. Perhaps you cannot tell, but those two were cheap and greedy all the way to their souls. Greedy existences that would do everything they could to pay as little as possible. Even without looking at their souls, they purchased the cheapest house they could possibly find even if it had a shady or haunted background. They wore second hand clothes and jewelry that was probably stolen.”
“Even if they promised credits in exchange, they would renege on any deal and possibly try accuse us of fraud to get back any deposit paid. The talismans would remove their current affliciton, and all they had to do was not return to a house that obviously had issues. Rather than continuing hotel costs, it appeared they returned.”
“That… I can’t see souls like you.”
“It doesn’t really matter. In any case, demons are becoming more and more common these days.”
Thomas quickly typed across his phone, shocking Senna who didn’t even notice when or how he had taken it back from her, and connected it to the display in the room.
A section of the wall distorted and revealed itself as a cleverly hidden antique frame-less television. What appeared was the popular video streaming website SkyWire, where a small content creator, otherwise known as a Skycaster, recorded with a personal aerial droidbot that would fly behind and around him to autonomously record.
“Welcome back everyone, I am Undead Dan, here with the latest investigation into the paranormal. Do you all know about the massacre that occurred last month in Utah during the sudden monster outbreak? We are here at the incident location where it began, the South Roadhouse Diner where the first twenty victims were.”
The video showed a rustic diner in a small town with boarded up windows but otherwise no obvious damage. The lights were all off and police tape still closed off the area, even though half of that tape had already come loose or otherwise torn and was simply lying across the ground.
It was morning in the video, so the atmosphere looked very safe, but very few people could be seen around, as if everyone was too afraid to come to this area.
“It was actually one of my followers who sent me a private message about this, which is why I came here. He claims that there was in fact no monster outbreak, but is that the truth? Let’s head on inside and have a look. Don’t worry everyone, I already have permission from the property owner. See, I even have a key.”
Undead Dan opened up the front door and entered the diner. The old diner furniture was in complete disarray as if half of it had been thrown around, whilst the rest had been broken into pieces.
There were no signs of blood, the scene having been cleaned up, but Undead Dan did still find some traces of stains on timber tables which had absorbed the blood and couldn’t be scrubbed out.
“This is actually suspicious. We all know about the typical monsters that attack people; prowlers, raptors, longarms and deathscythes, to name a few of the basic ones.”
Holographic images of twisted creatures that vaguely represented animals, albeit with deadly claws, teeth, bone scythes and more, were projected by the Skycaster’s ariel droidbot.
“Ladies and chaps, I don’t see any claw marks or other damages which should be brought about by these monsters, nor the supposed battle between them and the heroes which was reported. Could it be a new, smarter type of monster? Actually, I think it is something much different.”
“The owner of this diner had CCTV cameras installed due to credit chips going missing from the register, footage which has since been seized by the government. On it, he describes a black smoke creature invading the body of a young waitress before the entire video feed was cut. This girl, who had no superpower nor any talent for cultivation of magic, somehow overpowered and killed twenty people.”
“Somehow, not a single person was able to escape from the diner and were killed inside, except for this girl who is now registered as missing.”
“The Protectorate has stated that two B-rank heroes were dispatched to suppress what was a ‘monster outbreak’, but the evidence we are looking at does not show the level of damage that would result from a monster outbreak.”
Undead Dan inspected the diner to uncover any clues, identifying damages and how they should have occurred. It was a highly detailed explanations he gave as he demonstrated his excellent deductive skills, whilst he also postulated on other things that just didn’t make sense.
He was only a self proclaimed expert in the supernatural, but many people still tuned in to watch his videos and were passionately took him as an authority in the subject.
“This is strange, I have found several traces of what appears to be sulphor. It certainly looks and smells like it at least, and its giving me a bad feeling.”
Undead Dan looked very uncomfortable as he glanced around as if to check and make sure nobody is looking.
“Several centuries ago, we viewed supernatural creatures as superstition or old wives tales, but now we know they are real. I am well enough versed in some of the more biblical and even eclectic materials the described such things.”
“This was a demon, creatures of pure evil that seduce humans into sin. In saying that, it only makes this scenario all the more worrying. Sinclair Plaid once described in reference that demons typically didn’t attack humans. They fed off them, but not by sucking their blood.”
“Demons hold power to twist and shape reality. They offer contracts and exchange wealth, power, success in life or whatever the human’s desire in exchange for their soul upon death or at the end of the contract period. If a demon truly slaughtered these people, then it was because someone made it do so.”
Thomas scrolled down to the comments section on the video which was full of skepticals, fanatics, and others with more questions than answers. There were several obscure comments that claimed it was done by the Church of Eternal Life.
“As you can see, demonic activity is on the rise at an alarming rate.”
Senna looked long and hard at the paused video screen and muttered, “I never thought I would come across such vile creatures.”
“Nor that they would target you, I bet. But you have met plenty of angels, it’s only fair you meet some demons too.”
“…Those winged bastards are frustratingly stubborn.”
“That’s just the way they are. With the rise in demonic activity, we will probably start seeing more of them. That bastard Michael will surely show himself too.”
Thomas chuckled lightheartedly whilst mentioning the archangel he had feuded with several times over the past decade and had formed a deep grudge with.
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