--- Three days later, Sareg’s POV ---

“Hey, have you seen those black clothed people entering the city this morning?” one of the guards in the pub asked in a low voice. He was the one who inspected us when we entered, but he didn’t see our faces and we didn’t have our cloaks on.

“I haven’t, but who are you talking about?” the bartender raised his brows.

“Who, don’t play dumb! The Dark Scars! I believe our city is the next because the other guards have reported the appearance of many people in similar black clothes!” the guard whispered, but all of us heard him crystal clear. The poor guy didn’t even know he had master’s bacteria on him. He had been one of the people who served us with the most information thanks to his unstoppable mouth… He went by the name Rick.

“Hmm- if what you say is true, aren’t we in trouble?” the bartender furrowed his brows.

“I’m not sure, my friend. I’ve been considering leaving Egron for a few days now. I might pack up my things and leave with my family,” Rick shook his head. A smile formed on my face, hearing his worries. I wasn’t smiling because I was glad to see him worried, I was just happy about the fact that our group had grown this large!

As I stood up, Liz grabbed my wrist and wanted to pull me back, “What are you doing?”

Turning around, I brushed her messy blonde hair to the side, “Don’t worry, I’m just going to whisper~”

“I know, that’s why I asked. You should stop doing stuff like this. They may be afraid now, but they’ll be happier once we finish. There is no need to ease his mind and risk somebody noticing us,” she tugged on my wrist again.

“But-”

Seeing her start glaring at me, I sat down. Sis was dangerous when she was angry… “Fine then,” I grumbled.

“When do we start?” Fing asked.

“Master said we’ll see the sign, don’t be impatient,” Liz crossed her arms in front of her chest.

“But we’ve been sitting here for half an hour already and people are watching… I’m sure we look suspicious,” he whispered.

“It doesn’t matter. We have nothing to worry about this time,” she chuckled.

“Heh, that’s true,” a smile formed on my face as well.

I was about to order another drink when we heard a large explosion. Looking at each other, we stood up and nodded our heads. “That must have been the sign,” I said.

We ran out of the restaurant and saw one of the three towers of the palace crumble. From the forest outside of the city, a fireball with a diameter of forty meters shot towards the second tower. A similar sized ball of water flew towards the fireball from the ground and turned into a fog as it stopped master Audrey’s attack, revealing a similarly large rock hidden in the fire.

Nobody had enough time to react and stop the rock from crashing into the second tower, making it crumble as well. Not wasting our times anymore, we bolted off towards our designated target. I led my siblings into an alleyway and entered the sewers underground. We went straight to Dreven Krauss’s mansion, who was a marquis in the kingdom.

Since we take the late nobles’ money every time, we’ve collected quite a lot of… fortune. I used that fortune to bribe a few people in the city and turn them into my blood servants. That was how we gathered information about our targets every time.

Dreven was a casual marquis in that he held and sold slaves like tools, cheated, conspired, nothing out of the norm for these kinds of people. Sadly for Dreven, Master’s next target turned out to be their Shayde Kingdom.

“We’re here,” I said as I stopped at the exit. I climbed the iron ladder and pushed the heavy iron cover to the side. I helped up my siblings and put the cover back in its place.

“Finally, we are out. Why did we have to come through the sewers?”

“Stop pinching your nose, Liz. You’re out and we had to come this way to sneak up on Dreven. He isn’t a weak person. We can’t just attack him frontally!” I replied.

“But our blood servants will draw their attention anyway,” she rolled her eyes.

“Too much complaining! Move your legs instead,” I shook my head and left the backyard of the mansion and entered through the back door.

Hearing footsteps, I formed a shell around my body and stopped on the corner. As two people turned on the corner, I appeared behind them with shadow step and pushed them forwards.

“What the?!” one of the men shouted surprised. Fing punched both of them in the face, knocking them out.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t kill them?” Liz asked.

“Don’t hurt good people. They’re just doing their jobs,” Fing took the guard’s side.

“But they’re working for a bad person!”

“I understand you, sis, but sometimes you have to make hard choices if you want to keep your life. Although they’d have to take responsibility for their actions, I haven’t heard of any bad deeds these two made,” Keneg patted her shoulder.

“Fine then. Let’s hurry up,” Liz sighed.

We inched closer and closer to Dreven’s room until finally reaching it. Unfortunately, we found it empty.

“What now?” Fing asked.

“Look at this!” Urnoth raised his voice upon spotting a human-sized hole under the bed.

An escape route? Damn it, the guards we turned into our blood servants didn’t know about this. “Let’s go after him, we can’t fail as the number one group!” I said and kicked the bed to the side. We jumped into the hidden hole and fell down to a passageway underground, which led straight to a secret treasury.

I peeked out on the corner and spotted Dreven stuffing his gold, weapons, and other precious things into a large bag.

“Hurry up, bitch!” he shouted as he kicked a middle-aged elf woman, who was packing his things a bit too slow.

The woman fell to the ground and grazed her face on the rough floor of the room. Standing up, she continued packing after saying sorry. I’m not seeing this for the first time… I thought as I sighed and appeared behind Dreven with my arms crossed.

He reacted quickly as expected and wanted to kick my chest, but my shell was tough enough to defend against him. “I see the rats have come,” he clicked his tongue and pulled out his halberd, eyeing the walls. The room was tiny, not fit for his weapon.

I charged at Dreven once again and thrust my hand towards his chest. He swung his halberd to cut off my hand, but I lowered my arm creating a forty-five-degree angle between his weapon and my arm. His halberd slipped on my tough shell which I covered in moisture and he fell forward. I felt the wind brush against my right ear as Fing’s fist went past my head and hit Dreven’s face.

Earth spikes thrust out of the wall of the room, ready to skewer him. Sensing his impending doom, Dreven formed a wall of iron behind his back. Urnoth appeared beside him and thrust his dagger into his side. Dreven screamed out in agony as Master’s poison entered his body and started to corrode his insides.

“What the fuck is this?” he shouted as he swung his halberd in an arc, almost hitting the elven woman, but Liz used a vine to pull her away from the blade just in time.

Dreven put his hand on his growing wound and used ice to freeze a part of his body. But the five of us were using devour on him, and we quickly devoured the ice he created. As the poison continued to spread, he realized he’d have to kill us at first to stop it. But it was too late because Kene appeared behind him and covered Dreven’s head in a ball of dark magic.

As the black ball disappeared, Dreven’s headless body fell to the floor. I stepped closer to the elven woman and tore off the arm of her ragged shirt.

Averting her eyes, she spread her arms. “What are you doing?” I shook my head as I grabbed her hand and looked for her slave mark. Finding it on the back of her upper arm, I put my hand on it, “This is going to hurt, but bear with it.” After warning her, I devoured the mark and a small part of her flesh, freeing her from the slave mark.

Holding back her scream, she panted and looked at me with fear in her eyes until realizing what I did. “It… It disappeared! Thank you!” she shouted and hugged me.

What the fuck? This is quite an unusual reaction…

“It’s alright now, you’re free to go wherever you want to,” I smiled at her. Fing threw Dreven’s body on his shoulder and used Earth Magic to open a hole up to the surface. I separated from the elven woman and left her alone, though she jumped out after us. It seems like she has got some strength… the slave mark probably sealed her true powers.

Turning my back on her, I followed my siblings towards the palace. Many of the guards stood to the side upon seeing us running with the headless body of their strongest marquis. The few guards who fought for their lives because they knew they’d be killed were rushed by the other Dark Scars and lesser blood servants.

We didn’t stop until reaching the palace. I stopped for a moment to look for our masters’ presences. After finding them, I entered through the breached wall and ran straight towards their location. As we entered the throne room, I saw her black hair fly through the air as she kicked the shitty king of this kingdom in the stomach.

Whenever our masters killed a leader, they used their original bodies. Master Dred appeared behind the king and swiped with his large paws, cutting the man in two. Their shadows reached the fallen king’s body and devoured him in an instant.

“Master!” I shouted as I ran over to her and bowed my head.

I felt her fingers pinching my ear and pull it- “Ouch! Why are you doing this?!”

“I told you to drop this already. My name is Elena. Why did you bring a corpse, though?” she raised her brows.

“He is the marquis whose family left behind the Metal Magic! We brought him to you in case you wished to steal is spell,” Fing answered in my stead.

“Hmm- why not? It might be useful in the future,” she replied after some consideration. Her shadow crept up on Fing’s body and devoured Dreven’s body.

“I’ve got the skill,” she muttered and then looked at me from the corner of her eye.

“...”

“...”

“Stop looking at me with that fanatic face, it feels a bit weird when you’re staring at me so intently, even if I know it’s because you’re my lesser blood servant,” her words left her beautiful lips. She was my goddess!

“I’m just-”

“Haah- whatever. If you lot have nothing else to say, then I thank you for bringing his body to me and you can go to do your things!” she waved her hands.

“It’s our pleasure,” we all said at the same time and after turning around, we left to finish the rest of the enemies. The combined forces of the Dark Scars wiped out the whole city in just half an hour, leaving only the people Master deemed innocent.

When we finished, I found our masters again, only to see the elf woman we saved kneel on the ground in front of her and hug her legs.

“Please, let me join! I have nowhere else to go!”

“Let go of me! And I told you, you aren’t strong enough to join the Dark Scars!” Elena gently pushed the woman to the side. She hugged my master! I’ve never hugged her, even if only her leg… presumptuous! But I can understand her.

“But why do you need me to be so strong? I believe I’m quite powerful!” the woman shouted.

“Haah- listen. Although you’re powerful now, your talent isn’t all that good. It took only a year for my people to reach their current levels, while it took you hundreds of years! That’s the difference! You won’t be able to keep up with the others, which would cause jealousy and diversity. I don’t need that in my private army, but if you’re really so pent up on joining, you can become one of the Dark Scars’ blood servant, alright?”

“YES!”

Strange, it’s not every day that people want to join so bad. Should I take her in? But then I’d have to watch out for her a bit more than the others. I shouldn’t handle her like a pawn, I guess.

Most of our lesser blood servants were the kind of people we killed, but we used them to gather information instead of simply killing them. Hmm- if she would clean my house and repair our weapons, she’d be more than useful for me. Should I?

“Who’s willing to take her in?” Elena asked, seeing the other Dark Scars gather around her. Seeing that nobody stepped forward, I did, “I’ll accept her!”

“Well, there you have it, he is called Sareg, your new master,” she pushed the elven woman towards me.

“O-Okay. So what do I have to do?” she asked showing a meek face. I had a thing for older women and she was an elf too… elves were beautiful. I- I might make a move on her in the future… but only if she’ll accept me, I thought as I cut my finger and formed a glass in my other hand.

I handed over the glass with a few drops of my blood in it and said, “Drink this and you’ll be one of us.”

Taking it, she closed her eyes and drank it all in one go with a sour face. I know how it feels… blood isn’t tasty.

“Done! But I feel so sleepy all of a sudden,” she held her head and started swaying her body.

“It’s alright, don’t resist it. Just go to sleep,” I whispered into her ear and in the next moment, she fell asleep. She wouldn’t go through a big evolution, but her talent would be still upgraded.

“My, have you found love or what?” I heard my master’s sweet voice in my ears. Raising my head, I was found myself face to face with Elena.

“Eh? What do you mean?”

“I’ve heard your thoughts… have you forgotten that during raids I’m connected with everyone? I can hear all of you,” she reminded me. I never minded when she heard me thinking about my respect for her, but for her to hear something like this…

“No! I was just-”

“Why are you making a fuss? I’ve never said you couldn’t be in a relationship and since she’ll be one of us, I really don’t mind it. But don’t force yourself on her or I’ll be angry,” she flicked my nose.

“Ouh, I wouldn’t dare to!” I rubbed my nose. “And it’s not like I fell in love, I’m just… interested in her,” I added.

“Hahaha, alright. Let’s clean up and then leave the city. We can’t be sure when the forces of the Alliance will arrive. You’ll take her back to your house for the time being and watch over her.”

Nodding my head, I left with the elven woman in my arms. On the way, I met Rick, who was stumbling on the debris-filled streets. “Yo! You still have your life, don’t you?” I remarked as I walked past him.

“Who are you, demon?” he furrowed his brows.

A smile formed on my face as I hear him. Turning around, “One of the people you fear,” I laughed as I turned into a black cloud and disappeared along with the elven woman and appeared a few meters away at a corner.

“Huh? Could it be… a member of the Dark Scars? Wait, wasn’t he there in the pub not long ago? These bastards! But at least my family is alright…” Although he continued to talk to himself, I left since I had better things to do.

He had no idea what was coming, but he’ll be surely happy!