As the demon hybrid is hauled to the surface, a mage started examining the unconscious sibling’s teeth. After staring at its canines for almost a full minute he stood abruptly, drawing everyone's attention.

“Vampire….. IT'S A VAMPIRE! ” [Mage]

The room went silent as the mage fumbled around trying to put the collar on as quickly as he could before stepping back to allow the transportation team to start moving him to the cage.

There were two conditions in which you would never want to find yourself face to face with a vampire. The first being at night or in a dark confined place… like an underground cavern. The other was somewhere where there were copious amounts of blood… for example an entire pool of it.

Being in a dark cave barely illuminated by the pulsing red light with a huge pool of blood was pretty much the worst scenario you could come up with and this puts all of the men on high alert. They took all the precautions they could and with it only being a youngling, it shouldn't be any more dangerous than the rest. Hopefully.

Rolf’s brows furrowed. If he was not confident of the men selected and the phalanx formation that they had been training for months, he would've jumped into the fray and killed the vampire immediately not willing to take the chance, even for such a huge reward.

“Fools! Get him away from the pool and light up the area” [Rolf]

Initially, they had avoided lights as it would speed the creature's awakening but with a vampires sensitivity to light it, in theory, should slow it down.

The vampire was abruptly dragged away from the pool and light stones used to illuminate the surrounds as they moved towards the cage at an increased speed.

Vampires had a strong affinity with darkness and were incredibly cunning, making natural born assassins and dungeon divers. Many adventures were against the thought of partying with a vampire, let alone heading underground with one so more often than not the only choice they had was assassination.

“It's a hybrid” grunted Albert the look of disdain on his face. He had lost a lot of good friends to vampire assassins and knew just how fearsome hybrids could be.

“Type?” [Rolf]

“Honesty…...No idea” sighed Albert deep in thought.

“Apart from the colour of his skin and his black hair you would be hard pressed to be able to tell the difference between him and a human boy. The strange blue tinge of his skin along with blue veins baffles me somewhat” continued Albert.

Hybrids did not suffer many of the races negative traits and as such were much more dangerous than a pure blood. As least with a pureblood, you were safeish in the light with a good silver sword.

“Make sure to keep him out of direct sunlight when you get to the surface, you don't want him berserker instinctively” [Albert]

After the vampire had been contained and transported, the spawning continued incident free until the pool finally lost its colour, stopped boiling and finally evaporated into a dull red mist and dispersing.

This was greeted with a sigh of relief from all present and they looked at each other with large, almost fool like grins. They had done their job and no one died.

Unable to move many slumped to the floor. The summoning had been long and nerve racking. Only now it was over and the adrenaline dying down the exhaustion hit.

“I would rather fight the corrupted than do that again” sighed one of the young mages before getting swatted by a grumpy looking female knight.

“You only say that because you haven't fought those monstrosities” she chided. “...Greenhorn”

A few of the veterans chuckled as the atmosphere of the room broke turning almost jovial. Soon they were passing around stamina potions and herbs as they talked about all of the creatures they had caged and who was going to try their hand at becoming one of the trainers.

“I can't believe with all the power an ancient dragon heart contains it can barely manage 32 soul summonings” [Albert]

“Yeah…. Even though that last dragon felt extremely weak, maybe we should've added a few regular dragon hearts so we didn't get a runt.” [General Rolf]

“Your joking right….We could have powered the entire capital for decades to come, improving everyone's lives and even strengthened the barrier but we wasted it all” Albert spat as he glared at the general.

“Hmmmph… small minded as always, if they are as half as good as we expect then we won't need to be on the defensive. Only a fool would attack us” [General Rolf]

During the two’s less than friendly conversation a young boy with light blonde hair, looking to be around the age of 14 had been standing slightly behind Rolf finishing his notes on the summoned and anything that was mentioned about them.

“Squire, head to the surface and make sure no one leaves without being checked for status effects” [Rolf]

“Y..Ye..Yes General” stuttered the boy as he almost flew to the exit and up the stairs. He couldn't wait to be out of the cave. His heart had almost stopped at least a dozen times and the magic residue made his skin crawl.

-”Still I got to see that cute demoness, I wonder if the general will let me train her” [Squire]

He quickly vaulted up the stairs and disappeared out of site.

“Good job everyone, get up to the surface and get some food” commanded the general as a plump man in overly ornate silver armour waddled over sweating profusely.

“Sir Norvan,” nodded Rolf as he watched the man approach.

The man ignored Rolf and stared at Albert before demanding “Grand Mage, when will we be able to see the summoned one’s statuses”

“They will soon be evaluated and given a status stone, only then will we be able to decide if this was worth the cost” Albert snorted.

By binding a status stone to an individual, you would be able to use it to see all the important details related to that individual. The front top half of the plate displayed a table containing all the individual stats. The bottom half would display and status effects while the back recorded the title, classes and jobs. As most of the information was extremely sensitive the stone’s user could decide how much information he wanted to display. The only way to force all of the information to be visible was to use a seer’s stone or battle stone. The seer’s stone was often found at city gates where the battle stone was found in arenas.

Although relieved that nothing had gone wrong Albert was still silently fuming. He had felt the power contained in the ritual and knew that one small mistake could have easily destroyed most of the surrounding area, if not the entire kingdom.

The king had refused to let him destroy the information relating to the summoning and Albert did not want to alienate himself from his homeland as well as his dying friend so decided to try more peaceful methods than blowing up part of the treasury.

Upon the king's death, he thought that he could talk sense into the prince even trying to bargain with him, offering his services for the next 20 years if he would destroy the information. It seems e had significantly underestimated the prince. As the king's end neared the information cache that held the ritual scrolls had been emptied to an unknown location and the explosive triggers had been disarmed.

The prince could barely contain his glee as he told Albert that the ritual had already been prepared and that if he wanted to stop anything going wrong, he would need to make sure it was a success. Although afterwards, Albert tried multiple times, he was not able to change the prince's mind or stop the summoning so had to go along with it.

-"Mindless fools, they don't know how lucky they were... well that is if one of the summoned doesn't snap their necks the first chance they get" [Albert]

As the last of the soldiers ascended the stairs the Grand Mage took a last glance around the room, his gaze stalling on the husks of the 32 sacrificed mages. He felt bad about not being able to return the bodies to their loved ones but they were contaminated with mana and would soon break apart and return to the void. If he tried to move them he himself might get contaminated quite a nasty death.

From the top of the stairs deafening screeches could be heard.

“Looks like something's awake and as expected in a pretty foul mood…”