"Mhmmmmmmmmmmmn~!" Anne let out an uncharacteristic moan as she did a couple stretching motions while walking. She finally managed to get out of that damned city and into the arctic, sterile wilderness of Avarest. The light of civilization was all but extinguished in this place, with all but the road ahead of her being swallowed by everlasting snow and ice. "Almost like home... just without the volcanoes and ash clouds." The first princess chuckled to herself as she continued enjoying the otherwise fatal frost that surrounded her from each and every direction.

Already, a thin sheet of ice was forming around her body, with snow sticking to her heels as she walked ever forward, unbothered by neither the cold, nor the frost. Glacial winds struck against the icy shield upon her bare skin as Anne breathed in deeply, cooling herself down to the very core as she continued to stretch, her clothing flying in the freezing wind. If it wasn't for how loud the winds were, she would almost certainly have fallen asleep right where she walked.

Nevertheless and in spite of the favourable weather, our princess focused herself on the task at hand; arriving at the location of a supposed gold mine somewhat near the city. Avarest, it seemed, was as rich in gold, silver and precious stones as Sarcopha was in death magic. There were numerous mythos out there that attempted to provide an explanation for this, such as it being a trap for the greedy, laid by Phexris herself, as she is a goddess that despises most sapient life, while other tales speak of how the dragons, in their own eternal greed, gained a deep understanding of transmutation magic before twisting entire mountains into various precious materials.

Either way, the entire land around Anne sang with magic, a deep-seated power the likes of which was equally familiar as it was strange. It reminded her of Sarcopha's deathly echoes, of her grandfather's aura, which caused her to reason that this must be her grandaunts aura; an eternal force of pure magic that radiated enough power to infuse itself into just about every single snowflake and piece of regolith upon Avarest. Perhaps, in a way, all the continents of this fantastical world were shaped by an aura of one of the NAO. A concept that she had no proof over, but figured made a lot of sense.

In accordance with the directions she'd been given by the guild's elven receptionist, the aforementioned mine was part of a larger area called the Hailgold Crater, a massive crater left behind after an ancient dragon supposedly used some powerful magic to summon a comet from the dark beyond in order to pulverize its enemies. It was situated due north-west from the city using the gate of the residential district as a landmark. Anne would have had an easier time reaching the place had she gone through the gates of Zlato's Red Light district, but her sheer disgust for the place had made such an option an impossibility. The merest taste of the foul, vapour-filled stench of that district made her want to vomit and she could not believe just how many people there were inside of that wretched place when she unwillingly turned her soul radar in its direction.

The outside was much more preferable, with nothing living being anywhere near her and only the faint echoes of her grandaunts magic left around to keep her company. Regardless of which gate she chose to leave through, the guardsmen standing proudly at the gates still gave her a ton of trouble.

"What?! You're saying, you want to go out there, looking like that?!" A human guardsman yelled at her with an incredulous expression, filled with disbelief and shock as he pointed towards the veritable hailstorm outside of the gates, before turning his head back towards the first princess.

Anne shrugged and sighed towards him. "Yes? I'm an Inerti. We like the cold. Please, let me pass as I have business to attend to." She stated with a rather matter-o-fact tone, which did nothing to dissuade or convince the guard.

"Woman, I know of your kind, alright? I'm even friends with one of you, an old gray-haired asshole, and he shivers just like the rest of us when he's out there!" He exclaimed with a copious amount of worry, causing Anne to have to hide the sickness gnawing deep within her stomach.

With a roll of her eyes, the first princess decided not to bother with the animal in front of her, taking one look at how high the walls were before simply leaping upwards, grasping at the old stones with her fingers before descending to the other side of the gate, giving the shocked, horrified and stunned guardsmen a rather rude gesture before pivoting on her heel and disappearing into the blizzard.

Their expressions were almost amusing to her, if only they weren't simultaneously annoying. "What I wouldn't give to be able to just kill them right then and there... annoying bugs."

Still, it wasn't the right decision to take their lives right then and there. Murder may not be a crime in Zlato, but that does not mean that people won't hate you for randomly committing it. Regardless, she was hoping that the supposed band of elven bandits that took over the mine were numerous enough to slake her blood thirst, among other things. It had been quite a long time since she had a good elven heart to eat and their precious, delicious blood to drink.

After all, elves were animals whose bodies radiated with magic, a wonderful source of meat that was light, nutritious and delicious, with their hearts being so good, one could swallow them whole without even cooking for a practical drug-like high. Hearts, you see, are the source of the mana within the body and, as such, the one organ that has the most of the aforementioned energy coursing through it. This is the reason why magical rituals often use hearts as components and also why Anne loved to eat them. More than that, if one was particularly skilled in Soul Weaving, a persons heart can act as an effective soul stone for that same person. There was a peculiar, sadistic pleasure in sealing the souls of your victims inside of their own hearts, though Anne wouldn't do this simply because she wouldn't be able to consume said hearts if there were souls inside of them.

Not before using up the soul, anyway.

"Hmm?" Anne let out a humming tune as she continued ripping through the snow-drenched road in front of her, having detected something on her radar; a lone soul leaning against the rocks and shivering in the cold. There was a gigantic formation of rock that seemed to block the glacial wind up front, with the road curving to the left and behind it. From what she could see of the soul, it appeared that the being was huddled up in some form of bedroll, shivering and shuddering even when protected from the rabid winds.

She let out a small chuckle, with the ice on her cheek breaking from the action as she cracked her neck and picked up the pace, shattering the ice night completely along the way. As she came closer, she noticed a half-frozen sign on the right side of the road which said; Hailgold. It seemed that she had arrived at the location of her quest without any travelling incident to worry about. A myriad of people told her that the wilderness was swarming with enraged monsters for the past few weeks, so the first princess hoped to find a worthy opponent among them, yet it seems that this was simply not to be. Then again, monsters, such as they were, were all supposedly members of her extended family, since their mother is her grandaunt.

"Maybe it was for the best that I didn't come across anything, but damn, I really wanna fight an ice giant..." Anne mused to herself with a snort, reasoning that a fight does not have to equal murder and making a mental note to not kill any monsters she does not absolutely have to. Kin slaying is not a act looked upon favourably by the Inerti, though she doubted her kin cared too much about monsters, despite considering them all to be their cousins.

In a moment, Anne found herself standing at the entrance to a mine, with a large wooden doorway leading inside. "H-huh-wuh-?!" The figure clad in the bedroll awoke with a start, somehow managing to have fallen asleep despite of the cold beforehand. A singular look towards it from the first princess was enough for her to realize that this was an elven man, clad in so much fur that one could hardly believe he could stand in it. He panicked as his hazy sight cleared up enough for him to see Anne standing still, looking at him with a singular, grim eye and even more menacing smile.

An eerie giggle escaped her as Anne leaped into action, kicking the ground with her heel in order to gain speed as she charged towards the elf, the final remnants of ice and snow crackling off of her body as she impaled the startled elf through the chest, effectively tearing out his spine through it, before throwing the mass of bone to her left with a derisive snort. With life nigh instantly leaving his eyes, the elf shuddered for one last time before letting out a final breath and passing on.

On so he would have hoped, as the first princess opened up her mouth, causing the soul ash within her body to absorb the elf's screaming spirit as soon as it left his body. Digging through the wound on the corpses chest, Anne tore out the elf's heart and swallowed it, with her every taste bud leaping with euphoric joy as the squishy organ was torn apart by her maw. Not wishing to waste anything from her kill, Anne then summoned the blood of the elf, collecting it into a quickly-frozen cube of ice before throwing it through a portal and into her manors refrigerated storage.

Deciding to be smarter about things from now on, despite only barely managing to soothe her growing lust and ineffable hunger, Anne quietly made her way inside of the caverns below as the wooden door closed behind her with a sorrowful creak.

A couple minutes of creeping through what was definitely a needlessly-long cavernous corridor, Anne finally reached what seemed to be the entrance to the bandits lair; a small wooden house, or better to say; a makeshift shack, which conveniently blockaded the path deeper into the mine, having likely been used as a form of administrative area by the miners before the bandits violently evicted them. Everything surrounding Anne was covered in complete, total darkness, her ability to sense souls being the only reason why she wasn't slamming her head into a wall every few moments while the elves likely used their natural ability to see in the dark instead of torches for vision.

An intelligent decision, or it would have been in any other circumstance, as Anne easily found her way through the darkness by following the directions given to her by her magical sight, leading the thirsting princess to the nearest gathering of souls. Four elves stood guard, one up front and outside of the wooden shack, while the other three seemed to be playing cards on a table inside of the building. The elven woman guarding the gate stood by a low, lantern light, with the object glowing with magical flames rather than from any natural fuel. She had a slender body, healthy porcelain skin and red hair tied into a ponytail. She wore thick leather armour and held a blade in her hand, seemingly alert due to something.

Unfortunately for the elf, her alertness wasn't enough to save her from Anne, as the princess used her clawed fingers to climb up to the cavern's ceiling, using magic to block all sounds as she neared her target, stalking and preying upon the somewhat-suspecting elf with a hunters glee. Making her way back down and onto the ground, Anne scooted over directly behind the elf, who seemed to finally notice her just as the lioness' hands reached upwards.

Her left hand grasped the elf's mouth, while the other coiled below her breast. "Wh-! N-now wa- wait a minute! I'm s-sure we can come to an agree-" Several horrific sounds erupted through the cavern as Anne's fingers broke through the elf's mouth, shattering teeth and ripping apart flesh as she tore out the woman's tongue and threw it onto the ground. "HRGHN-!?" The she-elf attempted to scream as Anne moved her hand downwards, gripping her throat and violently moving it to the side, managing to not kill the elf regardless of the act as her right hand dug deeply into the elf's chest, reaching for her heart. The woman gargled again and again, suffocating on her own blood as Anne opened her mouth...

... and chomped down into the woman's neck, the lioness' teeth goring through meat and bone as she began to drink deeply of the elf's blood, the salty, mana-rich liquid reminding her of an aged soy sauce from back on Earth. The elf's knees buckled beneath her as her life blood was rapidly drained, drank straight, fresh from the cup, as Anne knelt alongside the woman, as if a twisted lover holding their special other close, so very close. Her victims body began to rapidly twitch as the light dimmed in her ancient, elven eyes, their rich blue iris' becoming paler and paler as her arms shook, turning limp and paralysed, as the first princess continued to sip from her grail.

It wasn't long before the trio of the elven bandits inside of the shack rushed to the door. "What' going o-!?" An armoured man ran towards the door and basically kicked it open before his eyes widened with unspoken horror and disgust. His eyes quickly darted between Anne, who was still experiencing a deeply-euphoric high and the pained, horrified expression of his fellow elf.

The woman, despite all of her fatal wounds and quick blood loss, managed to raise her right hand up in the direction of the man. "H-urgh..elp...aa-..." A sickening snap resounded through the cavern as Anne, using magic, emptied the woman's body of blood and tore out her heart, having finally noticed the man at the door. She chuckled and smiled eerily as his fellows corpse fell before her with a splattering thud, but before Anne could do anything, the man reached for the door he'd previously violently opened and closed it shut with equal fervour. "VAMPIRE!"

He shouted out as loud as he could, his comrades instantly leaping off of their chairs and for their weapons, lazily spread around the shack, yet before they could arm themselves, a baleful crack tore their attention from the weapons and back to the door. And there, they saw their fellow bandit, standing just half a meter away, with his back turned to the door, as a hand tore through it and into his neck. "A-..aurh...?" He turned his head down, as much as he could, observing the pale, blood-stained hand beneath his chin in disbelief before looking back towards his fellows. It almost seemed as if he was going to say something to them, perhaps to warn them to run or to beg for help, just as his female friend had mere moments prior.

It mattered very little as he was pulled towards the door, the insides of his neck being squashed as Anne's left hand constricted around them, while her right tore through the door and reached for the other side of his abdomen, before promptly setting the man's insides free from their fleshly prison in a sickening display of gore. Blood, guts, flesh and splinters of bone erupted from within as the other two bandits began to twitch with rising fear, their hands attempting to grasp their distant weapons, only to narrowly miss them due to the panic. One of the two fell on shaking knees as he watched his friend being torn apart, having played cards with the man just moments prior to seeing his guts splashed onto the floor, while the other, having missed the chance to rearm himself, turned away to flee the scene.

A smart choice, as Anne finally kicked through the remainder of the butchered door, so drenched in gore and blood by now that what little clothing she had truly left nothing to the imagination. Perhaps, if he wasn't paralysed with dread and she wasn't drenched in the bits of his fallen friends, the elven man may have liked what he saw, for the princess, even such as she was, possessed a divine beauty.

Swallowing down hard in an attempt to steel himself, even as pool of yellow formed beneath him, the elf gritted his teeth and turned to run as he witnessed Anne's foot smashing into the armoured man's head, grinding it to mush with her heel. With a panicked rush, he picked himself up from the ground and leaped to his feet, an act that had him put a foot onto a couple of fallen cards, causing him to instantly slip, smash his head onto a chair and fall down with a loud thunk. "O-ow! Aargh!" He grasped his head, the pain making him momentarily forget his situation and just as he blinked himself out of that stupor, he found himself face to face with Anne, her blood-stained mouth grinning at him with a row of ravenous, lions teeth.

Had he not already soiled himself, he would have done it a second time now as he quickly twisted his body around and hurriedly clawed at the wooden flooring of the shack, crawling his way towards the way deeper into the mine. "Hey, now! Isn't this a movie scene?" The first princess mused to herself with an innate chuckle as she rose, getting off of the elf's back and allowing him to crawl towards the open door, but not before taking the chair he'd previously smacked his head on and using it to smash his legs, eliciting a scream from the man. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH- ah- ah- A- AA-"

He continued to screech as his breathing quickened and he dragged himself forward, a trail of blood and piss following behind him as Anne slowly followed the elf, making sure to stamp her heels into the wood so that he would hear each and every step. And just as he managed to reach the doorway, raising his hand up and likely towards the rest of the bandit crew, he was pulled back into the darkened building with a final scream as the lioness pounced back on top of him, tearing up his armour as well as intentionally sending bits of skin and torn meat flying out of the shack before biting down deeply and drinking in of the exotic vintage that was his blood, before finally tearing out his still-beating heart.

Clanking armour and readied bowstrings caught Anne's attention as she finished up her preliminary meals, storing away the hearts and the remaining blood, as well as the souls of the slain before checking out what lied further ahead. Counting the one that got away, there were six elves in total; four fighters, a mage and an archer. Of the first four, only three had shields which is why they formed up a line of defence against whatever was coming, while the shaken, twitching fourth kept on running, deciding not to look back in spite of his comrades screams and yells.

The mage was formerly asleep, having slapped himself several times to keep awake despite the echoing screams, likely having been the former lookout if his hypothermic appearance was anything to go by, while the archer aimed her bow at the shack's open doorway, having taken the high ground atop a makeshift tower of nailed planks.

"[Shield]." Taking another moment to bless herself with protection, Anne summoned forth her snow-white sword and rushed outside, not through the door, mind you, but through the badly-maintained, wooden walls. The sudden eruption of wood caused the elven archer to jerk and twitch, letting her arrow loose on instinct and missing Anne by a good meter, cursing herself and already reaching for another arrow.

Meanwhile, the unexpected course of action allowed the lioness to charge the bandits frontline, smashing the first elf's buckler with her left hand before impaling him from the shoulder down and sideways with her sword. The elf died instantly, the blade having torn his spinal cord, causing gouts of his own blood to quickly finish choking him, while his seemingly more experienced fellows ignored his quick death with practised ease, turning to strike at Anne with a blade to her right and a spiked mace on her left. Thinking quickly, the first princess backhanded the mace, cutting her skin on its spikes but managing to strike the iron with her left hand, while using the right to push herself off of the ground, sending her crashing through a nearby coal box.

Not having time to dust herself off, the lioness grabbed hold of a coal piece and charged forward, throwing it in the direction of the newest arrow to fly towards her, successfully blocking it in the process. "You've gotta be shittin' me!?" The she-elf archer cursed loudly as she reached for her third arrow in an attempt to continue pelting her foe, as Anne re-engaged the two bandits up front. The blade user, spitting on the ground next to himself, reformed his stance and attempted to throw a kick at Anne, which was met with the woman's shoulder, resulting in a sickening crunch as his leg bones ruptured through the man's kneecaps."AAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaargh!" He inhaled sharply and fell on his back as he screamed.

On the other side, the mace user, having lost his balance from having his weapon previously parried by hand, picked himself off of the ground and charged, swinging his mace sideways and attempting to land a good hit on Anne's right shoulder. Anne reached for her sword, which was still impaled in her former victims corpse and roughly tore it upwards, intent on severing the mace bandits weapon arm. "[Lightning Blast]!" The wizard, having finally managed to wake himself up enough, channelled as much of his magic as he could into bolt of small lighting before sending it flying towards Anne, who was sent flying back into the shack from the blast in turn, as the mace bandit promptly fell on his ass due to shock, pun not intended.

"O-oi! You nearly fucking fried me, asshole!" He exclaimed, quickly picking himself up again and turning his attention to the wizard, the exhausted mage breathing heavily as he'd just wasted a lot of his mana in a way that would have gained him certain death at the hands of Anne's teachers, though he may have preferred that result when compared to the ingratitude of the life he'd just saved.

Yet before the either of them could do or say anything more, the mace bandit found himself spitting out blood as Anne's pale-white blade was thrown through his chest, the lioness having been completely fine despite the magical blast due to the shielding she'd blessed herself with beforehand. "A-..ah?" Despair was now etched on the mace users expression, which quickly turned pale as he stumbled and fell downwards, pushing the sword out of his flesh in the process as Anne leaped towards the sword user to his left. The man, still struggling with his broken knee, could only offer the lioness a soft whimper as she put one hand around his neck, the other on his forehead and pressed her chest onto the back of his head.

With a crunching, tearing sound, she ripped the stunned bandits head clean off his shoulders. "Nope! Yeah! HAHA! NO- NO NOOPE!" With a flick of his fingers and an expression of complete, harrowed disbelief, the mage used a [Blink] to teleport himself away from the combat, appearing further down the same road where the other coward of their party fled a good minute ago, before following in the aforementioned elf's example.

The archer woman attempted to do the same, letting out a screech of pure horror as her morale finally shattered from seeing her fellow bandits being killed in such a crude, brutal fashion. However, despite being more agile than the mage, she had no magic to quickly teleport herself with, which meant that while she was some distance away from Anne, she wasn't out of a good throws reach. Mimicking her previous throw, Anne casually grabbed another piece of coal before flinging it at the she-elf's head, with the dark stone smashing and breaking upon her skull, effectively scalping one side of the woman's head as she fell face first into the paved, stone path.

Anne was quick to leap on top of the archer, locking the elf's lower body with her own as she roughly pulled her upwards by what hair she had left. Much as she'd done with her second kill of the day, she moved her victims head slightly away as she coiled her other hand around their abdomen, just below the she-elf's breast, before her teeth ripped deeply into her victims neck.

Euphoria after euphoria, caused Anne to exhale a breath of relief, before continuing to drain the elf of blood as she smiled to herself, for today was indeed, a very, very good day.