Sometime later...

It did not take very long for the first princess to finish off the remainder of the bandits, since there were only five people left, including the wizard and rogue that ran away from the prior fights, after which she made sure to loot the entire caverns worth of valuables, which included a variety of enchanted weapons and pieces of armour for her to study, a dozen bars of solid gold, as well as the hearts and blood of the elves slain, the last of which was obsessively collected via magic down to the last drop. Naturally, all of this was then sent to her manor within Anea Sedea as Anne had no desire to have to explain herself to anyone, much less the Guild's pencil-pushing receptionists. With this in mind, she also made sure to collect all the corpses, as well as their bits and pieces, onto one huge pile before turning them to ash in holy fire. This action had a twofold purpose; the first of which being that she did not wish to risk having someone from the guild question her about why the corpses of her victims look as if a monster went through them, as well as a second, more religious one.

What better way was there to prevent people from rising unto undeath than to incinerate them in holy flames, after all? A deliciously plausible excuse that made Anne smile and smirk.

"H-huh?.. wait,... am I hallucinating?!" A guard standing proudly on the walls of Zlato exclaimed loudly enough for Anne to hear as the lioness turned her head upwards and threw the human a casual smile, which seemed to send him into complete shock as he promptly fell on his ass, before instantly standing back up and yelling out even more loudly. "By the Gods! There is someone out there in the blizzard! Open the gates! OPEN THE GATES!"

"Isn't that a bit too rash of an action? I could be an enemy of the city." Anne mused to herself as she watched the gate guardsmen running around in a panic, pulling the giant levers and operating the magical mechanisms required to open their gate. Many among them were also carrying a variety of furs, potions and what looked to be a hot drink, waiting for Anne to enter the city on her own before showering her with those apparent necessities. It almost made the first princess feel as if she was a hero already, even when the thought of it caused her to recoil in personal disgust.

Once the gates were opened, a small crowd formed around it, waiting to see who was the unannounced arrival. Their souls were ablaze with confusion and questions, with many asking themselves just who or what could have braved the blizzard at this stage of intensity. The temperatures of Avarest could easily reach unnatural cold, but that was of no consequence to Anne. After all, the first princess had an effective shield of ice coating her every exposed piece of skin.

Their confusion was replaced with shock, awe and horror as Anne walked into the city, with the aforementioned, thick coating of ice failing to melt even with the added warmth of Zlato's heat barrier. She wondered if they could even see her from within the frost, eliciting a chuckle from the woman as she stretched herself, easily dusting off the ice that had formed around her body and revealing to the crowd just how inappropriately dressed for the occasion she was. A black tank-top, hot pants, stockings, boots and gloves. In one hand, she held the head of the bandit captain, the only piece of flesh that survived her excursion into Hailgold.

The first princess merely smirked at her crown of stunned onlookers and turned around to face a familiar guard back at the gate, taking the hot cocoa from his hands and drinking it in one go as she flicked the few remaining pieces of ice from her shoulder. "See? Told you I can take the cold."

The guard, whom attempted to stop her from going outside in the first place, merely nodded with his mouth agape with disbelief, though he said nothing more. The lioness merely shrugged and made her way through the crowd, as while laughing at their reactions was an alright time waster, it would not do for an Inerti like her to continue to waste time in such an ineffective manner.

Instead, she would have to focus herself on the task at hand; delivering the proof of her kill back to the guild. For a brief moment, the princess wondered if carrying a frozen, severed head through a city would be bad, but gave it no further thought. After all, why should she care for the comfort of the sheep around her?

Switch to Anne's POV... - Adventurers Guild Hall

Surprisingly, apart from a few confused stares, nobody paid me any mind. In fact, I'm kinda sure a couple people were judging me for my style of delivery, since such rough-handling could cause damage to the head and potentially limit my profits.

But what was an even more pleasant surprise was the fact that there wasn't anyone waiting in line at the receptionist desk!

Quickly making my way up, severed head still in hand, I waved towards the elf with a cheery smile. With a not-so-inaudible sigh, she turned around to face me. "Good evening, Miss Sedellean. I trust you've come to inform me of your teammat-..."

She stopped dead in her tracks as she finally noticed the elf's severed head, before throwing several looks at it and me in quick succession. Then she sighed heavily again, clutching her apparently pained forehead with an arm. "Please, don't tell me that this is the head of the bandit boss from Hailgold?"

I tilted my head in confusion as I rose the aforementioned, still frozen in an ice cube, head up to desk level. "Uhm, yes? Wait, did you say teammates?... I don't remember that having a team was required by contact."

She let out yet another sigh, turning to look at me with extreme annoyance. "No, you are right, it wasn't." Then she made random, overly dramatic motions in the air with her hands while replying in an exasperated manner. "I simply figured that it would be common fucking sense to not go alone in the gods damned hailstorm, all alone, without allies and dressed like that."

I shrugged as she pointed out my outfit. "Actually, since I'm an Inerti, the weather outside of the barrier is perfect for me! And please, don't bother comparing me to those other three, as they seem to have given you all the wrong idea about our kind."

To my surprise, the elf woman just took I. a deep breath and calmed herself before nodding. "I see. I'll make sure to include that in my report. Anyway, not possessing common sense aside, you seem to have completed the contract on your own, which should place you at a higher status from the get go. However, we don't have a way to be certain that the head you just brought in is really that of the bandit boss, so you're going to have to wait a few days for our squad to reach the mine and perform an investigation to make sure that the bandits are gone."

With a shrug, I offered the receptionist a nod. "Fair enough, I guess? I burned all the bandits corpses in holy fire, though. They can find the ash pile next to a coal stack behind the wooden shack deeper in the mine."

The elf quirked an eyebrow at me with clear suspicion. "And why would you do such a thing?"

I quirked one right back at her. "Because undead are unholy abominations and their very existence is heretical to my Lord?"

She nodded and wrote my reply down on a piece of paper. "Since this is your first time, the guild will forgive it, but the next time you burn the evidence of your own kills, we will be deducting a fee from your reward."

"Now that's just unfair?! Am I supposed to leave the corpses behind so they can be raised unto undeath?!" I very nearly slammed my fist into the desk, but stopped myself with a grimace.

To my surprise and to her credit, the elf woman just let out another sigh. "Your complaint is duly noted. Please understand that the Guild cares not as we would rather aggravate our holier members than risk having vampires using our professional establishment as a proxy for feeding frenzies."

Blinking in surprise, I tilted my head in fake confusion. "So you want to see the bodies in order to find out if any of them were drained of blood?"

The she-elf nodded without raising her head up to face me. "Among other things, yes."

The corpses of an adventurers victims are a great way to learn more about how they fight. Hmm, I'll have to be more careful in the future. "Then can I burn the corpses after your people are done with your investigation next time?"

She nodded again, this time beaming me a disgustingly fake smile. "So long as you are willing to wait for the investigation to be completed each time, yes. With that said, please be advised that this does not apply to every single mission you may decide to carry out. For instance, the corpses of certain monsters are highly valuable commodities and, if you are unable to harvest them yourself, they legally belong to the Guild."

Now that is some proper corporate bullshit if I've ever heard it. Letting out a sigh of my own, I rose the severed head up again. "Whatever. What do I do with this?"

She threw one look at the thing before grimacing and pointing outside of the hall. "Hell if I know. Throw it to the fishes or something!" With a shrug and a nod, I went off to do exactly what I was told to do. Certainly, the fish at the harbour will appreciate this meal more than the Guild!

A few minutes later... - Normal Point of view...

Moving down Glory Lane didn't take the first princess a very long time, as while the entire pathway was packed full of people both arriving and leaving the city, it was also carefully curated by ever-present staff who made sure that only a select amount of people could enter the lane within a set time interval, while anyone who didn't want to wait to be allowed entry could either pay a modest sum of twenty copper pieces or piss off. Anne had no problem forking over this paltry sum, as her treasury and generally available funding had seemingly doubled in the short time that she's been within Zlato, a concept which both frightened and excited her.

More money is supposed to be always good, except when it becomes poison. She had no desire to see herself become a hedonistic piece of existential waste, much as the humans and demonkin were, as this would likely result in her death at the hands of her own mother. Anne let out a sigh as she flung the severed head into the harbours waters, much to the confusion of everyone around her. The lioness snorted at their expressions, finding them exceedingly amusing for the briefest moment as her mind wandered back to the previously mentioned duet of species. Humanity and demonkind...

The First Princess had spent quite some time pondering the two races, whom seemed to share several major similarities, almost as if they were mirrored versions of each other. The Humans of Aestra were highly religious, bound in doctrine and dogma, much alike to how one would expect a medieval society to be, except pushed to the extremes due to the endless wars with their eternal enemies, the demons. Demonkind, on the other hand, were highly anthropometric, industrious and absolutely uncaring of the nature around them, indulging in as much sin and wasteful behaviour as their environment could possibly allow them. One may excuse both species by claiming how their current states were merely caused by circumstance, but Anne found that to be extremely unlikely, for you see, the war between demons and mankind has lasted for longer than recorded human history, descending into myth and legend much like the dinosaurs back on Earth. It had been going on for so long that the first princess simply could not believe that no demon or human ever thought to themselves that peace may be the better option.

An endless conflict, ever-escalating and never offering even the barest of hopes for a change in course. It all felt a little 'forced', to Anne. If the humans of Aestra were to be considered medieval and religious, then the demons were representatives of a more modern, but still quite 'human', society. One that makes continuous indulgence from sin, whereas the degeneracy of the past becomes the norm of the future, escalating ever-forward in a sea of societal shifts and schisms, not even allowing the people to get used to the current state before forcibly adapting the next. Now, it wasn't like Anne despised demonkin, not as much as humanity anyway, not to mention how she herself was a product of one such society of 'proliferated sin' and abject morality, but she knew that she would likely end up murdering a ton of them in the process of ridding herself of the 'hero correction'.

"Huh...?" Anne blinked in confusion and quirked an eyebrow at herself due to these thoughts. Kill a lot of demonkin? Why? There's no reason for her to be their enemy. "Tch." She clicked her tongue in anger and frustration, cursing her own accursed soul as she stomped her feet forward, cracking the pavement and startling a couple onlookers too curious for their own good.

"Still... the correction may have a point, this time..." An evil grin etched itself upon her divine-wrought features, as the first princess thought a little more on the subject matter. While demonkind isn't directly responsible for her curse, they are the legitimate cause, for if there was no demons to threaten humanity, she would not have been cursed to bear the marking of a hero, albeit, she would not have been summoned to this wonderful world either. However, it was foolish to think this deeply about such things and Anne knew it well.

In the end, both species caused equal harm and good to Anne, so if she was planning to cause a human genocide for their sins, why not include the demons in that list? In fact, why not simplify things and lead a new Inerti Crusade with the intent to eradicate every single living thing upon Ennergres?

Anne let herself smile and chuckle lightly. "A thought for later." She mused to herself as she continued to walk forward with a steady pace, yet instead of walking through the Glory Lane once again, she found herself standing at the entry of an unknown pathway, an alley to the side on the right end of the harbour. The lioness blinked in confusion and wondered briefly why she'd even gone down this strange, alien path, though the answers shone themselves against her face as she rose her head. The light of the sun was being reflected by something, straight in her direction, causing the princess to have to shield her eyes from the light with a hand and a groan.

The light passed by as a cloud covered the sky, blockading the offending cosmic object from assaulting the princess as she realized what she was looking at; the Katedra Est Dracul. The gleaming, legendary structure stood tall, basking in the evening sunlight and boasting an aura of endless holiness that made even the princess gasp in sheer awe.

With another blink to clear her thoughts, Anne remembered the holy calling she experienced prior to leaving the city. "Ah, that's right! Phexris... aunt's been calling for me all this time." Anne tilted her head in confusion, contemplating her own thoughts as she is certain that she wasn't ever truly sure that it was her grandaunt that was calling for her, though perhaps the very thought itself was proof enough. After all, gods work in mysterious ways, the NAO even more so.

Nodding mostly to herself, the First Princess decidedly took the shortcut pathway instead of the Glory Lane, as it seemed that a being of divine status had decided it was a quicker way to reach the cathedral. Much like Glory Lane itself, this side pathway was riddled with a plethora of residential buildings and shops, though both were far less resplendent than their glorious counterparts and while the place wasn't completely devoid of people, it may as well be counted as depopulated in comparison.

Exactly what one may expect of a side alleyway, though Anne figured even this place is crammed full of people on a busy day.

A shout from the front caught her attention, as Anne looked around to figure out its origins, noticing a small crowd of people gathered around a grocery shop to her right. With a shrug, she walked over to the crowd to see what was going on. "M-move! Go a-away, you disgusting, c-creepy thing!" A human man, fat and dressed in what seemed to be a chefs outfit, as indicated by his white cap, waved a butchers knife around in open air, too far away to cause anyone any actual harm, which caused Anne to quick an eyebrow in confusion.

"What's happening here?" The first princess, uncharacteristically asked a nearby fellow onlooker, another human, though this one seemed malnourished and thin. To the man's credit, he was only briefly spooked when he noticed Anne standing next to him. His pale blue eyes told the lioness the tale of an extraordinarily painful existence as a former slave, though not from her empire of origin, but one belonging to the elves. This human, it seemed, was used as a jester and living toilet by arrogant, debaucherous young elven men for much of his childhood, an experience etched so deeply into his soul that she could read it without even bothering to dig any deeper.

"Uh-... an Inerti?... ah, who cares, anyway..." He turned back around, his surprise and fear all but evaporating in an instant, which caused Anne to quirk an eyebrow at him. "Soulless as he is, I wonder if he would even resist if I tried to kill him right here and now~?"

With a deep breath, the man pointed at the chef before signalling for Anne to look behind that overweight man, a feat not that easily achieved. "See the twerp? That things actually a dangerous assassin from some kingdom back on the mainland. Their organisation ain't liked so the owner hates the fact one of 'em is sittin' in front of his shop. Says that its scarin' away the customers."

Anne blinked several times before finally realizing what the man was talking about, which in turn caused her eyes to open wide in shock, as in front of the fat man lied the body of a clearly malnourished, wounded human girl, about the age of nine, maybe slightly more. She had short, raven hair and menacingly crimson eyes, was dressed in an equally-black overcoat, combat boots and leather gloves. A child assassin, outfitted with a myriad of hidden weapons, most of which seemed to be rudimentary guns; a rifle, a shotgun and two pistols, as well as a jagged, sinister-looking dagger and several hidden blades.

What caused the First Princess shock however, was the fact that this... creature, had a twin, a normally invisible ghost, sitting right next to it and looking nearly exactly alike to the half-asleep girl. Its deathly stare was almost creepy, with soulless, black holes for eyes and a blank expression ripping holes into the fat man in front of them.

With that said, the supposedly creepy spirit's expression twisted with rage as she protectively spread her arms in front of her sister's unmoving body. "Go away! Leave us alone!" The thing let out a ghastly vail, but to no effect, as the chef continued to slash away at the empty air in front of him, unaware that his cleaver was passing through the soul of another young girl. A singular look from Anne caused the ghost girl to twitch, turning her head up in an instant and her empty eyes to bulge out in shock and surprise, eliciting a snort to come from the princess. "Looks like I'm scary enough to terrify a ghost, though I wish it was anything but the soul of a little girl."

Having somehow heard the snort through his own rambling yells, the chef turned around with an angered look, only to nearly drop his cleaver as Anne came into view. "Holy fucking sh-!" Then, he blinked and grinned, rubbing his chin in thought. "Hey, you wouldn't happen to be that strange, new Inerti that said she's a paladin?"

Anne blinked in confusion and answered with an uncertain tone as she watched the ghost girl attempt to rouse her unmoving sibling with quickly-settling panic. "And what if I am?" The chef's grin now went from ear to ear as he turned back around and pointed at the two sisters, though he could only see one, cleaver in hand, as he exclaimed loudly for all to hear. "How's about you deal with this accursed situation for me, aye? I'll pay ya real good for it!"

The first princess shrugged and nodded, as she thought this was a good excuse to eradicate an undead creature without much thought. She approached the twins, one hand on her hip while the other lazily dangled from the side, showing off her disinterest. Much of the crowd instantly dispersed as they saw the Inerti approach, likely realizing how this would end and deciding they didn't want to stay around to witness the brutal end of a child's life, an assassin though she may be.

As Anne came closer to the duet, the ghost sister once again leaped to fruitlessly protect her unmoving twin by extending both arms and yelling at the opposition. "NO! You can't hurt her! You can't! Please!..." The Lioness rose her lazy hand upwards, fully intent on collecting the lost soul and sending it to Anea Sedea, yet as her gloved hand reached the ghost girl...

She found herself only giving her a light pat on the head. "... huh?..."

The ghost girl offered her best reply to the event as her non-existent brain attempted, and quite clearly failed, to make any sense of what was happening, as Anne gently passed her by, making sure not to walk though the child as she knelt in front of her unmoving sister. "Oi! Keep on your toes, lady! That thing is an assassin, not just a normal child. There's no tellin' if she's gonna shoot ya with those guns of 'ers!" The thin man from before shouted towards Anne, eliciting murmurs of agreement from those who were still around.

Anne's lion ears twitched in response, though she said nothing and simply continued to gaze at the duo of little girls in front of her. You see, the reason why she didn't just stomp the unmoving one's head in, was because Anne could see the trauma that the two experienced, she could feel their emotions, their crushed hopes and twisted dreams, with one word, one title, one organization's moniker being prevalent in all of it; 'Shadow Cradle'.

From what she could gather, the Shadow Cradle was a human organization created by a particularly rich king with the intention of creating the perfect assassin. Blood mages, witches, rouge Inerti, all manner of dark powers were called under the employ of this king, eventually resulting in a cruel training ground which collected potential candidates from the surrounding villages, all of whom were children aged two to twelve and all of whom were twins, who would then be put under rigorous training and forced to participate in horrific rituals to empower their tiny bodies. It was honestly the kind of thing that allowed Anne to momentarily defeat her curse and sincerely wish for the complete eradication of humanity as a whole.

As Anne continued to stare at the unmoving body of the girl in front of her, her ghostly twin hugged the body tightly with ephemeral tears flowing freely from her cheeks. Seeing these two awoke something deep within Anne which was equal parts pity as well as instinct, as further prodding into their darkened pasts revealed an intricate emotion that Anne found herself believing she could make good use of. The ghost girl was surprisingly the more 'moral' twin of the two, or perhaps more naive, depending on one's point of view, but the motionless, supposedly-living sister was fuming, frothing and drowning in a sea of pure, unadulterated hate. More specifically; hatred for humanity and all the sins they've committed upon her and her twin.

The lioness offered the unmoving body a knowing smile. "I'm going to be moving you now. If you promise to be good girls, I'll even buy you some food."

The body twitched with clear discomfort as it turned its head up in confusion, first taking notice of its terrified, ghostly twin and then looking towards the first princess with glowing, confused red eyes. "Uhm... did you just say... 'girls'?" Her voice was soft, but hoarse, a testament to the insane treatment that the two had survived up to this point.

Smiling at the child, Anne merely extended her hand towards the duo, nodding towards the ghost in the process, an action that confirmed the suspicions of both girls, as the lost soul among them began to jump up with excitement. "You can see me?! SHE CAN SEE ME! YAY!" The young girls mood changed instantly, becoming lively to an almost ironic extent. With but a few moments of consideration, the formerly unmoving girl took Anne's hand, who then unceremoniously picked her up. Carrying the extremely-lightweight, utterly confused girl in her arms, Anne felt herself twitch with unspent rage, with only the thought of her own family's experiences calming her down enough to not slaughter everyone around them.

Anne took one look over the tiny, wounded body of the child now laying in her arms and grimaced. "This must be how mother felt whenever she'd pick me up from a training session..."

Shaking her head out of a stupor, Anne promptly walked through the crowd, child safely in hand as its twin floated around them with a jealous expression, as the chef continued to blink in shock. "Well damn, if I knew it'd be that easy..." He muttered something far more vile under his breath, though Anne paid him no mind further than marking the man for death at a later date.

Once they were far enough away from the incessant crowds, Anne finally broke the silence that seemed to grip the air around the trio with a smile. "So!; my name's Anne. How about you two?"

The formerly motionless girl shifted with discomfort in Anne's arms, her expression twisted with complete and utter disbelief. "Uh-.. I mean.. I'm.. uhm..."

"She's Sarah! And I'm Cherry!" The ghost girl answered for them both with a cheery smile etched onto her frame, eliciting another chuckle to escape the lioness. "I see." With yet another uncharacteristic smile, as well as a myriad of manipulative plans forming inside of her head, Anne looked back down onto the scared, confused girl in her arms. "Sarah, Cherry... how would you two like to work for me, as mercenaries?"

A curious glint of life and gold formed in Sarah's crimson eyes as she nodded fiercely, only to wince as her tiny body shuddered with pain from extreme malnourishment. "... will need food... before taking targets..." Sarah groaned out with a tone full of desperation, causing Anne to wince in turn even as she managed to keep an otherwise unchanged expression.

"No worries. I did say that I'd feed you if you were good girls, no?" She chuckled once again and, looking around for the nearest tavern, decidedly changed her direction to move towards it, as surely, her grandaunt could wait just a little bit longer, right?

Despite making this choice, Anne was actually clueless on what to do. Helping the girls instead of killing them outright was a thoughtless choice as neither of them were her responsibility, but something about the duo forced her to act mercifully. She could, of course, attribute it all to the 'hero correction' doing its thing, as she does most of the time, yet for some reason, she did not want to do so. It was almost like...

"A matter of pride."

Anne clicked her tongue due to her inward realization, its silent, unspoken nature only serving to further her own growing fear. These girls, even if she were to forgo the fact that they were both human, were debatably undead. Holding Sarah's body close to her own, as well as the memories she'd dug out of their souls, only served to further settle the dread gnawing at her own heart. Instinctively, Anne knew that her grandfather would most definitely not approve of this, yet she couldn't bring herself to undo her 'mistake', for the girls reminded her so much of herself and Yvonne, with one cheery and acting as the moral support for her colder, 'stronger sibling'.

Yet, as previously stated, both were 'debatably undead', an atrocity that Anne, as a proud Inerti, should instantly unmake. "... but I can't do it... It would be a waste to kill them... yes, that's it! Killing them is a waste! They'll be much more useful if I can turn them into an ally against mankind..." Anne breathed out a sigh of relief, having found a plausible excuse for herself, even though she doubted it would fly with Atlyon for very long.

She'd best work quickly if she wanted to make use of this situation without damaging her relationship with her own family.