Another notification invaded my view, all monochromatic and bland as the many before it.

This time, I didn’t bother to read it.

With the feedback so intense, so distressing, so harmful, that there wasn’t even a sliver of doubt that the window I’ve ignored informed me of another ‘sealing’. While some natives I encountered had already shown abilities that were clearly above and beyond one of the normal humans, none of them felt like it directly opposed me and mine.

This one did. My power hated it, and it made me hate it too.

A sudden vertigo drove me down on my knees, and I could barely catch a blurry image of the wave of monsters dissolving in the red mist that signalled their demise.

I sensed all the loss, small parts of our being‌ violently separated from the greater whole.

More of my creatures charged through, with a horde of them rolling over the humans who attempted to hold the line, to strike down the caster beyond the attack, more furious than ever.

“For Master! Master! Master!”

All the movement in front of me turned into the smudgy mess of colours mixing with the flashes of flaring powers, while the furry hands and bodies lifted me, shielding me from the carnage, along with the potential attacks.

A few more monsters materialised from the puff of red mist, erupting from the ground, replacing the fallen, while others just disappeared into the nothingness, with an agony of the sealing worse when I was in the middle of it..

Humans, however, suffered for it too.

I heard their screams.

And then, out of nowhere, it was over. A sense of relief washed over me, equally abrupt in its timing and indescribable in its nature as its negative counterpart, and freed me from the grip of dizziness and unnatural sadness.

With the help of Miwah, I climbed back on my feet, paying only a cursory glance at the message, this time announcing our victory, with the usual red mist bringing an entire batch of new creatures into this world, all of them giddy, excited, and with the usual chant drowning over the cries from the village.

Tama was among them. It was over.

Skill “Scorched Earth lvl.23” gained.

Skill “Slayer of Men” Lvl. 24” gained.

Skill “Great Devourer” Lvl. 13” gained.

Skill “Slayer of Champions lvl. 3” gained.

Major Enemy killed. Five more to advance the General level.

I dismissed the window.

A fight was over, it seemed, with the remaining humans fleeing.

I didn’t care, as long as there weren’t more enemies attempting to kill us, or worse, and it seems we dealt with the local opposition for the time being.

At this moment, I couldn’t bring myself to care what was happening to them. I was concerned about my monsters - my girls - more than I logically should.

“Drive the remaining humans out of this place, or round those who don’t run. Don’t kill any of them if they don’t fight.” I commanded, almost absent-mindedly, too concerned about Tama.

“Yes, Master.” Miwah answered, but it was others who actually got to execute the order. Some spread out between the buildings and the fields to rake through the both hiding adversaries, while others formed a body wall between me and our surroundings.

Narita and Kuma, along with most of their respective kin, were the most useful in that regard, taking to the role naturally, giving me at least some time and meagre space to check on the girls freshly freed from so-called ‘sealing’.

Tama, along with the group of ‘Eviscerators’ that fell victim to the caster, were looking noticeably more confused than the rest of their kin around them, but to my relief, they were not showing any sign of injury or other damage.

Physically, it didn’t seem to have any noticeably worse impact than their conventional respawn would have on them.

I rushed to hug the vixen and the smaller werewolf-like girls gathered around us for the group's embrace, visibly overjoyed to return to the world after the imprisonment, almost desperately so.

The poorly explained link between us flared with now positive feedback from the tearful reunion. Significantly stronger than merely a few hours of separation should reasonably cause, making me wonder how bad the entire experience was for them and if it left any yet unseen marks on their psyche other than merely a couple of missing hours.

Way they behaved suggested it could have hurt them more than injury would.

The accursed connection between us made me shake a little.

An ‘Alpha’ vulpine embrace wasn’t as intense and over-the-top as the joy of the smaller canine ones vying for attention.

“Master?” Tama whispered in my ear. She sounded somewhat disoriented, her prompt mild and weak compared to her usual flirty tone, which immediately made me worried.

“Don’t tell me you remember nothing.” I said, silently, for the moment worrying the sealing left a lasting scarring on anthropomorphic vulpine.

The ‘Eviscerators’ certainly didn’t take it well, and every second Tama missed her usually quick and suggestive replies made me more worried about the consequences.

“I missed you.” She replied, pressing herself closer and tightening her embrace, even looping one leg behind me, and added: “I remember you promised to reward me thoroughly though.”

It was strange, as we were, at least from my perspective, separated for merely a couple of minutes, while there was something in Tama's way of speech and other behaviour that suggested a much longer time period was involved.

I hesitated to speak about it, though. Instead, with a sigh of relief, I replied. “I will.”

However, despite this triumph, and Tama’s return to me, it still felt that there was a small piece missing, still nudging me to take more action.

Whatever caused this strange sensation driving me to this time and place, it acknowledged the process, but wasn’t completely satisfied with it, though spending the brief seconds enjoying my vixen’s warmth and fluffiness helped to ease his sensation.

A sharp, terrified shriek interrupted at the same moment, forcing me to deal with reality.

I left Tama alone for the time being. Judging from the expression in those yellow eyes of hers, she understood.

There were still a handful of humans left, surrounded by or being corralled by my monsters, none of which accepted their current situation in silence and at the very least cried or screamed as my monsters dragged them around.

This was a village filled‌ with people of all ages, something I didn’t fully consider when I committed to this attack, and now I was forced to deal with repercussions.

I stepped towards the settlement, now completely overrun by my creatures.

When I went past the torn, scorched remains of the robed woman, now broken and burned beyond recognition, I felt nothing. What was left of the men that defended her, mauled to death lying in the pool of their blood, didn’t spark any response, even if they should.

She refused to release my girls and paid the price.

The small pack of ‘Eviscerators’ around me, most likely the same that took the ‘sealing’ as the system referred to that badly, formed a crowd around me as I walked through the village, inspecting my surroundings.

Architecture here, though distinctively Eastern Asian as the others I’ve seen in around this strange land, was quite unimpressive, something I could attribute to the fact it was a typical rural settlement. It seemed relatively poor, and though mostly undamaged despite the literally fiery zeal of ‘Purifiers’, it already took a toll from my monsters rifling through it, driving or dragging the peasants out.

A few villagers still struggled with my monsters, but just as it was in the case of the caravan members earlier, they were soon overrun, thrown, or dragged together on a single spot in the centre of the village where I could inspect them.

Most of them were angry, or terrified, or anything in between. As expected from any kind of village, there were children among them, which gave me the fair amount of guilt for putting them through this, but the distress my ‘Eviscerators’ expressed for being ‘sealed’ almost convinced me that the suffering inflicted was mutual, as in all wars in history.

It made me pause, as I realised how treacherous my own thoughts on the matter were, and a brief flicker of conscience reminded me that the damage inflicted upon them by my furry menagerie was, undoubtedly, greater.

This was the point where I started experiencing remorse over the damage we have caused.

Then I noticed the weird, dirty, ragged, homeless girl among the crowd of the locals.

Among the crying, and shouting, and scornful looks, she was the only one who looked almost apathetic to everything around her, not even attempting to keep any distance between her and the nearest monsters.

She slightly dangled from side to side, with an almost distant smile on her face, mumbling to herself, almost like she was on drugs.

When she noticed my gaze, she bowed down once again.

It was off. Weird, to say the very least. No human behaved this way. But for what I knew, she could indeed be insane by the local standards. She could be insane by my standards, even.

Whatever her motives were, it upset the other natives greatly. One man kicked her.

“Take her away.” I ordered, pointing at the weird, dirty girl.

Sudden movement of my monsters startled the crowd, but the crazy girl didn’t put up any resistance, completely indifferent.

She was the only one with this sentiment.

Her human folk weren’t happy about it at all, however, at this very moment I was utterly disgusted with the humankind I could sympathetic to the level of misanthropy Mai had shown earlier, though I couldn’t entirely be certain whether that was something the power put into my head, or was merely a reaction to circumstances.

Looking at the bitter and scared faces, I wonder what I should feel.

At least there was some guilt on my side for doing this.

A few in the crowd made a step forward, without thinking, and a few humans moved while my monsters growled threateningly at them.

“Rest of you, get out of my sight! This village is ours for now.” I declared and pointed out once again, gesturing something towards the horizon, towards the other lands they inhabited.

I knew natives didn’t understand me, and speaking to them was slightly pointless until I figured out how to communicate in the local tongue, but my monsters certainly did, stepping back to form a row the villagers could use to flee.

A few took the opportunity immediately and ran.

Others hesitated, possibly objecting, but their language was as incomprehensible to me as it was before, although it wasn’t quite hard to figure out they didn’t like being driven out of their homes. More shouts came, but without context for their native speech, it still sounded like gibberish.

There was still something that ticked me off, incomprehensibly so, almost as if there was a piece of me I was missing, and I shouldn’t stop until I get that part back.

“Go.” I insisted, and seeing no reaction I added: “We could have sorted it out without bloodshed, but you didn’t even try…”

Of course, they didn’t understand me any more than I understood them. I was very well aware of that, yet my frustration over failed attempts got the better of me, and I was tired of bypassing all the complications the absence of common language brought.

From speaking and gestures to sneaking in coins as compensation for good, nothing seemed to work, and the superficially successful attempts like the merchant captive brought only superficial results.

Faced with this helplessness, throwing the local farmers out of their homes didn’t register as a sufficiently heinous crime, though by the sensibilities of my home they certainly were.

Home we were robbed of. I was robbed off.

I twitched slightly, wondering whether those feelings were my own, especially when I felt considerably more sympathy towards my girls - my monsters, as the definition became increasingly muddled - than I felt for the random humans.

My monsters needed me, something deep within me reminded itself, for we were one.

Soon introspection on the dubious morality was interrupted when one local, a young man, stabbed one of the ‘Eviscerator’ between him and me with the dagger he took from nowhere, while a few more jumped me, too, or at very least, a few nearby monsters.

Before the perished canine respawned, Miwah nearly decapitated the attacker with her own sharp claws. Blood splashed everywhere, staining the white werewolf with pure white fur, while the rest of my monsters brutally pacified the last piece of resistance.

Then the blast of fire finally forced the remnants of the crowd to flee for their lives, this time with pure panic.

I was, once again, left with the presence of my monsters, puzzled by what forced the natives to take these desperate, or entirely suicidal, attempts on my life with such a frequency.

There was someone, or something, that motivated them to this kind of erratic behaviour, I just didn’t know what that something was.

I would find out, eventually.

Yet the victory, or conquest of sorts, didn’t bring me much satisfaction, even if it fulfilled some kind of urge that came with that accursed, newly found feedback.

There was something I had to do.

I was about to order the search of this place, to figure out whether it has the larger storage of crops we would need, or attempt to interact with the only human that had a counterintuitive reaction compared to her peers, but something stopped me.

A piece of the puzzle was missing.

I knew the general direction where I should go to reclaim the said piece, yet I didn’t quite know what it even was.

“Overview.”

A familiar screen came into view, and the numbers it presented spoke volume about the number of lives I needed to care for.

The Master

Skills

Mates

Miwah, The Bride of Shadows

Units (Active)

Tama, The Purifier Alpha

Brave, The Eviscerator Alpha

Narita, The Defiler Alpha

Mai, The Corruptor Alpha

Kuma, The Ravager Alpha

321 * Purifiers

28 * Named Purifiers

310 * Eviscerators

40* Named Eviscerators

103 * Defilers

8* Named Defilers

341* Corruptors

14* Named Corruptors

9* Ravagers

Units (In queue)

Sealed (per caster)

15* Eviscerators

The numbers were, as it was a customary, slightly off, as even my distracted, and unfocused mind caught the incorrect count behind the number of the bear-like ‘Ravagers’, yet there was something else that held much greater weight to me than right now.

Some of my girls were still ‘sealed’ - the ability to do so didn’t die with the lone magically gifted human in this village - and my power wanted me to reclaim them.

The threat it possessed still loomed over us, and I recollected some words that had been said.

Tama hugged me tightly from behind, and I leaned to her for support, while Miwah was merely satisfied with taking the place of my side, inspecting the stains of blood on her armour, and perfectly white fur.

“Brave?” I called for her newly ascended sister instead.

“Yes, Master?” She answered immediately, like the other ‘Alphas’ she quickly learned to be within the earshot, and came close.

“You said there was a second woman with this sealing ability?” I asked, recalling something she had mentioned before.

“Yes, Master.” She confirmed, “She rode with the direction of the fortress there, in the company of more soldiers.”

“Soldiers?” I said, though my tone betrayed it was rhetorical as by this point, I come to realise something else.

I once again scanned my surroundings, as from where I stood, and from where I came, I didn’t recall seeing any castle or fort, though it was not indicative of anything.

Historically, not all fortifications were placed on the highest mountains and the hard-to-access cliffs, though many of them were.

“When you returned to the pagoda for the stash yesterday, you ran into a few soldiers as well” I asked, and before she replied I followed my query: “Did they look the same as the ones accompanying the… caster… woman… sorceress?”

It was failing to find the proper expression to describe the woman in the colourful robe which the system vaguely described as ‘caster’, but could, in fact, range between the actual magician to the local equivalent of clergy. Everything was possible.

Be as it may, it at the very least gave the impression of a more organised action against us.

Brave, the black werewolf, didn’t hesitate with an answer.

“Yes, Master. They wear similar styles of armour, the same colour as this one.” She confirmed, pointing at her outfit. Same bleak, mostly grey scale coat.

I’ve seen more colours among the pieces we salvaged, which could be anything between the coat of arms, or sign of ranks, I couldn’t be sure. Whoever commanded those fighters, however, was one to blame.

After briefly looking at my monsters, and at the settlement we just took control of, I quickly decided.

“I think we need to pay the local lord a visit.”