Chapter 1: Everything already goes WRONG

The divine sundering blade cleaved through the once-man, rending him in two and bringing peace to his soul. For a moment, clarity reappeared in his eyes as his torso fell towards the ground. He reached his hand up towards his killer. His savior. “Thank you-”

The pommel of the same blade smashed into his head and slammed it into the ground. “Aww yeah, take that you zombie!” exclaimed the wielder of the divine blade. He pumped his fist into the air as he surveyed his handiwork.

The marble tiles on the floor were covered in blood and viscera, while the wide pillars that held up the roof of the mansion were pocked with arrows and cuts. The wooden railings on the floor above were scorched black with fire as a flame still ate at an exposed part of the finely carved timber. And at the end of the room, standing before a pair of large double doors, was a young man in gleaming armor wielding a blessed sword.

“Hero,” said a woman standing behind him. She had raven hair tinged with night sky blue and wore equally dark leather armor made of the endangered shadow wyvern. The dagger in her left hand was making its way through another one-man. “I believe these are thralls, not zombies.”

“Huh?” asked the hero, turning around to look at the woman. “What’s the difference?”

“Zombies are mindless undead, while thralls are-”

The dark haired woman was interrupted by another lady with brown hair and wearing flowing teal robes elbowing her in the side. Hard.

“-are practically the same thing,” concluded the shadow-clad woman.

“Oh Yuki, always so pedantic!” said the brown haired lady as she looked at her teammate with a teasing grin.

Yuki just looked back with a strained smile of her own. “Oh, you got me there, Melissa,” The muscles on her lips and eyes pulled back too far, and her chuckle was entirely devoid of mirth.

“Come on you three, we still have the boss of this place to take care of!” shouted the hero as he turned around and dashed forward through the double doors. “He’s the next step in getting strong enough to vanquish the Dark Lord!”

The other two women quickly abandoned their argument and ran behind him, leaving the final member of their party, a plain looking man wearing a mix of chain mail and leather, to play catch-up.

As the four made their way into the center of the room, they were met with a booming voice.

“How dare you invade my home and kill my servants! Prepare to face my wrath, murderer!”

The party of four lifted their heads to face the silhouette of a man standing at the top of the room’s central staircase.

“I’m no murderer!” the hero shouted back, flicking the drying blood off his sword. “I’m the hero, here to bring an end to your evil ways!”

“Now wait just a second here,” the figure on the second floor said as he stepped out of the darkness into the light of a lit chandelier, revealing himself to be a middle-aged man. He had well-combed white hair slicked back across his head, pale skin, and wore an incredibly stylish ivory colored cloak over a blood red dress shirt and pearl white tie. “I’m a member of the nobility, a baron! I’ve committed no crime, and if you had come here with a proper accusation, I would have happily followed due process!”

“We know what you are,” continued the hero. “A vicious, blood-thirsty vampire! That’s your crime, a terrible secret I’m now bringing into the light!”

“Oh really now, you’ve figured out my most deeply guarded secret?” The baron dramatically lifted an arm over his head as he leaned backwards, as if feeling faint.

“Sir, it’s time for your weekly fang sharpening session with the village’s dentist.” said another servant, as they poked their head out from behind one of the doors on the second floor. “She even had the blacksmith forge a new file coated with diamond dust, just for you!”

“I do appreciate you telling me, but it appears I have some unexpected company,” said the vampire. “Pay him and ask him to come back next week.”

The servant nodded and left.

“You’ve turned all of your servants here into your mind controlled zombies!” shouted the hero.

“Thralls, not zombies,” said the baron with a roll of his eyes. “And only the ones doing dangerous or mindless work, like keeping out intruders. Besides, I’ve only enthralled criminals sentenced to be executed to give them a chance at life!”

“Well, uh…” the hero began again, his voice beginning to waver. “What about the village?”

“The village?”

“Yeah! The village you’ve been terrorizing! That’s how we learned about you and your evil ways!”

“Terrorize?!” said the vampire as he choked out the word. He looked affronted, and an embarrassed red was beginning to color the otherwise pale skin on his face. “The village is under my protection! They pay me taxes! Why in the world would I want to disrupt that?!”

“Taxes in blood!” shouted the gleaming hero. He smiled to himself for an instant as he said the line. “I’ve heard enough, it’s time to end your evil reign!”

The party charged up the stairs, weapons drawn, ready to stop the evil Baron-

“Delphi, what the hell is this?” said a gruff, heavyset man as he slammed a manila folder onto the plywood table.

“The report for our latest mission,” replied a young woman. Her frizzled black hair was tied up in a messy bun as she nursed a cup of strong black tea. “Is there a problem, boss?”

“The hero ran into the baron’s mansion, had a back-and-forth with him, and then killed him. What is wrong with you, you’re in charge of the kid!” The man made to pull at his hair, but the spot he picked was almost entirely bald.

Delphi, the young woman, felt her eyebrow twitch. “I don’t see what the problem is Pancer, they achieved exactly what we guided them to do.”

“Codenames, Delphi! You’re supposed to call me Antioch!” exclaimed Pancer as several drops of spittle escaped from between his gritted teeth.

Delphi let herself relax a little bit, knowing that she’d gotten under his skin by calling him his actual name. She figured he didn’t like his actual name for some reason. And that she had no “real name” to be called back. Delphi was the only name she ever had.

“It’s the back-and-forth that’s the problem,” continued her boss. “The hero obviously wasn’t sure enough about the baron’s supposed crimes to just kill him on the spot. You know the baron was supplying mind controlled thralls to our black sites, and was ready to blow the whistle on the whole thing. He could’ve started with the hero!”

“Hey, heroes banter, that’s how it works,” said Delphi while crossing her legs. “And there’s nothing my team could’ve done about that.”

“And what did your team do?” asked Antioch, placing a corpuscular hand onto the table and making the mug of tea rattle.

“First, I had Stabby drug and apply fake bite marks to random citizens, and completely drain the blood out of the village bully. Next, I had Nysa convince the village priest that their god was giving them signs to fight against a vampire by messing with the church’s magical protections during sermons whenever they talked about monsters. We perfectly convinced enough of the village- the dumb ones at least- that the baron was attacking them, and when the hero and his party came into town a week later to see everyones’ reactions, they immediately charged at the only vampire within hundreds of miles; the baron.” Delphi crossed her arms and sat back in her seat with a smug grin. “It’s all in the report.”

Her boss gripped the table and managed to leave an indent in the wood. That said more for the quality of the material than his strength, Delphi knew. “You could’ve at least done more to really get under the hero’s skin.”

“I want to save really pissing off the hero when the mission is really sensitive, otherwise he’d just get numb to the suffering. The briefing you gave me was labeled as only partially sensitive.”

Antioch let out a low grumble that went on for much too long to be anything worth listening to. Delphi knew this was a victory and let the smugness show on her face before her boss finally said something coherent. “Fine, but your report never mentioned the change in the party’s composition.”

Delphi slowly sat up as her smile fell. “What change?”

“The new member, you never wrote it down anywhere.”

“That’s because there is no new member, it’s just ‘Yuki’ and ‘Melissa’, like it’s always been.”

“Then who the hell is this?” he asked, dropping a picture onto the table. It was the kind produced by magic, heavily detailed and lifelike. It featured a plain looking man wearing a mix of chainmail and leather, with an incredibly unassuming face that pricked at a part of Delphi’s brain at how uncanny it felt.

“I didn’t authorize this,” said the young woman. “But he looks… familiar.”

“You’re telling me you don’t even remember adding a new member, or even who he is?! This is what I call irresponsible, how is it that-” Antioch froze. “Oh… oh no.”

Her boss ran out the door and returned a few minutes later with a different folder labeled “Top Secret”. He opened it up to reveal an image of a man who looked eerily like the one in the first picture. He began reading from the attached dossier.

“Codename: Obych, real name unknown. High ranking member under the Dark Lord’s spymaster, thought to be part of the upper echelon of agents. Expert at infiltration and covert ops, other abilities unknown but assumed to be highly skilled in magic and combat.”

Two lines were bolded at the bottom of the page.

Wanted Rank: #4

Threat Level: “Asura”

Delphi leaned over the dossier and stared at it with wide eyes. She jumped in her seat when her boss slammed the folder closed, and soon let out a long sigh.

“Those jerks are trying to do what we are! How dare they try and make the hero their tool, he’s our tool! And now they’ve got an inside man who actually knows what he’s doing whispering into that kid’s ear.”

Delphi ignored the verbal jab. She didn’t have much of a choice with how her mind was swimming. “I-I’ve never faced an enemy this high ranking before. I don’t think I’m a high enough rank to even look at his file! We need to bring in the higher ups for this one. Seriously, what are we going to do?”

“No, the question is ‘what are you going to do?’” said Pancer. “You’re the one who let him join the hero, so you have to take care of it. That’s what the higher ups will think if they find out about this and you’ll be out of a job. I expect the report on my desk once Obych is taken care of.” He slammed a meaty hand onto the dossier before turning around and walking out of the room.

Delphi picked up her now lukewarm tea and downed the entire mug, wishing it were hard liquor. Or cyanide. She waited until her boss’ footsteps were finally inaudible before taking a very deep breath.

“AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH,” she screamed, before slamming her face onto her desk.