In a damp, dilapidated warehouse, several crimson-clothed figures were patrolling their respective paths.
The patrolmen had different clothes; some wore suits, some wore priestly outfits, and others wore dirty rags, but they all had the same crystallized shards of caked blood lining their outfits.
One of the men wearing a blood-stained suit strayed away from his post, while another took his position until Francis returned from his break.
Heading out through one of the side doors of the warehouse, Francis took out a cigarette from his pocket and into his mouth.
Lighting it up with the lighter from his pocket, he took a glance at the beautiful white moon. It always reminded him of the color of his victim's neck he drained out of.
Men, women, the elderly, and children...It didn't matter where he drank from; blood was blood. Though he wouldn't be the type of person to drink from a terminally ill person. He would rather off himself than get sick permanently
Looking at the landscape of the city and that obnoxious Eiffel Tower, Francis always wondered how he got to his point. Was it because he saw the murder of his mother when he was only a child, or was it the time he was charged for pushing someone off the Tower?
Murder wasn't an act of violence...It was just his daily routine
It didn't matter what happened in his history; the past was in the past, and now here he was working for a crazy lady, stabbing herself every time she spoke. Though she was quite a looker, especially her thighs--
The man's thoughts suddenly slowed, and his lit cigarette dropped to the ground, its flame fading just like how his life would follow the same fate.
'The......f*ck.......Can't.......'
Every movement he tried to make, he couldn't stop the impending dullness and stiffness of his limbs, and soon his mind slowed to a blur.
His fangs slowly revealed themselves and lengthened from his teeth to bite down onto his tongue, but the stillness overpowered his nerves, slowing down his reactions.
His thoughts started to blur increasingly, and each time his limbs wailed in attempts, it was all in vain.
Darkness crept onto his sight till the last thing he saw was a young blonde magician twirling his hands as if he was controlling a puppet.
After that last thought, the man stood completely still as a doll and limp as a corpse. The culprit flexed his right hand, and Francis's posture turned rigid before stretching into normalcy.
The Magician was a young man with azure eyes, short blonde hair who wore a black robe and a classic hat. Although his face looked quite young and childish, other than the crystal monocle on his head, it was nothing special.
Having the minion under his complete control, the Magician handed Francis several golden metal charms, which were in the shape of triangles with several mysterious symbols of the glorious and ancient sun.
After the deposit, the Magician walked back into the darkness under the veil of evernight, and Francis came back inside the warehouse with dullish, rigid eyes.
"What took you so long?" One of the guards asked as his crimson eyes glared at the man.
"Took a smoke, but some rodent tried getting in, so had to discard the body," Francis replied.
"Don't do it again before Lady Sinthea figures out your procrastination and punishes you." The guard patted him on the shoulder before returning to his post.
Francis nodded and made his way along his route. Seeing through Francis's eyes, the Magician saw shelves stacked with needles and packets of blood. The overbearing presence of dripping blood lingered throughout the entire warehouse.
It was highly secured, with cameras monitoring the entire place, guards on the upper catwalk gazing down for any intruders, and a tight patrol on the ground level.
The Magician knew it was the main base for one of the Shepherds and a holding area for their supply of blood.
On the high side of the warehouse, where the catwalks converged and spread out, there was a moderately sized, bulging room on the very top. It wasn't tough to figure out that the supposed Lady Sinthea was holding out in there.
Done with his sightseeing, the Magician controlled the body to move onto his intended path and place several of the charms in each corner of the place. It had to be done discreetly; otherwise, the Marionette would arouse suspicion.
After delicate hours of placement, 10 Sun Charms were placed throughout the warehouse and finished with his job, Francis's body turned limp, falling to the ground.
As another patrolman walked his route, he soon noticed the rigid corpse. The man pulled out his communicator and alerted everyone.
"Code Red...One of our men suddenly dropped dead. Work of an assassin or a clumsy one. Might be Schicksal since we're in their jurisdiction. I'll check the situation out."
The guard approached the corpse and took a look to see the cause of death. There were no apparent wounds, but an elated grin on the corpse's face and a monocle plastared onto their face.
"Tsk...Died with a smile of a madman. The hell is that fancy s*it?"
The appearance of that hideous monocle sent some shivers down the guard's spine, but it toned down as the apparent footsteps grew louder.
More patrolmen started to approach the scene, but as they stepped closer, a sudden shift of reality and precipitation engulfed the entire warehouse except for the bulging room housing a Shepherd.
"Got any cause of death?" One asked.
"Nope. No signs of external wounds or any internal wounds." The guard announced.
"Even your X-ray got nothing."
The situation suddenly changed as all of the guards' sight was covered in a dense, dark fog, and they could barely perceive what was around them. It was difficult to tell which was which and who was ally or foe.
"Everyone spread out into groups in a circle formation, and don't let anything out of your sight."
Despite the impairment of sight, the guards grouped out and tightly held their position.
As they tried contacting reinforcements or their direct superior, their electronics and communications were voided in use. Even their efforts to break down the walls or doors with their weapons of blood proved to be futile.
The entire world they were present in was a Concealed state.
It was a heavy cost of Spirituality to replicate this Authority, as this Power was in the Realm of Divinity.
Steeming from a Sequence 2 Servant of Concealment (Angel), the Authority of Concealment will make a target or entire area that cannot be sensed by the outside world.
No matter what, the guards couldn't exert influence on the outside world, and it was difficult for the outside world to influence them.
Battles that would happen in this Concealed World won't damage the real world, and for the notion, the corpse named Francis raised his hands to praise a golden star and scream at the top of his lungs.
"Praise the Sun!"
At his sudden words, from the corners of the warehouse, tens of suns started to implode and explode in the vicinity.
The heat kicked up to scolding levels as the illuminating suns cast down a thousand rays of light. Those who were in the shadow of evil, undead, darkness, and wickedness started to burn under the effects of Purification. Even vampires were no exception.
First, it was the grains of their hair melting and dripping down onto their skull. Next, it was their pale skin burning to ash, their internal organs failing from the heat, and lastly, it was their bones crumbling under the pressure till they oozed into a soup of slop.
Those on the high catwalk were not spared from the greatness of the sun and met the same fate. Their bodies melting in a meshpot of melted pale flesh.
"Motherf*cker! Cast the barriers."
The remaining surviving group put all their effort into defending their cold flesh from the heat of the glorious sun.
A multilayered barrier of blood formed around the guards. Each layer was made out of crysalized blood that got denser and compacted the further one went in. The last line of defense was sub-zero temperature ice, but as one looked closer, it was slowly thawing.
The group kept on their struggle, defending against the surge of sunlight, and it seems their efforts were rewarded as the blinding lights ceased. Even as the attacks stopped, they didn't let down their guard.
Though most of them were out of breath mentally and physically, in their pockets were a packet of blood to refill their drained state. It was scorching hot, but it didn't stop them from devouring it.
One of the senior guards took charge of leading everyone else, and as he stood up to give his commands, a sudden hole was shot through the man's head. It had been apparent that he had been headshot and that the barrier had been breached.
Weapons of blood were summoned forth into everyone's hands, and guns were locked and loaded. Wands suited for blood arts were ready in hand to cast spells of crimson destruction.
There was no need for words; even if this was their last battle, they would give it all until their enemy was crawling down into the fiery pits of purgatory, but those thoughts were put to a full stop as a stun grenade went flying, piercing the barrier at the speed of sound.
*POP*
That was the sound of one fiend having their skull caved in from the impact of the grenade, and in the next moment, a blinding light seared everyone's eyes.
In their moment of weakness, a young blonde Magician pierced through the 'flimsy' barrier with a combat knife in one hand and a regular pistol in the other.
One of the blood casters managed to regain their senses and delayered one barrier, converting it into a wave of crystallized blood toward the intruder.
The young man was faster as five warm rings of Mang (望) converged onto the barrel of his pistol, and he fired. The bullet was faster than the eye could see, it left a shockwave, and pierced the chest of the mage. His body flung so fast that it splattered into a fine red mist on the inner barrier.
"Do not approach him alone! Go all out in the start." In layman's terms, it meant to jump the individual and to brutally slaughter the intruder.
One man's body bulged into a behemoth of muscle and blood. The ground shook as he launched himself towards his target, and his fist cracked a shockwave toward their head.
The movement of his fist ceased as a combat knife covered in golden rings cleaved through his chest like butter. His top half on the ground, and his bottom spilling out his intestines.
A flurry of battles started to commence as the Magician danced around his opponents with just his two weapons.
The axe swung to his head was cut to pieces, and its holder was minced into chunks of flesh. The gunman, aiming their caked blood bullets, all had holes in their chest.
With each kill by the Magician, the spirits of the patrolguards started to dampen until there was only one Vampire left.
Although his body trembled in abstract fear, he pulled out the last of his vitality into a twirling crimson spear. He lunged it forward with all his might and till his last breath but...
*BANG*
A single bullet pierced through it from the very tip and dispelled it to a mere puddle. The Magician sliced upward, severing the guard's arm, and in his next movement, he jumped into the air, firing an onslaught of bullets into their chest.
"A full stop..."
With a swing of their knife downward, the guard's life was severed from the living and now into the dead.
"To your life."
With the battle finished and the multi-layer barrier broken, all that was left in the Concealed World was a "destroyed" warehouse and several corpses.
Being the responsible citizen he was, the Magician found a broken broom and started to sweep the bodies into one pile. Now gathered all up, he snapped his fingers, and a wisp of flame started to devour it into ash.
At the same time, the Concealed World was uncast. The broken warehouse and surroundings started to reform from the veil of evernight. The shattered shelves returned to place, the patterns of blood disappeared, and charred metal stopped dripping its driplets onto the ground.
But what didn't change was the bonfire of charred corpses that the Magician set ablaze. After a second, a figure stepped out from the shadows.
It was a crimson-haired young lady wearing a violet French dress with a sun hat adorned on her head. Littered on her body were several nails sticking out and piercing into her limbs. She stepped forward and asked one question to the Magician.
"Have you ever experienced the Suffering of nuclear implosion?"
Those were her words as she bowed, and her body exploded into the heat several times hotter than the core of the sun.
This was Sinthea Sifer, the Shepherd of Suffering for the Church of Monsters, who made her appearance, and her epitaph was Eternal Agony.