Things still had yet to go back to normal in the vampire settlement, but it had been days since the attack had last occurred. The pooling area was now non-existent. The vampires that were still alive had finally been given access to the inner castle areas.
A decision that had taken longer than it should and had left a bad taste in their mouths with their leaders. The pooling area vampires were vampires that often switched between families. When they next got the chance, they felt they would in the future move to the families that had acted quicker and were more successful in defending their people.
It was because of this that the middle of the settlement had become a ghost town. Abandoned and destroyed houses from the last fight, having yet to be repaired. Blood left staining the street floors, and a pile of bodies gathered, ready to be burnt.
The tenth family, once again, had taken in the most refugees. A lot of the vampires from the pooling area were insistent on going there after seeing and hearing how well they had done to defend themselves from the attack. It was a similar situation in the thirteenth family. Still, for some reason, they had decided to take no one outside of their own family.
However, despite all this, all of the castles, the leaders, and people were on the tip of their toes, for one of the royal knights and leaders had been killed and in their own castle. If they could get to them, who was to say that they were safe, no matter where they were.
At the same time, no replacement had been made for the twelfth family head. Instead, Bryce was giving out orders to the family using Jill's ability mostly. Telling them to organize themselves, and they were essentially being self-sufficient. There was no leader in the castle, causing them to somewhat panic as well.
Regardless, Bryce didn't care because he believed that everything was temporary. Once he got rid of Arthur, he could assign a new leader to the twelfth family, and everything would go back to normal.
——
At the moment, Erin, Leo, and Silver were staying in the thirteenth castle. The king rarely dropped by, especially with what was going on at the moment. Yet, even now in the tenth castle, there seemed to always be a pair of eyes somewhere on them. The king would often send royal guards there to check if Quinn or any other punishers had returned. So they decided it was safer for them to stay with Lee and the others with everything going on.
An important meeting was currently taking place, as Muka was updating Silver and the others on their new plans. Since their last meeting, Silver had told them about the information about Arthur's hit list. The leaders who met up from before, apart from Paul and instead Erin was present with them, were sitting in a smaller room with a round table.
They didn't want anyone, including members of the thirteenth family, to be aware of what was going on. Because they were treading into more dangerous territory as they found and gathered more information.
The fewer people connected, the less likely to be found out, and if they were found out, they hoped fewer people would be dragged into the whole mess.
"After what you informed me, I have been doing some research. Going through the files, I found out about those that went on the expedition along with Bryce at the time." Muka said as he threw a piece of paper that had a record of all those that had gone on the expedition out on the table.
What Silver didn't realize, looking at this was that the list was far bigger than she thought.
"This…is, Arthur is going to go through them all?" Silver asked.
"We can't be so sure," Sunny said. "After all, so far, Arthur seemed to have only gone for the leaders, the vampire knights, and anyone who is in a higher position than that. Maybe he believes that the other vampires were just forced to come along, not knowing what they were doing."
"Or perhaps he is only dealing with the people he thinks needs his punishment," Lee suggested.
"Or he could be saving them for later," Jin said. This, of course, was the obvious thing, but Sunny or Lee didn't want to say it, as if saying those words would make it come true.
"Thanks to your group, we have found out the reason why Arthur is attacking the vampires, and some of us can ease up even if it is only a little," Muka said. "Since Arthur didn't deal with you, we can assume he has decided to stay quite strict to this list, but there are still many problems we have to deal with, especially those that he brings with him.
"Knowing about this expedition, nearly half the leaders were involved. We can't use their testimony. The others will back that said person up or finish them before they even get the chance.
"Which means the only thing we can still do, find out the truth about what Bryce is doing with the missing vampires. It seems like the two matters might not be linked after all. My best bet is we will find out the answer in the king's castle.
"It's the safest place for Bryce since not even the leaders can freely enter that place. However, I am sure that Arthur will attack again soon. Bryce knows who Arthur is after, so the best move would be to enter the king's castle during the next attack.
"Most likely, since he has gone after one Royal knight, they will assume he will go after the other. Bryce will stay by his side to set some type of trap. So the castle should be easy to navigate. I know it was a close call last time, and it is hard for me to ask you this again, but you are the only ones that can do this."
Silver was a bit hesitant. She felt like with the way Arthur was acting, if they had tried to get in his way, in his way of completing his revenge, they could have easily suffered as well. When Leo got close and Erin looked to have nearly hurt him, Arthur had no choice but to fight back.
"We'll do it." Erin surprisingly spoke up and was speaking as if it was for the others.
"Erin," Leo said in a tone as if he was telling off his own daughter. "I know you wish to test yourself or prove yourself, but remember we need to think about not just us, but the rest of the family. If we get caught, then the tenth will be in far more trouble than when we were heading towards the twelfth family castle.
"What I am far more concerned about is what Arthur plans to do after and whether or not the vampires can stop him. If we don't figure that out, then this whole conversation and everything that we are doing could very well be completely useless."
The other leaders present didn't want to admit it, but Leo had a point. The settlement in thier mind had always existed and always would.
Another thought on Leo's mind was if the leaders were still taking the Dalki as a minor threat because they hadn't even been considered in the conversation.
"We will do it," Leo said. "But if there is any sign that we will get caught. We will abandon our mission. This is a task to find out information. Not to fight any of the guards or the others inside."
As the meeting came to an end, and everyone was ready to relax for the rest of the day, or at least as much as possible, they could see the dark shadow that appeared above, covering all of the castles.
Seconds later, and a repeat of what had happened last time had occurred. The Dalki were falling from the sky along with the masked vampires.
The attack was happening again.
*****
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