"What is the situation here?" the robed woman asked with as much authority as she could project with her half-asleep drawl.

  All eyes turned to her. Most were afraid, and rightfully so, but she could see a few contempting fleeing. Not that she could bme them. If they could feel the presence downstairs like she could, they could probably tell that whatever was down there was dangerous. Only fools leaped blindly into the dragon's maw, but all their livelihoods were based on what "products" were down there so they had no choice but to deal with it now. Who could sleep soundly when they knew something dangerous was right next to them? Not these parasites that can only prey on those weaker than them, that was for sure.

  "Not good madam. Fourteen have gone down there and only one returned. He died of his injuries shortly after. Whatever is down there has enough strength to rip an orc's throat apart with only its teeth but is also quiet enough to pick off a group of ten people one by one without any of them noticing." reported a thin human woman, one of only three in this hideout including herself.

  "How many do we have left?" asked the robed woman.

  "Twenty-nine including yourself. The bitch Jhasmin is on scout duty above ground." replied the thin woman, the disdain not hidden in her voice.

  "Gather everyone and have them arm themselves. We'll take care of this right now."

  "As you will mistress." With those words, the thin woman began to order around the few around the stairs. Some left in a hurry to follow them and the few remaining promptly armed themselves, either by fetching weapons or drawing what they already had on them. Most had blunt weaponry as they left the least damaging marks when swung to "discipline" their products and only had a few conventional weaponry in the hideout, a chunk of which was with the dead guards. It was a decision to help prevent escaped products from arming themselves with more dangerous weapons. A decision that was coming back to bite them. She didn't know what was down there but the robed woman could guess that blunt weapons would do little to it. Fourteen had already died to it and they had actual weapons. Hopefully moving in such a rge group would help dissuade it from sneaking up on them, and if it did then they could catch it quickly.

  As she stood and contempted what to do next a voice called out to her. "Hey boss we managed to fetch two extra bodies as they were close to the stairs. If you want to inspect them along with the guy who died earlier they are in the undry room over there."

  She turned to find whoever said that but couldn't. 'They must have blended into the hustle around the pce.' she thought to herself.

  The preparations would continue without her so with nothing better to do she went to examine the bodies. She opened the door to the undry room and the coppery smell of blood was pungent enough that she could taste it in her mouth. There were three bodies, all covered with tattered old brown bedsheets. Two seemed to be mostly fine but the third was soaked with so much blood the red was visible against the brown and a small pool of blood was underneath it. She gently leaned her spear against a wall and made sure her leather gloves were on and tight. She took in a deep breath and slowly exhaled, preparing herself for the potentially gruesome sight she was in for.

  She crouched down and pulled off the cloth from the first body and audibly winced when she saw the damage. This was the corpse of the one who reyed information and then died of his wounds. He was a bat demihuman with coarse brown hair and two major wounds on his body. The first was his chest, which looked like pte armor caved in by a troll's mace. But it was obvious that it wasn't a troll due to the ck of a stomach-turning stench that clings to everything that a troll goes near and the fact that a troll would have gotten bored by now and either started killing the sves in the cells or come up here to engage in thoughtless violence. Plus they aren't very subtle creatures unlike whatever was picking them off. So whatever it was was probably enhancing itself with mana to cause such damage with something blunt. The second wound confused her a bit though as it was two puncture marks at the base of the neck, simir to a vampire, and small streams of blood leaked out of them. But there were a few key differences. The puncture marks were too deep, too rge, and most importantly she could smell traces of poison in them. It smelled simir to the snake venoms that her cult would use in rituals but also different. The scent clouded her mind though, almost as if she was getting intoxicated from it.

  "What in the Burning Abyss is this stuff? And what made it?" she whispered aloud to herself. "Looks like he was bitten first then bludgeoned. He probably survived as long as he did by fleeing but died of the deep puncture wound that probably punctured an artery, the broken bones in his chest, and the poison. Poor bastard didn't stand a chance."

  She gently recovered the body with the cloth and csped her hands to offer a small prayer for whatever gods he believed in. She didn't know which ones he might have prayed to, but most schors believe there are over a thousand active gods. So he probably believed in at least one since nobody can deny their existence. They were lucky. Despite devout worship for over two decades, her deity had yet to show itself.

  The thought brought her sadness. Even demons can answer their followers despite the divine sanctions on their meddling. So why hadn't their god answered or even sent their avatar to this world? It was entirely possible that her god didn't even exist, but something was giving power to the priestesses so something was answering them. If only enough to keep them worshipping it. She heaved a deep sigh and got up from inspecting the corpse and moved on to the second one.

  She crouched down and removed the cloth from the corpse, her face remaining pcid at the scene in front of her. The body was a human who had his chest caved in like the st one but the damage was much more severe this time. That probably meant he had received more of a direct hit, unlike the other one. She was about to recover him when she noticed a slight detail she missed earlier. There was a slightly deeper dent in his sternum, probably where the initial impact was. She was expecting it to be fist-shaped but upon closer inspection, it was something shaped entirely different. It was blunt, obviously, but it had to have a certain amount of give to it to create a non-uniform shape like that. The surface area had to be retively small, and this deeper indent was smaller than the entire wound.

  "What if a muscur tail hit them? Larger reptilian monsters usually have pretty muscur tails. But when they get that size that usually means they have the blood of the extinct dragons running through their veins which would also grant them some level of intelligence as well but they would then have enough power to rip through us like a farmer harvests wheat. It wouldn't hide around in the shadows like this. It also wouldn't expin the snake venom from the first corpse.

  Maybe a dragonkin assassin from a martial arts sect? There are rumors of a shadowy organization in Kirikuni that does simir things, which means that those puncture marks would be from some weird weapon that was ced with poison. Maybe something like a katar1https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katar_(dagger) but designed with two puncturing points like a stiletto2https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiletto? What a weird weapon but dragonkin are just naturally stronger than most races depending on how much dragon blood flows through them. The only humanoid race that can beat them in contests of strength regurly would be giants, but they are also much bigger. *Sigh* This will be a tough opponent to beat then. I might have to go full force without holding back for once. But what happened to the third if the past two corpses were like this?" She thought aloud.

  She gently pced the old cloth over the body and gave a small prayer to whatever gods would listen, not knowing if any would. As she approached the third body the overwhelming scent of blood was stronger than ever and made her cringe in disgust underneath her snake mask. She was accustomed to the smell of blood but for some reason, there was a fetid smell mixed in that made her disgusted. Pulling off the heavily blood-soaked sheet showed the reason why, and she recoiled in shock at what she saw.

  The corpse was unrecognizable as it had been squeezed so hard that its bones had almost completely exploded out as jagged broken chunks, piercing every organ which caused the horrible fetid smell. It reminded her of a time when she was a child and still a noble. She saw a wizard who was skilled at both gravity and water magic who increased the weight of the water orb they conjured and crushed a knight's helm inside of it as a party trick. The amount of force used in both situations must have been immense, enough so that she did not want to be on the receiving end of either. But she had to confront the one that did this while the other was a memory of a more pleasant time in her life. She hurriedly covered the corpse, grabbed her spear, and left the undry room hoping to not look at something like that again. Not taking the time to think about how this would destroy her crafted theory of their assaint as she was in the process of psyching herself up for the difficult fight ahead.

  When she was free of the undry room she observed her surroundings to see if anything had changed. There were a few more people but that was it. She quickly scanned the room and came to a simple conclusion. All these fools would be useless against whatever was down there. So she made the most reasonable decision at the moment. To fight whatever it was alone. So she wordlessly went into the darkness. She could hear the protests of the useless bunch behind her but she didn't care. All she could think about was how to win the fight ahead of her.

  The long hallway of stone was dark but she could see decently enough due to her innate night vision. She could hear the quiet sobbing of the frightened ensved in the cells as she passed, the small drops of water off of the stone into a puddle, and her quiet muffled breath through her mask. She held her spear at the ready in case of an ambush but it never came. She progressed further and further into the dark until the faint light of torches came into view. She recognized it as the end of the hallway which meant that whatever was down here was waiting there. She took a deep breath and progressed towards the light.

  The iron torches shed their warm light throughout the end of the hallway revealing a sight that shocked her. Sitting on the most luxurious chair one could find down here, which just means it was structurally stable to comfortably hold someone's weight, was a woman who was nude from the waist up, her nipples just barely covered by her long ebony-colored hair. Her ephemeral pale pinkish skin contrasted with her lower half which was that of a snake with scales of dark autumnal red with a light grey underside and bck ovals connected with lines of bck scales with metallic golden circles of scales in the middle of the ovals on her upperside. Her eyes were indistinguishable as a ruby light was radiating out of them and a small crown of five small obsidian-like horns decorated her head. She was leaning on one of her hands, seemingly bored, while a small group of six beastkin prostrated themselves in front of her in seeming reverence. There were also two beastkin that was washing the blood off of her snake half, another non-beastkin that was brushing her hair, and a bck-furred catkin that was enjoying being pet by the half-snake woman with the hand that she wasn't leaning on.

  The robed woman felt herself pause as she felt the snake woman's eyes nd on her. Her body froze, if only for a second, as her entire being felt like it should submit to her and she thought she knew why. She jammed the spiked bottom of her spear into the seams of the mortared stone brick floor, took off her mask and robe, and cast them aside onto the ground. One could tell that she was of noble blood at first gnce due to her beauty. Her skin was tanned due to long exposure to the sun but the pale green snake scales across her body were still clearly visible. Her emerald serpentine eyes were focused entirely on the snake woman in front of her as her short hair, the same color as her scales, slowly blew behind her as a breeze gathered in intensity around her.

  She resolutely pulled her spear out of the floor and held it up in a ready position.

  "My name is Shereen Bdegale, knight of the Order of the Serpent Queen. I will personally destroy your bsphemous form monster!"

  Melodious ughter filled the air as the snake woman lifted herself from her chair. The six prostrating themselves in front of her quickly escaped into a nearby cell while the ones attending her slunk back to the end of the hallway. The snake woman grabbed a falchion, one that Shereen recognized as the pale elf's primary weapon.

  "I am Orstelia, Queen of the Lamia and your rightful ruler snakekin. I will be your end if you don't submit to me my little snakelet," she said in a tone that demanded her submission while raising her bde into a ready position. Shereen's body wanted to obey but through her willpower alone was she still standing, ready to face the monster in front of her.