Mystical Journey

He looked down, it was White Hair’s severed hand, its sharp nails furiously scratching about. It was this thing that grabbed on the his ankle earlier, the one that left 5 deep scratch marks.

From afar, White Hair’s skull suddenly split open wide, revealing a gigantic fanged mouth, roaring at Garen.

"Intruder! Chief won’t let you off that easily! You’re dead! Dead!! Hahahahaha…..." White Hair loudly laughed.

Garen bit his lip.

"What strong life force..." Looking at his opponents ferocious fangs, those bloodshot eyes, and that pale skin, it all reminded him of a certain familiar species.

"You’re a blood breed?" He unconsciously said aloud.

White Hair’s laughter suddenly came to an abrupt stop. He looked at Garen, stunned.

"You… You’re not a Vampire?"

Bam!

With a strong stomp, Garen bust open White Hair’s head. Inside, the inside was absent of blood or flesh, just a clump of black dust, nothing else remained.

Taking a quick look at his surroundings, he felt a twitch in his chest. Garen had a fairly clear idea as to what kind of world he was currently in now…

Quickly looking through White Hair’s clothing, he stood up and quickly left the scene. After walking around the woods for a bit, he dumped the clothes and walked back home.

Following the same route, he stealthily went home, without anyone noticing his presence.

In his own bedroom, Garen swiftly closed the curtains.

In the darkness, without even tuning on the light, Garen started inspecting the wound he got from the fight.

It was completely unexpected to him. The fact that when its body had already been completely torn apart, White Hair could still move freely, even to the point where it could wound his body. This kind of monstrous life force, completely eclipses the abilities of the Grandmasters of Combat.

Seeing that his wound didn’t have any infections or scars, he breathed a sigh of relief.

Checking his Attribute Plane, his potential points did not increase at all from killing that vampire. This made him feel slightly disappointed.

Recentering his focus, he started to ponder about the whole issue surrounding Raffaele and the Vampires.

"This vampire, and also the delinquent from the beach, all of these signs point to Raffaele as the cause of them trying to monitor and trying to control me. Being someone who gained the attention from the Vampires, Raffaele’s Blood Pact Group must not be any ordinary group… Raffaele herself must also have some sort of ability comparable to the vampires as well. That kind of power… coupled with the strange phenomenon and culture in the town, it must be a power only this lady can use…"

Garen suddenly remembered, no matter if it were the Earth or the Secret Technique World, there had been legends about Witches.

"What if she’s a witch?" From the collections of messages he’s received in the past and all the ancestral rituals taking place, he gathered that, "She’s most likely a witch."

Coming to 2 possible hypotheses, Garen immediately turned on the laptop in front of him.

"Maybe it’s time for me to start improving my technological skills, it would be good to create a programme specifically for collecting and sorting out the messages…" He searched the web for legends revolving around vampires and witches, but unfortunately for him, most of it were either about novels, television series, or other forms of entertainment. There were also a few search results about myths and urban legends, but most of them had been read before by him, serving no real value.

Connecting to the website of the National Security Agency of the USA, Garen was hoping that there were some relevant records for this issue. However, maybe these kinds of confidential information wouldn’t be uploaded to the Internet. It was highly possible that the information would be saved in the internal Local Area Networks of the agency, sealing it away from the public. As such, even the best hackers in the world would be rendered useless, since the Network wasn’t even connected to the Internet with any cables or optical fibers.

Unlike before, when looking through the national criminal records this time, especially the murder and disappearance cases, Garen made a new discovery.

All the criminal reports by the government had been carefully selected. Some of the resolutions of the cases seem perfect, but it still somehow felt off. Even some of the testimonials given by eyewitnesses, they seem to be slightly flawed and occasionally had some mutually contradictory statements.

Connecting the dots, a thought started to form in Garen’s brain.

The situation was becoming more and more clear, he was more and more sure of his hypothesis.

"Blood Breed, Vampires, and Witches, even if they weren't exactly the same, something similar to them exists here."

Closing his laptop, he sat back down in the darkness.

He heard the sounds of the door closing, his parents were home. He could vaguely hear his sister and her mother, Trish, talking,

Garen was sitting on the edge of hs bed, thinking back about his battle with White Hair.

The battle was quite easy. Even though his body hasn’t returned to the level it was back in the Totem World, and his average stat points sat only at slightly above 2, he had his years of battle experience and his secret technique, so beating White Hair was pretty effortless.

"His speed and strength was almost close to mine… No, it might even be better than mine. He also had that absurd life force and regeneration…" Garen said while caressing his skin, "It was only because his technique was bad, or rather he didn’t have any technique, just average level street-fighting skills. His speed was so fast to the degree that he himself wasn’t able to control his movements. This kind of vampire was nothing to be feared. But that life force though…"

Thinking back to the hand that could continue to attack its opponent, Garen’s knowledge of vampires had increased.

"For a pawn used to tail me, he already had strength and speed on par with me… Blood Breed’s advantages over an average human being sure is overwhelming."

Garen was worried that this was not just a normal species of Vampires. From their rank, it seems like White Hair is quite a low-ranked lackey. If even a low-ranked vampire could possess this absurd speed and strength, along with that life force and regeneration, how strong would a high-ranked vampire be?

In addition, the Blood Breed in the legends are immortal creatures.

This point garnered Garen’s attention, could they really live forever? Were they truly immortal?

He was really curious about this.

"Though it’s probably better not to rush to find out at this time… I should take it slow." He felt his slow growth of his Secret Technique - Black Claw of Sethe, although its regenerative ability was quite decent as compared to normal humans, when compared to the Blood Breed, it naturally pales in comparison.

If the Blood Breed were all at the same level as White Hair, he could easily take down a few more of them, but if a stronger Blood Breed appears… Against an absurdly strong unknown lifeform, even Garen felt a bit worried.

After all, the Blood Breed in the legends were monstrous immortal beings. Even in the Secret Techniques world or the Totem World, there wasn't anything that was truly immortal.

At best, there were only beings with extreme longevity, who can live up to thousands of years, like the Demon Phoenix. However, Vampires were different… If we go according to the legends, it’s wasn't just thousands of years, they could even be millions of years old…

"This world was not as normal as I thought…"

******

"What? We lost a tailing agent?"

In the church at the North of the town, a muscular man with earrings squinted at the minion giving a report to him.

It was the middle of the night, a group of blood-covered delinquents, most of them had some sort of injury or wound, with some major injuries such as the loss of 2 of their limbs, to minor ones like a few mere scratches.

However, even some of the minor injuries looked absurd, there was even a guy with a metal pole impaled in his chest. The entire church looked like a horror film makeup room.

"Yes, when it was time to change shifts, I went to find Carl, but that guy totally disappeared. I tried looking around in the surrounding areas but he was nowhere to be found, he might have left himself." The guy who was speaking was a dark-skinned, muscular male with a bandage wrapping his head, covering one of his eyes. Blood could be seen slowly seeping through the bandage.

"Looks like it was Raffaele’s work. She must’ve found something out." The white chief calmly said, "This bastard seems to be much more of a handful as compared to her grandma…"

"Since this line has been discovered, what are your plans for this?" The Reverend Father suddenly walked out from the side, frustratedly looking at the chief.

"Let’s leave it be for now. We’ve suffered quite a bit of damage, but it should be the same for that bloody witch too. In my estimation, both parties would be needing quite some time to regroup and recover." The white man hesitated, "I can’t shake the feeling that Raffaele is scheming something, that bastard is known as Grano’s strongest witch, tonights actions were definitely not just a warning shot."

"That Blood Pact Group or whatever, except for that old Witch, have less than a hundred core members. As long as you don’t break your contract with the ancestors and willfully destroy the balance, no matter how strong she is she won’t need to initiate in breaking the rule." The Reverend Father shook his head, "And what about those other Vampires who are roaming about outside? How are you gonna take care of that?"

"What do those random vampires have to do with me?" The white male laughed coldly, "Let that witch take care of them. I have already sent the a message before they entered my turf: ‘Those who don’t obey me, Jaern, shall all die."

******

BumTskBumTskBumTsk... My heart is ways onn fr you....cleary yt unser dain sky…

In the nightclub, the DJ was mixing the music tracks with a strong rhythmic beat, with loud foreign lyrics howling through the speakers.

The people on the dancefloor were twisting their bodies to the music under the flashing strobe lights. Some were screaming, some were clapping, and there were even couples tongue-deep with each other.

Two big, muscular men were at the centre of this dance floor, each with a hot girl in their arms, moving their body to the beat.

As the burly men were grabbing a handful of the girls' breasts, a loud sound suddenly started ringing in their ears.

The men’s pupils suddenly dilated. They looked at each other, then pushed away their respective girls and forced their way out of the club.

Ignoring the calls of the girls behind them, both of them left the bar. After talking a few turns, they arrived at a dead end alleyway.

It was nearing midnight, the alleyway was completely empty.

Poof!

Two strong women appeared out of nowhere and pinned the two men against the alley wall.

"You broke the rules."

At the exit of the alleyway, a beautiful young lady with long blond hair appeared. She coldly glared at the two guys.

"A witch? What rules? We didn’t do anything!" One of the guys frantically said. "We just arrived today morning!"

With a loud "bam", one of the girls kneed him in the gut, rendering him unable to speak.

"No sucking blood in the public, this is the rules of our Grano…"

"Bullshit!" The other guy interrupted, "Humans are nothing but animals, we will eat what we want whenever we want! If it wasn’t for you bitches and that bunch of traitors!"

Bam!!

This time, the impact was much louder.

The guy rolled back his eyes, nearly completely unconscious.

"Traitors?" The blonde shook her head, "Slaughter them. They are not welcome in Grano."

As she walked out of the alleyway, she could vaguely hear the sounds of the two girls’ ferocious hits, coupled with the men's desperate cries.