Fate and the story of blood

Chapter 49: The Beginning of the End

In an open lobby, she walked out of her dorm dressed in her usual clothing but a little more snug this time around. The weather has dropped in temperature and it now felt for her to be a little too cold to dress revealing. Thus as she walked into the room with a coat under her arm and a slightly clogged nose expecting to work another day in the office, what she didn't expect was for her peer, Lestling to be waiting for her in front of her workshop door.

"Old man? What are you doing here, I thought today was your workday. Did it change again? Then should honestly renovate more rooms, switching around workshops each day is so annoying!" She said, internalizing her frustration as she looked toward him with an agitated expression; her facial features quickly turning to a confused one as she noticed a slightly smug look on the wrinkled face of her colleague.

"Don't worry, I have the day off for the time being. Or should I say, we have the day off... We've been granted special permission to search for a ritual practitioner. Apparently, they liked the idea you pitched so much they held another meeting on their own to continue with the device you showed the other day." He quickly explained as he took out a small letter for her to see for herself.

"What, is this really true!? I really didn't expect this to happen so soon, I thought it'd at least be another year before anything would be searched out! This means that both of us have the opportunity to expand upon this! This is big, all I need to do is get my things ready and..." She said, about to rush away yet was quickly pulled by the back of her shirt before she could do so.

"Wait for a second there feisty one, I know we're both excited but, there's still more that they've done for us that'll be quite helpful. They've provided us with a list of all known mages and witches who are known for their ritualistic practices. Here are the few forms of what's currently been registered based on what's found in the mercenary database..." He said, handing her the papers as he sat by the hallway.

"To think they've gone this far for something like this... Wait a second, why's almost every one of them so vague? And the ones that actually have any meaningful data on them can only cast up to the fourth tier of magic. Are these types of mages really this rare?" She said, scrambling around the paper to see if she could find a single person that met her expectations.

Lestling helped her out with finding members and in the end, all they could find was but one individual coming from a kingdom that was quite a distance away. The individual goes by the name of Gardenia, an infamous witch who lives on the outskirts within the premises of the Kingdom of Garrison. She was recently labeled as an outlaw, yet was soon removed from the status for some reason due to the news that the heroes of Garrison were found to be traitors.

It seemed to her that she hadn't made contact with the mercenary guild for quite some time and the only lead that was known came from in the form of a registration in the Kingdom of Thar. Riley thought for a moment and processed through what little data she knew of this individual to make a hypothesis and soon a conclusion.

"Based on what was written, it can safely assumed she ran away with the supposed vampire, Vendrick the swordsmaster on the the day after the former hero proclaimed him as dead after battling a high-ranking demon. There's evidence to suggest that the hero back-stabbed his companion, throwing him into the forest and he suddenly became a vampire. I wonder how he ended up becoming one, was a royal vampire there?" She pondered, chatting away in her monologue as she recited what she knew of the circumstances leading up to where she was last scene.

"This continued until they reached the Elven Kingdom, where a disaster then struck then another in the Kingdom of Thar, in which they were presumed to be missing until they were at the last scene in the Holy Kingdom where the ancient demon rose. But, where they have gone afterward? The Kingdom of Dark? It's hard to think they had any play during the attack of the Kingdom of Myra..." She thought yet couldn't come up with a safe conclusion toward what she wrote in the mind map she formed.