Modern World Warlock

The night of the raid on Highpoint Town, the Omega Team waited inside Camille's office for their soul shards to be shattered.

Zarina's instructions were to break the crystals at 9 p.m., and when the clock struck the time, the succubus diligently smashed the shards on the ground, bringing the trio to her location.

Dante and his group found themselves inside an abandoned home wearing their black, hooded robes, where Zarina greeted them with a bow.

"Where are the other four?" Dante asked the demon.

"They've gathered at the plaza… King Astaroth wanted to discuss the next step since Nihilor is gone," Zarina replied.

"Do you think he is a king?" Dante asked in a more severe tone.

"I… What?" the succubus muttered with confusion.

"You called him 'King Astaroth.' Do you really think that coward measures up to Satan?" Dante continued.

Lilith, who was watching everything from the command room, asked Camille for a microphone to speak to Dante, to which the handler complied.

["Dante, can you stop teasing my subordinate? She wasn't around back then…"] the queen said on the warlock's earpiece.

"Fine…" said the warlock.

"Still, you should stop calling him a 'king.' Astaroth is nothing but a coward," he continued.

"I'm sorry—I'm only 75 years old, so I never got to meet King Satan," Zarina said with an apologetic tone.

"Good. He was a piece of shit…" Dante commented.

'Are they talking about THE Satan?' Zac pondered, afraid to ask aloud.

"Anyways, shall we get started?" Dante asked, prompting the succubus to guide them out of the abandoned house to the streets of Highpoint Town.

The group didn't see any other person walking around for a bit until they reached the main road, which crossed through the whole town.

As they walked along the main street, they passed by several hooded individuals, which Dante could tell were mind-controlled. Still, they let them be, as it wasn't time for them to reveal themselves.

When the group got closer to the plaza in the center of the town, they took a turn and entered an empty building with only six stories, reaching the rooftop, from which they could see the plaza from above.

'Uh, oh…' Zac thought as he peeked down at the plaza, filled with demons and hooded cultists.

The fiends were standing in organized rows, facing the cathedral before the plaza, awaiting for their king to come out.

Zarina split from the Omega Team to meet with her succubi sisters, who were at the plaza, raising her eyebrows at them to signal that Dante and his group were inside.

"Those are all fiends, right?" Zac pondered.

"Yeah… I can also sense some shadow demons down there," Dante replied.

"H-how many are 'some'...?" The redhead inquired, slightly nervous about hearing the answer.

"Nihilor and the captain said there were thirty… It feels like it's a little more," Dante explained.

Zac and Megan remembered their fight against a shadow demon in the sewers of Novis, where the two of them had to fight together to kill a single one of them, so knowing that there were over thirty of them was pretty nerve-racking.

While the trio started waiting at the rooftop for Astaroth to appear, Dante took out the green soulstone from his pocket and handed it to Zac.

"Why are you giving me this?" The redhead asked.

"You are going to look for the doctor, so use that if you need it," Dante casually replied.

"Huh!? Like… alone!?" Zac inquired, getting a bit restless.

Camille suspected that the demons were keeping Dr. Sylva at the town's clinic since it was the best place where he could conduct his surgeries.

Even if they found him, the man would be under Nihilor's mind control, so Dante gave Zac his soulstone that he had charged with a powerful "dispell" cast.

"You'll be fine, man…" Dante muttered, noticing his friend's nervous umbra.

After Zac took a deep breath to calm down, he took the soulstone and said that he would try his best, going back down the stairs to the ground floor.

A few minutes after the redhead left the rooftop, the doors to the cathedral opened, and an old man with a hunched back came out of the front.

"Hmmm…" Dante hummed with curiosity as he laid his eyes on the man.

"What is it?" Megan pondered.

"That guy is a forged warlock…" he replied.

A 'forged warlock' was the name given to people who got the ability to see and control umbra without being directly related to warlocks from Shadowvale.

Zac's mother, Clara, was a forged warlock after she gained those abilities from being drugged with Astaroth's blood for years, so Dante pondered what method the old man had used.

"That's definitely that 'Sabelio' guy…" Dante commented, saying that he could sense an abnormal heartbeat.

The group knew from the information they gathered that Sabelio had gone through a heart transplant surgery, and the fact that he was the only one with a demon heart made it pretty obvious to the warlock.

Behind the hunched-back man, a massive figure left the cathedral, his frame barely fitting through the double doors.

He had ashen white skin and a burly build. Two long horns extruded from his head, and a long, black mane flowed down his back.

The demon was at least nine feet tall, with his horns making him look a bit taller, and as he walked outside to the plaza, everyone present turned their heads and bowed with reverence toward him.

"There he is…" Dante commented with a mischievous smirk.

"Silence, for the king is about to speak!" The old man shouted, even though everyone was already silent.

"We've had our number dwindled the past few days…" Astaroth's deep voice echoed in the plaza.

"We'll bring blood and chaos to this city until they return my subordinates to me!" Astaroth shouted.

The archdemon knew about Nihilor and Captain Slacks' disappearance, but the demon was at least aware that Nihilor was alive since his mind-control spell was still active on his victims.

His plan was to terrorize different parts of the city by sending his men in an effort to exert pressure. Nonetheless, they were all intercepted right at the town's exit without their knowledge by the Kappa Team.