It seemed her recent accomplishments had caught the attention of some clients in Magnolia Town who wanted her to do some work for them. Joan stood a few blocks from her inn, waiting for her client to show up so she could hear the details of this request she had accepted from him. This was the very first time she was meeting a client in Magnolia Town, to take a legal request anyway. He was a ‘guard captain’ and his name was Devon. The vampyress was unfazed by this knowledge, even though she had an epic criminal record that could get her in big trouble if a guard captain found out. Or so she assumed. She was not fully aware of the duties or responsibilities of a guard captain mainly because she was never interested in finding out. She had an idea of what his job was like, though. But that did not matter at the moment. Joan had planned to spend as little time as she could around him and start the job immediately as soon as he would allow her to. Tapping one foot on the pavement with her arms folded, the vampyress turned her head in a different direction almost every second, as if she knew what her client looked like. She figured he would have been in uniform, which he was. She noticed this as soon as he arrived. It felt as though he had materialized out of thin air, and the heavy outfit he had on made him look quite big.

Given his choice of attire — well it probably was not his choice, but still — it was hard not to attract stares even though Joan was trying her best not to attract stares. She took a deep breath and offered him a smile, shaking the hand that he held out for her. She felt as though she had just run her hands over sandpaper or something. After sharing her name with the client, she kept quiet so that he could give her the details of the request as fast as possible so she could leave soon. Guard Captain Devon did not have much to say and for the most part, Joan was supposed to come up with her own plan to find out whether or not there was some cult stuff going on in Magnolia Town. Funny how she had just escaped the hot mess in Dahlia that involved cults, and here she was in the next town, having to look for cults. When was she going to be free from this cult business? Maybe this was some sort of sign. Guard Captain Devon confirmed that he had nothing more to add when Joan asked, and wished her good luck. The vampyress nodded and gave him a smile once again before she spun on her heels and started walking in the opposite direction. The way she was dressed now was perfect for this job. Everyone thought she was a witch or something dark.

According to what her client told her, talk about cults forming in Magnolia was just a rumor and her job was to find out if it was more than that. Joan had a crawling feeling that it was not just a rumor, probably because she was involved in cult business back in Dahlia, and since Magnolia was the next town, she could not help but think that it was true. As she walked aimlessly, she wondered how she was going to find out about this. Guard Captain Devon had suggested to ask around. As stupid as that idea sounded, Joan could not think of a better one, and so she decided to use that. She looked around for someone who looked like they would know about cults. Nobody really looked like it, but Joan was pretty certain she would find someone sooner or later. Sure enough, someone caught her attention and so she stopped her from continuing walking. As she started talking about cults, the lady looked as if she was being spoken to in a different language, shaking her head vigorously. Joan could see that it was no use pushing further, so she nodded and thanked her for her time. The lady looked pretty spooked with the way Joan asked her about cults. It was rather intimidating. Joan figured she probably needed to stop looking like she was going to eat them if they did not give them the answer she wanted. With a sigh, she turned away from the lady who had also turned away and started walking hurriedly in the opposite direction.

Joan kept walking, but slowly, watching everyone who passed by her. It was harder than she thought, to be honest. The Guard Captain made it seem so easy. Folding her arms over her chest, she thought of a way to find out about the cult. Maybe if she showed her fangs, it might work? She shook her head as she thought of this. While she was starting to doubt everything about this damn job, she noticed something as she passed an alleyway. Two men were exchanging something in broad daylight, in an alleyway where anyone could see them just passing by, just like how Joan could right now. They did not even notice her arrival. The vampyress slipped into the alleyway, approaching the two men as naturally as she could although she could not help that they could not hear her until she coughed to catch their attention. They were pretty spooked but also pissed at the same time, asking her what she was doing here and threatening to kill her or something. Joan neglected the threats and simply asked them what they were doing, trying to appear interested. The two men started making fun of her, which after a while started to piss her off, so she figured these guys did not have the information she wanted. Without a word, she simply turned and left the alleyway, leaving the two men confused and puzzled.

This job turned out harder than she had expected. No one was willing to share information about cults with her. She could not be sure if it was because they truly did not know about cults, or if they were pretending not to. Everyone was suspicious to her at this point. She sighed as she stood idly, wondering what to do next when she realised the sky had darkened. It was probably going to rain soon, not that it bothered her. She loved the rain, but it meant that it would become harder for her to ask around in the streets because there would be less people outside then. Her head turned in one direction to the other, looking for people to ask about cult shit. She decided there was no time to be picky about who she asked, and so she started with the people who were nearest to her, even a girl who was probably walking home from school or something, since she wore a backpack and held a lunchbox or something in one hand. Joan did not care if she looked nothing like someone who would know about cults. She was desperate now, and even little girls returning home from school became targets. Of course when she approached the girl, she was frightened out of her wits given how Joan was dressed and the expression she wore. The vampyress put on a fake smile to make her feel less frightened and asked her as calmly as she could.

The small girl was less frightened when Joan started speaking in this fake ass voice that made her sound less scary, apparently. She took a few seconds to think about it, giving Joan false hopes, but in the end she too did not know of the cult that Guard Captain Devon wanted to find out about. This was the third person she approached to ask about cults. Well, technically she was the fourth since she found two men in the alleyway, but this was her third time asking. If she was not going to find any information in the streets, she was going to go out of her way to do something crazy to dig up the info using other methods. She was a hundred percent sure that cults were a thing and especially because Magnolia Town was so close to Dahlia Town. Of course there had to be cults here too. There had to be a reason Guard Captain Devon got a tip. The only other reason he could have received that tip could have been because someone wanted him to be distracted from something else more important? Joan was overthinking things now. Shaking her head a little to bring her focus back to the task at hand, she turned around again, and then started walking. She was kind of clueless, but she knew that she would find out in the end, because she had this strong feeling that she would not going to fail Guard Captain Devon.

Joan was almost starting to feel super bored of this request. She just wanted to go home and take a long nap and probably have a feast or something since she stole a bunch of blood bags from the local hospital. Instead of looking for people to ask about cult shit, she was actually walking aimlessly as she thought about how to spend the evening back in her inn room. She had an idea and that was to binge watch some series while drinking the blood she stole. It was going to be perfect. Actually, she needed to steal some more to last until she was done watching the series. She was a serious binge watcher and once she started, it was hard to stop. Since she was a vampyre, sleep was not important for her well being which meant that she would not stop because she felt sleepy or something. She could go days without sleep, so it was easy for her to finish whole series while ordinary people probably could not. It was the same with reading. She could finish entire book series in one sitting if she felt like it, because she had no trouble keeping herself focused on something if she was a hundred percent interested in it. She balanced her time with watching and reading, because even though it was easier to just watch things, you could not watch something faster. It was different for reading because the faster you read, the faster you finished reading.

So after asking the little girl who was returning home from school, Joan really was at a loss for ideas which was why she was walking around the center of Magnolia Town as if she was a robot programmed to just walk around aimlessly, and she almost even bumped into several people who were walking past her on the sidewalk but thank god she did not actually hurt anyone because that meant bad impressions and she was not going to ruin her image here since her mission at the time being was to pretend to be one of those good mages even though she felt like it was wrong it do so given how she was from Phantom Lord and still felt loyal to said guild although she had started taking requests from legal clients and it felt so damn wrong to do that, to be quite honest, and all of this was part of her preparations for what seemed like a huge project that required the help of her vampyress friend who would be traveling to Fiore all the way from a different country since she was out there for some reason that Joan could not really say because she did not really know herself, and she had no reason to find out what it was but too bad she did not know that her vampyress friend was not really going to be much help for the ‘project’ and instead would actually become the cause of her nemesis.

The vampyress started walking in circles and at one point bumped into someone who actually had the audacity to tell her to ‘watch it’ which caught Joan’s attention. The person she had just bumped into was not walking away like every other person would after getting bumped into. The edgy looking girl stared right back into Joan’s eyes, catching the vampyress’ interest. What was up with this girl? She did not look frightened of Joan even though that was what happened to most people who looked into Joan’s eyes. Maybe she was a witch, or a vampyre as well. Joan could tell that the former seemed more like a possibility since she probably would be able to tell one of her own. The girl stared back at her and this brought a smirk on Joan’s face. Her instincts told her to ask this girl about the cult. Alarm bells went off in her head as she stood in the girl’s way. She did not look like she was in a hurry too. The girl stood still with her eyes fixed on Joan’s. A few moments later, the vampyress popped the question, in a subtle way of course. The girl blinked only then. She had not been blinking this whole time, which was definitely strange. She then asked Joan a question as well. She asked her what business she had with cults. This was when Joan knew she found the right person. With a small smirk, she started making up some story about her connection to cults and shit like that.

At some point after her long explanation, Joan was able to convince the girl to show her to the cult. The girl told Joan to come by a nearby store later that night and the vampyress nodded. Before she left, the girl whispered into Joan’s ears, telling her that she was not a girl. This caught Joan off guard, but the trap had left when Joan realised what he meant. Shaking her head and exhaling deeply, the vampyress headed back to her inn. She was supposed to go to the store at night time so she had some time to waste. Because it was not a lot of time, she decided she would not pay the local hospital a visit to get more blood bags. What she had would suffice for the time she had. She walked back to her inn from the center of Magnolia Town where she was previously at and took off her clothes to relax for a bit. She had some time to watch something on the TV while she waited. She grabbed some blood bags from her fridge and sat down on the sofa in front of the television set in her inn room, then turned on the lacrima screen. She picked a random channel and just started watching whatever was on the screen as she sipped through the tube connected to the blood bag. It was like a straw so she could just suck.

When the time came, Joan stood from her sofa, picking up all the empty blood bags that she just drank from and tossed them in the bin. She turned off the lacrima screen and headed into the bathroom for a quick shower. While she was watching the TV, it was raining quite heavily but now it was not raining as heavily, so by the time she was done showering, it would have stopped, or so she hoped. She did not mind the rain, actually. In fact, she loved the rain, but she did not want it to get in the way of her mission, since rain could sometimes be a hindrance. After taking a long relaxing shower, she dried herself and put on her usual clothes, the ones that made her look like a witch. This outfit was perfect because it made her fit right into a cult just by appearance. Joan headed to the store that she was told to come to, and used the password that she was given, and she was allowed inside. She was led to the backroom, with a makeshift tunnel that was near a wall. The person who let her in also led her down the tunnel and soon they were inside a large cavern where the cult members were. Joan remembered her way out so that if things went wrong, she could escape easily. The cavern looked like some place of worship for the cult and Joan took in everything that she was seeing to report back to Guard Captain Devon.

After a little while, a man approached her, one that she had never seen before and began asking her questions like the ones she was asking in the streets earlier that day. Of course Joan kept her cool and answered everything he asked so that he was convinced. He seemed convinced for a moment, and Joan kept up her act the whole time. But at one point he decided that he was not buying her story and started calling her a spy. Joan of course argued with him, but since she was outnumbered here and the other cult members started to chase her, she ran through the tunnel so that she was out of the cavern. Once she was outside of the store, there was no way for them to catch her anymore as her vampyre abilities helped her escape even more easily. She used the alleyways to escape and after a while of running, they lost sight of her and gave up on chasing her. Once she was sure that they were no longer after her, she returned back to where Guard Captain Devon was waiting and presented the information that she had gathered to him. He seemed very pleased with the information she brought and asked her a few questions before he handed her her reward in a pouch and thanked her. Joan nodded and gave him the fakest smile before returning back to her inn to take that nap.