"That has nothing to do with me. In the Trial of Fear, I tried three times to break through your fear response. I failed every time, and worse than simply failing, I apparently contributed to you extinguishing those fears entirely.

The contract cost isn’t decided by either of us. It comes from the trial. After I gave up the final round, the trial selected a fear from your mind at random."

A pause.

"I suspect your relationship with wealth is not what one would call robust?"

Raphael’s mouth twitched very slightly.

"One gold coin is approximately a thousand Colin. And my wallet currently contains fifty Colin."

He looked at that number for a moment.

He had no particular desire to use money that had passed through this nightclub, it was built on what it was built on. He thought through his options and arrived at the simplest one: Blitz’s own assets.

The same approach that had worked inside the castle’s treasury, on the assets of one of Blitz’s ancestors.

"Do you know where the surveillance footage from this building is stored? And what about Blitz’s assets, where does he keep them?"

Alp answered without hesitation.

"The footage, I only know roughly. It’s stored at the deepest level of the underground, in a secured zone that only the important people and Blitz himself can access. I’ve never been inside. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

The location is directly below booth 01, but I don’t know where the access point is. What I do know is that there are a few transcendents guarding the corridor, people who have arrangements with the important individuals involved. Not weak ones."

He continued:

"As for Blitz, I don’t know specifics. But he doesn’t trust anyone. He wouldn’t leave his assets somewhere for others to access. My assumption is he keeps them on his person."

Raphael shook his head with mild regret and stopped spending time on it. He knew enough to proceed.

The plan had two parts. Miguel, with his Church backing, would handle this location. Raphael would go to the castle and finish Blitz.

This building was at the center of a city. It wasn’t the right environment for a wanted man to cause open destruction.

While he worked through the logistics, the contract finalized. A weightless seal pressed itself into both of them, somewhere below thought.

He pushed the door open, found Miguel where he’d left him, and got to the point.

"It’s done. We can start the final preparations."

Both Raphael and Miguel had questions for Alp, and there were enough of them that they simply went back to booth 04.

Miguel looked at the robe on Raphael’s shoulder with an expression he was having some difficulty concealing. A piece of shapeless black cloth, and a Lv4 Demon. He went straight to the question he most wanted answered.

"Do you know anything about Blitz’s sacrifice ritual?"

Alp answered without hesitation.

"Yes. It’s a vampire tradition, a required step in advancement. If it succeeds, he becomes a Lv6 entity. At that point he can rise to Viscount, and his life-form undergoes a qualitative change."

He continued:

"I don’t know the specifics of the ceremony. I never looked into it in detail. What I do know is that it requires a large volume of living sacrifices, the higher quality the life, the better, which is why vampire tradition typically uses humans."

Raphael was quiet for a moment.

"So by that logic, Blitz is currently Lv5. Which would make him at minimum a vampire Baron."

Alp made a sound with an edge of something that was close to envy.

"Not initially. When I first started working with him, he was Lv3. An ordinary vampire by any standard. But then he found the castle, and from that point it accelerated beyond anything I expected.

He established some kind of connection with something inside it and received the vampire advancement ritual, which had been considered lost.

He spent some time quietly gathering people through commercial arrangements, used them for the ritual, and made Lv4 in short order. He’d already completed the Lv5 preparation before things got to this point."

A pause, and then the words came out with a distinct edge behind them:

"And now you’ve removed the castle’s illusion seal. He can access the ancestor’s blood-source essence directly. As we speak, he has almost certainly completed the Lv5 transition.

He brought approximately half of the nightclub’s underground captives with him to the castle, over a hundred people, specifically for this ritual. The ceremony itself isn’t fast. It runs through a full night. So you still have time. Not a great deal, but enough."

Raphael tilted his head slightly.

"That sounds almost like you’re hoping we’ll kill him. Your own kind."

Alp’s response was immediate and unapologetic, the contract keeping it honest:

"We were always using each other. He succeeded and I didn’t. Envy, malice, call it what you want, perhaps humans find the attitude difficult to understand. Among Demons, the relationship between different branches has always been poor.

Vampires and werewolves are ancestral enemies, they both want to be the moon’s chosen. Wraiths and undead have been competing over their position in the underworld for as long as anyone can remember."

Raphael let it go. Miguel moved to his own question.

"Do you know which of the important people is coordinating with Blitz? And what level of transcendents are guarding the underground level?"

Alp considered briefly.

"I know that the current mayor of Zexi came to power through means that weren’t clean, and that the network of interests he represents has wide reach. Your likely opponents are the strongest bounty hunters currently operating in this city. The IFSA, the AE Association, the Church, their members operate under institutional constraints.

Only freelance bounty hunters have the freedom to take dirty work at this level. To my knowledge, there are at least five Lv4 bounty hunters operating in this city, and one at Lv5."

Miguel glanced at Raphael with an expression that was somewhere between doubt and reluctant assessment.

"I’ll find support. That part isn’t a concern. But I need to know how to get down there."

Alp made a sound that might have been amusement.

"That’s not a problem for you. The location is below booth 01. The access point, I don’t know exactly where it is. But your partner here has a particular method that should be sufficient."