This goes back to a little before Celes departed

"There you are, you sure gave me trouble with that perception disrupting magic of yours, Cascade," a woman knocked on Cascade's iron door and opened it the next moment revealing a woman in full-body black tights that made her voluptuous body look more tempting. She also has several weapons and trinkets hanging on her waist and legs.

"Well sorry about that, it has been a while since someone apart from that marquis visited me so I forgot about it. So what happened out there, Sarah?" Cascade, the one that developed the item that mutated Cro Galrue into a demon.

"Right, it all went according to plan. Your prize got nabbed by the bait though," Sarah, one of Cro's greatest hands.

"I see that is unfortunate. I guess that bait wasn't that easy," he blurted out as he sat down on his chair.

"You don't seem vexed at all, are you." Sarah raised a brow.

"Well, it's not like this is the first time such a thing happened. This is also the reason why I was working under Cro, he was interested in my experiments after hearing about them from somewhere and forced me to obey him in exchange for my life and that elf's. What's vexing is that this happened several times already, no point crying about spilled milk now though," he said, followed by a deep loud sigh.

"You had it rough too, huh. What do you plan on doing now? I had my revenge now, I don't mind helping you with yours."

"Let's see. For now, can you investigate the people who nabbed her? Can never go wrong with your skills. I want to know their name, age, race, gender, physique, origin, everything!"

"I thought you would say that. Here, I had it all written in these. Though I found almost nothing about the most interesting one," Sarah smiled as he handed over a bundle of papers to Cascade.

"Let's see, let's see… oh don't touch that, you'll lose a third of your lifespan if anything goes wrong with it," Cascade said as he scanned through the important details written in the

"Heeeeh, no wonder you got his attention. To be doing these kinds of experiments, anyone who heard of it will want it on their hands," she said before backing away from anything that seemed ominous.

"Tch…" Cascade clicked his tongue in annoyance which made Sarah giggle.

After a few minutes of Sarah staring and Cascade reading.

"A vampire, huh. And a daywalker at that. I somehow can understand why you didn't find much about her. Except for this Orto and this vampire, the others are mostly irrelevant. They're just people who got caught up with the plan, nothing more. They appeared at the most convenient timing when the plan is almost complete. To force the Marquis to use the demon fuse, too convenient that it has turned into a problem," Cascade was irritated and scratched his head with his pen.

"Should be fine, right? A vampire's blood is the greatest magic catalyst only second to a dragon's core, if we manage to get our hands on her blood along with the elf then it's more worth it. And who knows how great the blood is of a day-walking vampire. Cheer up, yeah?" Sarah playfully explained.

"I suppose you are right. No pain no gain. Help me pack up, there's no reason to stay here anymore," he said.

"You could have done that while you were waiting for me," Sarah said, irritated.

"I was too busy on my research, had no time for that."

"Right, you won't have to worry about that Orto. He should be bedridden for like a month or so from what I saw. That vampire reached her blood hunt and had to drain all moisture from the Marquis' men and from that Orto, he barely survived. My revenge went better than I thought it would, with this the Galroe house is done for," Sarah said with a satisfied sweet smile on her face.

"Tch, must be nice huh."

"Not necessarily," Sarah smiled and stated.

"Annoying"

*****