"User we are being watched." Said Ugy interrupting Noah's tirade.

Noah stopped cold, scanning the empty dim warehouse with his gaze.

"From where?" He asked inside his head.

"Shadows." Answered Ugy with a grave voice. "Get out of here."

"Samantha will be here soon."

"Get to her through the medallio…" Started to say Ugy, but was stopped by the knock on the warehouse door.

"Noah?" Sounded Samantha's worried voice from outside.

"Fuck!" Said Noah taking a deep breath in and howling with a mighty voice that spread the dark energy of his malign aura skill through the space in an instant.

An explosive sound broke out of the warehouse and black smoke streamed out of it, breaking through walls. Turning stones and wood to ashes.

Samantha and Kate jumped away from the building with expressions of shock on their faces.

"What the fuck was that?" Exclaimed Samantha holding Dany in her hands.

A shadow-like figure clad in all black jumped out of the black smoke a moment later hissing with pain.

"Fuck. How did he…" Murmured the figure in black before her gaze landed on the three women looking back at her in shock. They watched each other in surprise for a few moments, silent realization downing on their minds. Then the shadow person jumped aside dodging a beam of black energy that disintegrated a wall of the building behind her and rolled on the ground until she touch some random shadow and sank into the ground disappearing from sight.

"Sam! It's a shadow squad!" Screamed Noah jumping out of the warehouse that collapsed behind him.

"Oh shit! That Dark Association guy was right. The Shadow squad is really after us?" Said, Kate.

"Is she alone?" Asked Samantha as Noah ran to them.

"I felt only one presence inside. But last time they were in a team of two."

"Wait last time? You have met them before?" Asked Samantha.

"Oh…um…" Voiced Noah as he realized his tongue slip.

/Hold on./ Thought, Samantha. /Noah was in Greenville town at the same time as us. We were told that they are after us for killing a shadow squad in Greenville….Fuck! Don't tell me!?/

"It was you?" Hissed Samantha.

"Well…" Said Noah, scratching his cheek.

"What are you two talking about?" Asked Kate.

"I will explain later." Growled Samantha. "We need to get away from here first."

"Sam, dash for the dungeon exit. I will hold her down."

"They are legendary assassins, you'll die boy!" Hissed Kate.

"Believe me. As long as she's alone I can take her on. If not, I am certain that I can at least escape." Answered, Noah.

"Let's go, Kate." Screamed Samantha dashing away, with Danny in her hands. Kate looked at Noah for a moment and dashed after her friend.

Just as they started to run they saw a flash of bright light from behind their backs and a person in black fell off the wall quickly regrouping and landing on the ground with a roll.

"Hey! Don't go away just yet. I can play with you instead of them." Said Noah hurling a black beam at her.

"Fuck! How can he spot me?" Muttered the woman in black, rolling away again to dodge another beam. She watched the three women going further away and tsked with annoyance. "Alright boy. You want to play? You're on!" She said, jumping into the shadow again.

*****

Screams and chaos were everywhere, as people clashed with monsters that ran all over the place. Buildings broke and fell as magic was hurled in all directions.

Black Market patrols fought to suppress the monsters, but there were hundreds of monsters and they ran around in frenzy instead of attacking them. They had to run around in circles for minutes just to bring down one or two of them.

In all this chaos one man walked through the dungeon with a quick step with an emotionless face as if all this did not concern him. He walked in a straight line without dodging the flying debris or turning when monsters jumped in front of him. Strangely these few monsters that jumped him, died before they could even touch him, while the man did not blink an eye when attacked. He kept moving toward the Black Market Auction house disregarding everything.

As he was passing through the path between two broken buildings, stepping over the debris on the ground, one piece of timber under him suddenly bent and lunged at him with a sharp end that suddenly turned into a spear tip. It moved with flash-like speed, piercing his torso and killing him on the spot. At the same time, his shadow widened several times its previous size in a second, then broke to pieces turning to tentacles that elongated into different sides, touching the shadows of the buildings around him. Then these shadow tentacles separated from the man and crawled in different directions like snakes, where they were then absorbed in the shadows of buildings

Small balls flew from all directions, hitting different spots around the dead men, before blowing up in a huge explosion, turning building debris into rubble.

A person leaned on the wall gazing into the dust of an explosion from behind the corner of a building, without noticing a figure elongating from the shadow on the wall behind him. But before it could lunge at the man, wooden staves hit the wall, missing the shadow person that instantly sank back into shadow sensing danger just a moment before sharp wood pierced the stone.

"Huh? What the?" Muttered the man, turning around startled and pulling at the stick in his hands that was bent and elongated like a snake and was piercing the wall behind him. 

"Nice try. But it's useless." Said a woman's voice before a figure clad in black appeared from the shadow of one of the assassin men that lay in ambush on the roof. She lunged at the assassin's legs but instead of trying to dodge, the assassin just moved the hand that held a strange wooden stick as if trying to block. He was of course too slow to block the flash-like slash of the shadow woman's knife but the next moment stick bent and moved like a snake lunging at the knife, blocking its path and protecting the assassin's legs.

At the same time, the man sent a throwing knife into the shadow person's head with his other hand, but it plunged into the roof as the shadow person disappeared.

"Damn it. That fucking stick in their hands is too damn quick and it's as if it has its own mind and can see everything around it. I almost got skewered by it and the guy did not even realize I was there. What the hell?" Muttered one shadow figure while moving through the shadows.

"It's too damn solid too. I would have cut through any normal wood like a sheet of paper, but this thing actually blocked my slash." Said the second shadow figure.

"Who are these guys?" Said the first shadow figure.

"Assassin guild from the looks of it." Said the second shadow person.

"It looks like they were waiting for us." Said the first shadow.

"Yeah. We were found out. Contact the other. Let them be on the guard." Said the second shadow.

"Shit." Said the first shadow a few moments later. "Gabriella found the target. They returned to the warehouse on their own. Looks like they escaped from the auction house. But she was forced to engage in battle with some unknown enemy that can force her out of the shadows, so she let the target escape."

"Damn it. Let's go back!" Said the second shadow.

 

As they started to move through the shadows back the way they came from, an assassin woman standing on their path suddenly opened her mouth making a deafening screech that made the ground vibrate. 

The two shadow people felt so nauseous they almost lost consciousness and had to spread out in different directions away from the screeching woman but were met by a few others that opened their mouths to screech.

"Fuck. What the hell are they? We should be untouchable in the shadows." Asked the first shadow woman.

"These things are Wraith hosts. Be careful, it's a soul attack. While we are in the shadows their screech is amplified on us. They are the worst enemy we could meet."

"There are six of these bitches." Said the first shadow woman. "And they are surrounding us."

"Damn it. We have no choice but to kill them all!"

*****

"Why?! Why?! Why is it not helping?! I don't understand. No matter how much dark energy I pour into it, the core just keeps drying. Why is this happening? What's going on?" Screamed the ghostly woman floating in the round, arched cave in the very center of which stood a huge shining crystal pillar stretching from the ground to the ceiling. A melon-sized crystal was shining the brightest in the center of the pillar, and it looked as if the pillar grew from it outward reaching the ground and ceiling later. 

However, this shining crystal now shone with a lot dimmer light than usual. It even shone dimmer than a minute ago.

"Mother. Is something wrong? Can we help?" Asked an assassin woman entering the core room followed by a group of ten more women in the same getup. All of them wore similar armor to the ones that ambushed the shadow squad in the dungeon in the middle of the black market.

"Why are you all here? You were ordered to kill those people from the shadow squad." Said the ghostly woman.

"We were left to protect you by Lord Doonpine. He went out to take care of the shadow squad himself." Said the newcomers while calmly approaching the ghostly woman.

Something irked the ghostly woman when she saw their behavior. She looked at how they walked toward her while spreading around the room, surrounding her and her eyes squinted.

"What the hell? What are you all doing? I order you to go out!" Said the ghostly woman loudly but after seeing the women standing there without obeying, her eyes went wide. "How? How are you able to disobey?"

"Oh, I am very sorry, dungeon lord, but your authority will not work on these daughters of yours. You see, the wraiths inside these hosts are a bit special." Said a woman with her face hidden under a mask of owl that left only her mouth uncovered, entering the core room behind the group of women that now fully surrounded the ghostly woman. It was the same person that the auction house master sat with inside the VIP room at the auction just a short time ago.

This newcomer walked in dragging by the hair a scantily dressed and heavily beaten woman with arms bound behind her back. A choker with a thick chain was put on the beaten half to death woman's neck.

Once inside the room the woman in an owl mask closed the gate and stood aside, staying behind the line of women surrounding the Dungeon Lord Wraith that floated in the air near the dungeon core.

"Who the fuck are you? Who let you in?" Shouted the ghostly woman.

"Oh, your dear daughters did. They also took care of all the others outside so that we would not be disturbed. Very thoughtful of them, don't you think so?" Said the owl-masked woman.

"What is this? A coup? You all betraying me? I created you! I gave you your lives, I gave you a place to belong! Gave you a family to be a part of! I am your mother. I created you with sanity as only rare monsters would ever have. Gave you the chance to live like humans again, to gain happiness after you lived in misery in your previous lives. You will betray me, your mother after all I did for you?"

"Oh, don't be so loud, dungeon lord. I will explain everything to you once we are done. But for now, be a good monster and don't struggle." Said the woman in an owl mask.

"Foolish daughters! You can not go against me. I don't know why my binding on your souls doesn't work, but you are still under my command. If I die, the sanity I gifted to you will perish as well! I am the Lord of this dungeon where you were made! I am the keeper of the dungeon core! Without me, you all are just useless dumb souls! Brainless monsters of the dungeon. Is that what you all want to become?"

"Oh, but no one wants to kill you, dear dungeon lord. On the contrary. We will keep you alive and even help you make a bigger family. That's what your wraith instincts desire the most right? That's what pleases your soul of a woman that died in pain in misery that is at the core of your being, right? To have a big, loving family. That is what we will give you. You'll just have to be obedient…as a slave. Just like these daughters of yours that obey my every command." Said the woman in the owl mask

Mother Wraith opened her mouth and screeched in the direction of that arrogant owl-masked woman, but her screech was met with another screech from one of her daughters standing between them. The sound waves clashed, dispersing in between them, without reaching the owl-masked woman.

Then another woman behind the ghostly figure screeched at her back.

One by one all eleven women surrounding the dungeon lord screeched, loud sound waves hitting the ghostly figure from all sides, making her incorporeal body bend and disfigure and turning her slightly more transparent. 

Mother Wraith screamed as if in pain and screeched at her daughters in return while flashing away to dodge their attack. This time her screech could not be annulled by them and the woman that Mother Wraith aimed at screamed in pain falling on the ground before a ghostly figure of a woman flew out of the fallen body, looking very similar to The Mother Wraith.

A barely visible transparent figure of a woman dressed in a long white dress with her hair moving as if a heavy wind blew in her face, floated above the fallen assassin woman's body gazing at the mother wraith with an emotionless face. Her face had no semblance with the Mother Wraith that called her her daughter and looked even older than Mother Wraith's face. This wraith was also a lot more transparent than her mother and was barely discernible to sight in her ghostly form.

Once the wraith flew out of the woman's body she flew aside to dodge the Mother Wraith's attack while other assassin women rushed after her, trying to keep the mother wraith surrounded, attacking her from all sides.

A few more women were hit with Mother Wraith's deadly screeches, forced to leave their host bodies that fell dead on the ground.

Blurs of white ghostly figures flying through the air filled the room while screeches reverberated all over it.

Mother Wraith was faster, stronger, and smarter, yet she was kept at bay by the sheer number of opponents. On top of that, she had no protection of flesh like her daughters, which made her receive their attacks in full. No matter how much she dodged and annulled their attacks, she kept being hit by screeches from all sides, which slowly withered away her power.

Owl masked person watched how mother wraith slammed one of her daughters against the wall of the dungeon that even a ghost could not pass through and screeched at her point blank. The daughter wraith screamed in pain and vanished entirely, her soul dispersing into crystal dust that fell on the ground in a small heap.

A moment later Mother Wraith was hit with another screech from behind and screams from pain. But this time her scream sounded full of grief and despair. 

The family was precious for wraiths that were the creations of women's souls whose life was filled with suffering and filled with malign thoughts and desires. Even though Mother Wraith had sanity and could oppose her monster instincts, she still felt a strong desire to have children that a ghost could not have. 

It is this desire that made the small children the favorite target to prey on for the wraith monsters. They stole the children's souls to cradle them like their own in a sick wish to appease their overwhelming monstrous desires to possess a family to care for.

However, mother wraith with her sanity found a way to substitute those monstrous impulses. She created other wraiths that she considered her daughters. She made a precious family to care for in another way. The souls inside her wraith daughters were just random women's souls with unfinished desires in their lives. Some of them looked older in their appearance than the mother wraith, but still, they all considered her as their true mother, and she loved them as daughters. They were family. But now she had to kill that family with her own hands. All because of that hateful woman in an owl mask. 

Mother Wraith's gaze fell on the owl-masked woman and her eyes filled with hatred and anger replaced her despair. Even if she would have to kill all her daughters here, she swore to get to that hateful person and make her pay. She dodged aside and the battle of wraiths continued.

After a dozen minutes, mother wraith felt the toll of taking numerous hits from all the screeches of her daughters, from which only five were still left alive and two of them were forced out of their host bodies.

She felt nauseous even though she was a ghost. And her sanity began to slip as she slowly lost rationality. Her monster instincts began to take over. She felt the strong desires of normal mindless monster wraiths fill her, the same as when she was just a mindless monster herself, roaming this world for centuries without any purpose, with only meaning to her existence to bring destruction. She needed to protect herself, needed to recover her power or she would slip away and turn to mindless creatures. 

Then she felt it…The soul of a miserable woman, full of fear, pain, regrets, hatred, and unfulfilled desires. The soul that had everything that a wraith needed. 

Mother Wraith looked at the poor half-dead woman, laying on the ground at the owl-masked woman's feet and her rational mind screaming that this situation was too strange, was overwhelmed when she received another screeching sound wave from her daughters.

Her inner voice of sanity that questioned the reason why this poor beaten woman was brought here was drowned in pain and monstrous desires screaming inside her mind like a myriad of voices. With a roar Mother Wraith flashed in the direction of the woman that lay on the ground, happy that no one attempted to stop her from possessing that woman's body and soul. She did not even take notice of the wicked smile that spread on the owl-masked woman's face.

Mother Wraith bound the soul of the poor woman starting to feed on her with the hunger of a wild beast. Only after her sanity had cleared a bit after recovering with newly absorbed energy did she notice that wicked demonic energy penetrated her soul streaming into her from the poor woman's soul that she fed on. This energy spread through her wraith soul like snakes, binding her and entering her very core. She tried to fight it, to break free, but it was too late.

"Finally. Now that you become all nice and obedient we can talk in peace." Said the owl-masked woman with a pleased smile on her lips.

"What did you do to me?" Asked the beaten woman laying on the ground.

Owl masked woman sat on her hunched and jerked the chain that was attached to the beaten woman's choker, making her raise her head. 

"Oh, this is just a binding, similar to the one these daughters of yours have in them. Don't worry as long as you are obedient it will do you no harm." Said, the owl-masked woman.

"Who are you?" Croaked the bound woman that Mother Wraith possessed.

"My apologies for such a late introduction. I am Lady Night Owl, an elder of the Dark Association. You must have heard of us, I am sure." Answered the owl-masked woman.

"Dark Association? Fucking fanatics. What do you want to do?"

"Nothing much. We just wish the name we bear to represent what it means. We wish to unite the whole underworld and all its divided dark guilds under one banner. That's all there is. But for that, we would need to take under our control the Black Market dungeons as they are the keys to this plan. And your Wraith Dungeon Lords black market dungeon is the most successful one there is. We want this power of yours that lets you prevent anyone to infiltrate it or find the entrance. Of all the black market dungeons that exist, yours is one of the rarest ones to exist the longest as it has never been successfully attacked by the government dogs."

"Idiot. I am not the only reason for that." Breathe out heavily Mother Wraith feeling the heavy binds of dark energy that squeezed her very soul making even ghost feel pain.

"Ah, yes. The legendary Doonpine of the Treefolk Spirit Beasts. It is unimaginable for a spirit beast to help a monster such as you. To serve as a door guardian of the dungeon. Commit so many wicked crimes and atrocities. To go against his very principle of existence. It is a marvelous existence. Truly astonishing and exciting. And of course, we have plans to capture it as well."

"Dream on." Said Wraith Mother. "You are shit in front of his power."

"Oh, I am quite sure it will be even easier to capture than you. Afteral, it would do anything to protect you. Isn't that so, oh Fairy Queen of the lost Doon forest? That is what you were in your last life, before turning into a wraith, right? Before humans murdered you and burned your kingdom to the ground. Making all your precious fairy family their slaves. And it was all his fault for failing to protect you, right? That's what he thought. It was mighty Doonpine's task to stand guard at the entrance of the holy realm of the fae, protecting it from invaders. Yet he failed. Let you all down."

"Now, you, his Dead Queen's poor mutilated, wretched, wicked soul is all he has left. Even if you turned into a vicious disgusting monster, he still follows you, protecting you for centuries. Such loyalty. I almost dropped a tear after hearing this soul-wrenching story. But…" Said the owl-masked woman standing up and pulling the chain, jerking the woman on the ground to stand up.

"But this is too good an opportunity for us to let it go. Now you and Doonpine will serve our purpose."

"How did you do it? My daughters, what did you do to them?"

"Oh, we did nothing to your daughters. It was your own oversight on who you turn to wraiths, that led to all this."

"What?" Asked Mother Wraith surprised.

"Yeah, they were our slaves from the get-go. There was binding enchantment in their souls even before they were turned to wraiths by you. All we did was bring them close to you and you took them into your family on your own."

"Impossible! They were, they all were..."

"Poor women with miserable lives. Tortured, hurt, humiliated. Full of regrets and desires. Not every soul can turn to that wicked hateful soul to be a perfect material for the creation of wraiths. Many trials and errors had to be done to make them right. We had to steal a whole village of them in some unlucky part of Greenville town just to create a few that you would desire to turn to your daughters. Poor poor girls. They lived through so much pain. Lost all their men. Their fathers, husbands, and sons were mutilated and killed right before their eyes, while they themselves were tortured, raped, and humiliated, in as many ways as only possible, and all this right in front of their whole village and everyone they knew.  Then they had to kill and feed on their daughters, mothers, and neighbors after starving for weeks. Truly a horrifying process. But we managed to succeed as you can see. We had no doubts you would notice them when we brought them to sell here."

"You are fucking monsters."

"Monsters? No hunny." Said the owl-masked woman taking off her mask and gazing at the mother wraith with burning red eyes that had strange patterns instead of pupils. "We are devils."