Kora Van Helsing. Also known as The Helsing Maiden.

Aside from Janus, Kora was the second youngest sibling of the Helsing children. And unlike Janus’s relationship with the other siblings, he was very close to Kora…of course, that changed after the Terror of Hyde incident.

Ever since that incident, Janus and Kora haven’t spoken to one another. How could they when Kora betrayed Janus’s trust?

And now the pair was back together…but Janus wasn’t really happy about the situation.

“What are you doing here, Kora?” Janus questioned; his words devoid of emotions.

“I…was hunting a group of Lycans that were causing a bit of trouble,” Kora said gently, though Janus’s previous cold statement clearly unnerved her.

“Oh? And it happened to be the three Lycans that my partner and I were after?”

Janus took another look at one of the Lycans. It had black fur like the one he encountered, and one notable feature was its arm. Or at least, it's missing one.

The moment he saw the missing arm on that werewolf, Janus was certain that the Lycan trio was the one he and Ana were chasing after.

“We came across these Lycans while patrolling this area,” Kora explained. “When we saw them, we chased after them to take them down.”

“I thought you were patrolling the Castle Baynard Ward tonight?” Janus suddenly interrogated. “We’re in the Langbourn Ward right now.”

“Y-you knew my Night Shift Patrol?” Kora said in surprise.

The City of London has twenty-five Wards. On each day and night shift, multiple HMDD members are assigned to patrol one of the twenty-five wards.

Janus and Ana were patrolling Walbrook Ward until they came across the Lycans and pursued them. Encountering the HMDD members that were patrolling Langbourn was one thing, but to come across Kora when she wasn’t assigned to this Ward was suspicious.

“Answer the question, Kora,” Janus demanded. “Why are you here and not at Castle Baynard?”

“I-I…” Kora was having a difficult time trying to explain herself as she stuttered her words.

Just then…

“Hey, you can’t talk to Lady Kora like that!” The Tan girl from before suddenly approached Janus, her face filled with anger. “She’s your superior!”

“Shut it, Ms. Tan!” Janus retorted. “I’ve got enough problems on my plate right now. I don’t need a little whelp that thinks she’s hot shit when she just recently lost a fight when it was four against one!”

“U-ugh…” The Tan girl flinched as Janus snapped at her.

While Janus was angry, he also knew that she was right. Kora was his superior due to him being a Lieutenant while she was a captain.

However, he wasn’t speaking to Kora as an HMDD member…he was speaking to Kora as an angry little brother who is avoiding his sister.

“Janus, please calm down…” Kora tried to reason with him, but Janus wasn’t having it.

“Not until you answer my question. Why. Are. You. Here?” Each word he said was filled with malice.

Kora couldn’t help but shrink back slightly from his intense interrogation. If she were a monster, she’d be in for a world of hell by the Merciless Helsing.

“I-I just…”

“She’s here because of me…” Suddenly, Anastasia spoke up and answered Janus’s question.

Janus turned around and looked at her, his face filled with shock and anger. Ana, on the other hand, had a very composed expression.

“What do you mean by that…?” Janus asked, trying to keep his composure.

“I…asked for Madam Kora’s assistance in Monitoring you due to her being a Helsing, like you.”

As soon as Janus heard this, he couldn’t help but be filled with rage. His hands shook and he kept clenching them tightly to the point where he started bleeding.

While it wasn’t much of a concern due to his healing factor, the fact that he was drawing blood from clenching his fists…showed just how furious he was at this situation.

“We need to talk…now.” Janus declared as he walked a little away from Kora and her team, Ana following suit.

Once they were far enough away from them, Janus turned to Ana, his face cold and expressionless. This sudden shift caused Ana to flinch out of fear.

“You had no right to get Kora involved in this,” Janus stated, his words were ice-cold.

“Maybe to you…but not to me,” Despite her fear of him, Ana stood her ground and confronted Janus. “Have you forgotten that I am your supervisor?”

“Oh, how could I forget when you keep mentioning it every damn second we’re on patrol?” Janus didn’t mince his words as he spoke. Every word he spoke became harsher and harsher.

However, Ana kept herself composed, unfazed by his cold attitude.

“While I was supervising you, I realized that I wasn’t enough to keep you under watch. And since that was the case, I needed help. The only one I could turn to was a Helsing.”

As his supervisor, Anastasia was needed to do her best in supervising Janus. However, due to their gap in skill levels, she felt that she needed help herself, so she wanted to get another Helsing involved.

Of course, this didn’t sit all that well with Janus.

“So you just decided to involve my siblings in this because you thought you were inadequate, huh? What’s next, am I going to see Rebecca joining in, or maybe Kane?! Hell, at this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if you got Luther to help you!”

With each sentence, Janus’s anger grew stronger. It was to the point where he couldn’t help but shout in rage.

“Janus…”

“I don’t want to hear it! Since you’re my supervisor, you read my profile, which means you know my relationship with the Helsing family. And yet, despite that, you got them involved anyway!”

“I didn’t have a choice!” Ana snapped. “After the incident with the Vampire Boss, I knew that I needed help because another situation like that was bound to occur. And what do you know, it did!”

“We would’ve been able to handle the situation without my siblings. Do you have any idea what you just started?! What this is going to cause?!”

“All I did was ask for help!”

“And because of that, you opened a door that should’ve stayed damn well closed!”

The pair kept arguing with one another, their voices getting louder by the minute. It got so loud that Kora approached them, looking a little alarmed.

“Janus.”

“What?!” Janus snapped at Kora, causing her to get startled.

“I…I understand that you don’t like this, but this has already been approved by Father.”

“Of course it has…” The young Helsing growled under his breath.

“Janus, this is what Anastasia is tasked to do. Don’t get angry at her for that?” Kora pleaded.

But Kora’s pleading fell on deaf ears as Janus groaned loudly, not sure what to do now. If anything, he just wants to leave, but he knows that’s not going to happen.

He also knows that he can’t get rid of Kora since Ana was the one that called her here to help supervise him. Knowing this, the young Helsing was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Aware of the predicament that he was in, he needed to find a way to let out the pent-up anger he was feeling. That was when Janus’s eyes laid upon the Lycan that was still alive.

It was the black-fur werewolf that got its arm cut off by Janus. It laid on the ground, unable to escape due to its injuries and being surrounded by multiple HMDD members watching it.

Seeing the Lycan before him, Janus knew what his next move was. Marching past Kora, he went over to the black-fur Lycan.

Janus then picked him up by the arm that still remained and slammed the monster against the brick wall. This display of violence shocked the others, including Kora and Ana.

“J-Janus, what are you doing?!”

“Janus…”

Ignoring them, Janus glared at the Lycan who was barely conscious, looking around in a daze.

“Here’s how this is going to go, mutt,” Janus snarled. “You’re going to tell me where the rest of your pack is, and why you and your two friends were attacking that woman. If you don’t answer either…I’ll make what these guys did to you look like child’s play.”

The Black-fur Lycan looked at Janus. The two of them glared at one another, and the Lycan even started snarling at Janus, but the young Helsing was unfazed as he continued glaring.

Janus then reached into his pocket and pulled out a dagger. For a moment, the Lycan looked at the weapon, and the moment it sniffed it, its eyes widen with alarm.

Then, Janus jammed the dagger into the Lycan’s shoulder, causing the monster to howl in pain.

“That isn’t the answer I was looking for, mutt. I’m only going to say this one last time; tell me where your pack is. And why did you and your friends attack that woman?”

After a few moments of grunting in pain, the Lycan looked back at Janus, its eyes filled with hatred and rage. But, Janus could care less as he started twisting the blade in the monster’s shoulder, causing it to groan in pain.

“In case you’ve forgotten, I’m currently digging a dagger that’s laced with Wolf’s Bane into your body. I assume you can feel the burning sensation of the Aconitum coursing through your body, right?”

The Lycan roared at Janus, but this didn’t stop him from twisting the dagger around, causing more pain for the monster.

“Unless you want your dying moments to be the most agonizing thing in the world, tell me where your pack is.”

“…N-nev…er!” The Lycan finally spoke, but it didn’t Janus the answer he was searching for.

“…Is that so?” Janus said in a calm voice before swiftly pulling out the dagger.

The Lycan grunted in pain as the Aconitum continued to burn its body. Meanwhile, Janus turned around and walked away, alarming Ana and definitely Kora.

“J-Janus…what are you planning?” Kora asked.

Janus said nothing as he looked through some garbage bags. After a bit of digging, he found a wooden bowl and placed it on top of a wooden box nearby.

He then pulled out what appeared to be a wooden pestle along with the pouch of Wolf’s Bane from before. Taking some of the Aconitum, he places it inside the bowl and starts mashing it inside with the pestle.

After a few minutes of mashing, the aconitum was now made into a fine paste. Janus then pulls out a dagger, most likely not laced with Aconitum, and cuts his hand, letting the crimson blood pour into the bowl.

Noticing this, Kora realize what Janus was planning, her face turning pale with horror.

“J-Janus, you aren’t planning to…!”

As he continued to ignore Kora and pretty much everyone else, Janus kept working on his little experiment. It didn’t take long before he was finished, showing a semi-liquid form of the aconitum mixed with Janus’s blood.

Taking out the dagger he cut himself with, Janus coated the blade with this substance. Once the dagger was nice and coated, he turned back to the Lycan, a slight sadistic smile on his face.

Putting his stuff down, Janus gets up and approaches the Lycan. The monster could tell that something was going to happen, but between the injuries it sustained from the other HMDD members and Janus’s interrogation, it was too wounded to run away.

Once Janus was close enough, he twirled the dagger around in his hand before stabbing the Lycan in the leg. At first, the monster grunted in pain, not all that fazed other than the pain of getting stabbed.

It didn’t take long before the werewolf started shaking, its entire body spasming like crazy. The Lycan then howled in pain, practically beating its previous howl.

“What I just did was stab you with a dagger coated in not just Aconitum, but also my blood. In case you haven’t realized who I am, I’m what you and every other monster call The Poisoned Helsing. Get the picture?”

After saying this, the Lycan realizes what it just got itself into. The pain it was feeling right now was due to Janus’s poisoned blood. And it was currently coursing through its body now, like the wolf’s bane.

“Noticing your expression, it looks like you’re ready to talk.” Janus grinned. “Start spilling, pal or the pain will only get worse.”

“A-alright…!” Soon, the Lycan started confessing to Janus, telling him everything he needed to know.

Where the rest of his pack was, why they attacked the woman, and why the Howlers were being so active this night. It didn’t take long before Janus got all the information he needed from the Lycan.

“I see now,” Janus pondered. “you bastards were after the woman to kidnap and turn her, making her part of your pack. Not only that, but you bastards planned on making her your little breeder, along with a few other women, huh?”

It seems that the Howler pack was trying to increase its members. However, this didn’t make much sense.

“Why not just turn people into Lycans? Why try to birth them?”

“B-because…our boss wants….descendants…and powerful warriors…to be part of his pack.”

“Ah, I see now…”

So it wasn’t about Quantity, but Quality. The Alpha werewolf wanted stronger warriors. Not only that, but he seems to want more loyal warriors, and what’s more loyal than your own children?

“So…you bastards are basically trying to make more soldiers…by using newborns, huh?”

Janus gripped his hands, a wave of anger coming over him. The Lycan could smell the bloodlust coming off him, its hair standing on ends in fear.

“I-I told you all I know…now cure me and leave me be-agh?!” Before the Lycan could say anything else, Janus stabbed it in the chest.

“I don’t remember saying that I would spare you if you confessed. I said ‘unless you want your dying moments to be the most agonizing thing in the world’, which means as long as you told me what I wanted to know, I would give you a ‘painless death’. I had no intentions of sparing you, mutt.”

“Y-you…bastard…!” The Lycan glared at Janus for the last time, its glowing orange eyes piercing right through the Young Helsing.

Even as it died, the beast didn’t take its eyes off Janus as he glared at him in death. Once Janus confirmed that the Lycan was dead, he pulled out the blade and wiped it clean.

Just then, the black-fur Lycan started morphing back into human form. Instead of dying in their Lycan form, werewolves will revert back to human form upon death. The same happened to the other two Lycans that were with the black-fur one.

While Janus was tending to his weapons, Ana and the others stared at Janus in disbelief.

Janus soon noticed them staring and looked at them with an irritated expression.

“What?” He scowled.

“D-did you have to go that far?” Ana asked, clearly disturbed by this.

All Janus could do was sigh in irritation. “I told you before, Anastasia, you shouldn’t show these bastards mercy. Unless they felt remorse for what they did or anything like that, they don’t deserve your sympathy, got it?”

Ana said nothing as she watched Janus, still fearful of him after what she just witnessed.

“Janus,” Kora spoke up.

“Whatever you got to say, Kora, it can wait,” Janus interjected. “For now, we need to go after the Howlers and put an end to their little scheme. Don’t you agree?”

“…Right,” Kora made a stern expression before answering Janus.

It was clear that she had more to say, but considering the situation, she had no other choice but to comply. Right now, the bigger issue was the Howlers Pack. Anything else was secondary…including her situation with Janus.

At least…he was willing to work with her, even if he’s being cold and distant. That’s at least a start for them.

“Alright, according to what that werewolf said, Their pack is taking residence in the Broad Street ward. It seems they made it their turf of sorts, like the other four Lycan Packs. We’ll inform the HMDD members patrolling that area and have them join us in taking down the pack. Any questions?”

As Janus asked this, no one else in the group raised any objections or had any questions to ask.

“Alright, let’s get moving.” Knowing that they were on the same page, Janus started walking over to Broad Street.