Julius stares down the Viscount. He had to admit that Kendrick pulled a smart move by burning the mansion. He'd usually need a warrant to step on a noble's property and by the time parliament gave him one, It'd be to late to do anything. However if an emergency like say a fire were to occur, Julius was given free reign to do as he pleased. The Viscount gives his son a smirk, then returns Julius's stare with an evil grin.

"Not bad, not bad. This would've been a real pickle if you didn't have value as a hostage! Take any step closer and the boy-"

A knife finds it's way wormed into Anwir's wrist! The Viscount curses, dropping Kendrick. Kendrick dashes towards Julius and hides behind his back. The Viscount pours an expensive potion over his wound and says,

"Riiiiiight knife. Oh well, looks like we'll be doing this the hard way then! PRINCESS, GROGNAVAR!"

"Just a heads up, both of those monsters are infernal aligned and have skills akin to the ruby wolf. Viscount Anwir likely has access to two skill trees because of the multiple dogs. Their weak point is their eye. Also watch out for the lasers."

"Infernal?! lasers-?!"

Julius doesn't has time to question Kendrick's advice as the two hell hounds pounce upon Julius. The royal guardsmen sidesteps the first hellhound and gracefully impales its side with his halberd. As he pulls his weapon out he jams the butt of his Halberd into second monster's eye concussing it. Unfortunately for Julius it seems that the jab at the first doggo wasn't particularly effective as it quickly turns to face him. With ridiculous speed the creature goes to bite off Julius's head! Julius barely manages to get his polearm's pointy end into the creatures maw in time to prevent it from biting down. As the hellhound winces in pain after chomping on something sharp and hard, Julius presses his advantage and tries to worm his weapon deeper into its mouth. He finds some success, but is interrupted when his instincts kick in and he tilts his head to the left. The second hellhound bites down missing his head, but still manages to get through his chain mail and bites his shoulder. Seeing a good opportunity Julius activates a skill.

[High Counter]

The hellhound that bit him howls in pain as the damage it dished out to Julius is returned with twice the strength. Julius seeing the opening, painfully rips out his halberd's head from the first's mouth and quickly spins around. Julius uses the centripetal force to deliver a devastating blow to the second hellhound. With one clean cut, he manages to lop off the beast's head. One is down but the battle isn't over yet! As Julius turns back around he sees several streams of fire collapse in front of a giant eye.

"Well fuck."

The laser fires. Julius screams in pain as it directly hits his chest, the explosions send him flying. The Viscount seeing that smiles in satisfaction. There's no surviving an attack like that after all! He gives a mourning look towards Grognavar, devourer of worlds. It was a shame that he had to lose a valuable hellhound, but it was just something he'd have to accept. He supposed loosing a hellhound was a fair trade for getting out of this situation. He turns back towards Princess and sees her begging.

"Yeah yeah, you can eat the corpse."

The damaged beast scampers towards the royal guardsmen's body with surprising speed considering its wounds. The creature lowers its fractured snout to poke the corpse when... A hand shoots up and grabs it!

[High Counter]

Energy surges from Julius's hand and blasts off the hellhound's head. The Viscount violently swings his head towards the disturbance.

"H-HOW-"

A carriage charges towards the scene. Its pulled by a rhino like creature with a rounded, blunt horn and gold capped tusks. While it has the build of a rhino, biologically speaking its closer to a horse. Ruri gracefully jumps out of the carriage  and rushes towards her knight. An expensive potion makes its way to Julius's lips. Hope drains from Anwir's eyes.

"So you were attuned to a brogaigia... Is that your trump card? Fine, I surrender."

Soon enough the Viscount and Annalissa are tied up and loaded on to the carriage. With the hard work all done, Julius looks over towards kendrick,

"Welp Kendrick, lets get out of here-"

Kendrick wasn't there.

------

Kendrick walked towards the charred remains of the manor. The fire had eaten through pretty much everything, leaving the basement exposed. Kendrick carefully dropped down the hole and made his way towards the trap door. The skeleton key slides into the keyhole with ease. 

Ker-chunk

The lock opens and Kendrick presses foward, an oil lamp his only light. The floors and walls of this secret chamber are dyed RED. Implements of torment line the walls and in the back are large cages. Most are empty, but in three lies the Alastair's family's biggest secret. The ghouls.

Ghouls are this world's closest equivalent to necromancy. They're an infernal aligned monster made by implanting a seed into a human. The person the seed was implanted in while suffer incredible pain for a week and then die. After death, a ghoul with similar features to victim will claw its way out of the corpse and eat the remains. Ghouls are pale, lanky, highly aggressive creatures with horribly long claws that they drag behind them. Obviously the practice of making these abominations are outlawed and yet people like Anwir still carry on the trade. Among all of the screeching and moaning of the ghouls another voice is heard,

"Hey you human bastards this wasn't a part of the contract! I didn't sign up for this job just to be locked up in some cage! The union WILL hear about this, mark my words!"

In the corner of the lies a smaller cage. Its inhabitant is a WORM. Kendrick instincts kick in and with lightning speed the cage is open and the apocalypse worm is cradled in his arms.

"H-hey who said you could- O-oh!"

Kendrick scratches the spot just behind its fourth spine and massages the underside of the worms chin.

"mmmm... I could get used to this..."

Before the worm even realizes, it's already down Kendrick's throat and the white prism in Kendrick's stomach has forcefully created a bond between the two.

Afewconcepts65

I know what you want. I can see the desire on your face. You're practically foaming at the mouth for it. Your eyes burn with fervent passion. You're just like me.You want worm facts. Ask and you shall receive.

1. The CWWU (pronounced kyuu, like the sound apocalypse worms make) acts as the governing body of Calamity, the Country of worms.

2. Apocalypse worms sprouted up around the time Euphoria fell. Nobody knows why, but its theorized that the worms had something to do with Euphoria's downfall since the reason the country fell has been lost to time.

3. Apocalypse worms are the only monster that can speak. This makes them quite prideful. 

4. Apocalypse worms act as parasites. When inside of a human's body they camp out near the heart and slowly eat their insides meaning the human only has at most a year. Of course its technically possible to have the time go longer, but that would mean starving the worm and only the most cruel and heartless of hosts would do that!

5. Apocalypse worms are often hired by those in power for Espionage. Their ability to instantly kill someone by eating their heart is very useful for shutting someone up. Contracts usually last a year, but before the CWWU came into existence, the cruel nobles would force the worms to work longer which would starve the worms.

6. Its very rare for a human to form a bond with an apocalypse worm for several reasons. First is that humans, for the most part, are terrified and distrustful of apocalypse worms.  Second is that the apocalypse worm has to be inside the human to form a bond, which means that the human only has a year of life span.

7. In the past there were rulers who attempted to wage war upon the worms, but all attempts ended in failure. Seeing a worm force its way into your comrade's throat and then eat their heart is very demoralizing.

8. Apocalypse worms absorb energy after eating a heart and is the reason they take contracts. When their contracts end the worm will return to Calamity and present their collected energy to the great worm mother, who evenly distributes the energy amongst all worms.

9. It is very rare to see humans in Calamity. The only humans you'll encounter are either merchants buying apocalypse worm silk or members of the apocalypse feeder cult.

10. The apocalypse feeders are a group of people that worship the apocalypse worms. They willing sacrifice themselves to the worms because they receive divine revelations about the future when they let the worms eat their heart a top a special alter once every year. Being chosen as a sacrifice is the highest honor among the apocalypse feeders. When they aren't sacrificing themselves they act as servants and pamper the worms, which is why the worms keep them around.

11. Apocalypse originally meant revelation. This is why the biblical apocalypse is in the book of revelations. In my mind Apocalypse worms are supposed to be these enlightened monsters because they've received a revelation, which is why I've changed the name from calamity worm in the orginal work. It still keeps the menace and end of the world meaning of Calamity, but also incorporates the heightened knowledge that this version of the worm has. The name also references Christianity which ties in nicely with the whole demonology thing going on with the original story's antagonists, but I didn't know of that when I made the change initially. I named their country Calamity just so that I can keep calling the workers union CWWU. I just can't see worms going AWWU. That's more of a dog or wolf thing.

12. I totally made the power system in this world tied to monsters just so I can say that the world has a worm based magic system.