“I suppose that is all,” she spoke and smiled at the waitress, gently nudging Espeon (who was resting underneath the table) with her feet. The other woman disappeared into the kitchen and as Seira waited for her order to arrive, she pulled out a notebook and started reading through it. Ever since she had started travelling the country, the vampire kept a notebook close to her, where she would keep tracks of all the jobs that she had completed, the money she had earned and the people she had worked for. Having a list of clients was extremely helpful, especially whenever she returned to the same cities to find more work, and after all this time she realized that (more often than not) she usually worked for the same people. She felt as though doing something like that was easier, much easier, than to look for new clients every time she needed work - nowadays not everyone was a reliable source for money and if Seira needed something to be stable in her life, it was her income. She had learned many things throughout the years and first and foremost she knew that finding someone who was willing to pay you if you did the job accordingly was most important. Furthermore, she also came to realize that some clients (especially those that required for her to do unethical deeds) were less complicated than others - they didn’t care what happened to whom for as long as the job was completed. Strangely enough, Seira prefered this kind of work since she hated having to deal with the aftermath. Mostly, she wanted to get things done as fast as possible and people who didn’t care too much about how you finished something were therefore the easiest ones to work with. She opened the notebook and began reading through the names of clients for Oak Town, the place where she was currently in. There weren’t many names, naturally, and Seira didn’t really have that many options. She had worked for two or three people here in Oak thus far, which was mostly due to the fact that she rarely visited. Oak was a mysterious place and the fact that the dark guild Phantom Lord was located here made things even a little more eerie. Seira did enjoy the town in itself, but there was darkness in the streets that couldn’t be described with words. Something was definitely off and she knew that it had something to do with the guild and the members of said guild. In a way, she didn’t feel as though she could ever spent a lot of time here. Seira also decided that Oak wasn’t going to be a place where she could feed, simply due to the fact that she knew that there were at least one other vampire here and the last thing she wanted to do was to take their prey away. She wasn’t interested in problems, never had been, and therefore the woman decided to do everything she did without getting too much attention.

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Seira looked through the list of names - some of them were noblemen of the Phantasm family and she knew that members of said family were always welcoming ‘normal’ people to work for them. They were more or less ruling over Oak Town and were pretty famous here - usually they also paid very well which made this whole thing much easier for Seira. The vampire was still waiting for her meal to arrive. It was late in the evening by now, the sun had already gone down and she was looking for a hot meal before she would return to her hotel to rest for the night. She had changed her sleeping schedule again, making sure that she was awake while the rest of the world was since she didn’t want to miss anything, and after working throughout the past few days she had decided to take two days off as a break to do other things. Now, however, it was time to find work again which is why she was looking through the list. There weren’t many other options other than the doctor, who was perhaps the most suspicious person out of all of them. She had heard that he earned most of his money through illegal underground trades and that he was a large figure on the black market - which was always interesting of course. To the public he was known as Doctor Stephan Mabuz who owns a quaint little magic shop quietly nestled into the streets of Oak Town. He sold quite a few interesting things there. He had many books that were hard to find elsewhere and Seira had purchased a few before to read about herbs and potions. Magic potions were another thing he did surprisingly well, but he often used ingredients that were either illegal or extremely hard to find. Of course they ended up being much better and rarer than your usual potion, but Seira never drank anything from him. She had injected some of his stuff before, for the sake of earning money, but that was pretty much it. He also was an expert with hexes as it seemed and she had tried out a few of his hexes before. It was quite dark, to say the least, but couldn’t really be helped. Seira thought of the doctor and all the work she had done for him. From injecting strange drugs that caused hallucinations to trying out actual hexes on the public, she knew that he was far from innocent and that those things were probably not even the worst ones. She wondered what else he had in mind and why he did what he did but then again, he was a mad scientist so he didn’t really need an excuse to experiment on actual people. Seira appreciated the fact that he paid well, rarely asked questions and was also quick to let the money over the table - he didn’t bother her and even though everything he did was somewhat dangerous, the vampire didn’t exactly care.

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She was also almost a hundred percent sure that he knew what he was in spite of her not telling him and she assumed that he knew much more about this world than he gave away. Seira thought back about the herbs which she had collected for him. She had written down the location of each of them to make sure that she would remember in case she ever wanted them for herself, but thus far Seira hadn’t been able to find information regarding their usefulness in any of the books she owned. She knew that the doctor had a book that described the plant itself as well as its purpose but it was one of those he wasn’t willing to sell, which was unfortunate but could not be helped. Eventually, the vampires meal arrived and she began eating. She had also ordered some raw meat for Espeon, which she would put onto the floor on a plate so the feline could start eating as well. She was glad to have found a place that is pet friendly, and she spotted a few more customers that had their magical pets with them. Seira was eating away at her meal and also drank a little bit of redwine with it. The restaurant she had chosen wasn’t anything overly fancy and rather normal in terms of price and whatnot. There weren’t many more places open this late but she decided that she had to eat something warm at least once a day, especially now that she couldn’t feed on humans. Seira had plans on finding a new feeding ground soon, but Oak wasn’t really problematic so she decided to stay and find more work while she still could. She had heard of a town in the east, a day’s walk away from Magnolia, that was much different than any of the towns in Fiore. It was said to be dark, strange, perhaps even a little dangerous and the vampire couldn’t help but think that if those informations were accurate, it might be the perfect place for her. But for now she was still stuck in Oak and had things to do. The woman eventually finished her meal as well as her drink and paid for it. She would then get up and leave the restaurant to return to her hotel. There were barely any people left on the streets and it was a quiet walk with only Espeon following behind. When she returned home, she locked the doors behind herself and took a long shower before changing into her pajamas and crawling into her bed. She usually read a little bit before going to sleep and she did that tonight as well, browsing through one of the books she had purchased here before finally turning the lights off and going to sleep. The night was fortunately very long and Seira got plenty of rest in those hours. When she woke up the next day she was refreshed and pleased to find out that it wasn’t too late to accept a job yet.

[1520/3000]

It was still morning, which was good and so she decided to get up quickly and get ready for the day. Seira took a shower, ate breakfast and after clearing things up with Espeon, she left the house without her companion who had decided to stay home for the day. During their last encounter the doctor acted weird around the feline anyways, which is why Seira prefered to keep her as far away from him as possible for the time being. In the end she had ended up with Doctor Mabuz again and even though there were other possible clients, he always had work for her right away. There was no looking for request boards or waiting for letters to be received and whatnot, it was always plain and simple with him and Seira really appreciated that. When she entered his store, there was no one else there and the doctor was nowhere to be found at first. She knew that he was usually in the back or behind his counter doing something so Seira took the last few moments of freedom to look through his stuff and see if there was anything new that he was selling. The doctor, like mentioned before, owned all sorts of mysterious items and every now and then the sorceress found something she was interested in. Today that wasn’t the case, however, and she went into the backroom to look for the doctor. “Doctor Mabuz? Where are you? It’s me, Seira, I was hoping you have work for me?” After looking around for a bit longer she eventually found him crouched down behind his counter, going through a small shelf of strange looking potions and notes. “Good that you are here, vampire. I do indeed have a job for you and this will take longer than the usual stuff, but it will be worth your time - I promise you that. Come over here, into my lab.” Seira frowned but followed him anyways. “Did you invent something new again?” She asked and he nodded and showed her a new potion. “Yes, this new potion right here - it’s my masterpiece although I am not sure if it works the way it is supposed to,” he seemed to be in thoughts and Seira frowned. “I need you to test this out for me - on animals. In the local zoo, preferably! I want to know exactly how the different animals react to this potion, you can do that, right?” Seira seemed off guard. “You want me to break into the zoo and test this strange looking potion out on actual animals?” The man nodded. “Yes, exactly! I will pay you well, it will be worth your troubles I promise you. I even have a blueprint of the zoo here for you to study, that way you can learn where to go and sneak in without issues.” He pulled out an actual rough sketch of the blueprints of the zoo entrance building and slid it across the table and towards Seira.

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Seira began browsing through the blueprints of the zoo buildings immediately. They were quite complicated and in some parts difficult to understand, but she could definitely make out where all the exists and important places were. “And what exactly do you want me to do once I am inside?” She would ask the doctor and he nodded and handed her a bag of syringes. “Simply inject these fluids into the animals. They won’t work immediately so I suggest you leave afterwards - if everything works out the way we want to, then we will soon hear of the effects.” Seira nodded and took the bag and the blueprints. It wasn’t too late yet and the zoo would soon open. “I suppose I will leave you now and see you later then,” she said to the doctor and excused herself to the door. The zoo was quite far away from her current location so she had to travel there first. When Seira arrived she noticed a bunch of people, mostly families with their younger children, lining up to purchase a ticket and enter the zoo. The weather was pretty good after all, so it was only natural that they would have many visitors today. Seira wasn’t interested in using the front entrance, however, and after scanning the blueprints again, she figured out a way to get inside the building after walking around it. She spotted what appeared to be a red door which was closed, but after using a tad bit of violence it eventually opened for her and let her inside. She took a careful look around and made sure to walk without producing sound so no one would notice her. There was no one around for a while and Seira walked around to check out the area. After a while she came across a staff member who was sitting on a desk, clearly busy with her own work. She hardly paid any attention to the things around her, she did not notice Seira at all and the vampire went by unnoticed. Unfortunately, Seira needed her uniform so she had to get rid of the poor woman. Seira pulled out a pocket knife and quickly slit her throat, putting her body to the ground before removing her uniform and putting it on herself. Disguising herself as a zoo staff member was perhaps the easiest way to go by this and with the bag of injections still with her, Seira went on her merry way. As the body was bleeding out, Seira felt tempted to eat something, but instead she hid her well so no one would notice her too soon and she could finish her mission in peace. On the blueprints it said that there was a special room with animals locked away into a cage, those that weren’t out in the public, where she could do the injections, but she had to find that room first. The prints were still somewhat confusing and Seira had a hard time finding around the building.

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But eventually she found the desired room only to realize that only special staff members had access to it. Visibly frustrated with that, the door wasn’t exactly a door she could break down either. Furthermore, she needed to be able to close the door as well so she could inject the potion into the animals without being seen. Eventually, after trying around for some time a male staff member approached Seira after he noticed her fumbling around with the door. “What are you trying to do exactly?” the blonde man asked her and Seira shuffled around shyly. “Ah, I was tasked to clean the cages of the animals inside but I can’t seem to enter the room. I’m new and one of the higher ups told me to do so, but I think they forgot to give me extra permission to enter the room,” she asked shyly and was successful in her attempt to get him to believe her. As she thought, no one here really liked cleaning the cages of the animals since it was dirty work, so lying about wanting to do it was the best way to get let in. It’s better if she did it than him after all. He nodded at everything she said. “I understand. Well, you can find the cleaning utensils in the locker in the back, and make sure to keep it all clean and whatnot. There you go,” he opened the door for her and let her in. Seira quickly closed the door behind herself and pulled out the cleaning utensils to make it look as if she was actually cleaning, in case someone came in. As expected, there were a bunch of cages with a bunch of animals ranging from small to large all across the room. Seira pulled out the injections and began injection the animals one after another. Since she was strong, none of this was a problem. The effect didn’t set in immediately, just like the doctor had said and she made sure to leave the room shortly after. There was no one else around so it was time for her to leave. Seira quickly left the zoo building and took off the staff uniform, making sure that no one was seeing her. Instead of going back to the doctor right away, however, Seira decided to stop by her hotel first. There was blood on her clothes and she wanted to get a shower and change before picking up her reward. She had the empty syringes with her as a proof as well. After taking a planned shower she watched TV while getting dressed, only to see the zoo being on the news. Apparently, the animals had caused chaos at the zoo for seemingly no reason - they broke out of their cages and destroyed almost the entire building. Assuming that this was what the doctor wanted, Seira returned to his shop and explained her accomplishments to him. He seemed satisfied, as he had seen the news as well, and paid her well.

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