Loopshard

The bloodfiend looked directly at Adam as he walked into the warehouse. Many of the armed humans swarmed him, until Adam pulled back the hood of his Mage Aspirant’s Cowl. The moment before he removed the hood, he noticed how there was a bubble of holy magic surrounding the crate with the reliquary. The bloodfiend was standing just beyond its reach.

Emelia had given Adam a lot of useful information about the vampires and how they operated. She’d been gathering it all to help him survive in her universe. He was glad to be able to put it to good use, even if the circumstances had drastically changed. Her work would not go to waste.

The first thing she’d taught him was that bloodfiends were solitary and territorial during the day. They didn’t stick together until nightfall, and even then they preferred to hunt their own targets. In that context, Adam’s arrival to the warehouse was viewed as a direct challenge to the bloodfiend already there.

The white-haired vampire sneered. “What do you want?”

“The Matriarch sent me to collect the trinket from the church,” Adam told him in a disinterested tone.

“It is already ear-marked for the Patriarch’s allies,” the bloodfiend replied. “Why would the Matriarch care for such a foul thing?”

Does he mean the Forlorn Kingdom?

Adam pushed his way through the armed thieves, changing his fingers into talons. He’d absorbed his tail into himself earlier and used its skin to coat his red glass hand, disguising its true nature and making it look like it had been bulked out from a shapeshifting spell. As he walked, he changed the shape of his own body, inflating the muscle and tissue to make it appear as if he was turning into some beast.

The humans quickly retreated to a safe distance, leaving just Adam and the vampire standing near the crate with the reliquary.