It was over.. The horrible nightmare was over, or at least that's what the girl in the fox mask believed as a quick flash of the butler's face smiling peacefully entered her view for a few moments.

She could finally go home, rest, and take a good long soak in her bathtub.

"Alfred, prepare the car---!" her sentence began to trail off as she realized her butler was nowhere to be found and then looked at the entrance of the mall.

A bloodied necktie lay in front of Cynder as she recognized the knives connected to the indiscernable body and the coat that her servant wore among the chunks of bloodied flesh now all over the tiled floor.

Horror was the only thing that gripped her.

The cyborg did not behead and mince her butler...

She herself took his life without knowing it; the thought alone made her blood run cold as she suddenly felt the burning contents of her stomach exit her mouth in disgust.

Slith, Joe, Vee and Lady could only look at her with pity as she just stared at the body.

They knew just how she felt.

Oddly enough, they didn't feel remorse nor even disgust at what they did. It was as if..... they had done this many times before.

Did the idea of killing others to survive numb them or did they all realize just how ruthless they had become by just playing a simple online game?

Oddly enough, the idea of somehow surviving and being numb to it all was the only sense of comfort they could find.

"Th-thanks for saving me", a small girl in a penguin suit began to say as she bowed to the mourning fox.

"Milady, it is too late for me! Please FiNiSh ME!" the last moment of the butler's life flashed in Cynder's head as the adrenaline finally drained from her system and reminded her why it all happened.......

And of that peaceful smile....

All of the survivors looked to be players of Cursed Earth.

That factor alone seemed to have allowed them to survive the battle that looked all too much of something from the game itself.

Oddly enough, though they played the game and experienced such violence in the virtual world; it still shook them all to their very core when they actually did such things in the real world.

After all the carnage and blood spilled all over the mall, everyone found themselves in shock.

Most of the civilians that were in the mall at that time, were massacred.

A few were kidnapped and worst of all, the remaining fraction turned into monsters.

The pale young man approached his hooded partner and the cyborg that had come with him, while everyone's eyes stuck to them, except that the cyborg had somehow disappeared.

"A few of them are suitable, the rest should be kept at the Fort", the cyborg began to say in a gravelly voice to Renoe's earpiece, causing the hooded man to grin wildly.

"Len, please don't do anything stupid", the pale young man warned his hooded partner while the other continued to grin even wilder.

"For now, I'll get everything set up at HQ. You two babysit the kids for a while", the machine told his two subordinates via their earpieces as he then went quiet.

All's well that ends well, thought Renoe as he then turned around and saw that the area was suddenly empty. It was just him and his partner, causing the two of them to look at each other.

All was not well at all, or at least that was how it would be normally.

It was a good thing he placed a tracker on one of them.

"They're at the Plaza", Renoe began to tell his partner as he looked back to him and found that he was already hot-wiring a nearby limousine.

"Way ahead of ya!" the man in the black hood began to say as the vehicle roared to life.

"Classy", the young man in the dinner suit began to say as he moved his partner and sat in the driver's seat.

"Step on it, Sebastian!", Len commanded imperiously as he covered his right eye with his hand, imitating a certain childish noble from an animated series.

"Very well... Lord Phantomhive", Renoe answered sarcastically as he stepped on the gas and as soon as they left the parking lot, a loud rumble began to echo from afar.

It was however not an earthquake or the sound of thunder , what chased after them was instead what looked to be a literal tidal wave.

And worst of all, the tidal wave did not look to made of water or any liquid.

"WHY ARE WE BEING CHASED BY A TIDAL WAVE OF BLOODY CORPSES!" Renoe screamed in a complete panic as he avoided vehicles parked all over the street, gasmasked monsters and all sorts of debris while his partner casually looked through a pair of binoculars to the top of the raging mass assailing them.

"This is so awesome! This is almost like that movie, World War Z!" the man in the back seat yelled out amusement while the driver tried hard to make sure they both survived this.

"NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO BE AMAZED! FIND OUT HOW IN HELL IS THIS EVEN HAPPENING OR AT LEAST WHAT IN FUCK'S NAME IS CONTROLLING THOSE THINGS!" Renoe began to yell with a stressed and murderous tone while keeping his eyes on the road.

There, on the top looked to be a blonde, naked man or rather saying that it was a man would be redundant.

The thing clearly had no genitals and had four eyes that seemed to each have four irises.

"Looks like we've got some sort of ball-less and dong-less, freaky-eyed nudist commanding these things" Len joked around as Renoe turned hard, causing the hooded man to also get pushed by gravity to the side and colliding his face with the glass and causing the wave of corpses to drain into the ravine where the unfinished bridge was that Renoe turned away from.

For now, they were safe. Unfortunately, they were now on the other side of town; away from the Plaza.

This is going to be a long day.

While the chaos had happened inside the mall, the demon chased after the men who had kidnapped his brother using the psychic abilities it seems he's suddenly gained after he was hit in the head with that iron bat and woke up to a world gone to hell.

His brother had more priority than a couple of strangers.

Oddly enough, his new-found abilities and current looks seemed to have suddenly come from his online persona as the Demonic Hurricane, he realized that the moment he woke up and saw his face in the cafe's mirror-like tables and when he got pissed off that shards of glass flew at some of the gasmasked freaks he saw.

Using the sensation of pain he got from the baseball bat, he could "feel" where they were.

It was the Psychic Trace skill that he chose to learn back then to easily hunt down opponents who preferred to snipe at him or use hit and run tactics.

No matter how fast they ran or where they hid, he would be able to find them and when he did....

He would kill them.

To most people, this would raise a lot of questions; mostly of the ethical kind.

To the man who bore the persona of the demon known as Baalstrum, there was nothing questionable when it came to family.

All that mattered, was getting Jamie back. It didn't matter how. He would turn the city inside-out if he needed to.

"Well, well, well.... if it ain't the great Demon King himself. The late Baalstrum", a deep voice that resembled the sound of gravel began to say as an enormous, hooded man that looked to be made of stone suddenly stood in his way.

"Oh? And you look like you're about to have a bad time", the demon grinned viciously as the throbbing pain in his head grew extremely painful, causing the dragon mask he was wearing to open a pair of previously hidden reptilian eyes that reflected his opponent's face.

He had never been this serious about taking someone down before, not even in-game.

"HAH! That's if you can even ---" the stone giant began to say and stopped mid-sentence as he realized that there were suddenly three bazookas and a tank aiming at him, leaving his mouth gaping.

"Hope yer head's tough enough to live through this, because I have a lot of questions for ya. But then again, I can just look through yer memories if you die" the demon grinned while he pointed the numerous weapons at his target with his right hand shaped like a gun.

This was the guy that knocked him out with the bat, the very thought of this being the bastard that knocked him down and kidnapped his little brother made his blood boil.  

He was going to have one hell of a time with this guy.