"ARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!"

Caius could barely hear the sound of his own yell over the cries of agony all around him. He fell to one knee with his hands pressed against his ears even though that wouldn't really help against the infernal frequencies of the Hellsong Boxes.

Because of the many painful cries, it took a while for Caius to realize it wasn't actually every vampire in the Hall who was crying in pain. For some reason, Brogan was unperturbed by the Hellsong Boxes even though their frequencies were directed most at him.

"You showed your hand, Hunter," Brogan said with a sneer before his mana swelled like a tidal wave and smacked Alexia away so she slammed against the wall.

*BANG!*

"Ack!" Alexia cried. She hit the wall so hard that she cracked the bricks but when she fell, she made sure to remain on her feet while glowering at Brogan.

"I've had enough time to understand how those frequencies work, preemptive action is all I need to protect against it," Brogan laughed and then vanished to appear within one foot of Alexia and swing a kick out at her.

Caius heard Brogan's words but he knew the Vampire Baron was making what he did sound a lot simpler than it was. While the frequencies of the Hellsong were technically sound, they could permeate through whatever open pores and orifices were on the target's body. It will take incredible mana control and enough premeditation actually to seal every single pore and Brogan had managed it.

Even more, Brogan had managed to do this and still speak without compromising his protection from the Hellsong. This was significant because every time Brogan opened his mouth and produced a sound, he should have been exposing himself to the Hellsong, and yet, somehow he appeared to remain safe from it.

Caius knew just how much of a serious undertaking it was because try as he might, he couldn't do it. Not on such short notice anyway.

For now, until the Boxes were done with their infernal songs, no vampire except Brogan could move in the Hall. They would all have been such easy targets for Alexia had she not been so occupied with battling the Vampire Baron.

"I was wondering when we'd meet again!" Brogan said with a maniacal laughter,

"I thought I would have to wait long. I thought I might not even get the chance. How gracious of you to deliver yourself to me!"

A lotus flower appeared as Alexia activated her Von Helsing Arts to keep up with Brogan's Eighth Circle physical and magical might but as they clashed, malevolent water spells against wicked sword slashes, Alexia's eyes narrowed in focus.

She was observing Brogan all the while. Alexia had noticed the same thing as Caius in that Brogan's ability to speak should have compromised his protection. So why didn't it?

And then she saw Brogan twitch after his most recent insult. It was a tiny twitch that could have gone unnoticed and didn't really affect his ability to fight but she realized in that moment that Brogan was indeed being exposed to the Hellsong whenever he spoke. It was just that his protection somehow overwrote the effects of the Hellsong before it could properly mess with his equilibrium.

'Alright then,' Alexia thought with a smirk. She still had a few minutes before the Hellsong Boxes were done with their songs and could do a lot in that time.

At the time Alexia was devising a plan, dark purple spell circles appeared in mid-air. A few of the vampires writhing in pain on the ground raised their heads just in time to see pillars formed with Dark Magic descend from the spell circles.

The pillars struck six vampires with enough oppressive force to smear their heads into the ground. Four of them were in too much pain to properly protect themselves and so their heads burst open.

The remaining two managed to resist the oppressive force of the pillars. Even in their writing agony, they mustered their mana and physical might to push back against the attack and roll out from underneath the pillars while looking past the spell circles to see the one who had cast them;

It was a sexy woman dressed in a black gown that clung to her eye-catching figure. She had a purple aura around her body as she used her magic to remain afloat just a couple of inches beneath the ceiling. Her beautiful grey eyes were unreadable.

The woman, of course, was Arlette and there was the barest trace of a frown on her lips when those two Brogan Vampires survived her pillar attacks. So she flexed her fingers, causing the arcane symbols in the spell circles she had cast to transform which in turn caused the pillars to dissipate into smoke that became dark tendrils.

The dark tendrils wrapped around the two Vampires' necks, tightening around their throats like nooses. Try as they might, the vampires could not summon the strength to break free of the spell, and with sickening crunch sounds, their necks were snapped and their eyes turned lifeless. Their faces were stuck in the expressions of pain and agony both from the strangulation and the infernal frequencies they had heard up until death.

Brogan looked over and saw two more of his vampires fall and he became irate. Somehow, despite a war being waged on the surface, he had thought Alexia had come underground to face him alone.

'I was foolish,' he thought, and then became curious, 'But who is this?'

Arlette was clearly not the boy from last night who hadn't even joined that fight. So who was this ally the hunter had come with who possessed commendable strength in her own right?

While Brogan observed her, Arlette caused her tendrils to slither still, wrapping around more vampire necks and strangling them while the Hellsong left them mostly incapable of fighting back.

'That should get you angry,' Alexia thought with a frown, 'Come on. Yell out your anger!'

Her plan remained to get Brogan to open his mouth and expose that orifice but for some reason, Brogan kept his mouth shut. For a second, Alexia thought Brogan might have caught on to her plan and was actively keeping quiet.

And then his lips moved.

"You have a ruthless partner," he said sullenly.

'Bingo,' Alexia thought with a smile, a vial already out of her storage ring and in her hand.

She held the vial in front of Brogan's face and crushed it, releasing a cloud of dark blue dust right before Brogan said the last word, and his mouth became protected again.

Barely any bit of the blue dust got through Brogan's mouth before the protection returned but it was enough.

"Arckkk!" Brogan choked as the dust tickled the roof of his mouth and struck him with discomfort like a hundred needles pricking him from the inside.

"What- what is this?" Brogan struggled to ask.

Alexia shattered a second vial just in time to get even more of the blue dust into Brogan's mouth and down his throat to wreak discomforting havoc on his insides.

"There are various things that don't quite agree with a Vampire's physiology. Usually, their effects are little and useless, but with enough dedication and determination, something useful can be synthesized from the lot of them.

We Von Helsings have dubbed the synthesized product 'Vampyr-Bane'. See how you like it."