After seeing the second person's face under the strange black mask all of them seemed to wear, something about it bothered Fex. Both of them looked identical… too identical even if they happened to be twins. Setting aside the small likelihood that the vampire just so happened to unmask two brothers, there was another explanation for their resemblance.
Fex gulped as he considered that possibility. He quickly went over to another masked man on the ground and started to pull his masks off as well. Dennis, Agent 11 and the gorilla were watching his strange actions from the side as they took a break to recover, wondering why he was acting like some type of mad man.
However, after they saw him pull off the sixth person's mask, they looked past his actions and were now looking at the details on his face. He was sweating, something vampires didn't really do, not even when tired, which meant most likely something was worrying him.
"They're the exact same!" Fex shouted in frustration. "All these masked men are the same! All of them must be clones of the same person."
Dennis finally got up to have a look at just what Fex was talking about.. He was half hoping that perhaps the people just looked similar or that the other had just revealed the faces of identical sixtuplets, but their resemblance was uncanny.
The group dragged the corpses of those men next to each other, so they could get a closer look and a better comparison. However, it just made things even stranger because from head to toe, all the men were identical even in height.
"They must be clones! Didn't Quinn say that Eno could do the same? He also had multiple copies of himself." Dennis assumed and started to sniff the air. He had another thought and wanted to check something out.
Following his nose, it soon brought him to another masked person that Fex had yet to pull the mask off. After finding six people with the same face in the row, Fex didn't expect to see anything different from the others.
'It would make sense, I guess. If Richard could do it, his relatives might be able to aswelll, given that they should have the same power.' Dennis thought.
If Fex was to concentrate, he could still hear the sounds of fighting coming off from different directions. He knew that Richard could create clones, but this many?
"For frick's sake, this whole time, we've been fighting against bloody clones!" Fex continued shouting and cursing. "How is this fair? These guys aren't even real! No wonder there are so many of them! We have to fight with our lives on the line while they can just as easily be replaced!!!"
Eventually, Dennis had found his resolve to pull off the mask from the person in front of him, and what he saw underneath was finally something different to the other masked person. There was a woman who was already dead but there was something else that was different about her compared to the others as well.
"Come over here!" Dennis called out.
Out of interest, the gorilla and even Agent 11 had come over. The Pure Agent wasn't sure why exactly Fex and the others were on the island, but from what he had gathered they seemed to be up against what the world knew as V at the moment. He had seen their red eyes and powers. If he actually got a chance to escape he could use all of this information to rise within the Pure organization.
"This one's… a human." Fex sniffed the air to make sure, but he also remembered something else looking at the specific wound on her body. He had been the one to have killed her. Fex remembered this person well because she had been the only one that had used an ability against him.
"Wait, is that the reason?" Fex spoke his thoughts out loud. "We've fought against so many vampires, but none of them seemed to have an ability?"
"I've seen some vampires who don't have abilities. Is it that strange?" Dennis asked.
"Even in the pooling area, vampires chose different abilities from the thirteenth family, only those who haven't given up on a promotion would choose not to learn any ability."
"So you think the humans aren't clones? Do you think they abducted them, because clones can't learn abilities?" Dennis wondered.
"Couldn't it just be a case of those ones being created recently?" Agent 11 chimed in with his own opinion on the matter, mostly because he didn't have anything better to do and he was aware that he would literally get dragged into the Cursed faction's mess.
"If all your enemy needed was an army to overwhelm you guys, would he have bothered to prepare for it for a long time to teach them all abilities, or to find them? Perhaps it's more correct to say that whoever made these clones is unable to copy them with abilities in the first place. Otherwise he coudl teach one person an abaility and then clone them. Then again I'm no scientist."
While they were all busy thinking about how this information could possibly help them in their current fight, they could soon hear another wave of people coming towards them.
"Well I guess they aren't short on numbers, and I guess unlike us they don't really have to care about any losses." Dennis stretched his arms behind his back a few times, he could tell his body hadn't made a complete recovery yet and although blood from humans allowed them to heal, restoring their energy and stamina was another thing altogether.
Out from the large jungle trees, they could see more masked men appearing. Just like they had suspected it was another group.
"Isn't something a little off about them?" Fex asked moving in closer to where the others were, also twirling his fingers getting ready to attach them to Agent 11 at any moment.
As they got closer, Agent 11 noticed it as well, some of the masks they were wearing were cracked and at the same time they had wounds and blood dripping on their clothing. Before the group even reached them, the snake beast that helped them from before dropped from above, landing on three of them.
It let out its acid on a the other members, and all of the other Masked had fallen, but they seemed to be ignoring the snake that had just landed on some of them. On closer inspection, they looked to be in a hurry as they scuffled to try and continue running.
Before they knew it, a figure could be seen landing in front of the group, and as quickly as it landed, it dealt with the rest of the Masked, with a few hits.
'Isn't that Mona, one of the former Big Four? What is she doing here, in a place like this' Agent 11 was beyond shocked.
Mona turned around after dealing with them, and the snake that was on the ground slivered up and went around her neck. When turning she looked at those in front of her, and noticed how tired and torn their clothing were.
"I'm sorry. I was confident that I could stop them from coming and I was faring well with the Kraken beast. They just kept coming and coming, it felt like they were…"
"Endless." Dennis finished her sentence. "We've experienced the same thing. We're just happy that you took care of many of them and I think everyone on this island will agree. What happened to the beast that was with you?"
Mona was a strong woman who was usually brimming with confidence, but when asked this question the others found it strange that this confidence had vanished from her face, and they weren't sure if they were imagining it or not, but could see her shudder slightly.
"The Kraken… it's dead." Mona answered, looking away from the others, her eyes full of pain.
"I guess, not even a Demon tier beast can handle an army of vampires." Fex noted, almost proud of this fact.
"No, it wasn't done by the Masked." Mona replied. "It was something else. Honestly, I'm not sure I should tell you, guys… it might make you give up on this fight as well… Do you think it's too late for all of us to give up on this mission?"
All of them were wondering just what Mona could have seen, that could convince her that retreat might actually be the best option.
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