He'd spent the past two weeks in a cheap motel in the eastern part of the city. The area was one of the poorest. Even if most of the city's districts cannot be described as affluent, this area was particularly poor.
Most of the residents of the eastern district belonged to the former Poland before the country was literally crushed in the great east-west conflict around 35 years ago.
The city was completely on formerly Polish soil and was one of the largest settlements founded after 1950, but also one of the poorest.
In the West-East conflict, the Western Alliance fought against the USSR, whereby the USSR was dissolved at the end of the war. At that time the German Reich had annexed half of Poland.
Nathaniel had tried to find out more about the black egg, but his research was in vain and the shadowy man did not appear a second time.
The previous night he had spoken to a warrior from the Black Wood district and learned of the revolt there against the Druids and the takeover of power by the Warriors.
For the second time since he set foot in this city, he felt curiosity.
The druids would never have withdrawn so easily, they would have wrought a huge bloodbath in the name of balance and would have fought for every millimeter.
That was only true, of course, if they had no plan.
Nathanaël had quickly worked through a few options and came up with three options.
The first is also the simplest imaginable:
The council of druids did not have enough people to carry out a quick and final strike and therefore feared a long and fruitless war for an area that might not be worth it.
The problem with this theory was the fact that it would have been entirely possible to drive the Warriors out quickly. Of course, only if enough troops could be mobilized.
As far as Nathaniel knew, there were enough druids who could be here within a week and deliver the decisive blow.
This fact led Nat to the next theory:
The druids had enough people, but they were busy elsewhere.
This ´employment´ had to be more urgent than the loss of an area and the risk of further revolts.
One more question remained: what did the druids do?
At the same time, Nat linked the last theory with the second possibility:
Since the druids did not want to take great risks and wanted to keep the losses as low as possible, they planned a surprise attack, or set up an intrigue, which in turn led to the warriors tearing each other or attacking a third enemy such as the ASC or the Brokers .
But how was the Council of Druids going to do that?
No matter which theory was correct, the fact was that Nathanaël had too little information.He needed informants and lots of them.
It just couldn't be that he just took something like that and waited to see how things would turn out. The whole thing was way too interesting for that!


"You are probably wondering why I had them all called?"
Lady van Marks did not speak very loudly, but everyone in the room could hear her.
The number of hunters had fallen sharply since the last hunt, and some researchers were withdrawn from the heads of the other departments.
So it's no wonder that the room wasn't even half full.
There were only nineteen members of the ASC in town at the moment, and most of them were in the villa's small meeting room.
This was in the center of the city and therefore only had a small garden.
Other large residential buildings rose around the villa, all of which had the same architectural features:
A small, pretty garden at the front entrance, two stone columns that held a kind of roofing to the right and left of the entrance, and large, sweeping windows that are reminiscent of black, yawning holes.
When Lady van Mark thought of the researchers, her gaze slid briefly to Mayra. The researcher struggled to keep awake.
When Erika thought of the researcher's working hours, she had to admit that Mayra was doing well.
With a little sideways glance at the projector, Erika began the demonstration.
"The reason for their presence are the following pictures!
Please memorize everything!
As soon as you have seen all the pictures, I will explain to you exactly what it is about! "
Without further ado, Lady van Mark switched on the projector.
It had been quiet in the room before, but now there was an almost eerie silence.
Everyone starts at the picture that the projector threw on the opposite wall.

The first picture showed a narrow room, looking at the overturned shelves, a kind of storage room.
The picture had obviously been taken from the entrance as there was no door to be seen.
In the back of the room, two figures leaned against the wall in a seated position.
You looked relaxed.
Only on closer inspection did you see dark spots on the clothing that began at the neck and ran down from there.
The calm demeanor of the figures seemed completely out of place in the chaos around them.
After a while, a faint clicking and whirring sound echoed through the room, the next picture was inserted.
In this picture the shelves had been cleared away and a man was standing next to the two figures, the camera angle had been changed a bit and you could see that the two figures were two young girls.
Again a low whirring echoed through the air and the next picture was inserted.
The camera angle stayed the same this time, which indicated a camera tripod.
In this picture the man had put his hand on the head of one of the girls, but the girl had obviously not moved.And once again the hum of the projector echoed in the room.
The whirring wasn't the only sound this time. A startled gasp from several mouths followed the appearance of the picture.
Even Mayra had shed her tiredness.
In this picture the man had raised his hand again and pulled the girl's head up with him.
Now it wasn't the hum of the projector, but Erika's voice that interrupted the renewed silence that followed the gasp.
"The two bodies were both beheaded and then placed in that position.
The cuts used to sever the heads are both clean, with no tears.
They were probably each beheaded with one blow. "
As if the projector had waited for these three sentences, it was only now inserting the next image.
On top of this, an adult couple lay cuddled together in bed, from head down they were covered by the blanket.
In the next picture, the covers had been pulled down and their bodies photographed.
They had a number of cuts, some to the bone.
"According to the results of the examination, both were still alive when they were so beaten. Since the injuries did not damage any vital organs, they must have bled to death."
The next two pictures showed an old woman sitting on a chair in the kitchen, her elbow leaning on the edge of the table and her head supporting her head.
A picture from behind showed a wound in the heart area, apparently it was killed with a stab in the heart.
"I have more pictures, but I think that's enough."
When Erika looked into the faces of the hunters and researchers and saw their grateful expressions, she could only congratulate herself inwardly.
She had presented enough pictures to shock everyone present. At least almost all of them.
And yet she still had enough pictures in hand to bring them out again at a later point in time.
You never knew when you might need a little trump card, and you could do a lot with pictures.
Especially if you could easily change the story.
The only three who were not in the least impressed by the pictures were the hunter Carolin, on whose face something like silent admiration could be seen, Kreuzberger, whose face simply didn't express anything, and Mayra, who only felt something like curiosity seemed.
With Mayra, Erika blamed the lack of horror on their insomnia, but with the other two she wasn't quite sure what to believe.
Erika suspected for a long time that Carolin was not completely normal, meanwhile she even thought the huntress was crazy and Kreuzberger had never understood her.
She thought briefly of the rainy autumn day last year when Kreuzberger suddenly appeared in front of the main entrance of the villa and identified himself as a warrior.At that time, the ASC did not have the lens.
The guards almost shot him.
Erika understood just as little now why the Warrior allowed the ASC to use it as a weapon.
Erika had asked him once, but the answer had not satisfied her.
"Why did I join you? Quite simply, I liked the house so much!"
He had said that at the time and Erika knew as surely as he did that this was just a lie.
The houses, or rather the villas around here, all looked more or less the same.
He wouldn't have opted for the ASC just because of a nicer front yard, there was more.
Erika just knew that Kreuzberger was getting some benefit from the cause. She just didn't know which one and that made her mad.
With a gentle admonition to herself, Lady van Mark attacked the real reason for being here again.
"Well, now to the promised explanations.
The pictures come from a mansion in Berlin, the pictures are three days old, although the actual incident was probably five or six days ago.
In the past three weeks there have been several such incidents in Berlin, the ASC group there had recently tracked down the perpetrators, but they fled to the south-east.
The headquarters in Berlin suspects that the two perpetrators are coming in our direction.
It is unclear whether there are really two perpetrators. However, the investigations suggest this.
We have received the order to catch the perpetrator or perpetrators, be it alive or dead, the headquarters doesn't care.
Some of you may wonder what the ASC has to do with it.
Well the answer is simple:
All previous victims were druids or warriors, there were a total of nineteen druids killed and five warriors murdered.
You may have noticed, but there is no sign of verse being used in the pictures.
This fact alone piqued the company's