"Ngh…" Velvet didn't know what had hit her, but it seemed like it had been a really strong blow if it managed to knock her out. Not the first time that happened and probably not the last. Opening her eyes, Velvet found herself looking at the blue sky with the occasional cloud passing by. Wondering where the rest of her ragtag group was, she got up and ended up finding no one. Curious, but also slightly worried she looked around, only to notice one particular thing. This definitely wasn't the place she had been at when she lost consciousness.

Judging from the size of the room she was sitting in, she in a foyer for some kind of mansion. The foyer was huge, if pretty empty. There was a green carpet spread in the middle of the room, but that was about all of the decoration the room had. A huge staircase led towards the next floor. Even from down where she was, Velvet could see multiple doors leading somewhere. On her floor there were four doors to the left and right of her, no doubt leading further into the mansion. In front of her, sideways to the stairs were two more doors and behind her was the exit.

("What is this place? Where is everyone?") the so-called Lord of Calamity wondered to herself, putting a hand under her chin. ("Is some kind of arte responsible for this? Whatever the case, I should be careful exploring this place. Who knows who or what force brought us here? And for what purpose?")

With that being established, Velvet chose a random door to her right, it being the second to the left and entered the next room. This one turned out to be a huge dining hall. Multiple chandeliers were hanging from the ceiling, enlightening the room, though it was strange. There were no candles placed on the chandeliers themselves. Instead, multiple glass tubes were attached to them, the light coming out of those things. Were the candles placed inside? Before she could further contemplate this, Velvet could hear a door opening on the other end of the room. Out of it came a little, blonde girl, carrying an umbrella on her shoulder. She looked familiar to Velvet, but she couldn't place the girl anywhere. The girl, of course, noticed Velvet on the other end of the room and glared at the hellion.

"Who are you?" the girl asked, sounding somehow bored.

"I could ask you the same thing," Velvet replied, crossing her arms. "Are you the one who brought me here?"

"You woke up at this place too?" the girl asked rhetorically, but Velvet nodded anyways.

"Huh, what a coincidence," the blonde spoke, twirling her umbrella with her fingers. "You wouldn't happen to come across some other people?"

"I just woke up here myself," Velvet explained. "And I'm missing a few friends too. They most likely were brought here as well."

The blonde nodded. "Makes sense. By the way, any reason you can see a Seraphim like me?"

"Seraphim?" Velvet echoed, confused at the term.

XXX

In another part of the mansion, Eizen was having a conversation with a fellow Malak, who called himself Dezel.

"And that's when I woke up here," Mikleo finished. "The white light just swallowed us all up. It came out of nowhere, literally. We were just walking down a path and then…" The water Malak made a gesture with his arms.

"I see," Eizen nodded. "I can't really contribute much. Me and my group, we were caught up in battle, when it happened. At first, I thought it was an arte that was supposed to blind your opponents. But then I found myself in this room." Eizen gestured with his arm. Indeed, the two Malakhim had found themselves inside a bar of some kind, but not an open one. Rather it looked like this was a private bar, given the soft couches that had been placed around the room, along with the small tables. A chimney could be found at one end of the room, but it wasn't lit.

"The others have to be around here as well."

"Agreed." Mikleo nodded. "We will probably also find whoever is responsible for our appearance here."

"Yeah," Eizen agreed. "We should be careful. Who knows what else they're capable of?"

With that in mind, the two Malaks started exploring the place.

XXX

"What could the function of this device be?" Eleanor was talking more to herself, than her newfound companion. Alisha too was wondering what the black box in front of them could possibly be for.

"There is a red light coming out of it." Alisha pointed towards the bottom part of the box, where indeed a red light could be seen shining. It was very tiny and by no means was enough to enlighten the room. Not that that was needed at the moment, since it was still bright outside, allowing enough light to enter the room through the window.

"Anyways, as peculiar as this device is, we should focus our attempts in finding out who brought us here and why."

"Agreed." Alisha nodded. "Maybe more people have been brought here."

"It's certainly possible," Eleanor conceded. "And I wonder if my traveling companions have been brought here as well."

The two spear wielding women exited the room and walked back into the hallway where they had met before.

"There are so many rooms here" Eleanor pointed at all the doors lined up in the hallway "it will take too long to explore them all."

"But how do we know if no one is inside one of them?" Alisha asked in return, sounding worried. "Maybe we can at least open each door and see if someone is inside. We don't need to inspect them in great detail."

"A good idea. Let's do it at once. From the looks of things we have quite a bit of work to do."

XXX

"Hmm…" Rose frowned, as she and her companion Dezel entered yet another empty room. Well, it wasn't completely empty. There were a couple of cupboards, a bed, a nightstand, a shelf… but that was about it.

"What is it?" Dezel asked. "Something wrong?"

"I'm not sure if "wrong" is the right word." Rose smiled at her own accidental word pun. "It's just… this is the tenth room we're inspecting. And we still haven't found anything interesting," she complained.

"You can't expect to find treasure everywhere you go."

"That's not what I meant," Rose waved off. "What I mean is, we're obviously inside some kind of mansion. This thing is at least three stories tall, so whoever owns it must be loaded. And so far every loaded person I have met just loves to throw their money around by filling their homes with all kinds of expensive stuff. Yet all we have found is… this." Rose gestured with her hands towards the bed.

"Ah, I see. Can't really speak from experience, but I can see what you mean." Funny given that Dezel was actually blind. "Still, is it really important right now to know why this place isn't full of treasure at the moment?"

"I guess you're right," Rose conceded, although this was still bothering her. "I wonder where the rest of the gang is."

"Probably somewhere in this building. But given how large this place appears to be, it might take a while to find them all."

"Well, since there's nothing interesting around, we might as well go look for them. Who knows, maybe they had more luck than us?"

XXX

"This is definitely not my lucky day," Sorey gritted his teeth, as he blocked another strike from the hellion in front of him. The shepherd faked an attack and then jumped backward in order to give himself some space. The hellion in front of him grinned viciously, his red eye shining through the dark hair that covered it.

"Don't tell me you're giving up already?" the hellion taunted the human.

"I'm only getting started!" Sorey shouted back, readying his sword.

"Is that so?" the hellion replied, readying his own two short blades. "I'll be honest with you kid. So far, I'm not impressed. You've got talent, I give you that. But talent isn't enough to beat a demon like me."

"Well, maybe this will impress you!" With a battle cry, Sorey charged at the hellion. Said hellion however easily blocked the attack with one blade and swung the other down for a counterattack. Months of constant battling had given Sorey enough experience to see such a move coming. He twisted his blade in a way that it intercepted with the second blade, but was still locked with the first one.

"Not bad," the Hellion commented. "But you have forgotten something important."

"And that would be?" Sorey asked. The hellion's grin became even more vicious.

"Demons are stronger than humans." The hellion pushed Sorey backward and immediately followed it up with a piercing attack. To the hellion's surprise, however, the human managed to block the attack once again, without any visible effort.

"I guess it's a good thing then, that I'm no ordinary human!" Sorey exclaimed and pushed the Hellion backward. Said Hellion was taken off guard for a second, but Sorey forgot to capitalize on the moment of weakness. Luckily for him, someone else didn't. Before he could fully recover, a fireball hit the Hellion straight into the chest. With a scream of pain, the Hellion flew backward and landed on his back.

"Sorey!" an all too familiar voice exclaimed.

"Lailah!" Sorey shouted happily, as he saw one of his companions quickly running up to him.

"Are you alright?" the Seraphim asked worried, to which the Shepherd gave her a reassuring nod. "Yeah, now that you're here."

"Hahahaha!" the Hellion laughed, getting the attention of the two others in room. They saw that the Hellion had gotten up again and was pointing his weapons at them.

"So, you're an exorcist! Things just got interesting!"

XXX

Magilou frowned, looking down at the human she had knocked out earlier. Laphicet was tending to his more critical wounds. No need to kill him just yet, as he was probably responsible for their current predicament. And it is oh so hard to interrogate the dead.

The self-proclaimed witch allowed her gaze to wander around the room they were in. It kind of reminded her of the place where the Prince's pet had been held in, only smaller and a little bit more furnished out. There was a blackboard for example on one end of the room with a complexity of spells written on it. A shelve with a variety of books had been set up on the other end. There was also the study desk with a variety of papers and some kind of square thing on it. There was also this other thing in front of the square thing, which had every letter of the alphabet on it, along with numbers and a variety of letter combination. Beneath the desk was also something big placed, though Magilou had no idea what it was.

"That's enough, Laphicet," Magilou stated without even looking at the progress. "We don't need him back at full strength, just enough for him to give us reasonable answers," she explained.

"Uh… okay. If you say so."

The witch could hear that the Malak wasn't too happy with the decision she made, but it was the smartest one given the circumstances. It didn't take a genius to figure out that the human was somehow responsible for their unwanted teleportation. Both Laphicet and Magilou could feel the residue magic of the art that had been used to summon them here. And it was a lot. Luckily Magilou had reacted quickly and overwhelmed the human before he could do whatever he had planned with them. Given how much strength it must have taken him just to summon those two here, it probably was something bad. Best to leave him in a weak condition for now.

"What do we do now?" Laphicet asked.

"We wait until he wakes up," Magilou explained. "Then we'll thoroughly question him about his intentions. And if his answers proof to be unsatisfying" the witch grinned in a way that it sent shivers down Laphicet's spine "then we'll just have to… "convince" him to tell us everything we want to know."

"Uh… convince him?"

Before Magilou could scare Laphicet any more, a cry from a certain Normin got her attention.

"Miss Magilou!" Bienfu cried, flying all the way down the stairs. He was holding a box-like thing in his tiny hands. It seemed like he had found something interesting in his search of the others.

"You have to take a look at this!" he screamed in his serious tone.

Raising an eyebrow at the nervousness of her slave, *ahem*, employee, Magilou took the box in her hands and looked at the front. Her eyes widened when she saw Velvets face beautifully painted on it. Her demon claw could also be seen. Above the picture in white letters with a blue background was written: PS4. At the bottom of the picture in a beautiful red and white fashion was written: Tales of Berseria.

("Things just got a lot more interesting.")