Giorno grabbed a stone beam with his two pinchers, sighing at the work ahead of him. Normally, he'd use telekinetics to move it, given how heavy they were, but he'd completely run dry on mana. Working all day in the sun had a tendency to do that to a Granchin.

His pincher clutched one end of the stone beam after setting it down. He gripped the stone column, severing a piece off it.

Another Granchin in a suit walked over, noticing the young Giorno. "Aye, where's your boss?"

"I dunno," Giorno said with half a mind to make a rude comment. But the other crab's garb stopped the young worker. He pointed with both of his pinchers back towards the beachfront properties. "Probably somewhere in that direction. He usually leads some of us out in the water for crushing up mineral."

The suited crab nodded and placed a pearl on a nearby table. "A tip for your services."

Giorno waited for the man to leave before pocketing the pearl.

"Granchia's mob," the man said, turning the pearl over in his pocket.

The less that Giorno had to do with them, the better. The Granchin took a cigarette from the pocket of his work shirt. He flicked his pincher against a beam, creating a small spark. He did that several times until the cigarette ignited.

Giorno leaned his red shell against a finished beam, taking his much needed break. At least this thing will restore some of my mana.

Even though the man worked for cheap, he still had enough money to blow on fags with crushed mana stone. The smoke seeped into his lungs, and he felt the mana slowly returning to him.

He coughed a few times, blowing the smoke away from his antennas. He finished the cigarette, leaving nothing but a small brown bud that he stuffed into his pocket.

"I guess I can take off now if the foreman is not coming back. How long did he say he was gonna be gone, anyways?"

The grab dusted some ashes off his work shirt and left the foundation. He walked back further into the city, passing through crowds of Granchin moving in the daylight. Giorno looked down, taking the pearl from his pocket, and observing it properly.

The crab man ran into a wall to his own disbelief, but he looked up and saw a horned woman. However, the fact that he'd almost dropped his pearl made him seethe with anger.

"I'm walkin' here!" He shouted, waving his pinchers around and staring daggers into the lizard woman.

The woman's vivid fiery eyes seemed to ignite. Her eyes narrowed, and she looked at Giorno like he was an ant.

"You ran into me…"

"Of course, of course," Giorno said quickly. "It was my fault!"

He sprinted past the two foreign woman as fast as his crab legs would allow him. The Granchin had no idea why, but he knew that he needed to escape. He reached a back alley and slumped against a building, clutching the pearl in his hands.

"Granchino be damned, who was that bitch?"

He looked at the white orb in the sunlight filtering between two buildings. This thing has got to be worth a fortune! Did I really just get a tip like this?

"Where'd you get that," a stranger's voice said.

Giorno jumped and looked towards the exit of the alley. What he found made his eyes widen in disbelief. Four Granchin men in expensive suits stood there. The leader was much larger than the others, and magic insignias curled over his shell.

"Ed?" Giorno asked in astonishment.

"You don't get to call him that, little chino."

Ed stopped Mario from continuing further with his claw. "Let's hear where he got it."

"One of yours gave it to me earlier! He went to check my foreman on the docs!"

"Your foreman? Ah, are you one of the builders?"

Giorno nodded.

"Then why are you here? Don't you got a job to do?"

"I was taking a smoke break! I walked up here to get some fresh air, and I bumped into a foreigner!"

"A foreigner? Did she have black horns?"

Giorno's antenna twitched madly, and he nodded profusely. "She had another woman with her as well."

"Aye boss, I think he's lying about takin' a break. He was gonna make off with ya sister's jewel."

Ed tapped on Mario's shoulder, shutting him up. "If you speak again, I'll be feeding you to the damn sea serpents." The mob boss looked back to Giorno. "Did anything else happen?"

Giorno reached out with the pearl. "Here! You can have it back. I didn't mean to take it anyway. It was gifted to me."

Ed shrugged. "I don't care about that jewel. I want to know where those two went."

"The two girls?" Seeing Ed nod, Giorno continued. "They left towards the docks. I bumped into them and took off running because the look in that woman's eye."

"You did a good thing. Best leave this kinda business to us. Just so you know, those two have gotten on Luigi's graces."

"Luigi? That traveling chef?"

"That traveling chef is a brother to me. Anyway, it seems me and my men have taken up a bit of your time. Head home safely, will ya? And don't stop for nobody, especially not your foreman."

Giorno nodded, relieved they'd let him go. All of this talk of family business was way above his pay grade. Besides, the Granchin turned the pearl over. This thing can get me out of work altogether!

He had an inkling before, but confirming that it was from one of Ed's siblings filled the crab with endless joy. He walked home with happiness in his heart and a kick in his step.

The granchin lay in his bed when he got home, spending the whole night mesmerized by the pearl. If I get this to an auction house, I will be able to live without doing anything.

Giorno put it on his night stand and closed his eyes.

///

In the shadows of his bedroom, he didn't notice someone standing there. The woman had dark blue robes that clung firmly to her body, and she turned over a sharp, triangular object in her hand several times. She was not a granchin.

Neither was this woman a human. Sharp fangs protruded from her mouth, and her blood red eyes pierced into the dark room as if it was natural. The woman waited for Giorno to fall asleep, and she giggled to herself.

"My, my, I've learned a lot of interesting stuff since entering this country. Has Granchino's people really plummeted this far?"

Elanore considered cutting open his shell, but she had more of a hankering for blood. She also had no desire to take the crab's life. She picked up the pearl from his night stand.

"Thank you," she said cheerfully. "I am sure that you would have liked to keep this all to yourself, but mommy wants it."

The vampiress pushed magic into her cherry lips. She leaned down and kissed the top of the crab's head. "This way you'll make sure to sleep soundly."

Elanore opened the window, cool ocean air flowing into the room. She grabbed the top of the window frame and used it to perform an acrobatic move, flipping onto the building's rooftop.

"I should really get this back home, but it would be a waste to miss out on Valericae…"

The vampire assassin's heart fluttered in her chest. She'd been alive for more than three hundred years, and she'd never once properly inspected a dragon. The blood dragon in her homelands never spoke to the lower ranks. Elanore could not even be considered a lower ranked vampire, considering she didn't even hold the title of baroness.

"Still, it's weird to see that a dragon is getting friendly with a Kanai'n...That reclusive race hardly talked to anyone, and most of its members were pathetically weak."

Vampires had a pact with the blood dragon, and in it, they weren't allowed to kill other races needlessly. The blood suckers never actually worshiped a god of their own, and they followed a hierarchy of blood.

That's why these crabs were so astounding to Elanore. Their society worked much differently than hers, and they were far more primitive. Even if our leader says we can't needlessly kill them, there is nothing against stealing from them.

Elanore leapt to a nearby building and another, her blue robes flapping in the wind. She could smell the blood of the dragon heavy on the air, so she knew exactly where to find them. The two of them seemed to settle off into their own little part of the beach.

The Kanai'n girl happily cracked open shells on the rocks, while Valericae watched with a smile on her face. The vampire really couldn't believe what she was seeing while she clung to the shadows, but what she couldn't believe more was the fact that those fiery eyes locked directly onto her. And the dragon's voice lashed out into the shadows.

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