GREED: ALL FOR WHAT?

He expects it to be difficult to seal the Ghouls and it should be nearly impossible to seal the particular one that chased after him. After all, Ragnarok is one of its targets and he is still alive. It will never rest as long as Ragnarok is still out there. But that is not enough to guarantee the spread of the blight. 

He intends to help the ghouls actively spread throughout the Underdark and the plane. And he won't let whatever the Vampires used to seal the Ghouls before work again. They will have him to contend with too if they want to seal the Ghouls. So he went around disrupting the Vampire's response to the ghouls. 

The Underdark was thrown into disarray due to the ghouls. The Vampires resisted but they couldn't stop the onslaught that ensued. The ghoul that Ragnarok led around was the first one to attack the Vampires. It enjoyed a lot of success due to catching them off guard. But the Vampires rallied soon after. They know a lot about ghouls so they began to fight back with the knowledge that they have. 

To be accurate, it was their familiars that were doing all the fighting. Vampires can't touch Ghouls unless they are Monarchs. A single contact is enough for a ghoul to kill anything less than a Monarch. Vampires that haven't fused with a heart of Carnage unravel with a single touch from ghouls.

Fortunately, all hope is not lost. The Vampires are not completely helpless to ghouls. Ghouls are terrifying but they have a glaring weakness. The Vampires aimed to use their weakness against them.

Ghouls are like golems. They have predefined protocols and instructions that determine their actions. They can make decisions but they are not intelligent so they can't adapt to tricky situations. 

Ghouls have a priority list that they follow to the letter. At the top are Primogenitors that aren't Monarchs followed by Monarchs. Origin gods come next. Other types of Vampires come after Origin gods. Then other living things come after Vampires. Ragnarok is in this last category. And so are the familiars. 

Ghouls will continue to attack Vampires with a single-minded focus and ignore every Sovereign of law no matter how many Sovereigns of law are around them. They won't change their target from Vampires no matter how many times they are attacked by the Sovereigns of law. 

The programming of ghouls to prioritize Vampires makes them rigid in responding to aggression. Ragnarok was able to use their programming to escape from the hunt of a ghoul. So the Vampires readily threw their familiars at the Ghouls to stall them while they ran away. 

Ragnarok curled his lips when he saw their tactics. "Sure enough, the Vampires are more informed than me about the Ghouls. I can't let them succeed."

He stuck around to watch how the Vampires were resisting the Ghouls. He made sure to stay at the limit of his divine sense which is more than 100 kilometers away from any Ghoul. He is doing this so that he can interfere in the resistance efforts of the Vampires. But he didn't get the opportunity to do so. The ghouls didn't need his help.

The ghouls surely have an obvious weakness, but it brought limited results to the Vampires when they tried to take advantage of it. Familiars can only injure the Ghouls at best. A Ghoul will never stop as long as it is locked onto a target. They are immune to spells of any kind during that period of time. 

Any use of Origin energy, laws, or mana to stop them will be nullified and broken apart before reaching them. Either that or they would wash over them harmlessly if it is too strong to be broken. It is exactly how the earth parts way for them. Reality seems to warp around ghouls to ensure that they succeed in their hunt. Only physical attacks can harm them in any way. 

While physical attacks can bypass the operation of the law of order, it is not every physical object that is capable of harming ghouls. Any inanimate obstacle in their path will simply give way for them. Ragnarok saw some Vampires that tried to hide within fortified bunkers. But the ghouls simply teleported past the obstacle in their way to reach the Vampires. 

He shook his head in pity. "I learned that lesson the hard way."

These Vampires didn't survive their mistake. Only living things or Origin artifacts can block the ghouls for a time. The ghouls won't be able to teleport through Origin artifacts or living things but that's only if there is no opening or breach. Any slight gap is enough for the ghoul to warp through. Even without gaps, it will only protect them before the ghouls destroy the obstacle in their way. 

The Sovereigns of law combined their physical prowess with Origin artifacts but it still brought them limited results. It is because no matter what they do, the Sovereigns could only attack the ghouls, but they couldn't manage to kill them. 

In fact, they can't even stop the ghouls. Anyone or anything that blocks their path will be attacked. But as long as the Familiars attack them from the sides, the ghouls will ignore them. The priority of the ghouls will change instantly once there is an obstacle in their path. That means the familiars are nuisances to the ghouls instead of being obstacles. 

What's worse is that they are ineffectual nuisances. The bodies of Ghouls are as tough as the Origin weapons that the Sovereigns are wielding. So the Origin weapons create sparks when they clash with the bodies of the Ghouls. Then those weapons break after several hits. Contact with ghouls seems to destroy Origin weapons too. 

The Ghouls are also very strong so they can't be knocked back. The best that the Familiars could achieve is slowing down the Ghouls. Because they can't break down the Ghouls no matter how many Origin artifacts that they sacrifice.