Chapter 225 (5/17): A Target on the Undeads’ Back

As a council that moved by votes, the council ruling Dianene usually took a long time to make a decision, because every race had representatives that tried to serve their own or their race’s interests, often at the expense of others. Naturally, the other representatives opposed and shot down those motions.

This time was different. It only took an hour to come to a decision. There were some details to iron out, but at its core, the decision made to form a defense for Dianene passed without a hitch. It was a unanimous vote, something almost unprecedented in the history of Dianene and its council. At the same time, the representatives served at the whims of their constituents, so opposing a measure that directly affected the life and death of Dianane’s citizens was political suicide. Such a result was inevitable.

As always, the devil was in the details, but some actions with no downsides were still taken with startling speed.

When the Fleeting Leaves and a bunch of other hunters gathered in front of the hunter’s guild the next morning, biting at the bits to go in and be the first to pick from the newly put out commissions, the doors opened as usual. However, unlike the usual, there was a guild employee standing in the doorway, blocking the entrance.

“I’m sorry, everyone,” she said. “However, due to some unforeseen circumstances, there have been some changes.”

“What?!”

“What changes?”

The gathered hunters broke into a clamour that drowned out the employee’s voice. Instead of raising her voice, she stood there quietly and waited for the other voices to cease. Lucienne applauded her decision—it was a tactic she often used to calm the twins down.

Soon, the hunters quieted down, pressured by their comrades that wanted to hear what the guild employee had to say. When no other sound came from the gathered hunters, the employee opened her mouth to continue. “As everyone knows, the territory of the humans lie north of us, and for decades or even centuries, they have been plagued with undead troubles.”

Some snickers came from the hunters.

Lucienne glared in their direction, but she couldn’t see exactly who the people that laughed were. She gritted her teeth, only for Eva to tap on her arm in warning, and she nodded and did her best to suppress her anger.

“What do they know?” she muttered under her breath so that only those right next to her could hear.

Eva shrugged. “If what your friends are saying is true, then soon things will be their problem too. See who’s laughing then.”

“I’m just afraid that they’ll run when the time comes to fight…”

Eva paused. “That’s true… well, that’s something we’ll have to live with.”

They turned their attention back to the employee, who made no reactions to the snickering thanks to her professionalism. The whole time, her face remained stoic.

“However, it seems that the undead are no longer a problem for just them. We’ve received word that a sudden surge in undead activity has caused the humans’ downfall and the undead have begun to move south toward us.”

The little conversations and laughs continued for a little while longer, but as the employee’s words sank in, they stopped for a brief moment. The little conversations gave way to gasps and shouts as the hunters voiced their disbelief.

“Serves them right! They’re so weak after all!” someone shouted.

...but disbelief was the extent of their emotions. There was no fear, and someone even laughed. Lucienne narrowed her eyes and she began heading toward the source of that voice, but another loud voice interrupted her.

A loud slap rang out through the crowd, and this time Lucienne was close enough to see what was happening. A female hunter had slapped the face of another hunter who still had a laugh on his face—only, that smile was frozen.

The female hunter put her hands on her hips. “Are you stupid or something? Even if they’re weak, they still just fought a war with us. It’s obvious that they won’t fight a war while having to deal with an undead uprising in their own lands, so the uprising didn’t take long at all. If the human fell this fast, then…” Her voice trailed off and she looked at the guild employee. “Then… the army must be massive. Do you know what we’re facing?”

The gathered hunters had fallen silent again after the loud slap, so naturally there was no one to talk over the employee. “The undead army is estimated to consist of at least a hundred thousand normal undead, as well as at least two hundred greater undead.”

“Greater undead?” someone gasped. “Three hundred? Really?”

Lucienne shook her head. “So much for their superiority,” she muttered. The fact that even these people had some things they were ignorant of made her happy. That said, it wasn’t strange that some of these people were awed by greater undead.

Unlike in human territory where any decently sized desecration zone had a few greater undead of jack-class or higher, the only undead worth mentioning here in vampire territory were those summoned by the few necromancers that the vampires had. While those necromancers could indeed command huge armies, they could not create greater undead.

On the other hand, to these people, greater undead seemed to be more of a curiosity, thanks to their rarity, than any real threat.

“Three hundred undead of varying strength,” the employee corrected. “Most of them are the ones that we are familiar with, but there appears to be specimens of greater undead with strength well above average, and one more stage above that. It appears that humans call them jack-, lord-, and king-class undead respectively. Of the three hundred, there are nine lord-class and one king-class.”

“But what’s that got to do with us?” someone yelled from the crowd. “You didn’t keep us here just to tell us this, right?”

The employee shook her head. “No, I’m also here to give an announcement about the guild. Because the undead army seems to be heading toward us, the council has decided to cease all guild operations that involve leaving the town. All guild members are expected to aid in the defense of the city until the threat is neutralized or the order is given to retreat.”

One of the taller hunters, an orc, stamped his feet. “What do you mean ceased? You mean there’s no more commissions? And we have to help? What kind of joke is that?”

“Of course, you’ll be compensated…”

“Yeah, but what if I don’t want to? I’ve always done what I want and I take orders from no one!” The orc proudly raised his chin in defiance. “I joined this guild organization because I heard that it was a way to take control of my life, but if I’m going to be treated as being part of a private army, then…” He trailed off to let the implication speak for itself.

“Or maybe he’s just scared to say what he’s thinking out loud,” Eva hissed under her breath, and some of the people around her began to laugh under her breath.

To her credit, the guild employee was unmoved by the orc’s words. With her hands clasped in front of her as normal, she nodded in agreement. “Naturally, there’s no way for the guild to force you to help. However, in return for not participating in this required activity, your guild membership will be stripped.”

“You…!” The orc reddened at the threat, but he quickly calmed down. “I’ll just go to another city’s guild then!”

“As you wish.” The employee bowed. “Now, I’ll explain what we will do. First, we as hunters are more flexible than the militia of the city, so we will primarily act as backup to the main force…”

As the employee continued to speak, Lucienne furrowed her brows. Despite the employee dressing up like any other worker, there was an air of confidence and unflappability about her that made her different from a regular worker. She was also knowledgeable enough to outline a plan without looking at notes, and there weren’t any pauses in her speech as she tried to remember something she rehearsed, which made it quite likely that the speech wasn’t rehearsed at all.

“That woman, who is she?” Lucienne asked, nudging Eva to get the vampire’s attention.

“Her? Oh, it’s not surprising that you don’t know who she is,” Eva said, laughing quietly so as to not interrupt the employee’s speech. “She’s the vice guild leader, but since she’s so quiet and subtle that unless you know who she is ahead of them, she really blends in with the background.”

“No wonder I don’t remember seeing her before!”

“Right? I was fooled too until Lavitte told me. However, she’s got her position for her paper-pushing skills, which makes sense.”

Although appearance was not a good way to judge a mage’s strength, when Lucienne looked over the vice guild leader’s thin frame, she had no doubt in Eva’s words. But with Eva’s explanation, everything that she felt was wrong made sense again, and she settled back down to listen.

In the end, the plan was quite basic.

While the undead are still in the forest, the hunters will conduct guerilla attacks on the army, wearing them down as much as possible, prioritizing the greater undead that the enemy can’t simply replace.

Once the undead are out, then the city will go into lock-down and prioritize defense until reinforcements from other cities arrive. In this phase, the militia will be the backbone of the resistance with the hunters shoring up any weak points as the more flexible unit.

If the defense is successful at stalling until reinforcements arrive, then the next steps will be further discussed with the leader of the reinforcements. On the other hand, if the city looks to be about to fall, then the city council will use its store of bloodstones to transport the citizens to another city.

Lucienne found herself nodding in agreement with the vice guild leader’s words. With her limited understanding of strategy and tactics, she couldn’t point out any flaws, since whoever came up with it did not have the hunters bite off more than they could chew.

They didn’t expect Dianene to stop the entire undead army by themselves and prioritized defense since that was the most effective allocation of resources, and on top of that, they left a path of retreat with the teleporter formation. As far as Lucienne was concerned, she couldn’t come up with anything better.

“What do you think, Eva?”

“Appropriate. However, I have a feeling that we won’t get much done in phase one…”

Lucienne sighed. “Yeah… if the high value targets hide, then we’ll have to get past thousands of undead to even have a shot at killing one. Hopefully they’ll get overconfident.”

“Hopefully…” Eva repeated.

The meeting in front of the guild center ended with the vice guild leader bowing to everyone present, and then proceeded to let the gathered hunters enter.

Gone was the booklet of commissions, and all that was left was copies of a single mission: wipe out the invading undead army. Alongside that simple mission were bounties.

Prior to the army reaching the city, the guild collected undead heads at ten bloodstones a head, plus extra for every increase in strength: a thousand bloodstones per jack-class, ten thousand for every lord-class, and finally, a hundred thousand bloodstones for the head of the undead king.

Altogether, if the hunters managed to wipe the entire undead army out in the forest, the guild would have to pay out more than a million bloodstones.

“If you think about it, it’s not really all that much,” Lavitte said to the rest of the party. “Still, we’ll take what we can get. Let’s meet back at the house and discuss what we should do. It’s going to be dangerous, but… we have quite the advantage.”

He made eye contact with Lucienne and he grinned.

Remembering that they had Justin and two more acolytes at home that were definitely going to give their all in exterminating the undead, if not in person then in spirit, Lucienne smiled too.