Chapter 651 (1/2)

“You've gone and done it now, Dhaed Ternecia smashed her fist onto a table that was sturdier than it looked, destroying it “How dare you, how dare you, how dare you!”

“Calh you do see a fit”

“Indeed,” Gubareed “Even if you howl from here, it cannot be heard in Talosheim”

Ternecia clicked her tongue in response to the carefree words of Birkyne and Guba it gently instead

“So, what are we discussing today? Are we going to have a reviewabout the lost war?” asked Ternecia

It had been around a month since the Undead expedition ar and was destroyed The Pure-breed Vampires orshi+pped Hihiryushukaka, the Evil God of Joyful Life, were surrounded by identical tables

“Of course, we are going to do that, but… We also need to discuss hoill kill the Dhampir at this point,” Birkyne replied

“Hihi, we have to share information, after all,” said Gubamon

Indeed, the Vampires had been defeated They hadshi+eld-nation send out an ar numbers However, this plan had ended in a spectacular failure

Despite that, Birkyne and Gubary mood The reason for this was simple – the one who had coreatest losses was Ternecia

The Mirg shi+eld-nation's elite soldiers, Balcheburg's guards, the assets of the villagers in the cultivated lands and their future – these were all trivial matters to the Vampires

But the loss of a cooperative individual, who had allowed them to sink their claws deep into the Empire, wasn't a happy event for them

Ternecia had numerous allies apart from Earl Mauvid who had returned as an Undead, but this incident had apparently allowed the Eht, but quite a lot of them had been disposed of

It seeated other Vampire allies and leaked information about them to protect himself

He had leaked information not only of individuals linked to Ternecia's faction but also those linked to Birkyne and Gubamon's factions These individuals had all been eliminated by the Emperor's subordinates and the Thunderclap Schneider However, Ternecia was still the one who had lost the most

And then there were the noble-born Vampires that had been dispatched as part of the expedition army Birkyne and Gubamon had provided ten each, while Ternecia had used ten of her oith Isla as their commander

Their deaths were a painful loss indeed

Isla had been a noble-born Vampire with the court rank of countess As her title of 'Ternecia's Hound' suggested, she had been a loyal retainer who supported Ternecia's faction for tens of thousands of years

She hadn't been insignificant a ith in battle, she had been a the three most powerful of Ternecia's subordinates

One ht think that Ternecia's subordinates were relatively weak, considering that she had ruled from the darkness for over a hundred thousand years, but this wasn't the case

Though those in lower positions obeyed the ones in higher positions, they were always looking for opportunities to take down those above them

Those in higher positions trampled those in lower positions underfoot so that those below them wouldn't surpass them

Raising a new generation of capable individuals in a society with such values would take a miracle And, since none of the Vaenerations would never be replaced

Vampires of Leader or Baron status weren't particularly unusual, but those of Viscount status and above co very few that survived more than several centuries

Of course, many also lost their lives to the tempers and whimsical, unreasonable orders of the Pure-breed Vampires

In such an environment, a subordinate like Isla who had reached Countess status was precious… It was possible for noble-born Vampires to increase their Rank further and become known as Marquises or Dukes, but they would actually be eli so powerful

In any case, there was nothat Ternecia's faction had lost a lot of its power

Gubarets as well I hadof the hero, but he was completely destroyed on the battlefield and burnt to ashes I cannot even claim him as an Undead”

Though Gubamon said this, nobody believed that he had ever been truly interested in a falsely-created hero like Riley

Ternecia glared at hi her teeth loudly

“Theis that infor “Though we have learned one thing The Dhampir… Vandalieu, is able to control Undead like us”

As he said, they had gained very little inforreat losses suffered in this incident

No matter how much they didn't want to admit it, the fact that Vandalieu could control the Undead was clear from the way the expedition army had risen as Undead

However, how Vandalieu was creating Undead was still unclear

“The Pure-breeds orshi+p Vida are cooperating with him,” said Ternecia “I'm sure they've come up with a new technique over the past hundred thousand years”

“He?” asked Guba out of the tunnel Even ould need to invest a considerable amount of effort to create that many Undead”

“We e if it was just Rank 1 Undead,” said Ternecia “Not all of them, but some were apparently Rank 3 and 4, weren't they? Even if we used the corpses exactly as they were and created one Undead every hour, it would take us a year to create that many”

Birkyne nodded “Yes, that's what the surviving soldiers who had been on lookout reported Good grief, what an unbelievable turn of events With this, te humans will probably be impossible as well”

“Theis that Isla and the other Va the Undead,” said Gubamon

The noble-born Va the expedition army that had come back as Undead

Birkyne nodded “Eighty or ninety percent of information about us has probably been leaked”

Vandalieu had likely turned the Vaained information from them It had already been confir Undead above Rank 3 This was a headache-inducing problem for everyone present here, not just Ternecia

Though none of the other dispatched Vampires had been as powerful as Isla, there had been a need to send reasonably strong subordinates Thisplaces and infor other subordinates had been leaked

The fortunate thing was that the Va in the Eions that Vandalieu couldn't freely wander into

But in contrast, the Pure-breed Vampires orshi+pped the Evil God of Joyful Life would find it difficult to gain information about Vandalieu The lookouts that had been left around had all been hunted down, and the ritual that revived dead noble-born Va back Isla and the others that had gone to Talosheim

They were already Undead at Vandalieu's side

Even if Isla and the others were somehow destroyed, the ritual wouldn't work on Vampires who had already become Undead once Even if that wasn't the case, Birkyne expected that Vandalieu would have used some kind of trick

“Fortunately, though we don't knohether he's connected with Vida's lot or another evil God, it seeion of the continent for a while,” said Birkyne

Ternecia nodded “You're right He wouldn't have destroyed the tunnel himself otherwise”

“We must come up with a plan in the meantime,” said Gubamon “My word, how troublesome”

They needed to gather a great ath

The next few decades will be busy, thought Ternecia, Gubamon and the noble-born Vampires ere present

But Birkyne alone had a different opinion

He destroyed an army of six thousand, created thousands of Undead… Perhaps I should persuade hi Hihiryushukaka's Divine Message Fortunately, the ones who killed his parents were Gubas in the expedition was Ternecia Depending on the conditions, it is likely possible The next few decades should be quite enjoyable

Two months had passed since the extermination of the Undead expedition ar

“He got us good,” Thole document in his office

The expedition with General Mauvid as its suprereater failure than he could have ireater than he had predicted

He wanted to go back in tio a fool

Not a single member of the expedition ar shi+eld-nation's nine thousand elite soldiers, had returned alive This was quite a painful loss It would take years to train that nuhts couldn't be easily replaced as they were men of noble families

There was no way that the sons of heads of exceptional families who had died in battle could be told that they needed to becohts in their place

There was also the equip, the war expenditures paid for the expedition to take place and the cost of building the forts at the mouths of the tunnels… Yes, the loss of the e wasn't small, either

The next painful thing was the setback of Viscount Balchesse's cultivation project

For some reason, the Undead that cah the villages in the cultivated lands instead of just heading straight for Balcheburg… Theirspeed was reasonable, but for an arht with no need for rest or sleep, it was slow

That hy the inhabitants of the cultivated land had all been evacuated successfully All of the Undead were defeated at Balcheburg, and once they were all burned so that no diseases would spread, the people were supposed to return to the cultivated land

At that point, the villagers and Viscount Balchesse would have been prepared to see the fields laid waste to by the Undead, the houses destroyed and perhaps even a few Undead rees

But ould have guessed that there would still be a thousand Undead left behind?

Because of this, soldiers and adventurers were gathered once et rid of them Fortunately, the extermination itself ithout any problems

As some of the Zombies had been Poison Zoated the dirt in the fields and the water in the irrigation channels to check whether they were poisoned

For some reason, all of the dirt in the fields had been contaminated with deadly poison, and the water reservoirs and aqueducts were polluted as well, rendering them unusable This was the worst possible outcome

Purifying this poison was so difficult that even a renowned es' Guild had saidit was hopeless, and leaving it to degrade naturally would take decades or even a century

The sae in the cultivated land There was no way that the cultivation project could continue

The cultivation project itself was the project of Viscount Balchesse's fanificant financial assistance from the nation, as well as h it hadn't shown that great an interest, the Palpapek family of earls was one of them

The fact that all of this had vanished was a shock not only to those in Viscount Balchesse's territory, but to the entire nation

To top it all off, Gordan and Riley had been leading the Undead in the attack on Balcheburg

Those who had been called heroes by the peoplethose sahtmare

That was a thorn in the Mirg shi+eld-nation's side, and blood was flowing freely from the wound

“Two hundred years ago, we could at least tell ourselves that ere victorious But noe are forced to admit that ere defeated,” Tho loudly even after death, mud has been thrown at the faces of the army, the adventurers, the Church of Alda, all of them”

Keeping such information secret was almost entirely iathered fro

False inforuished, but it would be a topic of conversation a the people for some time to come

Because of this, the air in the Mirg shi+eld-nation was continuing to become darker

And unfortunately, there was no small nu that revenge needed to be taken for this incident

If the target of this revenge was the Amid Empire that ruled the nation, it would not be a stretch to call it a step towards Tho shi+eld-nation's independence

However, the people were directing their hatred beyond the Boundary Mountain Range, towards Talosheim

“This isn't a joke The Dhaood I' on top of that half-Vampire's palm”

Tho shi+eld-nation had all been caused by Vandalieu

The unusually slow movements of the Undead, the unusually low casualties apart fro effects of the poison in the cultivated land that was too strong to have been created by the Poison Zo the Undead

Everything was too unnatural to be put down to coincidence