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Chapter 33: Domino

"90,000 Demons and 20,890,078,004 Beasts have been subjugated. Baguilla, Boshire, Guocab, Fayane, Ghaltar, Rorshire, Kenlie, Lesolith, Onger, Norvastin, Murchileve, Yaruima, Gobod, and 15 more prominent cities have been re-taken." The man with spectacles paused as he pushed the bridge of his glasses before continuing.

One might wonder how the number of demons killed and the beasts have such a disparity in numbers, if each demon is capable of controlling 10-15 million beasts then the number of beasts should have been a lot more.

Well, the answer to that is pretty simple, not all demons went around controlling beasts. Demons live like any other normal person. It\'s the demons who are in charge of protecting their people who control the vast amount of beasts, secures the \'food\', and take control of the lands.

In a way, it\'s similar to the army protecting its people, the common masses aren\'t armed nor are they well-versed in the fights, they are just common people living their everyday, carefree lives.

Not only that but if demons are looking for strong beasts compared to the quantity of weak beasts, then the number they can control decreases significantly as well.

The bespectacled man looked at everyone in the room, confirming that everyone\'s attention was on him, he nodded to himself and continued "We lost 5,00,000, of our man. 9,184 of those were individuals who ranged from S- to S+ rank and 4,056 who ranged from SS- to SS+ rank."

"Hate to interrupt in the middle but we all have read those reports. Just get to the point already, James. You know, I hate roundabout way of talking when it\'s not me doing it." A voice called out, James turned his face towards the man to whom the voice had belonged.

The man had long blue hair tied in a ponytail, James faced him, looking him directly in his aqua-colored eyes.

"We have rescued about 8,475,014 people in the process." A frown appeared on the face of blue-haired man as he heard James word\'s which seemed to suggest that he was going to continue with his report but James didn\'t, instead, he put down the documents in his hands on the top of the table and then he continued

"So, tell me. Oh-I-am-oh-so-smart! How the hell do you intend to feed those people when we are struggling with trying to feed our own!? How do you intend to keep those cities that we took back functioning!? We don\'t have enough resources! We don\'t have enough manpower to keep those people safe or the cities in our control that we took back! And in all this chaos you suggest that we go and declare war!? You want us to take the fight to that damned Demon lord!? Aw, hell nah! What we need, is to stabilize our current situation the most!"

James banged the table with both his hands and the table shook, a silence descended inside the room. James removed the circular lid from the nearby glass of water and drank it down in one gulp.

"Let me get this straight, you have been going on and on about the things we have done for the last 30 minutes just to tell me that you don\'t agree with my suggestion of going for the war? Dude, what the actual fuck is wrong with you? You should have just said that from the beginning!" The blue-haired man voiced his complaint.

"Marcus, can you take this a little bit seriously!? Again, who appointed him as our leader!?" A beastfolk lady complained, she is captain of the protection squad for the north regional cities, her name is Melina.

"You people did, lol" Marcus scoffed.

"For the love of god, don\'t add \'lol\' at the end of your sentences, Marcus!" Jayden, an elf said, his face disgruntled, he was in charge of governing southern cities.

"That\'s what you have a problem with!?" James shouted at Jayden, perplexed.

"Are you guys done with your skit? Look, guys, I have a date and this guy is like, super hot and he pampers me a lot and I definitely feel like we are soul mates meant to be together, so, how about we wrap this up fast? I don\'t want to break up with my soul mate!" A lady with quite a provocative dress shouted, she was none other than the captain of the squad that is in charge of reconnaissance.

"You know, you can\'t call him your soul mate if he is going to break up with you for being late on a date or missing a simple date," Luna said, busy trimming her nails, she is in charge of the western region.

"Fuck you, Luna! You just don\'t arrange a date and then miss it much less being late in it! That\'s why you are single!" The captain of the reconnaissance squad shouted

"Wasn\'t the last guy also your soul mate, Ruby, lol" Marcus quipped in fueling the frustration of Rubina-nickname Ruby-captain of the reconnaissance squad as well as an interrogator.

"Shut that damn mouth of yours! It was because you couldn\'t keep your mouth shut that he left me!" Ruby shouted, throwing a poisoned dagger towards Marcus with a speed that sent shockwaves strong enough to make cracks on the table.

"Nah, I just saved him. He needed to know who he was getting involved with." Marcus said as he caught the dagger with ease using two of his fingers.

"It would be wise to take this a bit more seriously, no?" A voice filled with dignity said it belonged to none other than a vampire bringing everyone to silence, his name was Luise.

"...Damn, boomers sure have something about them, age does matter... lol" Marcus said admiring the dignified vampire and the mysterious strength that his words exuded, on the other hand, Jayden cringed once more seeing Marcus use of \'lol\'.

"James is right, we don\'t have enough resources to even take care of our own people, taking all those people and keeping those cities safe is an impossible task as things are and you want us to declare a direct war with the demonic continent is straight-up suicide," Luise said and everyone else in the room nodded and looked towards him, none of them wanted to go on another battle after just recently having ended one, they had been in one battle after another, the sheer psychological toll wasn\'t easy to deal with. What they all needed was rest and a moment to organize their last 2 months\' thoughts and happenings, not another battle.

After a moment of silence, Marcus let out a sigh, stretched out his hands, interlocked the fingers of both his hands together, and cracked them, and then he finally opened his mouth.

"Dear, sons of bitches! I am glad to see your eyes have finally been opened! Saving the world is a delicate process, you save a few people, take care of their needs, build a shelter/base, and then go around saving more people. Saving the world needs a procedure, you can\'t just go ahead and save the world when you live in times as dire as ours but we did just that! We went around saving one city after another, killing demons after demons without rest! We didn\'t organize shit and now we have a huge ass number of people to take care of and cities to protect from any other demon that might try to reclaim them! Resources are important and we lack them and honestly, we are fucked."

Marcus said with a smile on his face, everyone looked at him baffled.

"And why did all of this happen? Because you all decided to make a decision while I was away! You fell into such an obvious trap, it makes me wonder whether you people deserve your freedom because honestly, slavery suits y\'all better! Doing what you are told is all you can do! Ahem ahem Tldr: Wisdom has been chasing y\'all but you guys surely have been faster!"

Some in the room gritted their teeth and some clenched their hands tight, anger was evident on everyone\'s face.

Unable to contain his anger, a man with long pointy ears, an elf, stood up and confronted Marcus.

"What the hell do you take us for!? I am really getting pissed with that attitude of yours!"

"Talk about being ungrateful, you all are alive precisely because I came up with strategies to keep y\'all alive and now, all of a sudden, you have an objection to following my suggestions?" Marcus replied coolly.

"That\'s because until now we had a reason! We had no choice but to keep fighting but now it\'s different. You are asking us to take the fight to them and the chances of survival this time are lower than they ever have been! This is suicide!"

"I could try to and explain \'why\' I am suggesting what I am suggesting to y\'all but I\'d need some crayons," Marcus said shrugging, it took a second before everyone understood how Marcus had insulted them once more, their anger more palpable.

"Then use those damn crayons and explain," Ruby said throwing a tablet towards Marcus, the tab\'s display was attached to the room\'s AI display.

Sighing Marcus spoke while tapping his fingers on the tab.

"As I have said before, it\'s a marathon and there\'s no stopping in between, either we emerge victorious against the demon lord and her army or we die trying."

"Yeah, I know. That\'s the shit you have been spewing but the question is \'why?\'" James asked his voice disgruntled.

"Because y\'all thought it\'s fun to fall for the trap?" Marcus said his tone suggesting \'isn\'t it obvious?"

"You keep talking about this \'trap\' but what \'trap\' did we actually fall for? We have made lots of decisions while you were away, what specifically did we actually do wrong?" Luna asked as she started opening the nail paint, she was done with trimming them.

"Haa~ Well, the way you went about the whole affinity extraction case was wrong. What did we name that incident again?.. Well, it matters not, what actually matters is that\'s where all your mess starts from" Marcus said as a holographic display appeared in front of everyone\'s seat, showing the images related to the incident.

Everyone looked at their holographic display, the incident that Marcus was referring to was a well-known incident. In one of the shelters, the leaders have decided to extract affinity out of those who possess them, or more accurately those who possess them and are weak.

Affinity extraction- as the name suggests, it\'s a process to extract affinity out of those who possess them but that wasn\'t all, the chances of successfully extracting one\'s affinity were quite low, only 1 out of 1,000 and all 1,000 of the people will die.

The leaders of that shelter had used this method and extracted those affinities, amplified their effects, and embedded them into weapons and the sheer number of weapons that they had was proof of the mind-numbing amount of people that they had killed.

This incident might have continued if not for the person who found out about it and sought out the help of other shelters to deal with the atrocities of those leaders.

...and it was also where everything changed, where they had gotten the ammo to fight off against demons for the first time.

"You can\'t possibly be suggesting that we shouldn\'t have intervened?" Jayden questioned, his face contorted, elves considered extracting elemental affinity to be the highest of taboos, they believed it to be no different than pulling someone\'s soul out of their body and then putting the soul into the weapon and making the soul suffer for whole eternity.

"That\'s not what I am saying. You made the right decision, those guys needed to be stopped but the way you went around doing it, that couldn\'t have been any worse" Marcus said sighing, tapping on the tablet, the holographic display changed.

"It had been one thing if all you needed to do was put a stop to their acts but that\'s not all there was to it, was it? Elina contacted you because she had no way of dealing with the leaders by herself, understandably so, she was weaker than them all but that\'s not the whole story, there was a demon involved in this mess and that was the biggest problem. Your timing of the intervention was totally shit. You needed to intervene at the last minute when no one would have expected it but ...you just had to go and put those leaders into confinement, and send the people there into panic. What gave you the idea it would help with dealing with the problem of the demon that was to come?"

"Hey, Luise said we aren\'t making a bad decision! He is the oldest of us! He has the most experience! So, we just did it! What I am trying to say is, blame Luise." Ruby chimed in.

"Your dress isn\'t the only shameful thing about you, is it?" Luna said admiring the nail paint on her left hand and Ruby glared at her as she spoke "Are you dress shaming me?" her voice laced with anger

"Yes, you are right, my dear Ruby but you see Luise is a vampire, A VAMPIRE! What gave you the idea he wouldn\'t look for his own entertainment in this mess?" Marcus asked, very politely

"...Luise won\'t do that, right Luise?" James asked while looking at Luise.

Luise didn\'t reply.

"You wouldn\'t, ...right?" James asked once more

Exhaling Luise slowly opened his mouth

"I didn\'t think that decision of mine would somehow end up being related to us going on an all-out war which is nothing sort of a last-ditch effort"

His tone was gentle, so so gentle it sounded soothing to the ears.

"I have to say, though, I truly am pleased with my past self! If it is as you say, Marcus, if my actions during that time have resulted in our current situation then I am truly grateful to my past self! To think I would be able to see the Demon Lord! I have heard about her other-worldly beauty, her exceptional knowledge of martial arts, her beautiful control over demonic energy and mana! My, oh my, every time I recall the words of my fellow brethren who had the fortune of seeing the Demon lord, the envy I feel has been quite indescribable but ...finally I will be able to see her myself, the one also named as \'The Goddess of the battlefield\', ah, the anticipation I feel -"

"Okay, stop your ramblings, Luise, I get ya, but weren\'t you just saying something in opposition to my suggestion earlier?" Marcus questioned Luise, bringing his concentration back to the discussion.

"Oh? That is not something, I, myself am concerned with. I was simply lamenting the sufferings the weak would have to face, personally, I am quite pleased with your suggestion and support it with all my heart!" Luise said with a smile on his face.

"Well, welcome aboard Luise!" Marcus said joyfully raising both his hands.

On the other hand, everyone else\'s expression in the room turned pale realizing they had been played by Luise, played hard. It took them a few minutes before they could process anything again, after all, Luise\'s words were nothing sort of a betrayal.

Oh- the laments of the ignorant- who now have been enlightened!

"Why?"

A sharp voice cut through the atmosphere, it was a voice belonging to Melina directed to Luise.

Her expression was indifferent but with just a look in her eyes even a kid would be able to tell, Melina was seething with rage.

"Why, what?" Luise asked tilting his head.

"Why did you do it?" Melina asked with her threatening voice, halberd ready in her hand. It was clear that depending on Luise\'s answer she would decide on how to make use of her weapon.

"Oh, you mean why I led you all in the direction I did? Why shouldn\'t have I!? By attacking and confining the leaders of that shelter we brought unease towards the people and then soon after we had to fight against that demon we used the weapons with affinity implanted in them and we also distributed as many of those weapons as we found to the masses to help in the fight. We might have won against the demon back then but we being the distributor of those weapons caused more questions to form in the heads of the masses, questions such as \'What if, they had lied to us?\' \'What if they are directing false claims towards our leaders\' and with the lack of time to explain things properly, people\'s distrust towards us increased to the point that it led them to choose between being used by us or by demons. Their anger with the issue regarding affinity extraction obviously led them all to rebel against us! Even though we are all on the same side, they betrayed us! And with that, we had to face off against another demon"

Well, the truth of why people had gathered together and rebelled was because of Aria and Albert had instigated it. Something anyone had yet to know about.

"Why did I do that? Why did I guide everyone on this path? The answer to that should be quite obvious, no? Why, but to satiate my own curiosity! Oh, I was enthralled by how well you all did against all those odds! Despite the absolute chaos that was ensured you all worked towards finding the solution and you found one as well! I was absolutely thrilled with all your growth!"

Luise\'s laugh echoed throughout the room.

Everyone stared at their vampire comrade, baffled. They had known vampires were selfish, they seek pleasure, excitement, and fun in any situation they can but ...today they witnessed how deranged they truly are, well, at least, Luise is.

Marcus simply shook his head for he knew following any advice from a vampire was simply asking to get yourself killed.

It wasn\'t that they didn\'t give any proper advice, it\'s more accurate to say they just add their own selfish desires to that piece of advice.

Melina jumped towards Luise with speed that defied any logic and swung her halberd towards him, Luise simply moved to his left and dodged.

"Oh my, careful now. That could have killed me, little one. Is this how you act towards your friend?"

"I will make it swift and painless, consider that a token of our friendship"

Melina spun around, her right leg coated in the aura as she directed it towards Luise\'s skull, with minimal movements Luise once again dodged Melina\'s attack.

"Oh, I like those fiery eyes!"

"Wonder if you will like fiery axe too?" Jayden said appearing behind Luise swinging his axe that was covered in blue flames.

"Hm?" Luise let out a voice in acknowledgment of Jayden but before Luise could dodge to his left, he noticed the presence of James, ready with his daggers to stab him from there, an Elf preparing to launch a spell towards him, and Luna, who had found a way to appear behind him and ready to lunge her aura coated beastfolk claw towards his chest.

There was no place to run.

"My, oh my, I might be in trouble" He muttered as the Melina\'s halberd and Jayden\'s blue flames-covered axe inched closer towards him.

"Freeze. Spikes."

With those two words, the air surrounding the vampire turned cold, cold enough that the approaching weapons and the spell froze and broke.

Ice spikes appeared around Luise causing everyone to take a step back.

Vampires have a natural affinity for ice and their specialization in ice magic was well known to even surpass the elves.

But this wasn\'t the end, Melina and Luna both coated their fists with aura and Jayden prepared himself to launch a high-grade spell towards Luise.

"Damn, who do they think has to pay for repairs of the room?" Marcus rubbed his temples with both his hands "Stop them."

"Tch" She clicked her tongue "I am already running late for my date, bastards. Fight all you want, after this meeting is over."

Black chains emerged from the ground beneath everyone, binding every person in place in less than a mili-second.

"Move an inch and I will tighten my chains enough to kill you all. Just in case a reminder, I possess dark affinity."

No one moved their bodies, not even a little, for they knew, Rubina Darkling would actually kill them.

Spells attack by those with dark or light affinities were far more dangerous than spells made by people with other affinities even if they were both same-grade spells.

People with Light or Dark affinity were rare and ...far more dangerously stronger.

"Now then, where was I again?"