Chapter 77: Desperation

"...can anybody tell me what happened there?"

Inside a dark-lit room, tension stirred as a group of people weren't able to say anything due to the pressure their facing.

Under their hoods, their expressions marred trepidation, fear, and anxiety. The longer the silence went, the heavier the atmosphere became.

"It's either one of you who starts talking or I will start picking people at random to turn into demon food."

Everybody chilled upon hearing that threat.

"Just so you know, once I start doing the latter, it won't matter if you start talking. I will still feed you all, one by one, to the demons."

"S-Sir! We..."

"You, what?" The frightening man raised a brow, waiting patiently for whoever spoke to continue.

"W-we're working hard to investigate what happened." The same man responded, "From what we gathered so far, we could only conclude that the replacement group we sent somehow got ambushed."

"...that's it?" The frightening man asked.

"That's it, Sir." The same man replied, "We apologize, Sir, we are working overtime to discover the identity of the party that's responsible for this and, if we're able to, we will also try to discover how they managed to intercept our signal."

The frightening man stayed silent for a while, which didn't ease the group of people in front of him at all.

Each time he tapped his fingers at the armrest of his seat, the frightened men's hearts would jump ever so slightly out of fear.

Their leader wasn't the merciful kind despite his rather calm demeanor. He had no qualms about reaping the lives of useless people if he deemed it fit for their punishment. He hates useless people the most, the close second is smart-asses.

This is why they're afraid of him. His threats earlier? They're not really threats, they're more like a promise because they knew that he would definitely do that. That's why anybody who has worked for this man for a while will never try to test his patience.

"...five days." Their leader muttered loud enough for everybody to hear.

"I will give you all a five-day deadline. Before those five days were up, I wanted a detailed report on my desk. I want to know how they did it, who did it, and every intel they managed to learn from their captives."

I refuse to die like this!"

Having said that, this man turned away and left the place immediately. They figured that this person would once again survey the area where the replacement group disappeared to search for any possible clues. He's already desperate so he didn't care even if it was already concluded that there's nothing there anymore.

"Can we maybe plead for leniency?" One of the remaining cultists asked, "I mean, we have contributed to our cause too. At the very least, that has to amount to something, yeah?"

"Yeah, it amounts to our continued existence, dumbass." The crestfallen man sneered. "What? Do you think that we'd live this long if we weren't useful? That might work for others but to that guy? Hell no! Our tenure doesn't mean shit to him."

"To him, we're just means to an end. Sure, we have contributed to the cult but in the grand scheme of things? We don't amount to shit. We're just Branch Managers. We're all expendable in his eyes."

"If I could, I would've already killed him for all of his posturing. Fuck this fucking unfair life!" The crestfallen man swore angrily as he picked himself up and left the place without turning back.

Silence returned after he left, but it didn't last long until someone asked:

"What should we do now?" Another frightened voice spoke up. "The more we sit around here doing nothing, the more I'm convinced that we are indeed going to die soon."

Nobody could offer anything to comfort that. All of them are stuck in the same predicament, and this inactiveness surely wasn't helping at all.

"Hey, do you all think that we can get away with forging a report?" A suggestion was raised, which caught some people's attention.

"Elaborate."

"I mean, we're more or less fucked anyway, so why not take it to the extreme?" The same voice suggested. "The plan is we fake a report. Of course, we'll make it as believable as we could. I mean, we could at least discern what we think our enemies managed to know about us, right? We can also add fake proof of activity while we're at it."

"If push comes to shove, we could send another batch of acolytes as a sacrifice to make all of this even more believable. We just have to be...really creative about this."

Many were stunned upon hearing that suggestion. On normal days, they would've admonished him for even suggesting this, but with their current predicament, this is no less than a blessing.

Everybody seems to be considering this suggestion heavily. So the same one who suggested it decided to add more fuel to the fire...

"You know what? Fuck it! I'll do it myself. I'd appreciate help, of course. If this shit works, then fuck yeah! We all get to live a few more days in this miserable world, you all should thank me and give me some resources for saving your hairy asses."

"If it doesn't work, then hell it is! At the very least, I get to say that I did my absolute damnest to live in this pathetic excuse of a world. Anyways, toodles! I have a report to make."