Only a week passed after the tavern massacre, normally, a slaughter wasn’t exactly a cause for rapid investigations or anything, people ending up as chew toys for some random monster or a random maniac going on a rampage was at the bottom of the list of important things.
At least when the victims were no name farmers and peasants from a remote, destitute city.
However, the word that the cause was an undead hadn’t been kept a secret, not at all, Robert had spread the word to his men, who all repeated it to their wives and children, who in turn spread it around with impressive speed.
Harold even held a speech about it, where he pronounced the word ’undead’ so many times that it barely sounded like a word by the end of it.
The mayor and captain of the guard knew exactly what they were doing, the information spread out quickly, and it quickly reached ears that did nothing but wait to hear about the walking corpses.
After just one more additional week, the death hunters had already arrived, it was like they had been waiting close-by, but in truth, they were just very fast when it mattered.
Harold and Robert stood side by side, honestly quite in shock at their supernatural swiftness, they were like a bunch of moths drawn to a light, flocking and hitting their heads against the glass of a lantern repeatedly.
Much like the fuzzy insects, leaving after being attracted would prove difficult unless they found a satisfactory conclusion to what they called, ’the undead filth’.
"Have you two gotten the guild ready?" Robert asked two other men standing nearby, Frank and Louis had been burdened with an actual job to do, which was to accommodate the guild for the flood of death hunters, though they had vastly underestimated those fanatics, they were way more of them than one could expect.
Those numbers could actually make some very small countries sweat a bit, and this was just those that had gotten there for now, no one could tell when more would show up.
"We strongly believe that it was a skeleton, it’s remains were put on display at the guild, if you want to inspect it, one of its arms is pinned with nails to one of the farms, it is still moving and trying to latch onto people" Robert had to keep stepping back because she kept trying to get uncomfortably close.
"Also, I am married" he added defensively, perhaps he would have normally been flattered that a younger woman was interested in him, but she seriously creeped him out, like, just her presence made him feel soiled.
"Huhuh, a skeleton? A smart skeleton all on its own?" ignoring his last words, she piled up the questions for a few more minutes until Robert had nothing more to tell her.
She rubbed her chin thoughtfully, the captain noticed a reflection inside of her right sleeve as she did so, she was probably carrying weapons everywhere on her person.
"Hum, hum..." she smiled again.
"You say it ejected its skull into the ravine this way?" Robert nodded his head.
"If I am not mistaken, that’s the Elephant Cave System, it spreads in every direction, linked to hundreds and thousands of caves everywhere, certain portions are also nearly impossible to navigate, either environmentally speaking or due to the monster populations..." she clicked the lenses of her glasses in, completely obstructing her eyes with a dark shade.
She shrugged her shoulders dismissively.
"By the way, my name is Rummy" she ran her gloved hands through her curly short blonde hair.
"Your wife would never know old man, let’s go out sometime" then she strolled away, Robert heaved a sigh of relief.
’Dear gods, I hope not all the death hunters are like that, they better find undeads to kill, otherwise I fear what will happen if they stay here for too long’ he took off his helm and just leaned up against a wall.