Author note; sorry this is a bit te. Had some health fre ups this week and needed more rest. I'll try to have better releases next week.

  Chapter 222 Part C10

  Demon Alliance

  Location: Hero Sying Guild Leader’s Office, Demon teeth cities,

  In a rge room the hero sying guild leader was watching a bunch of air screens with a room full of mages and advisors. It was a combat monitoring room. The irony was the room looked almost just like its human counterpart, and even had simir types of staff and personnel. Only it was run by demons to hunt humans. And the ‘adventurers’ here in this ‘adventurer’s guild’ were here here to sy human ‘monsters’. The staff of the receptionists was also here still, though they were mostly succubus race, and… non-combatants.

  “Any chance we can bring in another gate mage?” one of the advisors asked the leader.

  “Gate mages are expensive, I would remind you,” the primary advisor reminded the other one with grit teeth. “We could only hire one because they are both rare, expensive, and not many can reach the level of power required for this job.”

  “That’s why we only have one so far. But there’s another we could hire. But not cheap. It would require asking for a budget extension,” a receptionist, who specialized in HR said.

  “The bosses don’t like us going over budget,” the vice guild leader said.

  “We already have one gate mage. We only need 1,” the guild leader said.

  “The one we sent is A rank. He’s the best we can afford. He sure gouged us on the contract for this,” another advisor said.

  “But there is more like him that we can send right?” another advisor asked.

  “We could send others. But we will surpass our budget. If we do that, then that will take away budget from sending in fighters and other warriors,” the receptionist stated.

  “Are we close to the limit of our budget allocation for human sying teams?” another advisor asked.

  “We’ve already allocating 95% of our budget for staff on this project. There’s not much else we can do. We already put in py everyone we could. Everyone worth it will cost more than 5% to put into py. The teams are already fixed,” the second receptionist stated.

  They looked at the viewing monitors. Right now with the gate open inside the fae intelligence facility. The ‘camera views’ showed the demons were watching the battle of their forces against the enemy alliance of fae, humans, and a few other races which consisted of beastkin and dwarves also. The battle was already in py, now they were just going over mid-py adjustments to see if they could pull their side through just a bit more to an advantage, and correct anything they’d missed. Although humans living inside the fae city were the majority, even outnumbering the fae themselves. (Which the fae didn’t mind having extra fodder to employ.)

  The Imp Summoner was currently showing off the most and at the front entrance. He currently had over 50 imps summoned. He alone had been holding off entire teams of their enemy, the humans and fae and their allies.

  “That’s truly amazing. Just 1 guy is doing all that,” an observer noted.

  “The rest of his team isn’t doing so well,” another observer said.

  “How the hell does he do that? There’s so many of them?!” the succubus secretary asked the advisor near her.

  “The imp summoner is truly impressive. Just saying his name its clear who it is. THE imp summoner. Nobody actually even knows his name,” an advisor said.

  “Can you imagine being so infamous that just mentioning you people crawl away in fear?” someone said.

  “No idea. But even I’m jealous. A normal summoner can only keep about 4 summons in py. Occasionally you run into someone who can summon 5. But never that many, to summon as many as this guy. Nobody knows how this guy does it. He won’t say either, despite pressure from other mages and the princes,” the advisor said.

  They continued to observe.

  “Wait, I don’t recognize that st team. Why are they so short?” someone asked.

  “That’s the dwarven regiment we hired as mercenaries. It was a st minute acquisition on the cheap,” a receptionist said it almost like it was an apology.

  “Damn dwarves… they are so much trouble.”

  “At least they are on our side…this time anyway.”

  “Eh? Dwarves sying humans? IS that wise? They could switch sides,” someone said.

  “No. Those are from… that one pce. The dark dwarf town. The one that is a pain in the ass to get to.”

  “Oh I see.”

  “So how many teams are we up to?” someone asked.

  “We’ve sent 8 teams in. Each team has a minimum of 10 people. Of those 3 teams have summoners,” the receptionist stated.

  “They don’t look like they are doing very good. What happened?” someone frowned.

  “… they started out winning. Now its this street pizza mess. That one guy’s intestines are covering that whole entrance now.”

  “Oh. That’s what that spaghetti mess is. I was wondering about that.”

  “Yeah that dwarf uh… took a blunt force mana explosion attack.”

  “Dwarf guts seem to shred more messy than other species...”

  “You got that right. Its even worse that he’d just had a meal before they went into combat.”

  “stop that. You guys talk to much. Stick to business. What’s going on with our teams. Status please,” a secretary succubus asked.

  “OK. Show me the roster please. I want this business like also,” the guild leader said. (He’d put the smug vice guild leader in charge of this project, because he was his own boss’s son. The son of the prince. But he didn’t like it, and it meant he needed to babysit the job.)

  The vice guild leader nodded to his favorite succubus receptionist. (She was his only receptionist. The other 2 succubus receptionist the guild leader had assisting himself.)

  “Show me what you’ve done,” the leader said.

  The succubus recepionist #3 showed the vice guild leader’s roster. It showed;

  Team 1; 11 berzerker demons

  Team 2; 12 imp race warriors, 2 mages (rgest team in numbers)

  Team 3; 4 golems, 2 offensive mages, 2 ‘shielding mages, 2 buffers

  Team 4; 8 high kobold team, mixed csses led by an elite kobold shaman.

  Team 5; Undead Team; 6 skeleton warriors, 3 necromancers leading

  Team 6; vampire team A (all vampires, except the imp summoner on that team)

  Team 7; vampire team B (unknown mixes and csses)

  Team 8; 1 dark elf team of assassins, 12 in number. No healers, one buffer.

  Bonus team; 1 dark dwarf team (csses unknown, all wearing heavy armor, wide variety of weapons).

  “There’s the roster sir.”

  “OK. But that’s not showing me how many are KIA. What’s the status?” the guild leader asked.

  “An hour ago the skirmish began. All teams are deployed covering the entrances except for the golem team,” the succubus secretary reported.

  “Why hasn’t that st team you just mentioned entered combat?”

  “They are trying to free our giant, and work it out of the building guts by blunt trauma,” the vice guild leader said smugly.

  “That could take time. Its stuck in there like glue,” an observer mage said.

  “If you lose that giant, we’ll be punished. We weren’t supposed to deploy it yet,” one advisor said.

  “Kill that man. I don’t like my advisor’s showing any lip. So disrespectful,” the vice guild leader said to his bodyguard nodding.

  The bodyguard moved forward.

  “Cancel that order. Next time you touch my staff, I’ll kill you myself,” the guild leader said. “The advisor you wanted to kill is the one responsible for most of our victories. IF you kill him, we lose that.”

  “But I’m in charge of this mission,” the vice guild leader said.

  “Because of your daddy sure. But may I remind you we all pay a price of failure. The princes don’t tolerate failure. And that includes you. And I won’t have you breaking my toys like a dumb ass,” the guild leader said.

  “When I’m in charge for real the first thing I’ll do is kill you myself,” the vice guild leader said sneering in mock and hate.

  “Really? Well let’s take care of that now if you want to challenge me. Let’s go at it right now punk. May I remind you I’ve fought your older brother before. That’s why he’s missing a leg and an arm,” the guild leader said.

  The vice guild leader frowned and his eyes widened. “That was you?” he looked afraid now. He’s trembling in his boots now and not going to pull his sword out now. The bodyguard with him looked unsure about what to do, though it looked like he’d been about to sneak up behind the guild leader to help the vice leader ‘win’.

  “So you want to challenge me still for leadership?” the leader drew his sword.

  “I withdraw my challenge,” the vice leader looked cowed.

  “I thought so. Now back to the battle. You can spend the rest of the battle kneeling on your knees. Show me a status,” the primary leader said.

  The vice guild leader wasn’t so happy. Things weren’t going well.

  If only that damn foxkin girl and that one protection mage hadn’t shown up. They were the ones that had caused this! Everything they’d been wining dramatically even until that point of change.

  “Team 8 has 3 people remaining. The rest are KIA. The undead team is completely wiped out except for the st necromancer. The dwarf team has 2 people still alive, there was a third but he killed himself when he saw his hips and legs were blown off, screaming something about his… uh never mind. Teams 1, 2, and 4 are wiped out, no survivors. Basically our whole deployment… well they uh... aren’t doing well,” the succubus secretary for the vice leader said slowly and in low tones.

  “Why did we lose so many? Our initial intelligence mages predicted a win. And its completely changed now,” an advisor fumed angrily.

  “We should have won with only 10 to 20% losses also. We ran that simution six times with the same result! They had the whole building infiltrated also,” advisor #2 frowned.

  “What went wrong?” the guild leader said.

  Nobody wanted to speak up.

  “Tell me. Or I’ll start slitting throats. Its intolerable to lose this many people and after bungling this so bdly,” the guild leader roared.

  “Its… that foxkin girl and the protection mage on the other exit. They weren’t factored into our initial screening and prediction spells,” secretary #2 spoke up.

  “That’s possible,” the first succubus secretary added.

  “Your sure about that?” the advisor asked.

  “That’s me thinking on my feet. That’s what my guts telling me. But there hasn’t been time to check the data. They are the outliers that don’t fit,” the secretary replied.

  One of the mages did some kind of spell and then his air screen changed. “Its as she says. Those 2 weren’t in our initial analysis. We’d ran prediction and simution spells on everything. Those 2 vriables are the only thing different. Everyone else is accounted for. None of them could have produced a result like this.”

  “Damn it. The prince is going to be enraged. He’ll want heads for this. We were supposed to open the gate for his invasion. But he won’t want to bet his armada on a losing trojan horse!” the guild leader screamed.

  Then he slit the throat of the vice guilder so fast nobody even noticed.

  “Send his head to his daddy as the price of failure,” the guild leader said.

  “Um, won’t his daddy be mad and want revenge?”

  “Are you kidding? His dad told me to do it this way. He has 63 other sons anyway. Losing only 1 won’t hurt. He kills them also if they fail missions,” the guild leader expined.

  “I have a question...”

  “Hurry up say it,” the leader snapped.

  “We can just send the armada in anyway can’t we? Why not just go ahead with it,” a mage in the room asked.

  “Its not that simple,” the primary secretary succubus said carefully gncing at her boss.

  “She’s right. You don’t send them following a failure. You need to send them when they have accomplished something big and when the door is already open. This has turned into disaster. If those 2 variables hadn’t been here we would have had the armada go in. Now the head prince won’t like it.”

  “I don’t understand,” an advisor said.

  “This mission was to find and probe a weakness. The pn was only to send in the armada when we’d probed weakness. Its like you don’t hit someone in their hardest part of their armor. Instead you catch them by surprise. That’s why we have to stop this. Mage message the head prince. Tell him to cancel the mission. Recall our reamaining elite troops before we lose who is still remaining,” the guild leader said.

  A few seconds passed as the orders were transmitted.

  “Messages confirmed,” one mage said.

  “Backup messages sent and confirmed,” a second demon mage said.

  But then the combat monitoring spell screens showed the imp summoner just get killed.

  “Fuck. That was our best game piece,” an advisor sighed.

  “They killed the imp summoner?! How?!” even the guild leader was shocked.

  They couldn’t even speak.

  “Wait. Wasn’t he invincible?”

  “He’s thought… to be invincible. I don’t understand.”

  The imp summoner… WAS the demon’s side hero piece. He’d been unbeaten for over 70 years. And seen countless battles.

  “What the fuck just happened?! We just lost our main hero,” an advisor said.

  The room was dead quiet. They were in complete shock.

  “How...”

  “Our hero idol...”

  “I named my son after him… fuck...”

  “The price of failure just went up. Just sending 1 head to the prince won’t be enough. Sorry about this,” the guild leader apologized to the advisor who had been helping the now deceased vice guild leader.

  Now that guy’s head was rolling on the floor also.

  “Make sure you send out an alert and an information query on that one defensive mage and the foxkin beast woman. If I’m not mistaken he’s probably at archmage level of power. Before we can send the invasion in I want those 2 dead. Find out everything you can about them. Where they sleep, what they eat. Who they are. All of it,” the guild leader said frowning.

  “On it sir.”

  “We’ll dispatch the best spies right now.”

  The guild leader just kept swearing in frustration as he walked back to his desk. Now he needed a way to come up with something quickly before the prince saw their best game pieces were damaged.

  …

  But less than 2 hours ter good news came in. And some not so good.

  First, the imp summoner had somehow survived, despite being ‘killed’. He was trapped in the fae city’s recycling center somehow though when he woke up and realized where his body was. They didn’t have a way to retrieve him yet. And both sides were now hunting for him. Word had gotten out that his body was missing from the site. And both teams were both sponsoring adventurer quest missions to get him first.

  ...

  One of the dark elf girls had reported that they’d managed to still assassinate most the leaders in the fae intelligence center, which technically did make the job worth it.

  And rumors were that 2 dark elves that had previously thought been dead were now missing and believed to have used ‘fake death’ skills.

  ...

  Prince Nero was overdue reporting for his infiltration mission. And the higher ups were now worried.

  …

  A nearby dwarven kingdom has pledge reinforcements to the fae, in exchange for mineral rights in the nearby mountain ranges. Both sides are now also sending diplomats and quest missions for adventurers to rush contact with the dwarves to sway them to their own side first.

  …

  Rumors persist that the imp summoner, got away with some thing new. Some kind of secret he’d uncovered from the fae intelligence building. Both sides want that secret. But nobody knows ‘which secret’ it is, since that building had tons of secrets in them.

  …

  The silver succubus surrendered early on in the fight, ciming she broke a nail. She was taken in for questioning by fae agents. Only when they were due to arrive on site at the containment facility she wasn’t there with them and the fae agents couldn’t remember anything for the past 24 hours.