The knight who entered looked pale, was panting heavily and looked like he could barely stand on his two feet as he was relying on the other two knights to stand.
Although the Brigade Captain's actions could be considered rude and disrespectful on so many levels, the highest-ranked people here, the Duke Charles and Sir Luke, who was incidentally the head of the Bowthe Duchy, could not care less.
The appearance of the heavily panting knight was enough to tell them that something serious was up.
Eliza, quickly moved towards the man before Amelie or Heinr could, placing a hand on his shoulder and using life magic on him while Evan pulled out a bottle of water from his inventory.
His erratic breathing lessened and his pale complexion brightened up noticeably, and after downing the bottle of water from Evan like he hadn't drunk water in years, the man finally calmed down enough to speak.
He stood on his own two feet and despite his slightly shaking legs, did a proper salute before speaking.
"Saunau County Knight Division Vice Captain!
Reporting! Sir!
One! A swarm of undead forces numbering in the tens of thousands have attacked and…and…
They've attacked and wiped out a satellite city Southwest of Saunau.
The phenomena we were instructed to watch out for were confirmed to have occurred.
The soil was blackened with darkness deeper than the night and all who fell, instantly rose up once more as undead."
The knight's expression as he spoke was contorted and there were slight traces of tears dripping from the sides of his eyes, however, he grit his teeth and continued with his report before anyone could speak.
"Two!
The Superior Dullahans and undead forces in the fallen city Paglad have shown signs of movement.
From the last visuals of them, their predicted destination is Bultom Dungeon City."
The instant the Knight finished speaking, his body went limp and he dropped to the floor, however, Evan moved and caught him before he collapsed, patting the man's back and murmuring something to him.
After passing the unconscious knight's body to his fellow knights who took him away for proper medical treatment, Evan turned back to the rest of the people in the room with a solemn look on his face.
"Duke…"
"I know."
They didn't need to say anymore, everyone present had been briefed before, as such they instantly understood something from the Knight's report.
The Eighth Finger had moved in person for the first time since the Simultaneous attack three weeks ago, and the Dullahans of Paglad who had been keeping to themselves were beginning to mobilize.
This could only mean one thing;
'That shit's about to get real.'
Sir Luke dropped all his questions and concerns about Yetu, pulling out a communicator that looked like a pager from his jacket and pressing a button on it.
There was a short static noise, followed by a beep, with a voice ringing out from it a moment later.
"Major General."
[What are your orders, Lieutenant General?]
"Assemble all the Divisions.
Every single man we brought with us. The ones hidden in the satellite towns and the ones mixed in with the Knights and Churches' Holy Knights.
Assemble them all."
[?!]
The Major General on the other end of the line was momentarily shocked, but it only lasted a second as he immediately replied.
[I shall be done with immediate effect, Sir.]
At the exact same time, Guild Master Dasyra had already gotten up and excused herself from the room, sending a message to the Mercenaries guild leader who was in Bultom as she and the S ranker and Yetu made their way back to the guild.
Within minutes, all Adventurers in Bultom and the surrounding satellite towns received an Emergency quest notification on their guild cards.
The mercenaries were no different, as although their main line of work came from wars and similar endeavours, an event like the current undead crisis wasn't something they could just ignore or leave to the adventurers alone.
The Count who was silent throughout the majority of the meeting also pulled out an emergency communicator and spoke into it, sending out an order to declare Bultom under 'State of Emergency'.
As the city's warning alarms began blaring wildly, Amelie and Heinr returned to the Church to assemble all their forces, while Sir Czac instantly transmitted the situation to the Senior Mages who moved to gather the rest of the mages scattered around Bultom
Duke Charles and Evan gave out mobilization orders for the Knight brigades of Cheverton and the battalion sent by Duke Roger.
All forces involved, Knights, Holy Knights, Army Soldiers, Adventurers, Mercenaries, and Mages, mobilized instantly, with the Civilians and other non-combatants, either steering clear to not obstruct them or doing their best to assist in the little ways they could.
The lords of all Cheverton's counties and Marquisates were immediately informed of the situation, instantly declaring all the towns and cities in their territories to be on high alert as there was still the slight possibility of the Dullahan's movements being a diversionary tactic with the real targets being the rest of the Duchy.
Some certain people were of the opinion that all of this was a hoax and it was simply impossible for these necromancers behind the undead incident to have enough undead to threaten the entire duchy and its millions of citizens.
However, these certain people did not know that the lead necromancer involved had been hoarding undead monsters for over a decade, such that despite the fact that the combined forces of the church, knights, army, adventurers, mercenaries and other individual forces had killed tens of thousands of undead monsters over the past three weeks, the Eighth Finger still had tens of thousands more in stock, along with a group of powerful death knights, a Dullahan King collaborator and his subordinate Dullahans and nightmare horses.
Not to talk of the Eighth Finger's trump card that was so powerful that among the Grandmaster's present, only Sir Luke was capable of defeating it.
"…And for him to do that, he's gonna have to release that silly limiter he put on himself."
"What…?"
"How do you…?!"
Both Duke Charles and Sir Luke's surprised voices rang out immediately after Evan's small mutter. Despite how low his voice was, it wasn't low enough to escape the superhuman hearing of Grandmaster-level existences.
Evan turned towards the stunned Dukes and sighed before pointing at his eyes and saying.
"In case you have forgotten, my skill is called 'FULL' appraisal, not just appraisal. Take note of that."
Dropping his hand, he locked gazes with Sir Luke and continued.
"Besides, you are someone who served as the 'First Sword' during the Former Emperor's reign, there's no way on Aidos that what you're currently showing is your full power."
Shaking his head while muttering something about strange old men in fantasy novels always being 'unexpectedly' powerful, the boy turned around and moved towards the Church as he tried contacting Artemisia, leaving behind the dumbfounded trio of Second, Third and Fourth Swords.
◇ ◇ ◇
Despite Evan's small distraction, the three men didn't let it take up much of their time, quickly getting back to work soon after.
By the end of the day, majority of the combat forces that could be mobilized in the entirety of the Bultom and other surrounding counties had gathered and were ready to march forward.
Staying back and waiting for Vazgan to get to Bultom was obviously going to be the worst possible idea as a battle between multiple grandmasters would leave Bultom Dungeon City in ruins within a few minutes, so the plan was to meet and clash against the incoming undead in the midpoint between Bultom City and Paglad; the Savannas that laid North West of the Bultom County.
Scouts were sent out to confirm the authenticity of the information about the Dullahan's movements and it was indeed confirmed that they were marching via the predicted route.
From the speed of their march, it was inferred that the undead and the coalition resistance force would just barely meet each other towards the middle of the expected battlefield.
No movements of any kind were detected coming from Saunau, which was even more unsettling as this was all but confirmed to be the Eighth Finger's main base of operations.
An entire division of the army troops was assigned to keep watch on the North Central Area while the rest of the combat force advanced Northwest.
Obviously, said advance continued the next morning after the combatants had used the night to rest in preparation for the D-Day.
Though a lot of them could barely get any proper rest at first as they had to be on the lookout for any pre-emptive attacks by the undead, but luckily, there were none of such attacks.
The night was calm, eerily so, and everyone involved knew that this calm, was only the calm before the storm.
At a time as early as 6 am the next day, the combatants set forth once more, moving forward for a bit over an hour before the scouts reported that they were closing in on the undead forces.
The march was halted and final preparations for the main battle began, with some of the troops taking this time to get a little bit of rest as from what happened during Operation Synchro taught them, they were gonna be fighting for hours on end.
By 8 am on the last day of April, Year 1052 of the 51st General Calendar, the Undead Resistance Coalition force visually sighted the incoming army of the Dullahan King.
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