"That will be good, but…"
"Don't dream about reclaiming the city," Rick shook his head, "even if my dark master is here, he wouldn't be able to control these monsters."
"I thought dark masters can control monsters," Richard looked in doubt towards Rick, and the latter bitterly smiled.
"It's indeed true, but with certain conditions. These monsters are much stronger than any of us. So they won't listen to any of what we'd say. It's better to drop the idea of reclaiming the city after this."
"Tsk! I wanted to get my hands over the portal area again, in that underground city…"
"Don't fret, we have the rest of the world open for us," Rick laughed, "and on top of that, I know that bastard won't fall there. He will retreat, lose everything he built so far, and will come later for my master seeking revenge."
"I want to be there," Richard said in pure enmity and hatred, "I want to see that damn youth getting crushed, captured, tortured, before he'd die."
"Don't worry," Rick also shared the same level of enmity and hatred towards William as Richard showed, "we'll get to see such a fantastic scene. I want to see the look over my sister when that jerk will die, hahahaha! She selected him over the family, and I selected the dark side over the family. I bet my dear grandfather will be totally furious if he heard all this, hahaha!"
"What are you talking about?" Richard didn't get anything from what Rick just said. And the latter waved his arm before adding amidst his laughs, "let's prepare for the final showdown. Keep in touch with other forces in the city. Once they empty the place, we'll start rolling the dice."
"Got it!"
Like this, the hour of the final showdown got decided. And without William realising it, the casual idea he told Lara about was going to save them lots of time.
As Lara ended speaking with him, she started to act. The first thing she did was to spread lots of her family masters among the city, recruiting openly to defend the city.
The various forces' higher ups might hold deep grudges against the Vancouf family, but not the normal masters. Just hearing the order to retreat, abandon the place everyone called home for long generations was enough to make many felt rage against such a situation.
Many already started speaking among themselves about this weird situation. The idea of acting rebellious against such clear treason and cowardice decision was fermenting and brimming silently under the calm water surface.
The fuse that ignited everything into a blazing fire of rebellion came when the Vancouf family members spread the news over. The open recruitment movement was enough to lure many to join their side.
At the same time, William's guild also started to act at the same time. William's guild name became known and famous in the city after the last war. And so it wasn't a surprise for many to seriously consider joining the guild.
Right now, wealth and payment didn't matter, values were all that mattered. In the eyes of many, their leaders betrayed them, while the Vancouf family and Fox guild were doing the right thing morally.
William didn't know that, but the leaders of the various forces and families in the city panicked while watching many of their forces leave their side, voluntarily join their enemies.
This came out of the blue, out of their planning and scheming. They misjudged the entire situation, ending up losing close to half of their remaining forces in mere hours!
That forced them to delay the departing plans, try to focus on the remaining half, trying to make them stay and not leave their side.
Instead of leaving in an hour or two as planned, they had to wait for at least twelve hours, trying their best to control the remaining half they got, promising them lots of things to keep themselves in their forces.
This wasn't just to prevent the Vancouf family from getting the help of these masters. It was also for their future. These forces knew they'd end up in a more miserable fate if they went out of here with just little forces on their side. This would end up for them having much worse offers from any place they'd walk towards.
And after all this time, they failed to keep many of their masters. They ended up with less than twenty percent of what they initially had. And like this, they started to hate the Vancouf family and Fox guild even more. On top of that, the offer of Richard seemed to be more tempting right now.
No one was a fool. They already guessed that Richard was working for the dark side. And that offer was simply asking them to join the dark masters and betray the cause of the humans.
Yet as they already started walking down the road of betrayal, they didn't see it weird or hard to join the dark masters' side.
But they underestimated the resolve and forgot for a moment the hatred and enmity of the general spirit master community against dark ones. The moment the news spread out, about the planning of the remaining forces and families to join the dark camp, most of the remaining masters on their side left.
Even families broke apart on their own! Brothers left and cousins fought each other. It was crazy, and none of the leaders of these forces and families ever imagined such a fierce response.
They simply overlooked something that was considered as the general law in the entire world. And thanks to that, they got a fierce backlash, one that made them ruin the little things left for them.
They wasted nearly twenty hours trying to salvage what they ended up destroying with their own hands. When Lara got the news, she couldn't help but fall off her seat out of laughter.
William was busy fighting with the monsters for all this time.
This content is taken from (f)reewe(b)novel.𝗰𝗼𝐦