Belli Mundi - Chapter 44
Seven officers are sitting at a large oval table. On one side are both of the trainers of the two recruit squads in Veritas, as well as the commander of the garrison. On the other side there is a tribune, a centurion and the right hand man of said centurion. The head of the table is taken by the legate of the fourth legion.
Trainer Quincy was talking about the two squads of recruits, with one of them being a well rounded out team, while the other squad was mostly made up of heavy hitters.
“The second squad, Irana’s squad, is also suspected of not being overly loyal to this legion. I believe that they were promised to get the benefits, after which they were promised to be transferred to the fifth legion before being discharged. At the moment I don’t have more information on what exactly they were promised.”
“That’s not true Quincy, they came to me because they wanted to better themselves and help out!”
“Stop it you two!” The legate is quick to stop the argument before it can devolve further.
Immediately the two quit bickering and start to apologize to the legate. Interrupting them, the commander of the garrison starts to explain about the plans for the near future.
“As I stated in my message, the current garrison just isn’t sufficient for our needs. Due to the dungeon break, we already needed extra manpower. Thus we already recalled some of the troops. To replace these men, we started to build a permanent camp near the dungeon. The original plan was to house both of the training squads there, as well as some veterans to help out the guards with the dungeon.”
“And I agreed to your plan. Your last message stated that there were some changes to be made though.”
“Yes sir, there was some information uncovered that drastically changed our plans.”
“Continue.”
“As you know, the recruits were sent out into the forests in lue of the adventurers that other countries have. We did this because there were some sightings of dangerous animals. They have been able to confirm these sightings. In fact, we are lucky that we didn’t lose any recruits.”
“So send out some veterans to clear out the dangers of the forests. That’s what we normally do, no reason to panic.”
“That’s not really possible, sir. The recruits found several patches of extremely valuable resources, which will indeed need some veterans to harvest. The more troubling thing is the presence of void cats.”
“Void cats? Those shouldn’t be anywhere near this area.”
“That’s correct. At first we thought that there was a small pack that had been driven all the we here, but the numbers didn’t add up. There are sightings all over the area, and several packs have already been taken out. We surmise that these cats come from a different dungeon. That would also explain the premature dungeon break of our dungeon. It’s known to some dungeon experts that a dungeon break happening near a second dungeon can in fact force the second one to break. That’s also the reason that every known cluster of dungeons will break at the same time.”
Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.
“A second dungeon, huh. That could be both a blessing and a curse. Do you have enough manpower to send out some scouts?”
“Excuse me, sirs,” trainer Quincy speaks up, “our recruits are both out there, so they might be able to tell us more about where they encountered more cats, thus narrowing down where the dungeon might be.”
At that moment the door of the meeting room was opened by one of the guards.
“Excuse me sirs, there are some recruits here with some important information.”
“Let them enter.”
Immediately a squad of recruits entered, who were right away recognised by the local officers as the squad trained by trainer Quincy. Showing their training, they came in front of the officers and stood at attention.
“You have something important enough to interrupt us?” The legate asked the squad.
“Yes sir, we think so.”
“Allright, on with it then.”
“Sir, as ordered we were exploring the forest. We chose the north east, as we thought that that might be a possible direction to find the new dungeon. And well, we did, sir.”
“You found the dungeon?!”
“We did, sir, it’s somewhat hidden in a crevice about three hours away. It took us way longer to find it though, but on the way back we found out that it wasn’t that far away.” As succinct as possible their adventure was told, including their exploration of the first floor of the dungeon.
As soon as the report was finished, Sam’s squad was asked to leave the room.
“Right, I’d say that we do have some more to discuss after all, gentlemen. What are your suggestions?” The legate started by asking his subordinates for their opinions.
“The first step has to be to secure that dungeon. We need some men over there to make sure that there won’t be another dungeon break.” The tribune is the first to answer.
“I agree, but the second step should be to eliminate those void cats and other creatures that have escaped into the wild. We don’t want them to breed. Maybe send those recruits to do that?” The centurion follows up on the plan, but trainer Quincy isn’t that happy with his solution.
“We shouldn’t send the recruits. They did well against the cats, but who knows what else has escaped. In my opinion we should put exploring the dungeon as our second step of the plan. Then we know what creatures are out there, thus minimizing the risk.”
“So you would have us set up a permanent base out there?”
“Yes, of course. This dungeon is close enough to Veritas to be both a boon and a danger. We can’t just have it out there undefended, but it would be quite a loss to destroy it. So let’s build another fortress out there with a small garrison. Depending on the depth of the dungeon, we could massively increase our fighting capabilities against the undead by doing so.”
“He is right, you know,” the legate finally speaks up, “even if the cats were the only creatures in there, we would be able to train against void beasts. But the recruits also found shadow beetles, which means that that dungeon could have both darkness and void as its affinities. It isn’t an undead affinity, at least I hope the dungeon doesn’t have that, but we have enough undead creatures at the wall to fulfill all our needs on that front.
That means that I will have you, centurion, take command of both of the recruit squads. You will move out in two days to the dungeon to set up a defensive position. That should be easy with that crevice there. You can take one of the squads from your previous command as well. Our trainers here will recruit as many new soldiers in the next five weeks to hopefully fill out your new command. If they can’t find another five squads of recruits, they will get some of the lower leveled soldiers from our other active garrisons. We will keep building the new camp outside of the city as well, but as we have already had a dungeon break, it won’t be a priority for now. Oh and centurion, remember that these are recruits, you will be in charge of finishing up their training. Use your access to that dungeon to turn them in a force to be reckoned with.”