The next several weeks were filled with intense training and preparation. Duke took more trips into the city, trying to push his DUNGEON SENSE Ability higher. He did succeed, pushing it up to Adept 14, but was still not able to pick out a single individual in the vast crowd of undead. He did see that things were continuing to deteriorate in the city. The night patrols were now almost entirely vampires now. Although Duke couldn’t tell on sight, his IDENTIFY was able to distinguish them easily. He considered killing more off but held back to observe their behavior.
He followed another group of five vampires into one of the poorer districts. When he saw them going into a home, he couldn’t resist stepping in. The only question in his mind was whether to kill the vampires inside the home or to pull them out and take them down where the family wouldn’t be at risk. The risk of the second choice is that others would be alerted by the fight.
He decided that he could limit the risk to the family and TELEPORTED into the house. His sudden appearance startled the vampires enough that they released their victims to face him. Duke didn’t wait for them to move.
“You should not have entered this house unbidden, monsters.” Duke stated imperiously. As one moved to speak, Duke TELEPORTED their heads off. Their resistances were negligible, less than the previous group had been. The screaming as the vampire’s enchantment over the family broke at the same moment they vampires’ bodies started fountaining dark blood was unfortunate. Duke quickly moved the vampires heads and bodies into his INVENTORY and activated a CLEANSE to remove the mess. Suddenly, the whole home was clean as well as the family before them.
“Sorry about that, folks. I just couldn’t let the vampires hurt you.” Duke apologized to the traumatized family, the father pushing his wife and children behind him.
“Who are you and what is this all about?” The man demanded, doing a surprisingly good job at keeping his panic in check.
Duke smiled disarmingly, pushing his most friendly and calming demeanor through his Psyche. “I’m just someone who doesn’t like it when power gets abused. Those were vampires that we coming to feed off you. This city is crawling with them every night. I suggest that you gather your things and flee this place while you still can. I’d say tell your friends as well, but the more that know, the greater chance that word slips out and none of you will be allowed to leave.”
Duke wasn’t happy about having to lay it out like that, but he was walking a line between rescuing people, setting off a full-blown panic, and alerting King Chopie, Duke Negron, and his allies to the populace’s awareness of what was going on. He was surprised by the response he received.
“I can’t just walk away when others are in such danger. My friends, my neighbors, they all need to know what’s going on so we can all get out.”
“Idiot. What did I tell you? If they catch wind of anyone realizing what’s going on, they’ll lock this whole city down so fast, no one will get out. I’m trying to help you out here. Don’t you see that?”
“Sir, I do see that. I see it clearly, but my honor will not allow me to run away and leave others in danger.”
Duke paused in his argument. Dammit, it can’t just be easy, can it. Fine, we’ll play it differently. “OK, here’s what I’m going to do. Tomorrow night, I am going to come back and take as many people out of this city as want to leave. But first, I’ll need to clear the vampires out of the way. Is there any place you can gather people where they won’t be seen? And what’s your name, anyway?”
“The name is Bartow Bollistis. And yours?” He extended his hand to shake.
“The name’s Duke. Let me repeat that for you. The name is Duke. Not a title, a name.” He took the man’s hand and shook it.
“Well, thank you, Duke for saving my family. There’s a shared warehouse about two blocks west of here. You can’t miss it – it’s the largest building in the neighborhood. I’ll gather everyone there that I can tomorrow night. See you then. Come in through the red door – I’ll make sure it’s open.”
“See you then.” Duke TELEPORTED back to the Inn. He had plans to make.
The following morning, Duke had gathered his team back around the command table to discuss what was going to happen that night.
“Are you sure you can pull this off, Duke?” Elaine asked.
“I can TELEPORT twenty people at a time effortlessly. If I pour extra Mana into it, I am sure I can get one hundred in a shot. Even if there’s a thousand people crammed into that warehouse, that’s only ten trips. No problem. What I need is people on this end to help everyone get settled in the Inn. Aurelia, that is where you come in. I want troops on hand to handle both security and to direct people to the Inn. In a crowd that large, expect there to be some troublemakers, so be ready, and keep the people spread-out as much as practical. I’ll bring them in at different spots to make that easier. Grat, please make some areas that are easily identifiable as separate staging locations. Elaine, if there’s someone particularly troubling, take them down but try not to kill them. Any questions or suggestions?”
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Baslin answered. “I can set up a calming enchantment in the, what did you call them? Oh yes. Landing zones. That should help things from getting out of hand.”
“Good. I like it. Anything else?” Duke responded. After pausing for a bit, he continued. “OK, the plan is set. I’m going to hit the vampires hard and fast before this all gets going. Afterwards, I’ll hop on back here to give you a heads-up that Operation Midnight Escape is commencing. Until then, take the day to make any preparations you have to and be ready.”
Duke spent the rest of the day in the training dungeon, practicing killing vampires. Sam was able to ramp the difficulty up for Duke so that he could push his limits. He found that the TELEPORTATION beheading trick was far more difficult to pull off against a tier three and nearly impossible against a tier four vampire. He also discovered that trying to do more than six at a time required additional Mana infusion which ramped up quickly. All-in-all, he was satisfied with his training and joined everyone for dinner.
Dinner was filled with excited banter around the upcoming rescue. Duke was excited to finally be taking steps to clear civilians out of the city. He figured that if they were able to clear the civilian population out of the city, they could start military operations as well. He just hoped the army was ready. First things first. This is only one neighborhood. It will take a whole lot more to evacuate an entire city.
After dinner, Duke took a tour of the landing zones so that he was familiar with the spots and could TELEPORT the civilians to the right spots. His mood buoyed, he had one last check-in with the team, took a quick look at the troops, and TELEPORTED to the city.
Duke went around the city, his IDENTIFY Ability pointing out the groups of vampires out on patrol this night. He counted more than seventy patrols of five vampires each. With a shrug, he began eliminating them. His practice both earlier in the city and in the dungeon showed that if he could catch them by surprise, his chances of instantly killing them increased greatly so that’s exactly how he approached the situation. There were just so many low-level vampires among them that Duke concluded that they were all newly turned.
Within an hour, all of the more than seventy vampire guard patrols had been eliminated with only a few short scuffles from those who resisted. Duke made sure to collect the bodies and CLEANSE the areas so that nothing lingered behind. Anyone who investigated, would find that the vampires had disappeared without a trace. Duke smirked. Time for the vampires to fear what moves in the shadows of night. He moved to the warehouse for the next stage of the operation.
The warehouse was exactly as Bartow had described. It was a single, large building that had multiple entrances on each side. The building itself was square, roughly 80 meters on each side. Duke quickly found the red door that Bartow had described. He quietly opened the door and entered. As expected, Bartow was waiting for him by the door. He smiled when he saw Duke.
“I’m glad to see you, Duke. I gathered everybody I could. They are in the warehouse proper, waiting for us. There are a lot who have questions, but they are all ready to evacuate.”
Duke smiled in return. “That’s great. How many did you gather and did any not come?”
Bartow led Duke through a receiving area and into the warehouse proper where the lighting was better. Small glowing lights hung from the warehouse ceiling as Duke saw the sea of people before him. “I gathered the entire district. There’s over a thousand of us here waiting for you.” Bartow seemed proud of how many he had gathered.
Duke could not help but be impressed. “That’s more than I had expected, but we’re still good. This is going to take some time, so we had better get started. I’ll take them in groups of one hundred at a time. Are they ready, or do they need persuasion?”
Bartow chuckled. “Oh, they are so ready to get this started. This city is not what it once was. Not by a longshot.”
Duke nodded and walked over to the crowd. “OK, please form up in blocks of ten-by-ten people. That will make this go by faster.” The word spread through the crowd quickly and they all started moving into position. It took nearly twenty minutes to get fully organized but Duke lost himself in the process.
Once they were ready, Duke began TELEPORTING the groups to the Inn. The first five groups went without much trouble and Duke’s confidence was growing. He was interrupted by a shout from the receiving area. “Guards are coming!” Duke immediately TELEPORTED to the receiving area to see what was going on. As he arrived, the door opened, and five guards entered trailed by a short, thin, cloaked figure.
The cloaked figure asked, “What is going on here?” Bartow looked to Duke to answer and took a step back, placing Duke between himself and the dark figure. Duke nodded at him, considering it a wise move. He stepped forward to speak with this dark figure.
“It’s inventory night. We’re just going through things to make a proper accounting. It wouldn’t do to get our counts off and miss our tax numbers. Right?”
The figure moved forward, stepping up into Duke’s personal space. It reached up and threw its hood back, looking Duke dead in the eyes. “You should not have come back here, Duke.”
Duke’s IDENTIFY Ability involuntarily triggered in shock, confirming what he saw. Duke took an reflexive step backwards as he gazed upon the Vampire Lord, Lasandra. His mind locked in place seeing his former Leviathan teammate grinning up at him, her fangs glistening in the wan light coming in through the door.
“But I’m glad you did.” She smiled at Duke’s shock, her grin widening as some sort of magical beam slammed into the back of his head. In an instant, more than100,000 of his Health was gone, and everyone exploded into action.