And time passed, the rampaging defilers and puppeteers ceased all actions nearly a year after the start of it all, their numbers and the damage they caused were never great, but it was like they had all been lined up, waiting for a spot to free itself, as though they had been playing the long game.
The death hunters, a great group constituted of only men and women of great valour, was officially associated to the merchant kingdom of Tamaris, the recent actions taken by the neutral nation had gotten its allies worried, still refusing to yield to the warnings of both Quideos Audit and Agilulf Wanneck.
They liked the lull, enjoyed the peace brought by the gift of comprehension, believing themselves untouchable by the strife of battle and war, nations had forgotten its horrors and difficulty, yet, they still feared it.
Even as Agilulf Wanneck personally met with the leaders of all nations, be they grand, be they ancient, be they illustrious, be they strong, be they weak, be they small, be they insignificant, bringing to them a most worrying piece of news that he had learned from the vampire hunters, he failed to rally the most important pieces of Viridis.
The beastfolks, non-humans and monsters blessed with sapience were rather easy to convince, for no one other than the king of Tamaris had better reputation in their eyes, being part of weaker kingdoms still holding up mostly because of Tamaris, it was only logical that they would not doubt his demand of aid.
The intel he shared with the leaders was dreadful, his contemporaries saw nothing to worry about, yet, they kept the words spoken to them a tightly guarded secret, the people of today, so little knew, that there might as well be none.
None understood the threat posed by the undead, the only ones that could see the far reaching consequences of this possibility were the death hunters, and churches worshipping deities of life, only they sought the dead, confronted them and met the terrifying strength that lied in outer tomb.
Others, they never encountered the dead, barely even realising that undeath existed outside of old stories about liches and death knights.
And of course, the leaders believed themselves capable of handling it if what Tamaris was predicting came to be true, although the strongest people alive were mostly gathered in Tamaris, those were only the known forces, surely, the likes of Starkefolten would have a weapon to rely upon, or an individual that laid low.
They already had their seven elemental champions, although not to be compared to the likes of the copper knights, Storm Of Blade or the Volcano Witch, they were still potent warriors that Starkefolten was proud of.
Another thing Agilulf Wanneck did that roused the worries of his business partners was recruit many of the academy students and talent holders, even though the great majority had originated from other nations, but it was difficult to refuse the offers of the wealthy king.
"Although I am mostly theorising without proper proofs, Agilulf Wanneck's actions have gotten me suspicious, especially his repeated attempts to get Starkefolten to reinforce Bourgliotte further, it would seem that we had been found out, or at least suspected, since the beginning" the familiar voice of Unacunerra was coming out of rusted pendant, laying in an armoured palm.
"But our usage of the defilers and puppeteers was still a good idea, they have had their hands too full dealing with them to bother with looking for undeads, from what I have gathered, it does not seem like anywhere but Tamaris is worried about us, let us keep it that way, lay low, how is it going on your end?" he then asked, having not had any communications since they all split up.
"I have met with Gravelord Dracula, and Gravelord Nosferatu, Dracula is laying on stand-by, already prepared to strike Bourgliotte at any given time, Nosferatu is still busy bringing the undeads that had been slumbering alongside him back to full force, I have spent the greater majority of the year helping him in that regard, I am on my way to Dschungelland, to check out the forest of Laba, what is the progress on your end?" Loimos responded, standing not too far from a desolate little road in some overgrown woods, inside of his caravan.
"Fantastic, I have managed to contact Artencil, he has gathered old reserves of undead soldiers that had remained in frozen lands, and I have just arrived near the city where Faraday and Slotriig are to be found, the security seems to have been tightened, but I'll just dig until I reach them, I have taken a defiler with me, the rickety divine seal should get torn apart in a few days at most, what about you One?"
Both the skeletons were doing fantastic in their endeavour, but the sun-walking vampire also had a rather important job to fulfil, if she could successfully turn many high-ranking members of of various nations, their chain of commands could all be thrown into disarray, allowing for even swifter takeovers by the undeads, with lots of land under their control, any counterattacks from those able would be made intensely more difficult.
"Hello guys, hello Loimos, it's going rather well I would say, we managed to get the king's personal advisor, he is the one supposed to find him his new wife by the way, can we do anything with that?" her voice quickly came through, as happy as always.
The three undeads seemed to be making good progress on all of the terrains they had ventured onto, with Faraday and Slotriig soon joining up with Unacunerra, including the first's legions of iron skeletons, The Earthen Disaster would be able of keeping all of them hidden by moving underground, not to mention that Unacunerra and Slotriig were the king's royal guards, together, their strength would skyrocket.
But of course, not all could be decay and gloom for the dead.
"...My brainwashed servants, the ones that were dispatched around to occupy people away from the undead, have been meeting rather strong attacks, from what I was able of gathering, it seems like the tamarisian king is cracking down on us with an especially heavy hand, and he is using students that graduated early from the academy, thanks to the headmaster, I know that it has been converted into a real military school, teaching all that it can, and they are teaching life arts" One reported to them, silence was thick for a few seconds.
"I see, Tamaris will be tough to defeat, One, rile them up some more, use some of your more advanced minions, make sure they put more and more focus on Alizé, Loimos, just keep going"
"Once all of the gravelords are gathered together, our king will take his throne again, King Nitok guarantees our victory"