Only a week passed after the tavern massacre, normally, a slaughter wasn't exactly a cause for rapid investigations or anything, people ending up as chew toys for some random monster or a random maniac going on a rampage was at the bottom of the list of important things.
At least when the victims were no name farmers and peasants from a remote, destitute city.
However, the word that the cause was an undead hadn't been kept a secret, not at all, Robert had spread the word to his men, who all repeated it to their wives and children, who in turn spread it around with impressive speed.
Harold even held a speech about it, where he pronounced the word 'undead' so many times that it barely sounded like a word by the end of it.
The mayor and captain of the guard knew exactly what they were doing, the information spread out quickly, and it quickly reached ears that did nothing but wait to hear about the walking corpses.
After just one more additional week, the death hunters had already arrived, it was like they had been waiting close-by, but in truth, they were just very fast when it mattered.
Harold and Robert stood side by side, honestly quite in shock at their supernatural swiftness, they were like a bunch of moths drawn to a light, flocking and hitting their heads against the glass of a lantern repeatedly.
Much like the fuzzy insects, leaving after being attracted would prove difficult unless they found a satisfactory conclusion to what they called, 'the undead filth'.
"Have you two gotten the guild ready?" Robert asked two other men standing nearby, Frank and Louis had been burdened with an actual job to do, which was to accommodate the guild for the flood of death hunters, though they had vastly underestimated those fanatics, they were way more of them than one could expect.
Those numbers could actually make some very small countries sweat a bit, and this was just those that had gotten there for now, no one could tell when more would show up.
"Yes sir, we have dusted off the station for weapon and armour maintenance, emptied some storage rooms to serve as bedrooms or whatever if necessary" Frank spoke first, wiping his sweaty forehead.
"And I will take care of going around and informing them of the finer details of what happened" Louis followed quickly, cracking his neck in preparation.
Before any of the four men could say or do anything, someone came from behind the two guild workers, putting their hands on their shoulders, startling them both enough for them to yelp out.
"Gentlemen, you look like people in charge" it was a rather tall young woman, she seemed rather slender as well but she was dressed in some sort of brown, aged trench coat which made it hard to know for sure.
She was wearing some peculiar round glasses, the lens seemed to be able to be flipped in and out of their sockets, they were flipped up at the moment.
Leaving a clear sight of her oddly pink eyes.
"How may we help you?" Robert spoke first, putting his hand in front of the mayor's face to signal to him that he should be silent for a bit.
Robert, as good as he was, hadn't seen her coming at all, and judging by the way she was dressed, using his meagre knowledge of death hunters, he guessed that she was a vampire hunter, which were regarded as generally the harder undead sort to hunt down.
"Oh hello handsome, why don't you tell me about that undead that went through here?" she gave him a smile that made him deeply uncomfortable, he looked around for Frank and Louis, but the two cowards had already run away.
He turned to the side, even the mayor had casually slipped into the distance, Harold just showed him a thumb up as he backed off.
"I heard a lot of rumours but they weren't very clear, and so very much going in all directions, what sort of undead was it?" she spoke again, Robert took a step back before answering.
"We strongly believe that it was a skeleton, it's remains were put on display at the guild, if you want to inspect it, one of its arms is pinned with nails to one of the farms, it is still moving and trying to latch onto people" Robert had to keep stepping back because she kept trying to get uncomfortably close.
"Also, I am married" he added defensively, perhaps he would have normally been flattered that a younger woman was interested in him, but she seriously creeped him out, like, just her presence made him feel soiled.
"Huhuh, a skeleton? A smart skeleton all on its own?" ignoring his last words, she piled up the questions for a few more minutes until Robert had nothing more to tell her.
She rubbed her chin thoughtfully, the captain noticed a reflection inside of her right sleeve as she did so, she was probably carrying weapons everywhere on her person.
"Hum, hum…" she smiled again.
"You say it ejected its skull into the ravine this way?" Robert nodded his head.
"If I am not mistaken, that's the Elephant Cave System, it spreads in every direction, linked to hundreds and thousands of caves everywhere, certain portions are also nearly impossible to navigate, either environmentally speaking or due to the monster populations…" she clicked the lenses of her glasses in, completely obstructing her eyes with a dark shade.
She shrugged her shoulders dismissively.
"By the way, my name is Rummy" she ran her gloved hands through her curly short blonde hair.
"Your wife would never know old man, let's go out sometime" then she strolled away, Robert heaved a sigh of relief.
'Dear gods, I hope not all the death hunters are like that, they better find undeads to kill, otherwise I fear what will happen if they stay here for too long' he took off his helm and just leaned up against a wall.