A Serpent's Tale
Chapter 131: Extermination Plans

Chapter 131: Extermination Plans

With the meeting finally commencing, discussions were underway.

"So what would be the best and most efficient way of getting rid of those vermin? Do we just go gung-ho and just slaughter everything? Or do we take a more pragmatic approach?" The Gimwills asked.

"Hmm... How many are they in number exactly?" Tobreos asked the Fyyas patriarch.

"Well, the Darkhide’s have been quelling their numbers for a long time now, and I have come to the conclusion that they have either doubled their numbers or regained most of them through some abominable means."

The Darkhide patriarch then spoke up, "Well, I would say that we have managed to decimate around seventy percent of their forces over the years."

With this new insight, the Fyyas patriarch spoke up again, "If that’s the case, then I’d say that they’ve recovered about half that number, but the power of those that have risen again has drastically increased."

"Hmm..." This time it was the Auris family patriarch that spoke up, "It’s possible that they used some sort of ritual that sacrificed the souls of their comrades to strengthen the one’s that they did revive."

"While entirely possible, they could have just summoned more forces from hell." The Saki patriarch commented.

"But how? Our ancestors made sure that such a thing wasn’t possible." The Honeydale patriarch asked.

"It’s possible that due to recent events, something changed." The Qeith patriarch suggested.

"What recent events though?" The Saki patriarch inquired.

The Qeith patriarch replied, "Well, despite the fact that we have been able to fight back against the demons, that’s only because they can barely work together. But on the human front..."

They all lowered their heads in shame. There was a moment of silence before the Darkhide patriarch broke it.

"What about her?" He said pointing at me.

"What about her?" Tobreos asked.

"While she wasn’t the direct cause for this, she did play a part in the destruction of Hunam city." He explained.

"What do you mean?" The Cani patriarch asked.

"Well, when she arrived, she had a companion that some of you might know, his name is Dorrak Stormfist. To those of you who know who he is I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this, but for those that don’t..."

He then went on to explain the whole story behind my capture, leaving out certain details which Dorrak must have kept private out of consideration for me. He also said that Dorrak was currently helping guard the city from a possible invasion.

"And that’s the gist of it. I personally don’t think that this was intentional on their part, it’s just that whatever power may be behind these cretins simply capitalized on this oppertunity."

The Darkhide patriarch finished explaining everything and even added his own thoughts on at the end.

"I have to ask though, what was she even doing there in the first place?" The Saki patriarch questioned.

"I was told that I would only get an answer from her." He answered pointing at me once more. "I was also told not to pry into her too much, else we risk breaking her, at which point he would probably go wild in the city and take her away by force."

Everyone grimaced at that last part before they all looked to me, expecting me to explain as to why any of that happened in the first place.

I hesitated as I didn’t like talking about it when Cythistia put her hand on my shoulder and smiled encouragingly at me.

"You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to." Said Tobreos.

"Well, she kind of does, doesn’t she?" They Myryn patriarch finally spoke up after staying silent for most of the conversation.

"Why? It’s not like we need to know now, do we?" Tobreos argued.

"Well, we need all the information we can do deduce the most likely possibility, thereby giving the best odds of dealing with this crisis." The Myryn patriarch shouted back.

"Well, if you were smart and had been paying attention and had read the message I sent all of you, you would be able to put the pieces together and figure it out for yourself."

"Are you calling me stupid?!"

And then the most unexpected thing happened. All of the other ten patriarchs simultaneously said, "Yes." Shocking us all and even themselves by the looks of it.

The most shocked was the Myryn patriarch herself who looked like she was about to go on a rampage.

"Enough, we need to get on with the meeting." The Qeith family patriarch spoke up to calm the rising tensions between everyone.

"Right... So, Traytora, would you be willing to tell us why you were... Taken by those bastards." The Cani patriarch asked, taking care not to trigger my memories.

I looked away, still hesitant as I’m trying hard not to remember that time right now.

"I think we should just leave this be, Dorrak did tell me what she was put through and it’s clearly making her uncomfortable remembering it so let’s just drop this and just move on." The Darkhide patriarch gave me a lifeline and everyone else begrudgingly agreed to leave this situation alone.

With all of that out of the way, we actually managed to develop several strategies to deal with any situation that appeared. One such strategy was to continue the with the current method but much more aggressively, which just involved a lot mor hunting.

Another was to just use all our power to launch a full assault on their region of operations, although most of them would prefer not as, although it would get rid of the demons, it would damage the forest greatly, giving the humans a greater advantage when they went to war with them.

Several other strategies were suggested by numerous people, but they only ended up strengthening the initial idea as they basically just made executing it much, much easier and efficient.

"So, we will have a special unit team that will strike at the heart of their base while we have the rest slowly constrict them from the outside. Is everyone alright with this plan?" The Qilin patriarch asked, addressing everyone in the room, not just the other patriarch.

"Mmm."

"Yes."

There was a cacophany of agreement throughout the hall.

"Alright, since that’s been decided, next we must decide who must be part of the elite unit, who will be out in the forest hunting those cretins, and who will be staying behind to protect the city in case of a surprise attack." The grimwills patriarch started of the next part of the meeting.

This went on for a long while as they had a tough time deciding who would be placed in which team. Like, sure we could just put all our strongest people in the elite team, but then there wouldn’t be anyone left to defend the city. There was also the question of who would be leading these teams.

Personally, I didn’t care, nor listen to most of it, I just kind of sat there and only participated when I was called out.

And after several hours of discussing things, we finally had everything planned out, we even had a backup plan just in case. Thankfully that meant that we could finally go back.

"Oh, one last thing." The Honeydale patriarch said, making all of us groan. "When is this? Should we do it in one or two weeks? I say two as that will give everyone enough time to prepare."

There was a simple murmur and everyone agreed with two weeks to prepare, mostly because they just wanted to go home and have lunch, I was no different.