Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead
Chapter 946 - 946: Gentleman's Warfare

Being use to seeing mostly ghastly remains gnawed by rot and warped by all sorts of terrible wounds, Dracula revealing a most attractive face was actually quite surprising, he sported a refined moustache and goatee, looking just about the idealistic image of a young lord with a charming, albeit sharp, smile.

The two ancestors glanced at once another in a silent exchange.

Dracula was indeed a name they had been told about, the gravelord of burning blood, a being that could transform into an enormous dragon, a ruthless warlord who impaled the remains of his enemies as a show of strength- As intimidation to those who had yet to fall, they had certainly not expected him, or any of the gravelords for that matter, to be anywhere close to handsome, that guy barely even looked like a corpse, only his horribly pale complexion gave it away that there was no life to be found within him.

His facial expressions and eyes perfectly captured the impression of liveliness, it was hard to believe with just a look that he was a mass-murdering monster who could transform into a powerful creature at any moment.

The beast ancestor cleared her throat.

"I suppose we can't do anything but trust in your words about this matter, how shall we settle that contract, exactly?" she asked, not mentioning the latter words of the vampire.

"I would usually go for a blood pact, that is what I am most familiar with, but I could understand how livings could be averse to doing anything relating to blood with a vampire… So how about a soul contract instead?" he said, pulling out a piece of parchment from his long cloak, showing the details of the document to the two ancestors, the contract was very thorough and basically left no room at all for the usage of any loopholes, but the livings read it over several times still.

Loimos had also presented very clear contracts that had seemingly rendered the usage of underhanded tactics impossible, this one was less tight in certain aspects however, with what they now knew, it made it appear more legitimate, like Dracula would actually need to abide by it until it came to an end.

The cited punishments for going against the contract also made sense considering the natures of both parties.

After a while, they accepted the contract, both parties imparted their signature upon it, and the piece of parchment then fell apart, into blue sparks, signifying that it was now active, which made the gravelord form a smile.

"Now that this is done, might I invite you ladies to a small outing?"

"No"

"Shame, I will see you on another night then" in the next instant, Dracula and his men all turned into masses of burning blood, quickly vanishing from sight as they returned to the dark keep.

Solzmimi sighed.

"Will we really be able to play that game of his? Some details of that contract were a bit shady…"

"You know that we didn't really have a choice anyways, if we refused, what would have stopped him from beginning an all-out attack right there and then? That guy is dreadfully powerful, my instincts were telling me to keep my distance…" Hirzartanli was not fooled by the nice exterior Dracula presented, he was abnormally strong, and he wasn't as good at hiding it as Loimos had been, or perhaps he simply did not bother.

The terms of the so-called 'game' were also suspiciously generous toward them, the rules were simple, every year, on a specific day and night, a group of undead headed by a leader would step forward and the emerald folks would have to fend them off, that was basically it.

Too powerful members of both sides were forbidden from participating, which only involved the two ancestors on the side of the livings, and 'fending off' simply meant that they could either defeat all of the undeads that showed up, or simply avoided total annihilation by the end of the day, by that time, attacking undeads would have to retreat no matter what.

Honestly, the two ancestors suspected that Dracula was just trying to whittle them down in a supposedly nice manner, rather than sending all troops to crush what was left of their civilisation, he took them on in a game where they had the advantage of not having to actually face the true strength of the invaders, basically, he was just extending a little bit of kindness toward them, so that they were not too resentful toward the empire once they died.

This was undead methodology 101, do not be too mean to the livings, they are your future fellow undeads, so tell them how much you love them whilst cutting their throats and suffocating their children.

The fact that it was an actually successful method in limiting the amount of negators seemed absurd, but apparently, a little bit of niceties coupled with becoming undead was enough for most livings to shrug off the atrocities that had been committed against them.

It also helped that undead soldiers, primarily those of the vanguard and core army, were very efficient and were either good soldiers who followed orders perfectly, or natural undeads- For example, a good bunch of Nosferatu's subordinates from the old times had been livings who had been violent criminals and mentally unstable, or monsters with unsavoury habits, these were good attributes to have a good chance at resisting having the blood of Nosferatu shared with your person.

Due to this, the majority of the ancient vampires of Nosferatu could not be trusted with extending mercy and kindness to livings, if those guys were to be deployed, it would be to really make the enemy miserable and demonstrate that they could commit as many war crimes as all of living history combined in a single month at most.

Those undeads could certainly be used very well strategically, but Dracula was a classy individual and was one to wage war according to rules if possible.

And also, he was making use of the resources Loimos had left before leaving to fight the golden one, namely, he had issued an order to the minor lords, and some of them were already on their way here, Loimos had rather high expectations for them from what Dracula could tell, having the plan of making them all into gravelords one day.

They were the so-called leaders that would be leading their own troops to attack the emerald folks.

In fact, one had already arrived with plenty of troops.

Dracula was not actually personally acquainted very much with the minor lords, especially since Loimos had taken them into the vanguard, they had been far away from the heart of the empire, whilst he and the other gravelords mostly spent their times communicating with the other superpowers.

"Your name is Ir'Houwl, right?"