"Is that it?" Captain Harriet asked in confusion.
The contract Tashar had provided was genuine, and the signatures on both sides were undeniably authentic. The captain wouldn't resort to pointless trickery at such an obvious stage. Yet the contract, which should have self-destructed upon completion, showed no reaction. Nor did his mind register any confirmation of the agreement.
"What's going on?" Tasha deflected the question to the native of the Abyss.
"He's a captain, yet he doesn't even have a warrior rank?" Victor exclaimed in disbelief. "That makes no sense. Nobles who get titles out of thin air and rack up military merits at least have some bloodline..."
"Warrior rank?"
"He's just a commoner!"
"But he is a soldier," Tashu countered.
"'Soldier' is just another commoner profession, like blacksmith or tailor," Victor retorted.
Unfortunately, this world's common knowledge couldn't be installed like language with a single click upon contract completion. Tashu frowned inwardly—this was truly troublesome, always having to discover anomalies before asking questions after the fact.
Fortunately, mental communication with Victor was lightning-fast. Otherwise, having the captain wait idly by would surely strip away every shred of the mysterious, formidable aura he'd painstakingly built up.
When Victor mentioned "professional warrior," he wasn't referring to a "profession for livelihood."
What distinguished "commoners" from "professional adventurers" wasn't their chosen means of earning a living, but "extraordinary power." Even the most basic professional adventurer possessed transformative growth compared to ordinary people. The relatively low-entry profession of rogue still demanded years of training and combat experience. People in this world weren't born in newbie villages as level-one heroes; becoming a hero itself required qualifications. They were more like NPCs with lengthy growth trajectories—though human adventurers still matured far faster than most non-human races.
The question circled back to its origin.
The captain bore calluses from years of weapon use. His gaze was sharp, his movements agile, his battlefield assessments timely and astute—every sign of a battle-hardened, seasoned warrior. Why wasn't he counted as a warrior? Why was he ineligible for a contract? Thinking this way, did that mean the soldiers who lacked resistance to corpse poison weren't considered professional warriors either?
"Degenerated to this state from living in comfort?" Victor sneered.
"Because they never killed monsters or Celestial kin?" Tasha asked.
Victor paused for a few seconds before replying, "Never expected you to find common ground with the Killing Clan."
It wasn't that Tasha harbored some strange fascination with slaughter. Anyone on Earth who'd played video games shared a basic understanding: players gain experience by slaying monsters → experience increases level → higher levels mean greater strength and skill mastery. From this perspective, the key to growth lay less in training or combat, and more in monster-slaying itself.
It seemed Erian had no more "monsters" left.
Now wasn't the time to ponder such questions. Setting aside the tangled mess that was Tasha, he pressed on: "So how do you actually sign a contract with him?"
"You pay with magic power," Victor replied, flipping open a page. "The cost is roughly this much."
The prerequisite for a demonic contract is that both parties possess a minimum threshold of supernatural power—be it magic, bloodline, or class rank—serving as an entry ticket and qualification certificate. If one party lacks the requisite credentials, the other must compensate. Think of it like a notarized agreement requiring both sides to pay a deposit or processing fee. If the party Tasha was contracting with couldn't afford it, she'd have to cover a hefty sum herself.
And it was a truly enormous sum. If Tasha could afford it, she might as well keep fighting.
"How could it be this much?" Tasha gasped. "I only want to bind an ordinary human!"
"I told you before. The environment on the surface is as bad as a dead magic zone. Without a small amount of energy as a catalyst, you'll have to cover the entire cost of opening the portal yourself!" Victor explained. "And even before, binding ordinary humans required enormous expenditure. It's the Prime Material Plane's protective measure against higher beings—damned trade barriers. If not for this, demons would've long since bound every weak-willed nobody and conquered the world. You have no idea how vast the weak are, or what they're capable of!"
True. If hatred alone could trade souls for power like in the stories, the deal would be too easy. Humans are social creatures. If every hero's world were bought by the Abyss, fighting in a world where everyone is an enemy would be impossible. Tasha sighed, crossing out the bright future of global conquest from her blueprint.
"Is... something wrong?" the Captain asked cautiously.
"It appears you lack sufficient sincerity, Captain," the ghost stated flatly.
"I just signed my full name on a demonic contract selling my soul," Harriet gritted out. "I know exactly what fucking consequences this brings. My academy instructors and my former self would gladly hang me from the school gates for this. And now you talk about insufficient sincerity..."
"You hold something back," the specter murmured softly. "Let me ponder—is it for your wife and son? They reside in the north, I gather? Oh, that's a rather scenic spot."
The captain's face drained of color, his voice abruptly halting as if a hand had clamped around his throat.
"Relax. Let us turn the page."
The faceless specter chuckled softly, flicked a finger, and withdrew the invalid contract. Another emerald-green agreement appeared before the captain, its terms far more lenient than the previous one—no soul was required. Yet its scope encompassed every soldier remaining under his command. Beads of sweat formed on Harriet's temples as he blinked, staring at the sinister contract.
"I have no right to decide for those men," the captain said stiffly. "Perhaps you misunderstand. I'm merely their superior. I don't own them."
"But they respect you, trust you, and are willing to be loyal to you, aren't they?" the specter coaxed. "You deserve their trust too, for you're the only one who can keep these soldiers alive. Besides you, who up above cares about them? Who cares about you? You vouch for them, keep them from committing treasonous acts, and I'll provide you shelter. To these soldiers, isn't any job just a job? I swear I won't force you to turn your weapons on former comrades—though if they attack, that's another matter; I must defend myself, right?—I can also promise you..."
The gray-white specter drifted forward slightly, its hovering form radiating an oppressive, persuasive presence. Though it had no face, no eyes, Harriet felt herself bewitched by its gaze.
The specter continued, "I promise I will not harm your wife and children unless they oppose me. Should they come within my reach, I can reunite you."
The captain exhaled sharply. Half a minute later, he grasped the pen once more.
This time, the Clan Contract took effect.
Tasha breathed a silent sigh of relief. The clan contract provided by the Oak Elder carried none of the demonic pact's restrictions, though it still required signing with the "clan chief." It seemed this captain was genuinely beloved, so much so that his troops could be tacitly recognized as a collective clan under the contract. She had only pieced this together from details like his hasty retreat while gathering his forces—a misjudgment would have rendered the contract invalid, which would have been awkward.
Victor clapped gleefully at her "demonic deeds," and Tasha couldn't help but think the demons of this world bore a striking resemblance to pyramid scheme scammers.
The key points boiled down to gathering intelligence, bluffing, and using ambiguous language to let people fill in the blanks themselves. When Tashar had been concealed beside the captain, she'd seen him open his pocket watch and gaze at the portrait inside—himself and a woman holding a little boy. Their current location was southern Erian, so wherever his wife and child lived would be "up north." A captain who didn't seem poor wouldn't keep his beloved family in a place with poor scenery.
With the addition of supernatural methods like the Ghost, Tashar's negotiation skills increasingly resembled those of a street charlatan.
The new cards featured an army's phantom form on their faces, appearing somewhat duller in comparison to the previous clan cards.
"Captain Harriet's remnants—a standard human army, decimated by battle losses and the Wither Curse. An ordinary force with no specialists. Maintaining them requires careful supply management and constant vigilance over morale. Aside from a few officers trained at Erian Military Academy and Captain Harriet's passable leadership among common soldiers, they offer no additional advantages. Converting them all into zombies might be more cost-effective."
[Military Atmosphere]: Soldiers, heed my command! Within your sphere of influence, when you issue orders through loud slogans or precise, concise language, those receiving the command will instinctively lean toward obedience—like new recruits dazed by the military atmosphere, jumping up to run at five in the morning. This effect weakens as the recipient's willpower increases, the command's age lengthens, the order becomes more objectionable, or the same group is subjected to it repeatedly. It may fail entirely or last only minutes—after all, atmosphere is just atmosphere.
The limitations of this secondary skill seemed somewhat abstract. Tasha mused it might prove unexpectedly useful in certain situations, a welcome bonus. As for the card description seeming rather lackluster? She didn't mind that much. Reality wasn't a game of comparing stats. A merchant with pathetic attack power could be incredibly useful in daily life. An army recognized and trusted by local residents to maintain order was absolutely ten thousand times more effective than sending skeleton soldiers out onto the streets.
The biggest problem now was the aftereffects of the Wither Curse.
Harriet laid out their situation plainly: they were merely pawns, tasked with deploying the "Wither Gas" and the "Cleansing Blade" (that magical cannon). They knew next to nothing about the weapons' actual effects, let alone how to resolve them. When Tasha mentioned the solutions Victor had spoken of, this captain—who had trained for four years at the military academy in the Red Dragon's Heart of Erian's capital—said he had never laid eyes on a caster.
"Magic comes from the Abyss, divine arts from the Celestial Realm. How could humans possibly continue the legacy of traitors?" he stated matter-of-factly. "I've heard rumors that certain ancient families within the Red Dragon's Heart still keep spellcasters, using them to ensure the family's fortune. Even if they exist, they're well-protected. I don't think we can get any help from them. As for antidotes, the army carries some, but they only work against common venomous snakes and wound infections."
Victor laughed incredulously.
"You've got to be kidding..." he muttered. "I'd believe divine magic failing after being cursed by the gods, but magic? Those damn clever bastards would've figured a way around it ages ago. Would you really toss away powerful weapons seized from enemies just to 'not continue the legacy of traitors'? Mages won't be taken down by this bunch of fools!"
"You say the surface world is like a 'dead magic zone,'" Tasha said. "Does that mean magic can't be used there now?"
"It's just that mana is as thin as in a dead magic zone!" Victor snapped. "Mana is one of the fundamental properties of the Material Plane. As long as this plane exists, magic cannot perish!"
His blustering demeanor only deepened Tasha's sense that things were likely dire for them. Yet if spellcasters truly no longer existed, the earlier "fireworks" display wouldn't have drawn global attention—perhaps the sole silver lining.
Magic thin, professionals scarce, no spellcasters, no encounters with powerful extraordinary races... What exactly had happened to Erian?
Fragments of information pieced together a hazy pattern in Tasha's mind. Previous assumptions grew increasingly uncertain as understanding deepened. The world's truth remained as elusive as flowers seen through mist, yet the current mess demanded immediate attention.
Harriet briefed her confidants, and cooperation began to take shape between factions that had been locked in deadly conflict just days before. Mummified corpses and sleepers not yet fully transformed were sent to the dungeons, while the Oak Elder was planted in soil beyond the reach of the Wither Curse. Tash, grasping at straws, enveloped the military's quarters in a high concentration of natural essence, allowing them to sleep soundly. Captain Harriet's remaining troops were now considered Tashan's property. At this critical juncture, if any more turned into zombies, Tashan would feel the pain like a capitalist watching his investments evaporate.
The captain was indeed quite useful.
The zombie incident in Red Gum County did not escalate further. Rumors were suppressed, and most residents remained unaware of the current situation. Antler Town had barely regained a semblance of calm. Its inhabitants, like startled birds, were relieved enough that no undead had returned to attack them. The Captain persuaded the managers of two gathering points (by whatever means necessary). As news spread among the remaining soldiers that the Northern Military Headquarters had abandoned them to their fate, discontent and anger toward their superiors began to ferment. More and more would come to support the Captain's compromises made for their survival.
Just as Tasha continued her experiments using natural forces to dispel the Wither Curse, a strange accident occurred.
A doctor from Red Gum County had secretly slipped into the underground city.