CH37 (267), Hopefully, The Last Mission

Unsurprisingly, Mr. Cameron was expecting me, and he told me he had already chosen a mission for me. It turned out to be an extermination mission, which to be honest surprised me a lot since I had not thought that the academy would send me on such a "brutal" mission.

Mr. Cameron seemed to notice my shock since he solemnly told me that such situations were part of life and that I was bound to encounter such situations in the future which was why they decided to see if I could handle it or not.

He told me that it was okay if I did not want to do it and that I would not be negatively judged in any case. The guardians and the alliance were always ready to provide services to individuals so that they could talk about their thoughts and experiences to take care of their mental health, so I could receive counseling after the mission or even before the mission if I felt the need.

Actually, he told me that mental counseling was an open offer by the alliance to any trainer, that said trainers were made aware of at the start of their career since the alliance did not want their trainers to experience a psychotic shock, any form of breakdown, or other psychological problems.

He even added that in certain situations the alliance might insist on either a physical examination, mental assessment, or even both if an individual has gone through an extremely troubling ordeal.

I respectfully declined any form of counseling, even if I was pretty sure that he was simply using the situation to inform me about the existence of those services, and said that I was just surprised that he and the academy were willing to assign me such a mission, but that I understood his reasoning, as well as the rationale behind the alliance's mental support offer.

Mr. Cameron nodded with a smile before he began telling me about the mission. The target of the mission was a Crobat tribe, that was responsible for the destruction of a village 290 km south of Rota.

The situation was pretty bad since all 847 inhabitants of the village had died, along with all Pokemon and animals present in the village. The total number of lives lost was over 3000. Everyone had been sucked dry and only their empty husks were left behind.

The situation in the village was noticed by a pair of passing senior trainers who alerted the closest city after checking the situation and concluding that they were not strong enough to deal with the perpetrators.

The two trainers followed the traces to a cave that housed a Zubat tribe before they went to report the situation to get a better picture of the circumstances. However, they were forced to retreat after a few silver stage Golbat along with a lot of Zubat attacked them while they were scouting the cave.

The Zubat stopped following them after they left the cave not wanting to be exposed to the sun unnecessarily, while the Golbat gave up after the trainers managed to fend them off for more than 5 minutes. Still, the pair was positive that more Golbat were inside the cave and they also assumed that there was either a Crobat or an extremely strong Golbat acting as the leader of the group due to the behavior of the Pokemon.

Up until here, I had simply been listening to his explanation, but I could not help looking at Mr. Cameron in surprise at the last bit. This sounded like it could get really dangerous if the strength of the leader was too high, or if the number of strong Golbat was too high, so I could not believe that he would send me on a mission with such a risky variable.

He obviously noticed my doubt since he was a high-tier Aura User/Guardian, and chose to directly address it.

"I noticed the mission 3 days ago and directly reserved it for you because I thought that it was time for you to experience something like this since I trust that you are ready to handle this aspect of our life.

Still, there is no way that I would send you on a mission with such vague parameters, so I sent someone to check the cave to get a concrete picture of the number and strength of the cave dwellers.

My agent confirmed that the pair was right in their assumption because there really is a Crobat at the head of the swarm. Its strength is at the (mid) gold stage, and it also has also a (low) gold stage Golbat as its second in command.

Besides those two, there are 31 silver stage Golbat, more than 200 bronze stage Golbat as well as Zubat, along with over 600 Zubat that were either at the iron stage or stageless."

I gave him a grateful nod after he said that since having concrete information on the situation was critical if I wanted to come to an informed decision.

I mulled over the strength and number of the Pokemon and concluded that I, or rather we, could handle the mission, but before I decided to accept I had to know without a doubt that the goal was to kill all Crobat tribe members.

That was not a low number of Pokemon that I would have to kill if that was really the case, so I had to be sure of what was expected of me.

"Sir, when you call it an extermination mission, do you mean that I have to kill all Zubat line members that you just listed? I mean that's a lot of Pokemon," I inquired and Mr. Cameron gave me a serious nod before he replied.

"Yes, the mission objective is total extermination," he began sternly before his face relaxed a bit at the next part. "Honestly, most Zubat tribes are generally not this extreme since they know not to destroy their blood supply."

Still, his expression hardened once more when he said the next bit.

"However, it seems that the leadership of this one is rather bloodthirsty and does not care about maintaining a steady supply. Moreover, it turned the whole tribe that way as well. That village was not the only victim of the Crobat tribe.

My agent noted that Pokemon, or any activity really, in the surroundings of the cave was minimal and that the Crobat tribe probably attacked the nearest source of living beings/blood bags they could find after exhausting any close by sources of blood.

The fact that they showed no moderation and acted like this despite being able to eat berries, shows that they are most likely going to keep doing it if left alone, which is why they have to be taken down before they caused any more destruction."

I could understand why they decided that the whole tribe had to be taken care of, so I agreed to take the mission. Mr. Cameron handed me the mission file and told me that it was left to me how I went about completing the mission, but I would be given two weeks at most before I would have to report back.

Furthermore, I would have to present the carcasses as proof for the mission and each carcass counted. If I got the leader, his second, and all silver stage member I would receive 200 points at the end of the mission.

If I took out at least 80% of the tribe I would receive another 20 points and if I took out all tribe members I would receive 50 points instead. Additionally, I had the right to keep any eggs and materials I found inside the cave, as long as I took out at least 90% of the tribe. Otherwise, I would have the first pick, but I would not receive the full bounty.

Looking at the incentives, one could tell that they really wanted me to take care of all tribe members. After I had gone through the whole file, I informed Mr. Cameron that I would be gone for the whole 2 weeks even if I managed to finish the mission beforehand.

He just chuckled and told me that I was free to do so if I wanted. With all that out of the way, I thanked Mr. Cameron for his time and wished him a good day before leaving. I directly went home and told my parents about the mission.

Dad looked a bit worried, but mom was pretty mad at the academy for assigning an extermination mission to her baby, and such a dangerous one at that. It looked as if she would storm the academy to give them an earful, but thankfully dad helped me calm her down.

I had to spend a few minutes assuring her that I could definitely handle the mission which I somehow managed to do. However, even then had to endure 30 minutes of mom's fussing over me, before I managed to make my way out of the house.

It took me less than 30 minutes to arrive at the destroyed village after asking Hera/Pidgeot to fly in the direction specified on the mission file. I kept looking at the map on my phone and the area we were flying over to make sure we were going in the right direction.

I would have really liked it if we had something like Google maps that worked globally but satellites were, unfortunately, a no go and the antenna system used within the human cities and a great part of the route system did not extend outside of those places, so I had to go full-on old school, using my eyes and a map.

The village looked pretty spooky. There were signs of damage on the streets and the buildings, but the village was completely empty. There were no bodies, it seemed they had been cleaned up and had most likely already been buried in one of the cemeteries in one of the nearest towns.

After a brief look at the now "ghost" village, I moved in the direction of the cave marked on the mission file. The trek took me close to 30 minutes despite moving at jogging speed, which meant I was going at about 30 kph. I could have gone faster, but then I would have had trouble making sure I was heading in the right direction.

Nonetheless, I found the cave, and moving closer I could hear the sounds of Zubat coming from inside. Once I confirmed that this was indeed my target, I retreated away from the cave.

I wanted to make sure that I got everyone, so I had to make sure that no one managed to escape once I began my attack. To ensure that, I had to make sure that there were no other openings the Zubat and Golbat could use to escape.

A look at my watch told me that it was 20 minutes before noon. I was pretty confident that the tribe would not leave the cave before 7 p.m because that was when the sun was starting to set around these parts, so I still had around 7 hours to check the area to see if I could find any cave openings.

I would obviously be cautious during my search. While Zubat preferred avoiding sunlight, that did not mean they were afraid of it, so it was possible that some would leave the cave before the sun began setting. Golbat had no problem with the sun at all, so they could leave the cave beforehand as well.

While I would be searching for any openings until 7 p.m, I was not planning to miss the tribe leaving the cave. I was planning to observe the event while hiding in hopes of spotting some openings due to tribe members leaving from there.

Once I was confident that I had spotted all openings, or at least most of them I would act, and my action plan was pretty simple. I would spend the morning shutting down any of the side openings, before entering from the main entrance and blocking it behind me as well, imprisoning all of us inside the cave.

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