Chapter 10 - Praying ghouls

'What are ghouls? Why do they have elemental magic, How can we destroy them? What leads do you guys have?' Karato landed a barrage of questions.

Michinaki smiled and replied, ' I will reply to each and every question you have, but first allow me to introduce you to the current squad of the coalition, My name is Michinaki, do not call me short names, I do not like to be called in short forms, You have already met yumeko, who is a bit torn up right now. You should change to a fresh pair of clothes, Yumeko.' Michinaki advised.

Yumeko looked at herself and said, ' Yes, I should probably do that.'

She walked to the inner dorms of the fortress to get changed.

'Gamuraan is our assassin.' Gamuraan raised his head to say hello. He was the only one without any armor and just black, rugged cloth on his body.

 'Trumbor is our tank.' He was a huge man, with huge black armor. He did not make any gestures to greet Karato, he stood their silently.

'And finally, lydie is our attack.' Lydie waved at Karato with a smile. She was a dwarf with blonde hair and a big broken axe for her to comfortably use.

'You might be wondering, why this squad is so small, it's supposed to be a coalition, right? Well everyone present here are the strongest among the whole coalition, Yumeko is a blessing for us, she was sent by god at the most adverse moments of need. We have left our strong members to defend the helpless towns and their people from any oncoming attacks, while we have come here to investigate some leads on these ghouls.'

'What leads?' Karato inquired.

'Gamuraan will explain the rest.' Michinaki replied.

Gamuraan walked towards karato and said,

'A few months ago, I was out on a mission to gain insight on the roads ahead of us, an usual procedure we need to follow for safe travels. I travelled through the woods to have a better understanding of these fucking lands, These lands are fucking infested. As usual, I slammed any ghoul on the path and kept looking, until I got lost. These woods are a bit rougher than usual, navigating through was difficult for me and the road back was completely lost. In the journey to get back to our previous base, I wandered into a place that I never would have thought was real if I did not see it with my own eyes. It was a huge cave that led underground. I was curious enough to go inside the cave all alone, and hence trekked down for any evidence of ghouls. What I found was nasty. A horde of ghouls just everywhere, eating and it seemed like they were worshipping something dark. At first, I thought it was a small group, but once I killed one of them, I realized the huge mistake I had made by going in there. The cave was deeper than I had expected, and a huge army of ghouls appeared from the deep darkness, They growled and charged at me, leaving me with no choice but to run away. I ran for hours, before luckily finding my way back to our base.'

'I explained the whole thing to the coalition and Michinaki, we theorized that the huge cave must be some sort of hideout. Their worship that dark thing seems worse, they might be gaining their powers from it.'

'So we decided to make this squad and check out this mysterious cave. I hope we don't die, hihi.' Lydie spoke to Karato for the first time and seemed pretty enthusiastic and jolly of nature.

'I will not ask you to join us for the investigation but know that you are free to join if you want to.' Michinaki advised karato.

'I want to join you in the investigation, this would be a big step ahead, if we find something.' Karato replied.

'That's great, we are going to leave for the cave today in the evening, Now that you want to come with us, boy, let me clear somethings out, I am going to call the shots, and every action we take will be only upon my call. If any of our members face any issues due to your fault or disobedience, have faith in my words, I will tie you up and feed you to the ghouls myself, Clear?' Michinaki's voice intensified, it was apparent that he was not fooling around or saying things as a fluke, Karato could feel it deep down his spine that he was dead serious.

'You are the boss, I won't cause any trouble, but I have a question, why do you want to go in that hell at night?'

'As far as we know, they worship at night and hunt in the morning, completely opposite to their natural behavior and patterns, there is only one way in and out of the cave, so in the morning, ghouls would be inside the cave and also outside the cave, they may easily block our passage on one call. In any emergency situation, we would be pretty much stuck. Them worshipping at night would be the best cue for us to attack as they would not expect it at all.'

'I get it.' Karato replied.

'Good then, you can use any dorm you want for resting, reminiscing, making love to yourself, the whole fort is yours, except for our rooms ofcourse.'