Anton cleared his throat, tapping his quill against the wooden desk to cut through the quiet.
"Sorry to interrupt you two, Commander, but we need to discuss our strategy for the infected. Are you finished?"
Elicia turned around with a bright smile, scooping up the four gold coins Anton had set down earlier.
"Oh yes, certainly! We're all done. Little Ren, here is the mission reward Anton gave you. Hehe... you may go now."
She handed the coins to me, and I took them with a small nod.
Four gold coins was a massive payout. That was equal to five hundred silver coins, or forty thousand copper coins… more than enough to cover my expenses for almost half a month without even touching bounty work! Combined with the steady income from my tavern back home, I practically wouldn't have to work for a whole year.
A free retirement, I thought with a quiet smirk. If the Bureau tries to drag me into more high-risk work, I'll just use taking care of my son as an excuse.
"Well, Sister, do you want to leave together, or are you staying here?" I asked, slipping the gold into my pouch.
"No worries, I'll be staying, we have a lot of planning to do, and this meeting is strictly for high-ranking officers. You go on ahead." Elicia replied, turning back toward Anton's desk.
I turned toward the door, but Anton spoke up before I could take a single step.
"Wait, I have an idea. We should have Eirene help us draft the defense strategy against the outbreak. Eirene, please sit back down and share your thoughts with us." Anton said, holding up a hand.
I stopped and immediately declined.
"No, I'm good. I have a child waiting for me at home."
"I must insist, with your extensive experience as a top bounty hunter, we all know how sharp and cunning your mind is. You've cleared four high-tier bounty targets and just survived a near-death nightmare in Lulu City. Please, tell us how you would handle this threat." Anton said firmly, leaning forward over his papers.
I paused for a moment, weighing my options, before pulling back a chair and sitting back down.
Anton leaned forward, tapping a map laid out on his desk.
"As Elicia mentioned earlier, our hundred-mile perimeter around Lulu City is under active assault. There is a severe risk the Nightwalker virus will bleed into the surrounding villages, smaller towns, and eventually hit Caria itself."
Caria City was a massive metropolis, holding a population of over a hundred thousand people. If the virus breached these pristine walls, it wouldn't just be an outbreak… it would be total annihilation. Caria was the beating heart of the Andromeda continent. If it fell, human civilization would fall right behind it.
That was Edrie's true objective in his bid for the Archdemon of Pride seat. He was a pure narcissist. He didn't just want power; he wanted the entire world to remember that he was the one who brought humanity to its knees.
Elicia raised her staff slightly, her crimson eyes filled with determination.
"My strategy focuses on total cure and restoration using my healing magic. Look at how we saved the Governor's daughter just now… my Divine Regeneration completely wiped out the viral strain. The infected aren't actually dead, Anton. Their body temperatures remain within normal human ranges, which means their consciousness is still trapped inside those corrupted bodies. Even if physical mutations like bone blades remain post-cure, the core fact is that they survive."
She leaned closer to the map, tracing the surrounding roads with her finger.
"Lulu City had a population of fifty thousand, plus roughly ten thousand scattered thralls outside the perimeter. My plan is to subdue and capture the infected systematically. We deploy combat-ready mages to neutralize and restrain them, then bring them to me for purification. On my own, my hard limit is ninety-four standard purifications before complete mana exhaustion. Therefore, I will need high-tier artifacts to boost my healing output and expand my mana capacity. We must also recruit mages with high mana pools who possess the Mana Regeneration human skill. Finally, instead of relying solely on me, the Bureau must track down any other individuals across the continent who possess Divine Regeneration. That is my proposed plan."
I listened in silence, my face completely flat, but inside, my mind was picking her strategy apart piece by piece.
Too bad Big Sister is far too noble-minded and altruistic, her plan is an absolute disaster waiting to happen.
Sister's strategy was impossibly optimistic, riddled with massive tactical flaws:
First, attempting to cure sixty thousand infected at a rate of ninety-four people per day was absurd. Even with a squad of mages equipped with Mana Regeneration raising her daily limit to maybe two hundred, it would still take over three hundred full days… nearly an entire year… to cure everyone. By the time they cleared a fraction of the horde, the remaining tens of thousands would have breached every border and infected the entire continent tenfold.
Second, because the infected were technically still alive on the inside, keeping thousands of trapped thralls in holding cages for months meant they would still require basic biological necessities like food, water, and stamina. Confining them without massive logistical support would just lead to them starving to death in their pens before Elicia could even reach them.
Third, Divine Regeneration was an extraordinarily rare human skill. Finding another wild user on short notice was a fantasy… unless they wanted to break out a certain high-security inmate locked away in the deepest depth of the Citadel, a bastard I personally hated and refused to work with.
Lastly, the sheer drain on resources was preposterous. High-tier mana-amplifying artifacts were national treasures, and burning through thousands of mana potions and spell-casters just to preserve thralls who would try to rip your throat out was a massive waste of tactical assets.
I kept my mouth shut, resting my chin on my left hand as I waited to see if Anton was blind enough to actually buy into her dream.
Anton stroked his beard, nodding slowly.
"Well, your strategy is certainly noble, Commander... But Eirene, what is your approach?"
"I'd say just kill them all, cull the infected and be done with it. Easy." I said plainly, resting my cheek against my hand.
Elicia gasped, her eyes widening in pure disbelief. "What?!"
"Big Sister's plan is completely unrealistic, it wastes far too much time and drains immense resources, which will only make the overall situation exponentially worse. You still make one fifth of your progress and you will kill more than you do. If the long path leads to ruin, why not take the simple one? Slaughtering them is quick and efficient. Why push yourself to complete exhaustion, Sister? Just take the easy path." I continued, my voice flat and completely devoid of emotion.
SLAM!
Elicia bolted up from her chair, her hand flying out and striking my cheek with a sharp, heavy slap that echoed off the office walls.
"Eirene! What on earth kind of plan is that?! Do you truly think slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent, infected people will fix this?! Has your conscience been eaten by dogs?! Stop playing around, Eirene! This is a serious matter!" Elicia shouted, her voice trembling with intense anger and betrayal.
I slowly turned my head back, my eyes fixed on hers, cold and empty. Without a second thought, I stood up and struck her back across the face with a swift, heavy slap of my own.
"Noisy bitch, your plan is utterly foolish. Do you honestly think your naive, self-righteous strategy is going to save this world? You're going to make everything worse, Sister."
Elicia stumbled back slightly, her hand pressing against her reddened cheek as tears of shock welled in her crimson eyes.
"Little Ren...? You... you hit me? From the time we were children growing up, you have never raised a hand against me! What has gotten into you?! Since when did you become this cold-blooded and pragmatic?! Not just in a logical sense, but in a purely heartless one! You are far too cruel!" she breathed, her voice cracking.
I stepped closer, my arm shooting out as I slapped her across the face a second time, shutting down her emotional outburst before she could spiral any further.
"You still haven't learned how to do basic math, sacrificing sixty thousand doomed thralls to guarantee the survival of millions of humans isn't cruelty. It's arithmetic." I cold-bloodedly reprimanded her.
As I stood there looking at Elicia, the famous Trolley Problem from Earth flashed through my mind.
A runaway trolley is speeding down a track toward five helpless workers. You stand next to a lever. If you do nothing, five people die. If you pull the lever, the train shifts to a side track, killing just one person instead. Do you take action to end one life to save five, or do you sit on your hands and let five die?
In our situation, the math was identical. Do we actively pull the lever to sacrifice sixty thousand infected thralls, or do we stand by, do nothing, and let millions of innocent people get wiped out? My plan was simple: pull the lever, end the threat, and protect the majority. Sister's plan was to stand on the track trying to stop the train with her bare hands while hoping nobody got hurt.
What a pity... two sisters born from the same womb, standing on opposite ends of the stick. The younger with a cynical, realistic worldview, and the older trapped in an idealistic worldview. Fate truly loves playing cruel games.
Anton cleared his throat loudly, resting his hands flat on his desk.
"Please, both of you. Sit down."
We both took our seats, though the air between us was thick with tension.
Anton looked directly at Elicia, his face calm and practical.
"True to what Eirene said... your strategy, Commander, is simply too expensive and resource-intensive. If we drain all of our supplies, money, and mages on a long, slow cure, our defenses will crumble. It leaves us completely open to direct attacks from the demon armies. In fact, I suspect the candidate of the archdemon of pride planned for this exact mistake… forcing us to bleed ourselves dry so he can strike the final blow. I am sorry, Commander, but we must stick to Eirene's plan."
Anton was like me. He didn't care about moral posturing or soft feelings; he cared about raw results and guaranteed survival.
Elicia slammed her hands onto the wooden desk, her face red with frustration.
"I refuse to accept that, Chief! From this moment on, I will rework my plan to make it faster and cheaper! I will cut down the time and the costs! Just give me a chance, Chief!"
"Agreed. Commander, I will give you exactly one week to prove your method can work on a smaller scale. If you cannot deliver a fast, practical solution by then, we move forward with the cull. We cannot risk the many for the sake of the few.'
He leaned back in his chair, tapping a large map of the region.
"Do not worry about the surrounding areas for now. Before this news could even reach the public, I already dispatched squads of knights to all nearby towns and villages. We are evacuating every civilian directly to Caria City. Within days, Caria will become a living, heavily fortified stronghold for millions of survivors. We will protect the greatest number of lives possible, no matter what it takes."