With Uriel, Luna, dusa gone and Nika missing in action, the Dungeon Raiders were left in the military headquarters exchanging awkward looks between each other as they didn't know how to proceed.
The usual thing was for Miss Dragonfang to take charge of the situation and it would have made sense considering how she was also the daughter of a general of the army and a forr soldier too, but there was a problem.
Lizzy Dragonfang having bad luck was a well known fact as whenever she raised a flag during a mission the entire operation would be considered to be jinxed. They thought it to be a coincidence at first but after Bella confird it was a curse, they hesitated before putting her in charge of the defense against the gods who may have cursed her in the first place.
"Should Emma be our interim leader?" Asked Lizzy to a very confused Phlox.
"Why do you ask ? You're the second in command."
"The only reason why anyone would propose taking charge is because of my last na, but now we know I'm not blood related to Uriel it doesn't make sense. Not to ntion that I'm busy looking for more cases." Emma passed on the responsibility.
"It's not like we lack more cases, we lack strong hunters that can lead the investigations. We're just regular hunters like the soldiers, but those guys, they're built different." Phlox sighed.
"Maybe this is our chance to step up and beco more powerful. To raise above the level of regular hunters and beco sothing else," Miss Dragonfang said with the proud face of a warrior and the serious tone of a soldier before crumbling into a maddened laughter as she patted on Phlox's back. "you almost bought it, I saw it in your face!"
"Yeah, we'd get slaughtered the mont we find what we're looking for. All of us except for..."
"Bella!" All the Dungeon Raiders who participated on the conversation shouted in unison.
"What did I do now?" Asked Bella who at that mont was talking to her brother Tate.
"You're perfect for the job! Your brother is a colonel, you're a heavenly rank hunter, you know witchcraft and you're impervious to damage." Phlox declared followed by Miss Dragonfang's joking explanation.
"In other words, you're it."
"Fine," Bella let out a sigh that seed dejected for a mont, then a genuine smile appeared on her face. "It's settled then, brother. You're not a colonel of the army anymore, you're a Dungeon Raider."
"What!?" Asked Miss Dragonfang.
"We were just discussing things and none of us are confident to survive what's coming. I'm likely to fall in action as it is my duty and my honor to do so, and Bella, she's likely going to get involved with sothing too big for her to deal with. Our chances of survival are slim to none and we're Okay with that, but only if we are together." Tate explained and Bella added.
" and Tate have not always been close, but we're family," Bella not denying that the hopes of making it alive were slim made the Dungeon Raiders worry and she quickly corrected herself. "don't get wrong, I don't want to die. Much less die protecting a flag that doesn't care for its people, but I wouldn't mind dying to protect my family. And to , you guys are a part of my family too."
"Well said." Phlox said after letting her clenched fists relax.
"May I?" Asked Tate to Bella who was now technically his boss and she nodded in reply. "I'll explain the situation. The presence of divine beings has been confird within city walls, but we don't know their motives. What we can say for sure is that their re existence is a threat to us at the worst and a disturbance at the least, which ans we need to investigate. I will now present to you the current state of our operation so we can decide further actions." Tate spoke in a concise manner they all found refreshing as it was not only to the point, but allowed everyone to see the bigger picture despite how little information they possessed.
Most of the teams that had been dispatched to points of interest within the city where Emma believed there were unexplainable phenona taking place had failed to find any trace of the presence of a god, but only a couple had been able to rule it out. This likely ant that they either lacked the capability to detect gods that didn't want to be found or that they were too fast to escape, this of course was only a theory and could not be confird but it backed the idea that they needed a different approach.
"As you ntioned, we're not strong enough to take on a god, but that has never been our intention. If what Colonel Sage..."
"We don't refer to him using his army rank in this company." Miss Dragonfang butted in.
"As the boss..."
"He doesn't like to be called that." Phlox cut him short causing Tate's bulging muscles to almost rip his shirt out of anger.
"My point is, we need to find him."
"If he wanted to talk to us, he would call us or at least reply our calls." Miss Dragonfang pouted.
"And that leads to my point. We are currently investigating several unexplained phenona such as an abandoned building that should still be populated, a spot beneath a bench in college that teleports people to another spot within the college, a piano that plays itself, a mirror that reflects people's disfigured faces apart from the ones the higher ups are investigating, but for so reason no one is investigating the biggest unexplained phenonon."
"Which is?" Asked Miss Dragonfang now curious to hear the answer.
"Where is Mister Uriel."
"Yeah, it sounds weird if you say it like that. It's either Mister Sage or Uriel." Phlox scoffed.
"For crying out loud we need to find him now!" Bella shouted.
"That could be the case, but he usually does his own thing and whoever searches for him will either find more trouble that they can handle or will get reprimanded for interrupting him," Miss Dragonfang said, then continued. "not it!"
Tate witnessed as the shouts of 'not it' started going around and he questioned himself about how serious they were taking the situation. Especially after her sister also said it and even nudged him on the ribs and he unwittingly said it also.
"Guess it's on , then." Alice who up until that mont had remained silent sighed.
"Don't take it so seriously, they're certainly just playing around." Tate replied.
"Not really," Bella awkwardly explained. "it started as a joke, but it's so ingrained in our people that now it's written in our rules."
"I don't know what shocks the most, the fact that we have rules at all or that Bella knows them." Emma mumbled.
After passing on responsibilities for what seed like an entire day but was actually less than one hour, the company was now ready to jump into action which actually ant sending the last one to say 'not it' to do the job nobody wanted to do.
It was the least efficient way to make any decisions and while it was hard to see how could everybody be fine with such process, Tate admitted it was the closest thing he had seen to a democratic approach within a company. It allowed employees to bail out of difficult tasks and gave everyone a fair chance, leaving only the slowest, most distracted or more willing to do the jobs nobody wanted to do.
This worked in everyone's favor as people who did more work got rewarded for it and since all the employees had different traits and skillsets it was difficult for a task nobody wanted to perform to co up.
It may be argued that Alice only said it last because she was the least familiar with their process, but the truth of the matter was that she actually agreed that the best course of action was to find Uriel and she also knew herself to be capable of doing so as her trait allowed her to see in the future and by doing so.
The more she looked into the future the most flux expensive it beca, but being well rested and ready to take action allowed her to see around an hour into the future where Uriel would walk back from the north. This, however, was only one of the possible futures and the only way she was able to see it happen was because she used her trait after deciding she would make her best effort to look for him which ant that now she had to actually put in the work.
"At least now I know he'll co from the north." Alice sighed before heading out north where she thought Uriel would be.
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