Tonight, the curfew was back in effect at the camp outside Scarlet Castle. There were no more thrilling fights to watch at the fight club, and not even a drop of liquor to drink. Yet, strangely enough, everyone in the camp was on their best behavior.
There were hardly any complaints, either.
It wasn't that the rough, uncivilized Transians had suddenly learned tolerance. It was simply that the camp guards had passed along the details.
A bunch of truly awful Wolfsbane vampires couldn't stand seeing the hard-pressed people of Transia get on with their lives, so they'd traveled all the way from Greeny Island to kill the Blood Eagle vampires here.
Now, the two vampire factions were fighting with knives in the city sewers. Whoever won would decide who controlled Scarlet Castle's future, just as things were starting to improve.
At such a critical moment, Lord Murphy had ordered everyone to stay in camp. It felt less like imprisonment and more like protection.
Of course, protection had always gone both ways.
The strong had the right to protect the weak, and the weak had the right to decide whether to accept that protection.
So, in the workers' district of the forward camp, the Chosen Construction Worker stared dumbfounded at the foremen who had rushed into his tent to "petition" him.
The Construction Worker and his brother, Bricklayer, had wanted to join the excitement in the sewers, too, but Baroness Mirian had firmly refused their request to fight.
The reason was simple.
They were exceptionally talented bureaucrat players.
Before Lord Murphy entered the sewers, he had given explicit orders: unless the Blood Eagle Clan members and combat-class players were all dead, these hard-won "prized assets" were not to go rushing onto the battlefield and throw their lives away.
It might make