"The Silvermane Guards want to negotiate with us."
Inside Kliperburg, Natasha looked at the letter in her hand, her expression grave.
She could not tell whether they genuinely wanted to negotiate or were merely trying to buy time.
"As things stand, we're surrounded." Oleg sighed. "We have a large number of prisoners, so they don't dare make any rash moves."
But there was no guarantee they would not resort to extreme measures next.
From what Oleg knew of the Silvermane Guards, if they were sent to rescue hostages, they would most likely wipe out both the hostages and their captors.
The good news was that all the captors had been eliminated.
The bad news was that not a single hostage had survived.
But that did not matter. What mattered was that they had eliminated the captors, so the rescue had been at least half successful.
Hearing this, Natasha considered it for a moment before saying:
"We have to go through with these negotiations. Whatever they're thinking, we at least need to make our demands clear. We're not vicious criminals. We're comrades fighting on the same front."
After a pause, Natasha said:
"Let's release a few prisoners who pose no threat as a show of good faith."
Oleg nodded and said:
"Let's release those guards, then."
They certainly could not release Kliperburg's high-ranking council members. If they let them return, there was no telling whether they would retaliate like madmen. But the soldiers who guarded the entrance posed little threat.
Natasha weighed the pros and cons and agreed to the decision.
Inside a makeshift cell, several Defense Force soldiers were tied to chairs.
Across from them, a young member of the Assault Team sat by the door, guarding them with a firearm in hand.
He had only recently joined Wildfire,