Desolate World

Some vampires showed their support for her's idea and he could see several vampire servants nodding. Hugo could only put a blind eye to their behaviors. 

If he could, he wanted to do that too. However, he was being rational. They couldn't defeat the refugees with their power unscathed. And there was Noah. Although they could slay all of the ordinary refugees, it was impossible for them to kill Noah, the elite human. 

It was because after killing the ordinary refugees, many of the vampire servants and vampires would be killed either after the battle, and Noah of course wouldn't be silent when the vampires were massacring the refugees. Hugo asked himself, could they kill Noah with their battered states after killing all refugees? He shook his head. It was unlikely.

'Then my hard work these months, No this 2 years, would go down the drain,' Hugo said in his heart. Yes, it was his main reason he didn't want to confront the humans directly. Because he was being pragmatic. Why did he have to fight if he knew he would be defeated? That was unreasonable to him.

Yesterday's failure still made him angry. Freya, without his approval, led many vampires and vampire servants to get revenge on the refugees. The last failure made them unconvinced and did that reckless thing. They didn't believe that refugees, with their new 'rope' tactic could defeat them. 

As a result, many servants were killed that night. He was very angry with Freya. Her hot-blooded action caused them to suffer many casualties once more. 

However, Hugo didn't have the heart to punish her. He loved her. Although many of his friends ridiculed him for being unreasonable for dating an NPC, what could he do, if his feelings said otherwise. Love was blind. And he was powerless against his feelings. 

What he could do was to be more strict to Freya and other vampires. He couldn't suffer another loss. If it happened, his stand in his guild and vampire community would be hit hard.

Hugo then checked the wounded vampire servants who were injured. As a note, because of their constitution, vampires had a great regeneration, if they consumed blood. And blood in this case didn't have to be human blood. 

For them, every creature's blood had a different taste based on race. Although human blood was delicious, there were many creatures that had more delicious blood than humans, such as trolls and dragons. However, basically most vampires weren't picky about taste, because in their former world, where undead was the majority, fresh blood was luxury. It's not unusual that they had to hunt zombie creatures to get their decayed blood.

Although there were many of livings at the moment, it shouldn't be so in the later years. Just these months alone, they had transformed millions of humans into undead. 90% of them became skeleton soldiers. 

These simple-minded undead, like ghosts didn't consume resources to live, with just a spell of the liches, thousands of skeleton soldiers could be transformed from the corpses of the humans. 

If the pace of the undead army continued like this, Hugo predicted that in a few decades, the livings in the continent would be extinct. And if it happened, fresh blood would be so rare. Because of that, vampires couldn't be picky about food. Because they knew that in the future, such abundant good food would be rare once more like in their previous world.

Seeing the injuries of his subordinates healed fast after they drank their reserve blood, Hugo said, "Let's leave this place."

Freya and some vampires showed their dissatisfied expressions. But, no one dared to voice their objection. For them, Hugo was their master and his order was unquestionable. This rule was imprinted in their brain from the moment they were transformed into vampire servants.

***

Ace and the rest saw the cave with caution. Although Ace didn't hear any suspicious sounds around there, the fear of the unknown was enough to make him alert. After all, it was the first time he would face intelligent enemies. 

Although he had met dragons and angels, they were friendly to him. So, subconsciously, he treated them as allies, not threats. And at the moment, when he would face vampires, he felt the same nervousness as when he would hunt the ants for the first time.

"Are you sure the vampires inside?" Ace asked.

"Yes. She said that her sister is down there. It should be the vampire's nest," Cloud said.

"Then, let's take a rest first," Ace said while sitting down under a tree. 

In his head, he already had a plan to save Nila's sister from the vampires. Yes, he planned to only save Nila's sister. They had several glasses of stealth potions that he had bought from the system before the game started. 

They would sneak into Vampire's nest using stealth potions, save her, and then escape. After that, they would go to the refugees' place according to her direction. And if the other refugees wanted to solve the vampires, he wouldn't mind helping them. 

As for directly confronting the vampire, Ace had never considered this option from the beginning. He wasn't crazy. At least, he must know the vampires' numbers and strength. And then formulated a feasible tactic.

Actually, his journey these days had woken him up. He, who was always complacent in his strength, realized that many existences in this jungle could kill him, such as when they were sneak attacked on the river, the spirit's story, and then Red's alert. All of them made him realize that he still needed to be cautious when adventuring in this game. 

"So, before we start, I will tell you my plan. Our target this time is only to rescue Nila's sister. Even if we see other prisoners, we will temporarily omit them. Because we don't have the strength to save them all right now," Ace started to explain his plan.

He explained his plan detailly. Like they should consume black (stealth) potions before entering the cave, Geo should only take out Jumpy that had camouflage ability, and what they should do if there was an emergency, like, if they were detected by the vampires, etc.

Cloud didn't say anything about it. Ace assumed that she didn't mind with the plan.

"Okay, let's drink the potions before we start!" Ace then took out 3 black colored potions from his inventory. As he wanted to give the two bottles to Geo and Cloud, he realized that Cloud's expression was somewhat weird.

"Something wrong, Ma'am?" Ace asked.

Cloud who seemed to have communicated with Nila then said, "Nila said something weird. She said his sister was coming this way at high speed."

Ace was dumbfounded.

***