The aftermath of the Corrupted Treant's defeat was a somber, muted affair. No cheers. No cries of victory. The Unchained, exhausted and nursing their wounds, simply stood in the silent, cathedral-like chamber.

Their eyes darted nervously between the colossal, dead tree and the pale, trembling figure of their leader. They had survived. But the demonstration of Edward's new, terrifying power had left a deep, unsettling chill.

He was their savior. Their king. The architect of their impossible survival. But he was also becoming something alien. Something that commanded the spirits of the dead.

Something they were beginning to struggle to understand. The awe they felt for him was now inextricably mixed with a deep, primal fear.

Edward felt their fear. He saw it in their eyes. And it was a wound far deeper than any the Treant could have inflicted. He had embraced the monster to protect them.

In doing so, he had begun to build a new, invisible wall between himself and the very people he was fighting for.

He pushed the thought away. Locked it down with the cold, pragmatic discipline he had learned in the abyss. No time for introspection. No room for doubt. They were at war. And the next battle was always just over the horizon.

They salvaged what they could from the grotto. They returned to Asylum. Their mobile fortress was a welcome, rumbling sanctuary.

The victory, costly as it had been, had yielded a massive bounty of SP. Edward immediately began to reinvest in his people. He purchased advanced healing potions from the Market to mend the blacksmiths' broken bones.

Replaced the rogue mages' shattered focusing crystals. Upgraded Fenris's now-dented adamantite gauntlets. He was a king tending to his burgeoning, fragile kingdom.

But their actions, their relentless, systematic purging of the system's dungeons, had not gone unnoticed. In the shadowy, violent world of mercenary guilds and power-hungry factions, a vacuum had been created. And nature—especially the brutal, Darwinian nature of the underworld—abhorred a vacuum.

They had attracted unwanted attention.

The message came not as a formal declaration. But as a brutal, bloody statement of intent. A small Unchained scouting party, a team of four beast-kin warriors sent to map a nearby mana spring, had gone silent.

Fenris, her face a mask of grim concern, led the search party. They found what was left of them in a small, blood-soaked clearing.

It was a massacre. And it was a message.

The bodies of three of the beast-kin scouts had been crucified. Nailed to the trunks of the ancient, weeping willows. Their bodies were mangled. Their armor shattered. Their faces frozen in masks of final, agonizing pain.

The fourth scout was alive. Barely. He was impaled on a crudely fashioned iron spear. The sigil of a vulture with a fistful of coins in its talons was crudely branded onto his chest. He was left there to bleed out. A living, dying message board.

Fenris recognized him. A young wolf-kin. Who had looked at her with a kind of hero-worship. His name had been Sam.

She rushed to his side. Her usual, roaring fury was replaced by a cold, terrible grief. She gently tried to ease him off the spear. The damage was too great. He was drowning in his own blood.

"Iron… Vultures…" Sam choked out. A spray of red foam on his lips. "They said… the territory… belongs to them now… They said… to deliver… a message…"

His eyes, fixed on Fenris's face, went glassy and vacant. The last of his life faded. Leaving only the brutal, bloody evidence of their new, savage reality.

Fenris gently closed his eyes. A low, keening growl of pure, unadulterated grief and rage rumbled in her chest. She had known cruelty. She had known betrayal. But this… this was a different kind of evil. Not the righteous fury of the Inquisition. Not the mindless aggression of a monster. This was the cold, cruel, and utterly pragmatic violence of men who killed for profit.

Edward arrived moments later. His face turned to stone as he took in the horrific scene. He looked at the branded sigil on the dead scout's chest. The Iron Vultures.

He knew the name. The whispers of the Ashen Market had painted a clear picture. The Iron Vultures were one of the largest, most ruthless mercenary guilds on the continent.

Not a guild of outcasts or rebels. A corporation of killers. A private army that sold its services to the highest bidder.

They were known for two things. Their absolute effectiveness. And their scorched-earth, take-no-prisoners tactics. Their leader was a man named Korgan.

A brutish, pragmatic S-Ranker. A legend in the mercenary world. Said to wield a massive greatsword forged from the heart of a fallen meteor.

Korgan was not a zealot like Daniel. He was not a schemer like the nobles. He was a businessman. And his business was violence.

And The Unchained, with their new, powerful fortress and their control over a dozen resource-rich dungeons, were not just a rival faction. They were an untapped market.

A resource to be seized. A competitor to be brutally and efficiently eliminated.

Edward looked at the crucified bodies of his people. He looked at the grieving, murderous rage in Fenris's eyes. And he knew that a new kind of war, a war he had not anticipated, had just been declared.

This would not be a holy war. Or a secret war of shadows. This was going to be a brutal, bloody, and utterly personal turf war.

He placed a hand on Fenris's shoulder. A silent gesture of shared grief and cold, hardening resolve.

As if on cue, a single, terrified-looking man stumbled into the clearing. His clothes were tattered. His face was a mask of pure fear. He was a low-level rogue. He held a sealed scroll in his trembling hand. The vulture-and-coins sigil of the Iron Vultures was stamped on it in black wax.

"A message… from Lord Korgan," the man stammered. His eyes darted between the crucified bodies and the cold, terrifying figure of Edward. He threw the scroll on the ground. Then fled. Scrambling back into the woods as if the devil himself were on his heels.

Edward picked up the scroll. He broke the seal. The message inside was not the elegant script of a nobleman. Not the cryptic runes of a mage. It was a crude, brutal scrawl. The words were practically carved into the parchment.

It was an ultimatum.

It declared that all territories, dungeons, and resources currently held by the "upstart faction known as The Unchained" were now the property of the Iron Vultures guild.

They had twenty-four hours to abandon their fortress. Surrender their weapons. And swear fealty to Lord Korgan. To become another cog in his vast, mercenary machine.

The message ended with a final, chilling, and utterly unambiguous promise.

"Refuse, and what we did to your scouts will look like an act of gentle mercy compared to what we will do to the rest of you."

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