"Your guild was attacked? By whom?"
Eren asked while caressing Nina's thighs. The latter didn't know what to say about his behavior. She slapped his hands away before speaking up.
"Yes. We discovered this after we got out of the isolated dimension. The guild master of Healers' Nirvana– Jiana Jihang sent a one-way message to uncle Amory describing the event.
It's only been a few weeks since the attack. The guild has only 20% of its workforce left. Most died. A few managed to flee, never to be seen again.
The most shocking piece of news is that the attackers managed to critically injure guild master Jianna's demon beast Bilo. Since she was connected to Bilo, guild master Jianna also received a soul-related injury, making her unable to retaliate anymore for the time being."
Eren stopped doing his shenanigans with Nina when he heard that Healers' Nirvana was attacked. He was quite perplexed. In the last timeline, Healers' Nirvana only kept on prospering for as long as he could remember. He wasn't sure what happened to Amory in that timeline, but Jianna Jihang had managed to make more of a name for herself when she became a Grandmaster ranker. She already had a kingdom-certified title attached to her name.
'*sigh! At this point, I have lost all my advantages from knowing past events. This timeline had gotten more muddled than I thought it would be despite my efforts to preserve it as much as I could.'
Eren sighed and shook his head before asking the rankers.
"A guild like Healers' Nirvana has its say in the kingdom's affairs. The royal court wouldn't want to see a healer-specific guild being destroyed on the brink of war.
Why didn't Edinburgh's forces intervene? Was it another prominent guild or…"
"Cultists!"
Amory spoke up while releasing some more smoke through his nostrils. He hit his smoking pipe on his palm a couple of times to get rid of the burnt material, then refilled it with fresh herbs before adding more.
"The kingdom's forces wanted to intervene. Jianna was assured that a couple of army units had been deployed to assist the guild. But the attack was too sudden and took place on a much larger scale than one could imagine. It was as if these cultists had no intention of calling it quits when they were ahead."
Eren narrowed his eyes as he listened to Amory's words. As much as the masses liked to believe, he knew that the cultists weren't ragtag bands of lunatics. If one was willing to dig deep, one would always find the motives behind the cultists' actions.
Eren could only think of one reason why the cultists would want to attack a non-aggressive guild like Healers' Nirvana. A foreign hand. The butcher's suspicions were confirmed by Nina's next words.
"Everything was over even before the kingdom's forces could play their part in the incident. The royal court tells us that the kingdom of Layos has a hand to play in the attack. It doesn't want Edinburgh to have so many healers taking active roles in the upcoming war. So it influenced the cultists to attack the entire guild and all of its members.
The cultists also destroyed the guild's properties and the land it used to own. It got rid of all the healing-specific resources we were cultivating. It bombed our warehouses and destroyed our stocks of healing potions and more."
Eren shook his head as he listened to Nina's explanation. He lay flat on his back and took out his Sativa Stick. He used Argo's feathers as something to scratch the back of his neck before lighting his smoke.
He looked at the dim evening sky with a blank expression before voicing his thoughts.
"It doesn't matter if the cultists were influenced by the kingdom of Layos. What I'm more concerned about are players from the enemy kingdom who organized the whole thing.
They targeted and destroyed your guild's warehouses and other properties. Cultists would have tried to loot everything if they were acting on their own.
The cultists were tamed and made to operate like one force. This is not something that can be done remotely. My guess… There was a commander present at the scene who was not a cultist. They choreographed the event and did not let the cultists have their way."
Eren smoked his Sativa Stick leisurely as he made his predictions known to the two rankers. Nina started missing Eren's touch on her body when he lay flat behind her. She readjusted her derriere and made it touch his crotch ever so subtly.
However, Eren was on a different tangent at this point. He looked at Amory like one of his smoking buddies before starting to converse with him.
"This is worse than it looks, Master Amory. Layos has managed to get their prominent rankers into Edinburgh. Something like this should have made a beep on their radar.
What the fuck has Edinburgh's intelligence network been up to all this time? Why weren't you informed about this? How couldn't it see this big event coming from miles away?"
Eren knew exactly how Edinburgh's army operated. It remained alert to internal threats more than external pressure. A movement this big should have been noticed by the kingdom's intelligence agencies long ago.
A cultist attack of this magnitude cannot be handled by the city administration at all. Special forces should have intervened or the Army should have deployed its troops to handle the situation. There were other covert and overt preventive measures that should have been put in place.
Yet, a prominent guild like Healers' Nirvana was attacked and almost destroyed by the cultists. A large group of the kingdom's healers getting killed before the start of the war was akin to Layos dealing double the damage to Edinburgh using one move.
The attack on Healers' Nirvana was a slap in the face for Edinburgh's forces. The guilds' trust in the kingdom's forces was bound to be negatively affected by this single incident alone.
Amory knew what Eren was talking about. All of his assumptions were right on the mark. At first, he thought that Eren was just another young blood. But he changed his mind as he listened to Eren's predictions.
Amory continued to smoke his pipe as he replied to Eren.
