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While certainly, on a purely pragmatic level, it would have been beneficial to them to do so, there was far more at play in these circumstances than pragmatism alone could account for.

Between all of their collective histories and that of their reapers, they had too much experience and knowledge of the Weasel’s exploits. No matter how reasonably the man might have wanted to present himself now, Vanderberk was a mass murderer who gave orders to other mass murderers.

And not only that, he was known for doing so gleefully.

To say that such a person could not be trusted to keep his word would have been the understatement of the century. And even if, somehow, that were not a factor, there was also the basic moral component of it to consider.

“The rain fears not the torch.”

Those were their words, even now after all they’d lost. No. Especially now.

More than ever, they knew that they could not bend here.

And so, it had not taken them long in order to decide on their plan of action.

They were going to fight.

The mission to retrieve all of their captive kin from Logden Prison had proceeded fairly well at first. There were roughly four hundred souls to account for, and considering how few of these Invisibility rings they had at their disposal, they made respectable progress the first day, retrieving almost fifty frozen heads from cold storage.

Fifty warriors who could contribute to the fight, in other words.

Everyone was nervous now, and Zeff Elroy was no exception. There were still so many non-servants in the prison. They were always going to be harder to free than a bunch of frozen heads, but now that Vanderberk was here and all the guardsmen were on the lookout for invisible infiltrators, the task was yet more daunting.

The potential for casualties here was very high.

Not to mention, part of Zeff’s motivation for coming here was to recover his son, Francisco, who should have been among the frozen heads. But thus far, there was no sign of the boy or his reaper, Dennex.

At this point, Zeff was beginning to think that they might not even be here. And with how dangerous the situation was, he didn’t know if that would be a disappointment or a comfort.

There was, however, one confusing piece of good news that arrived before the fighting broke out.