[D'sP] Dealing With The Cult - Chapter 329 (Patreon)

Melonie shook her head, “I would have personally preferred if you had warned us, but I understand. They’re friends and maybe you didn’t think they would go this far. In fact, these twenty who only did minor things will be free to stay, with some conditions.

“These seven, on the other hand, will receive no mercy. They are to be exiled and sent in a direction away from Wolf’s Rest. It was them that caused the structural damage. The others might have damaged the building a little, but it is these seven who carved the holes, ruined the yard, and destroyed the roof.”

The crowd gets a little rowdy as just exiling doesn’t seem enough. Melonie allowed them a few minutes to rumble before she calmed them down again.

Melonie gestures towards Susan, “Don’t worry, exile isn’t the only penalty. Now, some of you might have seen a certain someone make their way through town recently. Well, I don’t want to go quite so far, but we have a guest from Wolf’s Rest and I figure a quick bit of tattoo work declaring that they were exiled would be a good punishment.

“To be honest, I really didn’t want to stoop to that level, but they did it first. Though speaking of exile, we’ll be doing that officially because we just gained access to the item needed to upgrade our settlement into a town.”

You could practically hear the record scratch as everyone fell silent. One of the regular vandals can’t help but ask, “Wait, we’re going to actually be exiled and not just told to leave?”

Melonie, “Well, if you choose to follow the cultists when I exile them, sure.”

Someone in the crowd speaks up, “This isn’t right! Why do you have the right to exile us?”

Melonie raises an eyebrow, “I’m the leader as recognized by the system. You don’t have to like it for it to be true. There is always the option to leave. It isn’t like you have all that much holding you here. It hasn’t even been a full year.”

A small part of the crowd really doesn’t like this. Odd how those who are unhappy almost perfectly match up with the ones fingered as being connected to the cult. Anyway, no one else really had anything to say against her stance on this. After all, most of the people do actually support Melonie.

If anything, they’re all for this. At first, the random acts of art were interesting. However, as time passed, the vandalism got more and more annoying. Now they really just want to have a home that they get to decide how it is decorated.

Melonie claps her hands to get the crowd’s attention. “Still one thing left to figure out! Just like with Wolf’s Rest, we will get to have a name. And no, we aren’t going to use what the previous council has landed on. Besides, I want a name with teeth to it.

“Like come on! Wolf’s Rest? Not only are wolves already pretty sweet, it has the implication of their town being the ‘resting’ place of wolves. Good stuff, that!”

Someone in the crowd yells, “And I bet their boots taste wonderful!”

Melonie snorts, “And I bet they could kill you with no one realizing it. I’m not going to sugarcoat this for you. The fact we aren’t just being conquered is simply because the people in charge over there don’t want to bother with it.

“Now, how about we figure out a name for this place? Being called ‘that settlement upriver from the dungeon’ is a little wordy for my taste. We don’t really have an animal mascot to be named after. I was considering something pointing towards how we are the gateway to the dungeon. In the future, we will be a major trade hub as multiple roads will center on us before heading to Wolf’s Rest.”

Melonie waits as a few people shout out various suggestions before deciding it can wait for tomorrow. So instead she stops the shouting and directs everyone to the secretaries that help her keep track of the settlement. With that taken care of, she takes the prisoners into a more private location.

Melonie, “Okay, of you who are just vandals and idiots, any of you want to get even more stupid out of your system by following the cultists?”

More than a few snorted at this. Though one guy does step forward, “I don’t want to live in a place with someone like you in charge!”

Melonie sighs, “But do you want to follow them? If you’re just wanting to leave, you can do that on your own time. I’m asking if you’re following the cultists.”

The man slow blinks before stepping back.

Melonie nods, “Remember, I’m not going to hold you guys for much longer and if all you want is to skip town? It will probably be quicker to do it on your own. I can’t release the cultists until this is a proper town.”

Another vandals speaks up, “They aren’t cultists! We just appreciate what the System has done for us!”

Melonie focuses her full attention on the man. “What if I said the system was weak? That while convenient, we could do most of this stuff even without?”

The man spits on the floor. “You know not how to show proper appreciation for the gifts given to you! With your System granted strength, you could have been a bright star!”

Melonie doesn’t even have to give a signal, Susan is behind him, applying hobbles to his legs before forcing him to join the other cultists.

Melonie sighed, “And that is just the stupid cultists. Yes, I know some of you are in the same group. I even know of a number of hidden cultists out among the other residents. Not all of them, obviously, but that is just a matter of time. That or I don’t know a thing and this is all to let you pass it on and cause paranoia. And I’m sure they won’t suspect you ratted them out to escape punishment.”

After that, they released the vandals. On the other hand, they kept the cultists in a, well, it wasn’t a prison per se? But it was a windowless box someone had made early on. Very much a log cabin style thing as well, so quite sturdy. Oh, and the Barrais are going to be defending it overnight. While Melonie didn’t mind the new building getting messed up, prison breaks were not going to be accepted.

And while this was happening, back in Wolf’s Rest there was a bit of a shake up happening as well. After all, cults don’t just hide in a corner waiting to be tidied up. They spread and try to drag others in.

Except, in Wolf’s Rest, the Barrais had kept an eye on the situation. Operatives made sure that the infiltrating cultists either were directed away from people or only talked to one of the Barrais undercover people. The cults every move had someone watching and with the cleanup happening upriver, now was the perfect time to pull the weeds out, roots and all.

So throughout the town, people were disappearing off the streets. An impressive feat, when you remember those cultists who moved down where those focused on fighting. They might not be the strongest, being a bit behind because of the system denier cult, but they ranked up there among the regular residents.

Despite that, the Barrais’ people scythed through their numbers without a single alarm being raised. Not even the town guard noticed anything. Though a small number of said guards did get a sense of impending doom. Understandable when missing what happened represented them being signed up for intense training sessions from the Barrais.

Now, the Barrais didn’t expect the town guard to be able to notice everything that happened in town. If anything, not noticing the truly sneaky stuff was a survival skill to cultivate. However, for the guard to not notice such a large-scale abduction of the population was unacceptable.

And it was large-scale. The town had a fairly erratic population, though it generally balanced around a thousand people staying long term. This included those who planned to stay at least a month for delving purposes, but still was a fairly accurate number, all things considered. And of those about a thousand people, the Barrais captured nearly a hundred that night.

This number might seem like a lot, especially considering how few were caught up river. However, while the cult accepted all comers, it has found particularly fertile ground with adventurers as they tended to experience the most explosive growth. Crafters tend to have more of a steady drip of improvement over a fighter’s jackpot-like bursts of growth that could come after a hard fought battle.

Also, unlike up river, in Wolf’s Rest they captured all the cultists and not just the ones causing problems. There was just one tiny problem. This wasn’t technically legal, at least by Ace’s rules on religion. After all, they weren’t doing anything illegal in town, so there was no reason to capture them. The Barrais saw things differently.

While they hadn’t technically done anything wrong, what the spies had uncovered pointed towards a much more sinister goal. Up river, the crafters just wanted to craft every available material to keep boosting their skills. In Wolf’s Rest? The cult had been planning on taking over.

They had found that fighting fellow humans provided a massive boost to certain skills. In fact, any skill that involved cunning or planning saw marked increase to growth when pitted against another sapient. So sure, they could fight the dungeon bosses over and over, but those things were practically newborns when it came to such things, making them only slightly more effective than the regular monsters.

No, the cultists wanted to turn the town into basically one large PvP zone. Sure, they would have rules and such, but those rules would be for increasing the difficulty of doing the things and not preventing them. Random fights in the street? Not okay. If you trick or force your opponent into accepting a duel? Well, that’s perfectly fine!

Suffice it to say, none of the inner circle wanted that nonsense. And sure, they as a bunch were more than capable of taking on all nearly one hundred cultists if needed. However, why bother? Much better to nip things in the bud. Plus, you never know how many will have joined by the time they decide to set their plan in motion.

After all, when they first arrived, it was only a small group of less than 20 people. So the town’s hidden forces easily gathered them and removed them from town. Though what that means, even the Barrais don’t know. Each agent was given free rein to decide how to handle their targets. The only stipulation was that they would be punished if any of their targets returned to town. Besides that, they had full authority to exile or do basically anything else besides stuff like torture.

After all, the town wasn’t looking for information or confessions. Both normal spying and magical scrying had been used to confirm the guilt of each target beyond a shadow of a doubt. They were even going to allow the normal members of the cult to stick around, despite the problems that might cause. What with their friend all vanishing.

But no, the deeper they looked, the more obvious it was that every single member of the cult endorsed the takeover plan. In fact, the cult could have possibly gathered nearly a third of the town’s population into their flock. Instead, they focused on only letting those who accept their world view completely into the cult.

And so it was that around 20 agents swept through the town and decimated the population in the classical sense. People would notice this, but since it didn’t disrupt anything and with news of what happened up river, people figured they had all left. At least, that was what they said to others in public. Besides, this didn’t hit any of the meat farmers or the merchants and opened up space for new people to move in.

What's That Over There! - Chapter 328

Melonie Loud - Chapter 330