The First Legendary Beast Master novel Chapter 41

Chapter 41: Low and Slow

The first thing that Karl noticed about the centre of town was how clean it was. There was no sign of battle here, no indication that there had been a last stand to defend this place. So, logically, the majority of the inhabitants must have simply left, or fought to the end in another part of town.

Reluctantly, Karl checked the large stone building nearby, whose doors were left open to the elements, and found that while the interior was a bit messy, there was no sign of a battle here either. So, either they left in advance, or the attack happened at night when nobody was at work.

If the battle did take place at night and made it past the perimeter security that every village should have, it would make sense that there was very little to see in the streets. The Goblins would have invaded homes, and by the time that the alarm was raised, most of the town would have been killed in their sleep.

The government building still had power to the computers, so Karl whistled to catch Dana's attention and gestured for her to come inside.

"Do you know how to work this? I've never seen that operating system before." He asked.

"Oh, no problem. We used the same one at school. It's even still logged in. I wonder why their computers don't have a time-out feature when you're gone too long?" She asked.

She tapped a few keys and then clicked on the home button and smiled.

"It looks like they did leave us a message. There is a text file in the middle of the home screen."

[Dearest explorers and salvage teams. The residents of this village intend to return within thirty days of the posting of this notice, making the town's property ineligible for salvage. A surprise Goblin attack with the threat of ongoing invasions forced us to evacuate to safe point Alpha, as designated on the government maps for this location, and once the region is deemed safe and the Elites have finished their work, we will return.

Mayor Dingwall.]

"That's dated this morning. We were likely already gathered for the morning briefing when this was posted, but I think that a lot of the blood we saw was a fair bit older than that." Karl noted.

Dana thought about the timing of the message and its implications, and then looked back outside.