The Martial Unity

He waved his hand and an assistant staff member in the room provided him with a map of Hajin and several surrounding towns.

"As I'm sure you're all aware of the commission objective; It's to protect our outgoing supplies dispatch batch enroute the Shadow Trails, a valley in the Basara mountains to the East of Hajin, all the way to the mission destination; the town of Gallagar." He said, pointing to a town far east of Hajin past a mountain range.

Rui nodded, familiar with the mission details. There was a small mountain range in between Hajin and Gallagar known as the Basara mountains. Their job was to protect esoteric supplies dispatch travelling from Hajin to Gallagar, through the Shadow Trails a valley in the Basara mountain range that was going to be traversed to reach their destination.

"This route has been the go-to route for shipping and transport between Hajin and Gallagar for nearly all matters, since it is the only practical means of travelling from Hajin to Gallagar without inflating the time, difficulty or cost."

Mountains were extremely unconducive as a topography for regular and reliable means of transport and shipping due to their structure alone. Furthermore, the greater one deviated from known trails and paths in mountain ranges, the more one strayed into wild territory, which housed many best species that were part of an intricate ecosystem largely uninfluenced by humans. The risks of happening upon predators was not insignificant.

This is what made the Shadow Trails in the Basara Mountains of such vital importance. It was a lifeline for a lot of markets, industries and sectors in several towns in the geographic vicinity of the Basara Mountains. The Shadow Trails valley was what allowed for a sustainable supply and transit between all these towns.

Which is why the presence of a new bandit group that threatened safe exchanges was extremely detrimental to several economies. The new bandit had been operating for little under two months, they slaughtered their victims before extracting everything of value that could be found.

transport and shipping companies heard about the bandits, the prices of transport and shipping services had been increasing over time, inflating well above

because the risks these companies were undertaking was huge. Furthermore, a lot of employees and personnel who managed the travelling process, who were directly at risk, had either quite their jobs or demanded higher pay

bandit group caused several problems beyond just the loss of life

them once before as well. This time we have decided to hire the five of you as bodyguards to protect this particular dispatch among

this dispatch among others?"

with a smile. "Before I answer that, allow me

There was more to their target

is to take down the bandit group, one way or another, simply put. We have noticed that this bandit group has not been indiscriminate in their targeting. They largely aim for higher-grade esoteric material supplies from esoteric suppliers such as ourselves rather than any random travelling group." He explained. "The supply dispatch you will be bodyguarding is quite valuable, furthermore we have subtly caused a minor intel leak regarding the contents of this particular exotic supply dispatch in the right circles. This dramatically increases the probability of you being attacked. However, with your presence, we'll be able to kill all of them or at the very least

a simple routine supply dispatch. It seemed far too extravagant and a highly unsustainable security measure. This could only have meant that the target of their protection was

bandits are in the Shadow Trails, how will they have access to this intel?"

allows them to transmit some basic signals." Savin explained. "Furthermore, a

He paused, before continuing.