There are only three countries that were said to lie directly in the bottleneck. Loreley kingdom, the Walhart empire which borders on our north and the Necropolis, which covers the complete eastern half of the bottleneck, reaching from the northern sea to the western sea, while also being the shared eastern border of our Loreley and the Walhart empire.

As the country that controlled all trade between the eastern and western lands, it was once one of the richest and greatest country's on the great land. But, around 200 years ago, it fell to the curses of an evil necromancer, and nowadays nothing that dies there, stays dead for long, returning as undead. And even if you destroy those, they come back at some point."

„So, our enemy's are undead? But didn't you say they had summoned heroes?", Cale asked.

„No, that isn't the case. You will have to fight the undead at some point to get stronger yourself, but we don't want you to break the curse. The Curse is actually something beneficial to our kingdom. As the undead stay around the area were they died and very rarely leave they don't cause too much trouble and are pretty good practice-targets for our soldiers. Also, we already investigated and the curse seems to recede by one meter on average in fifty years.

The area of conflict is a river, That river starts almost in the middle of the eastern continent and joins together with several others until it reaches the eastern end of the Necropolis while constantly changing names. But from that point onwards that river is called the ‚Gateway to the East' while traveling in a straight line westward through the Necropolis. Originally the Gateway was flowing in a different way, that was until one of the kings of old started to artificially change its flow in an insane project that took three generations of kings to complete, creating one of their most important trading and s.h.i.+pping routes. And it still stands till today, just that it is now the only route that can be considered save while cutting straight through instead of around it as well. After leaving the Necropolis the Gateway flows into a great lake, that lake isn't all that important, but the island in its middle certainly is, because that island is the only place were s.h.i.+ps can properly anchor, as the other sh.o.r.es are to shallow.

At this point you may be able to imagine the problem already, that island, that is mostly called Gate island, is under the rule of the Loreley kingdom, while being half the reason for this kingdoms prosperity. After all, Gate island is the focuspoint of almost half of all the trade between the Eastern and the Western lands.

Actually the blessing that river is for our kingdom doesn't end there, as it keeps flowing, after changing names to Rivelon, in western direction until it takes a sharp turn up to the north, providing us with an natural barrier on more than half our border with the Walhart empire.

But, and this is the core of the matter, two years ago the emperor of the Walhart empire changed. And half a year ago, the new emperor proclaimed that he would take back what is ‚rightfully his', namely Gate island.

That claim isn't actually wrong, as Gate island was originally part of it until they lost it to their eastern neighbors over 300 years ago, and back then the Loreley kingdom was actually part of the empire.

You have to know that the Loreley kingdom is only 150 years young and split of from the empire because of the very poor treatment of their commoners and the rather inhumane treatment of their slaves.

Back then my ancestors were rather desperate, and that was when they took a gamble. They cleared out Gate island of all undead, destroying them and carrying them out of the cursed zone one by one until none were left. Even today, it still stands under the influence of the curse, but we keep watch with extreme care, and had only one minor outbreak of undead in all those years.

Sadly, ever since we refused to hand over the island, we prevented already more than ten outbreaks, being almost too late already twice. And the Empire keeps putting pressure on the western part of the border, the part that isn't protected by the Rivelon."

„So they made their position very clear, they want war.", Loras summarized the situation.

„Yes, that is definitely the case."

„I hope you don't mind me asking, but what exactly is our job as heroes, sure you train us and we fight, but were and when?", Cale asked.

„Well, heroes have mostly three types of missions. The first and most common type is going to be the quick-dispatches, you get dispatched as an quickly moving elite-force, providing support on normal border fights, by filling the gap until reinforcements arrive, in those cases mostly only one or two of you would go.

The second type are full on strikes against important strategic positions, as well as the exact opposite, defending against the full on strike of the empire. These missions are going to be the ones were the most of you will get dispatched at the same time, making it also the missions were you will clash with the other parties heroes the most regularly.

The last type, lets just call them ‚special missions', pretty much all those top secret missions that can come up in a war. Mostly high danger missions on enemy territory like interfering with their support lines, a.s.sasinations, stealing stuff... and sometimes things like escort missions."

„So, that is the reason that there are so many soldiers running around outside, the preparations for war are already in full swing. In that regard, there are actually a few questions i would like to ask.", threw Allan in at that point.