Chapter 11
…
Time passed.
We travelled.
I handled any event as diplomatically as I could, while unleashing Riegert, Ilych, and the recently resurrected Tari when necessary.
Which was a lot of the time, since I didn't want any shitty questlines ruining the march.
Now, there were a lot of good ones, don't get me wrong, but there were just as many bad ones and I committed those to memory.
Passing a village filled with festivities, that invited my men into orgies?
Refuse, move on, and burn it down when the cannibals reveal their true nature.
Avoid losing men to cannibals and prevent crotch rot from plaguing the populace.
Sick village filled with people asking and begging for food? Click the perfect, blue option thanks to my equipment on hand. Heal the village, which have great physicians due to having been fighting the disease for generations, and give them a place back home.
Increased happiness, lower cost healer units, and increased population.
Rumors about a sword of a god being nearby?
Ignore and move on, because that shit was a Demon God's sword, and it was a massive headache.
Rumors about a witch hunted by a local lord?
Stop the whole army, get every hero on the case, and eradicate the hidden demon. The witch is just a normal mage, but the hidden demon always drops a great artifact and is weak to being killed. Search mansion, get access to the obvious B*rs*rk reference sword, and give it to Ilych and make her scarier. Increased defense, increased defense that ignores with every kill made, and 100% larger cleave! Murder blender time!
Events were coming out of the woodwork more like Oregon Trail, but I noticed that most of them weren't that big of a deal.
They were more normal.
We encountered warbands that wanted to be hired, or wanted to try their luck, and I just gave those guys ultimatums. Join or die by the sword. If they didn't join for the wages we offered, then they'd just use their higher speed to attack us and harry us, until we needed them. You always had to deal with those sorts of people with absolute military superiority.
I could only guess that beating them and getting them with us increased unit experience.
There were also roving nomads and merchant caravans. People mostly lived as horse herders or migrated with their animals. Those guys we purchased food from, protected, and pointed toward our territory. If we had some people who were lightly injured, we sent a small detachment back, while our supply lines transferred in replacements.
These guys, I brought in for economic benefits and general population increases.
The more people that we had the better off that we were, especially since we could mitigate all the disease in the city once I got back, which was one of the few issues of having high population counts.
Anyway, that's how a year passed, how I turned eleven, and how we reached the Elven territories.
…
"Burn a path forward."
"That'll anger the Children of the Elm quite a bit, kid."
"They'll be angry no matter what. We're here to steal everything from them."
Riegert mellowed out on his teasing and insinuating that I was in trouble as time passed. It was most likely due to the fact that I was doing my job properly by handling the events that kept popping up. Sure, he had a lot of questions at first, but after the fifth or so time we came out on top, he stopped asking questions.
Which was a boon, since we could navigate the events that were involved in conquering the Elves.
These events weren't usually in play in multiplayer, it was also something that you could disable in campaign, but most people agreed it balanced and lore-friendly enough to keep, even in the hardest of settings.
Anyway, conquering the Elvish territories came with the issue of having to deal with guerilla fighters that could "see" through the forest.
Going through the forest, trying to keep its beauty, was a good way of getting ambushed at inopportune moments.
Thankfully, the we had the manpower and money to get the job down.
"Set up bonfires next to the trees. Use our lumber and kindling and tell the backline to start buying all that we can from the villages and the merchants we met. Have a lumber camp set up for our prisoners to enjoy." I rattled off instructions in the safety of my tent. I had a lot of eyes on me, while I stood on a stool to look at the massive map drawn by our resident cartographer with the help of our flying scouts. "It'll take a while, since living wood doesn't burn quickly, but a good blaze will help us a lot."
"The Winds say that it will invite reprisal attacks from the Children of the Elm."
"That's good, too. Better to fight them on near-open ground, or smoke-filled paths, than in the forests they own." I clarified and saw a few nods from Khanrow's cronies. I wasn't fooled about their loyalties, but I appreciated having the clout. Though I didn't know how to revolutionize industry or agriculture like all the other nerds in other worlds, I certainly knew enough about my favorite game to get the right advantages rolling for the faction I was in. Common sense, poring over this world's military history, and what I could remember from history class and Wikipedia binging helped too. I really should've read the Art of War, instead of just getting everything through memes. "We need to pull back the flying scouts before we do. I don't want them within bowshot."
A general assent came from the gathered officers, so I moved on with the real crux of this plan.
In the game, to progress into this event without issue, you needed to give up half the "health" of a whole Mage Unit, which was the early game artillery unit.
It was a massive loss, but it was better than having ten percent of all Unit and Champion health lost before every fight.
"We will speed up the flames, once they are there, with the Mages. Riegert, they can do that, right?"
"Ah, of course. With the flames there already, it'll just be a matter of manipulation. With a big enough blaze, we can create a road of ash and smoke right to the Citadel." Riegert grasped the plan instantly, probably because he would be the one suggesting it to the leader character in the dialogue box, if I wasn't here. Still, he didn't think of it first in this timeline, so I was helping myself to the fame. Every little advantage counted, and I'm not below outright stealing. Times are hard. "If we do this fast enough, we won't have to endure the Children of the Elm's forest fighting!"
That increased morale quite a bit, and orders started to be given around the tent, until a strong wind hurtled through the tent and made everything silent.
The resurrected Tari went by the name of Rita now. In the game, the player renamed the resurrected Champion they captured, and Riegert did the same here. Personally, I thought that the shifting of the letters was lazy, but I was a hypocrite. After getting the ultimate form of the Shroud, and going on a kleptomatic binge to get every single Champion I could, I started just giving them numbers for names.
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So, yeah, Rita was a decent name compared to what I would've given.
"The Children of the Elm have sent a message." Ah, this was the prompt when you entered territory to talk things out. It changed depending on how strong the force you had for most factions. Not for the Elves, though. The sticks up their asses were lodged high enough into their skulls that they only had one, basic prompt to anyone entering their territory. "Prepare to die and nurture the soil."
This was no point in following that prompt, it was just useless meandering about how great Elves are and how we were going to lose, and it wasn't going to change even if we were sieging them down.
The actual Territory Conquest Events were going to need my attention, but not this.
"Well, it's good that we have a reply ready then. Let's start penning it up."
It took Riegert only a second to catch on, but he gave the order quickly, while I kept my gaze on the map.
I've done this hundreds of times before, but I wasn't going to let my guard down.
No one was watching to entertain, there were no saves for me to exploit, and every mistake cost actual lives.
It was my job to do this as properly as possible.
…
Interlude: Riegert
…
The kid was something straight out of legend.
Even if his body was normal, it was obvious that his mind was as keen as the Ancients intended. Khanrow told me that he was exceptional in terms of intellect, and that he consumed literature voraciously, but seeing it for myself made me feel blind.
From the moment he led our expedition through the continent, something that should've been fraught with peril, Jack's true worth was displayed.
An uncanny ability to detect danger.
The ability to command and lead, despite a young age.
A stunning ability to charm or intimidate all who would lend him their ear.
The desert tribes, known to respect only strength, folded to his demands the moment he made them clear. Greater warriors and kings who confronted them with larger armies died, and their lands ravaged, while he passed a whole army through one of their caravans with only a few words.
Villages contending with ancient diseases were cured and became his servants overnight. They all but pledged their eternal loyalty to him, along with their skills as physicians, and he bid them to go to the Citadel and heal the sick. Then, when confronted with pleasure and decadence, his guard was up and he discerned the trap that sought to kill him and many others, and put ancient horrors to the sword and torch without so much as a single lost soul.
Time and time again, he confronted the challenges of a land torn apart by war, ignorance, and fear, and gathered the righteous under his banner and slew the wicked.
If I believed in gods, I would've thought him heavensent.
But, I believed in the grandeur of the ancients… and I felt a thrill within my chest as I knew that this was what our ancestors intended for us to be.
If Ilych had the body of the Ancients, then Jack had the mind, and through them I was sure that we could slowly recover our glory, even without the Citadels.
But that was a thought for another day.
For now, I worked to see his latest plan brought to fruition.
A plan that he created in an instant, but was airtight from end to end, and unfolded like it was meant to be the moment it was put into action.
The villages, merchants, and peoples he treated fairly on our march were hungry for coin and lumber was plentiful. They worked and worked, bringing ton after ton of wood for our disposal, and many even asked to join us and supplement our few loses. The mercenary bands he subjugated and treated fairly were separated between those hungry for glory and those who wished for money. The former was sent forward as guards against the Children of the Elm, while those who yearned for simple duties had their place in the backline.
On our whole march, he gathered the tools he could have at his disposal, and did not hesitate to use them all as he required.
And, now, the Elves were to lose their greatest asset.
"How are the flames?" I asked Ilych, as she stood beside me. Soon we were going to be shoulder to shoulder. The constant battles did more than any training could. Some of the bulk on her body was refined down into leaner muscle. Her beauty came forth, as her femininity matured, despite her mother not receiving the same gift. Men stared at her now, but she paid them little heed. Though her instinct and ability increased, and the fact that she stayed silent unless necessary, her interest in others remained the same. "Are you ready with your magic?"
"Yes."
A single word. Sometimes, it was more than she spoke in a whole day. It felt strange to no longer hear about the winds, but at the same time I increased my guard. What if this was a way for what was influencing her to prepare her against us? I didn't want to be on guard against my own daughter, but I felt I had little choice.
Thankfully, she never contested any of Jack's commands.
"Then, let's begin."
I nodded at the nearest Mage and moved forward with my own power. A ball of flame formed in my hand with barely a thought, it was something I practiced until it came forth with a twitch of my fingers. The small ball of flame that saved my life so many times grew as I fed it, but I didn't need too much. The air was dry, flames were raging around us, and there was what resistance the Children of the Elm could muster to stifle our magics was mitigated by the blazing forest fire around us.
The mages lent me their aid, gathering embers and heat, while I used my catalyst and experience to gather and gather more and more flame.
Soon, I could no longer hold it in one hand, and I was spending more protecting myself from the flame as its focal point than protecting myself.
But that was all that I needed.
The flame I gathered was enough to carve a path through the whole forest, and so I unleashed it.
Magic is a great and terrible thing, and I could only wonder how the Ancients used it, when we could do so much with it as our feeble selves. How much of myth and legend was aggrandized and incorrect? Did storms truly come forth at the beck and call of the Ancients? Did great waves that ate whole countries? Did they truly rouse whole mountains as constructs to do battle?
All these questions thundered in my mind, while the flame I controlled barreled through the forest before me. The white-hot boulder was the size of whole home, and whatever it touched turned into ash. Trees, animals, and even the ground was scorched into grey dust in its path, until it crashed into the faraway walls of the Children of the Elm's Citadel.
The grueling and terrifying battle Khanrow and I prepared for against the Children of the Elm in their forest disappeared along with the flame I conjured.
We had a path forward, straight into the heart of the enemy's nation, where over twenty men could stand shoulder to shoulder.
Our siege, and our victory, were both months early… and with far less dead than we could've ever imagined.
All thanks to a boy we thought a mere prodigy.
When, in truth, he was the key to truly ending the madness that persisted since the fall of the Ancients.