V8: Chapter 2

…

After several years of conniving and controlling and careful management of my image, I requested a suite just for myself in the Citadel. A room where I could just rest and recuperate and enjoy the amenities of modern life. Whatever I wanted would just be brought to the door for me to enjoy, and maintenance and care of the room itself would be done by modified Guardians incapable of sharing my secrets or gossiping about me.

In other words, a room where I can be a useless fucking nobody for a week or two.

“Oh, thank fuck. It’s been too long.” The moment I crossed the threshold and the doors closed shut, I let go of the grip I’d been maintaining on my façade. As swiftly as I could, I took off my jacket, my trousers, my shirt, and headed straight towards the bath. My clothes were picked up by a faceless Guardian to be washed, while I could hear the water start running. The ring on my finger responded to my desires. I’d been wearing half of them ever since Khanrow started going off on expeditions. The other two were with people he trusted. Riegert and probably somebody else that I wasn’t aware of. “Dummy 1, get my lunch set 1 ready. And, my dinner set 2.”

The Guardian in question tilted its diamond-shaped head up and down and skittered to the kitchen where a wok station waited alongside a full range, a griddle, and a grill. The ring was linked to my mind. It saw what I wanted and desired. The fabricators capable of creating massive amounts of raw material, organic matter, and specialized equipment came alive to make what I wanted reality… and right now that was some spicy, garlicky noodles with lots of tender beef, along with a whole steak with mashed potatoes laden with cheese and butter, all accompanied by very carbonated, very sweet drinks.

The bathroom also finished transforming by the time I reached it.

As I crossed the threshold without clothes, dirt and detritus were removed from me by a field of magic. However, while I became clean, I didn’t feel clean yet. The aches and pains of a long journey, expedited through an express over-night flight by my request, lingered on my body. I clambered into a nice, heated bath filled with nice aromas and suds, which also began to bubble like a jacuzzi at all the right places. And, I wasn’t exaggerating. The jets of water were completely perfect at targeting all the knots and strains on my body, and I was perfectly floating in the water through magic cast by the Citadel itself.

Suspended in nice-smelling water, having all my pains and aches washed away, I did my best to forget, to not think, and to decompress.

To not think of all the Undead legions that I had turned to dust instead of buried.

To not think of all the monstrous tribes I ordered put to the sword instead of forcing to surrender.

To not think of all the people that died because I marched them off to war.

The last one was easy to untangle. If we hadn’t dealt with the Death Lord, it would’ve become a larger disaster that would’ve threatened our long term prospects and survivability. It had to be put down. Did I wish that less people died and that I had less casualties? Absolutely. However, I got as many people as I could out alive. All my preparation, planning, and conniving led to far less casualties than expected.

“Barely a thousand casualties and barely three hundred dead.” It was a massive, massive win. Most of it was attributed to all the vitamins and medical supplies stocked up, as well as the rapid transportation abilities of my transports. People can get stabilized quickly and sent into the backline. If they had bad injuries, they were kept alive and moved towards a Citadel for time in a healing pod. That was the cause behind our low casualties. We can regrow whole limbs and organs in people now. If they died, if their brain was gone, it’d be over… but if they persisted through immense and terrible wounds through magic? They could be put back together. “But how many can still fight?”

Surviving all of that was sure to be traumatic. Even if you get your bits and pieces back, you still lost them once, and that could easily lead to people getting absolutely fucked in the head.

Which I was trying to avoid, and barely managing to, while I was in the backline and giving out orders.

Not nearly dying at the front.

I needed a way to address that issue… but that went back to work.

Which meant it was for later.

I sank my head beneath the water for a bit, before rising back out. The sounds of everything outside the bath were gone and the room was darkened. Even the faint bubbling noises of the jacuzzi faded. It started to go completely dark and a low hum permeated the room, as I turned my bathroom into a sensory deprivation chamber and equalized the temperature of the water to feel exactly like body temperature and made myself float with even less effort.

A single thought pervaded my mind.

Was it right for me to take away a righteous victory from the people under my command?

Right now, news was going to travel fast. We’re going to be labelled as fearsome, terrifying foes who do anything to win. The chemical weapons we deployed were considered atrocities in the game, and they’ll be atrocities in this one. The bombardment of the enemy with Citadel Guardians unveiled strategic bombing as method of killing. Sure, we accepted the surrender of our foes, but we gave absolutely no quarter to any of those that didn’t.

Ogres and Trolls are endangered and if nothing is done soon, they’ll die out.

Genocide.

The tribal cultures and lands of the various monster species are going to be wiped out.

Genocide, again.

My plans to terrorize the rest of the world and try and keep them away.

Absolutely, genocide.

Chemical weapons and strategic bombing?

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Atrocities in the making, especially with my plans to expand on both for the next conflict, and my planned targets not being entirely military.

If I had to destroy multiple cities to gain the last four Citadels, I would.

“I’m willing to do whatever it takes to live.” I said the words aloud and held out my hand. It was so dark that I couldn’t see it. Weightless, suspended in nearly nothing, considered my words. “But… are my people willing to do everything to live?”

You’d think that’s an easy question to answer.

But a lot of people die for the sake of honor, for the sake of their family, and for a whole slew of other reasons.

Nearly everyone, also, has a line they’d never cross.

A sin that they wouldn’t commit, even if they would die in the process.

It would be presumptuous of me to assume that everyone would be fine with everything that I did, as I heaped on atrocities and black marks upon my nation.

Am I saving their lives?

Yes.

Am I working towards destroying enemies that would kill them all at best and make them suffer horrific fates at the very worst?

Again, yes.

But would these guys want to be saved at the price I demanded?

I thought about it for a while, and eventually came to an answer.

“Whatever, that’ll be my problem once I win.”

After the coming series of clusterfucks, I’ll welcome having to just deal with the consequences of my actions to survive it all.

I went back to enjoying a jacuzzi, bubbles, and nice soothing music.

…

A lot stories I read had protagonists that wanted a taste of their old favorites after being transported to another world.

Thankfully, given the fact I controlled a post-scarcity food fabricator, I didn’t have to worry about it.

The noodles struck the right chord between chewy and toothsome. Given a quick boil, before being tossed into a wok filled with aromatics, chili pepper, and sliced up beef and vegetables, the noodles were the star of the show with everything else just playing second fiddle. They were thin noodles, made in mind to carry the flavor of being fired up properly on a wok, and they were soft, but a bit chewy and crunchy while also having a hybrid taste of fresh and smoky. Every bite was garlicky, scented with fresh green onion, and spiced by a combination of numbing pepper and hot peppers.

I could’ve picked out every piece of stir-fried vegetable and meat from the noodles, and it wouldn’t have detracted from it one bit.

To accompany the noodles, I had hot tea that helped get past the slight greasiness that persisted after each bite.

After finishing that dish, I went onto the steak.

It was just a few ounces of steak alongside some mashed potatoes, but I preferred it over any ‘dessert.’ The steak had an immaculate crust, while being evenly pink throughout within. The crust crunched, the insides just gave way, and my mouth was filled with the juices of the meat along with the aroma of pepper and the taste of salt complimenting the beef. The meat produced by the fabricator had as much fat and lean meat as you wanted, and I chose around eighteen percent fat to meat, which was a few points shy of the lowest quality Wagyu but nearly double that of Prime grade. I preferred the middle ground between the two as a treat.

I polished off the few ounces of steak and the mash with an extremely fizzy cola.

With that I was ready for my next move… entertain myself until I could sleep.

“Dummy 1, bring out the cards and the chips.” I clapped my hands, as the table was cleared, and I got up to stretch. Card games were the best for this sort of thing. The Guardians had simple minds good enough to play well enough in poker and other card games. Blackjack was also fun. It was a good way to just mindlessly pass the time. “Dummy 2 and 3, get ready to play. 4, get me the latest books after checking them for anything strange.”

They all moved according to my wishes, doing exactly as I asked. Bots fulfilling their roles soundlessly throughout my room.

I willed a window to form and a moving surface to walk on and so it became.

The capital city was massive now. The initial center around the Citadel itself was revamped into various government institutions for processing information and handling various services. The number of clerks needed to keep track of everything would’ve beggared us, even with the influx of Academy-trained individuals, if not for the Iterants taking up the slack. Administering over hundreds of thousands of people with paper and ink, supplemented by some tablets of stone that could retain and transmit information in trusted hands, was a massive undertaking.

But it was working now, and it had enough capacity to last for another two decades without needing any renovations.

The remaining districts were like spokes on a wheel that went outward from the city.

The industrial areas were built as far as possible on purpose, as well as downwind and downriver from the rest of the city. Southeast of the city, factories belched out constant streams of smoke, as furnaces burned, water wheels turned, and industry produced goods for our civilian and military sectors, as well as for trade. Everything from armor, guns, and bullets to clothes, plates, and jarred foods left the industrial sector. Industrial pollution wasn’t something that popped up in the game, but I played enough city builders to know that industry was dirty and needed to be kept away, so I did it anyway.

The rest of the spokes alternated between research, commercial, and residential. In-game, after you created a district, you can construct buildings and institutions inside it. The districts weren’t single-purpose. People could live within them their entire lives without issue. However, the buildings that you built into them made all the difference.

Commercial districts could have banks and financial sectors, as well as trade hubs and bazaars. The former specialized commercial districts towards making money, while the latter gave amenities and wealth to your people. While residential areas focused on increasing happiness with parks and public services, you could also have hospitals and recruitment centers built into them that increase population and decrease reinforcement cost respectively. Research areas can have universities and research campuses focused on just pure research, or they could focus on military sciences or magical research.

Districts could be steadily upgraded, so that they can have more buildings or buildings of higher tiers within them. Choose the right ones for your strategy, be mindful of their upkeep costs, and you’re golden. If you pick the wrong ones, and you don’t have enough money, you’re going to get fucked. They take time to build, and even if you magically have 100% money back from tearing them down to build something else, the time they’re gone and the time their replacement takes to build is time they’re not working for you.

Let’s say you build a school at the start of the game. That school gives a ten percent increase in your research income, which is generated by your population. If you look around and find yourself surrounded by Children of the Elm and Forgers, basically two factions who’ll attack you on sight in the early game, you destroy the school to make a military research building. You lose the bonus of the school that turn, and during the turns that the military research building is being built, you don’t receive the ten percent increase AND you don’t get the 20% increase to your research points towards any military research you do. Since the t1 military research building takes four turns to make, you lose out on a 10% research bonus for 4 turns.

Some would say that the t1 military research building will pay off in just two turns… and they’d be idiots. It’d take four turns for it to pay off, because you still need to factor in the research bonus that the school would’ve given in its stead… and that’s only if ALL the research you do is military. No research into new districts. No diplomacy research. No research on industry. Just pure military… so you’re going to find yourself with units that you can’t afford to replace and take multiple turns to produce and field.

In other words, opportunity cost is a bitch.

In gamer words: you made the wrong building eight turns ago? It’s time to restart, buddy.

Anyway, I went with generalized, all-rounder build for capital.

Percentage bonuses across the board, population growth, and very little risk. I left specialization to the other Citadels under my control.

If I did anything wrong, I’ll find out in ten years, when everything goes to shit.

But, if I did everything right, my capital will be the cornerstone of the entire continent.

The place where I can literally funnel all my opponents into, so I can kill them at my leisure