October 25, 2022
Day 5
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"Director, the time for the Q&A is over. Please clear this room and let's plan our defenses. Before anything else, we need to man the outposts and start the patrols."
The director looked befuddled.
"Man the outposts? Patrols?"
The stewards looked at each other. Every second was important, and so they had argued about this while waiting in the spaceship and decided it best to take matters into their own hands, at least for the one hour they had on Earth. What would happen in the other twenty-three hours of the day depended solely on the competence of Dr. Singh, the sergeant of the elites.
The steward spoke, his eyes darting between the director and the sergeant.
"Create a perimeter of 800 infantry sentries around the campus, split evenly between spearmen and pikemen. Divide those sentries into regiments of 20 and assign a student as commander of each regiment. Controlling them at a distance is hard, and so is controlling more than a few dozen at once. Have the students stand together alongside their squad of sentries and rotate students every four hours. Put 100 archer sentries each on the roof and 100 more on the outer walls of the 4 outposts. Have students control groups of twenty there as well."
The stewards waited for the sergeant to process everything, then they continued.
"Finally, buy the stable upgrade in any one of the bastions and recruit 80 cavalry scout sentinels. Assign ten each to the eight elites. Have them run roving patrols across the campus and also on the outskirts. The elites of our neighbors should notice their counterparts and inspect their levels. The level seventeens are our only deterrent. In case of a minor attack that you are confident can be pushed back without any losses, prefer fighting using your students rather than sentries to conserve SPs. In case of a moderate attack, use both sentries and students. One healing potion is equivalent to 50 sentries. Keep that in mind before you make any decision"
"In the worst case where enemies break through the perimeter, claim our outposts, and decide to attack our base, forget about conserving the SPs. If we lose our bastions, the leftover points will turn to dust. So, pour all your points into defenses and replace every dead sentinel immediately. If you see no scope of victory, surrender, abandon the castle, and pray for the best."
With these ominous words, the stewards got to work.
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The Jafrabad Council was assembled at 3 am, with a representative present from each of the 370 bastions. The crowd waited for Imran to summon the stewards, but an elderly man slapped Imran across his face and interrupted the summoning.
The fate of the entirety of Delhi shifted in that single moment, and the tailwind that was propelling the Jafrabad bastion forward reversed direction.
Aadil Khan spat at Imran's feet before he spoke.
"The stewards can wait. We have a new agenda for this meeting. A trial for treachery. For treason against one's own community."
As he said the words, Aadil's son entered the room with a dozen of his friends and a tightly bound prisoner.
The fourth assassin.
Aadil spoke.
"This is Rishikesh. He came in to kill me not more than four hours ago. Why don't you tell the entire council what you told us?"
And so Rishikesh, the unwilling assassin, relayed the story of how his daughters were abducted by Loknath Pandey, and how he was forced to assassinate Aadil Khan to save their lives. He also relayed how he was ordered in no uncertain terms that he was to leave behind to make sure to subtly implicate Loknath for the assassination or his daughters will die.
By the time Rishikesh was done speaking, Imran was fuming.
"And what do the schemes of Loknath and his brethren have to do with me? You've caught your assassin, and he was instructed to implicate his boss. So what? How dare you slap me?"
Aadil Khan just smiled, as his son Shahid brought forth another prisoner.
Loknath himself stood before the crowd. A sneer covered every face in the assembled council. They all knew him.
And that made his testimony all the more damning.
"Now you tell him what you told us."
Aadil instructed Loknath, and he complied.
Loknath spoke before the assembled council and explained how Imran came to him with a proposal to widen the rift between the Hindus and the Muslims by assassinating Aadil. He explained how he was as tired by the lack of balls among the wise old men of his community as Imran, and how the two found common ground.
The chance to hurt the Jafrabad settlement and kill the 'esteemed' Aadil Khan was just the cherry on top, Loknath told the assembly.
Then he proceeded to narrate how Imran arranged secret meetings to give him the best times and locations to attack Aadil, and how he used that information to send assassins, or more accurately coerce high-level individuals to work as assassins. Then he told them of the failed assassination attempts and also of Imran's clear instructions to leave behind enough proof to tie the attacks back to him.
By the time he was done speaking, the crowd had a good idea of the events that had transpired. Imran and Loknath's shared interests in forcing the two communities to clash were evident to all, and the steps they had taken were rather simpleminded in hindsight.
Loknath's testimony was damning, and the evidence he presented regarding the clandestine meetings between the two was irrefutable.
His role in the meeting ended with the testimony, but as he was being taken back to a castle room converted into a temporary prison, Loknath heard Aadil's call for re-election in Jafrabad Haven.
He smiled.
Loknath did not know what will happen to him, but he knew that he had succeeded in his mission. He was prepared to sacrifice his life for his community and took great solace in the knowledge that it wasn't all for nothing.
The Muslim threat cannot be allowed to linger. I leave the rest to you, James.
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Loknath thought to himself as he recalled the events following the day when Imran first approached him with his plan. He had readily agreed, but before he went about sending assassins, he consulted his trusted steward, James.
James came up with a plan.
"You need to double cross Imran. Pretend to make attempts to kill Aadil as he asked, but leak the information about the assassination to someone close to Aadil, someone who can thwart the attempts every time without drawing any suspicion. When the time is right, I will instruct you to surrender. Then, you must arrange an audience with the most influential people in Jafrabad and confess your crimes as well as those of Imran. If you follow everything I tell you, it will lead to a representative re-election at the worst time for the settlement."
Loknath had tried to pry more information from James, but the steward had refused to elaborate any further. Nevertheless, Loknath trusted James and went ahead with the plan.
The first step was to find a pawn, and Loknath had found a perfect one in Shahid, Aadil's son. Hours before every assassination attempt, he would tell Shahid about the attack and help him protect his father. The fool had even agreed to hide all that information from his father, given the promise that Loknath would surrender and testify against Imran in front of the council. That suited him well, and Loknath had agreed to do so, with one stipulation.
The date and time would be of his choosing.
As he sat in his cell, Loknath smiled. His plan had succeeded on every account. The word of his confession was certainly spreading throughout the Jafrabad settlement, and a massive exercise of representative re-election would be beginning. Aadil would certainly sweep the election with all the sympathy votes and become the new representative. Imran would lose and get sentenced to imprisonment, or get exiled. But amid that uproar and confusion, something would happen. His steward had refused to tell him what it was, but Loknath knew it would be something big if James had felt it important enough to put him at risk.
As the steward in settlements around Jafrabad assembled a united Hindu army to march on a leaderless and defenseless settlement, his gamble was about to pay off.
And despite the heinous kidnappings, the blackmail, and the sacrifices of what were undoubtedly the world's most innocent assassins, he was about to become a hero for his community.
A hero.
Or a martyr.
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Two hours into the re-election process, Shahid heard alarms. He ran out and saw that the maze of walls that encircled the 370 castles had been breached in many places, and enemies were streaming into the compounds by the thousands.
They needed sentinels. They might not fare well against the strongest elites, but 37000 archer sentinels deployed on the castle roofs would cut through everything else with ease.
And they needed stewards. Shahid did not know why they were being attacked, but he was certain the stewards would know something. He hadn't thought much of their insistence on being summoned tonight, a decision he now regretted. He also thought back to this evening, and Loknath's seemingly innocuous question on whether there would be any meeting happening soon where he could expose Imran. Shahid had himself suggested that they make the stewards wait a bit and co-opt the already scheduled council session at 3 am to hold Imran's public trial first.
This attack could not be a coincidence, and Shahid felt more and more certain he had been taken for a ride.
The screams of battle outside grew more urgent, and Shahid ran back inside to where Imran was being held.
The settlement housed more than 300,000 people, and the election would take many more hours to complete.
The bastions had pooled their resources to train a hundred elites, and Imran had been the most promising and the most ruthless among them all. At level 23, he was their strongest fighter, the only one in the settlement who featured on the top 1000 leaderboard. And until the election ended, he was also their coordinator.
Shahid swallowed his pride as he entered the room where Imran and his cronies were being held. Imran was bound in multiple layers of thick ropes from head to toe, his every movement restricted, as were his cronies, though none of them were as dangerous. Three of Shahid's trusted friends, all level 20, guarded the cell.
Shahid spoke.
"Imran, our settlement is under attack. You need to call the stewards and deploy the sentinels, or we won't make it."
Imran chuckled.
"Under attack, huh? I was arrogant to believe that Loknath was a tool I could use and dispose of when I was done with him. It seems that I gave him too little credit. Not only did he double-cross me, but he also played you like a fiddle. Then he willingly walked into the enemy's den and set it on fire from inside while his people surrounded us. And when we were at our weakest, they attacked."
Imran continued to laugh, and Shahid spoke urgently.
"The stewards, Imran. Innocents are dying outside."
Imran stopped laughing.
"Innocents? There are no innocents. There are only weak. Strong and weak. The weak are dying. So what? Good riddance. The strongest will win. Set me free and I will kill that Loknath, then I will kill all the marauding Hindus, and then finally I will kill that old fool."
Shahid's face twisted and he punched Imran, hard. His hands gripped tightly around Imran's jaw and he looked right into his eyes as he spoke.
"If you even dare to look in the direction of my father, dare to utter his name, I'll make sure your incarceration is a nightmare worthy of demons, make sure that you will beg for death."
Imran grinned savagely.
"I always knew you had it in you, Shahid. That's why I liked you. That's why I always hung out with you, despite my contempt for the spineless coward that you call father. That impotent sissy suppressed the tiger in you and turned you into a domesticated cat. But I still see the fire in your eyes."
Shahid controlled his temper and spoke through gritted teeth one last time.
"Call the stewards. Now."
Imran laughed.
"I insult your father and this is what you have to say in response. You are a bigger coward than Aadil. Maybe he's not your father after all. That won't surprise me.
You wh*** of a mother was known to get around after all. My late father once told me that he had her many times, even after she was married. But you are not his brood for sure. Maybe some homeless wimp on the streets got lucky one night. I wouldn't put it past her to."
Imran's obscene rant was interrupted by a knife approaching his throat. He saw the attack coming and activated his Monstrous Hide skill just in time, and as the knife bounced harmlessly off his skin, he started laughing wildly.
"You can't hurt me with your pathetic little stabs. You should have picked a melee class, but I'm sure you didn't have the guts for it. It'll take a real man to kill me."
Despite failing, the stab had provided an outlet for Shahid's anger, and the thoughtless fury was replaced by a cold calculating anger. Killing Imran would free up his two friends, elite warriors, from having to keep watch on the cell. It would also earn him a lot of experience, maybe even enough to take him to the next level. Finally, with just one contestant, the fresh election to elect a representative will end a lot faster.
Shahid looked at his two loyal friends, and then at Imran.
"So, you won't call the stewards, you won't purchase the sentinels, and you won't cooperate in the defense of the settlement."
Imran nodded, unafraid and calm.
"I won't, not unless you set me free. If you do, I will kill everyone who has dared to attack this settlement and protect the weak, as you so desperately want me to. Then, I will end this farce of an election by strangling your father, and anyone else who stands against me, with my own two hands."
Shahid nodded and looked at his three friends. They all came to a silent agreement.
"You were right, Imran, there is a monster in me. And thank you for your candid answer. That is what it needed to hear."
Then, Shahid unslung his bow and trained an arrow right into Imran's face.
He seemed unfazed.
"It's good to see you have grown a spine. After I kill your father, you will serve me well, along with your mother. And how could I forget your sister Zoya? The things I would d"
Piercing Shot
Right before he loosed the arrow, Shahid uttered these two words. Imran heard it and his maniacal rage stopped dead in its tracks. His eyes opened wide in a mix of fear and recognition before the arrow penetrated them and got embedded into his brain.
You have killed Imran Afzal, a level 23 human. 23000 experience earned.
You have advanced to level 22.
1260/200000 experience to the next level.
Your endurance has increased from 59 to 60. You have been awarded 5 free stat points.
23000XP. That was a 100x multiplier.
Shahid thought to himself.
But then Imran is the coordinator of a settlement alliance with 370 bastions, so it isn't surprising.
Shahid spared no further thought to these details. It was time to turn the tides of this battle.