As we pulled back into the town, Takis and the rest of his squad looked depressed, no doubt interpreting my intervention as a failure on their part. Which was unnecessary, as their failure had more to do with their equipment than the insufficiency of their abilities.
I was impressed by what Takis was able to come up with. They performed better than I had expected, showing that Takis not only took my lessons about more modern military principles to heart, but also was able to adapt them for people with supernatural abilities far better than I expected.
However, this also created another challenge. I needed to find a way to give them some kind of legal protection. Letting them establish their guild should work, but I still needed to talk with Zolast to decide the best way forward.
I walked toward them as I was considering those details.
"Good work," I said to Takis once I arrived in front of him, loud enough for the rest to hear, and a subtle Charisma blast to make sure the impression stuck. "You and your men worked hard, and once the siege is over, I'll make sure to find a suitable reward."
"A-a reward is not necessary, sir," Takis stammered, unable to handle the sudden emotional shift.
"Nonsense," I said, cutting him off. "But, that's for later. Now, you have another mission." Takis nodded. "I want you to go and gather three more groups like that, ready to intervene against disasters." Takis didn't say anything, but reading his expression was easy.
"Is something wrong?"
Takis didn't answer immediately, but looked at his man. "We … we weren't very successful against the beast, sir," he said.
"Nonsense, you delayed it successfully without losing any of your men. That's already impressive enough," I said. "And, I'm sure you'll work much better with magic weapons."
"Magic weapons, sir," he said, surprised.
"Yes, I'll go and have a talk with the Baron and arrange the assignment of magic weapons," I said. "Now, go and arrange the anti-beast squads as I asked."
"Yes, sir," Takis said, the promise of magic weapons elevating his mood far better than my unnatural emotional support. He was the practical sort.
Good.
However, rather than going to meet with the Baron immediately, I went and found Mahruss. The reason being, I had received a message from Zolast, signaling that he was about to arrive, but he was under attack.
I wanted to be near him in case the cultists increased their attack. Having some reinforcements would be useful … but not as much as having Zolast in town when the trap inevitably triggered.
"You heard the plan," I said when I arrived next to Mahruss, activating the silencing ward once more.
"Yes, boss. Perception is quite helpful for eavesdropping," Mahruss said. "Now, I understand why you have all those codes and signals much better."
"Exactly. But don't forget to rotate and change them often, or even those will lose effectiveness," I reminded. "Anyway, returning to the topic at hand. I'm not going to talk with the Baron," I said. Mahruss looked surprised for a moment, then it clicked.
"Instead, I'm going to have that talk, right boss?" he asked.
"Exactly. Let's see how well you can play the role of a holy crusader," I said. "Don't forget that you're too exhausted to fight. Unless I give you a signal using my Charisma, stay focused on delaying any potential combat without ruining the role. If you can't find another way, collapse in exhaustion. If things get too challenging, replace the baron and take over the dungeon defense and send him to the walls, but only as a last resort," I said. "I don't trust him not to sacrifice himself and half of his army in a glorious charge."
"I'll do my best, boss," Mahruss said.
"Now, come to the building a minute after me and put on the armor."
With that, I went into the nearest emptied building, finally removing the armor. As I examined the armor, I found that Launara's warning was quite accurate. I hadn't received many blows, but just the stress of my constant movement was enough to ruin the armor more.
Before Mahruss could even come to the tent, I sneaked on to the roof and left, using my Concealment.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
However, before I went to the inner city, I spent a few seconds watching the enemy army, confirming that they were not ready to push forward, relying on the waves of corrupted beasts once more.
Giving me even more Experience in the process.
[Experience: 643,193,102]
The constant warfare allowed me to get significantly stronger. Unfortunately, even as my Authority reached above seven thousand — my archery paying its dividends — there was no further drop in the required experience, once again showing signs of exponential growth.
Annoying, but at this point, predictable.
Still, I was sure that I could level up four times, maybe even five if I was lucky and the requirements hadn't risen up too aggressively.
As I went to the Baron's residence, I considered calling Limenta and helping him level up as well and seeing if Authority was helpful during the promotion, but after some consideration, I ignored that temptation.
It was better to let Zolast take the lead in such experiments.
Instead, I directly went to the leveling ward, and leveled up several more times.
[Class: Hero
Level: 56
Experience (0/118,117,440)]
[Health (654/800)
Mana (140/600)]
[Experience: 0]
[Authority: 7327]
[STATS
Resilience: 50
Vitality: 40
Strength: 80
Agility: 35
Speed: 30
Perception: 50
Memory: 10
Charisma: 100
Attunement: 30
Concealment: 25
LOCKED…]
[Stat Points: 110]
[SKILLS: Archery of Destruction (0\X)]
[ABILITIES: Elevated Life - Intermediate - Human
Heroic Party (2) ]
[Alignment: Unaligned]
Level fifty-six, a very comfortable number for me to start poking around.
Before I left, however, I decided to take a souvenir. I took one of the ancestral weapons of the baron: A spear. Not only was it the one that looked the best among all the available weapons, but it also had the advantage of not being a sword.
Putting a greater distance between the brave knight and the mysterious assassin, making Mahruss's job of playing my role easier.
After twirling the spear a few times — an excellent weapon, significantly better than even the greatsword I had been using — I moved outside, examining the way the cultist army shuffled. At a distance, I could already see a large troop gathering from the direction Zolast approached.
The army didn't give any sign of unduly worry, treating the approaching forces with a casualness that stressed me. Mostly because I didn't know whether it was their arrogance that made them act like this, or they still had enough hidden forces to feel confident.
Not knowing which was the case didn't exactly help my mood. However, rather than searching for an answer, I decided to take action.
As I watched, I slowly pulled back my Charisma, ready to abort the plan if the soldiers reacted too badly to the absence of my artificial courage — though I hoped not, as I had been reducing the impact slowly for the last hour for that exact eventuality.
Luckily, Mahruss was already near the inner town, wearing my armor. The visible presence of the holy knight that had been destroying every summoned monster for the last three hours was keeping things calm, even with the clear signs of exhaustion.
With that part secured, I turned my attention toward the siege, looking for an escape path.
Which wasn't as easy as usual, since, unlike the humans, beasts didn't get tricked by concealment, and the corruption process hadn't change that aspect.
Luckily, it was not impossible either.
As the siege went on, the carcasses of the corrupted beasts were piling on, creating several clusters that I could dart behind to stay concealed. By timing my movement between volleys of arrows, and staying near those piles whenever I dealt with monsters, I was able to move through the battlefield.
And, since I had picked the direction opposite of Zolast's approach, I also avoided the attention of their commanders, which resulted in me conveniently avoiding the high-Perception individuals who could have noticed the sudden irregularity in the movement of their monsters.
Ironically, once I passed the line of summoners and arrived at the army, my job was much easier. The chaos and constant movement made it easy to avoid attention even without Concealment.
I ignored the temptation of taking care of some of the summoners as I finally left the army behind. Once I moved some distance away from the army, I communicated with Zolast, asking whether he could hold on for a while, or if he needed immediate reinforcements.
It turned out that he preferred immediate assistance, so I abandoned my plan to move back to the wall to see how the military was doing. Getting a better sense of what the plan was could have helped, especially since even Zolast's arrival didn't make them attempt to trigger that plan, content on destroying Zolast's forces.
However, that knowledge wasn't worth losing a portion of our army.
I moved forward, easily passing the small army that was preparing to attack Zolast, though I noted it had more elites than I had expected.
A minute was enough to see the troop, and their current situation and to answer how Zolast managed to arrive faster than they had expected. The soldiers were riding on carts that were glowing blue, being pulled by several horses that didn't look strong enough to achieve that task.
Their glow suggested that Zolast had used the same weight-reduction ward he did when I was pulling the cart. The horses were the same ones that had been dispersed in fear. Not all of them, but enough to pull the carts that were magically turned weightless.
Meanwhile, a smaller force of elites were on their horses, doing their best to cut down the cultists that were trying to slow them down, but barely enough.
No wonder Zolast asked for my help. He managed to hasten their travel quite a bit, but the method was too fragile to help them penetrate through the army.
Another strategy session was in order, I decided as I covered the rest of the distance, bypassing the security of our army as easily as I had bypassed the cultist forces.
Though, as I bypassed the security measures of two armies with similar ease, I was starting to understand why their armies were obsessed with flying castles. They were much easier to secure against high-leveled individuals.
It was just a momentary idea, one that was replaced by more immediate strategic concerns as I approached Zolast.
We still had an army to defeat.