King Bernard trembled in his throne, although it took all his Willpower to not show it. His herald announced. "Robin of Locksley, King of Windemere!"
The door opened. Bernard {Appraised} the man.
> {King}
>
> level 101
Triple digits. He never saw a level that high. He barely recovered from the shock of being released of his uncle's yoke by the legendary silver were-cat {Hero} two days ago. Now he had to be polite with a dreadful man three times his level. Bernard knew that King Locksley could kill everyone in the room with a thought. He had to be careful.
"We welcome King Locksley with open arms," King Bernard said.
The iron-clad figure nodded. "Likewise. Bernard, I come to offer help. A great evil befell upon Lonid. Windemere is willing to offer resources, money, and manpower to help rebuild your fair city. All I ask in exchange is that my citizens receive fair treatment in your lands."
"How many people are you willing to send our way? We need to check our provisions and granaries," the boy uncomfortably sitting on the throne said.
"Eighty thousand able men and women, with their underage children. And don't worry. Your granaries and crops were not damaged by the demons, only by looters and arsonists. Nevertheless, I know you have enough. I'm not sending them with only their clothes either. Each immigrant will carry a reasonable purse of coins to inject into your economy."
Bernard felt a shiver up his spine. Nobody, nobody sane just throws that many people away. That was what? A fourth, a third of Windemere's population? And why would he do that? Were all these people--
As if he was reading his mind, King Locksley spoke. 'Maybe he was', dreaded Bernard.
"And I swear with Galbarar as my witness, that they are not soldiers in disguise sent to infiltrate and take over your nation. I also swear I do not harbor any hostility toward the country of Lonid. These are honest workers in search of a better life."
"We accept your gift in the spirit it was given. When will these people arrive?"
Bernard could swear the man behind the metal helmet was smiling.
"In three weeks. My court magician will bring them here with the wind."
A rider switching horses might make the trip to Windemere in a week. Less if he has good speed-enhancing perks. Truly, the road there on a map makes a big loop around the unclaimed wild forests, but if this court magician could move eighty thousand people across just as fast, Windemere could invade anyone they wanted. Hell, with a King in the triple digits, he alone could conquer the whole continent.
"And who would be this magnificent court magician?" Bernard asked.
"Countess Rosewise Honorcoin, an eleon. I bestowed the title upon her five days ago when she finally accepted my offer."
King Bernard knew her. The brief apprentice of the archmagister. The last clue to the whereabouts of his family's corpses - he knew they were dead or Bundeus wouldn't promote him to King. The woman every noble, including his uncle, tried to hire and failed. What offer did this King Locksley to sway that woman? Mystery piled upon mystery.
"Ah, there's one thing, Bernard. No eleon, elf, or beast-kin shall be a slave in your nation. I strongly recommend you plan to abolish slavery before the next harvest season."
When a level one hundred and one person strongly recommended something, it might as well be an order.
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A logistical nightmare requires a logistical miracle. Fortunately, I had two level hundred-and-one spellcasters to make the miracle come true. How the fuck would I get eighty thousand civilians safely across four hundred kilometers?
Given that one of the casters' specialty was ice magic, the answer was easy. Inspired by Dudley Stokes and his team, the civilians would travel in a huge bobsled, Nenandil would make the ice tracks and I would propel the sled. Lorna and some adventurers I hired would provide security, and the civilians the MP.
It also meant it was power-up time. I set up a huge slab of granite with grooves to collect the blood of my massive kill. Away from prying (mortal) eyes, I took one of the red dragon corpses from storage and started to dismantle it in search of the core but also collecting all the materials. Each part of a dragon was useful. The organs, the scales, the leather, meat, bones, blood. Horns, teeth, and claws became powerful weapons and shields. Honestly, dragons were the cows of the fantasy world.
The body was still searing hot. The timeless item box preserved it exactly as it was seconds after its death.
A dragons' core rests behind the third thoracic vertebrae, cleverly hidden and protected by the tough and flat bones of the shoulder girdle and wing girdle. They had four scapula bones to give independent movement to the four forward limbs, the wing pair on the back closer than those of humans, and two on the sides connected to the wing ones. These flat bones formed a veritable impenetrable and sheltered cage protecting the core, heart, and lungs. You could pierce a dragon's heart only through the pectorals, never from the side or back.
And like the good cheaters they were, dragons had not one but two hearts. A discovery I made while I dissected the humongous beast. One was huge while the other was too small for their size. If I had to guess, it was for the same reason cellphones have two processors. The big, strong one is used when there's a great need for blood flow, during combat or extenuating exercise. During the long periods of sleep, that big heart was a waste of energy and the circulation shifted to the smaller heart that was perfectly capable to keep the resting oxygenation at acceptable levels. A series of powerful valves on the aorta and pulmonary arteries as well as the two vena cava guaranteed the blood wouldn't flow backward in the unused heart.
Therefore a dragon could survive with one destroyed heart. I was sure they had a reflex to shut those valves and divert the flow to the other in case of heart failure, which would also stop them from bleeding to death if one heart was destroyed.
The fire breathing organ was a gland that rested against the trachea. Maybe it was a mutated thyroid gland that spewed flammable fluid in the airways when the dragon exhaled, creating an air-fuel mixture that was vomited or sneezed at high speeds and ignited once outside the dragon's body.
Stolen story; please report.
The alchemist in me was squealing like a child unwrapping Christmas gifts. The ideas to use these draconic humor popped continuously.
After removing the hearts and lungs, I finally saw the core. It had the size of a basketball and was deep red. I removed the tendons holding the core in place and held it in my hand. I could feel it thrumming with power.
I stored the rest of the dragon's body. Couldn't let the rest of the materials lose a second of potency. I carefully filled glass jar after jar with dragon blood. After I was done cleaning it up, I admired my trophy. A level 131 magic core.
I called Nenandil out of my soul. This was going to be awesome. It is even worth buying my rainy day perk.
> - Your attempt to obtain Core Eater (ultra-rare) failed. You'll be awarded a similar Perk with a lower rarity.
>
> You purchased this perk: Monstrous Gourmet (very rare): You can eat the flesh of monsters to attempt to gain one of their powers with a low chance. Based on Luck.
Interesting. But useless for the task at hand. And that confirms it. The System makes new perks on the fly.
"Did it work?" Nenandil asked.
"No. I got something to eat a monster, so we might go on some strange journey cooking and eating monsters sometime in the future. Not today. Today we eat core."
And eat I did. It tasted... spicy? Bloody. No, that was my mouth bleeding because of the core shards. I shifted into were-jaguar. Easier if you regenerate. Eating cores wasn't a joyous experience. We did it for the ridiculous amount of stats this thing should give.
> You ate the core of a level 131 elder dragon (fire).
>
> You and your familiar gained the perk: Fire Healing (ultra-rare): 10% of all fire damage before reductions heal you.
>
> You gained the following Attributes:
>
> +40 Strength
>
> +30 Endurance
>
> +20 Mind
>
> +20 Willpower
>
> +20 Magic
>
> Attribute points were split between you and your familiar.
>
> Two Attributes points Withheld. 100/100.
>
> You gained the perk:
>
> * Surpasser III (ultra-rare) All your Attribute maximums are increased by 30.
>
> Attributes above the cap were redistributed.
> Strength 38 - Dexterity 38 / 45 - Endurance 39
>
> Mind 41 - Willpower 41 - Charisma 35 /45
>
> Magic 130
>
> Ego 122 / 130 - Luck 122 / 130 - Soul 122 / 130
>
>
>
> HP 4.262.699
>
> MP 12.093.921
>
> SP 8.050.377
Nenandil cast a halo around her, her form glowing white. Then she bellowed, playfully, "Power... Overwhelming!"
We laughed. Letting the fairy sift through my memories is a double-edged blade. On one hand, she understood my geeking jokes. On the other, she usurped them.
Then I remembered I had another core because the dragons cheated me of my assassination-boosted kill. I couldn't eat it now but there was always the next life.
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I sent Nenandil to clear the path and smooth the terrain while I selected the people that would go. The offer of ten silver coins per adult and two per child was more than enough to gather the volunteers I needed in a week across all the cities of the Kingdom. I extolled the woes of the neighbor kingdom and how there was an opportunity for a better life. How Bundeus called for the faithful to take this leap and go.
Kazuyran was vital in this mission. During this time, he acted as my spymaster and put together an intelligence network. Catching those that listened to the blabbering of Bundeus' expedition was easy. These were singled out and convinced to act. With an effective Charisma Attribute of one hundred-eighty [1] to talk people into doing what I wanted, it was as easy as killing knights with pebbles if you had that much Strength.
I might be able to just give people a pep talk and raise their spirits to be happy with my rule with that much persuasion. Or maybe subvert their brains and convince them to work for my team of trenchcoat-wearing cybernetic 8-bit agents. <<
I'll do that after I dump these civilians elsewhere.
While my fairy prepared the tracks, I needed to build a train that could carry that many people and their luggage. I needed to build a train-sled. Six meters wide would allow me three seats on each side and a corridor. Each seat needed about seventy centimeters apart for the seating and feet space. Each wagon would be six meters wide by twenty-two long with two floors and baggage on the roof. That would allow me to carry three hundred and sixty people in each wagon.
Twenty-one wagons and I could transport everyone in eleven trips. Two trips per day meant I'd need six days to transport everyone. Each round trip would take ten hours at eighty kilometers per hour. We could come back faster without the extra load. Three trips per day? Five hours with people, two hours on the back trip. No. Better blow the deadline than try something dangerous. I might even need to go slower.
The wagon-sleds were crafted entirely out of wood except for the sleds. Those were created from magically welding several bars of steel with fire magic. The carpenters crafted the wagons and the seats, leatherworkers added the upholstery to the seats, and I used the spell-song to lighten, harden, and reinforce the wagons.
I had to use {Suppress Curse} to explain how to make the wagons. Mass transit was a technology, after all.
During the week it took for us to build the wagons, the immigrants gathered their possessions. They had to sell their houses, livestock, furniture, and other things they wouldn't bet taking with them.
Nenandil had cleared a path through the forest, going around the eleon villages by a few kilometers. We used the wood from the forest to make the wagons. After leaving the forest, our path would make a sinuous path for Perennenth, using the lay of the land to avoid steep climbs or descents. We might trample someone's farm along the way, but that was inevitable.
As an incentive, those that went on the first trip would receive ten extra silver coins. I had to stop them from fighting for a slot. A silver coin could feed a peasant family for a week with three meat meals per week.
The wagons were loaded, the people took their seats. I gave the signal and Nenandil started to create the ice tracks. Lorna and the adventurers took their spots on the train roof. I sat in front of the first wagon and cast my force spell to pull the wooden train.
With the wellspring siphoning seventy-five hundred people worth of MP regeneration to me, I increased the output of my force spell until the train started to move. As it gained speed, the cost lessened. I was spending forty thousand MP per minute to keep it moving. My full MP pool would deplete in five hours if it weren't for the regeneration. Having Lorna and other mages in the guard detail helped a lot. I also had to feed Nenandil some MP to support her with the spell to make the tracks. I could also switch to spending SP to sustain the spell. I did that, keeping my SP pool partially lower so I could benefit from both regeneration rates.
As we reached what I thought was an adequate cruise speed, the pressure on my MP lessened as I only needed to keep the speed constant and not accelerate. I could hear the people talking and the children squealing as the forest blurred past us.
I didn't have a way to track time, but we arrived at Perennenth at a good time. The train stopped next to the south gate where most of the caravan traffic passed through. I sent Nenandil to warn the King that the first batch of settlers had arrived.
I talked to the people that traveled on the train. They were all smiling, excited with the experience. I convinced a hundred of them of coming back with the empty train to tell about the trip to the others. After King Bernard's soldiers arrived to pick up the settlers and direct them to their new houses, We drove the train back to Windemere.
We did the trip in less than five hours. The train's cruise speed wasn't eighty kilometers per hour, it was above a hundred. The return trip was not faster because I had to preserve my MP. I didn't have all the people on the train to leech MP from. But we found we could do two trips per day. One during the day, another during the night. The return trip at night was even easier, as the ice thawed slower than during the day.
We stuck to our schedule as we had half a day of slack should something go wrong. And just like that, I jinxed it. On the day trip fo the sixth day, a great flying shadow appeared on the horizon.
The cheaters were back. A dragon was approaching the train fast.
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[1] - Precisely 181. Base score 35 + {Social Tact} Master 66 + 39 Endurance via {Melodius Voice} + 41 Mind via {Divine Negotiator} <-- Also halves the target's resistance roll because the offer is fair and not harmful,