Laying on the ground in a tangle of limbs, Ambros groaned as he slowly got up while four of the citizen spearmen were pinning down two of the ogres he flew into, ending their struggling with stabs through the openings they could find in the helmets. Well, done, he thought. Straightening to full height, he saw his shield buried halfway into an armorless ogre's belly. A shadow in the corner of his eye made him roll towards the shield and yank it out as a massive club slammed into the ground where he had been moments before. The armored ogre stood head and shoulders taller than him, towering over the soldiers. Yes, he was finally beginning to think of them as soldiers. With a roar, it took a step forward. He could smell the rotten stench of its breath from where he was standing. Lifting its club high in the air, it staggered a step towards him as spears pierced its shins and legs. It didn't go down, but he could see its angry scowl. The ogre couldn't fantom how it would lose against these ants, so its expression never had time to change when a spear tip exited its forehead through the thick helmet and fell forward on its belly dead. Ambros gave Autonoe a nod as she pulled her spear out of the ogre's head before he started running towards the nearest armored ogre he could see, feeling two unarmored ones with lazy swings at their necks as he passed them.
Ogre Slayer was aptly named, but he would need something more powerful soon. He had noticed that he needed to pull his swings to not damage the axe head when using it as a poleaxe after he passed level 100. Coming up on the ogre's back, he kicked out while dodging an unarmored ogre's slow sword swing. Hitting the armored ogre in the back of its knee with his kick made it stumble forward, and he wasn't about to let it get its feet under it again, so he lept on its back and planted the back spike of Ogre Slayer in its spine, riding the ogre to the ground before rolling forward as spears started hammering down on any unprotected part of its body. Watching more and more of the citizen soldiers marching forward over their ogres dead, he thought, “Good, Autonoe had finally ordered an advance.”
Marching soldiers reached out to touch him as they passed, some grinning, some crying and others seemed to be lost in a spiral of their own thoughts, but they were advancing. Looking around, he spotted the last of the ogre cavalry going down, but it had cost them more than a hundred soldiers to do it. One of the phalanxes was simply gone. Hopefully, they didn't have too many more of the rhino oxen that could be ridden. Scouting for any more of the armored ogres, he couldn't see any, and as tempted as he was to end this with barrages of Arcane Bolt now that none of the armored ones were there to take the hit on their armor, he knew it would be better for the soldiers to get the experience so he did the only thing he could think to do. He walked behind the troops, using the rune stones set with life mana to give them a little boost in energy. Waves of it rolled out from him as he made his way between phalanxes, making men and women in deep fatigue raise their heads with renewed vigor.
Battle Award
850 Exp
1,400 Sp
5 Qp
So, it would seem he only got the experience from the actual kills he executed, not the deaths he helped cause. At a guess, he would say it was not his command, and he wasn't really part of any group fighting here. However, it didn't displease him as he watched the troops wading into and pushing back the ogres over the blood-soaked ground, stepping past dead ogres and their former comrades with determination. No, these people needed to grow more powerful, and he would see to it that it happened as he would see about having the original people's freedom and rights. Something had gone very wrong with this country in the past, for it had stagnated, and things that stagnated were killed off in a world under the System's rule. With an internal nod to himself, he sent mana into another rune stone, catching more soldiers under its effect. In the end, his success was bound to these people's success by the system, not that he really cared about losing the levels anymore, but losing a title would suck.
Looking across the lake, he could see that the vanguard he had been part of had started setting up a defensive position outside ballista range. To the north, the dust in the air told him the main army would be here in a few more hours, so they better have the area cleared before that, or it would only delay the preparations for crushing the ogre hold and all that it held. He had never liked ogres overly much. They made for terrible conversations and smelled like rotten pig carcasses on a good day, and unless they had more than half the amount of the Eastern Army soldiers in an engagement, he found it doubtful that the army would lose the battle.
There was a cheer from somewhere on the right front, and moments later, he saw several of the ogres running from the battle, back towards the hold. Then, more started dropping out of the battle until only a thin line of them were left that couldn't disengage. The smell of death was thick on the field of battle. He could hear the screams of wounded soldiers mingled with the cheering phalanxes taking down the last of the remaining ogres. The ground was slick with blood and viscera. Ogres had a lot of both. Not that the ogres had been the only ones to take losses. At a guess, he would say around two hundred ogres, forty armored ogres and all twenty ogre cavalry had been put to the spear. Of the left vanguard, around four hundred of the thirteen hundred had paid with their lives or were too wounded to fight. Hopefully, most of those he counted were just too wounded to stand. Unlike those who had paid with their lives, they could do something about that. Ambros decided to do what he could for those still among the living and sat down on a rock, carving rune stones. They would need as many soldiers as they could get before this was over.
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Staring at the disruption that had entered their lives so suddenly, Autonoe wasn't sure what to make of the man sitting on the rock writing something on a much smaller stone in his left hand with some strange pencil. Not the act he was doing now, with the stone in his hand, she knew it would be something to help her command. One thing she had come to understand about this outsider was that he showed surprising care for those of lesser power than himself, or his understanding of society was simply too foreign to what Ageraens were used to.
He had a strange charisma about him that was hard to resist, even for someone as old as her. He wasn't much of a speaker, but his actions were already becoming a legend. Even now, she could see the soldiers around him, men and women who had just fought a battle for their lives, cast reverent gazes at him. They believed in him to see them through this dark time, what he represented from their oldest tales, and so far, he had delivered more than even their unreasonable expectations of a mortal. The strange part was that she wasn't sure he knew, or if he did, that he cared. However, the rumors of a cult springing up around him were disturbing. She would need to confer with Diomedes by bird to know if the outsider was part of or even a problem for those who opposed the Queen. How anyone could support that snake was something she would never understand. She, like all other of the greater family heads, had been under the capital. They had seen what was there and what was written. How could anyone still support a Queen who continued that path of wrong? No, she would see justice for their ancestor's sacrifice, for the children she had lost. Knowing that these were her twilight years unless she grew in power soon, her house would end with her. There was no one left to take her place once she was gone from the main branch. She would take that harridan down with her before she left for the halls of the gods.
Brought out of her contemplative mood by Ambros hitting himself on the head and suddenly standing up, she was slightly alarmed as he took purposeful steps toward her. It was easy to forget the share size of the man when he wasn't wading in blood on the battlefield. Giving her a wave while calling out, “Autonoe! I got something that might help.” She wasn't sure if he was belittling her by calling her with honorifics in public, or he thought he was showing her honor by calling her as a close friend would, or just didn't understand what he was doing. There was also the possibility that he knew and just didn't care what any of them thought, a voice in the back of her head said. Deciding to be as cordial as possible under the circumstances, she could bend with the wind when it was to her gain. She answered, “What may I do for you, Great One?” He almost lost a step when she said Great One. Maybe he just was a bit clueless about their culture. Shaking his head, he said, “Sorry, I just forgot about something that could be useful while making healing stones. Oh, and please call me Ambros. Great One sounds… strange. Here.” He handed her a ring from one of his strange outer garments with many pockets.
She knew what it was the moment she touched it. She had one in her family vault in the shape of a purse made from some strange hard leather. It was a dimensional bag. Sending a bit of her essence into it, she was at first amazed at the sheer volume of items it contained, but she quickly understood what he had meant. There were tents, bolts upon bolts of bandages, bowls, jars, and medical instruments. He just shrugged when she looked at him again and said. “I had it filled up in the capital, just in case. Forgot about. I'll go back to making healing stones for the worst chases. Good showing in the battle, by the way, you kicked ass.” She wasn't sure if she should be insulted to have kicked ass, but she could have kissed him for the lives about to be saved.
Looked at his broad back, walking back to the rock he had been sitting on before she started to issue commands to have a field hospital set up, send runners to have healers from the main army brought to them, set up fortifications and clear the battlefield. Yes, she would need to talk with Diomedes before someone advised him to do something regretful.
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Ambros sat back on his rock and continued engraving a general healing sequence in the stone he was holding. He had been going through the rune sequences any time he had to spare lately, and if he was correct, he could make the general sequence at least target a specific part of the body, with minor adjustments, that would save a lot of time and would decrease the need for arrays. Strangely, the system didn't make any skills or lists about his rune knowledge. Bringing up his status sheet, despite knowing it would annoy him.
Name: Ambros Mardux
Race: Human, variant. Grafted Primus modus, Sanguis Kronos,
Titles: Eques, Reaper Apprentice
Class: Arcanist
Level: 127
Experience: 1,015/106,582
System rank: Questor**
System points: 28,434,649
Circle: Neophyte
Step: 6/6
Body: 50 ( E )
Mind: 50 ( E )
Spirit: 50 ( E )
Unspent attribute points: 104
Active Skill: Analyze ( E ), Meditation ( E ), Arcane Sight ( D ), Sanctum ( F )
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Passive Skill: Awakened Mana Core ( F ), Revitalize ( E ), Omnilingual ( A ), Giant Slayer V ( E ), Toughness V ( F ), Adaptive Vision ( E )
Spells: Arcane Bolt ( E ), Arcane Shield ( D ), Control Heat ( E ), Control Earth ( D ), Control Wind ( E ), Control Water ( E ), Stasis ( E )
At least it would take a while for him to reach another level unless he cleared a mountain full of ogres again. 104 unspent and useless attribute points were there, just taunting him. If it wasn't for the actual increase in power he got from leveling up by itself, he would have been pulling his hair out in frustration.
The skills were slow in growing, but he wasn't using them as much as he should, and he felt there was some sort of wall between D and C that he was just short of getting over. It was frustrating, but not as much as his blasted meridian. The latest attempt was to use the sliver of Energy he had to try drilling out a hole, and so far, it was going better than the other things he had tried, but still annoyingly slow. Then there was the fact that he was trapped doing this stupid quest while Eku, Whisper and his squad were hopefully doing well wherever they were.
Hours later, the main army had reconnected with the vanguards. Work was underway to create a fortified position while they bombarded the ogre holds walls with the catapults they were assembling. The parts had already been made and were with the baggage train. It was basically an Ikea set for siege engines. At first, he had found it interesting to watch, but once his tent was up, he wanted to get some time to work on his meridian. Sitting undisturbed in clean clothes, relaxed in a soundproof room, inside a siege camp was almost bizarre to think about, but there wasn't much more for him to do after he had bathed and gotten some food. After the relaxing meal, the ladies had retired to whatever they did when he wasn't around in their shared tent. They knew their work well, and he had no complaints. It did make him wonder what the status of the northern army was, the one led by the queen. There had been no major updates on the scoreboard for a few days, so he wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not.
Controlling the energy to bore into his meridian was becoming second nature to him now. He watched as minuscule amounts were removed from the first exit point he was trying to drill into. It was as fun as watching grass grow; maybe that was part of the problem. Ambros had no real connection to the idea of meridians or dantians whenever he got to the Circle of the Enlightened. Even worse, when he reached that point, he was supposed to start finding a dao? What the holy crap was that? The closest thing he had to a dao was being an Arcanist, and he was not a particularly good one at the moment. He wasn't even sure that's what Crystal meant by finding a dao. In fact, if he was being honest with himself, something he never considered a good idea, he was so far from being an Arcanist these days that he may as well drop the entire thing and take up weapons permanently and sell his swinging blade to the highest bidder because right now he felt like he had no agency. He was just letting events carry him from step to step. That wasn't what an Arcanist did. They researched, controlled and executed.
Crystal! He shouted an image at it. Desperate to have something not be true, but he had to know. Then Crystal was there, happy to help, more than thrilled, actually. Yes! Crystal answered as it pushed the System away from him, out of the room he was in. Only leaving the two of them. Thank you. Ambros sent. Crystal's presence swirled around him, almost like it was trying to hug him. They were together now. There was nothing the System could do about that. They would find a path.
He felt his pulse quickening and almost felt close to panic as he saw himself dragged across the universes to whatever faith had in store for him. The System sent him on increasingly difficult and longer missions where he would gradually lose the part that made him into him until he was just another tool for whoever controlled the thing. Fists clenched, he saw himself thrown at calamity after calamity, all in the name of the greater goods growth. He understood that the System quest was not what he had come here for, but now that it had started, he had to finish it. Was the System deliberately delaying him?
Crystal made a sound that sounded like maybe? He was supposed to go under the capital. What Crystal had sensed was there. There was no reason to hurry. He had no need to worry about time. It would happen when it happened. That was what Crystal had sensed when it guided him here, something under the capital. No, it didn't know if the System was actively affecting Ambrose's thoughts. If it did, he should slap it hard, Crystal sent.
He was almost certain he was being affected by the System in some subtle way. Now that he was free from it, he felt no reason to complete the quest. What did he care about a stupid title? Thinking back, the last time he had felt close to what he loved doing was when he had found the books he carried around in stasis, and he was no closer to finding a better solution. That should have been his priority, not throwing himself into new and deadly situations. While the System no doubt helped him grow in power, what was the point of the power if he couldn't do what he loved doing. Was the goal of the System just to throw beings against each other until there was nothing left? No, it wasn't important, he thought. What was important was for him to grow in power but not lose his agency. The question became when would he have enough power? He would have to look at other methods to grow while he used the convenience of the System to attain more power. Even now, that he was cut off from it, he retained all the increase in power that the System had provided. He just couldn't access his status screen or anything retaining to that, and he was sure that if he killed an ogre in here, there would be no battle reward.
Figuring this out would take a lot of time, and he needed answers that were more than likely considered taboo by the greater part of the multiverse population under the System's thumb. He would need to do this while he couldn't completely trust his own thoughts. Well, this is a mess and a half, Ambros thought as he asked Crystal if it could shield him from the System any time he was going to meditate about something alone? Of course, Crystal could do that. It didn't consider it an effort. Thank you. Ambros sent back to Crystal. Yeah, he would need to be more observant about his actions and thoughts going forward.
Hours later, Ambros found himself relaxing on pillows in what the ladies had dubbed the tea room, listening to Issa playing something that resembled a harp while the three other ladies were playing a card game with what looked like a tarot deck to him. Stretching himself out and lying on his side to get a better look at Chryse's hand or cards, he was definitely not trying to get a view into the side of her dress. Startled out of his attempt at spying by the System message.
Announcement
Maalik of Two Heads has been spotted in the northern mountain range.
To the victor goes the spoils.
Excellent, that meant the northern army had reached its staging area in the mountain and was starting to clear out the enemy. The faster they could get this quest done, the faster he could fix what was wrong with this country, setting it back on its correct path of growth and not stagnation, as was his duty as a questor. The people needed to strive for power, or their lives would be wasted. Especially the situation with the original inhabitants, but he had started on a plan for that already. The ladies had obviously gotten the announcement, too and quickly changed the topic to the queen and how she would fare as the northern army champion against these vile beasts. However, their consensus seemed that little was known yet, so there wasn't much to be discussed. It probably took those four a few minutes to come to the same conclusion that the eastern army command would spend hours discussing. All in all, he was quite impressed with their no-nonsense attitude while keeping speculation out of it. That didn't stop their card game, however.
Ambros got up at dawn the next morning when Revitalize gave him an extra boost, and the ladies were still deep in twitching and mumbling sleep. Chewing on some dried meat for breakfast, he first checked if anything was wrong with the herd they had liberated from the ogres. A quick tour by an overly enthusiastic cavalryman, and he learned that they were destined for the lowlands around the capital, and the one guiding him was part of the detachment to get it done. The rhino oxen were in great shape by what he could gather, but more importantly to Ambros, were they good to eat? That was something Ambros would learn later during supper, apparently. The command had ordered enough creatures slaughtered to feed the army a proper meal or two. While interesting to look at, the smell of their wool was something else. It was vomit-inducing from the first breath. If anyone sent him something made of that well, he would consider it a death threat. Soon enough, he wished them well and goodbye. Not sure what to do with himself at the moment, he decided that he could at least get a better view from the mountainsides.
Sinking his fingers in between cracks or even pulling pieces of rock out to get a handhold was probably the strangest way he had ever gone rock climbing. Admittedly, before this, he had only climbed indoors in the controlled environment of a climbing wall. The strange smell of pulverized rock followed the small clouds he made, sinking his fingers into the rock wall. He was dragging himself upwards to what he hoped was a plateau before it turned into more mountains on the western side of the encampment. Throwing his leg up over the last part of the climb, he rolled in to see that the plateau emerald green grass with yellow flowers strewn about like a child had decided to throw fists of them at random spots on the grass. It was quite a bit larger than he first had expected.
Ambros stood looking at the long line of soldiers digging earthworks and positions to start sapping the walls. There were defensive mounds constructed at regular intervals along their lines to repel attempts at breaking out. All in all, it looked like a bunch of late medieval soldiers had dressed up as ancient Greeks and decided to go ham on the poor ogre hold. The catapults would outrange the ballista of the ogres, so he wasn't really sure why the ogres were choosing to stay behind the walls and not come out to play when the passing of time would only worsen the situation for them. An ogre needed a lot of food to keep going and more to keep compliant, more than a day, and he expected them to start braining and eating the weakest among them. Two days without a good-sized meal would have it be close to mutiny in the hold. Something was off about what they were seeing her, or the commander of the ogre hold was exceptionally suicidal.
Ambrso had asked the sappers to come and get him once they dug under the wall. He quickly discovered that he couldn't affect anything from about ten steps from the wall and inside the hold. He wanted to study them before they tried digging out the support. Maybe it would give him some clues about the black armor that ate his mana when he was at it. So far, it had been the only thing he had discovered that would cancel or annul his spells, making them a possible threat to his future in these lands. Anything that stopped him from completing the quest had to be squashed before it could become a real problem. He had no time for vulnerabilities.
He sat there, pondering if there was anything he would have changed from the plan Eurycliedes and his command had come up with if something reared its ugly hide during the night, but he didn't see anything. They knew their work better than he could, some of them closing in on a millennium in age while he was sitting there on his second decade. It felt almost absurd at times that he received so much veneration from people, considering how little he actually had achieved. Checking the scoreboard for the quest, he couldn't see anyone having taken care of Maalik of Two Heads yet.
Sitting cross-legged on the edge while drumming the fingers of the left hand on his kneecap, he looked at the mountains framing the ogre's hold. He couldn't imagine seeing something that big on earth. They were simply another order of mountains that anyone could hope to experience. For that, he was grateful. Picking up a stone the size of his fist as he stood up, he spotted a large boulder a few hundred steps south of where he was standing. Drawing back his arm, he let the stone fly with all his might and saw it fly as fast as a bullet. Sure, he had cheated by removing the air resistance casting Control Wind, but it was still a good throw. It kept sailing through the air, and with a visible hit of smoke rising from the side of the boulder, he threw his hands up in the air. Why did nobody film that? Then, there came a slow rumbling. Ambros watched the boulder begin to slide downwards. Faster it went until it skipped on a different rock and started rolling down instead of sliding, hitting more boulders on the way on its breakneck race down the mountainside. Ambros stood with his mouth open as a massive rockslide was soon making its way down the mountain. Holy crap, the entire mountainside was sliding down now. He had been further north than expected as he watched the rockslide keep gaining momentum. Looking between the ogre hold and the eastern army camp for a moment, he cursed as he took a few steps back, and with the little energy he had been picking at his meridian with, forced his body to move as fast as it could without turning into mush and hurled himself from the plateau towards the army camp. Gliding through the air with Control Wind, removing the friction in front of him and bringing an updraft to keep him sailing for far longer than anyone his weight should be able to move, he grinned. This was as close to flying as he could get, and it was incredible.
Coming up on the outer picket of the eastern army camp, he increased the friction under and in front of him. He added a counter jet of air to slow himself as much as possible. He unsummoned his clothes as he caught on fire from the friction. The pain was temporary, he thought between clenched teeth. Claiming the landing was graceful would be a bit of an overstatement, but he was standing on his own feet inside, furrow taller than his head about a hundred steps from the command tents. When he finally stopped, making sure his skin wasn't molten hot anymore with a bit of Control Water, he summoned his clothes and jumped out of the hole he had created while still smoking.
It looked like the entire army command and their hangers-on were armed. Soldiers were rushing towards in, spear raised, until they saw it was him. Spotting Eurycliedes easily enough, he waved and shouted, “Eurycliedes! You really want to gather the soldiers. I may have pushed the timetable a bit forward, sorry.” Pointing at the sliding mountainside about to hit the ogre hold.