Swift's point of view
It's been 2 days since I've fed Tough… I'm starting to give up hope. I don't think he'll ever recover to what he was… It crushes me… Every time I see my brother in this shape it crushes me even more. I've gotten in the rhythm of feeding him every other day. If I wait any longer than that he tries to leave the cave. If I try to give him more food than he can possibly eat he still eats it all and then vomits up what he's eaten. So I have to do this routine until I find a cure… Or until what is far more likely to happen... I give up.
Most of my free time has been spent studying medicine or procuring rare herbs to try and fix him with. Recently, it seems he's been getting hungrier even faster. He's also started to be irritated far more easily than he would before. I can't get close to him anymore for fear of him attacking me. I've thought of chaining him up… I can't bring myself to doing that. He's my brother! I can't treat him like he's some sort of animal. Even though right now… My brother has always been kind… Just like his name he's always been tough. Tough enough to take care of all his idiot brothers, keep them out of harm… I just wish I could do something for him. Something to make up for all the times he's saved us from trouble... I feel helpless.
I enter the cave and head towards the back like normal. About halfway through a shadow rushes past me, in a single moment when my candle light hit the shadow. IT WAS TOUGH! I go to turn around and he is already on me! He pushes me over even before I can turn around. Knocking the food out of my hands. I look towards him as he consumes the food. He devourers it without a second though. I yell out to him.
“Tough! Stop!”
He looks up at me. The lifeless eyes he had with no life to them now are clearly showing emotion. The emotion of hate, of fear. My brother is gone, he's a wild animal now. He runs off away from me out of the cave. SHIT!
Kite's point of view
Going through the portal I break away from everyone else and begin to check and see how the things I have been preparing have been coming along since I haven't been around. Starting with the humans from Shienta. There training has been going well and most of them have reached the same level of power as the archers in my army. Fairly soon they'll leave for Merideth to join the kings army. I have no doubt they'll be an elite squad of troops that will help sway the fight towards our favor.
While outside I also see that my men have kept up their training as well. Some of the generals sparring with several men for each of their fields. Checking on the beast riders who were sent to far away areas of the world to get as many different monsters as possible… It is… Beyond what I thought they would have gotten. Dozens of unique type monsters with hundreds of variant type I've seen before. I'll have to spend a good portion of the rest of the day fighting these new monsters to try and gain any blue mage skills I can from them. I still have to check on many other things before then today.
Besides the fight in the morning and all of the eye surgeries I've done. It is still only slightly after lunch. Today just seems to be dragging on with so many things happening. I start to head towards the black dragon when I'm stopped by my slime companion. I've decided to name the one accompanying me Gastric, mainly because I've seen some of my other generals name their slime. Gastric bubbles for a few moments before belching out.
“Masssster. Sssssomething bad hasssss happened on the lizzzzzard man island.”
I was just there an hour ago to collect the philosopher stones. What possibly could have happened in between that time? I start to head back to the portal before I realized that my slime had communicated between another slime to get information and then he was able to rely it through talking. Depending on how quickly he was able to get that information over long distances I could use this to an extreme advantage. I go through the portal and half expect to see the houses on fire but nothing seems to be out of place.
I take to the sky in dragon form to look for the problem. I see a group of lizard men grouped around the building they were holding the philosopher stones at. I land close by and notice that they all seem to be calm but they are all looking through the windows and any openings in the building. One of them noticed me and addresses me now.
“Kite! We've got a problem!”
I don't even acknowledge him I just run up to the door and look through. I see Swift trying to talk to a lizard man. He has a barrel of fish toppled over and is eating portions of them raw. He has giant gashes in his skin, his scales are discolored and falling out. It takes only a second to realize that it is a ghoul. Not just any ghoul, this is one of the largest lizard man I've ever seen. The only lizard man that big besides Strong was…
“TOUGH!?”
He turns around when I shout. I try to lift him with by controlling his blood and using air magic to cut off his oxygen to put him to sleep. He breaks control of my water manipulation and lets out a guttural scream. He's going to charge me but Swift jumps in front of him.
“Brother, please! If there is any piece of you left please calm down!”
He slams him out of the way and jumps towards me. I fall down onto my back and fling him out the door with my feet, making sure to avoid his claws and teeth as he flies through the air. Shit! This is bad… Or is it? I mean, I thought Tough was dead. In this stage he isn't himself but I might be able to help him. There is a small chance that if I use one of my new necromancer skills I just got it could calm him down. I was going to use it on my blackened hand to strengthen it permanently but if it gives one of my men a second chance.
“PROMOTE UNDEAD!”
This will either work or make this insane beast even stronger than he was. I see his muscles bulge outwards as the spell takes effect and makes him stronger. I feel him fighting over control now. I grit my teeth and put more effort into my spell but he fights back with every ounce of effort he puts up even more of a struggle. Going into lich form, I feel that I'm winning as I channel the necromancer skill through my undead hand.
Even though I'm more powerful now he is still fighting! FINE THEN! TAKE ALL OF MY MANA! I push all of my mana into this spell. His muscles slowly calm down, he starts to become more of what he was before. His wounds from being a ghoul slowly heal themselves over, leaving deep scars where the gashes were. For a split second I see a bright flash of light come from his eyes as he falls to the ground. With the last bit of mana I feel control finally come to me.
Pet forcibly taken under control Pet class learned blood knight Pet class upgraded death knight Tough “feral ghoul” evolved into unique variant ghast New skill gained Ghast wail- Shriek long and attempt to frighten enemies, gives small stat and speed boost to other undead who hear it
He stops moving. For a second I think he's dead but he gasps back to life. He looks at me with clarity in his eyes again. He rubs his head as if he's in pain before finally saying.
“Master?”
He looks directly at me now. I don't know what he's going to do next. He stands up and says.
“You are my master?”
“Y-yea… Don't you not remember me Tough?”
“No… Should I know who you are?”
I think Tough might have lost his memory. He… Or it might be someone else entirely now. He looks over at the group of lizard men still watching now. His eyes focus on Swift now.
“You... I know you... But from where exactly?”
Swift rushes too him and throws a big hug around his brother. Not caring if he is still an enemy anymore.
“It's good to have you back brother.”
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Tough only looks at him confused. This person he doesn't remember is hugging him and looking at him with a happiness he can't understand. We spend a few minutes talking about what exactly happened. It seems Tough has lost most of his memory. He remembers fragments from his past. The memories are extremely scattered through history. The closest one to now that he remembers is a random few seconds in the army during a skirmish. I'm not sure he'll ever get his memory back but it is promising that he isn't a mindless ghoul anymore. Speaking of which, I know what Swift did was for his brother but he put peoples safety in danger.
I will have to reprimand him eventually… But for now I'll let him continue to tell Tough stories about their past. I leave them to reacquaint Tough to his people. I get back to what I was doing, checking to see how the repairs and upgrades were coming along with the black dragon. They've used some of the dragon killer metal to strengthen to weakest points of structure. I've also had them lighten the black dragon by a few hundred pounds by shaving the wood and metal down in areas where it didn't need to be strong. Comparatively to the weight it should be much easier to hold itself in the air if need be.
They have also made several extremely small improvements to the design that will help keep it in the air for longer than it could previously. It will also be slightly faster and take less mana to keep in the air but at the cost of the structure have some weak points. The weak points on a giant dragon are fairly irrelevant now that I think about it. If we're using it on the ground it will destroy everything close range and while in the air it will out range everything that could possibly hit it. The only thing we'd really need to worry about is it being on the ground when mana cannons are in range of it. If that were to happen I would have severely misplayed my hand.
It is still coming along smoothly. We'll do a flight test soon but even if it lacks flight capability it will still be a huge threat grounded. I think the planning and preparation of this automaton can be left in their hands from now on. It would be nice to get a few more black turtles made before the war but it will be starting too soon. At some point I'd like to get the black dragon stable enough to be able to carry a black turtle without falling apart. That is far into the future though. I leave them to their construction and move on to checking the armory for now.
Many of the specialty items I wanted to give to the new archer squad before they leave are almost complete. Along with their strengthened pull weight bows, I outfitted them with several different kits depending on their strengths. For the ones who are also beast tamers, I've given them the spider web net launchers and a revolver loaded with 20 flare scrolls. The will also be given a single shot firearm that the mage units will refill the mana cartridges for.
For the pure archers, I've given them specially made shields. The shield digs into the ground and can launch arrows from it as well. These specially made shields are to counter other archers. The shields are something I redesigned from the south eastern continent called a pavise. I remember them from Gold's memories. The firepower of the shield is nothing to be laughed at. Even someone without any experience with a bow could launch 200 arrows in a single minute. Reloading the shield would take an hour of work unfortunately but when you need the sheer number of arrows, the hour spent preparing it will be worth every second.
The way I have done this is that on the inside of the shield the arrows are already ready to fire. Just by pulling out the front plate board it will launch 6 arrows for every few inches you move the plate. By removing all 10 plates you could easily launch about 1000 arrows within minutes of putting the shield down. The weight of the shield unfortunately is something that most men would struggle with. The size might also be a problem when trying to get through doors. The prototype version weighed 500 pounds (227 kilograms) and was 8 feet (2.7 meters) tall and 5 feet (1.5 meters) wide. This version is much smaller and lighter than that so it can still be used by regular archers. But because of the weight this is the only thing they can carry besides their bow and some arrows.
Finally I outfit the rest with an assortment of different things. A firearm along with dual hand crossbows that double as melee weapons with a sharp edge mounted to the bottoms of them. Swinging the weapon reloads the next shot into place so even while fighting close range they can prepare to fall back and shoot at short distances. They are also given 2 revolvers to fight in close range with magic as well. They'll be given 40 flare scrolls and 20 healing scrolls.
They make up the specialist roll, also taking anything else to fit the role they want to fill. A shovel for digging trenches or cooking tools... I've actually been working on making a mutlipurpose. It uses a shovel head as the base but I think Nami has the prototype since she has so much to carry. I would have liked more time to experiment and try to add more things to it but I could manufacture them for the army now. These troops will fill in the holes of their troops to make them a much stronger force. Many generals don't realize how reliant on armies of for food. If these troops can keep themselves well fed they stand a much better chance of suriviving.
I've waited to make them armor for the sake that what I was hoping would have happened and it did. Several new variants of spiders had been brought by the beast riders. I'm hoping that I can learn how to make different types of spider silk from them. Even if I can't, I can have them be tamed and make the different silk to make better armor. I think for today I'm going to spend the rest mock battling with the captured beasts to try and earn new blue mage skills.
Blue mage skill strength increased String attack- Can now use regular spider silk, thick gauge, fire resistant and cold resistant webbing
Nice! I figured out that by taking attacks with spell copy up and reusing them I could learn skills far more quickly. There were only 3 variants of the spider but each gave me a new type of silk I can produce. With melded magic casting I should be able to combine the silk together. Comparatively, the thick gauge silk is about 5 times as thick. That is about half as thick as a rope but far stronger. The fire resistant colored red and could handle some very high temperatures before it finally burnt. Testing it with the blacksmith forge means that it should be able to take the brunt of a few fire based attacks. The cold resistance one was far thicker. Almost a different material than silk to be honest. It will be extremely good for any trips I make to the viking islands or anywhere cold. With how cold debilitates my energy it will be extremely good for avoiding that.
Blue mage skill strength increased Poison spit- Can now use both weak and strong regular, numbing, sleeping, necrotic, hallucinogen, acid, oil, ink
With the 7 different types of poison I've had before, these bump me up to 14 different types. The oil and ink couldn't be strengthened. Testing the new strengthened acid production I could either make the weak acid far quicker or make a stronger variant that would melt through things far quicker. The weak sleeping poison would make people drowsy while the strong would knock them out. Finally the necrotic was extremely dangerous. Practicing on a cow the necrotic would do significant internal damage even with the weak poison. The strong poison could potentially kill a giant if the wound was untreated for long enough. What a nice hall of new skills! I fight some of the remaining monsters to gain their skills as well.
Blue mage skills learned Pollen, White wind storm, Improved digestion, Magical fruit, Seed spray, Needle spray, Enhanced claw production, Enhanced fang production, Enhanced lung capacity, Iron stomach, Trumpet, Pack mentality, Thick fat, Death roll
Many of the skills I gained were better versions of what I had. By fighting against the plant type monsters they brought back helped me gain quite a few new skills as well. Pollen lets me make pollen that attacks the senses of a huge group of enemies. Causing them to have watery eyes and runny noses. This might not seem very strong but it could be melded magic with poison or even just launched normally against a very big army that could cause them many problems.
Magical fruit is the production of a fruit that can regenerate mana later by anyone who eats it. Seed spray will be good for planting large fields and needle spray could also be used with melded magic to apply poison with far more success than pollen would. The other improvements strengthened my ability to make claws and fangs, increased my lung capacity to 10 minutes and gave me the ability to eat almost anything to stay alive.
The beast riders who went to the viking islands manage to capture a polar bear that I learned fat from. A pack of frost wolves that I learned pack mentality which lets my allies pick up on sutle movements I make to better coordinate without speaking. They managed to capture a giant wooly mammoth teaching me trumpet and upgrading fat to thick fat. Trumpet was a fairly useless skill that would cause a loud noise. I have other skills that would be more effective but thick fat was another passive that made me more insulated to cold weather. With this I shouldn't have to really worry about the negative effects from forming the spirit contract with the snake anymore.
Finally the beast tamers who were sent through the portal scroll to where the pirates are waiting for the war to start managed to capture a few crocodiles. The skill death roll I gained is another skill that is going to be able to find a use for... A big problem with blue mage skills is you can't really determine which monster is going to have the most effective skills for you... Perhaps I should start writing a book on the skills you could acquire from fighting different monsters as a blue mage.
The last enemy I needed to fight is one of the monsters I'm most excited for. One of the beast rider groups came across a giant bee-hive colony in the central continent. Fighting the giant bees they managed to capture a dozen normal bees while making their way to the queen to capture her. A few of them have lost their lives… At the same time this could potentially improve our market immensely. Honey could be used as a cheaper alternate for sugar if they can produce a similar amount to their size. I fought against a few and understand why some of my men perished. Even grounded so they wont fly their speed is nothing to laugh about.
Blue mage skills learned- Pincer attack, Drill attack, Mandible crush
This isn't looking good actually. I'm fairly certain that all of these bees are worker bees. We'll need to go back and capture some drones as well if we want to make our own honey permanently. I'll need to send them back to gather the flowers these bees were collecting their nectar from. The flowers must be gigantic as well, I'd guess about the size of a person for the bees to work with. So there might be a flower forest close to the bee nest. I'll try to learn any abilities from the queen next just to be sure.
Blue mage skills learned- Extreme vibration, Pheromone spray
Hmm… I'm not sure how I feel about the pheromone spray skill. It seems like it should be a gender dependent skill but it isn't. I can use it in many different ways from marking territory, I could use them to control the bees and perhaps some other animals once I come in contact with other pheromones as well as… Being able to use my pheromones to attract potential mates to me. The final effect is I could use them to calm a beast down if it is going to attack. The extreme vibration I learned is fairly simple. I could rapidly increase my temperature and metabolism with that ability. While it seems fairly useless it could be extremely helpful in cold weather or for a quick energy boost by quickly burning calories. I may even be able to stay up for longer through this method.
I use the pheromone spray and separate the bees. Thankfully we did have 2 drones so we should be able to start producing honey at any point. I'll send my men back there to catch any stragglers that haven't left the nest since they no longer have a queen. Too make this completely effective, I should have Zergnar or Gobber tame the queen. I seperate the drones to be with the queen while I tell the worker bees to go about their business of making a new nest. I'm tired already, today I'll go to bed early. It feels like the day has been going on forever now… I get yelled at by someone from behind me when I'm headed to bed. It's Hilda… I wonder what she could want.