“A year, maybe? No, they're mobilising demons and monsters that specialise in speed, so six months, it looks like.”
Demons infested the expansive cave system they had built underground, which stretched everywhere throughout the Demonic Forest. Many demons also lived in the occasional wide patches of terrain that weren't just vegetation above ground. Even as a conservative estimate, experts on the continent guessed that over a million monsters and demons roamed the continent, with the number of monsters being overwhelmingly greater.
‘And damn, is it conservative. I guessed it the last few times I did this, but I can confirm it now. There's no way these numbers I’ve seen are a mere million. I'd say double that. This is frankly terrifying. All things considered, I can assume the coming invasion to be a force of a quarter of a million monsters, with demons in the thousands. Fuck, my side could gather, what, a few dozen thousand men? That would amount to the combat strength of maybe ten percent of that of the coming invasion. Why are the demons even launching a large joint assault in the first place? And why aren't the Heroes helping? Isn't this literally their job?’
Noah felt like tearing his hair out. So many questions, so few answers. All he could do for now was continue to investigate. He did feel a little better about the fact that his slimes could outmatch the information-gathering techniques of basically anyone on the continent, so these questions he had were bound to yield answers eventually.
‘I just hope these answers don't ask more questions than they solve.’
As he had that thought, a ferocious explosion occurred on the training grounds. Looking up, he felt a slightly warm wave of heat from the explosion hit him in the face as Archmage Seraphina gently floated down to Ariel while she lay sprawled out on the ground, panting. The front of the short metal breastplate and parts of Ariel’s face had heavy traces of soot on them, indicating that Ariel had taken the brunt of the prior blast face first.
Noah watched from the patio he was in currently slightly over a hundred metres from the two. The archmage cast the clean spell on Ariel, then pulled her up with a smile, which Ariel returned in kind. The two talked to each other for a brief moment, then seemed to exchange a short giggle, before Ariel's face hardened as she said something to Seraphina, which she nodded to and flew a short distance away, seemingly preparing for another bout.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Noah’s face loosened into a smile. He could almost guess that Ariel had spent the whole day here, in training, as she always had. In the increasing stress he found himself under in the past few days as his workload and worries ramped up, a familiar sight really did ease his nerves.
He allowed himself to watch their bout, noticing that Ariel had crept up infinitely close to breaking the barrier into becoming Sovereign ranked, yet did not yet have that final, tiny push. Seraphina, who had initially been forced into being here, seemed to have befriended Ariel and had clearly played a large part in helping Ariel reach closer to the rank of Sovereign. As he watched the bright magical lights whizz about the battlefield, Noah felt the presence of another archmage descend down to him from the skies.
“What's up?”
“Sir Noah, Tyril has arrived at the estate. This seems to be concerning the meeting with King Oberon in a couple days.”
“I guess I'm slightly late. Is he in a guest room now?”
Noah got up and dusted his pants, then allowed a pair harpy wings to sprout out from behind his back and took off in slow flight towards the front of the estate, which Archmage Lirael followed him in doing.
“Yes he is, will you have dinner before you take your leave with Tyril?”
“Nah, pack some rations just in case though, thanks.”
“Very well.”
“Damn, you archmages really are useful. Sucks that I can only convert a limited amount of people to thralls while retaining their mental and physical condition, or else I’d be doing this left and right.”
“...”
“Ey, come on, lady, don't get mad, I know you're not unhappy doing this stuff, thralls receive a hit of dopamine whenever you successfully follow your master vampire’s order, so I know for a fact that it's gotta be like drugs whenever you do these things I tell you to do.”
Lirael chose to ignore Noah’s remark that casually spoke about basically drugging them into submission instead of making a fuss about it. Not that she really wanted to. As Noah had said, the drugging was beginning to have an effect on her, making Noah seem more and more likeable in her eyes as days passed. She let out a shiver. From a proud archmage to a proud secretary.
‘Oh, how I’ve fallen’
“Alright, this is his door, right? You can go now, thanks.”
“Understood.”
Noah watched Archmage Lirael as she allowed herself to levitate back to the study Noah used to spend all his time in, now a place where she and Archmage Draven, sometimes Archmage Seraphina as well, spent all their time after a part of it had been converted into a small research facility, where they were either in research or administrative work.
Noah rapped on the door, which incited the sounds of frantic clamouring of boots from within the room, and then a short silence.
Noah chuckled, imagining the man frantically tidying himself up before opening the door. And it promptly did, at which point he came face to face with a flustered short man only slightly over five feet and a petite handlebar moustache.
“Hey Tyril, how you been?”