“Why’d you stop?” Christina asked. Her cottage fuzzed blurrily in her vision as she awoke from the long illusion. She blinked repeatedly, trying to clear the gunk from her eyes, and straightened, feeling her spine pop several times in rapid succession.
“We’ve got a visitor,” Cortana said while doing lazy spins and flips around her charges head.
“Show me,” Christina grunted, settling back into the couch. The cottage around her faded to be replaced by a high-level view of a segment of the forest. A lone man stumbled along a narrow, familiar path that lead to her cottage. If she focused, she could see the back of her head through the window in the distance.
The man stumbling along was Captain Arcturus. Sweat beaded on his brow, and he clutched his chest as if trying to keep his heart from bursting free. While his pants were as impeccable as ever, his incessant clutching had torn the left sleeve and collar of his dress shirt. It gave him an overall haggard appearance that Christina found surprising.
She had never seen the Captain so disheveled in all her time in the Guard.
The vision faded, and Christina reluctantly got up from her couch. She pulled her hair back in a messy bun and straightened her clothes to be presentable. She then walked to the door and opened it just as the Captain stepped onto the porch.
“Captain,” she said smoothly, falling into a comfortable parade rest from long force of habit. “What bring you here?”
“Ooh! I bet he’s bored and is going to ask you to spar with him or something!” Cortana said.
Christina ignored the fairy and studied the Captain. Theodore Arcturus leaned against a wooden beam that supported the overhanging roof and sighed. He looked at her with searching eyes, a dozen thoughts flitting across his expression before he let out a wracking cough and steeled his expression.
“Ms. Liashen. I’ve come to ask if you would guide me and my men out of the forest.”
“Damnit! Why? It doesn’t make any sense, doesn’t he like it here...” Cortana’s inane mutterings faded as she fluttered away. Christina looked after the fairy for a second, then glanced back in time to catch a brief hint of anger in the Captain.
“You want to go back to Krimta?”
“Yes. Krimta is under siege by a monster wave,” Theodore paused, coughing again, before continuing. “We are obligated to return and provide our assistance where we can.”
“Ahh, you mean the Dungeon Break,” Christina said, a wry smile blooming on her lips.
Theodore hesitated. “Yes, though the bugs are not dungeon monsters.”
“They might as well be,” Christina barked out a cynical laugh. “You want me to lead you out and...what? Are you planning on marching all the way to Krimta while fighting the insects? With all due respect sir, that’s a suicide mission.”
“Then we will die taking as many of them down with us,” Arcturus’s expression hardened. “I would expect you of all people to understand. I wasn’t made aware you didn’t consider Krimta your home anymore.”
“You...” Christina burst out laughing. She fell against the doorframe and clutched her stomach, barely suppressing her mirth. Suddenly, she froze, her laughter replaced in an instant by a burning anger. “You have no concept of what you are fighting against do you? You think two dozen men all under tier three will make any dent in the swarm? You’re delusional. Blind. Utterly and completely. Fine, let me enlighten you on what you are really facing.”
Christina stepped out of the doorway and got into the Captain’s face.
“These are no mere dungeon monsters. They don’t have a spawn point nor are they fueled by a dungeon core you can delve to and destroy. Each and every one of them is a unique spawning pool and there are 72 billion of them and counting. It's too late, they have already grown far beyond anyone's ability to stop,” Christina spat. “Give up, sir. Krimta’s City Aegis can hold back a horde of tier ones as long as needed, but look up. See those beams of blue light? Yeah. Those deal up to 8,202 lightning damage. Each. They fire every 27 seconds and there are 26 of them. Do the math. The Paladins? Inquisitors? All the other high tiers? Yeah, they’ll make it, but Krimta is doomed.”
Christina stepped back, panting as her former Captain studied her.
“You’ve given up? Just like that? Why don’t we delve toward whatever is firing those beams and put a stop to it?”
“Look at you,” Christina sighed, all her anger dissipating. “You can barely stand and I can’t leave the floor. Your men would be dead in an hour if you led them up there. What's the point? This is a battle of Gods, and Deia sleeps. Stay here. Stay alive and protect the few people who are safe from that black plague.”
“I see. I’ll take that into consideration,” Arcturus said. He nodded then turned and shuffled down the path back to New Hope. Christina stood at the doorway for a moment, then entered and sat on the couch.
“Let’s continue, Cortana.”
“Before we do that, I have a question.” The fairy’s wings buzzed as she landed on the armrest of the couch. She placed a thoughtful finger on her chin and furrowed her brow. If Christina would have been in a better mood she would have thought the expression comical.
“What is your question?”
“Did you expect the Captain to ask to leave?!”
“I did,” Christina raised a quizzical brow.
“Hmm, intriguing. I don’t get people. Wait! Maybe you can help me with this. Ok, see. If you knew a girl who was super nice and curious and happy while she was around you, would you be surprised if that person said nasty things to your back?”
Christina shrugged, “Ehh, Some people are like that. I wouldn’t be particularly happy if I discovered that person says those things, but I don’t think I would be surprised.”
“Wow! Really? What if not only they said nasty things, but spilled all your secrets, even the ones that could have nasty repercussions if told to the wrong people?”
“Again, it's possible. I would like to think that there aren’t many duplicitous people in the world, but every once in a while you run across one. You just have to try and avoid them. Make sure your friends are all real, you know?”
“I think so? Actually, I don’t get it.”
“Never mind,” Christina sighed. “Can we get back to it?”
“Ok. You sure like to dream a lot though.”
----------------------------------------
“This is a goddamn nightmare, Kellar!” Gella screamed, her voice distorted as she blurred across the periphery of the room where she and half a dozen newly freed slaves huddled. Insects were spilling in through holes in the walls, but so far Gella had managed to keep them at bay. It was getting harder and harder as the monstrous creatures chewed new holes in the thin wood panels making up the walls of the house.
“This is but a test to prove our faith,” Kellar replied, his fists blurring as he splattered insects on his side of the room. The huddle of people looked between their two saviors doubtfully. They had just been freed from slavery only to get dumped into a situation that looked way worse. Whispers abounded, and many were regretting their choice to listen to the highly charismatic bald man.
“Well, we’re gonna fail this test,” Gella called back. “I don’t think I could sneak past this swarm alone, let alone with all of us as a group.”
“Have faith,” Kellar said, then grabbed a heavy dresser and slammed it against the largest hole in the wall. The tide of insects slowed and Kellar instantly fell to his knees and clasped his hands together. “Great Nameless Goddess of Freedom and Plagues. Your humble servant seeks guidance through the black plague you have unleashed upon our foes. Please attend to our needs in this trying time. Amen.”
----------------------------------------
< You have received 42 prayers:
Stupid, stupid, stupid. What kind of mentally handicapped baboon makes a super weapon and conveniently forgets that friendly fire is on? Like honestly. What was I thinking? Probably along the lines of: Hurr durr, the church is bad and made of people, so let's make a weapon to kill all people! Genius!
What a moron.
I winced as my attention was split a dozen different ways as people sent me prayers asking, begging, me to save them from a horde of ravenous insects.
Damnit.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
It's fine. Everything is fine. I just have to figure out how to guide the insects not to attack certain people. The obvious solution was to somehow graft my cilia to the people who prayed to me. That way any insect which touched the cilia would keel over and the people I didn’t want to die would be safe. Thing was...that felt nuclear and I wasn’t sure if it would work in the first place. Cilia needed to be connected to a soul to survive, and there was no way a tier 1 human could sustain a tier 5 cilia for long without side effects.
No, I had to figure out a different solution. And fast.
How do you keep insects away? My mind instantly jumped to the pink electric fly swatter my aunt had given to me back in a different life. The thing had looked like a tennis racket and made a scary popping sound every time an insect collided with the electric mesh. Something like that might work, and really was working along the same principles as some of the aura skills I saw the people of Krimta use to keep the insects at bay.
But it probably wouldn’t work. Even if I could figure out a quick way of creating an electric aura contraption to protect my people, the thing would still have to be powered by the people. People who might be too low-level to actually sustain a spell like that. That was unacceptable. I had created the swarm, and I would be damned if I didn’t come up with some inclusive way to protect them all.
I pondered, abusing the weird state of time that prayers pushed me into. Magic was off the table. I hadn’t done enough research along those lines and anything I tried had as good a chance of failure as success. What I needed was some tried and true method to repel the modified flies that I could cheaply create and attach to every person who prayed to me.
...Repel?
The Shadow Swarmlings were functionally just generic flies. Wasn’t there something that was used in camping to repel insects like that? Insect repellant, tiki torches, or candles all used something similar. Citronella? That sounded right. What that was, I hadn’t the faintest clue. But Citron...Citrus? I did recall the few candles I smelled having a faint sour flavor. Problem was, I had no smell receptors to detect a sour fragrance, but no matter, I had other methods.
Excited, I rushed to my forest and began rooting around until I found an area where the flies were avoiding more than the others. It took me no time to find the exact plant that was triggering the aversion, and I extracted the compound responsible by pulling it directly from a Shadow Swarmling’s antennae.
Examining the structure of the molecule I could instantly tell that it wasn’t a great fit for the Swarmling’s receptor. Form beget function in regards to receptors, and the chemical was shaped more like an oblong capital I, while the receptor’s binding cavity was shaped sort of like a distorted J.
The first step then was to match the chemical to the binding pocket. I removed a few of the ancillary side groups and extended one end to better fit. It took me several tries, as sometimes my changes caused the entire molecule to bend back on itself or otherwise twist in exactly the wrong ways. In far less time than was reasonable, however, I settled on a molecule that when inoculated to a Swarmling’s antennae bound so strongly to the receptor that it may as well have been superglued in place. As a quick test, I made several hundred of my super repellent and slathered them all over a random leaf covered in Swarmlings.
The response was underwhelming. None of the insects keeled over or even flew away, but as I continued watching I noticed that no new insects landed on the leaf.
Hmm... A higher dose would probably have the effect I wanted, but I was out of time. I turned my attention to the many prayers viewing for my attention and latched on to one in particular. It was a disheveled man in torn rags covered from head to toe in chewing insects. A silver slave collar around his throat glinted dully as he vainly fought off the insects.
Manually creating the compound was pointless. Despite being a rather viscous oil, the stuff would rub off in hours, so I needed a more permanent solution. I reached into the man’s outermost layer of skin using the privileges granted by the prayer and located one of his sebaceous glands.
Normally the gland produced a steady stream of oils to keep the skin hydrated and pliable. They were also responsible for the nasty body odor, and pimples if they ever got infected. None of that mattered except that the gland was already optimized for producing oils.
My work with the Swarmlings had made me comfortable with fiddling with the DNA, and it was trivial to find one of the oils produced and follow it back to the DNA. There, I replaced the DNA to produce the normal oil with my super repellant.
The man’s already panic-elevated metabolism was already supercharging the glands on his skin and in seconds a squirt of concentrated repelling oil was deposited on his skin. He continued his frantic attacks on the swarm, and they continued to fly around him like angry flies, but as I modified more glands, the flies began to retreat.
The man fell to the ground, exhausted and my connection to him was severed.
Mission accomplished. Now to do that several thousand more times.
Sigh.
What felt like hours later, but was actually only a couple minutes from the prayer-induced time dilation, I watched a smug Kellar lead a posse of awed people out of a mostly destroyed building. His prayer ended and I was rudely dumped back to my base.
With that problem solved I directed my attention to my telescope. For once I didn’t need to share the device with Betsy as she was enjoying flying through the sky with a certain wind spirit. I trained the telescope on Krimta and examined the defenses.
They were doing remarkably well for what it was. Any human city would have fallen ages ago. The combination of massive coordinated attacks that killed tens of thousands and that huge bug zapper that surrounded the city made it all possible.
I was kind of glad that they were doing okay. The locust swarm was only meant as a suppression tactic. Not a one-stop shop for annihilation. Honestly, though. I had sort of expected more from a magic-wielding society, but the city's response had felt sluggish to the swarm. The big hexagonal bug zapper had appeared quickly, but it took a full hour and a half for a sizable number of armed people to get on the walls. It was especially weird since the horde had arrived at the city at midmorning. The time when I would expect most people to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
It didn’t really matter, all things considered. They were no longer floundering and were managing to keep the insects a good 100 meters or so from their wall, but were using all their resources to do it. They wouldn’t have been able to do that if the Shadow Swarmlings weren’t cannibalistic, but ehh. The damage had been done.
I would have to be prepared, though. It wouldn’t be long before they counter-attacked. Already I could catch glimpses of very strong individuals annihilating my swarm, then vanishing into the city to do god knew what. That wasn’t even considering the other cities, the nearest of which would be exposed to the swarm in two days' time.
I stopped my mana-fueled expansion and settled in to gain another level. In the meantime, I turned to my most recent upgrade. [Adamant Weave] was a skill that allowed for defensive enchantments to apply to maximum resistance instead. I wasted no time and created a new level 24 enchanted item.
Weapon
Level 24
+210 life
+3% to maximum physical resistance
That was...underwhelming. I had hoped for six percent, but this would work too.
Over the next several hours I triggered [Unstable Fusion] as often as I could. It turned out that I could sometimes create items with +4% to maximum resistances, which meant that the maximum I could increase my minions' resistance was to 83% in one category. That would hopefully be enough, especially if I was able to change my equipment in real-time to fit the damage they would take.
< Pending Upgrades: 1 >
I smoothly transitioned my attention to my interface.
Manalink Bond:
Minions can be bound to sentients
Excess mana from sentients with a bound minion is funneled to you
Bound minions draw power from their sentient, not you
+2 to maximum creature count
Spiritual Reinforcement:
Spectral minions gain 1% to maximum physical resistance per 1000 sentients within your domain
+4 to maximum creature count
Externalized Force:
Minions outside of your domain gain 20% increased damage and life per hour outside your domain.
+3 to maximum creature count
I was back to the minion option again. More creature count was always welcome even if the actual skills happened to be lackluster. That didn’t seem to be the case this time.
Of all the skills [Spiritual Reinforcement] stuck out to me the most. Not only did it give the largest increase to maximum creature count, but it also provided a potential upgrade to my Woodsingers. As it stood, the little spirits fell apart like a wet paper towel as soon as they triggered their ability, but with [Spiritual Reinforcement] I could eventually make them completely immune to their own ability. With no other modifiers at play, New Hope would need 25,000 inhabitants to make the Woodsingers not kill themselves, but I could drastically reduce that requirement with crafted items.
The part that appealed to me the most, however, was that the ability specified Spectral minions. That meant that if I took this upgrade, any future minions I was able to summon would also become immune to physical damage. In the worst case where I would never be offered another spectral minion, I could seriously delve into minion fusion to force a Nothic or Treant to become ghostly.
That being said, the other two options also appealed to me. [Externalized Force] was the simpler option, but encouraged a scout-focused playstyle. My Treants could already step outside my domain, and it was definitely possible to either increase the size of their mana batteries or allow them to generate or collect mana to replenish their tanks. Either way, getting this option would push that series of experiments to the top of the list.
[Manalink Bond] was the most intriguing of the options. In a way, it was the most and least powerful of the options. On the one hand, it relied on my connection to humans to work. Attaching minions to them was strategically brilliant. It meant that I could give Gella and Kellar additional reinforcements without having to worry about any of my minions getting distracted along the way. Additionally, the human town was growing fast, and this skill could be a way to actually start collecting mana from them without having to find a way to fix the tier 1 cilia.
On the other hand, I didn’t like the sound of ‘bound minions’. It sounded suspiciously like the verbiage of [Soulbind Artifact] and made me think that I would lose complete control in the process. My control was currently brutish, but it was absolute, and choosing this option was effectively relinquishing power to the humans.
There was a small chance that ‘bound minions’ didn’t take up a minion slot, but for some reason, I doubted that. So far the system had been pretty clear on the delineation between minions and non-minions. If the skill ‘bound’ the minion, it was still a minion, and therefore likely still required a minion slot.
I could speculate all day, but what really mattered was that [Manalink Bond] was another mana source. One that hopefully was able to collect mana at 100% efficiency from both low tiers and high tiers alike. If the humans turned on me with my own minions, then I would deal with that then. Whatever the case, redundancy was always welcome. Especially since I totally saw the humans try to burn down the forest during their counterattack. The operative word being try.