He went on to describe how each star in the night’s sky was actually a sun with its own worlds revolving around it. For someone so calm, Sersa was at a complete loss as she stared up into the great unknown with eyes that seemed to be seeing a beautiful sight for the very first time in her life.
She seemed a bit disturbed as she said, “It makes sense. So, those are suns.” She shivered. “Just how vast are the heavens?”
“If the stars you can see represent one grain of sand, then the ones that you can’t could fill a desert.”
Sersa took a deep breath. “That’s enough for now. Any more of this topic and I fear I’ll lose my ability to think.”
Jason used a quick arrayment to raise the temperature of the water within the tub, giving life to a steady supply of rising steam. When he let out a satisfied sigh, Sersa suddenly put on a thoughtful look. Looking down at herself, she raised a sleeve of her silver-on-black uniform and wrinkled her nose.
“A bath isn’t a bad idea.” Giving him a commanding look, she said, “Jason, teach me how to create a setup like this. You’ve hardly taught me any arrayments, so the least you can do is make it easier for me to bathe.”
“Can’t you just clean yourself with your energies?” he yawned, leaning back against the wooden boards of the tub and resting his arms on the smoothed-out ledges. “It’s not difficult, but it’ll still take a while for you to learn how to alter a construction arrayment to make this specific tub.”
“Then make me one.”
Solely because she was bossing him around, Jason didn’t want to. Still, he knew that this was just the way that she was.
“Fine.”
A few moments later and his tub had doubled in size.
Sersa didn’t seem pleased by this. “Careful, Jason.”
“I can make you a tub, but I can’t make water for you. If you want to have a bath, then we’ll have to share.” While he couldn’t make water, he could easily siphon some from the surrounding soil, and he could also gather moisture from the air. After all, that's what he'd done to fill the tub that he was in. “What’s the big deal? It’s nothing we haven’t seen before.”
“When have you seen me?” she said sharply.
“I mean, sometimes when you fight your clothes get destroyed. “You’ve killed everyone who’s seen you like that, but…” He held out his hands in a helpless gesture. “I’m still here, right?”
Sersa didn’t seem fond of his boldness. Just when she was about to give his face a rough slap, Angelica’s aura broke away from the distant camp and rapidly rushed to their location.
In the seconds before the other girl arrived, Jason gave Sersa a sly look and said, “You’re blushing, you know.”
Before she could say anything, Angelica landed within the clearing with a tremendous tremour, having just leapt from over three kilometres away.
“Master,” she said urgently, eyes finding his the second she landed. “It seems that the Haussians are launching a counteroffensive.”
He sat up straighter. “Go on.”
“Our scouts have reported that a large host has just left Calentall, nearly three hundred thousand troops. They’re heading this way.”
Jason suppressed a curse. After counting all of the deaths and desertions that had taken place in the kingdom, he estimated that only ten to fifteen million people were still alive within its dwindling borders, which originally had over twenty million citizens, possibly even thirty million. They had lost over half of their territory, and were on the verge of collapse.
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“Where did they get so much manpower?” Thinking on it, he said, “This must be some last-ditch attempt to turn the tides. Most of their soldiers are probably regular people.”
“If that’s the case, then they’re simply gifting Great Elder Germiel and his forces with a massive amount of cultivation resources. All this will do is allow hundreds of disciples to reach the Genesis stage, and even if all other disciples die in that time things will still be worse than they are now.”
Angelica shook her head. “That’s…they’re all at the Integration stage.” Pulling a small vial from one of her pockets, Angelica strode over to the tub and handed it to Jason, peaking beneath the water’s surface as she did so.
“Next time, just toss it.” The glass vial contained yellowish-gold liquid that gave off a strong aura of Origin Energy, the clear container displaying a label that marked it as a product of the CMA. Probing it, he added, “The energy in this stuff is incredibly pure. What is it?”
“Some of our scouts encountered some of theirs, and they found these vials within their spatial bags after killing them. We’re not sure what it is, but all of them had their own supply. It seems that the Haussians have been cultivating behind closed doors after walling themselves away in their eastern cities.”
Jason had a sense that whatever this impressive liquid was, it had been diluted from its original potency. I wonder what the original stuff was like?
Angelica’s black eyes adopted a serious glint as they settled on his browns, her pretty face outlined by the chestnut strands of her bob-cut hair. “It also seems that the third great elder was pushed back by the kingdom’s champion, and he’s returned to Germiel’s camp to the west. They…they’ve also mobilized and are currently heading this way as well.”
“How many?”
“Over ninety thousand, but it might be a lot more. We can’t get too close, else the great elders will sense us.”
“So many?” said Sersa, who crossed her slender arms in thought. “There shouldn’t be anywhere near that many disciples left in Hauss.”
“Our scouts can only rely on sight, then?” Jason stood up with a strong splash of water, wetting the robes of the two girls as he did so. Stepping out onto the grass, he dried his naked body with a basic arrayment that brought about a steady stream of wind and then dressed himself in the same uniform as the others. “Angelica,” he said, snapping his fingers and motioning toward his face. “Gather Havel, Renay and Brud, and then mobilize our own people. We’ll leave the area within the hour.”
Raising her eyes from his groin with visible reluctance, she went to say something else but was cut off by Sersa.
“Are you waiting for praise? Leave, now.”
Angelica let out an annoyed huff. “That’s not all. The sixth great elder—I take it you’ve yet to question her about matters within the sect?”
“I’ll get around to it.”
Growing a bit more solemn, the distractingly-endowed girl said, “I thought it would be fun to tease her a bit—you know, since you told her not to harm any of us. Well, she became quite aggressive, so I put her in her place.”
“What’d you say?” sighed Jason, who didn’t want to waste time on nonsensical bickering.
“I told her that she had been expendable within the sect, and that she was expendable here. Do you know what she said in response?”
Sersa spoke with an impatient voice. “Obviously, we don’t.”
Ignoring her, Angelica looked Jason in the eye and said, “She said that all of us were. That this war, we weren’t meant to win it. When I questioned her about it, she laughed and told me that last week, Verdure mobilized its entire military along with millions of conscripts and volunteers. The Verdurians have flooded into the Easterly Kingdoms to relieve their neighbours. According to her, half a million troops will arrive here in Hauss any day now.”
Jason rubbed his forehead, frustrated. “We’ll talk about this back at camp. Let’s hurry.”
A short while later, Jason and Sersa were surrounded by their core group of followers, in a private tent where they had set up a large table atop which sat a sizeable map of the kingdom.
“Our uniforms, our skills,” Renay was saying, her frayed brown hair in its usual messy style. “The Haussians and Verdurians will definitely regard us as their enemies. There's no doubt.”
“And so will Great Elder Germiel,” added Havel, whose blue eyes were examining the map with heavy focus. “If we assume he has a hundred thousand disciples in his war band, then our total enemies should be just shy of a million.”
Renay looked at Sersa, and then to Jason. “I recommend we don’t take part in this fight. Of all the parties involved, we’ll be the most disadvantaged. Everyone will want to attack us.”
“Normally, I would agree,” muttered Havel. “But doing so would give rise to another risk of greater weight.” Pointing at the occupied areas of Western Hauss, he traced an index finger toward Calentall, what was once the fourth largest city in the kingdom but now served as the temporary headquarters for the king and his forces. “Don’t you find it strange that Germiel would mobilize his people as soon as the Haussians decided to do so? If the sixth great elder was aware of the Verdurians’ coming involvement, then we can assume that he is as well.”