Second Arch druid’s POV
Every curse conceivable escapes my lips until my throat is sore and the silence serves a greater purpose than letting out my frustration.
I look once again at the system screen.
We managed to defer this the last time, kicking the problem down the road while attempting to achieve significant victories now, or at most in the couple next couple of months. But Nash survived and isn’t just at full power, he is stronger.
Worse of all, the penalty this time is not in the single digits or low double digits. It is so much worse. It went from a painful delay to a near death blow for our invasion.
Unauthorized use of new integrants tools outside the boundaries of their creation against protected system users.
Elven invasion slot forfeits 72% of the programmed reinforcements for the next 3 months.
This penalty cannot be deferred.
This penalty cannot be mitigated.
Reinforcement numbers cannot be scaled to increase Invasion Point Supply.
No high level troops or command personnel will be sent during this period.
Invasion points cannot be used for perks or new construction while this penalty is in effect.
We would recover in time. Considering the sys would make sure the human native will find out enough about our penalty, even if only indirectly, only compounds the damage.
We ‘cheated the system’ and even if we managed to spin the information in the past, these particular humans are unusually good to us to manage that against them. Worse yet, even without further system interference, this message will leak with every single elf in town getting a copy, even the lowest of grunts. Probably a judge’s decision based upon “FAIR” guidelines and precedent established billions of years ago. Though how do they consider this to be fair to us, I have no idea.
This decision will give them basically three months of free rein. Sure I have a good number of reinforcements still alive after we cut short our assault barely 10 percent of the way just after the Elder’s capture. But the enemy proved to have a much harder shell to crack.
Tree months where we will be only able to annoy them and then hide in our safe zone. Our only safe zone after failing to expand to a single other location. We are the primary avenue this planet has, the other invasions all being way smaller than us.
I had studied the records of thousands of other difficult invasions, but this planet is all over the place.
Each month, they genuinely believe that they have to give their all to survive, just a month later we come back 2, 3, 5 times stronger and they not only hold out, they thrive, all that while showing that same mentality of giving their all.
A few hidden tricks were to be expected and their leaders usually waited until the last second to reveal their cards, but their own troops wouldn’t fall for the same thing over and over if there were any indications of deception.
Unless they become one of the rare few that explode in power, eventually our reinforcements will get a foothold and then we will crush them. But a nagging doubt builds in my chest because every time we think we have an advantage they pull themselves out of trouble by the skin of their teeth.
Our constant and well trained reinforcements, even if not a single one from the earlier waves survive are overwhelming, but we are limited. Relying on the safe zone without first a heavy blood sacrifice is a death sentence to our future expansion and it would hurt the empire's plans. Hundreds of millions of troops down the drain after the invasion barely started on a single planet. That’s rare.
My mind spins in search of answers to our problems, answers someone experienced like the elder might have found or that the innovative Satomi of the Bright Leaves could have sidestepped.
But I’m just me.
Dependable, steady and reliable, but never the hero.
I’m the one to deliver the boring background work for invasions to run smoothly, not the one to take chances and that could significantly cost. Especially against an unorthodox Aether wielder.
I’m no real hero to Elvenkind.
Would I always be cursed to remain alive n this planet even while the others are captured or killed?
“Nash, why do you curse me?”
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Nash’s POV – An hour before
“No, I have no idea.” Says the only elven prisoner we ‘flipped’ who is wearing one of their higher level armor.
“I’m not gonna lie, I appreciate all that you managed to teach us, but no idea? Absolutely none?”
“I’m nowhere near the top. I know the nuts and bolts that the grunts from a dozen professions learn throughout their life and a few tidbits, haha, it’s a funny expression… Anyway, a few tidbits that only the higher level knows, but that is it. I was never someone to close my ears and drown out their talks, but I lost too much from the coded conversations and lack of context. There are even a few things that are considered public information by the system that wouldn’t be healthy for me to share, but that is another talk.”
He once again starts to spin the mana he takes from a battery and I push a few low-powered attacks directly in the middle of the breastplate trying to get a feel for how he is doing that and how the armor answers.
“Logically I should have expected that, but we have a common goblin that knows more about his people than you.”
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“Ugnhh. Didn’t know you managed to flip any of the ones captured in Egypt.”
“Oh no, we got him and his master in the instance.”
“How… Ohh… the inner world? Interesting, never heard of someone that unlocked it before leaving the instance. Even the luckiest races can only use the basic Space bags and you can’t transport living beings on them. You sure you should be telling me this?”
“I can’t see how you would use it against us and if even becomes a problem it is not critical information. They have to have a few guesses about us by now, we know too much.”
“Fair enough and I’m not gonna argue against you telling me stuff.”
“So what about tree singers? Even the public knowledge.”
“I… that’s something really sensitive. For our race I mean. I never got a job that would let me learn anything beyond surface level knowledge. I only know a tiny bit more than the average elf about them.”
“That is literally infinite times more than me.”
“Ohh, you just so often know stuff you shouldn’t that I assumed… never mind. They are our progenitors. I mean your culture has legends/stories of elves and other creatures of the forest, the reality, we are only slightly more connected to nature because we still carry enough of the tree singer bloodline. On average every few hundred generations another one is born. I have never seen one and even the rare picture seems strange. As far as I know, they have a special connection to nature that goes way beyond normal elf's senses. I mean any level 10 nature mage already surpasses the average elven nature connection, so not that impressive, but I imagine that their innate skill is significantly stronger and more controlled.”
“Interesting.” The Elder’s words replay in my mind. So tree singers really can listen to the screaming nature as it is twisted out of shape, yet they do nothing.
The elf in front of me however is the only one that is of any real use to us. Occasionally we learn something tangentially useful from one of the more talkative others, but the actual Elder who probably knew orders of magnitude more than him hadn’t said a single word since he arrived. Only meditating and eating our food in a profoundly mechanical way, like he isn’t even inhabiting his body.
He hasn’t tried to kill himself as many other lower-level captured elves did in the beginning. But nothing that I say prompts even with the mildest response in his brain or soul. My words don’t even register. All activity in his mind is seemingly divorced from reality.
“Do you know why the elder doesn’t seem to hear our questions?”
“What do you mean?”
I explain to him his lack of response, captured with every sense including the perception field, though I don’t go into detail about how it works.
“I have a few guesses, but I doubt that some as high up as he is told to kill himself after capture. They probably came up with other ways to resist interrogation. So if someone captures him, he probably won’t feel any pain, nor even learn the threats made against him or any enticements. He still has a chance of being released for a ransom of some type. Maybe he is in a world of his own with a weird meditation technique waiting for something to pull him out.”
Time passes as my sense get hints of something connecting our new ally to the armor, but a migraine builds the closer I look at it. Almost like I’m squinting to read the microprint on bank notes. Sure I could do it, but only for the briefest instant before the eye strain got to me.
Trying to get more than a hint of the mental state he described is frying my brain, so I will continue tomorrow.
“And you don’t have any magic to teach?”
“Nothing beyond the very basics. Pretty sure it would be a waste of your time, but send someone later for me to go over everything I do know. Connecting to mana networks and equipment, either throwing a fireball or raising a shied. You already know all the runes and I can’t teach you anything you don’t know about. There are no secret techniques hidden from new integrants, only practice and skill levels. I can’t even grow a single nature sprout, half of the reason any hope of advancement for me was dead before it began.”
Another minute passes and then I finally ask.
“Now, do you have any ideas on how I get one of you healers to show some healing? Not teaching me, simply healing in my presence.”
“Uhgnn, maybe… Yeah, I have an idea.”
“What is it?”
“A three stage plan. Introduce a dangerous activity that we actually want to participate in. Come up with a reason that makes sense for it and distract everyone from the healing efforts.”
“And the few that are going to take the opportunity to kill themselves for real?”
“Stop anyone actually trying that, leave them alone as punishment for like a month, no food, no visits, no sun, no nature. Only intravenous feeding inside a boring cell or something. Also, make that dangerous activity a reward for something that they won’t mind ‘giving up’, like talking about their families or how they clean their weapons. Maybe performing basic tests of dexterity or strength, nothing of strategic value. When someone inevitably hurts themselves if you pick the right activity and there is a good chance the healers will step up.”
“You have a devious mind. And I can’t say that I relish all aspects of your idea, but… I will send a couple of people in later today. Organize that effort ASAP.”
“That’s why I’m alive: my devious mind.” He says with teeth too sharp for a proper tree hugger, though I’m not the paragon summoned in people’s imagination, and I’m ‘supposed’ to be a type of druid.
I step out while letting his words sink into my memory. He downplayed a lot of his knowledge and some of it was probably influenced by propaganda, but I learned a lot that was very useful and as my mind passes one more time over the growing treasure trove of enemy equipment my eyes catch a pattern. A pattern in the formation of the runes. The way that they interact with one another. Not in the subtle way that an engraver tended to work versus another, but maybe the key that made the equipment useless to us.
That hint of inspiration is almost fully formed, but when I grasp for it, it fades.
I’m making progress, but I’m still not there.
Then the most important piece of news he told me comes back to mind. Something that I will confirm in my book.
We will have months of peace, comparatively speaking. The most likely outcome, from his admittedly limited experience, is that the enemy will lose a good portion of their reinforcements. We don’t know the exact percentage and it is almost certain that they will lose a lot.
Especially after their big display. I’m not trusting him on that, not even after the truthseeker and my own instincts judged his words and intent. My book pretty much played out with all the new information that I was imputing and this temporary weakness on their part will last at least 2 months. Only the specifics are still up in the air.
We can probably act a little more conservatively ramping up the industry and other efforts that will pay off further in the future. Then in the second month precisely measure how low we can reduce the efforts to increase our immediate strength such as equipment production and the expansion of the defensive formations. By then we might have a better idea of the future.
Maybe we will get luck and a third or even a fourth month of respite.
On the way out of the nicest cell in all the prison. A cell that would put most hotel rooms to shame, a multi room affair stocked with everything from food to crafting materials, an exclusive garden and walking space that had only had minimal security meant to keep the other humans safe given he was inside the main pocket of the inner world.
I would probably relax even those loose rules after I relocated that piece of the prison complex, but no need to rush. The illusion that I use to walk throughout my inner world fades as I glimpse another cell, this one from a being that had used the dark nature control rod to its utmost.
He is the worse of the bunch and I feel pity for the state he was in, like the life had been sucked out of him in a rather permanent fashion.
“Nash.” One of the comms people talks to me.
“Listening.”
“The low level elven troops are acting strangely and talking about a penalty.”
“They are gonna get way fewer reinforcements, that is what is purposed to happen.”
“No, you don’t get it. They are talking about a 72 percent reduction for three months. Everyone just started muttering about it at the same time while straining at a simultaneous system screen prompt. I don’t think they could have faked it. Orders came down only seconds later to stop any discussion, but we think we have the full text.”
The precise numbers send my brain into overdrive. The plans changed:
NOW is the time to work full tilt and we know how much we can push. We will have nearly four months before the next reinforcement wave with normal numbers.
Ohh… this is going to be delightful, we will be able to get a true breather.
So much opportunity.