-38-
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I remained in the drawing room after Annaeus left, figuring that Hailey would probably wrap up with Haaric soon. Also, I was enjoying the short break from all the craziness.
Beno had vanished into the kitchen a few times, finally returning for good with another batch of his bright citrus-colored concoction.
“I like this a lot, Beno.” I said offhandedly, “Why haven’t you made whatever this is before?”
“I’m pleased you enjoy it, Your Majesty. It is something I made often in Axio, but my limited access to sugar and ginseng made it difficult to brew before today. The Baron’s supplies are abundant and were made available at his insistence.”
“Oh. That makes sense I guess. With our rations being mostly hardtack and foraged fruits, it’d be hard to get refined sugar and specialty spices. Wasn’t it hard to get sugars while at the Church? From what I’ve heard even some laynoble families had trouble stocking their estates.”
Our manor in the city never had issues with stocking whatever spices, salts, or sugars needed for baking—but there was a great difference in the archnoble founding house of Vanixi compared to a failing remnant house of the old empire or the new upstart families of the Republic. Not to mention the many resource disputes between the Triumvirate Republics.
I’m not even sure what expansion zones and towns made sugar… Mental note: Ask Dell to figure that out if he hasn’t already. I believe one of those awful ministers back in Tolin was the head of agriculture.
My mind trailed off to thoughts of unknown supply lines and questions of how we’d get food and necessary resources to Tolin after the war.
When I snapped back to my senses Beno was patiently waiting with a smile and answered the question I asked him some time ago.
“On occasion, the greater nobles would make donations that had sugar and other luxurious spices. But I simply cultivated a few stalks of cane grass in the gardens for my own use.”
“Huh. That’s neat. Did you try selling these in the city at all? If you grew your own sugar the cost to produce mustn't have been that high.”
“One time I made a few bottles for the Primarchs or interested Grand Magisters in exchange for research funds or materials. It went well until the tonic ended up with a terrible name. Nobody would buy them from me after that.”
“A terrible name?” I leaned forward in my seat with a grin. “What sort of name could prevent sales altogether?”
Beno grimaced. “Devil’s Juice.”
I swished the yellowy-orange liquid around in my cup and considered how great I felt since drinking some this afternoon.
“I don’t get it. Why would it garner such a name?”
“Well. How do you feel right now?”
I tilted my head at the question. How did I feel? I felt great. Honestly, I haven’t felt this energized in days. Even after a pretty tough day—getting ambushed by an actual horde of demon dogs and being attacked by Hailey’s father and a band of free-knight adventurers.
“Never better actually. I feel pretty awesome today.” I replied.
“That feeling will last the remainder of the day, and then some. The tonic doesn’t stop you from sleeping but does inhibit your tiredness quite a bit. More than one of the clergy who had bought a batch from me found themselves up late in the night transcribing, reading, or otherwise wrapped up in other hobbies.”
“Wait-wait-wait! Is this some kind of super energy juice?” I raised the cup in the air at Beno. “Can we give it to our soldiers? Does it increase your STAMINA regeneration? Oh, I can just test that myself!”
I jumped up from my seat, carefully placing the cup filled with super fluid down, and ran out of the room with the intention of running a few laps around the estate’s garden.
“Your Majesty!—”
Beno’s cries faded as I sped through the halls.
I willed up a set of tiny status bars into my vision with OMNISIGHT to watch my stamina recover.
Two thoughts came to mind at the same time.
One, it had been some time since I sat down and looked through my detailed status. Sparing almost daily with Ikuye had made me numb to the constant bombardment of status increase notifications so I found a way to mute them entirely.
I should probably undo that so I don’t miss anything important.
And two, I think I misspoke to Annaeus earlier. He was definitely strong in AETHER-related attributes, but if I encountered myself on the battlefield I’d for sure have a heart attack.
By the Goddesses, my stats are starting to look crazy high like Aisling’s.
STATUS
STATISTICS
VALUES
AIRIS
HEALTH
STAMINA
MAGICKA
500 / 500
552 / 670
730 / 730
I don’t think I need to go all out or dip into exhaustion—this should be good enough!
Normally, a person’s STAMINA dictates how long they can do something physical at full strength, whether that is fighting, running, lifting, or other strenuous exercises.
Since developing OMNISIGHT with my chaos magick, the status screen has given more detailed descriptions about how each attribute affects me and STAMINA provides about one second of full-force exertion per point.
At my level, I could sprint or fight for a little over eleven minutes before beginning to feel winded and suffering from exhaustion effects.
Regeneration-wise, the rate is about ten times the amount spent to recover.
So if it took me about two minutes to run down here and I dipped down a little over one hundred points, I’d recover almost all of it in ten minutes of rest.
With the attribute bar expanded in my vision, I watched the values tick up quickly. Twice as fast as normal—At this rate, I’d be fully recharged in five minutes or less.
A flashing light on my left broke my gaze away from the green bar.
I pulled up a notification screen the normal way and a mist projection appeared in front of me.
» YOU HAVE GAINED IN POWER, YOUR ATTRIBUTES HAVE INCREASED:
» STAMINA HAS INCREASED TO 63
Oh, nice!
As I swiped the notification away another light flashed and the projection displayed once more.
» YOU HAVE GAINED IN POWER, YOUR ATTRIBUTES HAVE INCREASED:
» STAMINA HAS INCREASED TO 64
Oh! Double nice!
The hastened regeneration rate must have also kicked the attribute gain into overdrive.
A wicked grin spilled across my face. “Heeeey, Beno.” I called down the hall as I heard the patter of footsteps, “We’re gonna need a lot of that energy tonic! Oh, and it’s gonna need a new name.”
----------------------------------------
Hailey came down to the drawing room soon after Beno had crushed my hopes and dreams of having an energy tonic-fueled army.
Apparently, the process of brewing it was beyond tedious to the point that making enough for even a dozen people would take half a day. He had to imbue the ingredients with magicka during the process otherwise the ginseng wouldn’t bind with the sugar properly.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“It would have been perfect, Hails. Even a single raid-sized division of juiced-up knights would wreak havoc against anything they came across!”
Hailey patted my back to soothe me.
“Yes, yes. Drugging our army so they all become super soldiers does sound frightening. Now, come on. Dad arranged a meeting with the adventurers for us.”
“Doesn’t it? I won’t let it get me down though! Even if I can’t get the energy tonic for everyone, maybe we can make enough for a small group of elites.”
Hailey faltered a step and said something under her breath, probably pondering what party would best benefit from the extra punch.
“Sooooo,” She said in a weird tone as we walked through the halls, “I wanted to ask. What all did you talk with my dad about earlier?”
My turn to falter in step.
“Ah, m-mostly about the state of things around the estate. Speaking of, how come we’re meeting with a bunch of adventurers?”
“Don’t try and change the subject. We’re going to ask them to take over some of the responsibilities of defending the town so we can take more soldiers with us. Now, what else did you talk about with Dad? He was acting weird.”
“Uhm, he asked about Luke and Hanna. I guess he was surprised they weren’t with you. Maybe that worried him a little?”
Hailey’s heavy gaze felt like she was stripping me down layer by layer, down to the soul.
“Uh huh.” She murmured while squinting at me. “Well. Whatever weird nicknames or other nonsense from my childhood he filled your head with, I don’t want to hear it or I’ll be sleeping somewhere far away from you until we get back to Tolin.”
“Whaa!? Hey, wait a minute,” I whined. “We didn’t even… Haaah. I promised I wouldn’t bring that kinda stuff up around people anymore!”
“And I’m gonna trust you. It’s just that you’re both acting suspicious about it. I’ll drop it. Anyway, we’re here.”
Beno, who’d been following us at a distance but hastily made his way forward once we’d reached a set of doors across the estate, entered the room and announced our arrival.
Being treated like a proper noble—rather than a military commander—was a new and unsettling experience. Having the room called to attention and waving the occupants to ease felt way less stressful than having someone basically lord your titles and status over them.
Hailey followed after me since she was below me in both military rank and noble status.
The room we’d entered was a makeshift command room that looked as if it had once been the dining room. The large wooden table was slid back towards the wall and covered in maps, notes, and stacks of other documents.
There were twenty occupants in total—a stressful number of new faces to meet and I already knew I’d only remember the names of a handful.
I gave Beno a look and he brought out a notepad from his satchel.
He’s got to be the perfect attendant. Celestial’s blessings to Karina and the Church.
Twelve familiar-looking men were standing towards one end of the table, each wearing either plated or leather chestguards with the Brooks family crest on them.
It dawned on me who they were as I saw Bedivere’s grizzled face.
Ah, the free-knights.
I gave them a cursory glance. All humans, all knights, and all too serious. Too boring to be adventurers, really.
Bedivere bowed in our direction, and then waved his hand in a motion that emulated a Divisional sign which meant ‘pack up and move’.
The knights filed out of the room in an orderly manner.
Sweet. I didn’t want to re-greet a bunch of people who were begging for forgiveness a few hours ago.
The remaining eight people, though, were very interesting-looking and I did want to greet them.
An imposing woman stood at the head of their group. She had dark-toned, tawny, skin compared to the others, jet-black hair, and red eyes—a color rarely seen. Alistaire was the only person I knew who had red eyes… well, at least one red eye. And his was due to a weird racial heritage.
The apparent leader of the adventurers wore a freeing set of clothes that left little to the imagination, leather shorts with the hips exposed and a top that covered only what was needed to prevent a public indecency charge.
I took her for an elf at first glance because of her elongated ears, but they weren’t quite at that length. Rather, they looked like longer and sharper human ears. She could be a half-elf of some sort, but I imagine it would be rude to ask.
To her left was what was sure to be an Aestori woman. I’d spent enough time with them to know without a doubt. She had long auburn hair, an almost copper color, and bright amber eyes. Golden plate armor with ruby gemstones inlaid in accent along with quite a few pieces of expensive jewelry and accessories gave the impression she was probably a noble or very wealthy commoner.
Next to her was another elven woman, also an Aestori, with similar colored eyes and golden-blonde hair, wearing an elegant white robe that screamed it was made in the height of excess—the entire front was covered in golden filigree and emerald jewels. Decorative ties on her arms also boasted the same golden metalwork and gemstones.
In contrast to the two I looked over just before, this woman had an almost hostile-looking expression—that felt weirdly familiar—Though, I realized her look was actually one of deep inspection. Her eyes spilled over me just as mine were doing to her.
I felt a cold tingle spread across my body. It was definitely unnatural, and kinda gross feeling.
So, I flooded my mana circuits with magicka.
The nasty feeling disappeared in an instant and a pulsing glow of orange light spilled out from my wrist.
Huh?
I willed open the notifications through my chaos magick instead of the runic interface and the text in my vision disturbed me.
» YOU HAVE RESISTED AN ARCANE IDENTIFICATION SPELL
What in the Aether was an identification spell?
Is it something like how my OMNISIGHT can see my status screen, but it can be used on others?
The golden-haired elven woman flinched at the exact moment the notification lit up, so I guessed it was her doing. She’d probably just suffered from a bit of magicka feedback.
Hard to blame someone for inspecting us while I was inspecting them.
Now that we’d had a little spell-based exchange, I couldn’t stay quiet and keep staring down the group.
“It’s a pleasure to meet with all of you. Please, don’t get too hung up on formalities, we’re here to meet you after all.” I said with a cheerful tone.
The suspected leader was the first to respond, the others seeming to hold back on purpose, “It is indeed a pleasure to meet with you, Your Majesty. I am called Tamirayth Schwarzenrabe, but it seems to be quite a long name here on the mainland so people just call me Tami.”
Tamirayth gently leaned her body forward in a slight bow and crossed her left arm over her chest. Her gaze never broke from mine.
From both her posturing as an archnoble and her name I already knew who she was—the famed leader of a small guild that had risen from a low Silver standing up to the highest Platinum rank in a very short time before the Renaultian-led coup.
“Founder and leader of the Scarlet Ravens.” I finished the introduction for her.
A wide smile spread across her face.
“I am. I’m both pleased and worried about which of my great many exploits you may have heard about to be aware of me already.”
“All good things.” I assured her, “I feel more at ease already. If your companions are in the constant company of someone of your status, I’m sure a fledgling empress is hardly something to write home about.”
I gave Hailey a moment to introduce herself and we settled down into our seats, prompting the others to sit as well.
“Well, I’d love to hand over this meeting to Hailey to get the ball rolling, but I must admit I’m still interested in the rest of your group here, Tamirayth.”
“I’d certainly hope so,” she replied with a laugh, “They’re a golden goose as my people would say. My best party and, before all this terrible business, one of the best in the city. The A-ranked team, Widow’s Kiss.”
Tamirayth motioned towards the golden-haired elf, who took the cue and stood to introduce herself. She bowed the same way as Tamirayth, indicating herself as an archnoble as well.
Two noble adventurers, what an unheard of combo. No wonder they rose to fame so quickly. Connections would make a big difference in whether a team gets quality contracts or fights out in the sticks for low pay.
“I am Zophiel of Aestor, a sorceress and Magistrix of the Vanixian Republic High Court. I am at your service, Your Majesty, Empress Vanixi.”
“Oh,” I said with mild surprise, “I thought you looked familiar. I’m certain we’ve met in the past when I had business at the capital offices.”
“We have, yes. I’ve handled some personal documents for you in the past. I’ve worked with High-Commander Brooks as well.”
I had a brief thought about how weird it was to meet someone you knew from work moonlighting as an adventurer—or did she moonlight as a government employee?
Either way. It felt a little weird.
She introduced the rest of her party, noting they weren’t really up to speed interacting with high-ranking nobles, completely glazing over the fact that she and Tamirayth were archnobles.
It truly was an odd assortment of races and classes.
Ulfgrim, a hill dwarf—whose family had hailed from their old city, Dunkreel. He was a sort of STRENGTH-based archer class, as opposed to the more typical ranged classes that focused on AGILITY or DEXTERITY.
Vitalis, a gray-skinned and white-haired elf. One of the very uncommon Sylvae Nox, or as they were called in common, dark elves. After Zophiel’s explanation of his skills, I mentally marked him down as being basically Luke, but better.
Sorry, Luke.
Ezalez, a half-elven paladin whose green hair marked his elven heritage as a spring elf, the Sylvae V’alen. His abilities were more widespread than mine were, but when Zophiel admitted that he was one of the oldest amongst the group it made me feel better about my, as the Goddess called them, ‘third rate skills’.
Elethia, a V’alen druid who surprisingly specialized in fire magicks. She had gained a unique subclass, letting her control flames as naturally as other druids commanded nature.
Danzark, an absolutely enormous frame of a man who put Julius at a disadvantage. His specialization was a kind of warrior with abilities that sounded like how Soren sometimes went into a blood-rage. He was the only human in the group but had shade of skin a few hues lighter than Tamirayth that wasn’t common in the Vanixian Republic even for the commoners who worked outdoors and had tans—usually an indication of Maarin heritage or further out in the nomadic tribes that lived in the Strifelands.
Lastly, there was the auburn-haired elven lady I suspected was also a noble.
Zophiel paused, “Did you want to introduce yourself, Strea?”
The elven girl, Strea, stood and performed an archnoble greeting.
At this point, I thought I was on the receiving end of a foul joke.
Really? Three archnoble adventurers all in the same guild, and two of them in the same party?
“I am Strea Schwarzenrabe, Tamirayth’s adoptive daughter. I was an officer in the Fourth Divisionals, achieving the rank of Knight-Protector before retiring, Your Majesty. I’m one of the few clerics licensed with the Church. My skills in restorative magicks are quite high. I recognize your attendant, Abeno. I’ve had the pleasure to purchase his medicinal potions.”
Perhaps Beno was also experiencing the weird feeling of seeing a work colleague show up randomly as an adventurer.
Strea being Tamirayth’s daughter made the trope of three archnobles less strange, though still a rarity.
And so, everyone new had been introduced.
Zophiel turned to address her companions, “Any questions for or about our employers? Any qualms if we accept a contract?”
They all shook their heads or verbally gave a response they were all good.
“Well, then everyone can take off for now. The three of us will handle the negotiations.”
Of the Scarlet Ravens guild-members only Tamirayth, Zophiel, and Strea stayed behind. Everyone else disappeared in the blink of an eye.
“Great.” Tamirayth smiled turned upwards into a grin, “Let’s negotiate our rates for town defense then.”