Chapter 16

The assembly master was ecstatic when I told him that I was a baron. I wasn’t surprised though. From what I had learned this was considered one of the lower assemblies. As such almost all of the prospective swarm knights came from the untalented population or the swarm commoners. The children of a current swarm knight or lord would end up going to one of the higher assemblies.

I had learned a great deal about the swarm, knights, lords, and the assembly itself over the past few days. I spent most of my day either managing my swarm or learning as much as I could. What was left was spent with Faye either eating or relieving stress, as she liked to call it.

Part of what I had learned was the exact nature of the assemblies. Primarily they tested swarm knights and trained their servants. They didn’t actually train the swarm knights themselves. That was part of the responsibility of the swarm lord they were assigned to. The other thing I learned was that there were millions of assemblies. The vast majority were categorized as lower assemblies.

The stated average that there was one swarm baron for every hundred swarm knights was for all the assemblies combined. The vast majority of the prospective swarm knights that tested at a lower assembly ended up being swarm commoners or squires. Swarm commoners could only create the first swarm unit and the squires could only create the first and second unit. They were able to buy the swarm connection once they were unable to unlock the next unit. Although without the higher units it would take forever for them to unlock the various upgrades.

Each year the assembly processed around a thousand prospective knights. On average once every couple decades one of these passed the test to become a knight. So around one out of twenty thousand people who took the test. Of those that became knights significantly less than one in a hundred from a lower assembly became barons. From what the assembly master told me it had been over almost five thousand years since the last swarm baron had graduated from the assembly. So well over two hundred swarm knights had passed the test since the last swarm baron did.

I had initially been stunned when I heard that they had records spanning back over five thousand years. From what I remembered that was further back than the oldest writing on Earth. What was more stunning was when the assembly master told me that the assembly had been established over forty thousand years before. People had still been living in caves back on Earth at that time.

After learning the age of the assembly I had spent a few hours in the library trying to piece together the history of the swarm. According to records the milky way had been colonized over a hundred thousand years ago. Unfortunately there wasn’t a lot of information in the assembly library about history before then.

I did find one book that was simply titled early swarm history. A lot of it was about the largest wars between various swarm lords. What I was interested in was a single chapter towards the start of the book that described the creator of the swarm.

According to the book the swarm had been created by someone simply referred to as the founder somewhere between one and two million years ago. The founder used it to fight off a great enemy. Then there was a weird line about the exile returning to humanity and ruling over them for a thousand years of prosperity. I was guessing the exile was also the founder since the next line talked about the founder abdicating his throne over humanity towards the end of that thousand years.

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Over the course of a thousand years humanity had spread across the stars. The founder divided up humanity among his children. What followed was over a dozen pages worth of information about the gods and what areas of the empire they ended up ruling. I guess for many people a swarm lord would have god-like powers. Right after dividing humanity there were a bunch of wars but the founder quelled them. Then after it had been peaceful for a few years he simply disappeared. As far as I could tell nobody had heard from him since.

Unfortunately, despite how much I enjoyed studying ancient swarm history, it wasn’t a priority. The important thing was that I had learned that the swarm was far older and larger than I had ever imagined. That and when I got the chance I was going to visit some of the older libraries and learn more. It would probably require traveling to one of the early galaxies. So not something I planned to do in the next few years, or even decades. I was immortal though so I knew eventually I’d find a way to sate my curiosity. I was sure every swarm lord had at least a few hobbies.

Anyway all of that was secondary to the meeting with my liege. It only took a few hours after I had talked to the assembly master for me to hear back about when I would meet the queen. Apparently new swarm barons were common enough that there was an established protocol. In the case of my liege that meant that she had set aside a time each week to meet all the new swarm barons for the week. As luck would have it the pre-scheduled meeting was tomorrow evening.

At first I thought that was plenty of time. Both the assembly master and Faye disagreed. It didn’t take long before I realized they were right. Fortunately both had started preparing as soon as they heard I was a swarm baron.

What followed was a frantic day. First an entire team of seamstresses were brought in and were making me an entire wardrobe of what was considered formal wear in the milky way. Although I only needed a single outfit to meet the swarm queen, that wasn’t the only thing I’d need an outfit for.

To start with I’d need an outfit for traveling. Which at first seemed silly. Then Faye pointed out that it would help prevent security from questioning whether I was really a swarm baron. In addition there would be numerous other potential functions I’d have to attend once I arrived at the meeting location. Just for example if the count and duke I was assigned to were present I’d be expected to meet them. It was also likely I’d be invited to a few balls, dinners, sporting events, and what seemed like a half mile long list of other possible events. Apparently each needed a similar but slightly different outfit. Even the sporting events had different outfits depending on what the event was.

Once that was done I had to interview an entire new batch of prospective servants. Apparently the last batch wasn’t deemed experienced and skilled enough to serve a swarm baron. Even the ones I was interviewing, which were the best at the assembly, were only deemed good enough as a temporary staff. According to the assembly master I’d have to visit a mid tier assembly to get permanent staff.

At first I had no idea why everyone was struggling to get everything done that day. Then I found out that tomorrow morning I’d have to wake up early in order to start my trip to the meeting location. According to the assembly master I’d need to make my way through eleven portals before reaching my destination.

The trip through a portal was instantaneous. But the trip between portals wasn’t. Imagine taking a flight and finding out you had eleven connecting flights between where you took off and where you arrived. Which meant you had to make your way through a dozen airports. Including having to make your way through security on each side of all eleven portals.

As a swarm baron I’d get prioritized going through security. Even so, if nothing went wrong the trip would take almost half a day. If something did go wrong I needed to leave early enough to still make the meeting.

To top all that off during all of this I was expected to keep up on managing my swarm. The sooner I unlocked the internal and external nano swarm the better. With everything I had to do I found myself wishing I had a week before my meeting with the queen.