My “Master the art of knife fighting” strat ran into an immediate snag.
“I don’t want to.” Versai shook her head helplessly.
“You DON’T want to or you don’t WANT to?” I asked, hopefully.
“Both? Either? I get what you are asking, but I really, really don’t want to teach you how to fight with a knife. Like… in the sense that you would ever use it, really teach you. On any level.”
“It’s literally my only means of attack or self defense.”
She shook her head violently. “Your means of attack and defense are the summons, myself included. WE are your sword and shield. Before I was just testing how much the Tower would let me get away with. I didn’t think you would actually learn anything. That knife is a holdout weapon, a last ditch weapon used only in the most desperate circumstances, or for assassination.”
Versai took a deep breath. “Now kindly point to the person you intend to shank. Is it a monster? No, that would be insane. Is it another Tower Master? No, you haven’t met any, and as far as I know, you never will. Someone in a relic site? No, they are all, without exception, vastly better at fighting than you.”
She started hammering her finger down on my chest. “The only thing that teaching you how to knife fight will do is make you think you can knife fight, and then you will get killed.”
Well. Damn. “Well. Those are all really good points.”
“Yes. They are MY points. I specialize in keeping high value individuals alive. “High Value” being determined by my employers, obviously.”
“What exactly did you do for the Queen anyway?”
“I don’t want to talk about it. And how did you know I worked for anyone?”
I pointed back into the wood chip filled Records Hall. “Your record sheet. It comes with an insultingly brief note about who the summons is as a person.”
“Oh. And it mentioned that I was… employed? By a person?”
“Yep. Which… actually has me kind of confused.”
She cocked her perfect head to the side. “About what?”
“Well, if you were a bodyguard, shouldn’t you be specialized in defense? But you are a vanguard.”
“Cultural difference.”
“Eh?” I said, intelligently.
“This is a cultural difference thing. “Bodyguard” probably doesn’t mean the same thing where you come from.”
Huh. Valid.
“Maybe “champion” might be a better fit?”
She just shrugged. Right. How would she know?
“Assuming champion was a better term, do you think you would be better deployed against single powerful enemies, rather than many weaker enemies?”
That rocked her back. “Yes. Absolutely yes. Ten thousand times yes. Not that I would ever suggest you do such a thing, obviously.”
“Obviously.” I nodded, playing along.
“Consider the way you have already deployed me- as a sort of tactical reserve, coming in to weaken and slow the monsters, then retreating. Or to finish them off at the end of battle.”
“Yes?” I encouraged.
“No, really, consider it. I don’t WANT to talk about it.”
Ah. Well then. I started sketching it out in my mind.
For the first couple of waves, I had her stationed behind the Mikas, basically stabbing over and between them. This was largely to prevent the whole “getting shot in the back” thing which is generally considered a less than pro-gamer move. When I had the palisade built, and especially once I had the rammed earth wall built, I sent her over the top to slow them down. Weaken them to get finished off by Mika.
“Versai, do you think you could have killed that Monster Alpha one-on-one?”
“Yes.”
No equivocation about it. Not a hint of hesitation. She had never seen one before that night, and even with all that, she was absolutely certain she could have solo’ed it. First time I’ve seen “Nah, I’d win” energy IRL. Figures it would be Versai.
Well. “I R-ish L”.
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“Took you quite a few shots to finish it off?”
“Working up from the feet has that effect, yes.” Her voice was bone dry.
Interesting. Very interesting. I had noticed she was faster than the monsters were, too. Not massively faster, but enough to let her control when and where the fights occurred. So long as she wasn’t overwhelmed by numbers.
I started sketching out the next battle in my head. Three orders left. Three entire orders to shape my battlefield.
“Versai, what would you say your greatest skill is?”
“I don’t WANT to talk about it.”
Damn. I rubbed my forehead. This was… going to take a very long time. And I would need to sneak in practice time too. Regardless of what Versai said, I’d seen enough anime to know what happens to the guy who doesn’t sharpen his knife, given the opportunity.
I stood out on the wall, and looked over the fortifications. Two Judiths, a Marci and a Rakim? That was a lot of dirt they could move. And I am happy to report, Rakim appreciates my taste for cheap tricks. I think.
First thing we did was digging trenches. It would mean limiting where Pomoroi could effectively shoot, but it would also encourage clumping and funneling into those places where she could hit.
We dug out… just so much dirt. I followed a simple 80-20 rule. Eighty percent of the dirt went to building new walls, topped with a row of hedgehogs (recycled from previous waves, I was really squeezing everything I could from these orders.) The other twenty percent of the dirt was dumped on top of our back door. Sooner or later, they were going to open that door, and I intended for it to be blocked off already.
The workers had dug out a classic switchback series of shallow trenches. The idea was to balance order-space with the ability to have the monsters running as far back and forth between “openings” in the line as possible. Those openings, naturally, were twenty foot deep pits.
Technically there was a sloped way in and out of them. My thinking was that they wouldn’t register as barriers to the monsters, and therefore wouldn’t encourage them to go climbing over the walls. The other nice thing about the pits? Each of them was easily within Pomoro or Radz’s artillery range.
Nice, deep, pits full of monsters. Pits full of long, spiky sticks. Pits that were also, to the extent practicable, filled with woodchips. They might not hold ‘em like the tarpit traps did, but it would slow ‘em up. There were an awful lot of those wood chips, some very tiny. I was quite curious to see if either of my artillery could set them on fire.
I had gotten very good at stabbing and slicing. Versai was loudly of the opinion that it was all worthless until it was tested in sparring, which I reckoned was fair enough. I also reckoned that I, at a bare minimum, could be reasonably certain I would hit where I was aiming when I stabbed, every time.
It takes a certain monomania to get good at anything. Don’t test the ability of a weeb to mindlessly lose themselves in an activity. Firmly gripping something and violently moving it up and down. It’s our core competency.
MOVING SWIFTLY ALONG, there was my new favorite addition to the defenses. The Pillbox. Yes indeed. Speaking of things I wasn’t waiting for the Monsters to figure out- ranged attacks and flying monsters.
Alright, it wasn’t a proper pillbox. I used some of the new Common grade materials to put a hard cement front on the wall, cemented the top of the wall, then roofed that sucker with four inches of rebar-strengthened concrete. Corporal Mika swore it wouldn’t interfere with her unit using their Ult, so I was quite content with it.
Which led to the last big addition to the defenses (beyond, yanno, four pit traps and a few other odds and ends of the hopefully-lethal variety.) The Crow’s Nests.
The Crows Nests were my commitment to the world of lateral thinking, if not outright idiocy. This was some Cirque Du Soleil logic right here. They threw out the whole logic of the pillboxes. They were just very tall poles poking up around the clearing. I had a half dozen of them erected, each fifteen yards high.
Which is… let me tell you… really damn high. You don’t have a feel for it until you are standing at the bottom of one and looking up.
Why did I do such a mad thing? Because they were connected to each other by thick ropes, courtesy of all those resource packs. Some of them, the ones closest to the main wall, even had crude rope bridges. I had wanted rope bridges for all of them, but by this point Rakim and Marci were threatening industrial action.
Part of this was to give Versai more mobility around the battlefield. If she needed to pull out and reposition, she could climb a post and (with a great deal of care) cross the ropes. If something wised up and climbed after her, she could always cut the rope behind her as she got clear. But really, I did it for the new girl on the block.
You have to spoil your waifus, so they know you aren’t like the others. You really care. And she was already a firm contender for waifu.
Hair black as a raven’s wing, black as the new moon at midnight over the Iga Peninsula. Eyes as dark as a shinobi’s soul. Her black clothes left her milky white arms and shoulders bare, save for an arm guard. The half mask she wore could not conceal the aching beauty of her face. The lacquer combs she used to pin up the glory of her hair lent just a hint of femininity to the austere package.
Slim? Yes. She was slim. But we cannot always be on the side of the big cannons.
She had a bow nearly as long as she was tall, with delicate engraving along the belly. Her soft sandals could run across those ropes like they were flat ground. Despite not being a scout, she was now firmly set at number three on my “Battlefield Mobility” table.
My very first sniper, and the purest balm to my Otaku heart- Miyuki. A modest and respectable Two Star.
Ah! I could see it now- her beautiful posture, losing deathly arrows through the dim night. Raining death on her Master’s enemies!
I admired her lithesome form, as my skin slowly tried to crawl away from me.
Might need to reel that last one back in. Went to a happy place, managed to squick myself out. Goddamn 3-D world ruins something beautiful yet again.
Miyuki is a ninja sniper bishoujo. A. Ninja. Sniper. Bishoujo. Literally a beautiful girl. Why won’t you let me have this, 3-D?! Why must you be so cruel?!
I forcefully tore my eyes away from our latest addition. My preparations were as perfect as I could make them. I had delayed as long as was practical. Versai and I had honed our skills as much as we could, given the system’s limitations. We had gotten creative. No more delays. No more “just one last thing.”
“Rakim, tie off the last rope bridge. It’s time to summon the Fifth Wave.”