I clapped my hands together, then rubbed them for maximum effect. I was renewed by a divine night’s… an order times…

I was renewed by sleep! Time, as an illusion, was less meaningful than waking renewed. Refreshed. Recharged. Ready to take on the day’s challenges. I still had four orders to play with too.

Hand rubbing time was over. I steepled my fingers together and leaned forward, pressing my fingers to my lips. Hmm. HMMMM!

Gate house first, damnit. I really wanted to hold off on new construction until I had new supply routes lined up, but while I could build the roads, I couldn’t send the workers without a functional back door. And I wouldn’t dare open that to the public without heavy, HEAVY fortification. And the people to guard it of course.

I gently tapped my finger against my lip.

I nodded slowly. Yes. I was not an idiot. I had slowed down and remembered that I had resonance crystals to spend.

Three hundred of them, in fact. And I now had a sizeable little pile of Frozen Diamonds too. Doubtless they would melt away under the heat of the thieving merchants, but I did have them.

Off I trotted to the summoning pool.

I decided to grandly fling the Resonance Crystals into the pool, to make a grand spray of them. Then I remembered that three hundred of anything is a lot to hold in your hands, let alone slippery crystals, and adjustments had to be made.

I decided to grandly fling several handfuls of Resonance Crystals into the pool, to make a delightful series of slightly less grand sprays with them. It still felt very satisfying, being able to just toss them. To watch the impossibly mystic water dance.

“Dora is here, you have nothing to fear!”

Wait, what?

Out of the mists of the summoning pool strode three pike… women? I want to say Pikemen is gender neutral, but hell if I know, really. Once again, I had been blessed with the Triple Dupes. And that catch phrase couldn’t be a coincidence.

The Pikemen were dressed in smart skirts cut to the knee, with sensible yet attractive ankle boots and the signature white berets I usually associated with Mika. The shirt was blousy and off-white, though the sleeves were tied up with green and red ribbons. The Pikemen looked a little older than Mika- college seniors instead of freshmen, maybe. And they were One Stars, which is rough.

The Pikemen… I decided I didn’t like calling them that. Pikes. They were just pikes now.

I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to find the path back to Happy Thoughts. The most brutally OP unit in Total War Shogun (II because I’m not insane enough to want to play the first one) is the Oda Yari Ashigaru. Which is a fancy way of saying peasant militia pikemen. Kind of. Sort of. But probably close enough. So considered that way, Three Pikes is an excellent thing.

Slight downside- Pikes, to be effective, are deployed in dense, multilayered walls. The pikes my summons are carrying are, by my careful eyeballing, frigging huge. Like… twenty feet long, or something. These could be used exactly one way- line up and stab. Twenty feet of reach, that’s great, but, counterpoint, swarms of monsters each far stronger than an ordinary man who strongly believed in flanking and attacking from the rear whenever possible.

Mika had been clutch from day one. I can’t say I never feared with her around, but I sure felt a lot safer. I’d be both a jerk and an idiot to write the Pikes off as soon as they arrived. Besides, the Mikas functionally transformed once I collected enough of them to form a unit. Wouldn’t be the craziest thing if I could do something similar with the Pikes.

What… what if that was their Relic Site’s thing? Trash-tier units with amazing upgrade potential, but you needed to draw TONS of them to make them really effective, not to mention buying or looting the appropriate officer and NCO uniforms to make the squads. I could see it. I could practically taste it.

Also, not going to lie- the skirt was whatever and the boots were only decent but the loose blouse thing with the sleeves tied up with ribbons was working for me. Not my usual aesthetic cup of tea, but there was enough detailing on there to make the Summons pop, while remaining simple enough to honor their One Star status. A heavenly moon must be surrounded by twinkling little stars, after all.

I nodded firmly. When combined with the oversized weapon, it added just enough contrast to really make the whole package pop. I approved.

But that still left the question of how to make use of them. As a formerly red-blooded-American, I firmly believe in victory through superior firepower. “Poke them with long sticks” wasn’t really part of my range. Fortunately, I could delegate.

“Othai! Got some of your people here! Come and greet them.”

Othai trotted into the room, saw the Doras and crashed to a halt. Her smile was sad, but real. “Hello Dora. It’s good to see you again.” She stiffened up, throwing a salute. With a loud shout- “Genuda Forever! Death to traitors!”

There was a sudden crack, smash, as every Dora turned, stomped their heels and smacked their pikes into the ground. “Genuda Forever. Never Forgive! Never Forget!”

I saw it now. Their pretty faces twisted and made ugly. The rawness of the emotion. They must forget it most of the time. Whatever the betrayal was. It must be like Miuki’s Ult- something about that final stand triggered her memories of family.

“Othai… just what happened in Genuda?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

I exhaled through my nose. Versai didn’t chat about Gradden March either. “You know we will be going to Genuda sooner or later, right? Probably sooner. Genuda now counts as… what, a plurality of all my Awakened? And you are here? It’s coming soon.”

“I don’t know about that, Tower Master. But if it is, perhaps you will have the opportunity to learn many things.”

“Take charge of the Doras, please. I will put them under your command.”

“Gladly, Tower Master. What are my orders?”

“Defend the Tower. Details to follow.” I smiled, and walked outside.

This was the tenth day. The wave coming at us would be enormous, and probably filled with unpleasant surprises. We would therefore prepare unpleasant surprises of our own.

The battlefield around the Tower was intensely chewed up. We had gone through roughly nine iterations of fixed defenses, fired I don’t even know how many artillery rounds at it, built walls, tore down walls, dug ditches… dug so many ditches.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Most of the earthworks were at the ‘front’ of the Tower, AKA the side with the door that was open from day one. And boy wasn’t that stressful. But now it is time to prep the back door.

I carefully tapped my lip, then corrected myself. It is time to fortify the western entrance. Much better. Much, much better. So… how exactly?

In my ideal world, the workers go out the front door, but that’s not an option. Also, I don’t have a front gate or anything. I deliberately made it a complete pain to get from the battlefield to the Tower, on account of the horrifying death thing.

I played around with the idea of a sealed tunnel, well protected by thick walls, that wrapped around to the front of the Tower from the back, and dumped the workers out on the Rampart. From there, we would have a heavy duty bridge that could be mounted and dismounted as needed. Basically a giant ramp that covered the moat and went high enough to get on the wall.

It was horribly impractical from any kind of work flow perspective, and I had a feeling that the ergonomics would be firing-squad worthy if I tried to institute them in Scandinavia.

Was it… Finland who had that one sniper that had more bodies on him than some morgues? I remember something about there being a sustained aerial bombardment campaign by the Russians to kill one Finnish farmer, but damned if I can remember where that’s from. Point is, we can expect my firing squad to be both highly accurate and unionized.

Unlike my poor laborers. I groaned softly. There wasn’t a good solution here. The most sensible thing would be a heavily armored gatehouse. Do the whole bit- drawbridge, portcullis, killing hole, all the medieval classics. They really worked too. But that was against human enemies, not “LOL Biology” monsters. They should. They absolutely should. But…

Fear. It’s all just fear. And fear is useful, when used right, and it will kill you if it isn’t. And right now, I was running like a rabbit from the monsters.

“Versai, Othai, join me at the back, please.” The magic of the Tower carried my voice to them. No need to think about it or activate something, it just happened.

No tense body language there- it seems the two Six Stars could work together amiably enough. No Versai-Carousel situation, then. So that’s good.

“I need the opinions of two Castle enthusiasts. I want to get our defenses into something like a comprehensive shape. Right now we have protected the front of the Tower and kinda protected the back of the Tower, but how do we make this one cohesive, defensible, structure?”

“Motte and Bailey, surrounded by an even bigger wall?” Versai asked with a certain glimmer in her eye.

“We can do so much better than that! We need to get rid of these curtain walls and start putting in a glacis. We can turn this place into a Star Fort without too much trouble, though it’s lacking a water moat.” Othai sounded alarmingly enthused.

“Love the enthusiasm, both of you, but I’m thinking about today. What can we build today that will stand up to the doubtlessly nasty wave that’s coming our way?”

They conferred for a minute. Then smiled.

“ALRIGHT EVERYONE! PLEASE FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS FROM MARCI AND RAKIM, AND LET’S GET THIS THING BUILT!”

I yelled from the balcony, enthusiastically waving my scepter.

“No.”

“Marci? Is there a problem?”

“Yeah, I’m not a general contractor. You want something done, tell me where to go and what to do. I’m not taking responsibility for managing the project.” I’d swear I saw some haunted memory flash in her eyes, but I was high up.

“I’m more or less the same, Sir. I can give advice and can help with the work, but when it comes to planning and running the jobsite? Above my paygrade, Sir.”

Oh for- “Marcy, Rakim, I am giving you the most explicit plans I have yet developed for a build.”

“Yeah, alright.” Marci nodded. Then did nothing else.

“So…”

“So I’m still not going to boss around people, Boss.”

GOD DAMN IT! She had been blatantly leading the other workers, hadn’t she? Or maybe she didn't see it that way- they were all just working on the same task together, as assigned by me.

“Look-”

“Um. Like. Do we have to have the whole, you aren’t the boss of us conversation again? Because talking to you is, like, totally destabilizing my aura and whatever, and it’s just gross to talk to uggos, so could you, like, die, or whatever?”

“If I die, you die.”

“Oh mygoshplease just stop talking. It is just the worst. I think my pores are clogging.” This from a different Blue Rose.

I was promised a tyrannical rule. That’s what Black Robe said- Tyrannical Rule.

“I’m not very good at construction, and I am very worried about chipping a nail. Can I be excused?” Carousel asked.

I knew it. I was suspicious after dealing with Versai, but the Six Stars can definitely mess with me. This is intolerable. My Tyrannical rule must endure!

“EVERYONE WORKS! WE ARE ALL GOING TO WORK! EVEN I AM GOING TO WORK!” I bellowed, tyrannically. “Since I can’t delegate, I hope you enjoy having me as the site foreman. ALL AWAKENED, HERE IS THE ORDER- BUILD!”

I swiveled my head to look at the Blue Roses. “It’s going to be an earthen wall with a stone facing. In order to make the wall hold up, the earth must be tightly packed in place. At long last, I am finally ordering you to go pound sand.”

It is regrettable that even higher star levels are worse at labor than Two Star workers. Still, I didn’t regret dragging them into the labor pool. Firstly, because even if they couldn’t do much, they could still do something, and second, team building.

No, really. Team building.

I hate team activities. I never did team sports at school. Or any sports, other than mandatory gym class. When we got assigned group projects, I would always carve out a little piece of it I could do by myself. Get kicked in the teeth, metaphorically, often enough, and you realize that you just aren't going to make friends. Even the kids who turned up at school with Naruto headbands tied to their backpacks didn’t want to hang out.

The Hell with them.

I’m stuck in this broken game with my Awakened. Yes, some of them may only be technically sapient, but I know there are bits and pieces of real people in there. And most of them have a history where they worked with other people. Even Mrs. Hungry, now that she was past her cannibal phase, was an echo of that old palace cook. Teamwork, once upon a time, really mattered to these people.

Not me, obviously. I go out of my way not to work with people. Well, except for Sayed, my Bangladeshi AI wrangler. Still, we have managed to almost entirely eliminate any need to communicate with gradual improvements to my system, so that’s good.

But I’m not by myself anymore. So I have to learn. And I have seen enough Shonen anime to know that big group projects are the key for team building. Silver Spoon (highly underrated show) was all about people helping each other out and building connections. It was enough to make farming in Hokkaido look really appealing. So a big construction project like the Gatehouse was perfect.

It’s not bringing together all the different agricultural departments for a big pizza eating festival perfect, but it’s pretty perfect.

Silver Spoon just vanished with absolutely no buzz. Which is so damn weird since the Mangaka wrote Fullmetal Alchemist. I get that slice of life is a bit of a genre transition, but… the lady wrote Fullmetal Alchemist. How could people skip it?

“Alright, let’s get a mirror polish on those stones. No sneaky baboons are going to be crawling up there!” I cupped my hands to yell out the orders. No reason to, they could hear me perfectly thanks to the magic of the Tower. It just felt right.

“Othai, are you really, really sure about this?”

“Yes, Tower Master. As I said. Crossbows and pikes work very well together. It would be even better if we had arquebusiers and the like, but crossbows will do excellently for now.”

“Right, but those pikes are going to be basically static once they are set up, right? What if we put them somewhere, and the monsters don’t hit that spot?”

Othai blinked at me, clearly not understanding something. “Static, Tower Master?”

“They have twenty foot pikes. Even if they don’t get tired, that’s a lot to haul around.”

Othai was now giving me a distinctly funny look.

“Is that so, Tower Master?”

I sighed. “What am I missing? Twenty feet of… I don’t know, ash or pine or whatever, topped with a long pointy steel head. It cannot possibly be light.”

“It is also very, very dry, carefully preserved with oil. It’s a lot lighter than you would think. Second, they are trained to march and maneuver with those pikes, even in surprisingly close quarters.”

“Oh really?”

“And, third, while they are useful on defense, where they really shine is on the attack.” Othai smiled. I was a little intimidated.

“I honestly can’t imagine it.”

“DORAS! ASSEMBLE! LOWER PIKES. FORWARD MARCH. DOUBLE TIME. CHARGE.” Othai called the orders, crisp as a November morning.

The Doras could run. They weren’t the fastest, but they were meeting the world with twenty foot pikes.

“I’m suddenly imagining what ten or twenty of them together would look like.”

“Imagine a hundred of them, formed into a ten by ten square. You wonder how a pike formation can maneuver quickly? Easy. Stick the pikes straight up, rotate each soldier in place, then proceed in the new direction. Then when you charge, lower the pikes in the direction of the advance. Back rows reaching out over the shoulders of the rows in front.. One hundred spear points all coming at you. And that was just one unit.”

“I can understand why Cavalry was useless against you, but… bows? Crossbows? Guns?”

“All effective to some extent but not as much as you would think. Well, guns are, if I’m being honest. But Pikes are still a decisive power on the battlefield. Arcing fire has to make its way through a hundred densely packed spears, after all, and while you might lose some people to direct fire in the charge, that’s what your own crossbows and cannons are for.”

The Doras didn’t have any armor. At all. The Mikas had their shields. Versai was armored almost head to toe and had a shield. Othai had armor too. The Doras just relied on speed and stabbing, willing to risk the losses if it meant closing with the enemy.

I looked over at the gatehouse we were building. Star Fort is for the future, right now we are still dealing with melee focused monsters. Having lots of sloped dirt firing points for artillery was less important. Being able to mass our defenders and have local firepower superiority was the most important. My big worry was always that Murder Baboons would get in behind us and rip up my ranged attackers. Now, I had Othai with her Halberd leading a bunch of speedy Pikes.

“How good are you at spotting hidden units, Othai?”

“Decent, my lord. Two dozen yards, or thereabouts.”

I looked up at the fake sky, and smiled.