NOVEL NEXT V11: Chapter 5
V11: Chapter 5
…
Waiting for things to happen was something that I've grown used to.
In-game, after everything's set up, you hit the next turn button. Things get built, progress is made, and a load of things to do pop up. After you finish off the little bevy of challenges, you remember that you want something to happen, start the process of making it, and then click on the next turn. Turn after turn happens, you do a lot of small things, and everything culminates when the next war happens. You fight it with all the preparation you've put in at your back, lose if you're a loser, and win if you've done your job correctly.
A game on standard speed can take eight to ten hours, though you can keep playing after you win just for fun.
Anyway, I was fine with waiting nowadays.
Waiting meant that there were no problems, no events, and nothing happening. The more time I spent waiting, the more time I spent waiting for my projects to finish. More factories will come online. More soldiers will be trained. The next generation creeps closer to the point where I can recruit them or draft them. If I had ten more years, I was sure that I could win against the entire planet, and I would've gladly enjoyed those years.
Unfortunately, sitting around and waiting was no longer a luxury that I could enjoy.
The demons were already here, and we needed to deal with them.
Rita gave me a bow, while Ilych nodded at me, as we met for the first time in months.
"Your majesty, the base is yours." Rita ceded control over the forward base to me with a small bow. The command center was the standard. Multiple runners were at the ready, two riders with flying mounts were present to relay priority instructions, and there were dozens of people processing reports from outside, looking through telescopes, and a signal corps was on standby. We were atop one of the frigid mountain forts that guarded the pass between the continent and the rest of the world. "The expedition that we sighted is three days away. Here is what they saw."
On the table at the center of the command center, ink danced and motes of pale blue light arose. The mountains formed and gave us a clear understanding of the topography, while the ink on the paper shifted to form what was last seen by the scout. Morgan's method of accessing the brains of her targets to extract information was useful in scouting. Our scout had to be present, but after pressing their hand on the command desk, they could show what they saw on the map. Once I was sure that our small arms and equipment were all good to go, I planned on the scout's role being replaced by flying familiars who can give a bird's-eye view.
Or maybe some telescope attached to a balloon.
Maybe some sort of early radio?
The researchers will figure something out.
"It's an expedition in force." The initial scouts were too numerous for us to realistically all catch. We caught a lot of them, but that just meant those who escaped reported the dangers of our land with the deaths of their colleagues. The first demonic force was supposed to be summoned by cultists who've taken over a couple of towns. Since they were unable to do that, they had to hoof it here. "Are the charges ready?"
"They are. The winds tell me that it will soon be the opportune time to unleash them." Ilych spoke up. I didn't even honestly recall the last time that I spoke to her. Mainly because if there were opportunities for her to level up, I sent her off to level up. She spent quite a few weeks incapacitated after taking down the Sirena. She needed to catch up. If I did everything right, she should be halfway through all her possible perks by now. "I advise an initial strike at the front to recover officers first, then initiate the plan. We should gather intelligence."
"You, Sirena, and Rita will be on that, then. The landslide will deal with the most of them. We'll let some run who see it. You'll follow them, Eminent." I felt a warmth on the sigil on my hand as I addressed the figure to my right. She was kneeling with her head bowed to my right. Most people present tried to ignore her. The circumstances of Eminent's awakening were known to all. "You'll be creating a border state of undead on the frontier. Raid their outlying settlements, take all that you can as far as you can, and make sure that they need to assail your lands with a truly immense amount of might to have a chance at reaching our lands."
I hit the slave thralls of the Stymphalians and the Ascendant with diseases.
The Demons I was hitting with an undead plague supported by an undead army.
"I hear and I obey, my dear master." Eminent rose up, but her head remained bowed, and she curtsied. I saw her force in the path below. Bone golems, hordes of skeletons, and flying carrion swarms. A mid-tier Undead army without long-range artillery or supportive necromancers, except for the Goddess of Death. I really hoped that she'd be able to hold out long enough to get enough kills to create a stronger army. "Your enemies will die and then rise to fight against their kin."
"Succeed, and some of your debt to me shall be lightened. All you have done so far is stay your execution." I told her, and I could tell that she was smiling at my words. Since I was alive, I supposed that she liked the fact that I was swallowing my fear and summoning up every bit of courage that I have. "Go now and prepare your troops. Rita, Ilych, and Sirena, stay for a moment."
Eminent left, and with a motion I had most of the officers leave as well.
With three champions in front of me, I gestured for Ayah to come forward, and she gingerly placed the briefcase she was carrying on the floor before carefully unlocking it.
Inside the briefcase were twenty glass ampules.
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Each one filled with gimped prototypes of the endgame poison, Scarlet Mist.
The endgame poison weapon was an item carried by a champion. Preferably a stealth one that stayed on the espionage layer and also had the cautious trait. The Scarlet Mist was a magical living poison cloud with a timed life of one turn, or four months. It acted like a pseudo-nanomachine swarm that replicated off of living material. Poison and chemical weapons can be healed, but what if healing someone just gave more mass for the poison to create more of itself upon? Deploying the Scarlet Mist on a tile meant rendering that tile barren; practically all life on it will be consumed.
Champions and troops can survive it if they have enough resistance to magic, healing, and regeneration.
A couple of upgrades for the Scarlet Mist made it far stronger. It could last four turns, a whole year, instead of going away. It can be made to spread to eight hexagonal tiles or even spread up to nineteen. Another upgrade was to make it more effective so that it can eat past regeneration, healing, and magic resistance at the final stages of the game. The final upgrade for the Scarlet Mist made it so that the Scarlet Mist turned into useful materials at the end of its lifecycle, basically turning living materials into piles and piles of refined carbon that can be used as fuel or used in alchemy to create equipment.
I've played and seen whole games where people rush for the Scarlet Mist and just deploy it as fields at chokepoints, then they exploit the 'Carbon Fields' generated with a nearby city.
It's an incredibly potent and powerful tactic.
But once the genie is out of the bottle, it's never going back in.
Deploying the Scarlet Mist was just asking for everyone with a Citadel to develop it.
Once everyone has their hands on it, the events start rolling. You need to start doming up your cities, setting up checkpoints, and doing your darndest to make sure it never gets deployed in a city. Troops need to be given sealed suits in order to do combat, and mechanical units with pressurized cabins become the name of the game. Every magical resistance tech and upgrade needs to be researched. If you don't put in the money, time, or have the right research to access those options, the Scarlet Mist will ravage your armies, kill your populations, and do incredible damage to your nation.
If Scarlet Mist strategic deployments and events reach a hundred, then you get a game over.
If there's enough Scarlet Mist generated from all the people it kills, it's only a matter of time before it becomes airborne and comes into contact with some wild, primal magic that gives it enough power to keep going.
Then, it'll replicate until the whole world is just processed carbon.
Yet, here I was, ready to unleash a prototype on the Demons.
"This is the deadliest chemical weapon ever devised. Upon contact with any organic flesh, it will create more of itself using the flesh it came into contact with as fuel. That new copy will do the same alongside the original. Then, it will do so again and again without ceasing for one minute." I didn't want that ending to ever happen, so I constrained its development immensely. Rather than a strategic weapon, I developed a tactical one. This Scarlet Mist can't be used to create chokepoints, but it can be used to assassinate and kill hard targets. An anti-Champion weapon. "If you find an opportunity, I want this weapon to strike a powerful demon. Observe how it functions and how it acts against them. This is a field trial, but make sure none of you get it on your bodies. This is the most dangerous poison ever designed."
I made it clear to every alchemist that worked on it that they needed to make sure that the compound never received more power, couldn't keep going past a minute, and had a mass limit of one ounce before stopping their flesh-to-living-poison conversion. All the alchemists are now perpetually watched and monitored. With the slightest hint of betrayal, they'll be removed from play, made comatose, and placed in a medical tube to keep them alive.
Why keep them alive?
Because I'm still making the original version of the Scarlet Mist, though I hoped to never have to use or deploy it like in the game. Without the constraints it had in the game, if I could turn it into chemical artillery shells or drop it like bombs, things could go wrong very quickly. But if there's a chance that I'm going to be turned into a living waste processor or an immortal nursery for parasites, I'm going to stock up on the magical version of a nanomachine swarm that replicates off of biological matter.
I'd rather be reduced to carbon and know all the horrors of this world are the same than let them do that sort of thing to me.
"Sirena and Ilych, you will be on guard. Rita, as you can see, these ampoules are evenly weighted and can be attached to these arrows." One of my Iterant bodyguards came forward. It was Ria with black hair and blue eyes. She had a long rectangular bag slung over her shoulder. The other Iterants had briefcases and similar bags, but they had Citadel Alloy weapons in them. We were close to the battlefield, so they were well-armed. "I'll leave the deployment to you. Use them carefully and away from Eminent's forces. There is a chance that the rapid feeding of the poison will cause the body to burst and then spread the virus to nearby individuals."
All three champions carefully considered the weapon, and each one bowed after contemplating it carefully.
Rita then took the arrows and closed the briefcase shut.
"I will take it to the battlefield in this secure container and load it onto the arrows there." Rita made sure the briefcase was secure thrice over before picking it up gingerly. She treated the thing like it was a ticking bomb. "Are there any countermeasures?"
"A barrier of wind that directs it away from you. An enclosed suit of armor with a breathing apparatus with filters. Being entirely mechanical. Undead flesh will be consumed and used by the poison as well." I told them simply and held up my hand. The Iterants wouldn't let me near the weapon without a form of protection. I had a circlet on my person that could create a barrier of wind around me and blow away the poison. "If it gets on your limb, cut it off and run away. If it's inside you, then there's little hope, unless you can heal through your body being eaten from within."
"What is the rate of consumption?" Ilych asked quietly, and I recalled her armor that allowed her to regenerate from killing, as well as her own personal regeneration ability.
I thought about the best way to convey the in-built mass limit.
"Each ampule carries an ounce of the poison. Once it comes into contact with flesh. It will become two ounces within five seconds. Two ounces will become four in five seconds. The first ounce alone will exist for one minute, but in that time, it will generate twelve ounces of itself with the same lifespan." I looked at Ilych. She probably considered taking the hit if possible. Maybe it was. If she was hit with it, then she was smashed with healing magic while also surrounded by an army to heal off of. It was possible, but it was better off not chanced. "If one is resistant enough to magic through various means, it can be slowed or even ignored; perhaps you are strong enough to slow it down. If it takes you, struggle and survive if you can, but if you fail, I will make a pact with Khalai and find a means to resurrect any of you."
I addressed them all with that statement, but in all honesty, Ilych was the one I'd go out of my way to resurrect.
She had more potential and was already ridiculously useful.
That was only made more evident by how she stared at the Scarlet Mist briefcase.
Not with fear, but with a calculating gaze.
I didn't dare hope, but…
"Is it possible for me to learn how to create it myself?"
…if she had magical resistance and enough regeneration, and if the Scarlet Mist's kills counted as her own?
Lifesteal with a battlefield-wide high-DPS damage-over-time effect was hilariously broken.
That build just might break the setting over its knee.
I wanted it.