Steel and Mana

After our morning meeting was over, I held another, more private one in my office. It was attended by Sasha, Yuri, Oleg, and Merlin, the prominent figures who were allowed to make military decisions within Avalon. This time, it was about our next step, including the issue of our infiltrators, Clara's master, and the clues leading back to her origin.

"My girls perfected Clara's handwriting." Yuri started, explaining the latest happenings in Lothlia, "We scammed enough nobles and permits in our old days to have a knack for it. The issue will be how to slowly join and become part of her organization."

"The way she operated," Sasha clarified, leaning back on the couch, letting Luna come close and pour us freshly brewed coffee, "will help us with it. Not every cell knew of the other or had ideas about who were agents and who weren't until they revealed themselves. Clara placed herself in the middle, acting as an agent while keeping someone 'above her' for appearances. Even though she was the end point of all the reports, it wasn't her who sent the filtered letters back to whoever was commanding her, but another, discardable agent."

"Who stayed behind, keeping a lookout in Lothlia." Oleg nodded, arms crossed, taking up two seats next to me. "With our first fake letters, we monitored her remaining people and identified the one who took them out of our territories. His name is Argile Winefield. As for if that is his real name or not, we can't tell."

"Good enough." I nodded, glancing at my wives before speaking. "We will continue feeding him false news about being stopped before the city and not yet being let in. We will stretch it out as much as possible, but we are going to share some interesting facts with them. We also need to find out if they have more weapons like the flute Clara had."

"It was dangerous." Merlin nodded. "The formation it was equipped with would have blown up the whole camp, including Clara, using her magic as fuel and wringing her dry. It is… a barbaric spell."

"We will try to dismantle it." Sasha nodded, agreeing with Merlin. "We could turn it into a self-destruct spell to protect our inventions from falling into our future enemies' hands."

"Meaning… Are we revealing ourselves?" Oleg asked, and I just smiled at him.

"We are. With Mirian as an ally, we have the required backing to do so. Our enemy will simply get the news ahead of time. We won't be able to hide the train anyway, so let them learn of its existence first!"

"The railway from the Silver Region is also being created." Sasha agreed, sharing the news with Oleg. "Duke Kustov has begun focusing on constructing it, including the stops along the way."

"Does he already have the territory under control?" Oleg asked, thinking it may have been harder because the change had to be a surprise to the people living there.

"He says he has confidence." Sasha answered, "Seeing that the Tobrok family also acknowledged him almost immediately made people think that maybe it is not the time to start protesting. With the plans they sent us, there are going to be multiple offshoots for tracks that will do nothing but lead to their production sites to get the steel and coal, directly delivering them to us."

"The rest will be up to Mirian to handle and control the other nobles as they realize what a train really means. She can take the credit for it and spin whatever tale she wants to introduce; we keep focused on our land." I shrugged, returning the topic to our spy problem, "For now, we are going to feed these news slowly and under heavy control to our curious enemy. When Argile returns, he will be introduced to a cell he didn't know about before, replacing a captured duo. We are going to use Clara's carefully built method to periodically replace her agents with ours without them taking notice."

"If it goes well," Yuri chuckled, finishing her coffee, "we may be able to trace their route back to where they came from. As for getting into the hornet's nest? That probably won't be possible, though."

"We don't need to." I hummed, running my fingers around my cup's edge, "The one commanding Clara is either another mage or someone from the Ishillian bloodline. It could be both! It would be too dangerous, and I bet they would be discovered. We just need to constantly spread misinformation and muddly truth with lies. The best way to confuse them is if they start doubting every piece of news they receive."

"Elena, Lady Mikan, and I," Merlin spoke up confidently, "Are already working on replicating the magic slips that the spy had used. We are confident in creating our own version and making mind-confusing and healing cards. The former could help our spies influence targets and obfuscate their own presence before others. The latter would be handy for our soldiers, too, although its healing factor is probably going to be highly limited, at the first-aid level at best. The only thing we lack is monster blood to craft them... last winter's harvest was abysmal."

"Elena is helping you out?" I asked, this being the first time I'd heard it.

"Yes!" he yelled proudly, shaking his head, no longer worrying about our material shortcomings. "She shows great talent in understanding how a formation works, although her knowledge of runes is still lacking. But she is gifted in noticing patterns!"

"Hmm… Interesting, go on. I am not against it. If we can poison their spy network to the point where they can no longer rely on it, we will win the war on intelligence gathering. Our goal is not to learn their true capabilities or motivation; we just need to make them come to the light."

"We will crush them in battle." Oleg nodded, agreeing with the notion.

"For that, we are continuing to build our mechs." I continued, referring to the letter that arrived during the morning meeting. "Mirian wasn't lying; she sent three monster cores from their collection."

"Meaning, we can make three mechs!" Oleg laughed until I raised a hand to stop him.

"Only one. How's the training camp's preparations?"

"We have completed and worked out everything. The qualified Knights we have will go through a month-long course. We will choose the best one of them then, My Sovereign."

"What will we do with the two unused cores?" Merlin asked because he also thought we would use up all three of them in future mechs. "Will they go into your own machine?"

"I wanted to build my own, but with last winter's spider infestation, I decided that it could wait." I shrugged, signaling to Luna, who silently walked over in her favorite maid uniform and rolled out my prepared parchment on the coffee table, pinning down its corners.

"Is this our airship?" Sasha whispered, recognizing the plans and the shape emerging from between the sea of measurements and mock formations.

"It is. We need our own Judgment, and it can't wait any longer. The largest two monster cores we have will go into this."

"So we will indeed use two in one machine?" They asked, surprised, and it was Sasha who answered them while studying the blueprint. Once again, she was learning all the details by just looking at it.

"Um. One is set up to be responsible for the ship's propulsion & weapon system, while the second one will be solely responsible for its shielding capabilities." Sasha hummed, reading my drawings like an open book.

"Since we used the first iteration of Mikan's shield spell, she did work on it, improving its effects. Still, despite all that, we must acknowledge that our version is weaker than what Ishillia has." I stated it as clearly as possible. "To match their level of deflection, the ship needs its own power source, solely dedicated to doing nothing else but operating the shields. We are not going to create our own shipslaves..."

"Won't we need them to control it?" Yuri hummed, looking at me for answers because, amongst us, she and Merlin would probably see no issues with creating some. Even if I gave the green light and we ensured that we only used our enemies for it... that would still open the door for the future. Who says we wouldn't step past that one day? Or if not us, our children. No. I won't be responsible for that. If we become like Ishillia, be it after I'm gone.

"No." I shook my head. "With all the old mech designs, those that I scrapped are going to play a part here. This machine will indeed be filled with formations and multiple CC-powered sub-systems, including its weight reduction capabilities, which will help us rise to the air or land when necessary. All these sub-systems will need their own crew, so we will have to train an adequate crew to operate the ship. This alone will be its own thing within the army, the first unit in our Air Force."

"Building it won't be easy…" Merlin sighed because, by now, he also realized the scale the drawing represented. "This thing will be huge!"

"Yeah." I chuckled. It is 400 meters long, right on the dot. The widest point is 110 meters, while its height tops out at 95 meters."

"By the Gods…" Oleg gulped, the hair on his arms rising, "This will be a true monster…No! A monster slayer!"

"That's the original plan." I whispered, leaning back, holding out my coffee cup, and letting Luna refill it. "This one is made to battle behemoths and not human armies. It will be capable of carrying mechs, infantry, and mechanized infantry at the same time. It will also be future-proof!"

"For what?" Merlin questioned me, looking at me with sparkling eyes, regaining his spirit.

"If we can solve the issue of a reliable and usable fuel source… We can start making flying machines. Planes."

"Why not use magic?" Oleg asked a seemingly simple and obvious question, but Merlin and Sasha answered him immediately.

"One anti-magic spell could make them fall out of the sky. With the size of the airship, we can implement backups and counter-measures, especially with it having two cores! But we can't afford to do so with other machines, nor can we fit every device with high-level CC."

"Ah…"

"Our mechs are still susceptible to those kinds of attacks." I agreed, which is the reason why I tried to find a delicate balance between magic and technology, which, of course, wasn't easy and not something I could just simply... do. It was a constant struggle, and I had no idea how well I was doing. All I could do was hope things would go well. "If we managed to create a spell-hijacking formation, others could do it too. Or what if there are monsters who have something similar? We have already seen one with shields before! While some machines must be equipped with CC and magic formations, our troops must retain their fighting capability without compromising it if someone casts a spell, canceling all magic in the area."

"What about its attacking capabilities? Or are we just going to carry our soldiers into battle?" Yuri questioned me while rubbing her chin, trying to make sense of my drawing.

"I replicated the spell the Kingdom of Scorc used and implemented it as its main weaponry. Of course, a proper firing test will be needed before installing it. As for the rest, we are going to install multiple cannon ports on its sides and underbelly. This is not a project that will be done quickly or openly. We will gather and screen everybody, even though they are all citizens of Avalon. The smallest hint is that they got into trouble anywhere, and they can't work on this project. I want this to be extra secure!"

"Yes, Sovereign!" Merlin and Oleg answered at once, saluting.

"While recruiting," I continued, giving my last orders for the day: "Start looking where we can drill into the mountains. I want it to be hidden from prying eyes because even though we caught the spies now, that doesn't mean we are catching them all. I don't want it to be discovered. We will hide our work under this massive wall we are guarding."