"So? What are your thoughts on the situation?" I asked, tense and very serious. Even when briefing for a campaign my patience was being tested.
Standing in the center of Hilda's lavishly decorated sitting room in Roa, I desperately tried not to let myself be distracted by the group that I had assembled. Aside from the two men present, there was nothing but beautiful faces, tight shirts, toned mile-long legs, and criminally short skirts. Even my own mother had allowed herself to be pulled into my wives' speed and had updated her wardrobe to match.
Eris, there by hologram, with her sharp eyes fit for one of the group's fastest warriors, smirked. Crossing and uncrossing her legs from where she and Ghislaine sat on a holographic couch off to the side, those red eyes met mine with a knowing look. My third wife knew me too well—more like, knew which buttons to push. "Sounds like Milis is getting ready for a war against us and someone's helping them deal with Sprite specifically."
"Hitogami," Kishirika sighed from the other side of Sylphie to my left on our couch. "It's most likely his work. We know he's targeted Rudeus once already. He can reach out to humans in their dreams and influence them. The incursion from the Conflict Zone—"
"East Asura," Ariel corrected from my right, one down from Roxy, with a grin.
Kishirika rolled her eyes. "It was probably just a test to see if it worked at all or if something needs to change. He's probably taken someone high up in Milishion to spread the enchantments."
"War with Milis…" Therese murmured on the couch across from us. Beside her, Zenith frowned and pulled her sister into a side hug. "Are we sure that's what this is? I thought they were gearing up for another push to claim the Great Forest! Not, not planning to cross the sea and attack us. Even using the highway, it's a ridiculously long march up here!"
"They would be better served commandeering ships and sailing up the coast," Sauros, sitting beside Hilda and Phillip on their own couch to my left murmured.
Phillip nodded. "Sprite, would you please give us a map? Also, I'd like to see what we're dealing with. Do you have an idea of troop numbers?"
"Mm!" the spirit nodded from where she sat floating in the air beside Eris and Ghislaine's holograms. A map sprang up in the middle of the room, along with a live feed of troops massing outside of Milishion, marching in from all over the country. "As of this moment, there are over two million regular soldiers gathered, with at least another million on the way."
My mouth fell open. "I'm sorry, what?"
Sprite nodded and, looking around the room, I saw no one seemed surprised by this. "Milis has a population of roughly thirty million, spread across the Milis continent. By comparison, the Dragon King Kingdom has roughly five million, Sanakia an estimated six million, Kikka roughly the same, Shirone seven million, and Asura ten million."
That's a population approaching the size of the Holy Roman Empire. Fuck me, no wonder they wanted to expand into the Great Forest. It's not just about the food, slaves, and resources, it's about the space. I knew I saw a lot of people in Milishion while we were there, and a lot of towns and smaller cities along the way, but I didn't think it was that many.
"The standing army is roughly ten percent of their population, at three million. There are at least another three they can call in at any time always on standby. But if you include the entire able-bodied male population between the ages of fifteen and fifty and some of the female population to include mages, then we're looking at roughly fifteen million who can be called up at any time," Ariel explained. "It's why, before now, Milis was the dominant world power—aside from the Milis faith, that is. They've got a lot of people. A lot of soldiers, mages, and clerics. Before now, if they had sent boats full of their people north, we wouldn't have known about it until it was too late to do anything. We wouldn't even be able to prepare adequately. Now, at least, we can do something about it. If they want a fight, I say we give it to them." Pausing, she sent me a smile, a look in her eyes that made me want to bend her over the table. "Before that though, perhaps you should simply ask what they intend to do with all those troops?"
"You know how that's going to go," Roxy sighed, shaking her head.
Ghislaine smirked, her tail wagging in her lap. "I think that's the point."
Ariel sent Roxy a leer. "What? I just want to see the sun rise over Milishion."
"No," Roxy denied, looking at me. "Rudy, don't."
"What's she talking about?" Elinalise asked, voicing the confusion several of the others felt.
It was Sylphie who answered, patting my knee. "Rudy has a weapon. It's…" she paused, tilting her head a moment as she thought. Finally, her ears wiggled and she perked up. "Ah! You remember the teleport disaster?" she asked, and several people winced or nodded. "It's like that. But everything burns and dies. And then, the land is poisoned for, what? Thirty years?"
I wagged a hand back and forth a bit in a so-so gesture. "The radiation could burn off as quickly as a day from a normal nuke, used a few hundred feet above ground level. If I wanted to get nasty, yeah, I could salt the earth there for the next twenty thousand or so years and make it an impassable barrier. Or just lay down a belt of radioactive material around their country and warn them that if they cross it, they'll die."
Sylphie smiled at the others. "That's what they mean. It basically poisons the land, water, animals, people—anything in the area. If you get within range, it attacks your body in a way you can't even see or feel. Then, you get sick and die. As far as I can tell, there's not really a cure either, except for cutting off and regrowing the exposed areas of the body. But even then… the blood goes through the whole body, so it's possible that some of your blood could already be poisoned and the effects just take longer to show."
"Well. That's horrifying," Hilda murmured. Looking to Ariel, she asked, "Does this mean we need to call up the troops and start training more?"
"Yes. Just in case," the blonde answered with a nod. Turning a look on me, she said, "If they do come by sea, it might be best if they were lost at sea."
"They'll start sending troops by land once they see that they're losing people," I pointed out, and she shrugged.
"Then it will take them long enough to march here for us to gather our forces, start training new troops, and equip everyone with better weapons and armor." Ariel hesitated for just a moment before steeling herself. Standing, she offered me a hand and I took it, standing and allowing her to lead me from the room as the others talked amongst themselves. I heard Phillip and Sauros start in on the deal I'd brokered between the four nations who had been fighting over East Asura and their thoughts on how to exploit it, especially with the war coming.
Ariel closed the door behind us and leaned against it. Crossing her arms over her chest, she looked at the floor for a few moments, thinking. I let her think, quietly asking, "Sprite?"
The girl's hologram appeared at my call. "Master?"
"I thought we killed all of the Cardinal's faction before we left."
She nodded. "I did."
"Doesn't mean someone else didn't take up the mantle after the dust settled," Ariel sighed. "It could be anyone. Even the royal family. Could they prove it was you?"
Sprite shook her head. "I made it look like natural causes and accidents. They may suspect foul play given how many died within a short time period, and how they all happened to be the Cardinal's faction, but there's no proof."
"Since when has that stopped someone from making assumptions and being right?" I shrugged. "Or just using this as an excuse to do what they want anyway. There was obviously a gap there for Hitogami to exploit."
Ariel only nodded. Finally, she said, "You're American."
"You love it, Ms. Japanese," I chuckled, stepping closer and taking her by the hips. Ariel looked up at me as she uncrossed her arms and rested them on my shoulders, as though we were about to dance.
"I do," she agreed, but there was none of the playful teasing or lust in her tone this time. Taking a breath, she asked, "You already know the formula for gunpowder, don't you?"
"American. Literally something we were taught in school, when I went," I nodded. "Why?"
"…How hard would it be to build a gun?"
"Not very," I shrugged. "Why not use magic though?"
"I don't want something our enemies can turn against us easily. This world thinks in terms of magic when it comes to power. They're all stupidly hyper-focused on it. I've been to Ranoa. Even the most brilliant alchemists have all but given up advancement in the field of mundane chemical and materials science, and physics. If it doesn't have magic, they're not interested. Chemical propellant is vulnerable to fire. If we absolutely had to, we could destroy any ammunition stockpile before they got hold of a sample, and even if they did, it would take years, maybe decades, to reverse engineer it. Using magic to make a rifle or a cannon? They'll just figure out the enchantments or make their own version that does the same thing."
"I have enchantments that make mana cost a non-issue though. Solar power to mana. They don't," I pointed out, and she nodded.
"I'm aware. And if those get into enemy hands, we're super fucked," Ariel raised an eyebrow and I was forced to agree. "Chemical propellant would take them too much time to figure out and wouldn't give them the key to infinite energy. And even if they worked out how to magically reproduce a rifle or cannon, they wouldn't be able to turn out the sheer number of bullets or shells that a magical assembly line could produce."
"That still leaves the issue of logistics, but… I guess if we're going to war with Milis, then we can start revealing some things. Sending, teleportation, and portals would solve that. They'll need training. We should also talk to our neighbors and let them know what's going on. Get them to send some of their own people for defense."
Ariel nodded, smiling. "Even coming by land, they still have to cross the ocean to get to West Port, or go around and put in somewhere else. The Dragon King Kingdom won't take kindly to an invasion by Milis. We could make a friend there, too. Guns at the port would dissuade them from landing there and force them to go north."
"Now you're talking my language," I said with a wink, earning a tinkling laugh from the blonde queen of my country.
"Figures you would approve, you brutish westerner," she giggled. "But it would work. Especially in concert with walls around the Dragon King Kingdom, it would force them to move further than they want. They'll be forced to march a hundred miles away from where they put i—mm in. Rudy…"
Ariel looked up at me with a pout and a hot blush. My hands had slid up under her skirt, teasing the smooth skin of her thighs. However, she managed to keep going. "They'll be too far to get a message back to tell them to send the boats further up the coast. And put a wall across the narrowest point of the continent, be-below the mountains," Ariel panted out as my hand reached between her thighs, her eyes locked with mine, "One vulnerable entrance right on the road that we can close up and— Ah, Rudy~!"
Instead of the silk cloth of panties, my fingers brushed against delicate, very uncovered feminine lips, already wet. To the sides, my fingers found the expected silk and Ariel's blush grew hotter. "Your panties seem to be missing the crotch portion," I pointed out in a whisper, even as I drove my fingers into the queen's, my wife's bare womanhood, quivering around my fingers, squeezing tightly as she welcomed me.
"It was for my, mm, my night assault on your heart tonight," she moaned, torn between squeezing my hand with her soft thighs and spreading them open to grant access to her crotchless panties. "A surprise, all out attack. No quarter given, just a hard, relentless pounding."
I smirked, drawing my fingers back and forth, teasing her. "Are we still talking about the army, or that 'night raid?'"
"Yes~" she nodded, the word coming out in a hot, breathy moan.
"Tell me how you'd secure the location," I said, pulling my fingers back just a bit so she could focus.
"A," she swallowed thickly, blue eyes staring up into my green with hunger, "a bunch of forts lining it. Put artillery on our side and machine guns on the top." She panted, her hand trailing down to play with my zipper, "Of course, you'll have access. All the access in the world for you and your large… vessel."
My hands slid further up her skirt, cupping her ass and squeezing as I leaned in and kissed her neck. "Good girl," I murmured, drawing an appreciative sound from Ariel as she tilted her head and kissed my shoulder, her hands coming up to play with my hair as she ground her hips into my fingers.
The door to the sitting room opened and Elinalise poked her head out. Taking in our current state, she smirked and looked back into the room. "They're just 'flirting,'" she laughed, closing the door.
Ariel chuckled, pulling her hands away and patting my chest. "We should get you back inside."
"But I thought we were going back to the others, not inside."
"Teasing your queen like this should be illegal," she pouted up at me.
"Go ahead, make it illegal. I'll just take what I want," I murmured, taking a moment to lean down and attack her neck. Ariel moaned, clenching my shirt. I pulled away and inspected my work for a moment, before giving her a smile and heading back in.
Ariel took a moment to recover, before reaching up to feel her neck. "Rudy… did you give me a hickey?! Rudy~!"
Once again, Lilia, Aisha, and I had taken out my maid's namesake ship—this time with Norn, Zenith, and Sylphie accompanying us. Standing on the deck, we looked out over the city of Milishion as we approached, coming to a stop outside of the effect of whatever they were using to interfere with Sprite.
Reaching into her breast pocket, Sylphie pulled out a set of sunglasses and slid them on, frowning as she studied the city. They were an artifact she had acquired in Ranoa and we'd had a chance to examine and modify them, adding a few extras on top of the ability to see mana. She could now see the field in question directly, and hummed as she studied it.
"The whole city is covered and I can see individual fields moving below. Some of them are approaching, but it looks like we're high enough to ignore them," she murmured.
I shook my head. "Sprite, maintain… call it ten times safe distance, minimum. I don't trust that they can't extend that field on demand."
"Mm! Will do!" the spirit nodded.
Looking down at the city, Norn asked, "We really can't go visit?"
"Sorry," I shook my head. "With them blocking Sprite directly, that's a hard no. I don't want any 'accidents.'"
The blonde girl turned an annoyed look on me. "I can defend myself."
"Can you defend yourself against an army?" I countered, and she frowned. "Aisha can't either, so she's also not going. Sylphie is staying here just in case they can get someone with one of those marks up here faster than Sprite can move the Lilia out of the way."
Norn looked away, but her expression shifted a bit, looking somewhat mollified. "Can we at least stop in the port?"
"Sure. In fact, why don't we make an adventure of it? None of you really got to see the Demon Continent the way we did. We can go visit and spend some time letting you try your luck against the local monsters. Explore, see the sights, let you try the local delicacies," I carefully hid a smirk at the thought of their reaction to Demon Continent food. "A week sound good?"
"Yes!" Aisha cheered, a happy smile on her face.
Norn looked a little less enthusiastic, but nodded. "That sounds fine."
I looked to Lilia, who sent me a smile. "Wherever you go, I will follow."
Sylphie pulled her sunglasses down to eye me suspiciously over the rim of them. "You're up to something."
"You know me too well," I grinned, grabbing her by the hip and pulling her into my side. Then, I leaned in to kiss her cheek. She turned her head quickly and caught my lips instead, smiling against me as she blushed. I let go and stepped away. "I'll be back."
The white haired girl nodded. "Stay safe."
"You too." I launched myself off the ship, flying under my own power towards the city. "Sprite, where is this guy?"
"That depends on who you're looking for," she chuckled. "The king is in his throne room, holding an audience. The pope is in his tower. The cardinal is in the church." She pointed out each location as we approached. "I'll put a red light over each and adjust them if they move."
"Thanks," I sent her a smile, before her hologram disappeared.
A moment later, my senses ready this time, I felt it as I passed through the edge of whatever barrier was in place. I paused on the edge of the barrier and reached out, testing to see what had happened, even moving back and forth in and out of it a few times to test. Summoning a few lowest level wind spirits outside, I had them fly through it, only to watch the crystal butterfly looking spirits dissipate as soon as they crossed. Trying to summon inside the barrier allowed them to briefly flicker into existence, before disappearing again—and allowed me to feel exactly what was going on.
Alright, it looks like it disrupts any links at the soul level. All of my mana-based spell links are still intact. I can still reach out and contact everyone via the telepathy spell. I can still cast spells through the barrier. It's only things connected to the soul. Which is… really fucking specific and weird. I have no idea how to counter that. I'll need to test more.
Thankfully, Sprite already had a copy of the array being used, so we could study it at home. I'd be playing with that when we got back. After all, while this seemed made specifically to screwed us over, what's to say we couldn't use it against some future enemy? Waste not, want not, as the saying goes.
That decided, I flew the rest of the way into the city, turning myself invisible along the way. Following the red light beaming over the palace, and drawing the worried attention of many citizens and guards who had begun pointing to it and the other two lights and questioning what was going on, I made my way through the main doors and inside.
Finding the king's audience/throne room was easy—all I had to do was follow the servants, nobles, and peasants moving that direction. Finally, I slipped into the room and moved into a position to observe.
It was a fairly typical day for a ruler holding audience for issues that they wanted to oversee themselves, either because it was important, or specifically because it wasn't important but would show the people that their ruler cared enough to address their concerns personally. I'd sat in on a few such sessions Ariel had done by hologram and I wasn't exactly impressed with the whole ordeal. I felt the entire process could be streamlined with some properly deputized individuals appointed specifically to address issues of arbitration in this manner, with only the highest level concerns making their way to a ruler's desk, and the occasional citizen visit just for PR—or even better, as we were beginning to implement with Ariel's sessions, streaming the entire thing in the city and town square of every settlement in Asura so people could see how their government was run and that it was done so in their best interests and with as clear transparency on issues as we could manage without screwing ourselves when it came to national secrets.
I waited through a few people being announced and having their issues dealt with, before using a spell to silence the man making the announcements. Then, I used a spell to duplicate his voice before fading into visibility and striding out onto the red carpet leading to the throne.
"Announcing Rudeus Boreas Greyrat, Emperor-level Elemental Mage and king of the Kingdom of Asura."
A murmur went through the crowd of nobles sitting in the balcony above and in chairs on an elevated platform around the exterior of the hall, while the normal citizens all looked confused but just as excited as the nobles. Everyone apparently sensed something juicy about to play out.
As I walked closer, I studied my fellow king as he studied me. He was an older man, but not terribly so—perhaps in his fifties at a guess. He looked a bit pale and on the declining side, with a bit of a gut, as though he had been sitting on that throne for too long and hadn't been out in the sun in a while. His hair and neatly trimmed beard were blond shot through with gray, and even with the crown on his head, I could make out that he was starting to show the signs of balding. Crows feet stood out beside his eyes, frown lines dug deep into his face, and his brow was deeply creased—giving him the look of a man who had been fighting a losing battle with age and stress for many years now.
"Good afternoon, King," I waved, putting on a friendly grin. "I promise, I won't take up much of your time. Just a quick question. You see, we've noticed that you're mustering a lot of troops. Approximately three million, give or take a few thousand. You've also brought in your fleet and started commandeering civilian vessels—practically anything that floats. I was speaking with my wife Ariel, the queen, about it yesterday and she thinks that, given the boats, you're not intending to simply send those troops out to try to take the Great Forest again. No, she's convinced that you're going to send them northwest, to the Central Continent.
"I told her that's impossible. That many troops? It'd absolutely be a provocation of war, since very few of the other kingdoms on the Central Continent could deal with a force that large. I told her that there's no way a wise king such as yourself would make that mistake, especially knowing that if he did, he'd be going up against the world's only Emperor-level mage, who could just snap his fingers and turn that army into dust. I told her you have to know that, so there's no way you'd pointlessly send that many of your loyal men and women to their deaths. Well, she wasn't convinced. That's why I decided to fly down here and find out for myself. We traveled most of the night just to come see you and hear it from the horse's mouth."
I paused, letting the whispers circulate the room for a moment as the king looked distinctly uncomfortable—pretty much confirming what we'd suspected, but I wanted to hear him say it. More importantly, I wanted his people to hear him admit to it. "So, one king to another, be honest. Where are you sending those guys?"
The man frowned, his eyes cutting to his right. I looked that way and found a pair of men—one from the military, one wearing what looked like their templar order armor, from the Order of the Temple. The templar shook his head. The king's jaw clenched, but he turned back to me. "You come into my court uninvited and demand explanations of me? I owe neither you nor Asura anything. You're just a jumped up mage. You're full of yourself and think because you've got a bit of power you can just do whatever you like. If I decide to send my troops to Asura, there's nothing you or anyone else can do about it. You will soon find your country falling from within as those true faithful adherents of the Milis faith turn on you."
I nodded slowly. "Is that your final answer?"
The man squared himself in his seat, sitting up a bit. "Get out, before I have my guards throw you out."
Chuckling, I shook my head. "That would be the last mistake you ever made. But alright. A final word of warning. If you send those boats northwest, the moment they cross the line that the southern tip of the Dragon King Mountain Range represents, they're going to go down. Likewise, if you march them up, they'll die. We can't have a force that large marching into the Central Continent. Oh, and those faithful adherents? If one of them tries to kill a member of my family, I'm going to take you and yours out. There won't be a hole deep enough for them to hide in."
"Guards!" the king yelled, and several armored men quickly stepped away from their posts within the crowd to surround me. "Kill him!"
"I warned you," I sighed, before pointing at the throne. The room erupted into screams as the guards lowered their pikes and charges, and I shot a compressed ball of wind at the king. The man disappeared in a fine pink mist, the wall behind the throne blasted out as wind whipped through the room, knocking people over and generally causing panic.
The guards were mostly unaffected and the first was on me in the next second. I turned and grabbed his pike, jerking it out of his hands. Whipping it through the air, I smashed the flat end of it into his armored chest with enough force to launch him into the three men behind him and break the wooden shaft below the head. Reinforcing the wood, I walked calmly towards the exit. Another guard tried it, only to get batted aside and pinballed against the far wall. After that, the others seemed to realize it was pointless and simply kept a cordon around me as we left the building.
Looking up and spotting the lights, I lifted into the air and made my way towards the next one. I had already killed their king. I was committed to this decapitation strike now. There was a hope, however slim, that if I took out their leadership, they wouldn't send people to die in a pointless battle. Also, I might get whichever puppet had Hitogami's hand up their ass.
The other two men, I didn't even bother speaking with—simply blasting my way through every obstacle between myself and them before blowing them apart with simple elementary level magic backed up with enough mana to kill whatever I pointed it at. Then, it was back to the ship.
Taking in my slightly rumpled state, Lilia walked over and began straightening my clothes out. I put up with her fussing as Sylphie looked me over. "How did it go?" my second wife asked.
"About how I expected. Killed their king, new pope, and cardinal," I shrugged as the ship turned for the east and the Demon Continent. "We'll see if that discourages them. If it doesn't, we may need to escalate and move ahead with Ariel's plan."
"That's a lot of people," Sylphie sighed.
"Yeah. I don't like it either, but if they're coming to kill us, then I'm going to kill them first. If it's them or us, I choose us every single time," I sent her a smile as Lilia licked her thumb and began scrubbing at a spot on my cheek. "Really, Lilia?"
"You had a spot of blood, master Rudeus," she murmured, looking this way and that at my face. Eventually, the redhead was satisfied and let me go, nodding. "Shall I prepare lunch?"
I rolled my eyes and grabbed her by the hips, throwing her over my shoulder and heading for the door as Aisha and Sylphie laughed. "M-master Rudeus! Put me down!" Lilia protested, but didn't fight—at all.
"Quiet, maid," I shushed her, reaching up and smacking her fat ass. That earned a quiet sound of surprise from her and I grinned.
"Mooom~! Stop flirting with Rudy~!" Aisha pouted as we went inside and I led us to the kitchen area.
"I cannot help it if my master flirts with me, Aisha. I am simply a humble maid, powerless to stop his advances—"
Sylphie slipped up and put a finger against Lilia's lips. "That's enough of that!" she giggled. "We'll definitely continue that discussion later, though!"
"Very well," Lilia nodded.
I carefully put her down on a chair at the kitchen table. She made to stand and I pressed her firmly back down. "Lilia. Sit. I'm going to make lunch."
"…If that is an order," her green eyes looked up at me with a bit of defiance, and mischief.
I sighed. "You know I don't give you orders, Lilia."
"Perhaps you should," she murmured.
"Gross~," Norn grumbled as she and her sister sat.
"You'll understand one day, when you're older," Sylphie stuck her tongue out at the blonde as she moved to help me make food.
Aisha, meanwhile, watched us the whole while and I couldn't help but feel there was a bit of jealousy there. I made a note to spend some more time with her and Norn.
"So, what's the Demon Continent like?" Norn asked as I put a sandwich on a plate down in front of her.
"You'll see when we get there," I answered with a non-answer instantly. "You'll love it. Their food is great, too," I lied, already planning to have Sprite record their reactions so I could show the others.