"My liege, half your troops are in critical condition, you must tend to their injuries and ensure they go to the hospital immediately," said Ezra in a convincing voice as if she was worried. "Send the injured to the hospital right away," replied Eden as she paused on how many other troops will be needed to transport them. A beam of light went hit the injured troops and they were transported right away. Eden looked up and asked, "Why didn't you tell me you could transport us?"
"I can only transport the injured to the hospital immediately, but for traveling, I need to use an advanced spell with magic stones found in the bosses, like the one on the centaur that was just defeated, here is the report." Ezra responded and handed a scroll. Eden looked over the scroll and noticed the power level on the centaur was more than the amount of power level of all her troops combined. She then saw that her items gave a boost, but only met up to 80 percent of the boss. She noticed an uncategorized buff with the power level of null. Eden thought to herself, that must be Ezra. I didn't know if my guide could be killed, but I took a gamble that the system requires an immortal AI to go with me to record all my whereabouts. I wonder if others have discovered this already. Either way I should probably keep this quiet before the administrators become aware and set additional rules. She scanned for EXP and saw 25k added to her arsenal. At the very bottom it showed the loot from the boss. A box of stones for armor, thousands of coins for first reward and kill, a bow. Eden handed the scroll back to Ezra and said "destroy this." The scroll turned into ashes right away.
"My lady, how did you know the danger we were in when confronting that centaur?" asked Arthur. Eden paused before answering . She wondered if this was a script or it was an admin asking her through Arthur. After debating and thinking it would be too soon for them to see anything odd, she replied, "I saw a red crystal over the centaurs head and assumed it meant danger. You were already engaged in battle and I didn't want to lose you specifically. Your name reminds me of a dear comrade I once had."
"The crystals are only seen by royalty, It is a testimony to your rightful place to rule over the lands of Eden," added Ezra.
Eden gave a breath of relief before she asked for a troop count and health stats. She then requested Ezra to give her a health stat of hers too. At first Ezra paused, as if waiting for something and then she handed her a report. Most of Ezra showed nothing was wrong. Good, thought Eden as she smiled to herself. That meant, Ezra can be my trump card during battle.
They kept hunting monsters and only attacked when there was no sign of a red crystal. Eden had begun to send one troop to distract the monster while she gave it the lethal hit. This kept going until Ezra pointed out that Eden's stamina was almost fully depleted. Eden then looked at the map they had explored and marked it. "How long before we return to the village?" She asked Ezra as she walked towards Thunder. "You will have to regain some stamina before we can move back. Traveling also takes up stamina." replied Ezra as she showed Eden's condition and her armies. Eden then flashed a smirk on her face. She walked to her troops and pricked each one that wasn't injured including herself. "Send all the injured to the hospital. In a flash, everyone was back in the village hospital except Thunder. Eden frowned, I was sure that Thunder would be here with me too since he is my travel companion. Ezra spoke up as if reading her thoughts, "Thunder is back in the stables, he can't be in the hospital, but will teleport to the stables."
Later that evening, Eden sat in her office looking over her reports and thinking about how to allocate her EXP. She decided to start doing the math so that the points were distributed in a power pyramid shape. In war we send out the foot soldiers first. I need to divide them into different types before our next outing; calvary, archers, ground and siege. After reviewing her academy charts, training grounds and her troop count, she made her decision on how many of each will be in every squad. She went to sleep still thinking of how many more troops she can afford to recruit and still make progress on the castle reinforcements.
Eden woke up after 4 hours of sleep thinking of everything she needed to get done assuming that other players were already ahead of her. This was a power game after all, the strongest one rule and make up the rules. She checked the current stats of the castle and troops. Looks like I need to split my forces and send them to the academy, then rotate them after each new level. She saw the cost of sending half her army to the academy. It was almost all of the earnings from the prior day's work. With a sigh she said, "whomever has the money to fund war wins I guess." Then she took a deep breath before summoning Arthur to her office. "My lady, how may I serve you," said Arthur as he bowed. "I prefer Chief-Commander and I want you to take half the army and send them to the academy with you. Return only when you surpass 10 levels with the other squad leaders who have lapels. The rest of the troops will alternate after every level they reach." Eden said without looking up from her documents. "Ezra, I need to hire more troops at the basic tier level that will replace the amount of troops in the academy." "Yes my liege." responded Ezra as she walked out the office. She was in the room the entire time, standing behind the curtain. Eden thought, "It's an uneasy feeling being watched like that. As long as the creators don't interrupt me as I'm trying to also figure out a way back. Then I think I can overlook the creepiness."
After going over the numbers, Eden decided she needed to use Ezra during battle to get ahead faster. A few centaurs won't be noticed Eden thought. It's probably too low for it to matter at the moment. She had already noticed the improvement of the troops from yesterday. Eden and her army ended the night fatigued. She did the same thing as she did the first time. The entire army was transported to the hospital.
"My liege hospital has reached its max capacity. Please expand your hospital." Eden looked at the report and noticed a squad of 20 missing. Then said "expand the Hospital, where is my squad now?"
"They could not be transported and are marked as deserters."
"Can I recover them now?"
"You can only recover a percent of your deserters during a loyalty horn that is found in the market"
"How often can I use the horn?"
"Each horn can only be used once."
"I need to hire the same amount of troops we did this morning"
"Yes my liege"
"Have them go to the academy at once"
"Yes my liege"
My numbers are not balanced out anymore, but this is expected as more troops get lost by war or raids. Now I need to check the bulletin to see who has the highest power in the ranks and how to join an alliance. Eden made her way to the market to look at the rankings. As expected, there's already a few alliances and some powerful players, now that I have an idea of who is out there I can plan. Eden went through the information of each alliance and stopped at Dark Warriors, DRK. It's not the most powerful, but its intro sounds reasonable. Eden submitted her application and was accepted. Soon a pop up of messages between the alliance members started showing, like pop up bubbles floating in the air. There was barely any conversation on how to get organized or plan. The leader kept posting, everyone has to get stronger. Eden placed her notifications in silence. She thought, "perhaps I should stay silent for now and see where I can go next if this doesn't work out."
Eden returned to her quarters and took a bath. She was thinking that perhaps expanding her army would give her the appearance of being strong, but for how long. She was just about to get some rest before she noticed fire outside her window.
"My liege, our city is under attack"
"Where are the troops on guard?"
"They were too weak to defend"
"What are they sending against my ground?"
"Calvary my liege"
"Of all the troop types"
Eden quickly checked her arsenal and found a shield spell to cast over her city. She skimmed through the information and used it right away. The force field expanded from her room and blasted the enemy back and outside her territory.
"How many dead?"
"None my liege"
"How is that possible?"
"You expanded your hospital, the hospital can hold the capacity of your current army"
"Battle report" demanded Eden.
A scroll appeared in Eden's hands. Attacker was from Alliance For The Good, FTG, by Expatriate. His power level was ten times hers. Only 30% of resources were taken before they got blasted. Eden looked over at the fire being put out by the rest of the villagers and mumbled, Just wait Expatriate.