Author's Note: Not much to say right now, working on my new story is putting my writing a smidgen behind I'm hoping to make up for it during the impending snow days/winter vacation. Read, Review, Favorite and Enjoy!
Chapter 35: The Surviving Workers
Balloma alongside Prince Zanac exited through a teleportation magic circle into the Lizard Man village. Numerous Lizard men were grinding away at summoned monsters as they trained for the day when they would be selected to become Dragon Newts. Zanac was uneasy about these people. Yes they represented valuable allies in a world where they had none but when the fighting was over how well would they fair in their grand machinations. This woman and her siblings wields a increasing amount of influence in the Kingdom, they train monsters in the use of Martial Arts, they booby trap the surrounding areas into unrepentant merciless death traps. Therefore one question for this brown skinned foreigner became obvious for Zanac.
"Will You marry me?" Doubtlessly Balloma was a beautiful woman, any lesser man would be seduced by her beauty and fail to see the monster below. But Zanac was familiar with monsters who happen to have pretty faces already, no he choose Balloma for two reasons he made very, very clear to her: Her intellect, and her resourcefulness. After all who else would think to draft a bunch of monsters into a army. Balloma hadn't answered him yet, in much the same way he had carefully assessed the value of marrying her she likewise was probably doing the same to him.
"Milady Ooal Gown." The possessed desiccated corpse of lizard man declared bowing to Balloma. "The prisoners we collected are nearby, as are the bodies of their associates." Cryos explained leading Balloma away.
"I'm not a necromancer: I don't go sniffing around corpses give them to Kori's department." Balloma instructed prompting the lizard man to bow in acknowledgement as he opened the tent where their prisoners were being kept. Three humans, Three Elves, one half elf. Balloma's interest was caught by the elves first, walking up to one she grabbed her by her face and turned her head around. "Why have their ears been cut off?" Balloma asked questioningly.
"It's the mark of a elf in enslavement." Cryos explained having received the same explanation from the trio earlier on. "Brain even mentioned in his report that after the death of the man they were traveling with they began beating on his corpse, apparently in revenge for his actions."
"So in other words, you did not willfully enter that forest to interfere with our plans." The glorious empire that her family was once part of also played a role in the enslavement of the elves of her homeland. However, though enslaved they were treated with a bare minimal amount of respect, like valuable resources, after all if the slaves working in a mine die you have to go out and replace them. What the Glorious empire failed to realize was that there were only so many people that they could conquer and enslave before they ran out of manual labor. The way the people of the Baharuth empire treat these elves, far more important than being inhumane, was simply wasteful. After all a Elf's superior sense of hearing allows them to sense danger much sooner then others, but that relied on their ears. "I've seen enough. Healing potions and food for these three now." Balloma stated indicating the three now liberated slaves.
Cryos used his staff to herd the three elves along, that in turn left Balloma's attention turned to the four workers.
"Those three didn't participate in this scheme against us willfully: you four did." Suddenly the four of them felt a unnatural pressure rock them to their core. "Let's hear your excuses!" Balloma who had just activated her skill, Truth Teller, against the four adventures demanded.
"We... were... hired." Hekkeran struggled to say. "We... needed... money."
"For what purposes?" Balloma asked expecting some pathetic excuse.
"My... Family." Balloma looked down at the tiny little girl she had brought to her knees with a glance and lifted her skill.
"Speak." Balloma stated bluntly.
"We were nobles, because of the Bloody Emperor's policies now we are not! I worked hard to keep my family out of debt but those idiots keep spending all of my savings on stupid things!" Arche stated beating small fists on the dirt in front of her in frustration.
"I'm not your councilor girl make your point already." Balloma stated tapping her foot with impatience.
"I don't care what happens to those two anymore!" Arche spat out her words dripping with venom. "Just let me rescue my sisters I beg of you!"
"So you intended to buy your own sisters?" Balloma could only sigh, she has seen a new low in this world. "Put them some place less comfortable than here. I wish to check on something." Balloma was taken to the tent where the items that the four workers had on them was being kept.
"If I might be so bold to ask Balloma: what are your intentions for those people?" Zanac asked aware of the mistake of classifying Balloma as someone merely human.
"A question of my own first." Balloma stated as she used her finger to draw Zanac closer. "I have a hard time telling the difference in quality of garbage. Could you confirm my suspicions about these?" Zanac seemed insulted by Balloma's question but complied with her whims non the less.
"This leather and armor is decent." Zanac stated flipping the items one by one over in his hands.
"But this mage gear: it's garbage." The mages robe was simple cloth, the staff was weak pine, Zanac found himself seriously wondering if she had just joined an experience worker group.
"So, all of her income from job to job goes directly into her family's savings eh." Balloma confirmed as she rested her chin in the palm of her hand. "I need to go discuss this new development."
When none of the worker teams returned to the village Zesshi had the Golden reactivated and personally investigated the area. To her annoyance she learned that not only had none of the traps been disarmed, but the ones that were already tripped were reset. No newly converted monsters were coming out to greet her either.
"Taking it from the ass. We've been played." Zesshi concluded as she tapped fingers on a table. "We can't disarm, we can't march forward, and we can't sit on our asses doing nothing while they work on stockpiling power." Zesshi concluded while tapping her finger tips, having eventually reached a satisfactory conclusion. "Hire an arsonist."
Climb had been continuing his training under Kieran, he was currently, with a great deal of difficulty, chopping through firewood using a single sheet of paper, but he doubted that like Kieran he could hack through cylinders of metal using nothing but paper. Still Climb's daily routine had changed, in the morning he used paper to chop through one hundred blocks of wood. In the afternoon he would slay one hundred summoned skull rats. Instead of sleep he would be made to enter a meditative pose where he would pretend to sit on a chair and pray to his mistress continuously for three hours a night, through this he would build up small amounts of holy power in the form of Holy infused Ki and Holy infused mana. Once his ability was high enough he would be taught paladin skills by Kieran. On the subject of which, it was rather fortunate that Kieran had given him such basic exercises: because he was gone for more time than what he wasn't. Out working to advance the Kingdom's and his siblings objectives doubtlessly.
"Chopping wood... with a sheet of paper?"
"You think we can do that?"
"No. No. The real question here is: why is he doing that?"
Ignoring the rambling's of passer by's, this was important training for Climb to learn that ultimate tier cheat like ability: void cutter that turns a missed slash into a trap for the enemy to walk into.
"Sir Climb!" One of the scouts ran up to the warrior nearly out of breath. "Something is coming from the Baharuth empire!"
Climb and the soldier made their way up the wall. A dust cloud was streaking across the Katze plains, something was moving very fast at them, it was too fast for them to hit with the archers even with the magics of the minions on their side.
"Get the warrior captain now!" Climb shouted turning to look at his subordinates.
Zesshi was suddenly interrupted by a wheel of fire spinning through the air in front of her and slamming down in a burst of flame, cutting off her advance.
"You are a long way from home puffed up brat." Kieran stated as he pulled his sword out of the ground and pointed his blade accusingly towards Zesshi.
"Why don't you just go to lala land for me?" Saying that, a gold aura advanced from Zesshi's body, growing grass and flowers within the perimeter, but suddenly stopping in a equally large radius around Kieran's body.
"You don't have any of your gassy horses to back you up elf. The likes of your don't scare me any." Kieran informed aiming his blade at the head of the half elf.
"Well now that is a nice surprise." Zesshi stated as she smirked sizing Kieran up and down.
Kieran looked over his opponent, the war scythe she was carrying was the weapon of a high tier undead, a grim Reaper, so she should be someone of a bare minimal amount of danger. Kieran would take some precautions against her, but alas unlike Shalltear she did not seem content to stand idly by to allow him time to prepare.
"Heh. A warrior eh?" Zesshi vaguely recalled mention of a warrior in black armor with horns attacking the men of the sunlight scripture just before those monsters that amused Zesshi so much were born. "Tell me do you know a Necromancer?"
"My Half Sister. What about her?" Kieran stated cocking a brow.
"Well that's disappointing." Zesshi stated letting out a exaggerated sigh. "You as strong as she is?"
"Why don't you come over here and see for yourself?" Asking that, Kieran sent a wave of fire at Zesshi with a single swing of his sword.
Zesshi's response was to smack the projectile aside with the blunt of her war scythe. Kieran used the smoke screen of his own attack to deliver a scissor chop to Zesshi, the half elf in turn used her scythe to vault over Kieran. By the time the exchange was over, both sides were nearly intact, however as Zesshi landed she felt a slight gash on her arm, and Kieran had a gouge in his helmet as well.
"Hmm. Void Cutter." Kieran commented using his eyes to trace the path of the scythe as it came all the way over here from Carne.
"Yeah, I'll be avoiding that." Zesshi stated realizing the cut in the air was made when Kieran drew his sword.
Zesshi channeled Ki into her scythe blade through a martial art and swung it at Kieran using now dramatically enhanced speed, with that lightning arcing off of the blade even a near miss would be a sure fire hit. So instead Kieran took advantage of that, grabbing a knife in his boot he tanked the hit from the scythe head on, the explode armor enchantment on his suit bounced the weapon away from him, and allowed him to follow up with a even bigger blast of lightning from the knife aimed directly at Zesshi.
"Nice, full counter right?" Zesshi asked having immediately deduced the nature of the technique.
"Yeah pretty much." Kieran admitted mildly impressed.
Most metals possess the capacity of retaining a magical charge, hence enchanted weapons and enchanted armor. However when you realize this then you also come to understand the value of carrying around with you a blank, a weapon that had no enchantment on it, and which can temporarily hold the power from a enemies magic attack, which you can then stack on top a bit of your own power, before releasing the accumulated power on the enemy.
"Sorry: I'm afraid that cheap tricks to enhance striking power won't work on me." Kieran explained as he rubbed a armored finger along the edge of his sword.
"Nor me. Been a while since so many of my high end techniques were sealed off so effectively." Blade enchantments were no good, he likely knew a lot of the same martial arts as she did too.
If this kept up they would just keep canceling each other out, then there was the advantage of the weapons they were using. In most cases a scythe was a highly impractical weapon. The blade was angled awkwardly, the whole thing was balanced poorly, Zesshi got her highest kill count out of the thing when she skimmed above the undead that invaded the theocracy and used the thing to lop their heads off. If it wasn't for it's raw power it would probably be one of the weakest weapons she could have ever selected for use. As it was though, it was one of the strongest weapons on the continent purely for the reason of the one who owned it previously.
"Shall we continue then?"
The two locked blades again, screeching in both of their ears as Zesshi had used another Martial art to augment her cutting power, Screaming Blade, named so for the high frequency vibrations made by moving the blade side to side at a rapid pace in a gap of space less that a millimeter thick, dramatically enhancing cutting power in the process. It was a principle that Kieran was familiar with because he could use the exact same martial art, and using that same technique, synchronizing his own blade's vibrations to that of the enemy, he could cancel out the effect.
"Hey hey hey! What's the big idea? Are you holding back your power out of concern for the people on the wall behind you!?" Zesshi asked sounding like she was offended.
"Are you instead proposing that I follow you into your golden laid trap? No thank you!" Kieran landed a kick to Zesshi's mid section pushing her away from him.
Unfortunately, now Zesshi was at a mid range to Kieran where her weapon's length gave her an advantage. Thus Zesshi cut loose with a series of slashing attacks. Kieran however saw her blows coming and matched them: he stabbed one of his blades into the area trailing behind her and flipped over vaulting over the slashing weapon and countered the incoming follow up attacks with his blade. It was starting to get hazardous down there, both sides had by now created a spread of cuts in the air, a dozen criss crossing invisible intangible razor wires designed to dismantle who ever comes into contact with them.
"It looks like we've reached a bit of an impasse." Zesshi commented even her eyes having failed to track the pattern of movement of Kieran's attacks.
"Yes it does doesn't it?" But that doesn't mean the two are without their range attacks.
For Kieran, there was a good chance that Zesshi was aware of and capable of super tier attacks, if she saw him charging up sexta giga then that would be bad for him, as it would incline her to to strike him down while he was vulnerable no matter what.
"Well I guess this is going no where." Zesshi stated as she held up a glowing mass of Ki in her hand. "World Break!" Zesshi crunched that mass of energy in her hand and released a huge explosion consuming the entire wall in the process, a fate that the warrior captain had barely escaped.
"Go get the half elf!"
"That idiot!" Balloma snapped growling in pure outrage, staring at the distortion in space time created by the World Break Super Tier Martial Art Balloma already had her prime suspect locked in her mindset.
"Tell me: how bad is this?" Zanac asked the look on his face one of someone who didn't understand what was going on.
"My idiot brother, for some reason I have yet to comprehend, has made use of one of the most powerful moves in his arsenal to cut E-Rantle off from this plain of existence creating a giant impassable barrier between E-Rantle and the rest of the Katze plains in the process." Balloma stated as she stared off to the spacial distortion in question.
"Is that a bad thing?" Zanac looked mighty confused with the explanation. "It means that the enemy can't enter the city doesn't it?"
"Until they realize that they can just walk around it because our archers can't attack them through it." Balloma stated as she seemed to use the sun's position to make note of the time. "If Kori hasn't dismantled that thing within the next forty minuets we need to assume a worst case scenario: That she can't." Balloma explained, which meant that instead of one of the many random acts of spectacular violence that her brother was known for this was legitimate strategic arrangement created by Kieran. "Sukyu! Here Now!" The former Small Fang chief in question ran over to Koriander. "What was the last report from the scouts?"
"We received..." A bright red signal flare was shot into the sky with a howl as the chief was talking, which means. "...The Enemy is on the move!"
"I could tell that much." Balloma stated letting out a sigh. "Call a meeting of everyone we have on this side."
To summarize, they had approximately six hundred able bodied lizard men, two thousand minions which they can't use for fear of the Golden, five war trolls born of Demiurges experiments on Guu, fifty treants each capable of summoning a variety of Skull Rats, Deer and Boars, one usually invisible snake man and a handful of former adventurers serving as Zanac's guard.
"Is this everyone?" Balloma asked sizing up everyone present.
"I believe so." Zanac admitted as he let out a sigh. "Alright, how many do the scouts say there are?" Zanac asked directing his attention to Kyuku.
"Sixty Thousand Soldiers. Two dozen magic casters mounted on some kind of horned hippogriff." The Lizardman head scout explained tapping his spear on the stone below.
"'Hippogriff?'" Balloma asked cocking a suspicious brow.
"Wow really?" Zanac himself looked surprised. "I can't believe I know something you don't."
"Out with it fat man!" Balloma barked tapping her foot with impatience.
"A Hippogriff is a hybrid of Griffon and a horse. They're infertile, but in exchange they're a lot calmer and easier to fly than a Griffin. The Empire uses them as a type of areal assault mount."
"Horned horse." Balloma connected those words together immediately and came to only one conclusion. "For Ainz's sake they're flying now." The foreigner present muttered in distaste.
"Something we should know about?" Zanac asked having picked up on Balloma's cursing.
"Lemme put this to you in simple terms." Balloma stated turning her attention to Kyuku. "Those Hippogriff's you saw? Kill every single one of them, even at the cost of your own lives. Am I making myself clear?" Kyuku nodded his head as he quickly ran off to inform the other scouts.
"Is it that bad?" Zanac asked looking legitimately scared now.
"Hmm. How to put this in a way you can understand." Balloma stated as she tapped her foot. "Do you know about unicorns?"
"I've heard of them, never seen them in person myself." Zanac replied in a questioning tone.
"Has anyone from your kingdom ever seen one in person before?" Balloma asked realizing the need to rephrase the question.
"People have claimed to, but they tend to be so stoned out of their minds that we generally assume that they were hallucinating. Either that or they were out right lying." Zanac explained shrugging his shoulders.
"They weren't hallucinating. The gas produced by the unicorn has a number of... unpleasant effects on the body. Or depending on your point of view, very pleasant effects." Balloma started walking around as she continued to explain. "The gas is highly addictive. Those who breath it in are immediately dropped into a state of absolute bless, for creatures of negative end of the spectrum, ones commonly referred to as 'monsters' the effects are also mutagenic in nature."
"'Mutagenic?'" Zanac asked looking confused.
"It refers to one creature being turned into something else entirely. Similar in concept to what we did with the Dragon Newt you saw back at the city walls." Balloma stated before she thought of something else. "Or a victim of Vampirism forcibly transforming into one of the creatures of the night."
"I take it that it's the latter you want to compare this gas to?" Zanac asked cocking suspicious brow.
"There's something I want to show you."
An experimental chamber had been set up in the village, many of the lizardmen were looking at it with ominous fear on their faces, they've seen this thing in action before and they knew what it does to people. A unwilling test subject in the form of a goblin from the forest was forcibly dragged over and stuffed inside of the chamber before it was locked shut. Samples of the Golden were few and far between, most of it these days came from those few brave enough to get close enough to the Baharuth empire to risk infection. As a added precaution, undead who were resistant to the golden were sent in as support units. Now Zanac would witness the fruits of their labors as the golden gas flooded the chamber. The goblin twitched rapidly as it was transformed, it's skin grew fur and a heart shape pattern appeared on his chest. The most notable change was in it's demeanor, gone was the fearful creature that was stuffed inside forcibly, and in it's place was a lackadaisical creature that skipped happily across the ground.
"Here." Balloma passed a knife to the goblin. "Kill yourself."
The goblin immediately and without hesitation stabbed itself in it's throat, blood gushed from the wound as it fell over, even as the light disappeared from it's eyes, the goblin's face was still plastered with a look of pure and utter joy. "This is what we are fighting against." Balloma stated indicating the goblin who died in the happiest moment of it's entire existence.
Review Section:
rmarcano123: I don't blame you, Ainz manipulates those guys into entering his tomb and then kills them for it, it was one of the low few moments of true douchebaggery for him. Well there's the pit of acid and the room full of fire beetles. He's the former lizard man chief whose body Koriander acquired prior to the full scale attack on the lizardman village, Koriander took advantage of his status as a mummified cannibal to reanimate him as a combination of Mummy and Wendigo. It's something the author did in the web novel.
Chronos0305: Eh. Made sense to me.