Blessed Time: The Complete Series: (A LitRPG Adventure Box Set), page 130
“I know that my investigations have the potential to undermine trade,” the elf replied without a hint of remorse or softness, “but unfortunately, everyone mentioned in the correspondence is actively involved in one of the cults or is so enmeshed in other illegal activity that they would be lucky to escape with only a seizure of their land and titles.”
Servants entered the room, placing plates set with roast quail on a bed of greens in front of each of them. For almost twenty seconds, the only sound was the clink of silverware on plates as the workers cut their meat. Then, they sat in silence as the employees filed out.
Finally, once the room was empty of anyone but Micah’s team and the royal family, the Empress spoke up once again.
“How did things get this bad? Shouldn’t your shadows have caught a plot of this size before it gathered any momentum?”
“Because of what the scout team discovered,” Lledavan said with a sigh. “Our resources were all spent monitoring the blessed that worked for the nobles. Forgotten hardly matter in the grand scheme of things, and even if you used one as a spy, it’s hard to find one that will stay loyal, let alone carry enough clout to be used as an agent. It created a blind spot in our security measures where we didn’t bother to check the comings and goings of manual laborers. It turns out that Pereston has found a way to empower their forgotten to the point where they are as strong as a level 20 or 30 blessed. Worse still, they appear to be able to create these special forgotten en masse, and it was those individuals that they slipped through our security network.”
“Wait,” Christopher responded, raising his hand to cut the elf off. “You’re saying Pereston has spies that we know next to nothing about? Do we have any idea how many and in what areas they are concentrated? This has the potential to cripple us.”
“More importantly,” Kraegar chimed in, “do we know their numbers? If not, it would be foolish for us to deploy an army against Pereston. That’s likely exactly what they want, us to move our soldiers away from the capital, only for their hidden forces to appear from the woodwork and seize the capital.”
“I don’t know,” the elf replied, frustration seeping into his voice. “You must understand that other than some loose contact with larger gangs and guilds, I don’t have any sort of infrastructure set up in the slums where the forgotten live. Even then, most of what I have is designed to let me know if goods are being smuggled or clandestine meetings are taking place. There are over 150,000 forgotten in this city alone. There’s no way for me to keep track of them, so no one has bothered to truly try.”
“One hundred fifty thousand potential soldiers,” the Empress said severely, her food sitting untouched in front of her. “It does not matter if they are stuck between level 20 and 30. Those numbers alone will overwhelm our more elite soldiers before Pereston’s regulars have a chance to arrive. Tell us, husband, you do not have the means to detect these irregulars now, but how will you go about rectifying this situation? How long do we have before you are able to discover what it is that our neighbors have managed to bury in our country?”
The table fell into silence. Nobody but Trevor was eating, but his gusto devouring the quail was easily ignored due to the heavy tension in the air.
“I do not have a way to detect them,” Lledaven responded slowly. “My men have only captured two of them, and as best we can tell, there is nothing to differentiate them from normal blessed except their ability to use their strange powers and an almost fanatical loyalty to Pereston. Unless we are willing to torture each and every forgotten to the brink of death, there’s nothing we can do but assume that any one of them could betray us at any time.”
The Empress’ expression transformed from chilly to wintry in a fraction of a second. Micah swore that he could almost see her pupils contract into vertical slits as she trembled with barely contained anger.
“You mean to say,” she began, enunciating each word with deadly precision, “that there is a network of disloyal nobles with access to a secret army that could be hidden within a league of this palace, and you have no way to determine who or where they are? Maybe it would be easier for us to put our collective heads on a chopping block? Save the barbarians in Pereston the effort of rounding us up.”
The elf wilted under her barrage. Rather than looking for a response, he cast his eyes downward at his untouched food.
“I can find them,” Micah offered. “The green fire is their souls bleeding. Not many people can sense it, but it’s like a siren and a flashing light to me. To be honest, there’s a non-zero chance that I detect anyone that interacts regularly with them.”
“What!” Lledaven exclaimed. “How? None of our Court wizards could make heads or tails of the magic powering them.”
“As I said,” Micah replied. “It isn’t actually magic. It’s closer to the powers you tap into when you perform rituals, just like a blessing. As for how I do it?”
He shrugged, making eye contact with the Empress as he made a circular motion in the air.
“I can see blessings. They’re gifts from the gods and feel natural. The green fire is parasitic. It burns the soul of the person using it and gives off a stench that I can smell a league away.”
NINETEEN
SPRING CLEANING
Micah looked over a long line of royal servants. They stood at attention, hands clasped behind their backs in ranks twenty people long and ten deep. He took a deep breath, casting Root Weave wordlessly as he absorbed the scent of Elsewhere that filled the mustering hall.
On either side of the room, members of the Silver Wolves stood with their weapons at ready, eyeing the formation of forgotten. He’d cleared the blessed amongst the royal servants the day before, only finding one person that the Third Prince had managed to seduce with its promises of magic and power.
He couldn’t see Lledaven, but he knew that the Minister of Shadows was scrying on the meeting, recording his every action so that he could report back to the Empress. It didn’t matter that much to Micah. At least for the moment, his interests completely aligned with those of the royal family.
Gwendolyn stood serenely by his side, guarded by Eris, Esther and Leeka. He’d been a little surprised when she volunteered to lend her authority to the mission, but it seemed that she wanted to make amends for the rigorous testing that had been forced upon him.
“Column 2, row 3, column 3 rows 5 and 9, column 4 row 1, column 6 rows 4 and 5, column 7 rows 4 and 5, column 8 row 4, column 10 rows 9 and 10, you all stay,” Micah spoke up, shattering the pensive silence that had filled the hall. “Everyone else, please return to the dining hall for further questioning.”
Men and women began to file out, mumbling as they walked, more than one casting uncertain eyes toward the blessed guarding the hall.
It almost worked. Most of the civilians were out of the room when the shouting started.
“Oi! My feet are stuck to the floor!”
“You too, Mason?”
Micah didn’t wait for his targets to put the situation together. He’d cast Air Supply on all of his guild members and the Princess before the first forgotten had entered the room for just such a situation. He cupped his hands in front of his mouth, shouting over the clamor.
“If your position was not named earlier, you have fifteen seconds to clear the room. Everyone else will be considered a traitor and a valid target. Wolves, ready your weapons. You will be attacking in eleven seconds.”
A pillar of green fire burst into being. Barely a second later, a half dozen more joined it as the transformed forgotten realized that they were being targeted.
The rest of the servants were screaming, practically trampling each other as they tried to push their way out of the mustering hall. Micah didn’t pay them much attention as he began placing Wind Shields as quickly as possible in order to create a hexagon surrounding the remaining figures.
All of them were bound to the floor with Root Weave, auras of angry green flame surrounding the “forgotten” as they tried to pull their legs free from Micah’s spell. He wasn’t terribly concerned with the rest of the forgotten. So long as they didn’t literally trample each other to death, Augmented Mending would be able to fix any broken bones or concussions they might suffer.
What really mattered was clearing them out of the way so that he could use Poison Fog.
Micah raised a hand, extending two fingers and then pointing toward the mustering hall. Leeka’s first arrow struck a trapped woman before he got the spell off. The green flames provided her with some protection from the attack, but it was clear how much the large orange woman had grown from their time in Jakint. The arrow slowed, wobbling slightly in the air, but it still punched into its target’s unarmored shoulder, knocking her over backward.
Then yellowish green gas began to billow inside the wind barriers. The ice-cold emerald light from the burning converted flickered throughout the mustering hall, giving the entire room an eerie aura as Micah’s guild members charged into the fog.
He began casting Regeneration, targeting one melee fighter after another as they threw themselves into close combat with the converted. Screams and the clatter of weapons filled the room as the sickly haze choked off visibility, but Micah still did his best to support his fighters.
Theoretically, Poison Fog should have been enough to kill all of the forgotten. After all, their bodies were fundamentally human, albeit reinforced by the daemonic magic. For about half of them, the gas was sufficient. They died where they stood, unable to rip their feet free of Micah’s magic as they choked to death on the poison.
The rest of the converted were weakened. On its own, the poison wasn’t enough to kill their mutated physiology, but it did dull their reflexes and enervate their muscles enough that the common guild members could fight them on equal footing. With the help of supporting spells and the weight of numbers, the result of the battle was never in doubt.
At this point, the forgotten were little more than sacks full of experience for the common soldiers. Crippled and immobile, even if they landed a lucky hit on an adventurer, the blessed would simply fall back and wait for Regeneration to close their wounds.
One by one, the green torches hidden by the poisonous fog began to wink out. To his side, Gwen frowned, crossing her arms as she tried to pierce the heavy mist to see what was happening within.
“This hardly seems sporting,” she said, frowning slightly. “Forget about their lack of blessings, even if an ordinary battle would have been something of a challenge, these servants can’t even fight back. I really don’t know what you’re playing at here Micah.”
He shrugged, shoring up the Wind Shield on the opposite side of the mustering hall before replying.
“Experience really. I doubt anyone is going to jump skill ranks from this fight, but they all need levels. By the time we’re fighting Pereston’s army, I suspect we’re going to be dealing with thousands of converted forgotten in addition to daemons. I know the Sandrovok army has elite units, but they hardly mean anything if they get overwhelmed and run out of mana and hit points while trying to barge through Pereston lines.”
“Hells,” he muttered, “I doubt even your elites can handle a mass summoning of luocas or a couple of greater daemons. It sure looks to me like we’re going to be dealing with an enemy that is more numerous and more powerful than us. Really, I think everyone needs to be about ten levels higher before I’ll start to feel remotely confident.”
Magic surged inside the clouded depths of the hall, followed by two of the green torches winking out at the same time. There were only a handful of the forgotten left, and the trickle of injured guild members staggering out of the fog to wait for Regeneration to finish healing them had ground to a halt.
“Ten levels?” Gwen asked, cocking her head to the side slightly. “That’s an awful lot. For people at the lower end, we might be able to rush that in a couple weeks or months, but you should know that for more powerful individuals, gaining a level a year is considered fairly impressive. Even if it weren’t for massive amounts of experience required, most of them are in their seventies or eighties. They just don’t have the same energy as younger blessed.”
“I can fix that,” Micah replied. “I don’t like to advertise it because I usually have better uses of my time, but if you give me access to the old and powerful, I should be able to get them fighting fit in fairly short order.”
The last green light went out and a voice inside the cloud bank shouted “clear.” A moment later, another voice shouted the same word in response. Soon, a chorus of guild members began responding to indicate that their targets were down.
Gwen had stopped. Any pretense of paying attention to the one sided battle was gone. Instead she was staring at Micah, her mouth practically hanging open.
“What,” she hissed, “did you say?”
“With the proper reagents and a focus, I can make people younger,” Micah responded, waving a hand to dismiss the Poison Fog. “It’s a hassle, and I prefer not to advertise it because people tend to react like you are right now. If it weren’t an emergency, I wouldn’t even let anyone know. The wealthy, elderly and powerful would naturally see me as a fountain of youth and I’d never have a moment’s peace.”
“Of course not,” the Princess said incredulously. “Why would any country let you have a moment’s peace when you have the power to keep its most powerful blessed young and fit? Hells, given a decade or two, you could completely overturn the balance of power on the continent.”
“Exactly,” Micah replied, eyes narrowing slightly as he began dismissing the wind barriers. Triumphant blessed were beginning to leave the area of the battle, roots covered in ash the only reminders that there had been converted forgotten. “If I can help out one or two people, that isn’t the end of the world, but the problem with helping a couple folks is that they tell their friends. Then, before you know it, you’ve been labeled a ‘strategic asset’ and given a title and a bunch of land that you are never allowed to leave lest you defect to a neighboring country.”
“That wouldn’t hap-” Gwen began only to catch herself. “I mean, would that be so bad? You’d have more attunement than you could shake a stick at, all of the resources you need to perform research to your heart’s content, and your family would be well taken care of.”
“I’d prefer a little more freedom than that,” he responded wryly. “Still, I don’t see any reason that I shouldn’t help out. After all, the Empress has agreed with my proposal. We’re allies after a fashion, and it only makes sense for me to provide assistance to an ally.”
For a couple of seconds, their team just watched as members of the Silver Wolves caught their breath and congratulated each other on their victory. A couple of them began to walk toward the edges of the mustering hall. The entire time, the Princess kept staring at Micah, as if trying to judge or weigh him.
“You’re serious about this, aren’t you?” she finally asked. “You actually have a way to restore youth to the elderly. Please, Micah, assure me that this isn’t all some sort of elaborate prank at my expense. I understand if you’ve kept this secret because of some hidden cost or something of that sort, but if you agree to help the royal family, I promise we can accommodate whatever concerns you have. Even if this is the actual reason you fled Pereston, we’ll protect you if you can restore Grandma and Uncle Markus to their prime.”
Micah reached up, rubbing the back of his neck in embarrassment. To his side, Leeka peered at him curiously.
“It actually doesn’t cost me anything,” Micah replied. “If anything, I can use the power from the ritual to fuel high tier enchantments. I suppose I would end up with a killer headache if I had to perform the ritual too many times in a row. After all, the human body isn’t meant to channel that sort of power. But other than that, it’s mostly that it would be a gigantic hassle.”
“A hassle.” Gwen choked on the words. “Is that what my grandma’s life is? She’s level 82! If you could make her younger, she’d be a strategic asset that could change the course of the war!”
“Well yeah,” he said evenly. “That’s why I’m doing it. Still, everyone has a grandma or grandpa that they’d like to be younger, and that’s not even the beginning of the problem. What happens to your mother if she’s the same age as your grandmother but twenty levels lower? Does the Empire revert back? Do we continue as is with an uneasy power-sharing arrangement? The entire process has the potential to create major problems, the sort of problems that some folks wouldn’t mind solving with an assassin. Now, I’m not terribly afraid that they would succeed, but having someone targeting my family doesn’t sound pleasant.
“Feel free to let the Empress know that I’m willing to help out if she wants it,” he continued, “but I’m also perfectly fine not talking about my abilities again. I don’t think that’s a great idea given how powerful Pereston is, but if she has some other way to supercharge her army, I’m absolutely willing to listen. Until then-“
He shrugged, turning and walking toward the mustering hall’s exit. The last of the poisonous gas had faded and the guild could handle the final cleanup.
“Until then we stick with the plan,” Micah finished. “Whirlwind tour of the countryside using my guild to clear high-level dungeons and gain levels while I target the converted forgotten and you clue Nobles in to the threat that faces us.”
“Fine,” Gwen replied testily, “but I’m letting Mother know about your ability right away. I expect you’ll have a line of elderly blessed waiting for treatment as soon as we get back.”
“I’ll make a list of reagents,” Micah said with a smile. “Some of them needed for the ritual, and some of them for using the excess energy for enchantments. Waste not, want not.”
