Born a Monster

557 Who Needs Ladders?

I raised my shield again, easily catching the descending arrows.

“Would you mind, perhaps, telling us what you’re looking for?” asked the sergeant on that section of the wall.

“Hortiluk’s colors.” I said.

“Well, could you please look for them in short peeks, like we do? You seem to be attracting a lot of arrow fire.”

I swept my eyes over the assembled army again, wishing I’d paid the thirty development points for [System Images]. “They do hate me, at least that’s consistent.”

But I did step away from the wall.

“Damn you, Hortiluk, I expected more from you.” I muttered.

“What’s that about the boss?” the sergeant asked.

“Have you seen Hortiluk’s colors in the past week?”

.....

He shook his head. “Nothing at all that looks like reinforcements. Not Hortiluk, not Rakkal.”

I suppose he had a point. Rakkal was taking his time, or was wrapped up in something. Again, I had brief, unfounded fears of another army, marching under the Twelve Daggers mountain range, though a road melted away using acid.

Instead, I reached up to (I hope) comfortably squeeze the sergeant’s soldier, and shared a truth. “Rakkal isn’t one to retreat, nor one to hide behind walls. I don’t believe he founded the Tidelands just to abandon them now.”

He turned his head to spit over the walls. “And that’s why you’re one of our diplomats, rather than a warrior. You believe that line of crap?”

“I do.” I said.

“Why?”

“Because I am a Truthspeaker, and I can say that without my vocal chords locking up.”

“I’ve heard speaking the truth doesn’t work that way.” he said, squinting at me.

I shrugged. “I can only speak the truth; nothing in the class at my level forces you to believe it.”

And yes, I had to phrase it like that. Telepath. Empath. Able to channel Divine Mentalism. I might not be able to control Hortiluk...

Okay, I’m reasonably certain that without my divisor that Hortiluk will remain mentally and socially ahead of me, and could easily catch up physically and magically if he really wanted to.

But yes, because I couldn’t just say I couldn’t control minds...

It made me fearful, to be honest. If I, at my low level, could control minds, what defenses could I muster to keep others at bay?

I mean, I had a System List of purchases... but what if I had missed something?

I think I managed a quick goodbye to the soldiers on that section of wall, but … I also think I might have left that to my [Diplomat] class abilities rather than coming up with the words on my own. At least I’d found the default toggle to keep it from clashing with my Truthspeaker Oath.

Yes, I’m sure. One toggle. One.

Check your own System, but I make no guarantees that it works like any of mine.

What I had become sure of was that in spite of similarities, each of mine worked differently. The scales in the Titan and Demigod Systems gave me lower numbers, and highly abstracted skills at the substat level. The Axe System... well, it was made for morons who were born without a System.

Yes, I mean that. Morons. Dolts. Imbiciles. Not people just unused to Systems, but people who didn’t understand the concepts. I mean, unless, somewhere out there, there was a world without.

What a sad world that would be, I thought. Imagine yourself, in twilight, waking up for the day. And suddenly, you see a dark elongated shape at the foot of your bed. A snake, you think. How much horror is there in that world where your reticule can’t correct your error, when you try to figure out if it’s a poisonous snake or not?

How would anyone live with that uncertainty?

I saluted the guards at the base of the tower again.

“Is it that bad?” the captain asked. “You look like they have a pair of dragons.”

I waved a hand in dismissal. “Personal problems.” I said. “In spite of the one weakness in our walls, they show no evidence of re-making that type of siege engines. Our supplies of food and water are near full. Their numbers don’t merit them storming the walls...”

Someone beat the gong like it was a tumor moth landing on their cheek.

I sighed. “Does that mean...?”

“Idiots. Why would they storm the walls in broad daylight?”

I bolted up flights of stairs, which seemed to hinder me less than the average soldier. The average human soldier, any way. Uruk seemed similarly in their element, and hobgoblins seemed hindered just by the presence of other soldiers.

Such were our remaining troops. Yay.

My hand burned where it touched the haft of the Axe.

Crap! I’d been changing through Systems for two days now, trying to smooth out the differences, mostly by importing from my Rhishisikk’s System.

<System. Shutdown. Start Axe System.>

[System shutting down for reboot.]

I steeled myself against the cheer of the Axe System; it was going to remind me today was a great day to reach Axeman, Level One. Again.

And rising to the first of three walkways along that section of wall, I saw the truth of that. Clad in bronze and burnished copper, enemy Forge warriors grappled and sparred with our own loyal troops.

I moved to push away the ladders, only to find there were none.

How had they gotten to and through our windows without them?

But there were plenty of swords and spears and axes, each of which was a little bit higher on my list of priorities at the time.

As the fight turned against them, they would link hands and [Sunlight Step] away.

“How do they do that in spite of our wards?” a panicked soldier asked. Well, it was a valid question. If they could just [Flash Step] all their third level warriors wherever they wanted to, this siege was in trouble.

Well, our side was in trouble.

“It’s probably a breach of the Celestial protections.” the captain said. “Fight hard! Stay true! Wound any enemy your weapons can reach!”

I took a nasty cut above my left eye, but nothing major.

“Are you eating right?” the captain asked. “Normally, head wounds bleed a lot more than that.”

“I’m not anemic, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Not all truths need be spoken. I was probably eating better than ten of his men, making excellent progress on a list of evolutions that contained tens of thousands of biomass. That wasn’t the cost to actually evolve them; just the up front costs to unlock them.

Of all things, it was the limitations of my Omnivore method that were holding me back. Well, that and the fact that I’d slotted several expensive items while I had both the biomass and the nutrition to. The other limitation, I’d seen a poison-crafter for. The prices for the sorts of chemicals I needed were almost murderous.

Yes. I can make puns, so live with it.

“Spirits of the sunlight, it is I Rhishisikk, Shaman and Dreamwalker. Though not allied to your gods, I do dare to ask a boon and to ask you to consider granting it. Let me infuse my hands and arms with glorious light, that I may touch upon these wards not with my powers, but with yours. Assess Ward!”

“Meh.” I said.

“That bad?” the captain asked.

“Whatever they’re doing to bypass the wards, it isn’t through the full collapse of the Celestial Wards.” I said.

“Hey.” one of the soldiers, a wide shouldered Uruk, said. “Does that mean they’re coming tonight, Moon and Star warriors?”

“It means,” I said, “we need to get our mystics into research mode. However they got inside the ward, it’s not through a breach. Something else is going on here, something they haven’t done before today.”

I took my own advice, taking up a half lotus position and pulling up my System’s description of [Sunlight Step]. Again, it just looked like a rewording of [Flash Step], a more limited version with bonuses anywhere the sunlight touched the floor or the ground.

So how had they used it...

I checked the ward again.

“They didn’t get in using Sunlight Step.” I said. “It was just their means of escaping once the skirmish became untenable.”

“That almost sounds worse.” the captain said.

I nodded twice. “It means they have a way in that bypasses the wards. Limited, obviously, or they’d have brought in more troops, and in more locations.”

“We’ll need more troops near each side of the wound, then.” he said.

The Wound was what they were calling the damaged section of the wall.

“Something feels wrong about that.” I said.

“Do you have even a shred of evidence to back that feeling up?” he asked. “If not, I must deal with the threat in front of me.”

Since I had the ward-sight up anyway, I examined their wards, such as I could through the interference caused by ours. It wasn’t much; I didn’t see anything different or alarming about their wards. In fact, their wards didn’t protect them as well as ours would protect us. If we just had enough magic of Ice or Romance or … other rare mana types that are rarely stocked in a town.

So I guess their wards protected them against what they knew we could hurl at them.

And, whatever their wards, it let their troops come right through.

We had to figure out what they were using before their little experiment became a big one.

We just had to.

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