Chapter 54: Chapter 52: Be Prepared

Elenoa stretched, preparing for her Visit. Most of her war preparations lately had been taken care of by her underlings due to that annoying scrying spell that girl had placed on her, but Visits were something only she could do. She had been the sole Visitor for the past few hundred years, and the religious leaders of Earth had come to know her Messenger form well, so sending someone else wouldn’t have the same effect.

Besides, it wasn’t like anything could be done to stop her. She wasn’t technically breaking any rules; no pressure was being exerted, just…advice from someone who knows better. She had several trusted mages making recordings of her activities, so if that annoyance did try to step in, she’d have all the ammo she needed to make sure her reputation was permanently shot. And that threat alone was enough to keep her safe; even if Elenoa was killed, which she wouldn’t be, the other party would lose so much that it wouldn’t be worth it.

She shook her head, clearing her thoughts and then shifted into her Messenger form, becoming a white, glowing cube that continuously collapsed in upon itself. It wasn’t particularly well suited for combat, but what it lacked there it made up in utility and espionage. The soft light she emitted would heal those inside of it, and in return she would get a full read on their body, as well as reducing their resistance to any mind-altering spells she may choose to cast.

She teleported, winking out of existence and appearing inside the office of the head of Earth’s largest religion. There was a gasp, and the man in front of her, the leader whose name she never bothered to learn, fell to his knees. “Your holiness…to what do I have the honor?”

She spoke, well, telepathically broadcast, her words carefully and deliberately. While she was on a Visit, the other party was under the impression that she was speaking directly for whatever god they worshipped, so she had to be careful not to let her emotions leak out when it wasn’t appropriate.

You have done well, my child. She intoned. It is no easy feat to keep your faith in times of change such as these.

A sorrowful expression appeared on the man’s face. “I don’t deserve such praise. Despite my efforts, many have fallen away from the faith as of late.”

It is not your fault, little one. Mortals are fickle, and easily stray from the correct path. You did the best you could. She meant that, too. After all, she herself had lost a fair bit of influence after the Shift, and if she couldn’t hold on to it, there was no way this groveling sycophant would be able to. Still, he had some, and that was all that was required.

However, it is of this matter that I have come to speak with you today. You must warn your flock that the so-called “Administrator” is naught but a false idol. She seeks to take His work for herself and use it to gain worldly influence. Let them know they must not view her as one of His instruments, and to not put trust in those working for her, for it shall only bring their ruination.

The man nodded. “I will see to it. Is there any other way I may help deal with this matter?”

Simply expand your flock once more. The more people know of their true colors, the less power they hold.

He swallowed hard. “If I may be so bold…may I ask a question?”

She paused, trying to give the impressions that she was talking with someone he couldn’t see. I have been given time for a single question. Ask.

“Why did the lord choose to make another world, and why keep it separate for so long?”

It is forbidden for me to say anything on that topic. It has been left for the mortals to figure out themselves. It was an excuse she had prepared beforehand, having anticipated this question already. I’m afraid my time is up, child. I have other works to do. Remember what you have been told and exert yourself to the utmost. Farewell.

Before the man could say anything else, she teleported back to her office and let herself have some time to recover her Mana and prepare for her next Visit. She had a lot of people to get to, but hopefully, by the time she was done, the airhead would find herself with next to no influence on Earth.

---

Titania lounged, letting a servant feed her as she “held court”. In reality, she was receiving telepathic reports of her minion’s work, and paying only a minimal amount of attentions to the proceedings. They were just a farce anyway, something set up to look real to an observer, and indeed the issues brought up were real, just nothing consequential. Of course, she did have one or two scheduled times where she dealt with important matters, but they also served the purpose of letting her Mana recover.

And the constant telepathic connection took a lot of Mana, more than she could afford to be using had her food not been laced with Mana potion, but it was worth it; no one had figured out how to read the minds of people they were scrying, so it was about as safe as she could get.

The infiltrations were going well. Elenoa had provided her backdoors into the planes of all the Council members, save Elenoa’s own plane, so that her minions could get into them without raising any alarms.

These infiltrations were quite the challenge, but that’s what made them fun. Her task was to try and get the other Council members to fall in line with Elenoa, and she wasn’t allowed to use any mind control, so as not to forever poison relationships once the mind control was inevitably undone. She wouldn’t have used it anyway, not with as little time as they had, but it was still a stimulating restriction.

Right now, she was just working on gathering information on the Councilors. Once she had compiled enough, she would figure out what levers to pull, and then pull.

Some levers were easy. Tunem cared a little too much for that child of his, and Enna was obsessed with the safety of Haven’s cities. Those would be relatively simple, coming down to just finding ways to convince them that leaving those in the care of that girl would run counter to their interests.

Other levers were harder. Yamato really wanted peaceful relations between Earth and Haven, and she would be hard pressed to get him to think that a dedicated peacekeeper would be a bad thing. And, to make things harder, she couldn’t visit him or any of the other Councilors, and neither could her agents.

But that didn’t mean there was nothing they could do. It was simple enough to nudge the people around the Councilors into bringing up the necessary topics, and Elenoa had a person or two close enough to each Councilor that would allow the viewpoints they wanted to be given. Then it was a matter of finding the optimal times to do so and creating situations to highlight the failings of opposing arguments, which were all things that she excelled at.

But the infiltrations weren’t the only game she had going at the moment. She was also training a team specifically to counter Lilith, inasmuch as that could be done. She’d been given the list of the girl’s known capabilities and was directing the team’s Class progression so as to counter them. She didn’t believe for a second that the team would be successful in actually killing her, but they would tire her out, and that was what was really important.

The team was also practicing fighting alongside those tanks Baern had built. They were to be deployed at the same time, and it wouldn’t do for the two units to get in each other’s way, so they had to make the teamwork was passable.

But most of this was just filling time, really. They were waiting for everyone to be at full power before they sprung their trap, and, at the rate it was going, that was to take about another two weeks. And, as soon as everyone was back to being how strong they were before the Shift, they’d take probably another week to prepare the trap, lay the bait, then wait for the girl to walk into it.

They couldn’t afford to take longer to prepare. As things stood, after everyone’s accelerated growth was finished, the girl would grow stronger faster than anyone, save perhaps Winston. Their odds of success would decrease for every day past the time most of their forces were trained up, so time was of the essence.

Titania smiled. A tight time limit, difficult manipulation, and revenge as the end result. She couldn’t ask for anything better.

---

Judy set the last book down, sliding it into the “rejected” pile. She sat back in the comfy armchair and let the sounds of the jungle wash over her, giving herself a couple minutes to decompress. The past few days had been a whirlwind of intense study and theory crafting, trying to find what would best fit her needs.

She had started with one big pile of potential, and then had begun a long process of narrowing that pile down, and she had finally made her decision. Well, officially, anyway. She had known for a while what she wanted, but she was wanted to thoroughly explore all avenues first.

“Alright, you decided?” Kali asked, walking out of the library and into the reading room.

“Yeah, how’d you know?”

“I didn’t just set you loose and leave you alone, I kept some tabs to make sure you weren’t struggling unduly. Anyway, what’s your choice?”

Judy cleared her throat. “First off, what’s the possibility that I can get two? I’ve prepared an argument for why, but if that’s just completely out of the question I won’t bother.”

Kali grinned. “Before I answer that, let me praise you for asking. When trying to get something from people, ask for something big, maybe even unreasonable, first. If they’re open to it, then great, you got a big catch. If not, you can offer something more reasonable and people will be more open to it than if you just asked for that first. Classic sales technique, but you probably shouldn’t try to use it on people who are really good if you don’t actually expect there to be a chance you get the big thing. They’ll know what you’re getting at and it might have the opposite effect.”

She walked over to one of the chairs and sat down, crossing her legs and giving Judy an appraising look. “Anyway, I’m open to giving you two if you can convince me that they’ll work well enough together to warrant the extra Worship. Each Racial Class I give you past the first takes increasingly more Worship, so you’re going to have to justify it.”

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Judy nodded. “I want Swarm Queen and Fungal Parasite.”

Kali’s smile broadened. “I’m listening.”

“So,” Judy continued, “I don’t have any contacts, or any infrastructure required to gather information, and right now I don’t have any way to get that infrastructure without leaving the dungeon for extended periods of time. That got me thinking of ways to build a network while staying here, and I eventually landed upon parasitic fungi. By implanting a parasite onto something, I can send it out and have it propagate the network by itself without doing anything.

“The issue with that is that I don’t have any way of retrieving the information from things I’ve infected, and little to no control over them. So, I thought Swarm Queen would allow me to do just that. And, as something with intelligence, I can pick up the right Skills to be able to make unobtrusive parasites, hijacking things like flies that no one pays attention to. And, because they’re part of my swarm, which is technically a part of myself, traditional scrying wards won’t work on it, and most magic detectors...probably won’t trip. I think.”

Kali nodded. “That’s a good enough reason, I’d say. But, should you do this, you’re still going to have to make a normal network. The one you’re envisioning is only capable of getting information, not influencing anything. That’s good, don’t get me wrong, but if you want to be truly effective then having people in the right places is going to be essential.”

“That’s fine. As far as I can tell, I wouldn’t be able to infect people, so I figured I’d need something like that.”

“You’re correct, you won’t be able to, not with only the three Racial Classes you’ll have. You’d need a lot more to make that a reality.” Kali stood up, rubbing her hands. “Alright, that’s settled, then. Shall we get started?”

---

Carmen and Oberon were taking a break, relaxing and eating some lunch. Neither of them needed to, but it still felt nice, so they did it anyway. Solomon had declined the break, instead opting to work on some sort of spell she’d been constructing during the time she wasn’t tutoring Carmen.

It wasn’t complete yet, so Decipher wasn’t able to give her a full picture of what was going on, but from the pieces she was able to get, it was some sort of incredibly complex scan of the magical signature with some additional comparative functions. Considering the way Solomon was looking at her while working, Carmen assumed it had something to do with herself, but she couldn’t figure out what.

But these people had been vetted by Kali, so she chose to trust that it was for her benefit in some way and decided to let it go for the time being. If she got suspicious, she could just confront her about it and then, if Solomon wasn’t cooperative, ask Kali.

Instead, she decided to get to know Oberon a little better. “So, why are you…here?” Carmen asked him, gesturing about. “If you’re fae royalty, shouldn’t you just come back like Titania?”

“Um, yes and no.” He replied. “In most situations, yes, but there are ways to permanently keep us down, and Titania wanted to, uh, not have to deal with me ever again.”

“I assume we’ll cover those later?”

Oberon nodded. “Yeah. Um, you probably shouldn’t use them, though. I, uh, think it’d end up causing more problems than it solves. Fae succession wars aren’t pretty.”

“Fair enough. But, while we’re talking about it, how did you end up king anyway? No offense, but you don’t seem particularly suited to the job, and you really don’t seem like the type to choose to marry someone like Titania.”

“Y-yeah, you’re right. It’s, uh, because of the way fae succession works. The most powerful male and female end up taking the throne, and the male, uh, was me.” He scratched the back of his neck sheepishly. “I-it’s not like I tried for the throne, but people knew I was strong and kept challenging me as a matter of course, and it, um, just sorta ended up like that. Titania and I never saw eye to eye, and so, uh, I guess she got fed up after a few thousand years and decided it was worth taking the risk to end me.”

“For what it’s worth,” Solomon added, “it wasn’t a fair fight. If they just duked it out, he would have had a shot at beating her, but she brought a lot of backup and had been preparing for a while. He was alone and caught off-guard. So, don’t lose confidence in him just because he lost. Take it as a lesson on the value of preparation instead.”

“T-that’s right.” Oberon said. “I don’t want someone else to suffer the same way I did, so, uh, I’m going to do my best to make sure you don’t end up that way.” He looked at Carmen’s plate, then back to her. “Um, are you ready to get back to work? We’ve got a lot to cover so, um, I think we should finish up as soon as we can.”

Carmen nodded, standing and stretching. “I agree. Let’s get back to it, then.”

---

“Alright, fess up.” Carmen said, giving Siph a serious look. “I know you’re all hiding something from me.”

Siph chuckled nervously, glancing to the side. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Please, I don’t buy that whole ‘you told Grandma about me’ bit for one second, and all my new teachers have been giving me this weird look when they think I’m not looking. The same weird look, in fact, that you and Grandma gave me when you first met me. Lilith may not have noticed, but I did.”

Siph’s eyes darted around the room as she looked for any sort of escape. “I, um…”

“Look. I got my teachers to let me off early today, my senses still aren’t hooked back up with Lilith. If you would like, I can keep it a secret from her, but you’re not getting out of here without telling me about it.”

“Um…” Siph paused for a moment, then let out a sigh, meeting Carmen’s gaze. “Fine. But you have to promise not to tell Lilith, not yet.”

Carmen nodded. “That’s acceptable, so let’s hear it.”

“You’re…a dead ringer for that Lilith, you know, the original. If you just swapped your wings for demon wings…well…”

“I thought it would be something like that.” Carmen mused. “Did you know her?”

“Very well, actually.” Siph said. “She saved my life, back before the war. I was still young and had just set out on my own after a fight with dad, and I got attacked by some opportunists looking to…I don’t know what, honestly. Sell me into slavery, kill me and use my body as materials, I can’t really say.

“Point is, she came across us when they were about to take me down, and she put a stop to it. She took me in for a bit after that, helped me heal for a few months, and then brought me back to my parents and helped patch up my relationship with them, too. I think she and mom would talk from time to time after that, but…well, she died, and that was that.”

She reached up, wiping eyes that were beginning to water. “So, you’ll have to forgive me for keeping this from you. I really didn’t want you to think that my thoughts on her influenced how I felt about you. They…well, they don’t. If your teachers are looking at you funny, it’s probably because you remind them of her. She was an amazing person, one of the best I’ve known, so it wouldn’t surprise me if she ended up in the afterlife.”

“She did.” Carmen confirmed. “Tiamat mentioned it, said they were friends.”

“That’s…good to hear.” Siph said. “I’m glad she found some sort of happiness after death. She deserved it.”

Carmen walked up to her mother and gave her a hug. “Thank you.” She said. “I appreciate you telling me.”

Siph returned the hug. “You’re welcome. Just…let me tell Lilith when I’m ready, okay?”

“Of course.”