Hack, Slash & Burn 2: A LitRPG Fantasy, page 24
“What do you mean much of the world?” Peter frowned. “How much of it, Cal?”
Calder pursed his lips. But there was no point living in fear of a thing. Better to just do it. Like I did, by avoiding this conversation for hours? he chided himself.
“Half. They’re taking half. Opening portals in all the major cities.” He ran a hand through his hair. “First come first serve. They’ll be giving them Weapon Stones on the other side and integrating them into the Protectorate, whatever the hell that means.” Peter looked about to say something. Calder raised his hand. “Unfortunately, they won’t be allowing these people to return here.”
“You’re telling me they have the resources to provide Weapon Stones for at least half the population, yet they are just… taking them away instead?” Peter’s face was turning red. Calder saw a shadow of the rage he had been feeling upon the man’s face, the rage he had let dissipate as he trained.
“I imagine they have enough Weapon Stones to provide everyone in our world with one,” Calder said. “Doesn’t mean they will.” He waved a hand. “I’m sure they justify that by saying that would make it easier for the Darktouched to convert more humans to their side, as the Touched they had created in Dranador switched to the enemy.”
“This…” Yesna sighed. “What does this change of our plans?”
Calder’s gaze became intense. “While I was… training, a new plan formed in the back of my mind.” He interlocked his fingers together, leaning his elbows on the table. “We need to bring everyone together. Everyone that remains on this world after it is evacuated.” He nodded again. “Bring them all into one place. Somewhere we can protect them. Somewhere we can train them.”
Peter raised an eyebrow. “That’s an admirable plan, Calder, but how exactly are we going to manage that? Do you know how many people there are in the world? And how are we going to get them all together?”
Calder didn’t actually know how many people there were in Halanor. Though he did know that number was about to be cut in half. “I don’t know how many people there are.” He raised a finger. “But as to how to get them together… I have a plan for that.” He tilted his head to the side. “Though I’m not sure if it will work.”
Graham appeared, materialising out of nowhere on one side of the table. He looked at the chair next to Luceen. “Do you mind?”
Luceen blinked at the ghost. She looked at the chair. “Oh.” She pulled it out for the ghost, who sat down on it.
How could the ghost sit, if he was incorporeal? Not important. “Do you have anything to add, Graham?”
“Hmm?” Graham leant back in his chair. “Not at present. I’m just glad to hear you have a plan!”
“Speaking of the plan,” Yesna said. “I’d like to know the answer to Peter’s question. First, how many people are in this world?”
“Millions…” Peter trailed off. “I know the empire alone, before we took Lorilan, was home to at least three million citizens.”
Luceen’s gaze fell on the table, though she seemed to look right through it. “Huh.”
“What?” Calder asked.
“There’s… a way to do that.”
“Do what?”
“Know the population of a world.” The Saint tilted her head to the side. “Though it’s expensive.”
Peter sighed. “Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be expensive?”
Graham smiled, as though he knew what she spoke of.
“How expensive?” Calder asked. “As much as a new Spirit Construct?” The ten thousand gold he had in his pouch of holding was a paltry amount compared with what they had originally gathered, and while much of the gold had been spent on the town’s fortifications and divided between the Touched, they did have some remaining within a lockbox in the basement of the mayor’s house. “Tell me a number.”
Luceen bit her lip. “Five hundred thousand gold.”
Peter swallowed. “Five hundred thousand? That’s… that’s a lot.”
“Do we really need to know the exact population?” Yesna said. “That’s a lot of gold for such information.
Calder was inclined to agree. “Even if we had that much, there are better uses, aren’t there?” They had perhaps a hundred thousand gold in the lockbox. Even if they took the gold from all the Touched in the village, they would have maybe two hundred thousand. Not even half as much as they needed.
He would much rather spend that money on outfitting new Touched and strengthening defences.
“That’s not all it does,” Luceen said. “It advances the capabilities of a Proximity Scanner. Usually only very high-level Touched have access to it, though sometimes it is issued to lower-level Soldiers of Light to help them perform their duties.”
Calder raised an eyebrow. An advancement to the Proximity Scanner? That certainly piqued his interest. He leant forward on the table, inching closer to Luceen. “What else does it do?”
“Well, for one, it can better calculate attributes, adding in any percentage modifiers gained—like what we gain from the wall’s defences. It also makes the user cloaked.”
Calder frowned. “Cloaked?”
“It means no one will be able to scan you. There are cheaper ways to do it, but this helps too.”
Calder could see the appeal. He would much rather not have someone scan him. When he scanned his own attributes, he was able to see “Avatar of Light” near his name. Fortunately, that wasn’t something others had access to, as he had asked. But they could see his level, and even his attributes. As the human Darktouched in Dranador were able to scan him… well, he would rather them not have an idea of what he was capable of.
Still, it sounded very expensive.
“That can’t be all it does,” Calder said. “Five hundred thousand gold is a lot of money.”
Luceen smiled. “Well, other than scanning a planet for sentient lifeforms—Touched and non-Touched alike—it can map the planet and locate portals opened in the world. That’s how the Soldiers of Light were alerted to incursions in Halanor. They must have scanned it long ago, and it finally came upon their radar as they track portals opened by Darktouched.”
Calder raised his chin. Now that would be a powerful tool. “Is that how the Soldiers of Light were able to portal here, without having been here before?”
While Graham had taught Calder that he could portal to a different world with a simple word and a Portal Stone, when they wanted to appear in a specific location they needed to hold that location in their mind—that wasn’t possible if they had never been there before. Fortunately, when travelling to the Great Marketplace, the world Baldor resided in funnelled incoming portals to the portal platform.
Which was why he was worried they wouldn’t be able to get everyone in Halanor into the same place, as none of them had travelled around the entire world, and so they couldn’t simply create portals in the major cities like the Soldiers of Light could—though that was something he was planning to speak to Ballam about. He must have access to one of these scanners. Even so, he knew they couldn’t rely on the man to help them.
Though that wasn’t the only thing he worried about when it came to getting them all in one place. If Peter was right in saying there were three million people in Talna… well, he could only imagine the population of the world to be at least five times that.
And if that were cut in half, it still left roughly eight million people. Kashan was a large city, one of the largest in the world as far as he knew, and that city only held perhaps half the population of Lorilan—perhaps one million people.
How exactly would they fit eight times that in there? Not to mention the problem of portals. The low-level portals that they were able to create could only send twenty beings through them. But, as the Protectorate were planning an exodus of half this world, there must be portals capable of transporting more than twenty beings—hopefully an unlimited number.
Calder could barely fathom these numbers, especially since Berring itself had so few people inside of it. We really are a very, very small town.
Luceen nodded. “Exactly.”
Calder blinked, having been lost in thought, and remembered what question he had added. He nodded. The advanced scanner would help them travel the world.
“So this device would not only show us how many people are in the world, but their locations, and then give us the ability to travel there though portals?” Yesna asked. “We would have to route those portals through the Dark World, but at least we have an outpost now.” She spotted Calder’s smile at those words. “Yes, yes. I called you a fool and yet it comes in handy. No need to look smug.”
Calder’s smile fell away as he realised just how impossible this was all sounding. Not only would getting that much gold be difficult, but herding together so many people… He looked at Luceen. “The portals we can create only allow twenty people to go through them. Can we purchase more advanced Portal Stones? Is that possible?”
Luceen nodded. “It is. Like Spell Bombs, there’s a market for that. The soulstones we use to create portals are raw, harvested straight from the Darktouched we kill. But there are Portal Stones that have been made more efficient. I’m not really sure what the process is.” She shrugged. “But those shouldn’t be too expensive to purchase.”
“Good.” He frowned for a moment, a thought occurring to him. “Will that scanner work on the Dark World?”
Luceen tilted her head to the side. “Yes and no. Dark Worlds tend to be immune to such devices. Their Mages discovered ways to block the technology, just as there are some structures that prevent Proximity Scanners from seeing inside them, like the tunnels where the Nexus is in the mines.”
Calder had supposed that would be too good to be true. “How are we going to amass that much gold?”
Luceen raised an eyebrow. “We already have that much gold, Calder. All we need to do is sell our soulstones. Considering how many thousands we have. We can’t get market value for them, but selling them all off should get us enough. More than enough, actually.”
Calder sighed. He had been saving those soulstones. Without them, how could they turn more humans into Touched?
But if those people simply died, left defenceless in their cities, they wouldn’t be able to turn them in the first place.
“All right.” Calder nodded. “This is the plan. First, I’m going to speak to Ballam. If he has such a scanner and lets us access it, then we can spend our gold on other things. If not…” He looked at Luceen. “Then you have permission to sell off as many of the soulstones as you need to.” He stood. It was dark outside, night having fallen on the town, but he barely needed to sleep much these days.
He looked at each of them, waiting to see if they disagreed. As they did not, he World Stepped straight out into the Dark World once more, just as he had earlier in the day from Kashan. The World Step ability had a very generous cooldown of a single hour, one he had never been able to change by adding more into his Magic attribute. Perhaps it couldn’t change, or he just needed to be considerably more powerful than he was now for it to do so.
Arriving in the Dark World, Calder sighed.
Gods, it’s been a long day.
Chapter 28
Calder spoke to Ballam and left the conversation feeling conflicted.
Once again, the man was not able to offer any help. He wasn’t allowed to give Calder access to an Advanced Proximity Scanner, especially after he had given him three Weapon Stones, something his superiors had apparently discovered when that army meant for Kashan had been destroyed.
Which also meant he wasn’t willing to provide them with any more Weapon Stones, despite Calder’s insistence that they were needed.
But Calder had come out of the conversation with some useful information.
Ballam had sat and listened to Calder’s plan, nodding his head as he went along. Surprisingly for Calder, the man had not had any negative things to say about it. And though he couldn’t provide Calder with an Advanced Proximity Scanner, he did provide him with some much-needed information.
Calder had been blind to the state of the world beyond Berring, Dranador and Kashan, and Ballam saw no reason not to inform him of what else had been happening.
According to Ballam, Halanor was a small world. Not that it seemed that way to Calder.
There were three continents on Halanor.
The continent in which Calder resided was called Moavolder. It was the largest continent, containing the Talna Empire, the Lorilan Kingdom and the Barrak Kingdom.
Then there was the second largest continent, and the closest to Moavolder, Palaria, which was ruled by a single entity known as the Palaria Collective.
Calder had known of the Palaria Collective, though he knew little about them.
The third and smallest of the continents was also the one Calder had the least knowledge of, simply because it was the farthest from them.
Arcahnasos.
Arcahnasos was home to a dozen small warring kingdoms, according to Ballam. He listed off a few, and Calder had Graham relay the information to the others back in Berring.
But the most important information that Ballam relayed was that only a dozen cities within the entire world remained under the protection of the Soldiers of Light. Those were the dozen cities that were to be abandoned, and so they were where everyone would flock to.
Calder had slumped in his chair when he had heard that. Only a dozen cities…
Ballam provided him with another valuable piece of information, as well.
Apparently the Protectorate’s officials had negotiated with the Darktouched. The Darktouched wanted to turn the world to evil, conquer all of its Nexuses, turn its citizens into Darktouched soldiers, not simply slaughter everyone in it—though they would do this happily if they had to. And so, when they had been informed of the exodus, they had agreed not to strike any cities protected by the Soldiers of Light until after the exodus of Halanor.
Then, they would be left free to terrorize those who remained in the world.
This knowledge left a horrible pit in Calder’s stomach.
The fact that the Light and Dark had negotiated made Calder’s skin crawl. He hadn’t known they had any lines of communication. However, the information had been incredibly valuable.
When Calder returned to Berring, they still had six days left before the exodus. Six days to acquire the Advanced Proximity Scanner. Six days to train. To attain more gold.
Six days to shore up Kashan’s defences, for that was the city they had chosen to be Halanor’s remaining bastion of hope. There were other things to worry about. How were they going to house millions of people in Kashan? How were they going to feed all of them?
And when were they going to lay siege to Dranador, taking that city back for the Light? Or, well, taking it for the Light for the first time, Calder supposed.
But they could only do so much at once.
One step at a time.
~
The days passed in a flurry of activity. Calder had decided to forego sleep altogether.
There was simply too much to be done.
If Calder had his way, he would enter Kashan and start making as many of the citizens into Touched as he could. But he couldn’t be sure those Touched would remain in the city once the exodus portals opened. He worried that giving superstrength to refugees that were desperate to leave their world would only wreak havoc during the exodus. They might rush to the portals, pushing everyone else aside—maybe even killing those in their way.
Not only would that be bad for non-Touched in the vicinity, it would be a complete waste of Weapon Stones.
He knew he could rely on the citizens of Berring not to abandon them during the exodus—they all had access to Portal Stones already. If they wished to leave this world, they could have done so by now.
Calder wanted nothing more than to return to that snowy mountain in the Dark World and slaughter as many Ice Yetis as he could to gain more levels. The power and spells he had managed to gain by reaching level 60 had brought his strength higher than he had expected, and he didn’t wish to halt that growth. Besides, he really wanted to practice his new abilities and see how strong he could be with Strike Advantage.
But Graham had been right—he had responsibilities to uphold. He may not have asked to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders, but it was there now. He couldn’t just leave Peter and the others to handle everything while he went off to train, as much as that was tempting.
At least, I can’t leave them right away. Training was definitely on the agenda over the coming days—and not just his own training. They needed more resources, after all. But there were things to be done first.
Though he couldn’t start making those in Kashan into Touched, he could start shoring up their defences. While Luceen and Yesna travelled to the Great Marketplace in search of an advancement for Calder’s Proximity Scanner—apparently it would only work on one scanner, and the others in his party insisted it should be his—Calder and Peter headed to Kashan once more.
Ballam granted them an audience with the military officer that had been left in charge of Kashan. At the sight of Peter, who was technically still his prince, the man had been more than willing to hand over control of the city, as long as they protected him until the day of the exodus, when he would be “getting out of this hellhole.”
Calder hated the man for his cowardice, but was glad control of the city had come so easily.
Now that they were in control of the city, they could tell the citizens of Kashan of their plan. He knew that there would be people who wished to remain and fight. People who wished to do everything they could to keep their world safe. Something similar had happened in Berring, after all.
The citizens of Berring had decided to stay and fight. They had chosen to be there. They could have abandoned Berring. They could have hidden in the Dark World. But they had stayed.
The military officer who had been in charge of Kashan was ready to abandon it the second he could, but he wasn’t from here. He was from Talna.
He also knew that even if many people in the city wanted to flee through the exodus portals, that didn’t make them heartless. That didn’t mean they would want to leave their fellow citizens to perish without at least trying to help them. There were plenty of selfish people in the world—Calder had met his fair share, and they hadn’t all been from the Talna Empire—but the world wasn’t only filled with the selfish.
