When I finally woke up, half an hour before the dawn, I was exhausted, and my mouth was dry as a desert.
Though, considering four naked women was snuggling against my body, spent after a very long night where we had gone through all the interesting permutations five people achieve without any scrap of clothing between us.
The perfect way to relax after a close call with the disaster, and certainly well-earned.
Though, I decided even as I stretched my agility to the limits as I tried to slide out of their delicious hug without waking them up, they certainly earned their rest.
Admittedly, I earned my rest even more, not only making sure that I satisfied four beauties burning with desire — though, to be fair, I did have their assistance in more than one combination — but also leveling them up to the limit.
Titania was exempt from that benefit, as her level was still higher than mine, though only two levels remained between us.
Which also meant I was about to lose my most convenient direct experience source, but that was unfortunately inevitable.
I had made sure to elevate Helga and Cornelia to Level twenty-two, though Marianne was only able to reach Level nineteen, an unfortunate consequence of her incomplete Companion Process. It wasn’t as urgent considering she was going to stay at the school, while Helga and Cornelia would leave for her family estate at the first opportunity, but still…
Treating my girls as equally as I could manage was only fair.
I dressed quickly and left the room, no matter how much I wanted to stay with them.
I had an important meeting with the headmistress.
Slipping out of the city to create an elemental mount had been trivial at this point. As I felt the chilly touch of the morning weather on my face — I hadn’t blocked it intentionally, to properly wake up — my mind shifted into more important issues.
Namely, the threat provided by the mysterious Eternals. Until I discovered Zokras’ final trick, I had assumed that their presence had been an incidental part of this siege, trying to score some easy victories for whatever they had in mind by supporting Zokras.
But Zokras’ latest decoy had put a different spin on the things, especially since I had no idea just how committed Zokras had been to the siege in the first place.
He was obviously trying to destroy the school, of course, as some of his plans were perfect until they were unraveled by me, a factor that he could not have planned for in any shape or form. However, that didn’t actually mean his main focus was against the school. Maybe it was a decoy from the beginning.
Which meant that I had never met with his real body, not even in his base — though, the real body was a complicated concept for a lich in the first place. When I first met him, I wasn’t strong enough to properly assess his capabilities, nor my focus was on there.
I was too busy trying to escape his death knights.
The anger he displayed as I destroyed his death knights was certainly genuine, though that wasn’t very surprising. Even if the attack was a decoy against the organization, he had to commit a majority of his assets — at least, the known ones — for his sacrifice to be convincing. He, without a doubt, hoped to save at least some of those Death Knights for future use.
The same was true for the magical ability he had displayed. His actual strength was definitely higher than his revealed strength.
Though, it was complicated. If I was approximating the organization’s abilities correctly, it was difficult to hide things from them.
Which meant one good news and one bad news for me. Good news, even if Zokras had been using a decoy from the beginning, I had seen enough to get a good understanding of his power. Enough that I shouldn’t be worried about him trying to target me directly.
And considering he was trying to hide his survival, he wouldn’t have bothered with a pointless act like targeting Cornelia and Helga, shouting his survival.
Bad news that, even with everything I had discovered about the Eternals, I might have been underestimating their power and their reach. Zokras spending a decade of effort just to frame his death — albeit while achieving some other objectives, most likely stealing that dark Divine Spark the headmistress using for an extremely expensive concealment source, maybe even taking down the headmistress at the same time — told a lot about their strength.
Once again I was facing an enemy that over-classed me significantly.
“Damn,” I murmured, letting the wild winds devour my annoyed gasp. With the undead threat resolved, I was hoping that my desperate need to get even stronger would have disappeared.
It wasn’t even that I was hoping for a holiday. The presence of the Crown Princess was a mess big enough to keep my attention even without the looming shadow of a huge organization that could make my life hell if they ever properly noticed my presence.
“I was lucky,” I murmured as I realized another critical detail. Almost every mass-destruction spell I had used during the battle had been light magic in some shape or form. It had some generous life magic mixed in to make it much more explosive, of course, but ultimately, for an outside observer, it wasn’t nothing that couldn’t have been applied by a secret mage raised by the Headmistress and kept in reserve for emergencies, acting in shadows while Titania played the more visible face.
That wasn’t the case, of course. I was an accidental acquisition for the headmistress rather than a carefully-developed weapon, but it was the only reasonable conclusion a spy could make based on the data. Amusingly, the real truth was too absurd to be a part of the report for any competent spy.
Which meant, I still had a layer of anonymity to act around.
Unfortunately, that anonymity didn’t come without its cost. To sell the impression that I was working for the headmistress, even on the surface, meaning I had to sacrifice a considerable amount of freedom, to reinforce the impression for any possible spy.
I didn’t make the job any easier by introducing myself to different parties by different identities. For the possible spies of the Eternals, I was a mysterious spy with great competency in light magic, almost raised intentionally to fight against the darkness, his visage always hidden.
And, from the perspective of the princess and her party, I was an expert in crafting, focusing on esoteric wards and enchantment, yet with weak social skills. The overlap between the two identities was considerably low that any spy might think of these two identities as two different people.
Or not, considering their appearance in timing. It depended on the abilities and the connections of the spy.
Of course, whether the spies could guess I was the one that ‘destroyed’ Zokras or not, I had to be careful in my interaction with the princess’ retinue. It wasn’t about me trusting her — and I certainly didn’t — but something more fundamental. Her brothers had used the same monster horde trick the undead army suddenly added to their arsenal when they faced with a problem.
Meaning the enemies of the princess were in contact with the Eternals.
I didn’t know about the level of connection between them. It might a straight transaction of services between the princes and the organization, or it could be a total surrender in terms of some of the royal family.
Regardless, one thing was clear. My involvement with the princess would make me a person of interest to the organization, meaning, I had to be very careful revealing my skills and abilities, especially when it came to forging weapons capable of storing Divine Spark.
One thing the Organization clearly hunting for.
If I had known Zokras was just a shell, using such a deadly siege that expanded most of the forces he gathered for decades just to fake his death, I wouldn’t have gotten involved with the princess. Unfortunately, the die was already cast, and trying to pull back would just bring more unwelcome attention to my identity.
But I didn’t have much more time to consider the political weight of my actions, not when I arrived at the school, even as the first lights of the morning smashed against the walls.
As I closed in, I noticed that the walls had suffered some damage, indicating that the surrounding towns were not the only ones that suffered the attention of the undead.
However, while the attack itself was not surprising, the damage itself was. Ironically, not because it was too much, but because it was too little. Other than a few spell damages on the walls, there was hardly a sign.
Which raised some dangerous issues.
The attack wasn’t surprising, because even with most of his forces committed to the towns, Zokras needed to add another variable to the battle, enough to prevent the school from sending some rapid reinforcements. However, such a diversionary force needed to be convincing, more than able to leave a few broken walls.
The lightness of the attack was not the problem, however. That could have been easily explained by Zokras trying to hasten his death.
The problem was the lack of reinforcement from the school. It was impossible for such a light diversionary attack to convince the school not to send any reinforcement.
Unless someone high up enough was able to interfere enough to send reinforcements. Maybe it was the same spies that tried to take down Titania earlier. Unfortunately, despite it being the likeliest conclusion, I couldn’t take that as an outcome. There was a chance the spies from a different organization — maybe the Eternals, or maybe completely unrelated groups.
There was even a chance that the Crown Princess was the one that interfered, hoping to get rid of the headmistress’ most loyal assistant to increase her bargaining value. It sounded counter-intuitive to cripple a critical ally, but unfortunately, that was how politics worked.
Regardless of everything, one thing was clear. The higher management was still infiltrated with spies, fully able to interfere with critical decisions without revealing themselves as the culprit.
Which definitely didn’t make my job any easier.
Still, the deeper I delved into politics, the more I was realizing that keeping myself hidden was the smartest decision.
With a shrug, I dispelled the elemental mount and sneaked into the school. I had more important things than theorizing about the definite existence of the spies and their possible intentions.
Like, another meeting with the headmistress.
[Level: 31 Experience: 493210 / 496000
Strength: 46 Charisma: 63
Precision: 40 Perception: 42
Agility: 40 Manipulation: 45
Speed: 39 Intelligence: 49
Endurance: 39 Wisdom: 51
HP: 6324 / 6324 Mana: 7750 / 7750 ]
SKILLS
Master Melee [100/100]
Master Tantric [100/100]
Master Biomancy [100/100]
Master Elemental [100/100]
Master Arcana [100/100]
Master Subterfuge [100/100]
Expert Speech [75/75]
Expert Craft [75/75]
PERKS
Mana Regeneration
Skill Share
Empowerment (1/1)
Teleportation
COMPANIONS
[Cornelia - Level 22/26]
[Helga - Level 22/26]
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