I prodded the interface, curious to see what my steadily increasing Tokens of Valor could buy me. Doing my best not to be too mad that the pay shop Medals of Valor were required to buy the unique, and gold trimmed, Verton Defence costumes. I’m not mad. Really. That’s fine. That’s just fine.

  “Tower Master, your teeth are making a racket.”

  “What’s that, Versai?”

  “The grinding is getting very loud, Tower Master.”

  “Ahahaha. I have no idea what you are talking about. Hey look, more units we can recruit. Ancients. Which are, apparently, cosplaying banner carriers? Why is this one dressed like a yellow cow?”

  “Chassem Canton, their symbol is a Golden Ox, my Lord. The pike regiments are usually recruited all from the same canton.” Othai chipped in. “It gives a big boost of morale. Even if things are chaotic and terrifying, as long as the Ancient is there, the pikes will rally and charge.”

  I had to sort through that one for a minute. The mercenaries had all displayed the same sort of suicidal courage I associated with the Awakened. On the other hand, if there was any place that could lay down fear debuffs, the monsters of Wastet would be high on the list.

  The swinging corpses in the dead village were debuffing me plenty. I didn’t like to remember them. I scrolled further through the mini store. No new troops other than the Ancient. A bit annoying. If they had a cannon here, surely they used cannons in battle. Oh boy, common tier armor kits, the same grade we were using in the Tower these days. I will definitely… actually, yeah, I can just wait indefinitely. Each sunk ship was more Tokens of Valor. There is no reason not to buy armor and weapon kits and upgrade everyone as much as possible. Then I saw something on the list that really made me smile.

  Sergeant Mika Uniform

  Corporal Dora Uniform

  Sergeant Dora Uniform

  Corporal Lupa Uniform

  Sergeant Lupa Uniform

  Corporal Cara Uniform

  Sergeant Cara Uniform

  I didn’t hesitate and bought them all at once. Mika didn’t meet the qualifications to advance to sergeant- we needed another five Mikas. Ditto Dora- we were still short there. We hadn’t even pulled any of the others. Didn’t matter. We would get them eventually, and then I would be ready. Though it did raise some annoying questions about who to bring on the away mission.

  Both Pomorois seemed like an obvious one. Then Versai and Othai. That would just leave one slot open. I could deploy other awakened here, and planned to. Mrs. Hungry could look after Radz, especially if I left Rikka to keep an eye on the shadows. But who to bring to Wastet?

  Rache? Her high speed, long range scouting was always going to be useful, and going without some kind of scout was extra-dumb. Ditto not having healing in the form of a medic, and this seemed like the perfect venue for Yuki’s wide scale incense buffs to really shine.

  None of whom were who I really wanted to bring.

  “Othai, could Corporal Mika take charge of a crossbow detachment? More than just five people, I mean?”

  “No, corporals don’t-” Othai suddenly seemed to hang up on her own words. “Actually, Tower Master, I don’t know. I don’t think she should be able to, but I truly don’t know.

  I could take one less Pomoroi. Or one less Six Star. But it really didn’t feel right. It really, really didn’t feel right. I could use the Genuda scouts, now that I had finally unlocked the horsey boys. I rapped my knuckles against my forehead. Wagon. I’d need to drag a wagon over here somehow. Can’t be waiting around for ages as my artillery shuffles around.

  Solid case for bringing Miyuki too- she was half a scout in terms of finding hidden enemies, and the crowd control of her arrows was just INCREDIBLY useful. So was Rakim- an army corps of engineers demo specialist was tailor made for a siege situation.

  Really, the only wrong choice was bringing more DPS, on account of having a metric ton of it already.

  “I guess it’s just that she was my day one, you know? Not bringing her for this would feel like a betrayal. I’m already not bringing Dora. And I just can’t stand the thought of betraying Mika. Almost anything else, but not that.”

  “She would thank you if she could, my Lord.”

  Even though this is a damned world, built on cruelty and exploitation. Even though sentimentality seemed like exactly the kind of thing that would get you killed. Even if it was a million miles from the meta pick. I shook my head and started putting in the orders.

  At the end of the day, I’m a weeb, not a whale. Obviously I’m going to pick my favorites to bring along. Even if it doesn’t make sense. I’d just have to make up for it by buying all the optional extras I could before leaving.

  “Can someone grab me a chair? We may be here a while.” The exploding ships made an odd ticking clock, but one I was prepared to cherish. The more you bring, the fewer you lose. Each tick of the clock was a trade in lives- the enemies’ for my people. Each ship was worth five hundred Tokens of Valor. Each pike cost five tokens. I already had earned a bunch. It wouldn’t take too long to recruit everybody other than the regular city garrison. The only issue was what to do. Can’t exactly game in the game.

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  Or could I?

  “Hey Othai, do you think you could scrounge up a deck of playing cards around here? I flat out refuse to believe not a single person in Verton has a deck of cards. I’m willing to buy it if necessary.”

  “Excellent idea, my Lord. I will get on that immediately.” Othai smiled and strode off. She loved cards. It was on her character sheet. Maybe she could teach me a card game.

  The ships exploded steadily in the background. It passed the time.

  “You know where I like? Not here. There are lots of places that aren’t here, and I think, based on available evidence, that they are all better.”

  The cold wind blew across the empty fields, making the scarecrows twist and writhe.

  “I can certainly understand that view, Tower Master.” Versai agreed.

  There were hundreds of scarecrows. Each of them was a skinned human, their hide tanned and stuffed with straw. Grotesque on their own, the way they were walking by themselves across the barren land elevated them to Actually Disgusting. And a threat.

  “Pomoroi, test them out.”

  “Pomoroi, by Imperial Decree!” The cannons roared and sent their balls flying down the field. The scarecrows they hit exploded in sprays of straw and leather. Something scampered out of them, but it was too small and distant for me to see properly. A couple burst into blue flames, lighting the scattered straw. Must be the ones the artillery actually killed instead of just disassembled.

  “Formation, advance!” Othai commanded. I don’t know the right word for it. She wasn’t yelling, exactly, but her voice was raised and there was force to it. There was some trick to it that told the listener that they would do as instructed. No other option was presented. There was no “Or Else.” There was just “Obey.”

  The mercenary army of Gendua obeyed. Pike squares were checkerboarded with crossbow units and screened by matchlocks, with cavalry scouts racing around the edges and making sure the formation wouldn’t be flanked.

  The Ancients marched in the front rank of their pike squares, banners proudly fluttering in the wind. I’d thought they had looked like rolling death before. Watching the pikes move with their ancients in the lead, I realized that they had been goldbricking this whole time.

  I should be mad, but at this point I was more impressed than anything else. It was staggering to see them march. I understood intellectually how Genuda earned its hegemony, but it was something else to see it. One of the ancients banged a drum to drive the march, and another had a trumpet. The two of them sounded like a fast-beating heart and surging adrenalin. Like I wanted to get up and fight.

  The matchlocks volleyed, making a hell of a racket. Most of the bullets passed clean through the scarecrows and did no damage. A few lucky shots made the scarecrows go up like torches, most kept rushing towards our lines.

  Charging across an open field at volleys of musket fire. Well, that was how it was done for centuries. Doesn’t make it smart. The scarecrows were moving faster than the matchlocks could fall back, but that was fine- soon the crossbows were in range. Only a few scarecrows were still on their feet by the time the pikes arrived.

  “My Lord, there are a few key points on the battlefield that we should secure to guarantee our victory.”

  Of course there were.

  “Go on.”

  “The village near the front gate, the ridge roughly a mile from Wastet, and the road to the beach.”

  “Do you think there is still anyone back there?”

  “I think there is no good reason to find out the hard way, my Lord.”

  “Fair. I’m going to assume all three are defended. Do you plan on taking them down individually, or do you want to split the force?”

  “Up to you, My Lord.”

  Ah. Right.

  “Keep everyone together. Take them down in the order of Road, ridge, then village. Scout hard with the Cavalry- shouldn’t take more than a hot minute to find out if the beach is still occupied.”

  “Yes, my Lord.” I thought I heard a note of approval.

  The actual battles at the checkpoints were kind of nothing-burgers. A combination of bringing an absurd amount of firepower, and Othai being really good at this. I’d figured out that I could order something vague but applicable and not waste the order so long as I was standing near her. So that’s what I did. She could do a lot with “Deploy your troops in a way that is consistent with established methods and secure this victory point.”

  I’m going to laugh myself sick if corporate gobbledygook is the key to breaking the order system. It feels very right. Fighting eldritch horror with banal horror.

  The only thing worth noting about the checkpoint battles themselves were the troop makeup. No more Hosk Raiders, not even on the road to the beach. These were fully armored heavy infantry, mixed with their own pike and crossbow formations. Most worryingly, they had their own monstrous cavalry. The frog-centaur things made a return. I wish they had stayed away. On flat ground, the vile-looking things could move.

  Unfortunately for them, none of those things beat “Cannon” in the rocks-papers-scissors of the battlefield. The densely packed formations were ripped apart, like God dragging his fingers through grass and leaving furrows behind. They didn’t retreat, of course. Like the Hosk raiders before them, they were driven on, fed into the mouth of a slaughter-machine. I wondered if they were aware of what was happening. I wondered if their fury came from the devs, or the monsters.

  Not that I’d ever ask. There wasn’t anyone to ask. They never made it to the pikes. Othai really was terribly good at this. The constant withering barrage of musket fire alternating with crossbows just melted the enemy forces away. Even their ranged units couldn’t achieve anything much- any time they stopped to shoot, the cannons flattened them. It was nasty work, and very effective.

  Taking the victory points gave us buffs. Good ones. The road gave us a movement bonus, (which resulted in some hilariously fast cavalry zipping around the map,) the ridge buffed our DPS for no clear reason, and the village… made us resistant to fear effects.

  The village victory point was, I think, intended to be a sort of ambush, a guerilla attack by the scarecrows while crossbowmen fired from inside the houses. Othai just bombed them from outside of the village, letting Pomoroi flatten the houses from half a mile away. Anyone coming out of the village got shot up or run down by cavalry.

  I got the idea. The map seemed balanced for maybe a hundred mercenaries plus five awakened. Assuming someone rolled in with, say, forty or fifty, these victory point battles might wipe them out. A hundred would have a tough fight, but unless they massively fumbled, the player would win.

  We had around five hundred troops. And we brought artillery. I have no idea why they didn’t design with artillery in mind, but they didn’t. Maybe they thought that the size of the map would discourage us from hauling around slow moving artillery. The portal was way up on a wall, after all. It probably discouraged lateral thinking in most.

  I, on the other hand, am bloody minded enough to make hundreds of people hoist a wagon up a wall and shove it through a portal. Once I realized that the cavalry was just going to ride their horses up the narrow stone stairs, on to the rampart and into the Wastet map, I decided to embrace irritable unreasonableness.

  For some doubtlessly very smart reason, wagons moved at the same speed as scout cavalry. I’m not a horse guy. Maybe that’s normal. Feels weird, but so do a lot of things. Just so many things. I could only accept having my artillery position themselves on the battlefield faster than the infantry it was supporting. It was a struggle, but I endured.

  Wastet looked different now. The walls were stained with long trails of blood. Fresh bodies hung from spikes all along the ramparts. Burning brasiers were plainly visible, as were cauldrons. And the whole damned thing was crawling with soldiers and monsters.

  “Pomoroi. I have brought you to the gates of the enemy. You can see the monsters up there, and the traitors who serve them. Today, we are not on defense. Today, we smash their gates open, break down their walls, slaughter the traitors and exterminate all monsters. Today, the Army retakes human land! We are taking it back, and we are keeping it. And you, Pomoroi, are given the honor of announcing our arrival. By my command- ATTACK!”

  “POMOROY, BY IMPERIAL DECREE!” I heard a battery fire. I heard cannons roar by the dozens, the whistling of round shot and the hissing rasp of grapeshot scything through tall grass. I heard two very happy women, and the thunder of their long guns.

  The cannonballs flew out, arcing across the field and smashed into the gate. The heavy iron thudded and shook, holding up against two shots, then four- but not six. The gate blew inwards, giving all of us our first look at Wastet.