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Weeaboo Vol. 2 Chap. 7 People, and Monster, Management
🕑 Added 2024-09-16 16:00:19 +0000 UTC“If Exploding Murder Baboons are going to be a regular part of our lives, and I have every reason to think they will…” My words drained off like piss into a sink.
“Tower Master?” Versai raised a politely concerned eyebrow.
“Sorry. Just processing the fact that Exploding Murder Baboons are now a regular part of my life. That’s my day to day, now. Once upon a time, I dealt with rats in the subway. Sometimes, the rats were hauling pizza, because even rats know the City reigns supreme in the ‘za department. Now it’s Exploding Murder Baboons in my Tower.”
“You don’t have those where you are from?” Versai blinked her limpid blue eyes in polite interest. I don’t actually know what ‘limpid’ means, but if anyone had ‘em, I’m sure it’s Versai.
“New York has all kinds of amazing stuff. Art. Culture. Sandwiches as big as your head. Katz and Carnigie are massively overrated, but the sandwich point still stands. We even have our own Maid Cafes. But we do not have Exploding Murder Baboons.”
I paused, and some remnant shred of honesty forced me to add- “At least not in the wild. But those penthouses around Central Park? Dark things happen there. Things that good, honest folk don’t even have the language to describe. They could very well have bred Exploding Murder Baboons for their… hobbies.”
She looked at me oddly. “Penthouses? Like… an outhouse or extra room on the side of a shack?”
I looked at her twice as oddly, to display dominance. “A penthouse is the apartment at the top of a tall apartment building. Very expensive.”
“No it isn’t. It’s a little room off to the side of a house where you can shove your halfwit cousin or something. Assuming you don’t have a castle, obviously.”
“Oh yes, quite obvious.” I rolled my eyes. “After all, not everyone has an oubliette.”
Versai instantly looked nauseous. “Don’t even joke. We might be bloodthirsty on the battlefield, but that’s just sick.”
I raised an eyebrow. She continued. “I’m guessing you have never actually seen one?”
“Nope.”
“Good. Good.” She shook her head. “I wish I hadn’t. I had to duel a baron who had one. We only found out after he was dead. I only wish I had taken longer killing him.”
“And just like that, I don’t want to know more details. Let’s build a castle instead.”
“Fortress.” Versai corrected.
“What’s the difference?”
“A castle is a private residence.”
“So we are building a castle then.” I waved upwards at my still rough-looking Tower. “My Tower, right?”
“Yeah, but is it a residence? I mean, we don’t eat or sleep or raise kids here. We do, however, fight all the time. So, fortress.” Versai was firm on this. I wanted to push back, because ‘reside’ didn’t necessarily mean those other things, right? Also, I had a bed. I couldn’t really use it for anything, but I did have it. But arguing about the definition of a castle with a person who grew up in a castle and worked in a castle for people that built, inherited and destroyed castles seemed like a losing proposition.
“Alright, it’s an oubliette-free fortress. So we have effectively doubled our building team, but the monsters are starting to think outside the track. Thoughts?”
Kim’s white hand was reaching up out of the drowning blackness, she was reaching out to me, begging me to save her but I couldn’t, I couldn’t save her, I was the one who killed her, and I couldn’t even stretch out my hand to her and save her from the dark waters that covered her mouth and face and poured into her lungs-
“Might be time to switch to a more conventional fortress design. You already have a start with the Rampart wall… a name that we are going to have to change, incidentally, as I’ll unscrew my own head before I go around calling it a “Wall-wall,” and the “Bastion” that is actually more like a tiny sub-fort.”
“Since when were you so picky with names?” It was out of character for her. Another development from the relationship system? I can banter. I can banter. I can pretend to be fine and keep my mind on the job.
“I’ve always been particular about castles.” She sniffed, looking off to one side. It was cute. I found myself starting to smile, before the smile drained off my face. It was something from the relationship system. It wasn’t on her character sheet, but that turn-away move was straight out of a gacha game cutscene.
“Alright. We need conventional fortifications. But we still don’t have enough Awakened Souls to defend the whole wall if we surround the Tower with walls.”
“That’s normal, actually. Most castles or forts won’t have remotely enough troops to defend every wall, and it would be a waste of manpower even if they did. After all, the enemy isn’t attacking from every side all at once.” Versai shrugged.
“They might actually, in our case.” I said. The woods were very dark under the bone-white moon. “One thing is for sure- the monsters have plenty of cannon fodder.”
“We should be so lucky.” Versai grimaced. “Charging straight at the open door, it’s dumb, but it’s also highly effective. They are putting all their pressure on a single point. If we can’t keep up for even a second, they can burst through and we’re dead. But if they spread out, they have to cover a wider area while we defend a smaller one.”
Versai crouched down and started drawing in the dirt. She drew a little circle in the middle, then a small arc on one end. She then drew a much, much bigger circle around both. “In fact, we still only have to defend that one door. So our defensive perimeter is tiny, letting us jump one monster with many Awakened.”
She tapped the little arc. “Our biggest worries are that they will flank us and get into melee. Right now, I’m the only melee fighter worth a damn. Rikka I don’t really know well, but she seems built for ambushes, not holding a line.”
“Yeah. And she can make traps, apparently. I thought they would be little single-target things, since she worked as a vigilante. Maybe she can do more.”
Versai shrugged. “Maybe. Rakim can too.”
Rakim was from some foreign Army Corps of Engineers. She could, indeed, make traps. They were just very expensive in terms of resources. On the other hand, since I just came into a lot of resources…
“Alright, we’ll add that to the list. And we can’t forget that the Tower has two doors, front and back. Right now, the back door has some guard towers around it and it’s covered in… what, a hundred cubic yards of dirt? It’s an insane pile at this point. But I bet you the Devs wouldn’t think twice about just vanishing all the dirt and going “Look at the exciting new door we are giving you!”
Versai snorted. “Fair.”
I nodded slowly. We still had a critical troop shortage, and it was worse now that we had lost Kim. On the other hand, we had three artillery, and if we could concentrate that fire, they would be utterly devastating. We could actually put down a really solid net of fire, these days.
“Still need to slow them down and shoot them up. And we need way, WAY better ways to detect concealed units.”
“True.”
“How are we for blue magnesium?” I asked, with faint hope.
“We used most of it in the last wave.” Bye bye hope.
“So no new detectors.”
“Not unless Rikka knows a different way.”
I snorted. She might just have some ideas about that.
“Any chance we can make some in Gradden March?” I grumbled. Of course we couldn’t. Things wouldn’t be that nice or fair.
“Of course we can.” Versai said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Loads of drug labs and cut rate alchemists. If they can’t make it now, we can hang a few until they figure it out.”
“Heh. I’d love to go walk around the Floating Quarter. It just doesn’t feel real looking at it through a mirror.”
“So why don’t you?” Versai gave me a weird look. “Don’t your feet work?”
“So when you and Osain vanish back to Gradden March…”
“We are going through this door right here, yes.” Sebastian leaned against the frame, like he had the faintest goddamn idea any of this existed earlier today. We were on the floor below the Throne Room, where the door to the map room used to stand in solitary splendor. It now had a very fancy looking new neighbor shoved in next to it.
The Map Room door was sturdy, dark, heavily varnished wood. The Sky Realm door was painted white with gold filigree over it. Because it was clearly a later addition to the game, and they wanted to make sure everyone appreciated the fancy new update.
Did I get a notification about a new door opening? No, I did not. I looked out the window at the explosions of dirt and rubble criss-crossing my one orderly murder track. It was time for a major rebuild. We didn’t have an infinite amount of time before the Devs started cracking down, but we did have a fairly long time. And if Rikka and Rakim were going to be making me traps, I had to see what resources I could get for them. Later would be too late. I went in.
I very quickly regretted that decision.
The smell. Oh God. The smell. I don’t have words. I walked through Chinatown in August the day before trash day, and it still wasn’t even a tenth this bad. The smell was apocalyptic.
No, not apocalyptic. The reason for the apocalypse. The people would be begging, kneeling in the clinging muck, eyes stinging from the horrible acid-fumes, begging for that meteor to come and end all earthly suffering. I don’t need to breathe and I was still choking, drowning in the miasma.
“SEWERS! SWEET CHRIST! WE HAVE TO BUILD SEWERS!”
“What are you talking about? There is a sewer, built back in my Grandfather’s day. Look.” Sebastian pointed at a reeking trench flowing horribly slowly through the street. People would come and fling pots and buckets into the trench, doing their part to contribute to the cholera factory.
The Floating Quarter had a nightmarish feel to it. The buildings were crammed together. The second stories would extend out over the street, making everything dark and claustrophobic. There were people everywhere, walking, working, yelling. Above all, they stank. The sheer, animal smell of it all. B.O. was universal, and also the least of it. Every fluid and solid a body could eject, they ejected, straight out onto the street or into the ditch.
Three story tall houses, four at the tallest. They looked like they were made from wood and plaster. I knew they burned well. Didn’t stop the locals from using torches and lanterns to light the place. Cobblestone streets. There was that, at least. I could work with that. My eyes kept getting pulled back to the river of excrement flowing through the middle of my Realm. It was unbearable.
“Sewers, and I will fight you on this if you disagree, are underground.”
Sebastian smiled faintly. “Technically, the River Rhedyn is below ground level. Grandfather dug the river bed and lowered it four feet along the length of it. But I do know the sorts of sewers you are talking about. They are on the list of possible developments. They take forty orders to complete, and cost five hundred thousand Skygold for the cheapest model. Apparently, there is a limit to how many houses a sewage system can support. Too many houses, and the sewer system starts applying penalties to health and morale, for some reason.”
“And where is this sewer on that rating?”
“No idea.” He shrugged an urbane shoulder. “That’s a Realm Lord question. I believe you can see all that in your magic mirror.”
“And I will check on that the instant I leave here, which is going to be almost immediately. We need blue magnesium for the stealth detectors, lime-but-not-the-fruit-lime, whatever that is, and a whole bunch of caltrops. Like… just so many caltrops. Caltrops by the thousands. Who can supply this for us?”
“At the moment? We can have the blacksmiths turn out some caltrops with the remaining iron stocks. I doubt it will run to many thousands, or even a thousand, though I suppose caltrops are small and simple to make.” Sebastian’s voice was utterly steady, and perhaps a hint amused. His elegant old self seemed to find the entire world quietly amusing.
I’d seen the rabid wolf inside him. None, not one member, of the Gradden family was a nice person. And Sebastian had been their spymaster and underworld king.
We walked on a little bit. There were kids in here. Kids. I… didn’t know what to think. There were kids here. Kim had just been torn apart by monsters, technically I’m still fighting a wave, and here we are. With the kids in a pocket dimension inside my tower.
“Lime is easy to make- you just burn limestone or sea shells. That gives you quicklime. Then you slake it with water to make lime.” He chuckled indulgently. “We have some lime in our stores, but not a particularly large amount. And we have essentially no limestone reserves. Likewise, our magnesium supply is essentially nil, as we don’t get much at the best of times. As for turning it blue, that requires a substantial amount of cyanide.”
“Cyanide? Can you manufacture cyanide?!” I had sudden visions of crop dusting the Monsters with poison powder, then frowned.
“Before you ask, yes, the monsters are immune to most non-magical poisons. It’s been tried.” Sebastian could apparently read my face even when he was looking away from me. “And calling it ‘manufacturing’ is somewhat overstating our abilities. We can create large quantities of it by burning coal in airless furnaces. It’s quite tricky to manage, but the result is a very steady burning jet of gas that does work quite well on the monsters, when applied in quantity. It also creates giant pools of waste that are poisonous to us, but not the monsters.”
“Ah. That’s no good.”
“Indeed.” He sounded indulgent. I died a little inside. “But from that poison, we can isolate and refine some cyanide. Not much is needed to create blue magnesium, but if we are mass-manufacturing it, we would require quite a lot of coal. Which…”
“We don’t have.” I concluded.
“We do have some, but not nearly enough for major production. Frankly, we don’t have enough to keep the industries we already have going for very long. I’ve already ordered the ironmongers and smiths to keep their forges cold, and started rationing fuel.”
“That bad?”
“Worse. The markets produce something called “rations,” which can keep a fixed number of people fed. They just turn up. However, rations increase the likelihood of sickness, reduce morale, and slow work efficiency. Real food is required. Would you care to guess if coal or firewood magically appears in the sheds of the locals?” Sebastian looked genuinely interested. The swine.
“I’m going to guess no. Which means that they cant stay warm in their homes, which means that, between the sewer, the slum housing, the rations, the soon-to-arrive typhoid epidemic-”
“Oh, I am sorry, Realm Lord, I neglected to mention one vital point- we don’t actually have enough markets to feed everyone in the slums. Although you will be relieved to know that we almost have enough wells to supply their drinking water. Good thing you invested in that upgrade.”
“Almost? ALMOST?!” I was shouting, not giving a damn what the local yokels thought of me. “Sebastian, what in the nine Hells were the Graddens doing? You pricks are murderous, not incompetent!”
“We had a rather good series of fountains throughout the city, all fed by, and plumbed to, a bound water elemental. In a way, it’s rather fortunate that we didn’t didn’t bother to install many of them in the Floating Quarter. Their connection would have been severed entirely, and the situation would be much worse.” He smiled kindly. Encouragingly. Not giving a hint of what was going on inside his head.
I tried to breathe. Just… let the instinctive act calm me. Try to get a good handle on my emotions again. It had been a completely cursed day. Just…
Oh Hell. Oh fancy fish fornicating forestry. It’s all the same day. It’s all the damned Sixth day! Sebastian, despite all the knowledge jammed into his head by the Game, had just gotten out of the dungeon he had been trapped in for an unknowable length of time. He immediately watched a sort of symbolic reenactment of the battle that killed him (except this time with a good ending) and then got dragooned into a new job.
He was being pissy. Deliberately pissy. He was absolutely fucking with me while doing his job, because he was messed up too.
I slowly banged my head against the wall. Real people. They weren’t complete people, but they were real. I wanted to crawl in a hole and die. For several reasons.
Would I look weak if I apologized? He worked for cracked-out feudal nobility. Apologies probably weren’t a big feature of their work process. On the other hand, his last boss was the Marchioness, who famously wouldn’t listen.
I blew out a breath. I’m too much of a coward to just ignore what I said and act like everything was fine. Sebastian definitely is the type to hold a grudge, and he was already figuring out how to work around the game rules. Would I run away if I could? God yes. But I can’t. So. Here we go.
“I apologize. I shouldn’t have shouted at you, and I shouldn’t have called your family pricks. It’s been a long day for all of us, and particularly you. This is all a lot to take in. Especially with the lives of your countrymen at stake.”
I watched Kim die. I watched her die and I could do nothing. Nothing. I was useless, and I just stood up on my balcony and watched her die.
There was a startled pause. I kept my eyes fixed on the cobblestones. What a pity I couldn’t rip them up and hide for eternity.
“You know, I think that is the first sincere apology I have received from even a nominal employer since ap Gradden marched off. And the last time he apologized to me was when he made me miss a small birthday dinner I had planned with a rather charming acquaintance.”
“Must have been important.”
“Oh very. He wanted to show me his new destrier colt.”
“Destrier? I know a colt is a young horse.”
“A warhorse used by knights. Much larger and heavier than an ordinary horse. Not common in your Federal Democratic Republic?”
“Nope.”
“Ah. Well. Apology accepted, and not much offense taken in the first place. It has been… a remarkably long day. Incidentally, before you become too maudlin, I suggest you take a closer look at the people around you. As if I needed more reasons to be in a… puckish mood.” Sebastian’s voice had a touch of frost in it by the end there.
I took a look at the people. They looked ordinary, for medieval fantasy with a grimdark edge to it. More GRR than JRR. I wasn’t seeing it. I kept watching.
“Are those kids… twins? Wait, triplets?”
“Look more closely at the adults. Try to imagine them without beards or pox marks.”
I did. I was never good at this kind of thing but-
It clicked. There were only five male models and four women models, and two kids models.
“NPC’s. They are all NPC’s.”
“NPC? They are homunculi or summoned spirits of some sort. Roughly as aware as the imbecile creatures that infested my prison.” Sebastian agreed. “Your labor force. We lack everything, and soon, we will lose even our serfs. Realm Lord, what shall we do?”
I laughed. Bitterly, but I did laugh. I knew the answer before I saw this place.
“We carry on the noble traditions of Gradden March. We go kill some people and take their stuff. War, Sebsatian. We will fuel our war machine with the blood of our enemies. Tomorrow, we hunt. The day after, we kill.”
Comments
Pike
Is Katz really over rated??? I have never been!
Deathly_God
It's just so sweet that Best-Girl Miyuki allows other characters some screen time. Truly she is the most gracious and kind of all the waifus.
Deathly_God
These savages don't even know what a Pizza is! How could they understand the intricate and immaculate complexity that is the Fortress/Castle divide?
phantom
'But arguing about the definition of a castle with a person who grew up in a castle and worked in a castle for people that built, inherited and destroyed castles seemed like a losing proposition.' Objection! People eat, sleep, and raise kids in a fortress!
