At this point, I was familiar with the operation of Silver Spires to know exactly where to look to get a comprehensive view of the situation, and it was not the commander’s office.
My destination was not one of the command rooms, but a less important location. The communication room.
Responsible for collecting and aggregating every single emergency message the school received from the surrounding towns.
I did so, because while accessing raw information was time-consuming, it was certainly not as time-consuming as trying to unravel the warped reports of the ones responsible for analyzing that information.
I needed to spend some time to get rid of all spies there, but it was one of the tasks I was procrastinating repeatedly, more important — or more entertaining — tasks taking priority.
I cast a sleeping spell on the people that were manning the room to keep my intrusion hidden. The spell was ingenious, not only sending them to sleep, but also ensuring that they wouldn’t realize that they had a five-minute gap in their memories.
It was a good idea to keep the source of my information hidden.
Of course, that didn’t mean every single message was reliably correct. Far from it, and not because the ones that sent those messages were actually enemy agents. No, they were ordinary guards defending their town, which probably assumed exaggerating the threat would allow them to receive help quickly.
“Not all of them, at least,” I murmured as I went through the first few messages, seeing exaggerated action reports, describing monster hordes attacking from the north and west that was far too big to be believable. Then, I moved to the next one, which described a fresh undead army attacking from the south.
My frown was already deepening at this point, then, I read one report in the South, about a great forest fire with supernatural origins, forcing the town to evacuate.
I started going through the reports even quicker, but my earlier disbelief was abandoned. My stats allowed me to go through all information easily, but the results didn’t help my mood the slightest.
I realized the Silver Spires were under siege once more, and, if even a fraction of the information I could read here was accurate, it was a far bigger threat than Zokras had ever presented, even with the assistance of the beast hordes.
I didn’t even bother speculating about the source of the attack before I burst into action, sending magical messages. Two of them went to a great distance, utilizing the teleportation trick — as I had managed to understand the mechanics enough to send a small, sealed package without going myself as long as there was a beacon — to Titania and Helga, warning both of them to be alert for an attack.
The risk of a coordinated attack was simply too great.
With that warning, both teams knew what to do.
The third message went to Oeyne, asking her to drop everything she was busy with, arm herself, and go to the headmistress’ tower, ready to intervene in case of an ambush, and ignore every order that didn’t come directly from the headmistress.
Another message went to Janelor, asking her to be ready for any potential intrusion.
Then, after some pause, I created another lengthy message to Helga — too big to be safely teleported — and hid it in my room, in Helga’s favorite book, with a small ward to alert her once she entered there, explaining the important facts and developments I had managed to discover, the secrets of the Eternals, the Princess, the headmistress, and the dragon, giving her the chance to keep things under control in case of an emergency.
I had a bad feeling about the intensity of the situation, and I wanted her to be ready in case I had to pull away from the school temporarily.
I didn’t send a message to Mariel.
I went back to her room directly, and find her still lying on the bed, but she had several reports in hand, and was reading through them with a serious expression. The moment I entered, her wings furled around her body, hiding her nakedness from me while her blush intensified further.
Tempting. If the crisis that I was facing was any simpler, I would have loved to spend twenty minutes enjoying the benefits of her shy reaction.
Pity the situation felt far too dangerous to enjoy such a delay, not when several sources of attack had been triggered.
“The situation is grim,” I said.
“It seems so,” she said, but her intensity certainly didn’t match mine. I would have loved to assume it was about the mood she was in after my extended efforts to keep her happy, but I knew that it wasn’t the case.
“Let me check those reports,” I said as I pulled them off her hand. I had no doubt that, just yesterday, that would have created a great negative reaction of her, maybe enough to make her attack me. This time, she just blushed as our fingers touched momentarily.
Pity the situation was too urgent to tease her about that.
Instead, I focused on the report. The contents were horrible enough to justify my quick trip to the massage room. The threat was undersold greatly, the unquenchable forest fire reduced to a simple fire, the undead army reduced to just an accidental remnant, and the monster hordes diminished.
Oh, they did so in a way that would keep them safe, mentioning the same aspects that initially made me doubt their validity, but they carefully avoided mentioning the number of messages from different sources that drew the same picture, which increased their reliability significantly.
As expected, they were offering a conservative action plan. I had no doubt that they would change the recommendation in a few hours, once it was too late to intervene with most of the armed forces.
Forcing the real elites to leave Silver Spires.
I frowned, wondering who was the target of the plan. Titania, Mariel, Janelor, the Princess?
Or maybe me, which would make my next action rather idiotic, but sometimes, it was best to react immediately.
I pulled a quill toward me and started doing corrections on the page, before passing it to her to read. She did so, her expression getting tighter, which didn’t help when I passed the next few reports.
“How sure you are about its necessity?” she asked, her voice grave as her nudity momentarily forgotten.
“I’m sure enough to be actually afraid of the consequences,” I said.
“Maybe I should go and —“ she started, but I didn’t miss the enthusiasm in her tone under her seriousness. Understandable, as our ‘treatment’ told us that for the first time in a very long time, she was free to act outside the suppression wards without directly imploding.
“No, there’s a chance that you’re the target. We can’t afford it.”
“I don’t think that they would do so after all that time —“ she said, but I used the opportunity to kiss her lips, using the opportunity to cast a spell on her, a Biomancy spell to enhance the daze she was feeling.
She would have easily resisted it if she wasn’t far too occupied by the way my tongue invaded her beautiful mouth, moaning softly. As much as I enjoyed her sound, it wasn’t just about the pleasure.
[-2830 Mana]
I used it to deliver a great amount of mana in a flood, and unlike the other attempts, it carried the maximum amount of Tantric effect I was able to manage, hastening her Divine Spark transformation significantly.
Enough that I was confident she could operate outside the wards for several minutes without a significant side effect. But that was the limit even if I didn’t want to save some of my mana for the upcoming conflict, as the Divine Spark I transformed still needed to actually bond with her body to be useful, which was not instant.
I cast the spell to make her dazed, because I didn’t want to reveal just how much control I had over the process. When I pulled back, she was still gasping in pleasure.
“I don’t want to risk you,” I said, and she nodded shyly, still under the effect of the searing kiss. “I even arranged a trusted bodyguard warrior for you, you can trust her to block others until Titania return.”
“W-what should I do, then?” she asked.
“Give the order to evacuate all the cities, and pull the population back to Silver Spires, I don’t think we can defend against the attack otherwise. I have a feeling that it’s just to the first wave.”
“We can’t just house all of them here, we don’t have the facilities,” she said.
“Then, we set up a city outside the first one. It wouldn’t take too long to set up a secondary set of wards, I’ll create the basis before I leave,” I said before I pulled the map, and pointed several towns to the North as we started discussing the evacuation efforts.
I wanted to target the ones that were too far away from Silver Spires. Those towns were critical to establishing a trade line, but I had a feeling that trade wouldn’t be a priority concern for a long while.
“Those towns should receive the first orders to retreat,” I said.
“But they are too far away from us, the reinforcements won’t be there on time.”
“I know,” I answered. “That’s why I would go there personally to make sure the evacuation works as intended.”
“Alone!” she gasped in shock. “It’s too risky—“ she started, only to be interrupted by another kiss, but this time, without the mana infusion.
Under the circumstances, I didn’t have the luxury to waste time, so I pulled back after silencing her. “That’s better than the alternative, don’t worry, I know how to defend myself,” I said to her.
It earned a hesitant nod from her, and we turned our attention back to the evacuation plan, and how to arrange setting up the refugee areas.
Luckily, Oeyne was not only a bodyguard. As an accomplished blacksmith, she was a good candidate to handle the communication between the Guild Members and the headmistress despite the bad blood between them.
Especially once Titania returns to take the role of a bodyguard.
Five minutes later, we had a beginning of a plan.
I would have loved to stay and direct the organization myself. Unfortunately, I had a trap to set at the north.
[Level: 36 Experience: 631374 / 666000
Strength: 46 Charisma: 63
Precision: 40 Perception: 42
Agility: 40 Manipulation: 45
Speed: 39 Intelligence: 49
Endurance: 39 Wisdom: 51
HP: 7334 / 7334 Mana: 6933 / 9000 ]
SKILLS
Grandmaster Tantric [114/140]
Master Melee [100/100]
Master Biomancy [100/100]
Master Elemental [100/100]
Master Arcana [100/100]
Master Subterfuge [100/100]
Master Craft [85/100]
Expert Speech [75/75]
PERKS
Mana Regeneration
Skill Share
Empowerment (0/1)
Teleportation
COMPANIONS
[Titania - Level 35/38]
[Cornelia - Level 22/26]
[Helga - Level 22/26]
[Marianne - Level 21/29]
