Shrinking The Battle Lines

Regardless of his individual power, Richard wouldn’t dare fight hundreds of the reapers and thousands of their warriors on his own. Cutting a few of the approaching flesh warriors and storing their pieces in his bracelet, he materialised his three faces and bombarded the base with fireballs before blinking a few kilometres away.

The reaper planes gave chase, but none of them could catch up. He started ringing around them and taking down any that got isolated, but within moments he suddenly felt a sense of danger that far surpassed the rest. He quickly turned north to see a hundred-metre-long warship in the sky, picking up speed as it rushed towards him. The thing was within ten metres in moments, and it opened fire.

The large warship didn’t attack particularly quickly, but each energy beam was as wide as Richard’s arm. Unwilling to fight it, he quickly took a series of portals to return to the messenger waiting on the edge of reaper territory. The mount quickly flew through the snowy sky, but as it went higher he eventually sensed the distant warship still giving chase. Fortunately, he was already out of range and the drone was fast enough to slowly open up the distance. It would get tired very soon, but an improved one was waiting for the next leg of the trip that could go as fast as 900 kilometres an hour for very short bursts.

Covered by the translucent barrier of the new messenger, Richard quickly opened up distance before falling back to normal speeds. Thankfully, this new one was also extremely stable, leaving him feeling almost nothing as he headed to the Land of Turmoil.

......

Once he was in front of the broodmother, Richard removed the remains of the reapers from his spatial equipment, “Try analysing the structure, see if you can find any weaknesses.”

The broodmother nodded and opened her mouth, inhaling all of the scattered remains. Some of the flesh was still squirming, but neither of the two seemed to care. Richard had even left a bit still in his bracelet, he planned to run some tests himself.

Once she had eaten it all, Richard flew over to pat her on the head, “So, what do you think of our chances?“

“They will not be victorious, but we lack strength as well. The humanoid nature of our existing drones is holding them back, I will need to redesign them. But then I need time to produce them, and time to analyse the enemy to make a more targeted unit.”

He nodded, sighing himself, “This will be hard. But I’m going to keep fighting until they’re gone, or until they destroy me. You’re not dying alone.”

“How did you know?” the broodmother responded immediately, but that was only more telling of her shock. She normally timed her conversations with him for normal human cadence.

He chuckled, “I was considering how I’d get the three goddesses out from Faelor. It made me realise that you’re rooted into the laws of this plane now too, just as a deity who doesn’t need any worship to survive. They can give up their faith by just renouncing their worshippers, but your existence is tied to Faelor’s own. You still need a few levels before you can break the entire plane, don’t you. When is it? 15? 16?”

“16, Master.”

“So you knew yourself. So what was it going to be, a fake egg with a message for your clone to act like you? Then you’d just sit here and fight the reapers to the death?”

“Yes.”

“But there’s no chance for you to win alone. Why? Why lie to me?”

“I was worried that you would refuse to give up on Faelor if I told you.”

“Do you think I’m that hot-blooded?”

“You always have been,” she said directly.

“Ugh... But at least tell me that you lost control of your clone in the Forest Plane.”

“She means you no harm. Telling you would only make you want to stay.”

“Alright, whatever!” Richard waved it off, “Anyway, I’m fighting them back, so go work on your analysis. Right, they also had a strange type of energy wave that could detect living things. I’ve already figured out how to work around it, so here you go. I’ll be leaving.”

Transmitting the information he had, Richard jumped onto a messenger and took off. As the Land of Turmoil shrank in his vision, the broodmother’s voice suddenly rang out in his mind, “Thank you, Master.”

He laughed out loud, “Why? I’m not fighting for you... Well, not only for you, anyway.”

He then sat down to meditate during the return, planning the upcoming bloodbaths. Growing hyper-focused in an instant, he missed the soft whisper that came in response, “That’s enough.”

......

Back in the Iron Triangle Empire, Salwyn was busy rearranging the imperial armies. It had already been proved that even the first infantry would be killed in battle against the reapers, with only the elites of the Crimson Empire who averaged level 10 standing a chance, so he was picking out his best troops to form a new division.

As he was reviewing the new framework of his army, an elite shadowspear knight entered his study, “His Majesty wishes to speak to you.”

Salwyn nodded, following the shadowspear to the command centre where a few mages were already adjusting the map according to instructions. The new map centred around Bluewater Oasis, with three lines of defence on the outside. With Richard’s adjustments, the outermost line had shrunk significantly from before.

“Why are we shrinking the lines!” his expression immediately soured. If this was the new defence plan, tens of cities and hundreds of thousands of citizens would be given up.

Richard’s voice sounded from the shadowspear’s mouth, “Because we cannot defend the original at all. Both of the outer lines will fall in days, we will only be able to hold back against the reapers in the innermost regions.”

“BUT WE’RE GIVING UP A HUNDRED THOUSAND CITIZENS!” Salwyn smashed the table.

“I know, but they will perish regardless. If we try to hold that line, more who could have lived will die to our stubbornness.”

“But—”

“I’m giving you an order, not asking for your opinion. If you have any problems, I’ll look for someone else.”

Salwyn couldn’t rebut, but the weight of another hundred thousand citizens pressed hard on his chest. He growled like a beast, but Richard reacted coldly, “You only have yourself to blame. If you were stronger, if the lines had a chance to hold, you could have saved more people.”

The Emperor went down to his knees, hot tears dripping from his chin. However, it took mere minutes for him to stand back up with renewed determination, pulling a bottle of hard liquor from the shelves and gulping it all down. Face flushing red, he ordered his subordinates to bring him a physical map.

That afternoon, he finished a workload that would normally take him days before falling asleep from sheer exhaustion.