An interesting strategy. Very interesting. “So I know this sounds stupid to say out loud but…what’s a wall, exactly?” I asked.
To his credit, my tutor didn’t bat an eye at the question. “If you check the Grid overview of your map, you should see an area where you can build roads, lay down rail tracks, build ports, etc. In that area, you can also create stretches of designated walls. They aren’t terribly cheap, but they essentially allow you to box in territories and create buffers. Bypassing a wall always requires the section to be destroyed, so you can whittle an enemy force down by walling off your entire realm, then wall off each individual territory. An enemy invading for the first time would have to pass two buffers and then the targeted land of their choosing.”
The dowry the elves provided, combined with the mustering resources I had raised would hopefully be enough to build up a wall around all my territories. While we were doing well on silver, mana was still a problem. “Go call the Magistrate, would you?” I asked. “I need to find a potential ally that controls a great deal of mana crystals.”
Joeth nodded. “Take the day to rest. Doctor’s orders. You can figure out alliance stuff later. I’ll start pulling map designs for you to study so you can build a proper wall defense.”
I lay back down, fully reclining in my bed. Rest didn’t sound half bad, especially since my brain felt as if it were on fire. The Erudite finished his apple rather noisily, then took his leave, slamming the door shut behind him, causing me to wince.
As I let my eyes begin to droop downwards, there came a faint knock on the door. I didn’t respond right away, but that didn’t stop the door from slowly opening. Lily poked her head in to see if I was awake.
“Sorry to disturb you,” she said once I spied her. Before she could close the door however, I motioned for her to stop.
“Please, come in, Miss Lily. I know you have something to say.” Dread crept up in my stomach as she entered. She knew. She absolutely, one-hundred percent knew of my situation. I could read it on her face almost instantly. Well, now was as good of a time as any to bring it up. “So…I had an eventful visit with the Kinteli clan,” I said.
“Indeed. You bringing home three wives and an army of in-laws is hard not to notice,” Lily said, sitting on the chair across from me. She smoothed her apron out and sat up. Her breathing was shallow. She was nervous. “Sigmund took the liberty of explaining the situation to me.”
“He did?” Oh Stars, what did that damn meddler do? I could kill him for interfering.
“Yes. And I think, quite honestly, that you’re an incredible person for doing this. Helping save an entire race? It’s…it’s so unbelievably noble. I know a lot of cynics would scoff and say that any man would help himself to as many wives as would have him, but I know you, Richard. You’re not a skirt chaser.” She paused and blushed. “I know cause you’re too scared to chase this particular skirt.”
“Er…I…I mean…”
Lily gently put a hand on mine, squeezing it tightly. “In another life, it would have worked out between us. I’m sure of it. Sigmund tried to explain that you’re still technically available, but come on, let’s not fool ourselves. You chose to put the needs of others above your own desires. And so will I. This place is my home, and you are all my family here. If you have brought these women into your life, then I want to help as best I can. I’ve already put the servants to work learning elven, sent out for some books that should make it easier to converse with them…” she paused for a moment and merely looked at the ground.
I didn’t know what to say. There was disappointment on her face. Pain at having to look at reality square in the eye and not shy away from it. But she was far more willing to face the truth than I had been. “I’m sorry it ended up this way,” I whispered, squeezing her hand.
“Don’t be. Everyone wins this way. Truly. Because I serve not just you, but this House. And we need the Kintelis. You need relatives that you can use to build up alliances. Personally, we both suffer a little loss, but…we’re still friends. And that’s never going to change. So, you serve your wives as they need, I’ll serve you as you need, and together, we’ll all overcome these trying times together,” she said. Her words did not match her tone. But she said them all the same, because in the end, she had to say them to keep sane.
Part of me wanted to tell her to wait. That I’d figure some clever way out of all this…but that was foolishness. If she was willing to grin and bear it, I couldn’t torture her by promising false hope. “You’re a good woman, Lily. And I hope you find someone worthy of your caliber. If not, Joeth will be single forever so you can fall back on him.”
This caused her to laugh. “I’d sooner join a convent. He is a very strange man with little respect for anyone.”
“But he is brilliant, so there’s that,” I said. I let out a deep sigh, one mixed with equal parts sorrow and relief. It felt good to clear the air. Though, in truth, it spoke more of Lily’s character than mine. Why was I so incapable of facing such things head on? I was supposed to be the Gentleman of the House, the lord and law of the manor, but…I was so timid that I chose to hide in my studies, rather than deal with what was in front of me. I couldn’t live like that any longer. Even in ending whatever potential spark we had, Lily had the strength and grace to inspire me to be a better man. Maybe with a friend like that, it didn’t matter who I was married to.
“Thank you, Lily,” I said, squeezing her hand once more before releasing it. I sat up and coughed a little, feeling a sharp pain in my stomach as the Study Brew informed me it was time to make a most wretched exit. “We have work to do. First and foremost, I’m going to need you to send a buyer to the city of Ellery.”
“Ellery, sir?”
“Yes, there’s a shop there run by an astronomer who dabbles in linguistics. He makes language charms. Normally such charms are too expensive, even by a noble’s standards, but I happen to know the man needs glass lenses of a certain quality. He should be willing to trade for what we have sitting around storage somewhere. That should solve my communication issues with my new family.”
“Wonderful! I’ll see to it at once.”
“And second, I want one of those autocarriages sold off to the highest bidder. We’ll need the funds to protect our land,” I ordered. “And third, I’ll need a letter sent out to all allies currently. It’s high time I inform them of my designs.”
Lily bowed and quickly left me to my thoughts. A lot of questions were swirling around in my head, but I was feeling a bit better. The future wasn’t something I could ever truly avoid, so the best option was to just face it head on and hope for the best.
Chapter 22
Despite the sheer amount of events that had gone by, it had only been four days since the Baron had visited my property. We still had ten days left to prepare for the invasion. I could not afford to waste any time, so I began to immediately divide my set of tasks to the staff.
My Magistrate was ordered to begin searching for a weak link in the enemy composition. For every alliance, there was always someone looking to make a change. We just needed to find a family who was unsecured and unmarried, allowing for them to join our side. Such an accomplishment would be difficult, but even if we could find some way to cause strife between my enemy’s alliances, it would help slow down the tide coming my way.
My own allies were alerted to the danger I was now facing. Hopefully, they would respond favorably to my letters and arrive to hold a meeting. While I had already utilized the mustering capabilities of my newfound relationship with the Kintelis, I still wanted them to be on the same page. For my goal wasn’t just to react to this threat only once. Rather, I wanted to construct a wall around all allied territories, putting everyone underneath my own banner of protection.
Such a move would allow me several advantages. First and foremost, none of my allies would begrudge me for mustering from time to time, since their own properties wouldn’t be touched unless the ene
my got past my wall defenses. Second, if I was building a wall for everyone, it might convince both Esha and Nelson to invest more money in the actual wall fund, allowing me to build with better material.
The most basic material for a wall was composed of stone and cost exactly 100 silver per mile. All three properties together would cost me around ten thousand silver, as our collected properties were about 90 miles total. Building second walls around each property was far cheaper since most lots required about 5 miles worth of wall in order to secure.
It was funny, in a way. From the main overview, my properties seemed so expansive, but when calculating the cost of walling each lot, it turned out they were small compared to the rest of the world. But even with such a small amount to cover, there were high costs to incur. The basic stone wall wasn’t particularly bank-breaking, sure, but I’d seen poorly directed golems accidentally walk through regular stone walls without any real effort. In the case of facing an army, a stone wall would do nothing other than simply delay the enemy from advancing.
The real value was in the second tier walls. Twice as expensive, the Mana-treated Stone walls—known as Manastone—were magically reinforced by powerful alchemists who had learned how to distill mana crystals into a liquid form. When layers of the liquid were applied to regular stone substance, the material would become extremely hard and twice as dense. All golems were constructed from basic Manastone, giving them their immense strength and power. While there were better options to defend the wall, Manastone would at least ensure the enemy couldn’t just walk through at a sustained pace. With a proper amount of thickness, they’d have to go all out to break through.
But I could not afford to pay double out of my own pocket. The autocarriage wouldn’t pay for that kind of material. And I couldn’t blow my entire budget on just the wall, because I would also need defenses to protect the asset. A wall alone was just an obstacle. Without a defensive force to keep the area safe and secure, it would be a futile exercise to even keep the wall up.
While I worked on the wall, Sigmund was busy taking account of the new relatives we had in the house. Every elf was to be educated in Velecian, trained in a job or trade and assigned their own quarters. There had been somewhat of an uproar when Sigmund placed the menfolk in the same classroom as the women, which was apparently a major faux pas in elven culture. Elven men were restricted from learning trades other than farming and hunting, and the very idea of them being formally educated, alongside women as equals, was quite scandalous.
On one hand, I wanted to respect the elven custom. On the other hand, I could not just marry off some of these men to noble class women without the ability to read, write and speak in the common tongue. We couldn’t afford to put translation bracelets on everyone, so in a rather harsh move, I ordered the education to continue as is. Everyone would learn together, like it or not. If a weak link was found in an enemy alliance, I’d need to marry off one of these men in order to cement an ironclad relationship with the disloyal party.
The Baron was a powerful man with a very powerful family. He had the luxury of choice when it came to permanent alliances. That luxury meant that only those who earned his favor would gain the right to enter into his family and gain the benefits therein. His power meant that he had the ability to keep his other allies in line without needing to cement a permanent alliance with them. This gave him a tremendous amount of flexibility and power. If he could remove his hand of protection from, say, a lowly gentry, then that gentry would be vulnerable and weak. This meant that his lesser allies would be dependent upon him and perhaps even subservient, all without permanent alliances.
The inverse applied to my situation. I was small and weak, unable to attract strong allies with either power or influence. An unsecured ally could easily overtake me at the opportune time and the rules of the Great Game were not adverse to trickery or treachery. Only one law barred people from fighting one another: Blood may not fight blood. Whether by birth or marriage, the Crown did not tolerate families attempting to invade one another. The worst a family member could do in a time of crisis was to abandon their post, and even that didn’t cause any real harm as the Gridmaster still had access to all units and resources.
So it was in my best interest to secure allies through marriage at the beginning. Perhaps once I was powerful and influential, I’d be able to choose which of my allies entered my family, but for now, marriage was a form of self-defense and a guarantee that my new comrades-in-arms were actually on my side. Otherwise I’d be vulnerable to one hell of a betrayal.
Last on my big list of things to do was figuring out how to secure more Mana Crystals. Indeed, this was no small task, for Mana Crystals were hard to come by and the famed “Crystal Bitch”, Juliet Efera, had been my only source of those powerful resources. Now that the Baron had pushed Juliet out of her land, he now commanded the only major source of crystals in the region. Well, okay, he only controlled the major source that I knew about. There were probably other crystal mines elsewhere, but such secrets were carefully concealed by the controlling families. I certainly wouldn’t advertise my reservoir of Fire Spice like Juliet did. Oh well…
Wait a second…I frowned as I reviewed that passing thought. Juliet had crystal mines, and lots of them for sure, but mines only produced the crystals. They needed to be stored somewhere, right? Would Juliet have placed them all in one area? Or would she be savvy enough to put some away for a rainy day somewhere? While she was certainly aggressive, the woman wasn’t an idiot. If she secured some crystals, I could dig them up and use them for our defense. But what were the chances? Hard to tell with a woman like Juliet.
Still, I didn’t really have any other leads so far. Any feelers I had put out to the other gentries in the area had brought back nothing. And I mean nothing. No letters back, no invitations to visit or offers for trade. While the Northern Tip wasn’t completely devoid of action, it was certainly a sleeping region. Most folks were probably waiting to see if I would be squashed like a bug by some greater power before throwing in their lot with me. Prudent for them, bad for me.
Even if the crystals were secured under the Baron’s new rule, there might be some way I could abscond with them. Juliet would know the territory well and perhaps even provide me with some security flaws the Baron might overlook. He had captured a great deal of territory and certainly didn’t have the time to secure and revamp everything to his liking. Not when he had more important matters to handle, like securing the territory for good.
“A crystal heist…” I mumbled, tapping on the table with my pen. Now that was an idea. Theft from an enemy force wasn’t really theft, it was subterfuge. Warfare. Sabotage of the highest form, for by taking resources from the enemy, I was ensuring they couldn’t be used against me. But while this made sense, was it allowed by the rules?
The laws of “gentlemanly conduct” as they were commonly called were located in the last few volumes of the rule set. Once my instructor had gotten an understanding of how good I was at skimming topics, he removed all volumes that covered non-Grid related topics. “Until you understand the game, you can’t read these,” he had said, waving the books in my vision before stuffing them in a large metal box full of complex locks.
“You don’t trust me with the information?” I had asked.
“No, you might realize some clever ways to avoid fighting in Grid battles through political means,” he had replied, scowling at me. “And that’s the worst thing a man at your rank can do. You need fights to gain experience and increase in your ranking level. Politics are for Lords, bucko.”
I had tried to persist and make the case for a comprehensive study, but it was no use. Joeth knew much more than me about this subject and while I tried to get away with what I could, ultimately it was his call. He had already aided me immensely thus far; there was no reason to doubt him. Still, that meant until I was able to read those conduct books, I’d have to rely on his yes or no in order to learn what I was legally able to
do. Hopefully he wouldn’t fuss much about a little bit of property reappropriation.
As I began to prepare my speech to give to my allies, there came a knock on the door, ginger and almost afraid. I had, for a brief second, hoped that it was Joeth, but his knocks were usually loud, frantic and annoying. If it was the off-chance that he actually felt like knocking, that is.
“Come in,” I said, looking up, wondering who it could be at such a late hour. It was well past midnight and just about everyone was busy with some activity or another.
The door slowly creaked open, revealing a slender, light brown face, staring at me. It was one of my wives, the one who seemed to be of a different descent than the others in the Kinteli clan. Immediately I felt my heart jump up into my throat at the sight of her. None of the other elven women had approached me yet and I was certainly happy to let them keep their space. But it seemed now that was over with.
She was smiling a little nervously as I waved her in, gingerly stepping past the door, clutching it for support as she entered. I felt bad not even knowing her name and even worse about never having introduced myself to her. The elven maiden was wearing a pink silk nightgown, one that did a poor job of covering her body, coming down just a few inches below her waist. Though I suppose that was the point of such a piece of night clothing.
She was barefoot, tenderly walking across the room, hands clasped together so tightly I could see her knuckles were whitened from the force. “I must speak to you, Landon,” she whispered.
“You speak Velecian?” I asked. Immediately, her long pointed ears twitched, and she motioned for me to lower my voice.
“Please, beloved, do not be so loud,” she said, slowly walking towards the desk where I sat. At first, I thought she was going to sit across from me, but instead she merely knelt down on the ground beside my chair and draped herself across my legs, nestling her head right into my lap. She felt warm and soft. I could feel her heartbeat, hammering just as hard as my own. “I am breaking many traditions by being here.”
Gentleman's Wars 2: A Tower Defense LitRPG Series Page 13