by Virlyce
But it probably is easier to collect heads myself…. Do I go against all my principles and commit murder for Durandal’s sake? I’m a good, moral, upright person! I can’t do that. Oh! What if I beat the enemies to near death and then have my minions harvest their heads? That way, I won’t be responsible for killing them. At most, I’d be an accessory to murder, and that’s totally morally okay. And since I gave all my minions earth-realm-ranked swords, they all pledged to do whatever I say. There shouldn’t be any issues at all. It’s settled then! My genius shines through once again.
Wait a minute…. I could get even more merits if I did both! I’ll beat up enemies and rob my allies! Wow, I knew I was a genius, but this necklace of intelligence makes me a super-duper even smarter genius with better ideas! Collecting five thousand earth-realm experts’ heads will be a cinch. Hmm? Five sky-realm experts’ heads? Not happening! If four people as scary as the crown prince are going to show up along with the rest of the sky-realm experts, then I’ll die. And I don’t want to die, so I won’t do anything to provoke them. Durandal might call me a coward for picking on those weaker than me, but he’s not here to judge me, so it doesn’t matter. Besides, I’m doing this for him. If he complains about the method I used to stick him in a sky-realm-ranked sword, I’m sincerely going to go on a quest to find sky-realm-ranked panties.
Alright, first things first, we have to settle down in the barracks that were assigned to us. The army camp is nothing like the one back when I was a punching bag for the Ravenwood army. Instead of a dreary place with rotted wooden planks and straw roofs, this training ground is a lot more natural. And, by that, I mean our barracks is a hole in the ground. …Again. What’s with cultivators and their obsession with living like moles!? It’s a good thing I stole so many buildings from those sects. Sheesh. These caves don’t even keep rainwater from soaking into the ground and creeping up on their inhabitants’ butts when they meditate. How are cultivators going to be immortal if they catch a cold?
Anyways, we have a week of rest before we’re required to join the battlefield. I don’t know why the crown prince thinks we’re tired, but he ordered us to standby at the base, and no matter what, we shouldn’t approach the warzone until a week is up. But I don’t want to wait a week before I can acquire merits! That’s why I’m going to place this mansion down by the entrance to the camp, right by this watchtower. As soon as the watchtower signals someone is coming, I’ll go outside and rob them! The crown prince said we’re not allowed to fight in the camp unless it’s at the arena of grudges, so I have to leave the camp first. I’m following the rules like an obedient soldier! Military discipline is very important, mhm. If a soldier doesn’t obey orders, then the whole structure will collapse and the soldier will be whipped a hundred times with barbed leather. At least, that’s how it was back in the Ravenwood army. I don’t care if this army’s structure collapses, but I don’t want to be whipped again!
“She’s not listening.”
Who’s not listening? Wait, who said that? Ilya?
“…When did she stop listening?” Softie asked. They were both following me around as I set down my furniture in the mansion. I don’t have much, just a bed and lots of pillows. But the pillows have to be arranged in a certain way under the blanket to make it seem like Durandal’s waiting for me.
“She never stopped listening,” Ilya said. “After all, you can’t stop what you never started.”
“Lucia? Hello?” Softie’s fingers crept close to tug on my sleeve. She does that a lot to get my attention. I’m not sure why.
“Hmm? What’s up?”
Softie lowered her head and looked up at me through her eyelashes. She’s so frail and soft-looking! I’m jealous. Even her voice sounded like a helpless maiden that you just wanted to protect from everything. If I swapped vocal cords with her, would I have her voice? Hmm. “What do you think about what I said earlier? About the formation we should employ.”
“The what we should what?” Employ a who? I’m not hiring anyone. “Explain from the top.”
Softie nodded. If she were like Ilya, she would’ve sighed and hung her head, but Softie’s a lot more patient. “The battlefield is going to be hectic, with thousands of people on the field at the same time. We—”
“Halt! Who goes there?”
Softie’s brow wrinkled. “Maybe we should relocate the mansion to some place less noisy. How about—”
And once again, she was cut off by the shouts coming from outside the open window. “This is Captain Smoke. We’ve finished the patrol. Requesting permission to enter.”
That’s my signal!
“L-Lucia!? Where are you—”
I didn’t get to hear the rest of Softie’s question because the wind rushing past my ears drowned out her voice. She should really learn how to speak louder. Anyways, there’s this giant defensive formation surrounding the camp that kind of looks like a fence made of light. Softie told me people could leave the camp without an issue, but they’d be attacked by the formation if they tried to enter without permission. Before this formation goes down, I have to seize Captain Smoke’s merits! They’re much more useful in my hands; thus, it’s totally okay for me to take them from him. But first, I have to make sure I can take him on in a fight! …My tail’s nice and springy, perfect. And since I shouldn’t hurt my allies, I’ll use my non-lethal technique! “Heart Devil Apparition!”
This defensive formation tickles! It makes me want to scratch my ears when I pass through. Mm. Anyways, there’s a big group of people waiting outside standing in neat rows. And my heart devil predator, who I named Fluffles, grew in size and swallowed them all in one bite. A few chewing sounds accompanied by screams later, Fluffles disappeared and left behind a bunch of shivering and sobbing men. They didn’t even notice me when I took their stuff, and … there’s no heads. Why aren’t there any heads in any of the rings? “Hey, Captain Smokey?”
“Gah!!!”
…Mm. Well, at least I planted a few heart devils. And I got some underwear! I wonder if that succubus sect will pay more if they’re soiled. “Lucia Fluffytail, requesting permission to enter the camp!”
***
I wanted to discuss squad formations with Lucia, but she jumped out the window and ran off somewhere…. Did I say something wrong? “Ilya? What was that about?”
“She probably smelled something nice and wanted to eat it,” Ilya said and shrugged as she sat on Lucia’s bed. I want to defend Lucia, but ... there’s a high chance Ilya’s right. “Anyway, you won’t get anywhere discussing battle formations with Lucia. She does her own thing, and I wouldn’t trust her to be a competent commander. Imagine she runs off in the middle of a battle because someone shot her in the heart again. Then what do we do?” Ilya snorted and rolled her eyes. Then she held out her hand towards me as if she were expecting me to hand something over. “Let me see what you’ve come up with.”
My grandfather gave me these formations before we left, saying they were the special formations of our Shadow Devil Sect that would allow us to defend ourselves from an earth-realm expert with a group of a hundred saint-realm disciples. But the gulf between the earth realm and the saint realm is really too vast to fill up with only a hundred saint-realm experts. The formations only exist to buy time for Lucia to save us. There’s also a formation that allows us to share qi amongst each other through heart devil worms. Ilya doesn’t cultivate like a normal person though…. I suppose it couldn’t hurt to let her take a look at the formations; after all, she is my grandmother’s personal disciple.
Ilya took the jade slip out of my hand and squinted at it. A moment later, she nodded and passed it back to me. That was quick! I put the slip away and hesitated. It took me a day to digest everything inside that slip. Maybe Ilya didn’t understand? “You … absorbed all the information? Already?”
Ilya raised an eyebrow. “Hmm? What do you mean? There were only ninety-nine formations, right? And most of them shared the same principles behind them. You coul
d probably merge around thirty of them with each other to reduce the number while increasing the effectiveness.”
…The difference between Lucia and Ilya is too great. Lucia suffers from a tremendous headache when she absorbs even the tiniest bit of information. Ilya can absorb a tremendous amount of information in an instant—no wonder why Lucia keeps Ilya by her side. As for me, I’m … just average. But forget my lack of ability for now! What did Ilya mean by these formations could be merged? “Our ancestors came up with these formations, and they’ve worked perfectly as they are. I don’t think we should merge them.”
Ilya rolled her eyes. “I mean no disrespect to your ancestors, but just because something’s working perfectly fine doesn’t mean it can’t be improved. A lot of people like to say, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. But that’s a problem. Where’s the need for innovation if everyone becomes complacent, content with what they have?”
“But our ancestors were wise!”
“So what, does that mean you’re dumb?” Ilya snorted. “You can’t improve on the works of someone who’s long dead? This is why you’ve been living in a literal hole in the ground for the majority of your life. Yeah, my ancestors had bows and arrows and those worked perfectly for capturing prey to eat and survive. But that doesn’t mean bows and arrows can’t be improved. Nowadays, we’ve taken those bows and arrows and infused them with magic. We can destroy a country with them by shooting lightning bolts from over a mile away.”
That’s…
“And all of you are like this. Every single person in this Immortal Continent thinks like you do. Why? I’ve overheard so many conversations between disciples where they’re hoping to discover the tomb of a long-dead super-strong expert so they can become exactly like them. I mean, really? Hello? The expert died without becoming an immortal and you want to follow his footsteps on the road to immortality? Isn’t that like asking a cow to teach you how to play the harp? What would a dead person know about living forever?”
But…
“I haven’t seen a single person here try to innovate for themselves. The alchemists in the sect follow recipes from ancient times that were so damn long ago that some of the ingredients have gone extinct! I looked through those martial techniques in the skill pavilion, and the person at the front desk told me the most popular technique originated ten thousand years ago from a sky-realm expert. Ten thousand years! Have only idiots been born in that time? How do you not improve a technique after ten thousand years? Hell, in the eighty years after the Godking’s death, magic’s advanced by huge leaps and bounds.”
Ilya’s so … forceful.
“Wait. Are you crying?” Ilya’s face froze. “I don’t think I said anything that’d make you cry…. Certainly, I didn’t say anything that I need to apologize for.”
“I-it’s not what you said. It, it’s the way you said it.” I thought I toughened up a bit after being with Lucia for so long, but I still get really nervous when I’m yelled at and the tears just come out by themselves. I can’t help it! I know Ilya wasn’t yelling at me, and she was just ranting, but … it’s scary.
Ilya sighed and took out a jade slip. She pressed it against her head before holding it towards me. “Here. I did some quick mental math and merged the formations. These formations should be around three times better than the previous ones, whether in power or efficiency. Take the squad and compare these formations to the previous ones, alright?”
That’s not something normal people can do in their heads! Mental math is like adding two and two, not creating new formations while calculating their efficiency! Ilya’s just as ridiculous as Lucia…. I wonder if she realizes it. But why would Ilya help me? I thought she hated me. “A-are you sure you want to give this to me?”
Ilya pressed the slip into my hands. “You think you’re the only one stuck in this battlefield? I’m going to do everything I can to improve my chances of survival and having allies with a better formation should help a lot. Ideally, I wouldn’t even have come here at all, but I have to follow Lucia since she’s my ticket home. So, look, I don’t care if you like Lucia in the way a woman likes a man or whatever. Just stop trying to get rid of me because I’m not going to leave. And if things ever escalate between you and Lucia, I’ll be sure to step out of the room and give you your privacy.”
W-what is she saying!? M-me and Lucia? Engaging in the activities of a woman and a man? “W-who’s the man!?” Wait! That’s not what I should be asking!
Ilya didn’t react to the obvious blush on my face. I think I could cook an egg if I pressed it against my cheek. “Wouldn’t it be Lucia? She’s not girly at all.”
“Who’s not girly at all!?” Lucia’s head poked in through the window. How, how long was she there? “Stay right there, Ilya!”
Ilya’s face paled and she tried to run away. I say tried because she wasn’t successful. “W-wait! Lucia! Stop! I just fixed my hair!”
***
A week passed by pretty quickly. I decided to cultivate the Heart Devil Cultivation Technique since I hadn’t done it in a while and I was bored. Because of that, I received a lot of compliments and words of praise from people inside of the army camp. When I cultivate, the skies turn black from all my heart devil wormies! I think I figured out why people lived in caves without doors. It’s for them to show off their techniques when they cultivate! Instead of these people surrounding the mansion and peeking through the window, if I cultivated in a cave with a large entrance, they would’ve been able to see me more clearly. I can’t believe all cultivators are so vain, gosh. Immortals should be more modest, like me.
Other than cultivating on the roof of the mansion, I robbed every single person that requested entry back into the camp. Sadly, I only found two earth-realm experts’ heads even though there were over hundreds of people. It turns out robbery is extremely rampant on both sides, and the people who were making their way back had had their merits plundered already. Ilya said it made sense since every cultivator was a greedy selfish bastard that didn’t care about their countries. Softie said that wasn’t the case, but Ilya shut her down through some arguments that I didn’t bother to remember. Besides, it doesn’t matter why people are being robbed; the only thing that matters is the fact that people are robbing my prey before I can!
But now, I’ll finally be able to rob them first! We’ve received our first mission: Retake eastern outpost number 33421. I don’t know where that is, but it doesn’t matter. The mission doesn’t have a time limit. I’m going straight to the heart of the battlefield to beat people up so my minions can harvest their heads! Wow, that sounds pretty brutal. But I’m not the one doing the killing, so my hands are clean. Mhm. Then, once I have all the heads required for a sky-realm-ranked sword, I’ll go capture that outpost and report back. I’ll redeem the heads, get my sword, plant Durandal in it, and then desert the army! Hmm. Should I desert the army? It’s punishable by death…, but at the same time, I don’t want to stay in the army forever. Eh? What was that, necklace of intelligence? I can just apply to leave? Genius! That works too. I’ll just quit when the time comes.
And now we’re traveling along the road, riding our carriage which is totally not a flying boat that’s on the ground. Flying isn’t allowed here, sincerely, sincerely not allowed. I tried going up because most rules don’t apply to me, but my tail stiffened and I had a really bad feeling that something terrible would happen if I flew a little higher. Some rules are meant to be followed, especially when they concern my well-being! All the other ones can usually be disregarded with enough strength. Mm. I love this Immortal Continent. As long as you’re strong, you can do anything you want. It also means people who are stronger than me can do anything they want to me, but I know how to avoid bullies like them.
“This isn’t the way to eastern outpost number 33421,” someone said from beside me. I’m cultivating on deck so people can see me more clearly to heap praises on me, but sometimes there are people like this person wearing green robes that try to tal
k to me instead of flattering me. Jeez, get with the program, Mr. Green Robe! Wait. Green robe?
“Uh, who are you?” The Shadow Devil Sect only wears black except for me; I wear pink and black. No one wears green! Our carriage has been infiltrated already? Or I’m in an illusion. Mm, nope. The necklace didn’t heat up or break. Maybe the illusion fools me into thinking I’m not in an illusion by not breaking the necklace? …I need a backup necklace to disillusion the illusion cast on my counter-illusion necklace. I’ll have Ilya make that one give me intelligence too. Then I’ll be doubly smart! Why didn’t I think of this earlier? Ooh, I could be triply smart! Or, or…, uh, fourtimely? I think it’s fourtimely. I’ll be fourtimely smart!
“I thought I introduced myself to you, Heart Devil Lucia. I’m the navigator that the crown prince sent to acquaint you with the battlefield.”
Mm? The crown prince put a chaperone on me? That’s…, does he not trust me? I’m totally trustworthy! I haven’t even done anything that’d make me suspicious yet! Why did he preemptively try to prevent me from straying off course? Hmm…. He must be a very cautious or paranoid person. That must be it. “Well. How do you know this isn’t the way to eastern outpost number 33412?”
“Eastern outpost 33421,” the person in green robes said while lowering his head. Was he trying to flatter me? He should’ve done this from the start instead of talking. Then I wouldn’t have to figure out an excuse to explain why we’re going the wrong way. “The direction is in the outpost’s name. We’re currently heading west.”
“No, we’re not. We’re heading east.” When in doubt, deny everything!
“The sun rises from the east and it is currently behind us. It would be ahead of us if we were traveling east.”