Gentleman's Wars: The Rules of Engagement: A Tower Defense LitRPG Series (The Great Game Book 1)

by Andrew Karevik

  Once the Barrier Golems were demolished, Gorn turned its energies towards the Siege Golems. I switched the elemental cannon out to electricity and hoped for the best. Unfortunately, the Sniper mode was not meant for such a big enemy. The first shot barely took 5% off of the target’s health. I rapidly ordered the Gorn to switch modes back to Barrage, but that would take a minute. A small eternity in active combat time.

  With the path wide open, the Siege Golems marched forward. I tried to order my Karracks to move back into position, but when blocked by a unit, a Siege Golem would swing its mighty arms forward, crushing the Karracks to smithereens. One by one, the Siege Golems were able to bypass my defenses and move in such a way as to avoid getting hit by the Phlogiston Cannons too. One was able to destroy the Karrack Tower I had repaired and then, without any ceremony, all six exited the map.

  “Not bad,” I said. “You managed to get some Siege Golems through.”

  The rest of the wave arrived after that. It was a mass of Vulture Golems again. Thankfully, my Karracks were in a good position at this point. A few Vultures went down, but the rest passed through, easily enough. The wave ended. Only forty left total.

  “So…” I said as the round gave me time to make preparations. I mostly just moved my golems back into the wedge position. I will say one thing, when any unit other than a Stone Golem arrived, my own Stone Golems were useless. I had to figure out some way to improve them. “How much blood do you have left?”

  There was silence. A deep, unnerving silence that gave me enough pause to deactivate the Grid. Lady Efera’s face was pale, and she stood, wringing her hands. “They took the Manor…” she whispered. “It’s gone.”

  “Aren’t you required to surrender your starmetal then?” I asked. Of course! I didn’t have to beat her; I just had to outlast her until her united enemies took her status away.

  “I have 24 hours to do so, yes,” she whispered. “And the Efera name dies. Gone in an instant. Everything I’ve worked so hard to build. My family will be required to change their last names. The estate will perish.”

  I opened my mouth to ask if she expected pity from me, but something held me back. The look on her face was like seeing that of a corpse. She merely turned around and walked off the road, trudging down the hill towards an open field.

  “Uhhh, can we get a time out?” I asked the Judge who was watching with interest. He looked at me and nodded.

  “Very well. A fifteen minute time out. If neither participant returns to the battle zone within then, the fight will be considered a draw and you will be penalized one rank for wasting my time,” he said.

  “Sir, what is happening?” Sigmund asked as he approached me. He had been watching the battle from the sidelines, taking notes about my movements as I had requested. I wanted to know if he had any observations on how I strategized during the fight.

  “I don’t know. But…I think Efera’s about to snap,” I said, pointing to her as she walked across the field. There was nowhere for her to go. Nothing for miles upon miles in that direction.

  “Excellent! You drove her to madness with your defense. Let’s get lunch,” Sigmund replied.

  “Hang on,” I said. “Let me go talk to her. I might have an idea…”

  Chapter 44

  The wind blew gently as I trotted after the wandering woman. The sun still hadn’t risen above the clouds yet, making a cool day just a bit colder than usual.

  “Wait up,” I said, catching up to the woman. She ignored me and kept walking forward. I noticed that she had something in her right hand.

  “I said wait!” I repeated, putting my hand on her shoulder and stopping her in place. Lady Efera slowly turned towards me, revealing red eyes that had been crying. In her hand was a knife, I realized.

  “What do you want? In a minute, I won’t be a problem for you anymore,” she murmured.

  A chill ran down my spine. Suicide wasn’t a particularly popular custom among nobles, especially since war was a thing of the past…but it did happen. If a member of the nobility truly messed up or shamed their family, taking the “quiet way out” was seen as a way to stop any further embarrassment on behalf of the noble line. This was a very old-school way of looking at things. One that I thought had died along with slavery.

  “Lady Efera—”

  “My name is Juliet!” she said, interrupting me in a burst of exasperation. “Juliet Efera, okay? Not Lady! Not the Crystal Bitch! Just Juliet. And unless you’re going to marry me this instant, go away. Let me die in peace.”

  “There are other ways to solve your problems,” I said. “I know it’s none of my business, but I can’t help but feel…like you’re making a big mistake if you just walk out of life now.”

  “Tell me, Richard? What do I have? Hmmm?” she unclasped her starmetal necklace and held it up, shoving it in my face. “This amulet was passed down by my ancestors to every single firstborn member of our household. Eight Eferas in total, a long, uninterrupted lineage of tacticians, fighters and problem-solvers. My father was the one to screw it all up, to push too aggressively into other territories. And when he died from all the stress it was causing him, he left me this!”

  The amulet glistened with a green light, shining despite there was no daylight directly touching it. “When my family story is told, it won’t be my father who was to blame for the end of our noble lineage. It’ll be me. A stupid woman who tried her damndest to control the wildfire she had inherited. I’m truly sorry that you were in my crosshairs for a time, Richard. Your estate would have solved a serious problem for me and that Fire Spice mine would have made all my issues go away. But now you win. Okay? You get to walk away without having lost anything, not even that stupid Treasure Golem you probably begged to borrow from some noble. Just leave me alone. Please.”

  It would be easy to walk away here, but I found myself pitying the woman. No, not pity. Empathy, perhaps? She had inherited a hard situation and was just trying to get control of it. Behind the moniker, her eccentricities, she was just a fractured woman trying to keep a sinking ship above water just a little longer. The Gentleman’s War might not involve direct violence anymore, but it had just claimed a very real life. Could I just walk away and leave her to kill herself? Did she truly deserve such a terrible fate? For not only would she die, but so would her legacy and her family.

  A cruel voice told me she deserved it for attacking me. For invading me. But…she had tried to be fair with me before, even going as far as to warn me ahead of time. Was that a way for her to assuage her guilt for attacking me?

  I found myself staying. Juliet was a complicated woman and I certainly had no plans to marry her…but perhaps there was another way. “You have twenty four hours?” I asked, quickly doing the math in my head.

  “Yes,” she replied. She looked at me with slight suspicion. “Time enough to get to an altar, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “I have a proposal for you, Juliet,” I said. “One you might not like. But…it’ll let you stay in the game.”

  Juliet brushed her hair back and straightened herself out. “What do you propose? I will do whatever it takes to keep this amulet. To keep my family legacy alive.”

  “I’m not interested in marrying you. And I have no one eligible in my own family to pair you to, but…well, and it’s just an idea—”

  “Just get to the point,” she said. “I don’t have all day.”

  “My niece just married into the Frankinsons family. We’re allied now. The patriarch of the family, Eustace, is single.”

  Juliet looked at me blankly. “Eustace Frankinson, isn’t he dead by now?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “Luckily. And I doubt he’d object to marrying again. Man is a lonely, miserable old son of a bitch who never seems to be happy.”

  Juliet took a slight step back and considered the proposition. I could see the arguments for and against this idea running through her head at lightning speed. “Why would you do t
his?” she asked. ”I have nothing to bring, really.”

  “You have a claim to all those territories you just lost, don’t you? So when it comes time for us to begin expanding, we’ll have a rightful territory to invade. It won’t cause a scandal if we’re just trying to take back what’s rightfully ours,” I said.

  Those words didn’t seem to convince. “That might be the tactical thing, but I think you’re just pitying me. Offering me this out of your own sense of guilt.”

  “Are you in a position to reject any pity you get?” I asked, extending my hand towards the knife. She looked at the blade for a moment, then at me.

  “I marry Eustace and live to fight another day. I’ll transfer whatever resources I have left to his house and then what?”

  “You start to rebuild,” I said. “That’s all you can do. But you are indebted to me for this kindness. I don’t intend to demand anything of you other than loyalty. Understood?”

  Juliet Efera looked at me and smiled a little. “You are kind, Richard. Too kind. A good trait required to be a friend, but a miserable trait when you want to become a Gentleman. Other people will not treat you as kindly as you treat them. You’re better off crushing your enemies than converting them.”

  “Is that the wisdom that landed you here, knife in hand?” I asked. “I don’t believe in crushing your enemies, Juliet. I believe that with a little bit of wisdom, empathy and compassion you can get them to see things your way.”

  “And if they won’t?”

  I smiled at her. “Then I’ll create a large enough wall for them to bash their heads against until they get tired enough to convert. Simple as that.”

  Epilogue

  I sat on the balcony, legs hanging off the side, staring out at the night sky. I tried not to shift too much because Lily, having enjoyed a bit too much of the wedding festivities, had passed out on my shoulder, gently slumbering. I found her to be a little more clingy as of late, seldom wanting to leave my side. It would seem that her exciting adventure and brush with danger had left her to prioritize what she found important. And it would seem my company was what she saw as most important. I wasn’t about to rush into anything with the gentle maid, for there were many political things to consider, but for now, it was just nice to be getting closer to her. We had been sitting on the balcony for some time, drinking wine and talking about the future. At least, until she decided to use my shoulder for a pillow.

  I reflected on how far I had come in such a short amount of time. My ascendance to status as a Gentleman of the House might have been marred with tragedy, the loss of my brother, uncle and cousins. It had been a rough road to become stable, what with the constant invasions, risky gambles and scramble to gain the proper resources. But now…now things were finally calming down. With barely anything, I had managed to cobble together a proper defense, strong enough to keep even the most desperate and determined enemy away from my lands. In doing so, I had turned two of my enemies into newfound family members, strengthening our household as a whole and building up a powerful new alliance.

  The marriage ceremony for Eustace and Juliet might have taken all but ten minutes to conduct, but the celebration was a week long. Eustace was delighted to have Juliet join him in matrimony, if not for any other reason than so he could have someone to tell his war stories to. He was surprisingly agreeable to this idea, a fact that had baffled me greatly. I had thought it would take some great amount of convincing, but he was more than happy to comply once I explained the nature of the marriage.

  As I sat and reflected on this, the familiar sound of a cane caused me to turn my head, carefully as not to disturb Miss Lily from her slumber.

  “Ah! I was just thinking of you,” I said, waving for Eustace to come sit with me.

  “Oh yeah? What about?” he asked as he walked beside me. He didn’t sit but leaned against the railing, looking out at the night sky.

  “Just curious why you married her so quickly. You seem like the type to argue about everything and anything.”

  “Hahaha, you’ve got that right. My old wife, my one true love, once said that if grumbling and arguing replaced the golems in the Great Game, I’d rule the continent by lunchtime,” he said. His face darkened a little. “But in truth…well…I’ve nothing left to do in this world. Your niece has shoved me out of the way and my grandson has found a spine of his own, either that or he’s borrowing hers. They handle everything now. I just shuffle around most days. If you say marrying a complete stranger will not only save her from destruction, but strengthen our house, so be it. I’m not a foolish man. I’ll not pretend we’re together for any other reasons than pure politics. But…I must admit, I find the idea of helping her retake her land far more exciting than anything else. I feel like I have something to contribute towards now. Before, I felt like no one needed me.” He paused. “Actually, I’ve felt that way for a long time, Richard. It’s why I invaded you. I just wanted to cause some trouble. To do something. And now…well, the lovely Juliet needs to raise some hell. To help her take back what’s hers. And that’s enough for me to be happy.”

  “I’m glad it’s working out,” I replied. “I’m surprised you both seem to get along as well as you do.”

  “I must ask…are you with us?” he quietly said, turning to fully face me. “And by that, I mean, are you willing to support our efforts in retaking her land? It’ll take some time to determine which claims are lawfully hers, but I’m confident we have casus belli for invading at least her old crystal mine.”

  Casus belli was a fancy way of saying that one could declare war on another house without pissing off the rest of the nobility. No one likes a warmonger, conquering and stealing territory for no real reason, but having a just cause helped prevent diplomatic incidents. You couldn’t be condemned for trying to take back what is rightfully yours.

  “When the time is right,” I said. “But first I must continue bolstering my own defenses. And I have other matters to focus on as well, before I begin thinking of a bigger picture strategy.”

  “Ah yes,” the old man said. “The assassinations. Thing is…in my discussions with Juliet, I learned something that would be of great interest to you about the matter.”

  My heart stopped for a moment. “What? What was it?”

  “Now, now, we’re family, Richard. And family helps one another out, right? You get my wife’s crystal mine back and I will make it well worth your while. I can promise you that much,” Eustace replied. “After all, what is family for?”