Art of War

by Triantafyllou, Petros

  Given that I wasn’t high, sleeping, or LARPing, I noted this circumstance to be unusual.

  I was ringed by hooded, wizard-looking figures. Etched into the floor between them and me was a geometric figure that glowed with a pale blue light. It faded as I watched.

  Either someone had decided to turn off the EL-wire, or it was magic fading away.

  Beyond the ring of hooded figures were dozens of armored soldiers and a handful of other people. The one who drew my attention immediately was, of course, the woman sitting on the throne.

  She was in the regalest garb I’d ever seen, highlighted by a ridiculous crown that covered the entire top of her head and proceeded a couple of feet upward. It looked like it weighed about thirty pounds. I pitied her poor neck.

  The woman on the throne raised her voice above the clamor that had erupted upon my arrival. “Silence!” Her voice struck the room like a hammer.

  Everyone got real quiet.

  When she seemed sure she had my attention, she spoke again.

  “Greetings, chosen hero. I am Queen Valerie of Generia. You have been summoned to our land in a time of great need.”

  I nodded amiably. This was exactly the kind of scenario I’d probably encounter if I experienced some kind of psychotic break.

  The queen continued. “For many years, our land has been besieged by the forces of the Demon King. Though the forces of good—humans, elves, and dwarves—banded together against this onslaught, we have been pushed back to our last bastion of hope. The city of Aegis, in which we stand.”

  Wow. This was an implausibly generic setup.

  The demon king’s name was the Demon King? Really?

  “The demon armies have nearly reached our city walls. Within one month, they will be upon us. Desperate for any solution, our wizards have divined an answer, a chosen hero, summoned from another world, with the strength and wisdom to lead us to victory over the demons.”

  I nodded once more. “And your wizards cast some sort of spell designed to summon the optimal hero for your situation?”

  She glanced at her wizards.

  One of them, a traditional grey-bearded man who seemed to be wearing a pointed hat under his hood, turned to the queen. “Erm, no, your grace. We, uh, left it to the, uh, prophecy to determine who would be best.”

  Meaning they summoned me at random.

  I barely managed to stop myself from face-palming.

  The queen seemed cheered by this, however. “Ah, yes. The power of prophecy has guided us all. Surely, this one is the hero who was promised, but I must ask you, hero, will you help us?”

  This is a terrible idea.

  They really should have summoned a mechanical engineer. The old “giving guns to the Romans” strategy is probably appropriate, but I have no idea how to implement that.

  I looked around the room awkwardly. Everyone was looking at me with hopeful stares: the soldiers, the few nobles, the bearded wizard, even the queen.

  “Of course, your grace. What sort of hero would refuse?”

  I’ll have to fall back on what I know.

  It wasn’t arrogance that led me to agree, nor any real belief that I could lead their armies to victory. It was, rather, that I doubted the confused-looking wizards surrounding me would be able to send me back home safely.

  Beating the demon army seemed like a better bet.

  “Thank you, hero.” There were many sighs of relief. “My kingdom’s resources are at your disposal while you prepare for your battle against the demon king.”

  “Wait, what?”

  Five minutes later, after vehemently clarifying that I had no intention of fighting any demon kings in personal combat...

  “To start with, I’m going to need a map of the area with troop positions and numbers. For our side, at least, though ideally for both. How strong are these demons individually?”

  “They vary significantly, but on average, about as strong as three of our soldiers.”

  “And I presume the demon king is stronger than an ordinary demon?”

  “Oh, yes. Thousands of times stronger. He has destroyed cities single-handedly.”

  Lovely.

  “I’ll need an idea of where he’s located and if he’s going to be leading his troops personally. Also, any sort of files you have on his generals, lieutenants, and other important forces.”

  The queen nodded. “Anything else?”

  “Several things. How do our numbers compare to theirs?”

  “We are outnumbered at least one hundred to one.”

  Even guns probably wouldn’t be enough of a force multiplier to handle that. Tanks and aircraft, maybe.

  Assuming bullets even work on demons.

  The queen gestured to a noble at her side. “Begin those preparations. Anything else?”

  “I’ll need information on demon strengths and weaknesses. In addition, I’ll need to know who our strongest troops are, as well as what other resources we have at our disposal. Magic, items, that sort of thing. Can you summon other people from my world?”

  The hat-and-cloak wizard answered me. “Nay, Lord Hero. It took months of saving our magical resources for a single summoning spell. We have very little left, and certainly not enough to summon a person.”

  I considered that. “What about an object?”

  “Something small.”

  “How small?”

  “About the size of a dagger.”

  I nodded. “How hard is it for you to teleport something that’s already here? Say, to transport someone or something directly into the midst of the enemy army?”

  A series of gasps erupted from the wizards around me. “Surely, you don’t intend to fight the entire enemy army from within!”

  I waved my hands. “Nothing like that. More like teleporting a small object. Would that be possible?”

  “With appropriate preparations, yes. We could send a person, a small object, or both.”

  Okay, a “vials of deadly pathogen” plan is potentially viable, presuming that demons are susceptible to diseases. I’ll need to find out more about their physiology, as well as local human culture, before I go to that kind of extreme. There’s too much of a risk that it would either fail or backfire to start with that route.

  If the morality of that approach bothered me, well, murdering an army was going to be bad regardless of how we did it. And there was no doubt that murder was the best strategy here. We could not possibly survive a straight fight with hundred-to-one odds.

  “I’m going to need a better understanding of your magic in general. Would it be possible to teach me the fundamentals within a few days?”

  “Perhaps, but if your soul is not properly attuned, you may not be able to cast powerful spells.”

  “That’s not the important part.”

  Seven days passed.

  We had an estimated twenty remaining before the demon army arrived.

  Speaking of demons, I learned they could be hurt by both conventional weapons and magic, except for the strongest ones. Only magical weapons, holy magic, and powerful spells worked on greater demons.

  Mages were, unfortunately, in short supply.

  Everything was.

  The mighty kingdom of Aegis had about ten thousand troops. This was, by their kingdom’s standards, quite a lot.

  It was smaller than the student population of my college.

  And it certainly wasn’t going to stop an army of one million demons for very long.

  In terms of advantages, we had walls blessed by one of the ancient gods, Reinforcia, in the early days of the world. Hopefully, those would hold up against serious bombardment.

  We had about fifty trained wizards in total, although roughly half of those were apprentices. There was no requirement for a magical spark or that sort of thing here. Anyone could learn the local magic with effort, and basic battle magic could be learned in a week. It was more powerful or specialized magic that had serious requirements.

  I instructed the wizards to b
egin teaching classes to the army as quickly as possible.

  Demons were critically weak against holy magic. We only had a few holy mages, and they were apparently on the front lines, trying to hold back the demon army as long as possible. I was informed they were all too deep in combat to be summoned back here.

  I recommended the local wizards begin studying holy magic as soon as possible, but it seemed that would be difficult without a teacher, a book, or an object to study. I couldn’t plan on getting any additional holy mages easily.

  I tried to tour the city. I’d been assigned guards, and they were stubborn about keeping me confined to the palace itself. They feared that demon assassins would strike if I moved into an area that wasn’t secure. Apparently, they’d lost several important figures that way.

  Including, I learned after some pressing, the first hero they had summoned.

  I was, in fact, the fifth and final attempt at a prophesized savior. Every other summoned hero had died some terrible death, and relatively quickly.

  Given that explanation, I grudgingly accepted their protectiveness, even if it kept me from doing a visual check of the state of the walls and siege engines.

  I’d have to trust that, as well as a number of other things, to the people of Aegis.

  “In conclusion, combining magical types is possible, but only for a mage who is capable of wielding both types at the level necessary to generate an effect of the appropriate type.”

  “So, you’d need to be third level in both fire magic and lightning magic to turn a fire ball spell into a lightning ball?”

  “Correct.”

  Two more days passed. My rudimentary magical education was progressing. I’d managed—to my delight—to conjure a flame about the size a lighter could produce.

  If I was going to die, at least I’d die as a goddamn sorcerer.

  I picked up a few other basic spells. “Frosty Beam,” “Read Language,” “Loud Noise,” that sort of thing.

  My favorite was a basic Comprehension spell. Every time I cast it on something—an object, or a person—it would tell me a tiny bit of new information about it.

  This mostly consisted of useless trivia.

  “Comprehension.”

  This is a sword.

  “Comprehension.”

  This sword is called an arming sword.

  “Comprehension.”

  The arming sword was first invented by—

  “Comprehension.”

  This sword weighs exactly 1 pound and four ounces.

  Nevertheless, I could cast the spell easily and repeatedly, and that had certain uses.

  In spite of my excitement at learning magic, I found the limitations of it were severe. Magic was split into levels in a suspiciously RPG-like fashion. Nine levels, to be precise. Plus, a tenth mythical level that obviously existed.

  At the moment, the spells I could cast wouldn’t even qualify as level one. The demon king was presumed to be able to cast ninth level spells easily, and his generals were probably in the seventh or eighth range.

  The local wizards were able to cast levels two to four spells on their own. Only three of them could cast fifth level spells, and one was just starting to push himself to the point of casting sixth.

  The differences in spell power for each level were exponential.

  A first level fire spell was probably around the danger level of a handgun.

  A second level spell was more like a high-powered rifle. Or, on the utility side, things like causing rainfall or levitating someone.

  A fifth level spell could rain fire from the sky or cause a minor natural disaster.

  A ninth level spell? Looking at nuclear bomb territory. And not a small one.

  So, in summary, we were hilariously outgunned in terms of magic, as well.

  I found out that there were elixirs to boost magical ability, and I started drinking them by the gallon for every element.

  Once I found out there were physical enhancement elixirs, I started drinking those, too.

  Give me all of the permanent stat increases. All of them.

  The kingdom also had a limited supply of magic items available, including an incomplete set of legendary equipment they expected me to wear for my confrontation with the demon lord.

  Incomplete, of course, because the demon lord had pried some of the pieces off the last hero’s body before the wizards had managed to teleport his corpse back.

  Also, the legendary holy sword was kind of…bent.

  They assured me it would still work just fine.

  I didn’t like the odds of that. I did, however, graciously accept the equipment for three reasons.

  One, to boost morale.

  Two, because it looked slick on me.

  And three, because the sword was imbued with holy magic. I wanted to figure out how holy magic worked.

  “Comprehension.”

  This is a sword.

  “Comprehension.”

  This was once considered a holy sword.

  “Comprehension.”

  This was called a holy sword because it was invested with holy magic.

  I sighed.

  This was going to take a while.

  While spending an absolutely absurd amount of time spamming the Comprehension spell, I picked up on a few important things.

  The sword had once been imbued with the power of a divine goddess. A goddess who was also divine sounded redundant to me, but I couldn’t exactly snark at the spell effect. Or the sword, for that matter, which I had learned was currently useless, though it still had a bit of holy magic dormant inside.

  It was, at least theoretically, possible to repair using powerful enough holy magic.

  From my magic lessons, I figured out how to draw some of the power out of a magical item to use. While I hated the idea of damaging the sword further, it was the only item available that had holy magic in it. The divine goddess was apparently pretty stingy with blessings.

  It took me a couple days to figure out how to use the basics of holy magic from studying the sword, but I considered that a worthwhile investment. The sword had several holy spells imbued in it, such as “Holy Light” and “Bless Weapon,” which had stopped working.

  Both were effective against demons. I learned how to cast both.

  I wasn’t just studying holy magic for days, of course. I was also studying the art of enchanting items, as well as going over various tactical documents. Demon strengths and weaknesses, battle histories, that sort of thing.

  I learned that most demons looked pretty much like humans. There were minor discrepancies, though. Horns were the most common. Some demons also had claws, wings, tails, or the like. More powerful demons actually looked more human-like, which sounded strange to me. Still, I had to assume it was reliable information.

  I kept to my bedroom for my studies. It was a nice room, if lacking indoor plumbing. In spite of my guards’ insistence on caution, I’d convinced them to leave me alone while I was inside.

  When the ninja appeared in my room, I knew I had made a terrible mistake.

  The ninja dropped from my ceiling, as ninjas do, and paused for a moment before rushing toward the holy sword that lay in a corner of the room.

  “Nope,” I declared, and hurled a tiny blast of fire in the ninja’s direction.

  This was my second mistake.

  The ninja dodged easily and turned to face me. He said something in a language I couldn’t understand.

  That was a little confusing, since I had understood everyone here so far. Was he speaking the demon language, maybe?

  Either way, he was talking, so I tried to talk as well. I raised my hands and said, “You can’t have that. I’m still using it.” I was defiant, like a brave and valorous hero.

  He replied with another foreign statement, followed by a thrown knife aimed at my arm. Both came across as rude.

  I caught the knife between two fingers and shook my head. Those physical power enhancing elixirs had done their job.
>
  Now? I was pretty damn fast.

  I closed the distance in a blink, throwing a punch.

  Apparently, he was pretty fast, too. He dodged and my fist hit the wall, smashing stone apart. Which was cool, but kind of inconvenient, because my hand got stuck.

  He reached for the sword’s hilt.

  I threw my other hand up. “Holy light.”

  A blast of golden light smashed into the ninja’s face. He staggered back, blinded.

  Blinded, but not burned.

  As He stumbled, the ninja flung something to the ground. A plume of smoke rose from where it landed. Then he was gone.

  Huh.

  From that point forward, the holy sword never left my side.

  But that wasn’t the most important lesson I had learned.

  My main preparations after that focused on enchantments. Nearly any spell that could be cast could be turned into an enchantment.

  I convinced one of the most powerful mages to enchant an item with a teleport effect for me — it couldn’t be used often, but it would be a key component of my plan.

  One week before the demon army was set to arrive, I was summoned for audience with the queen. Fortunately, I was allowed a few minutes to prepare for the meeting.

  She gazed down at me benevolently. “Great hero, the final battle approaches. Will you share with me your plans?”

  It was a little earlier than I would have liked, but pretty close to when I’d expected to talk to her.

  I’d already given some of the basics to the army gradually over time.

  I’d decided against summoning a vial of a deadly pathogen. Instead, though a series of complex divination spells, I managed to target an eReader with a large collection of engineering books saved on it. I’d kept the device to myself, reading what I could from the books and silently thanking the anonymous donor, who was far better prepared for this scenario than I had been.

  Initially, I had been planning to use that information to build an airship powered by air magic. The theory behind it was sound and, surprisingly, few demons were capable of flight or ranged attacks that could get above the clouds.

  From there, I’d planned on bombardment with blessed explosives.

  The encounter with the ninja had changed my mind.