Chapter 25

The time had come to leave Adrian if I was going to. I had everything in my control that I would, and access to everything that required access. I was having issues getting the human brood construct to function right, but that wouldn't change depending on location.

I gathered my forces and divided them equally into four armies, one for each cardinal direction. The northern force would be led by Adrian CMXXVIII, the western by Angie and Euri, the southern by Trgl and Mgrt, and the eastern by Glrt and Nagt with Grace as an assistant. I split the brood constructs for each race for each army as well, as I didn't think any would ever see each other again and each needed to function independently.

Before they left, though, I had a few things I needed to take care of. The first was setting up the end of the Cannibal Conclave. Now that I knew everything they did, I knew how dangerous they were to me. Not very, was the answer. Only two cities had a focus on "aura spells" while the rest could destroy my bodies but do no damage to me. A third city was focused on body-based circuitry that could potentially allow them to be a threat to me but they were too jealous to give their secrets to the Conclave. There would be random wizards that dabbled in these fields, but no specialists capable of matching or exceeding me outside of those three places. From their records, necromancy would be the most dangerous school of magic for me to face. Due to the hatred of necromancy, anything they dabbled in was a warning sign and caused everyone else to look askance at them, making them unpopular. Good for me, fatal for the Conclave. I would have to be careful in those three cities, but the rest were just a matter of time.

Having deciphered the library circuit, I had as much access as I wanted. I had an open link to each wizard tower in every city dominated by the Conclave. I helped myself, loosing ten humans worth of will into each city, two hundred for each of the more dangerous cities. Even if each assault failed, I wouldn't have lost much. I'd gained so much will from the invasion that I had plenty to spare. It would have been a strain on my ability to process information, but I'd finished converting the fallen into mana true circuits, providing me with exponentially more processing capability than I'd need for my four armies. I could absorb the entirety of the Conclave's library in under a second at this point. I was also learning composite circuitry a lot faster with the help of the Conclave's accumulated knowledge. Once that advanced far enough, all of my mana true circuits would grow. With how powerful they were now, I was awaiting their next phase with great anticipation.

The next thing I needed to do was initiate the destruction of Celius and Agatha. Their wizard population was even weaker than Adrian's, so the first phase was easy enough. I didn't know how powerful the wizards of Adrian had been, but as daughter cities Celius and Agatha would have a weaker foundation. Agatha, being the youngest, would probably still be struggling to set up a consistent method of deciding who gets into their tower. Neither contributed much of anything to the Conclave's resources, so it was unlikely that their wizard populations were merely reticent to allow others into their hoard of knowledge.

From what my bodies in each town had discovered, there was still resentment in each city toward the wizard tower. The first wizards had been discarded from Adrian as a means of ridding their wizard tower of pestilence, so the impression they'd left on their respective populations had been horrible. That meant the first batch of apprentices were similar, and had reinforced the cycle. Eventually, it would even out or explode into utter domination of one or the other. Celius looked to be on the path of blowing up, but the civilians had no power to resist yet. It would take a long time for the military to start allowing their circuits out into the public and until that was common the wizards would be dominant.

My bodies within each city started killing at every opportunity instead of only when the dead wouldn't be missed. It would only be a few days until I was ready to take them. I didn't technically need to take the wizard tower first, as it was a clear declaration. I could have just started a rebellion the normal way, gotten myself crowned and then taken the tower. Rebellions were fairly common, so it wouldn't alert anyone. I was still paranoid about my tactics leaking out to potential victims, though. I could always stage a rebellion if my initial plan failed. I always kept at least one body inconspicuous, just in case.

Around the time I was preparing for the large-scale circuits to activate, I finally finished deciphering the brain. The benefits of that single accomplishment did more for my understanding of composite runes than anything in the Conclave's library.

I kept back from launching my assault until I finished the brain nexus. As soon as I did, my bodies became so much more useful. Not only was I able to access the memories that hadn't rotted away yet, I gained control of their sensory system. Part of the reason I had to hide my bodies was because I couldn't act like a human among humans. Now I could. I could see what they were pointing at, I could use their frame of reference to answer questions, interacting would become so much simpler. I could even operate their bodies such that they appeared alive even under close scrutiny.

An unforeseen benefit was the increase in processing power that this nexus allowed me. Every brain construct in every body I controlled gave me almost as much processing power as my first body had. The nexus put all other sources to shame, doubling my processing capability by itself. Prior to activating the brain nexus, I would have struggled to utilize all the information from each body, but with the nexus it was simple. I needed more, but I'd spent all of the resources to make them apart from the brain tissue to make mana true circuits.

Now completely ready, I assaulted the wizard towers of Celius and Agatha simultaneously. Both were nearly identical to Adrian. The main difference this time was that instead of advancing into the tower with my entire force, only my will entered the tower as my bodies turned around and started conquering the cities.

Claiming everything the towers had to offer, I also consumed the will-cores of the two that had them in Agatha and the four that had them in Celius. Agatha had much more focus on body magic while Celius devoted itself to evocation, trying to overwhelm Adrian at their own game. From all of the records I had access to, no city had ever been sacked by a rebel force that had been banished into a new city but there could always be a first time. From the pitiful remnants of the research in Celius, however, that wouldn't happen this time. Their research had all been focused on making magic more flashy and impressive.

One wizard had even devoted herself to the project of working an intimidation rune into every spell she used. She was one of the few that had a will-core, and her memories had so much resentment toward the civilians that she'd based her will circuit on intimidation. She did that specifically to make sure no civilians tried to save their friends when she killed them. Her favorite hobby was strolling through town, proving to everyone that she was no longer the girl that had her shoes stolen as she killed anyone that dared look at her shoes for too long, daring their friends to protect them from her wrath. If everyone's mind was as fascinating as that woman's, I would have spent a lot more effort keeping them intact for me to consume. She was the exception, though. Most of Celius' wizards were arrogant and useless in their pursuit of magic.

Agatha's wizards were worse. They sought to uncover the true path of body magic, but refused to do it to themselves. Instead, they forced civilians into their experiments to see how good they were at communicating. They uncovered a few circuit combinations that weren't in the Conclave's library, but their method ensured that their subjects didn't know how to properly communicate what was happening and as such the wizards missed a lot of valuable information that could have changed their fate entirely. One of the ones they missed was a circuit that provided increased resistance to will-created material. It was a weak circuit, but the effect was there. Had they discovered it, my invasion would have been much more difficult.

Their research wasn't entirely wasted, though. I now had access to their memories of their experiments both through their will-cores and their bodies, though the brain memories were far less clear and tended to have inconsistencies with the will-core memories. Either way, they provided me with centuries of experience. Who knew what ideas I could come up with after experiencing their lives?