A Dweeb Deep Down

6/2 night.

For the first time, Lividia was properly leading an army. She had taken the form of a dark green dragon, combining the powers of both a human and a black dragon in one form. Accompanying her were around two hundred demons, mostly the ones that looked like very large and attractive humans with horns and wings (a definite improvement), and the shaggy ones that were basically just bigger Satyr. The tall dragonspawn like ones and the scaly elves who threw fire were behind the more physically imposing ones, so that they could use magic without trouble. That was where Lividia was, as well.

Hahrana Ironhide had made herself useful by reporting that Horde scouts had found a hive of Silithid in Feralas. Her king decided to send Lividia to clear them out before the hive was properly established. Far better than simple lessons; Lividia needed to act. To fight. To prove herself.

They didn't need fancy strategies; everyone here would happily die a thousand deaths in the king's name. Not that they intended to die stupidly, just that they were willing to learn how to assault a hive through trial and error, as their casualties simply didn't matter. A few of the new Dommes began singing a war song, which the rest took up cheerily, though very few actually knew the words so it was an awful racket.

The first problem arose fairly quickly: the Brutes were very large, making them cramped in the tunnels. The Dommes were nearly as large, but had slightly more room to maneuver at the cost of being more reliant on weapons, since they didn't have claws. In both cases, the strongest among them ended up serving as glorified meat shields once they were inside, heavily reliant on Lividia, the Flameborn, and the former Atal'ai to do the actual killing with their spells. Nearly half of their front line ended up shredded before they changed tactics.

In practice, the spellcasters ended up breaching the inner hive while the warriors ran rampant on the surface, ripping open entrances to the hive and crushing the enraged Silithid that dared to retaliate. It worked better than one might expect; most of the spellscales had been shaman or warrior priests of some sort, capable of using both magic and brute force together. Between their claws and magic, they served as a good enough front line with Lividia and some of the former Atal'ai healing them.

Lividia was using her training with Doan to try to vent mana as quickly as possible. Bursts of flame and arcane energy would sear the Silithid just as power words of renewal and shielding would strengthen her allies. The Flameborn, with their high elven heritage, were able to tap into her mana as well. Their rudimentary, inefficient fireballs were disgustingly crude in Lividia's eyes… but they held off the explosion. There were far too many of the Silithid to kill manually with a fifth of her army, so she instead sought out their egg room. Bugs had lots and lots of eggs, and a new hive wouldn't be worth much without hatchlings.

While trying to hold off on the blast, intending to make it as catastrophic as possible, Lividia ironically began to slowly cut off the stream of mana. If she allowed herself to be drained for more mana than she was using herself, the staff would be confused, only replacing what she used. Was it a perfect solution? Not really. Would it suffice? Certainly. She ordered the Flameborn to stop tapping her energy once they reached what was likely the center of the hive, where a large bug was laying eggs, and began channeling as much mana as she could, releasing holy novas as quickly as possible. When her guardians were overwhelmed, she took her full draconic form and cast a shield upon herself. She had grown substantially from all the magic she was channeling, to a size larger than a horse, letting her rip and tear for the twenty seconds or so she needed before the light became searing and she appeared on the bed next to her king. It had felt like quite a big one.

••••••••••

6/2 update

Deadline 6/15

Silithid Killed: 3195/20,000

Alliance War Effort: 933/500,000

Horde War Effort: 3230/500,000

••••••••••

The orgy had been more because I could than anything else; I didn't have any special attachment to any of the big name Druids, so why pick just one? I'd grabbed every woman at the meeting and brought them back to my bed, at which point I discovered that neither they nor I really knew how to make an orgy in any way more interesting than a threesome.

By some zany coincidence, the girls were all very straight and had minimal interest in one another. By the rules of the amulet they would probably all end up as bisexual eventually, but they'd only been captured half an hour prior. They were also mostly very level headed and reasonable coworkers with a strong foundation of respect. In other words, none of them were really touching one another (performatively or not), nor were they attempting to compete for my attention.

While I fucked Ysiel they all talked it out and decided to form an orderly queue for my dick based off of what I was fairly certain was the Kaldorei equivalent of Rock Paper Scissors. Which wasn't… *not* hot, conceptually, but I've been informed that Irma is literally aesexual and she brought more passion and enthusiasm to the time before sex than that. By the time I was done with the fourth pastel colored athletic woman with supreme power over nature I was already kinda tired and out of ideas I wanted to try. I felt obligated to keep going, because you don't just call a bunch of women to your bed explicitly for sex and then dismiss more than half of them unsatisfied because they lost a Rock Paper Scissors tournament. If I'd thought about it, maybe I could have brought other people in, or used the collars to facilitate something, but honestly it was already getting close to midnight when we started and I was at a loss.

At least Lividia had fun; she'd pulled Ysera away to play with the extremely pliable sleepwalking demigoddess almost immediately. I think she finds power hot, and having power over people even hotter. It was fun to watch, but I had other girls waiting. Women who, I was sure, were each delightful individuals, but who I had largely ruined for myself tonight through my hubris.

••••••••••

6/3 morning

I woke up a little bit sore, and surprisingly alone other than Ysera. I heard voices down the hall, where the Druids were trying to piece together what the hell happened to them. None of them were upset, but what else were they going to discuss over tea the morning after being forcibly added to a harem?

I called Talaada and she sent over one of her underlings to explain the situation to them. I didn't feel like handling it myself, and that's what minions are for. She was a succubus/human/high elf hybrid. Apparently she had wanted to maintain her original appearance to some degree, and was paying for it with a much thinner frame. She could probably go into modeling and I imagine she's a little better at magic now (especially shadow magic), but any kind of athletics would probably exhaust her quickly. This was not a soldier, but I supposed not all of my minions needed to be. She was in marketing.

Speaking of my minions, I put an arm around the peacefully sleeping Ysera and examined the options for her regional upgrade. The two best choices were stamina, which would allow her to be fully functional in both bodies simultaneously and reform herself as long as she didn't die on both sides, and spirit, which would instantly capture every single green dragon currently living. The rest just didn't provide me with anything I didn't already have.

Stamina had the benefit of giving me a demigoddess that I could deploy pretty freely without taking her away from her war in the Emerald Dream, and would let me deploy her very aggressively since she was unlikely to ever really die unless I royally fucked up. That would hold more weight if I hadn't just picked up the limited warranty plan upgrade from dominating the Cenarian Circle. I got one free resurrection of any member of my retinue that was currently dead every 48 hours now. Ysera was never going to be dead for more than a day or two anyway.

Capturing quite literally ALL of the green dragonflight instantly was a massive up front benefit. Just, truly outrageous. I amusingly had many of the biggest name green dragons already under my control, but not all of them. I was pretty sure there were at least ten to twenty other green dragons in Ysondre and Emeriss's weight class, at least four times that many powerful drakes like the ones that I found guarding the portals, and hundreds if not thousands of minor drakes and whelps.

I'd get myself an army. It wasn't an army I could fully utilize for my primary objectives immediately, but it was an army that was fighting my enemy, and an army which would grow tremendously stronger when captured. With more or less total immunity to the Emerald Nightmare's corruption and the support of several of my archdruids, they could go on the offensive. Once Xavius was out of the picture, I'd have an Air Force that makes my current crop of dragon riders look like the Wright brothers armed with a musket.

Looking at my mission log, it seemed likely that I'd be able to finish the kill quest at my current rate, even if assembling the scepter took longer than expected; Lividia had managed to kill quite a few Silithid last night. I could afford to take an upgrade that might take a minute to really pay off. I pressed the button and got a popup in my retinue tab. I was not going through that whole thing first thing in the morning. I'd let Nishera and Ysera go through it and tell me who I needed to know about later.

Speaking of armies that weren't paying off yet, the retinue Centaur were continuing to grow. I suspected Leh'Prah needed to be widely known and respected among the other clans before it counted enough for me to get credit. I wasn't too worried; minor investment would pay off soon enough. I just got a metric fuckton of new members of the retinue that absolutely love sleeping in places associated with the Emerald Dream, which would pay dividends of energy. I thought I'd be able to make use of that mercenary camp just fine. In the meantime, they were training so that when they had the numbers they could establish Leh'Prah as a great khan the only way the centaur knew: glorious ultraviolence.

I had Sylvanas send an envoy to him; she could advocate for the new Leh'Prah clan (they are always named after their founders) to be added to the horde. Leh'Prah was advocating for a warrior culture with honor and personal accountability and all those manly man virtues that the orcs love; it didn't seem like it would be a hard sell.

If I wanted to continue my pattern of taking down one moderate mission per day, I think setting up Lilliana Voss with messenger boy was the way to go today. Sally reported that her father should be captured by lunch, and once this guy had dad approval and was magically enticing, the mission was in the bag. As far as taking her for myself… meh. If she looked like Lilliana Vess from Magic the Gathering, definitely, but she was nothing special aesthetically.

Valeera had been killing twilight council members (and the odd normal rioter) all night, but I decided that I was, in fact, going to at least try to send her to kill one of the Silithid Hive Lords. It seemed like the easiest way to capture one, though she was sure as hell going to be monitored by a shadow priest the whole time. If she couldn't do it, I was dropping the mission.

Unfortunately, the situation in Shadowforge had not really resolved itself. Instead, the insurgents (they could hardly be called rioters at this point) had seized the area around the Black Anvil and were summoning more earth and fire elementals into the heart of the city. For the most part the civilians were siding with their emperor, but I was going to need to deal with this unpleasantness.

"Aegwynn. You fresh?"

"Surprisingly so. I appreciate the heat resistance from the amulets. It's a very interesting enchantment."

"Yeah it's great. So. Are you good to take down the enclave that formed in the city? They went and made it easy for us by bunching up."

"Give me two dozen soldiers and a priest and I'll take care of it."

"Will you be ready for the assault afterwards? I want to try to delve into the Molten Core this afternoon. I think I have a good enough team to get to Ragnaros and take him down if we can get to him, but you're a big part of that."

"I'll try to finish quickly then. And I do hope there is some kind of reward in store for me."

"You're certainly racking up points, that's for sure. Think about what you want, eh?"

"Did you do something to me to make me really, really want your baby?"

Beat. "Not directly. It's a passive effect I have on women in general."

"Hmm. Good to know. I'll go earn a few more points now, shall I?"

I looked down at my new stiffie as thecommunication channel closed. "Quiet you."