Chapter 27.North

Samantha's command was inefficient. She was stuck in her thinking that the regulars in her army were civilians. She thought of this army as a convoy instead of a conquering army. It was a shame that I had to point that out to her, though she did realize her mistake once it was pointed out. Points given for her ability to recognize her failings and address them.

By the time her army had reshuffled again, this time with significantly less order as she hadn't disciplined the lords in her force. The lack of training only served to show just how poor their control of their powers were. They had fallen far behind all of the other armies in relation to working as a group. I'd need to discipline Samantha after the battle lest the trend continue. She needed to become more flexible. My capabilities were expanding every day. She'd need to learn to adapt her policy to fit what I was learning. Her army had more potential than Angie's or Trgl's due to the presence of beasts of burden, but she was wasting that potential entirely. All of them were still standing in the caravan, waiting for the humans to return.

Since they hadn't trained, they didn't know how their influence worked in conjunction with each other. All of them activated their intimidation with far too much mana. They didn't control the flow to make sure they'd be able to last as long as the battle did, they didn't take their allies around them into consideration, they didn't act according to any plan or idea, they were merely afraid and activated the circuit they knew how to activate. Chaotic forces of intimidation roiled through the army, causing entire swathes to become unusable as the enemy drew near. Those that were suppressed didn't stop their circuit, though. Instead, they poured more mana in.

While the chaos was escalating, I took a good look at the enemy. Now that they were in range of my will I could get a much better picture of them than the trace of will I left on each scout to process their sensory information. The enemy force was much larger than Samantha's. More dangerous as well, though the divide was shallow. She had several dozen fourth class ogres, but the enemy had golems capable of fighting them to a standstill as well as fourth class necromancers and other humans. The golems were massive constructions built with earth. Had their feet not fused with the earth at every step, the army would have had trouble keeping their footing due to the trembles such massive weapons would have produced. They were merely forty pedes tall, but they had more mass than ten of my fourth class ogres. The wind resistance they faced was ridiculous. Honestly, it was a little amazing they could move at all.

Due to a lack of will to impede me, I could see the circuitry of the golems. They were very impressive, by human standards, and I learned a lot from them. They only used second class circuits, but they used the mass of the golem as their primary weapon. With that, they had power enough to fight a fourth class creature. Necromancy was a subject that was sorely lacking in the Conclave's library, but now I had a fresh fountain of knowledge. I could even see a mobile library in the enemy army, protected by the two most powerful beings in the army. They radiated so much mana it could have hurt fourth class ogres, but given my overestimation of Samantha's power level I assumed they were only fourth class despite a large divide between their emission and others that had enough to fall into the category of fourth class. Both were cannibal necromancers. I could tell they were necromancers because their will was scattered throughout the golem forces, just waiting for me to snip the connection and have their whole formation fall apart.

It was easy to tell the difference between cannibals and whichever breed of humans made up the rest of the army as the others had silver skin that glinted like metal in the sunlight. They were also as tall as ogres, though they were much slimmer. They maintained the same proportions in their larger bodies as the cannibals had in their smaller ones. The largest difference I noticed was how they were dressed. Cannibals dressed in leather. Only treated leather. Many different styles and cuts, but all was leather. Food goblin leather, to be specific. These other humans dressed in skins and metal, leaving fur and hair on their leather as decoration. Maybe it was to compensate for their bodies not having the hair the cannibals did. Their metal was all carefully placed to protect their vitals or in their weapons. It was my first real experience with metal, despite knowing about it from the Conclave's records. It seemed less spectacular than the records made it seem. Some of the first cannibals to donate knowledge to the library couldn't shut up about how inconvenient the lack of metal was becoming, but I didn't see the loss. The metal was clearly harder to shape, as no circuitry existed in the metal armor the humans wore. They had circuits in their fur armor, though. Maybe it was a trade-off, as they didn't have protective circuitry in their armor like cannibals did. Instead, their armor was circuited to reinforce their offensive potential. They could hit harder, but they were more fragile.

One of them was coated entirely in metal. There was a lot of circuitry packed into the thin clothing he wore under the metal, but even his metal had no circuits. The radiance he generated was almost equal to the two necromancers, but it was more muted. I wasn't sure if that was due to his circuitry being better formed or because he was a very leaky third class. It was a hard distinction to make for many humans in their army.

As Samantha had advance warning of them, they'd noticed her before they had to engage. Their formation was odd, though. In front were all of their monster forces followed by all of the golems with the humans hanging back. Why lose breeding resources when golems were so easy to construct? They had no autonomy or mana generation so it wasn't even that complicated a collection of circuits to build. Well, maybe seeing the fight would allow me to understand better.

Samantha's army was still in chaos as the enemy slammed into her "formation" causing it to immediately collapse into a melee. Some of them ran away while others stood and fought back, though all of them kept their intimidation circuits active. This may cause chaos in their own formation, but it was even more devastating to the enemy. Especially once the golems caught up to the monsters. The necromancers lost control of them almost immediately after they entered the chaotic field of suppression. Without their will supply, the golems collapsed. They crushed many allies as they did so, especially the giant earth golems. Those devastated entire swathes of their own army before they were claimed back into the earth.

It seemed that the control of the monsters had been tenuous. Either that or the chaotic suppression was very confusing because almost all of the monsters surrendered once the golem forces had fallen. A few continued to fight, but they got demoralized when they noticed those they'd killed standing back up after I finished fixing them and either died or surrendered soon after the cowards.

The humans and necromancers were rooted with shock. It was entirely understandable. They'd been utterly defeated by what seemed to be a completely amateurish commander. The chaos they'd seen as Samantha tried desperately to control her army had been laughable, but they'd underestimated the base level of the enemy forces. Each civilian-looking member was a class three lord, despite the fact that they were utterly indistinguishable from normal people if the only metric used to judge power was the emission of mana. Had their control been more concrete and golems not been directly countered by the intimidation that was the strong suit of my armies, the result would have been entirely different.

The way things were going, the humans and necromancers would fight to the death or flee. I didn't want to chase them and I doubted the rabble Samantha commanded would be nearly as effective against an enemy that wasn't inherently submissive to power or a construct powered by an external force that could be interrupted. I'd learned enough about the current inadequacies to improve Samantha's style into a viable tactic. It was time I ended the battle.

The mana in the area pulsed as two bodies appeared in the air. They radiated no mana, but the intimidation force of one and the enfeebling force of the other was incomparable to anything either army had ever experienced. The chaos in Samantha's army was immediately eradicated as my intimidation tainted theirs as they recognized me as their superior. Now they weren't vying for dominance as people, but as worshippers. All were equally insignificant before me, the only exception being Samantha. Interestingly, they were no longer suppressed by my constructs. That was interesting.

The enemy humans had barely the time to be intimidated before they were too exhausted to keep their eyes open. The silver ones kept their feet more than twice as long as their equivalent class level cannibals, but a few seconds doubled still isn't a long time.

Canceling the vacuum around my avatars, they plummeted into the ground at excessive speed. Their wings were spread to make it as fast a descent as possible. It took them less than a second to drop the fifty pedes over the ground I'd had them occupy to the ground. I'd canceled the air repulsion in order to gauge whether the golems or my avatars generated more suppression from the air, and my avatars generated significantly more.

They slammed to the ground with so much force a ripple two pedes tall spread just under ten pedes before the earth could regain control over it. Even then, the air suppression was creating such wind that it was actually stealing tiny pieces of earth, creating a black fog that ignored the wind as it enshrouded my avatars. Seeing how irritating the fog was, I restarted the air repulsion circuitry. It was more annoying the move them with little air pulse circuits behind them, but dealing with the suppression was worse.

Once they were under control again, I had them approach the prisoners that were still awake within the formerly chaotic army. It seemed that neither intimidation nor enfeebling had an effect on those surrendering. Good to know. I wasn't sure if the effect was removed because they were actually not hostile or because I recognized them as non-hostile due to their surrender. I'd need to figure that out at some point. "Only those that worship will survive. Samantha, draw the rune." Both bodies spoke simultaneously.

"My God! You have a body now? Bodies? Both feel like you." Samantha absently drew the rune as she stared at my avatars. It was the first time I'd seen lust color Samantha's will. Now that I thought about it, her fucking someone to paste on her bed without any lust in her will was quite strange. Apparently she was inexperienced with lust as well. Either that or she'd lost her restraint. "Will my God fuck me after you've claimed the broken pieces of that disgusting army that dared try to steal the lives of your pets?" What I found slightly interesting was that she didn't differentiate between my two avatars as her will was suffused with lust. Each time she looked at either there was a fresh wave of lust that rippled through her. Neither resembled the man she'd fucked to paste. Was that why she hadn't felt lust or was it because they were mine that she felt lust? Either way, the lust was distracting her from building the rune. She'd failed a few seconds ago and didn't seem to notice.

"Sure. Finish the rune." She squealed in delight and started rushing to finish. Unfortunately, this caused her to lose focus even more and she repeatedly failed to properly make the rune. I had to dive into her will and control her body to draw the shape with her finger for her to be able to focus on what she was doing long enough to finish the rune. I hoped this distraction would be easier to restrain once I fucked her. My avatars would be part of this army from now on and she needed to remain an adequate commander.