Chapter 88 Infamy

"Holy underwear!"

Susan's eyes travelled up the wall which towered over the city. The wall was around five stories high and was made of the same material as the bastions, looking to the left and right she could see various staircases leading to the top of the wall with various towers and redoubts (openings in the wall for shooting from) located along its length. Even the walls of the imperial city weren't as tall or as imposing as these.

She could see that where the caravans and people were being funnelled into was a large vaulted tunnel leading under the wall but how could they not realise the wall was there? She was aware of the 'concealment' and 'illusion' arrays that hid the bastions and how they functioned but surely this should break the illusion created by these arrays, but first.

"Wow it's so big!"

"Well that's because you're so short it looks bigger." Kyle responded to Susan who was again doing a little skit for her own amusement.

"Hey that's heightist or would that be heightism? How could you Kyle et tu Kyle?"

"No Susan I'm not doing this with you right now we've got stuff to do."

"Oh okay how about Omae wa mou shindeiru?"

"No and that's the wrong way around anyway?" Insert face palm right here, Kyle was regretting telling Susan some of the pop culture he remembered as she couldn't even get it right but hey ho on we go.

"Come on everyone I want to get this back on track, yes the wall is complete and now we roughly know the locations of the lost cities we can start with the next phase."

However Susan wasn't finished playing and instead latched onto Miranda.

"You'll look after won't you child Kyle is being mean."

"Sorry ma'am but Kyle is my leader."

"What about you girl on the other side, side girl, side chick?"

"Oh sorry Susan did you call me a side chick, my name is Clara and can you kindly go somewhere far away."

Hearing Clara and Miranda denying her she began to cry crocodile tears before slowly turning to Elena who was now staring straight back at her. Maybe she could, no it would be better if she didn't involve this strange girl who had already defeated her with a flawless victory. Finally she could only shout as she lamented.

"Infamy, infamy they've all got it in for me!"

As she was shouting out her parting piece Landon, Maria and 2 elders entered the library. Maria walked over to her master and began to rub her head.

"Master has Kyle been teasing you again?"

"It isn't just him this time it's the people with him this time."

Seeing a third stage master acting like this left the elders slightly non-plussed while Landon felt impending pain as Susan seemed to like taking out her frustrations on him whenever she saw him.

The elders who were accompanying Landon and Maria were amongst those Kyle could prove weren't involved within the conspiracy and had complete loyalty to Landon and the Powell family in general. Currently there were 4 out of the 15 elders currently cleared and these men had also been trained in the 'breath of deliverance' technique Kyle had created.

These elders had also received a servant seal so they couldn't disseminate his technique without permission. They hadn't told the elders what Kyle called this seal as the name may make them refuse it, but they did understand the reason for the secrecy and once they had received the full details that had been gathered about the attempts against Kyle and the Black family they knew a battle was coming.

"Okay that's enough everyone let's sit down and talk about the details Susan has just brought to us. Have you all heard what is happening in the empire?"

Kyle and the adults sat down while the youngsters began to wander the library looking for something interesting to do while they discussed their future plans.

"Yes master told us about what's happening in the south, what are we going to do?" Maria asked and Landon was the first to respond.

"I don't think we can do much to prevent the beast incursion, we don't have the means to fight them straight up and the imperial army will probably begin to pull back before long."

"I think we should send some people to evaluate the situation before we do anything." Said one of the elders.

"I agree we are pretty blind as we stand now we need feet on the ground and information." Responded the other.

"I have an idea, Miranda could you grab that big map over there and bring it over." Kyle called out as he wanted to see how the movement of these beasts would affect them.

Miranda hurried over and they unfurled the map, weighing it down using items already present on the table. Looking at the shape of the empire it looked like a crescent shape with the imperial city being located at the thickest point to the southeast while new grange city was located to the north on the inner side. Looking at it laid out like this you could see where various chunks of land were now in control of the beasts.

"Okay so you can see the beasts are avoiding these larger cities just north of their attack line correct. This should be because of the number of people present and the military strength is higher. If they continue in the same way they have been proceeding they'll reach the eastern most point in about four years. This may be sooner or longer depending on the imperial response agreed."

Everyone nodded their heads at Kyle's conjecture if nothing changed this thin point of controlled territory would be lost and with no way stations the north would be completely cut off.

"Alright then now we have within this northern territory 6 hub cities including New Grange and 17 low level cities. Each of these cities has more people than New Grange due to the previous attack we suffered, so what I propose is we send a team consisting of 1 member of 'steel lotus, 'death watch' and 'shadow hand' to each of those three border cities and they'll start the process of reactivating the bastions there and recruiting people in the same way we did here."

The low level cities only each had 4 bastions each as opposed to the 6 present in New Grange city.

"I had our people look at the nearby cities and the low level cities have defensive walls present as well so once the bastions are up and running they can be repaired."

"I have a question how are you able to hide the walls from what you've explained to me about the array's functions they shouldn't be able to hide them like this." Susan couldn't hold it anymore and had to know how he had made an entire city ignore a giant wall that surrounded them.

"Well like I said before these arrays don't really hide them but instead it makes the suggestion they ignore them. I made a slight alteration to this when the walls were being revived, I strengthened the suggestions slightly I also altered the 'illusion' array so it would implant an image of the other side of the wall in people's mind and also make people think it was always there. It's a little wonky but in combination it made people not realise."

"I've also got another question, you said the attacks from the bastions pass through the walls but why not just place the attack arrays on the wall?"

"Another good question, it's to do with coverage and control. We need the attack arrays to have a good control system which the wall wouldn't provide and if the wall was damaged while an array was charging what do you think would happen?"

"It go BOOM!"

"Bingo so the attack arrays are kept behind the wall due to the sudden spike in destructive energy. The walls do contain protective arrays but that is because the energy in those is far more stable and won't explode if they're damaged."

"Okay got it."

"Back to topic these teams will begin the process of garrisoning these cities, they will also make contact with those small cities in the attack line and we will offer them land here. This will bring in more people to replace our previous losses. The teams will also make investigate the nobility in these three cities; we can't govern them all so we need a vassal house to manage them for us. I don't care about strength of these houses as that can be fixed but we need those who are loyal. Does anybody have anything to add?"

"Yes how will we communicate with the teams, these cities aren't close by and if they need reinforcements we will struggle to get people to them." One of the elders asked as lines of communication were always problematic hence why if the north was cut off the empire would just drop them.

"Glad you asked, currently I'm working on a long distance communication tool using the bastions but this is outside of its existing functions so while we can get updates on the various buildings we can't use the same system to send messages. Susan here however should have brought our solution with her."

"Yup, yup let's head down to the stable and you'll see what we've come up with."

So the group travelled down to ground floor and walked to the southern wing. In this wing was a large space used to stable the various steeds that were used. Currently there were no steeds present as they used the ones in the Powell estate but the space was now filled with multiple carriages.

Susan walked up to the nearest and with a flourish pulled down the sheet that was covering it. *Screee* What was contained within was a large falcon type beast it had a wing span of over 12m and a height of about 8m. Kyle could see there were some injuries to its wings either from when it was captured or during its containment.

"Well done Susan how much do I owe you?"

"Don't worry about it; I did miss a few birthdays after all. So what are you going to do with them?"

Kyle walked to the cage and took a better look at the beast, it stared back at him with a beady eye trying to see what this human wanted and perhaps it would be able to attack him. While these beasts may not have the reasoning of humans they were however much smarter than their earthly counterparts.

Kyle wasn't going to risk that as he already had a plan, as he and his people had the abilities of sorcerers they had been playing around with these abilities and one that most sorcerers possessed was the taming ability. This was due to it being closer to an array so if your soul was strong enough you could form a contract with a beast. The most common tamed beast would be of the equine variety but predator species would only be rarely tamed due to their inherently violent nature.

Kyle began to project his taming ability using a specialised array of his own invention, this was a blood contract. When the eagle felt this array enter it, it lost strength and slumped down stunned. While it was stunned Kyle placed his hand on its head and directed his soul force into it completing the contract.

Raising itself back up the falcon looked around with a new form of clarity in its eyes. Kyle opened the cage allowing the falcon to exit and spread its wings. Everyone stepped back as who wouldn't be intimidated seeing such a large beast. However the beast didn't act aggressively and instead waddled over to Kyle and begun nudging his hand apparently wanting him to stroke it.

"He is the chosen one!"