The Occupation Pt4

An hour later back at Outpost A I learned that our players respawned at the cathedral and that they came with both reports and reinforcements from the cathedral.

Around thirty people led five hundred light-armored skeleton NPC with skeletons now made of a frosted crystalline substance that was pale gray like phantoms rather that just the outer frosting of my golem. I was fairly certain that their overall stats had climbed higher as well as their base physical parameters. On top of this, each carried three lances.

Now that the questions of our manpower were solved for at least one very easy reclamation project, it would only be a couple of hours before the rest of the skeletons were combat ready and properly equipped. By then, our fighting forces would be able to start spreading out around the encirclement. No matter how tough the fighting might be, it was imperative that we farm as much of the dungeon as we can.

Eventually, the other clans we had left behind would be arriving and we had only just made our first push since digging in. No matter if the other couple of clans outside came in, they could easily be bullied by the level gap as well as the relations we already founded with the skeleton NPC. Most of which was due to the fact that only I could hear every NPC.

However, why should we have to share at all? We could easily take half of everything to ourselves before anyone else shows up to compete with us.

If the others followed my plan, that is. Currently, elites of our alliance were gathered in Outpost A's boss area where camp was being built up around. Currently, the others wanted to sit tight and draw out the enemy forces while using a temporary home field advantage until the other skeletons were done. I wanted to go out and subvert all of the other phantoms in the dungeon.

Because the fighting was only going to get harder and harder as the demon outposts put in more and more effort, the other clans wanted their greater powers in a single location. At least until Zekrom finished buffing the skeletons. After that, our overall combat power would have soared.

While it was hard to argue with their reasoning, it did not mean they were right or I was wrong. It just meant things would be slightly more complicated. As far as I knew, none of the demon outposts knew that I had claimed one hundred of their troops. Once they figured it out, though, they would probably withhold their Wraith Fiends.

If they withheld their chaos entity type, it would become a hell of a lot harder to break the balance by converting them.

So, after around half an hour of discussion I decided to take matters into my own hands. Once the meeting was adjourned I simply started wandering around the outpost pretending to keep myself occupied. As soon as I felt like I was not being paid attention to, I made my way to the outpost wall and pretended to wander in an out of the many holes and crevasses in the stacked rubble of the wall.

With the loss of the central command structure of the outpost, the outpost had lost one of its main sources of 'firelight'. With the increased darkness in the area, once I found a kind of tunnel I could exit the wall through unseen I hazed out my shadow like a fine dust cloud up from the ground around me.

Even though it took me about twenty minutes to actually sneak away from camp, once I was outside the walls I was nearly invisible to the naked eye. I had no idea how to use proper light magic for such stealth purposes even though the skill said I could basically turn invisible but the use of shadow in an underground area like this was just as good.

Between Outpost B and C, B was the smaller outpost and thus I skulking off in that direction. I did not plan on actually ransacking the outpost by myself since there could still be a few thousand enemies for all I knew. All I needed to do was get close enough to the outpost to start using Channeling.

Like Outpost A, B was surrounded in a tall wall of rubble with many large openings through which even my 'meathead' body could fit through. As well, there were several dozen large structures surrounding a large central headquarters where the outpost's leader was probably lying in wait.

Instead of the dark purple lighting that came from the demonic fires of A, B's buildings were perpetually burning with brighter green flames that made it slightly harder to sneak around. Despite this, though, there were no discernible lookouts anywhere in B as if they were complacently awaiting orders from somewhere higher up the ladder while hiding out.

I did not think the demons would actually be hiding from us, but it seemed like every since the bell run when I got to the cathedral the demons had started keeping their numbers out of sight unless sending bodies on the march. It was obvious they were trying to move covertly to keep their enemies in the dark. However, I was right outside their walls in the dark.

Taking a couple of simple food items and a mana regen potion from my belt. I plant my staff in the rocky ground in front of my and start conducting my mana through it before releasing the first pulse of Channeling. Taking up hundreds of MP, this pulse spreads out for more than a hundred yards in all directions and lasts for several slow seconds.

Counting the following seconds, I strain my ears and use a few dozen MP to enhance my senses. No sounds of alarm or any kind of reaction could be detected from within B after my Channeling, telling my that either Channeling did not affect demons or that nobody had noticed. Either way, I soon released the next pulse.

A few moments later, the next Channeling pulse went out, soon followed by a third and then a fourth. After a full minute of Channeling, I finally received an answer to my efforts. From within the outpost walls floated out a single pale gray phantom followed by another and then another.

Slowly but surely, dozens of neutralized chaos entities started floating out of the rocky wall around Outpost B to form a long line in front of me. Bowing lightly from the waist while lowering my head deeply, I stand upright and say, "I appreciate your answering my call, wraiths. May I ask for some assistance? It would be of great help to my people and I if you could come back with me and help us to protect ourselves. All you would have to do is touch the demons, we will handle the rest."

In response to my words, the phantoms slowly mirrored my awkward bow and then hover a little closer to me as if to say they were ready to leave. "Thank you," I say with honest gratitude, not expecting for them to return my actual gesture. "Thank you very much, please follow me."

Spinning about on one heel, I quickly lead the way back toward Outpost A where my people were waiting. Behind me slowly floated over a hundred phantoms seemingly strolling at their leisure. Luckily, we were leaving Outpost B so I did not have much to worry about in the way of stealth at this point until we got close to A.

Once we got close to A, though, it was pretty much impossible to sneak up to the outpost with its dozens of sentries. As well as the collection of Little Thirteen, Donna, Mistress, and my own party waiting atop the wall surrounding the outpost. I should have known things would not be so easy for me.

"You just had to go and do it anyway, huh?" Donna asks with a very dissatisfied expression on her face. Almost contemptible, even. "I thought we agreed to wait."

"You guys decided to wait," I argue flatly. "Waiting would have cost us opportunities. What if they moved all of their non-demon forces into a single unit and sent them after us at once? I would not be able to convert them fast enough to keep us from killing each other and we would be missing out on a large number of helping hands. If the enemy wraiths actually got to us in close quarters, we'd be finished and I have no way of making you understand that besides this. You, curse her," I say, nodding to the closest ghost who swiftly breezes up to the top of the wall and in front of Donna.

Before the leader of Duality even had the chance to react, a ghostly clawed hand reached out and almost seemed to pat her head. In response to this, black static began crackling about Donna's body as she tried to move away. This black electricity caused her to stutter in her motions, as if moving by a single frame per half-second.

By the time she actually managed to get out of reach of the phantom, they had already returned to their position beside me. "WHAT-DID-YOU-DO?!" Donna demands furiously, producing a single word per second as she struggled against her restrictions.

"I proved a point," I say just as frankly and simply as my early response. "Before enemies with a power like this, even I would be fucked running backwards if one of them managed to touch me. Since I have help from a god, I might be able to negate such effects once or twice but against hundreds I would simply wither away. These are the greatest threat to our success so far so I find it absolutely insane that you guys are content to just let them be."

Studying the full effects of the restricting curse belonging to these phantoms, Little Thirteen says, "I'll admit, its terrifying, but we DO have the ability to simply mow through them with our overall firepower. don't we?"

Shaking my head sadly as if his words disappointed me, I say, "No, we don't. In groups of about a thousand, we could overwhelm them with our combined firepower. What if the demons up and decide to fully commit all of their forces to dealing with us? We'd die, numerous times, before we finally cleaned them up. If their was a viper in your bed, would you tell yourself you have the ability to deal with it whenever you want and then go to sleep with it?! That's basically what you're doing by giving the demons time to further organize their efforts!"

"So, what, do we just do everything you say we should and blindly follow your orders?" Mr. Thirteen scoffs. "Because you're the strongest person here? Because you simply know better than the rest of us? Let me ask you this. Let's say you've acquired two hundred of these guys, yeah? One of them is worth three hundred experience, so what's two hundred times three hundred? That's sixty thousand experience you've taken from everybody else."

I was honestly taken aback by this response. Not because it was an astounding number and he had a point but because he was worried about all of the wrong things.

"Experience?" I ask with a slight pull of my upper lip in a sneer. "You're right, that's a lot. Let's say there's an entire outpost of three thousand phantoms out there, that's three hundred times three thousand. That's nine hundred thousand! Now, let's look at it this way.

"After spending hours wasting time waiting on the other townspeople from the cathedral to be ready for battle, the other clans come into the dungeon," I go on with an imperious wave of my hand as if none of it actually mattered. "Then, while we're here waiting they sneak out to said outpost and manage to clear it. That is nine hundred thousand experience points that YOU clan leaders let slip away to the enemy! I'd rather nobody gets the experience over hand feeding the enemy!"

Mr. Thirteen did not look happy, whether because I had a point or because I had easily dismissed his I could not tell. Nor did I care. My clan alone could have made it this far without any of them and not only beat the territory boss by ourselves but also taken this outpost and kept pushing by ourselves.

We might have the first-come-first-serve advantage over the other clans but that was no reason to let these people squander our advantage out of fear!

"You weren't always this pushy and overbearing," Little Thirteen remarks with a dark glint in his eyes. "What happened to the cute little kid who only cared about fighting people and followed orders like a good soldier?"

Snorting lightly as I think about my time and style in monochrome, I say, "Ha! That little kid joined the game a couple months before it was shut down and never had the chance to acquire the balance breakers that all of you hoarded since the beginning. This time, I started the game when the game started and I AM a balance breaker. Listen to me because I'm stronger? You're damn right you should. Or did you forget that YOU needed ME to get this far ahead of the other clans?"

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