THE EVE OF BATTLE

Still, after Benimaru finished his report, I couldn’t help but be amazed by the sight of ten thousand of my soldiers in formation. That, plus ten thousand beastman soldiers—an army of twenty thousand, all lined up and waiting for the order to march.

Shion’s Team Reborn, as my personal guard, was on standby away from the crowd. They were holding down the fort back home this time, so they’d just get in the way among these ranks.

“Sir Rimuru,” Rigurd reported, “everything is ready.” I thanked him for his long hours of frantic work. “Oh, I hardly deserve it,” he said, smiling.

So if we’re all set, it’s time to get transporting.

“Oh, um, Lady Alvis…?”

“Alvis is fine, Sir Rimuru.”

I was trying to be polite, but I guess I made things worse. Let’s just bulldoze right over that.

“All right, Alvis. We have all your friends assembled on the other side, so I want you to relay what we talked about to them. I think Phobio should be organizing them into units, so you take care of the rest!”

“Understood. I promise I will not forget your kindness.”

She bowed deeply at me, followed by Sufia and the rest of the beastmen. It felt almost oppressive, but I didn’t react. That was how they wanted to show their appreciation.

“You really saved us,” a smiling Sufia told me. “Now we can smash up Clayman’s forces without a second thought. We’ll let you have him, Sir Rimuru, so take out all our anger on him for me!”

Pretty scary face, considering that smile. Alvis was similarly glaring at me, in apparent agreement. Everything was set for them; now all they had to do was go wild on the battlefield. We’d enjoy a force of twenty thousand beastmen alone, so I’m not sure we needed the reinforcements, but the more the merrier. If it was just them, we’d still be outnumbered anyway.

With these extra fighters, we now had a unified force of thirty thousand to go against Clayman’s own thirty thousand. We were even now, and we were the better-quality army. Victory was as good as ours. The only problem…

“Benimaru, any issues with our operation?”

While I was rounding up beastmen last night, I had Benimaru and his team shake down our plan of action once more. The gist of it hadn’t changed, but since we weren’t spreading out our forces to collect the refugees any longer, a few details needed to be changed.

“We’re all set, sir.” He shot me a crafty smile. “If Clayman is targeting the citizens of the Beast Kingdom, then retreat is certainly an effective option as well.”

Yes. I agreed with him. No need to smash right against his front line and get people killed.

“I discussed it with Sir Benimaru as well,” Alvis said, excitedly playing with the staff in her hand. “We’ve got enough leeway now to move the site of battle, so it’ll be a little while before we begin…”

All systems go, then. Failing to complete his mission before Walpurgis would make for one angry Clayman, no doubt. At the very least, he’d treat his underlings even worse than usual. If their army’s commander fears that and starts freaking out, the ball’s on our side.

“…We will deploy the force at the entrance to the Forest of Jura. The wasteland that was once our home, the now-toppled orcish kingdom of Orbic—now, it shall be their grave.”

There was something close to sheer malice in Geld’s voice. Clayman’s scheming cost him his home nation, and now it would be the site of the decisive battle. I suppose anyone would’ve felt the hand of fate at play here.

The strategy, as it was, is pretty simple. We’d make it look like we had the refugees evacuate into the Forest of Jura, then strike at the enemy forces trying to pursue them. That’s about it.

Raphael provided the perfect simulation of it in my brain. Obtaining and replaying the information Soei and his gang gave me, I had a picture of the future that was almost as vivid as reality. I then Thought Communication’ed that to everyone else, so we could all equally grasp it.

Our original plan called for us to keep the refugees secure as we lured the enemy over, eventually surrounding and destroying the force. With this change, the faster units would serve as bait instead. That reduced the danger to the individual forces involved, which greatly boosted the chances of this working.

The key to this was making sure they were all inside the forest before crushing them. I didn’t intend to kill them all, but I didn’t like the idea of them running away and attacking again later. We had to be thorough.

“You got all that, Benimaru?”

“Of course. Let’s give them enough hell that they never dare defy us again!”

Ooh, he’s got his no-mercy face on. I like that.

“Let’s wipe ’em out, Benimaru!” Shion added, cheering him on.

“Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh… You need to take out the garbage fast, you see, before it rots.”

Diablo was…also cheering him on? I’m not so sure, but whatever. They both wanted to join in, of course—they just loooove fighting. But Shion would stay with me to prepare, and Diablo would be stepping into Farmus land soon. They were out of the picture. Now to just leave things to Benimaru and wait for the good news.

“Right! No matter what happens, I want you to report back immediately. I’m sending you off now. Win this one, guys!!”

“““Rahhh! Victory shall be yours!!”””

And now they were all looking at me, all those many, many eyes. As I regarded them with my own golden pair, I deployed a square of magic. I spent ages practicing this last night, so I had it down pat. Beneath the feet of all twenty thousand, a giant square drew itself in layers, from the bottom to the top. A complex array of geometrical shapes built themselves up inside, too intricate for me to figure out. Something this size, of course, required a lot of magic and concentration. My energy rapidly drained, but based on my figures, I should manage to hold out. (Not to brag, but my magicule stores had risen exponentially, too.)

It took around five minutes in all. Everyone stood there, bolt upright, waiting for the transport spell to complete. And then, the moment the mélange of shapes within the square stacked up above the heads of everyone inside—the entire army was gone, in the blink of an eye.

Transport complete. Looks like we got them out of there.

Back when I was practicing last night, I was a little concerned Clayman had noticed all the light this was generating in the darkness. So I combined it with a blindness bomb to sap all the light away from the magic square. You never know where you may mess up—diligence is key. There was no need for that now, though, and the sight that unfolded before me could only be described as magnificent.

“Well done, Sir Rimuru. Such a beautiful spell.”

“Indeed. It was so charming!”

I had earned high marks from Diablo and Shion. Diablo must’ve really liked magic. Once things calm down, I’d like to talk shop with him a little. Maybe he’s got a spell or two I don’t know about. And I’ve got to help Shion stop being jealous of everyone around her. I can’t afford any weird drama around here.

Such were my thoughts as I nodded at them, and we went on our way.

After everyone left, we were greeted by a clearly bored Veldora. “Rimuru,” he asked, “can I go and beat ’em all up, too?”

I knew it. He hadn’t listened to a single word I told him.

“What are you, deaf? I’m trying to keep you a secret until the Walpurgis Council begins! If you go crazy out there, the secret’s gonna be out in two seconds!”

“Gwaaaah-ha-ha-ha! Yes, yes, of course. I almost forgot!”

“Almost,” my ass. I don’t know what to do with this old coot. I gave him a whole bunch of manga volumes I had stored up, but will that be enough? Because I’m really worried he’s gonna try to pull something stupid. Better keep a very close eye on him.

Yohm and his squad also set off that afternoon. I look forward to having them tell everyone they run into along the way that Veldora is back—I told them to make sure and phrase it so it spreads as quickly from village to village as possible.

The purpose for this, of course, was so Clayman would hear about it as he keeps snooping on us. Hopefully the news will reach him sooner than later, I thought as I saw them off. Diablo told me to “expect us back very, very soon,” but how much of a pushover does he think Farmus is anyway? It almost made me worried, but I still left things up to them anyway. Everybody makes mistakes, after all, and if something came up, we could think about it then.

It wasn’t long after when Gazel set off toward the Dwarven Kingdom. His assorted ministers were livid, which made his departure a bit more hurried than I think he would’ve liked. Guess that decoy he hired wasn’t up to the job, and I could guess why. I definitely shouldn’t be taking any lessons from him on that front. Nobody likes being found out.

Another day passed—and while Benimaru reported that things were moving along well, we weren’t without our problems.

Naturally, a group of thirty thousand soldiers and refugees is a little restricted in where it can go. These were stout beastmen, however, not humans, so I was told that they should reach their destination without too much delay. I wasn’t too worried, though. I had something to deal with that.

“Right,” I said, patting Benimaru’s shoulder. “We’re all ready to take in the refugees here, so I’m gonna transport all the noncombatants over to Tempest.”

“Oh… There is that, yes…”

Benimaru groaned, chiding himself for not coming up with it first.

You know, though, that transport spell costs a lot of magicules. The more people you’re transporting, the more it adds up. At this point yesterday, I was fresh off moving a force of twenty thousand around; I didn’t really have much free energy left. I couldn’t go shooting that off rapid-fire, so it wasn’t like I was deliberately wasting time. Besides, this was a completely new sort of magic, one that flew in the face of conventional approaches, so we’d be able to weave this into future tactics with a lot more frequency. I mean, I don’t think too many people could cast that spell anyway, so that should help preserve our unique superiority.

Regardless, Rigurd had set up the required camping quarters after I sent everyone off yesterday, so I figured we could transport the refugees alone into here. So I did it all in a snap. And none of them were nervous about it, either. I guess they were all adaptable enough that they got used to it quick.

I let Rigurd guide them around, since that work I started yesterday was still calling my name. I really wanted to finish it up in time for Walpurgis, so I just had to hope no more issues arose.

In the end, the day of the Walpurgis Council began without any major crisis. My work was done before lunch, allowing me to dive into the final stages that afternoon. Looks like I’ll be on time. That’s a relief.

“Rimuru, is this…?”

“What do you think? Pretty neat, huh?”

“What’re you, some kind of genius?!”

I had enough of dealing with Ramiris’s yelling at me. I didn’t want to engage any longer. I had to save my mental acuity for this evening, so I’d just ignore her rantings for now.

After lunch, I worked on the final touches, then placed the finished item in my Stomach and headed over to the treant village where Treyni lived. Veldora wanted to join me, but he’d have to wait. I didn’t want anyone attacking town, not that I thought they would. Right now, the whole urban area was being protected by a Barrier that Veldora put over it. That prevented any potential eavesdropping from Clayman as well, so him abandoning town at the moment was a bad idea.

So I promised him “next time” and set off with Ramiris and Treyni. I assigned Beretta to deal with him, as much as it hurt my conscience. He’ll probably be used and abused, I’m sure. I’ll have to reward him later.

With a quick casting of Dominate Space, we were on our way. Once we reached the village, we quickly spotted the insectoids Apito and Zegion. When I first saved his life, Apito was maybe around a foot long, but now he had grown to nearly twenty inches. It was great to see that guy in good health. Zegion, meanwhile, was at well over two feet and strong enough that a lot of monsters knew better than to pick a fight. Of course, there weren’t any monsters around here that were hostile to Zegion anyway, so there’s no real way to gauge his power. I told it not to do anything too risky, so it probably hasn’t. Unlike Gobta and Gabil, it knew its limits and didn’t get all carried away over everything.

Apito flitted right up once it spotted me, happily providing me with some honey. Ah, thanks! The perfect medicine. Let’s have a li’l taste of that… Mm. Yep. That most rare of cure-alls—and it tastes real good, too.

“Hey, whoa, um, Rimuru— Er, Sir Rimuru? I wanted to ask you something.”

I looked toward Ramiris. She looked freaked out.

“What?”

“Those insects… Are those army wasps?”

“Hmm? I dunno.”

“You don’t know?!”

Ramiris gave me the most exaggerated double take I ever saw. So what if they’re army wasps?

(Sir Rimuru,) Apito telepathically said to me, (it is as that person says. I am a queen wasp, the highest of the army wasp order. Would you like me to summon my queendom?)

Whoa, that sounds pretty fancy. I think we can go without that for now, though.

(You can save it for when this village is under attack. If you want your friends around here, I’m sure you can talk that over with the treants.)

(I’ll refrain for now, then,) Apito said, wings thrumming in what sounded like a happy buzz as it flew off. It sounded quite pretty, if a bit chainsaw-like and lethal. Are army wasps pretty dangerous beasts, then? I doubt it. Apito, collecting honey for me and everything, hardly seemed hostile at all.

Plus, Zegion was there, too, giving me a shy salute as it followed after Apito. Maybe that guy was the king of the insects or something—it certainly felt kind of regal. I was pretty sure it’d only grow in strength. Maybe evolve, even. If so, I’d love to have that guy join my team.

Turning around, I saw Ramiris with her mouth agape, while Treyni was doing her best to console her.

“Yeah, you’re right. I guess they are army wasps. Plus, one’s a queen.”

“I heard them! I mean, you… Ugh. Never mind. You can do just about anything, can’t you? And that other one… I mean, I really don’t think it could be, but…”

She wasn’t making much coherent sense. I ignored her. No time to deal with it, and besides, if it was Ramiris, it couldn’t be that important.

We had reached our destination—a dryas, the holy tree that was Treyni’s “main” body.

I took out my completed project from my Stomach. It was an orb, dull in color. No sheen, no glow to it—but you could absolutely feel the power.

What was I going to use it for? Well, Treyni—and all dryads—were descendants of fairies, a form of spiritual life that could take on physical form by combining themselves with plants. They could freely release their spiritual bodies and use magicules to create temporary corpuses to live in. Their “real” bodies, however, were these dryas trees.

The Walpurgis Council was going to be held in some kind of special dimension, so Treyni might not be able to get in. So I decided to conduct a bit of large-scale surgery on her so she’d be able to move around in her “real” body. Unlike Beretta, which had no physical form in this world, Treyni had a corpus. As a result, we needed to transfer the “core” within her from her current body to the new one, much like a golem becoming established in its own form.

I had an idea of what this new core could be. It was a chaos core, one that can only be made with certain materials under certain conditions, and that orb I just took out would be the vessel for this core. In a way, it was like extracting magicules from the magic stones that can be taken from the cores of monsters. It’s hard to make these retain no element at all, so I went through many failures before I created this. I also needed several other materials to make this orb, so I spent nearly all of yesterday gathering them.

Making a chaos core required an equal mixture of spiritual and mystical force inside this vessel. With Beretta I could’ve just filled them with both in equal quantities and densities, but it wasn’t so simple with Treyni. She would have to inject the orb with her own spiritual energy herself, while I put in mystical force that had been mixed to an exactly proportionate density and size.

Now it was time to get to work, and that meant it was time for Raphael to shine. With my signal, Treyni began to turn her body into spiritual matter and let it flow into the orb, without a moment’s hesitation. I injected the mystical force alongside her, not missing a beat. This was precision work, but it proceeded with no calculation errors.

The dryas lost its life force, visibly withering before me. Alongside that, the orb began to blink on and off, almost like a pulse. Light and darkness traced a spiral inside it—and then, the orb began to shine a light shade of green. The flickering of life was thriving inside.

Report. The individual Treyni’s element has mixed into it, but construction of the chaos core is successful.

It had all gone as planned.

“Okay, it worked. This orb is now Treyni’s main body.”

(Thank you so much, Sir Rimuru!)

“Yeah, thanks, Rimuru! Now I can take Treyni here along with me!”

“You should be safe with that, yeah. But… Hmm…”

Treyni would no longer be separate from her main body, so she wouldn’t have issues traveling across dimensions anymore. But something still seemed missing.

“Treyni, do you mind if I take this tree that used to be your body?”

“Of course not. Use it however you like.”

I thanked her, then got straight to work.

“What’re you gonna use it for?”

“You’ll see!”

I cut down the tree, working the wood, creating precision parts with it to form a human shape.

(Oh! Ohhhhh! Is this…? Are you gonna…?!)

Ramiris quickly understood what I was up to. She was right—I thought I would make a replacement body for Treyni, using the dryas that was imbued with her magical force.

Three hours later, the doll-like figure I had been working on all afternoon was complete. Its core was reinforced with magisteel, the surface made of fully polished wood. It felt remarkably comfortable to the touch—a very fine piece of work.

“Oh, is this…?”

Even Treyni, who rarely expressed surprise at anything, couldn’t hide her excitement.

“What do you think? Pretty good, huh? You can use this as your body if you want.”

I didn’t need to ask. Ramiris was overjoyed, but Treyni needed no encouragement from her. She thanked me profusely and installed herself in her new body. From that moment, the wooden doll became Treyni’s new corpus. It was the world’s first fully mobile dryad.

From the moment the chaos core—the heart of any monster, you could say—entered the doll, magic force surged out of it, penetrating and filling every grain on the surface. Then, amazingly, the white grains faded, no longer standing out, turning as intricate and detailed as human skin. Perhaps more beautiful, even. A beauty that goes beyond humanity.

Unlike with Beretta, I didn’t work from a skeletal frame for the face. I simply carved the head to look the way Treyni looked. But once her orb was in there, its expression grew as soft as anyone you met on the street. It was wood, but the mouth still moved, and the eyes blinked. I have no idea what was driving that. “Because she’s a monster” was my only real guess. This body was kind of herself, once, so maybe it was more compatible than most cases.

Either way, that pie-in-the-sky surgery of mine was a greater success than I ever could’ve guessed.

And for some reason, she was stronger now, too.

My mystical aura, injected into the orb so perfectly by Raphael’s fine-tuned work, had produced a chaos orb that worked in exact harmony with Treyni’s spiritual force. It was the equivalent of doubling her magicule stores. I think taking in the holy and demon elements earned her some new skills, too. She struck a greater presence than Shion, who boasted the most magical force out of us all. Definitely stronger than the Orc Disaster. Not up to the demon lord Carillon, but I could feel a different type of sheer awesomeness from her.

I think it could bring her to disaster level, the venerable S rank. Of course, she’d still be Special A for now, a calamity-level threat, due to not actually being a demon lord. The Guild-crafted ranking system really couldn’t deal with special-case magic-born like this. Personally I’d feel safe calling her a sub-demon lord.

Between the dryas, the doll, and the dryad, we had here a creature that was worthy of awakening into a demon lord someday. That’s the kind of powerful magic-born Treyni was now—and among other things, it let her join Ramiris on the trip.

I’ll bet even Raphael was surprised by that one!

Understood. It was all according to plan.

See? Totally surprised. No need to be a sore loser about it.

…

Raphael had nothing to counter me with.

With that mental victory in hand, we all said good-bye to Treyni’s sisters, Traya and Doreth. They had been watching the whole surgery, looking incredibly jealous. I suppose I should do the same thing for them, as thanks for all their work watching over the Forest of Jura…but that would have to wait. We could consider that after we were all back safe from Walpurgis. I didn’t want to lose Jura’s guardians because they were too busy doting on Ramiris, besides.

Well, we were now on our way back to town, and I’d now done all the preparing I could. Looking up, I realized there was no moon in the sky, the stars twinkling at me. Today was a new moon, wasn’t it? And soon, under this beautiful night sky, the bell for the first round would ring out.

With the stars behind me, I set off for my battlefield.

Siti Dara

Hi. I’m Designer of Blog Magic. I’m CEO/Founder of ThemeXpose. I’m Creative Art Director, Web Designer, UI/UX Designer, Interaction Designer, Industrial Designer, Web Developer, Business Enthusiast, StartUp Enthusiast, Speaker, Writer and Photographer. Inspired to make things looks better.