Chapter 568: The Gloves Come Off I

Name:Beneath the Dragoneye Moons Author:
Chapter 568: The Gloves Come Off I

It was a fairly hard rule that Sentinels weren’t bothered on their time off. Susan regularly sent Elaine letters when I was off rotation, asking to chat socially, or simply sending me interesting little tidbits of information. With her information processing capabilities combined with her multitasking, I had no doubt that she was in close contact and communication with hundreds, if not thousands of people.

I also regularly met with the rest of the War Sentinels, just one of the many social gatherings and ties I had. It was a fun weekly thing, helped get me out of the house, and all that good stuff.

Sentinel Dawn was never summoned by Sentinel Arachne though. That didn’t happen.

Or rather, I’d been warned it might happen, under the most dire of circumstances.

The poor [Courier] at the door didn’t know what hit her. I flashed over at full speed, runes glowing on my body to not create a villa-destroying sonic boom, and read the letter without opening it.

Dawn,

Urgently need you at Castle Stormwatch.

Bring your entire team.

Arachne.

Triple-gods-damnit-fuck.

Was it now? Was everything I knew about to be upended? I could feel my heart thundering in my chest like a drum, and my palms started to get sweaty. My stomach twisted in knots.

Not now. I thought. I still have so much to do.

I threw a bunch of coins at the poor [Courier], not really caring that I’d probably dumped two years wages in a single tip. My mind flashed to one of my more used spells, and I used [Reality, Writ as I Will] to reshape the world to my spell. My voice boomed, deafening anyone close by.

“Attention everyone! Skye, Titania, Valkyries, squires, and guests! If I am not back in three hours, head to the bunkers!”

I could tell my words had kicked the hornet’s nest, but I was already flying off to Fenrir’s cave at my top speed, coming to a halt in a great gust of wind. “Fenrir! Wake up! It’s go time!” I yelled at him. While he was waking up, I teleported into [Tower], my own personal pocket dimension, and armed up.

It was go time. My mind flickered through all the floors, quickly reviewing everything. Had to be prepared for anything and everything. It was decades of preparation, but I could’ve used a few decades more.

The first floor was my armory, filled to the brim with everything I could practically want and use in a fight. My Sentinel armor was prominently displayed on an armor stand, and my two badges were floating in a display case attached to the ground. Spears, short swords, round shields and tower shields filled a portion of the room, as did several less-preferred armor sets, and a collection of assorted weapons. I was barely trained and barely proficient in them, but it was better to have quick access to the weapons and not need them, than it was to need them and not have them.

My mind flashed through the rest of the tower as I [Teleported] everything onto my body, finishing by cinching my belt tight.

The second floor was the hall of gems, Amber’s fortune funneled into a thousand and one life-saving measures. Floors 3 and 4 were secondary armories, dedicated to Iona and Fenrir’s armor, weapons, and spare supplies for each of them, and the fifth floor was potions galore.

Floors 6 and 7 were toolsheds, everything from chisels to looms, only missing out on the hyper specialized tools of some professions. Axes, saws, picks, and shovels all came in triplicate, along with more common and popular tools.

Floors 8 through 11 was a third armory, this time dedicated to Legion equipment. Given enough time to teleport in and out of my [Tower], I could arm three centuries of troops, from sandals to spears, from banners to shields.

The twelfth floor was my kitchen, because fuck having that on the thirteenth floor. That only took up about a third of the floor, and the rest of it was my ‘workshop’, where I hammered, sawed, nailed, and generally leveled [Handy And Dexterous] to create all the other furniture, storage, chests, cabinets, and general items used to store things inside of my [Tower]. It was a good place, filled with sweat, memories, and sawdust, but also something of a boring place. There were no great adventures, no fantastic memories, simply measure, measure, cut, drill, nail, hammer, repeat. I didn’t have any particularly fancy moments or terrific insights, bugging [Carpenters] to hand me blueprints for things I wanted to make, then faithfully creating them, letting my skills guide my hands.

The hardest part was honestly getting things to where they needed to be. I could make the biggest damn wardrobe, but the hole in the middle of the tower was only so large. I’d need to make it in several parts, float each part to the final destination, and do the finishing connections there.

It would be far more interesting if Iona and Auri could come in here, but they couldn’t, and the space remained a practical one.

The unlucky thirteenth floor was for coins and cash, along with important documents. Documents that would be worth less than the paper they were on if this was indeed the start to the great war.

Floors 14-30 were pure food and water supplies. Enough to hopefully feed a village for a year, which was hopefully long enough for floors 31-34 to kick in - seeds, more plows, and other farming equipment. In my mind, these were probably THE most important floors, the ones directly dedicated to saving lives in the one way I was unable to help in.

I had some brief regret on the 35th floor. It was supposed to be ingots of all sorts of metals, but they were all heavy and expensive, and I’d elected to spend my time and funds filling up the rest of the [Tower].

Which brought me to some more self-indulgent floors. It wasn’t all disaster planning and future supplies, although I did like being more stocked up than a half-dozen warehouses. The 36th floor was for various trinkets and knick-knacks, along with a small unconsecrated shrine to Ciriel. The next three floors were dedicated to Iona and her artwork, thousands of pieces lovingly hung from the walls I’d built inside. Her best pieces were hanging in the villa, of course, but I squirreled away those I could to these floors. Here was the hall of memories, thousands of sights, views, and people Iona had seen and sketched over our life.

The 40th floor was dedicated entirely to my vanity and my vanity. A quarter was dedicated to the massive table, mirror, and countless drawers of lacquered wood that had been an absolute bitch to craft. Hadn’t even leveled from it all. A thousand and one makeup goods were scattered in nearly as many drawers, the ghost of a once-present organizational system crying deeply over what I’d done to it over the years.

I reminded myself to clean it up and organize it, only to notice nearly a hundred other notifications in the same spot in [Astral Archives] telling me the same thing.

Whoops.

Floor 41-49 were building supplies of various sorts. I’d intended for it to be fewer floors, but the stuff was big, and I kept liberally raiding it for my own construction projects. Bricks, clay, planks, the works.

Floor 50 and 51 were ‘core’ rooms, filled with arcanite. Getting it in piece by piece was easy, and it was surprisingly simple to re-merge them back into a single whole on the other end. Turned out, I wasn’t the first wizard with the problem. The art of fusing arcanite together, usually an Arcanite class special, had a large number of well-documented solutions. A narrow rod of arcanite ran the length of my tower, all my enchantments hooked up to it for mana.

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In theory, I could reach out from where I’d teleported into my [Tower], touch the rod, and restore my mana. In practice?

My mana pool and regeneration dwarfed the core by such an extent, it wouldn’t matter.

Floors 52-64 were Legion supplies, from shovels to tents, toiletries to cookpots, a few ‘assemble into wagons’ and a large dose of medical supplies. The 55th floor was disassembled siege weapons.

I had no way of telling how useful the supplies would be in the moment. It ranged from ‘complete waste of time, money, and space’, all the way to ‘the supplies got burned and Dawn’s the only one with spares’.

Floors 65-67 were empty right now, and I currently regretted not working harder on getting everything set up.

Helmet and greaves, gauntlets and sword, a round shield and the heavy enchanted scale. Everything in its place, I teleported back to existence, Fenrir opening an eye.

I had no cape.

“Case?” He grumbled. I spoke rapid-fire.

“No case. Urgent summons from Arachne. Need to get Iona and Auri and get to Stormwatch.”

Most mortals would’ve heard my words in a high-pitched chipmunk squeak with how quickly I was talking. Invoking Arachne was one of the better ways to get Fenrir up and motivated, and I started to [Teleport] his gear onto him, blurring into motion as I expertly strapped on every piece of his armor.

Fenrir growled low in his throat, the rumble in his cave feeling like an earthquake. He could feel the urgency, perhaps sensed something on the stormwinds. A tendril of Ice wrapped around his pipe collection, and he placed it in front of his nose.

“Take.” He commanded as I tightened his helmet. I dutifully stored it, tossing it into the hall of gems to be properly sorted out later.

“Go.” I ordered, and the two of us took off towards Sanguino at top speed. I noticed Ranger Team Gale leaving the outskirts of the city on their roc, none of the current members part of the original group I’d met.

By Ciriel, I suddenly realized I didn’t know what had happened to each of them.

I stormed into Auri’s bakery like a force of nature, glad that she wasn’t on one of her trips to the North right now. How I’d react if we were separated... it didn’t bear thinking.

“It’s time.” I told Auri, feeling a little bad about the fear and panic I was spreading.

[Age: 112]

[Mana: 9,729,940/9,729,940]

[Mana Regeneration: 24,731,562 +(79,775,800)]

Stats

[Free Stats: 0]

[Strength: 78,653 (Effectively: 629,224)]

[Dexterity: 102,994 (Effectively: 1,096,680)]

[Vitality: 336,579 (Effectively: 5,259,047)]

[Speed: 323,811 (Effectively: 6,373,572)]

[Mana: 972,994]

[Mana Regeneration: 2,692,854 (+ 7,977,580)]

[Magic Power: 1,282,346 (+ 63,027,306)]

[Magic Control: 1,281,410 (+ 62,981,302)]

[Class 1: [The Arbiter of Life and Death - Celestial: Lv 983]]

[Celestial Spirit: 983]

[Aurora Curialis: 983]

[The Stars Never Fade: 558]

[Luminary Mind: 983]

[Universal Cure: 983]

[Etheric Aegis: 510]

[Event Horizon: 842]

[Zenith Everlasting: 983]

[Class 2: [Seraph of the Dawn - Radiance: Lv 948]]

[Radiance Mastery: 948]

[A Light Shining in the Darkness: 851]

[The Rays of the First Dawn: 948]

[Radiant Angel's Spear of Obliteration: 430]

[Celestial Dew: 948]

[Sunrise Halo: 948]

[Wings of the Seraphim: 948]

[Six Wings, Six Million Feathers: 948]

[Class 3: [Sage of Tomes - Spatial: Lv 840]]

[Spatial Authority: 840]

[Scripture Savant: 840]

[Teleportation: 840]

[The Library of Infinite Wonder: 840]

[Tower of Knowledge: 433]

[Reality, Writ As You Will: 700]

[Astral Archives: 840]

[Endless Pursuit of Knowledge: 840]

General Skills

[Long-Range Identify: 624]

[Dexterous and Handy: 500]

[Companion Bond between Elaine and Auri: 983]

[The World Around Me: 533]

[Oath of Elaine to Lyra: 983]

[Sentinel's Superiority: 983]

[Persistent Casting: 983]

[Tender Gardening: 420]