Chapter 299

Chapter 299

Agent Atrisa Gloomwood carefully ran a brush down one of the support runes of the backup life support system. It was made out of a single hair, plucked from a Tier 25 antelope friend of hers, and just about the finest rune brush that was possible to make. She was no master rune smith, far from it, but sabotage and spy work didnt require expertise in the field of runecrafting. She couldn't do that if her life depended on it, but she was a master of manipulating existing runes and injecting viruses into them.

While it was incredibly unlikely that the Federation would be foolish enough to power up the shipyards systems without a thorough check on the runes and code running everything, backup systems like this were sometimes overlooked, which made the painstaking effort worth it. If worst came to worst, she was making more work for the Federation which was a win in her books. In the best case scenario, one of the viruses she had implanted into the systems would activate once the shipyard was connected to the Federation main network and infect everything, allowing the Guild operatives a back door until the Federation counter espionage teams identified and purged the infected systems. This being a shipyard, there was even a chance of them infecting ships, which would be a coup of immeasurable magnitude.

She was almost giddy at the thought of Federation ships trying to engage with Guild ships, just to find their weapons refusing to fire or their shields continuously triggering overload prevention protocols. It would be glorious.

Unlikely, but glorious.

Her eyes flicked to the side as a warning went off in her [AI]. Someone was moving in her direction and had been picked up by the station's life support systems. Opening her own [AI] back up to the public channels, she found Aster had messaged her a few times.

With only a little kicking and cursing, she kicked one leg out of the vent she had stuffed herself in and wiggled it around.

Over here.

The fox bond skipped over to her spot and shoved her head into the hole. Whatcha doing?

Atrisa started to explain, but was ready to cut it short expecting Aster's eyes to glaze over in boredom. Instead, she found the other bond had a decent understanding of runes and enchanting.

Why not hook into the civilian networks? That seems a lot easier.

Atrisa sighed. Against the articles of war. Civilian networks are too easy to abuse, so no one is supposed to use them. That said, pretty much everyone uses them as a backup network. But to catch them, you would need to be in the civilian network to monitor the traffic, which meant you'd be admitting to breaking the war rules yourself. The only real way to prove it is if the military network is taken down before any messages can go out, and the opponents still respond, but that's a rookie mistake no one will fall into.

Cant they just have someone jump to the next system with the teleporters and pass the word along like that? Or at least say they did it that way?

They do that too. In fact they

Aster nodded along as Atrisa gave her a rundown of the various ways the Great Powers circumvented their own rules.

When she petered out of steam a few minutes later, Aster said, Well I just wanted to let you know we are expecting the second wave to arrive soon, so you might want to come hunker down at the peak.

If it had been before the last battle, Atrisa would have scoffed at the suggestion, saying she could take care of herself. That was before. Having seen the destruction they were capable of in the last battle, Atrisa was more than happy to go back and join Aster and Morgan at the top of the best defended part of the ice block that was the former shipyard.

Atrisa had worked damn hard in making herself hard to notice, but when energy got thrown around like it had been in the recent battles, she wasnt willing to be a sitting duck.

Gathering up her supplies, she checked and made sure she had a few dozen miscellaneous pieces of equipment from the Federations last attack. Instead of twiddling her thumbs, she could add some viruses to them and hope one got used by someone before being checked over.

***

Liz stood, perched atop the fortress of ice.

A human body looked on with a severe gaze at the space around them, watching as Drifter popped into and out of realspace to harass any military ships that got too close, and making sure there were no attempted stealthy attacks. The fact that civilian traffic, or at least what could pass as civilian traffic in the Federation, had started avoiding their system indicated they were going to get hit again, and they needed to be ready.

Inside her veins, she flowed with renewed vigor as she channeled and delivered nutrients, mana, and essence as appropriate to her human self. On her shoulder, she ruffled her feathers and looked out with the piercing gaze of a phoenix, a second pair of eyes even better than her human sight.

Outside the fortress, she flapped her wings as she circled the area, keeping another eye out for incursions.

In the lower levels, she moved supplies and settled into the fortifications.

With Matt, she perched on her husbands shoulder, taking advantage of the mana regeneration he was providing and adding additional gravitas to his already-impressive and handsome stature.

In a hidden backroom, she was working on her alchemy three times over, and reading The Book as well.

Ten bodies was loosely the limit for how far she could push herself, especially doing such disparate things, but it was good practice, and she couldnt slack now.

They had already lasted a week and a half, which was longer than their minimum needed time, but Liz didnt want to just pack up and leave any more than the Guild generals did. Even if they said it was fine.

Liz wasnt ready to be pushed out like that. No, she wanted the Federation to throw themselves against their position until they gave up. That was the ultimate victory, a Great Power deciding it wasnt worth it to throw more troops into the grinder, divert all their military shipping around this point, change the entire face of the war, all because their team was too damn hard to dislodge.

That was a way to prove to their enemies and allies alike that they were a force to be reckoned with.

Liz temporarily flickered the bulk of her consciousness to her alchemist bodies. They werent clones, the Kanakas had been quite clear in their advice that she shouldnt think of any part of herself as a clone, but it was still a byproduct of [Lesser Blood Clone], or [Sanguine Footsoldier] as Group Chatter had been pushing her to call it. That carried certain inherent attributes, no matter what her Domain and Talent did.

[Lesser Mana Clone], according to normal wisdom, could never support more than four clones without an upgrade, Talent, or Domain saying otherwise. When upgraded once, that could be pushed to six. Shed been able to do eight for decades if she called on her Intent, imbuing each of her clones with a bit of independent life. Her Tier 25 Talent combined with a Tier 26 upgrade orb to push that to ten, and her latest record was fifteen bodies controlled by a single mind, albeit heavily relying on her Intent.

Ten was her current normal limit. Ten Lizes, six of which were human, three of which were phoenixes, and one of which was pure blood. If she wanted to be comfortable beyond that, shed need to cast [Mana Clone]. That particular spell also created a second mind in addition to an extra body, and that second mind could control bodies eleven through twenty.

She could then keep casting [Mana Clone], giving her up to ten minds to work with. Ten minds, each with ten bodies, meant she could control a hundred bodies comfortably, optionally pushing that up to a hundred and fifty depending on how fast she wanted to burn through her willpower and mana. At least the latter wasnt that big of a limitation, between Matt and her own [Blood Sacrifice]-powered regeneration, but it still left it impractical for continuous use.

Plus, she was still getting used to having multiple hers running around. For most people, it wasnt a true issue, as clones lacked the Domain and thus were undeniably not the true self. But for her, every body was her true self, and she wasnt interested in going for either a true gestalt existence or as multiple parallel entities, like the Kanakas did. That each mind could freely change what bodies it focused on only further complicated things, but she didnt like the feeling of multiple minds trying to use the same body at the same time. She rarely had conflicts, but it was still common enough that she actively avoided it.

As a result, she tended to dismiss all of her extraneous minds when not in combat, an action that was always profoundly disorienting to her, as nearly a dozen distinct sets of experiences recombined into a solitary train of thought. But, the way she did it preserved her primary bodies, so that was a plus.

Not that there really was anything different about the primary bodies, in all honesty. The closest thing to a distinguishing feature between any of them was the one that had completely exsanguinated itself to make room for a different Liz to inhabit its veins. Otherwise, shed taken to choosing the bodies with the most intact sets of armor to maintain.Updated from novelbIn.(c)om

Reading, Liz chuckled at the thought of her armor and she set aside her book, stretched out her hand, and let a drop of blood morph and expand until it became a wickedly sharp feather floating just above her palm. The crafters had really outdone themselves with her armor. With nearly no cooldown or diminishing returns for concurrent use, she could summon an incredibly versatile weapon or armor at the cost of just a bit of blood and mana. Sure, keeping them around permanently took reserved mana, which was in such short supply, but each individual feather was cheap, and she could fluidly move them around wherever she needed them.

Really, the fact that all of her bodies shared a single mana pool was an issue. Sure, her max mana was already high for a melee warrior of her Tier, something that had only been further increased by some runic tattoos and a small pile of natural treasures. But even she couldnt keep upwards of a hundred and fifty bodies fully armored. And that was without even getting into all of the buffs that also took reserved mana, or keeping enough surplus that she could actually cast. At least [Conjured Avatar], usually a favorite of summoners, let each of her minds use spells without worrying about the cooldowns of the others. But that only exacerbated the problem further instead of solving it.

It still left her stretched thin, but Luna had prepared her well for that. Her spear skills and existence-wide buffs were plenty for most enemies she fought; no extra mana required. If anyone needed genuine attention from her, she would use her twice-upgraded [Coven Casting] across multiple bodies, solo-casting what was usually a multi-person ritual enhancement, and not many people survived that.

Sadly, the Federation troops werent stupid and stopped sending in troops, instead pulling back and accepting their losses instead setting up a shield wall, using range to batter her clones down.

Liz didnt bother to continue the fight and allowed most of the clones to be quickly destroyed, only putting up resistance when it would be mana-positive.

When there was only one left, she made a show of it and she grinned at the Federation troops who had encircled her.

Blowing them a kiss, she said, See you soon.

Letting her body fall apart, she stopped the transformation and pointed above them. Might want to duck.

The mind dissipated, returning her experiences to the bodies back at the fortress. Once there, Liz laughed as she watched Matt and Bolt hammer the position with spells, quickly eliminating many of the tightly packed Federation soldiers.

Cracking her neck, Liz readied herself for a long and drawn out battle.

Her little stunt had been a, if she said so herself, brilliant opening move to crush the enemy's morale but the actual casualties were only in the hundreds. The commanders had quickly cut their losses and spread out enough that it was hard for her to get enough blood to do anything large scale.

Still, it had been a good test of her new skills, and that was worth the strain she had been put under while holding the coven spells.

Looking back at her coven, she smiled as they finished casting the final spell. It wasnt a true spell, but one of the skill-less spells she had been working on with Chess. The spell was a simple resonance spell that used her connection to her [Scarlet Plague] and more importantly its residual effects of thinning one's blood.

Anyone that had been infected would be quickly healed but unless the healers took the time to completely purge the side effects, which was unlikely given the pressure they were under, she would be able to track the once infected attackers.

The only real limitation of that little trick was processing the information. Her [AI] was already split a hundred ways and couldn't handle that much computation without being useless for the rest of them. She could mostly bypass that by sending a data dump to Matts [AI] and let him use his excess processing power to track everyone, but even just sending that much information quickly enough could make her spare mana run dangerously low..

Hefting her spear, she went hunting even as Matt threw himself out of the fortress. The enemies would soon be infesting their halls lest they contend with her husband in the open field backed by Morgans constructs and deadly crossbow. Staying out there was asking to die which would send the attacking soldiers scuttling inside looking for shelter from the rain of death he would bring them.

A good idea in theory but Liz wouldnt live with vermin in her house. There might be a lot of attackers but there were a lot of Lizzes as well. Lizzes backed by Mercury, Stick and Stone, Bolt, and most importantly Aster who had turned the entire station into her icey territory.

It was time for a hunt.

***

General Casos finally understood how Jas had felt after the first engagement. She had thought she had seen everything through her time in the army, but she just blinked at the report Agent Gloomwood had sent her.

She still couldnt believe it.

The Oval Table warned her two weeks ago that the moment the Ascenders had crushed the second wave of attackers, the Federation pulled three more Tier 26 armies from the frontlines of battles the Guild wasnt trying to relieve for the express purpose of dislodging the Ascenders from their territory.

This mission hadnt just gone well, but had exceeded expectations beyond her wildest imagination, and she could only wonder at the Federation Generals who had given the orders for even more troops to leave the frontlines. It was a bold move, to say the least. She would have never given such an order, but she suspected she knew the reason. The Federation and the society they had cultivated had been holding pride and honor as an immutable ethos since their fall so the fact seven people were squatting on their front lawn must have been creating societal unrest.

She had immediately ordered Agent Gloomwood to investigate as much as she could with the access she had. If things were so bad that the populace couldnt tolerate someone taking over a single system they might be able to use that to their advantage with strategic repeats of this maneuver.

Granted it was all conjecture, but she hadnt been sure what else would or could drive the Federation to pull back from three Tier 26 battlefields to dislodge them out of a single system. Sure, with Drifters exceptional piloting skills and the Ascenders for back up, no military shipping could use this lane, but at worst avoiding this choke point meant a few more weeks of flying and shouldnt have elicited such a reaction.

That said, there was nothing for them to do but watch.

General Casos had read up on Drifters profile, and as the woman had been stationed in an embassy for a time they had a fairly detailed personality matrix built on her. She wasnt a glory hound and knew her limits. A good thing as General Casos was in her ship and didnt particularly want to be in a heated fight in what amounted to a light frigate with larger than normal engines and weapons.

No, she preferred to do her fighting in a miles long dreadnought surrounded by dozens of layers of armor.

She rethought that proposition as she considered what Ascender Quill could do to a dreadnought with a cast of [Breach]. His single spell was a little stronger than the cannons usually mounted on such ships, and while their shields were rated to protect against such levels of power they werent made to fight single cultivators. They would never be able to hit the man while he flew circles around them and blasted holes in her ship.

Or worse yet, he flew inside and cut his way through the ship with that power armor.

General Casos was just glad they were on her side.

As she saw the mountain of ice slowly turning, she reaffirmed her thoughts. Ascender Scoop had been a bit of a question mark in their information but after witnessing the latest, third battle, she intended to send a strongly worded reprimand to whoever rated her so lowly due to being a bond.

The three newest armies had learned from their predecessors and instead of rushing into a fortress of ice and dying inside its halls they had kept their distance and set up cannons used to siege fortress worlds and started blasting the shipyard.

That elicited a response, as everyone defending the shipyard came out to properly hold their position. Enormous spells clashed across the battlefield, and Casos was stunned to see how these handful of people managed to hold their own against what should by rights be overwhelming odds.

After three days of making no progress they had changed tactics again and sent in probing attacks combined with sappers who used massive breaching charges normally used to blow through fortress worlds shields. That had finally caused serious damage but Ascender Quill had simply cast some spell that seemed to create mana crystals and used it like glue to reform the fortress to its original state after he slaughtered those who moved the charges into place.

That had caused a standoff that lasted a full seven hours. The Federation Generals must have been asking for new orders, because just when things looked hopeless they packed up and left. While the Federation were not the Sects, General Casos had never seen them just give up like that and knew no field commander would be able to make such a call.

From Mercury and Agent Gloomwoods reports, the Ascenders were angry that the Federation didnt meet their challenge. Angry they didnt get to face three battle hardened armies at once.

Pure and utter madness. Insanity of the highest order.

There was no other word for it.

But the retreat of the Federation armies left them unsure of how to proceed, and General Casos was waiting for the Oval Tables decision. From the last reports she received the battles they wanted to relieve had already had their attacking armies routed so there was little strategic reason for them to stay but now that it seemed like the Federation was unwilling to push into this area they might want to reinforce it and create their own staging area deeper inside Federation space similar to what the Federation had done to them.

General Casos would never suggest such an action when they were on the defensive everywhere else, but she wasnt part of the Oval Table and didnt know if there was a larger strategic reason to keep this system.

Despite her own objections to such orders she had had Jas preparing loose deployment plans just in case. General Casos hadnt risen to her rank because she could be caught unprepared. Thankfully their orders werent suicidal and they were ordered to return to Guild space so they could send the Ascenders on another mission.

Looking out at the fortress of ice, General Casos decided she would not be volunteering to be their handlers going forward. Her understanding of the realm might not make it through another such deployment.