Chapter Six, And Then Everything Changed When The Edgy Elves Attacked.
I stabbed the blazing hot rod of steel into the mouth of the beast before yanking out the other rod I had left in there. Spinning around I smacked the rod against the most solid surface I could find and began to weave my magic into it, magical veins and miniature hybrids of hearts and lungs grew into the slowly forming sword under my hammer and magic. With a final blow I took my magical weapon and quickly stabbed it back into the beast before taking the other one back out.
I snorted to myself over the narrative I had been mentally building up to amuse myself while I practiced my forging. Who knows, maybe someone would write such a legend about a weapon I made about how I forged them while in mid battle against a fiery beast rather than the boring version of the constant pulling them out to whack on a few times before placing them back in to heat up again.
Granted, the high speed forging I was doing was probably still pretty cool, heh, from the outside perspective. The magical forge I had to create a strong enough heat so I could forge at fast time periods, the rapid onslaught of my magical hammer as I meticulously and tediously hammered out the shape of the weapon before tossing it back in to maintain the perfect temperature at all times, the literal holy water I had on hand nearby to get the quench just right, and the massive magically reinforced anvil next to the forge. All while looking like someone pressed fast forward on me.
It was likely an awe inspiring sight even if almost everyone else would need special safety gear to survive being in the room since the magical forge was actually pretty hot even if I was safe from it. Glancing at the forge, I panicked a bit as I realized I had slowed down too much and quickly swapped out what I was working on. What I was working on right now wasn't anything too impressive, today was less about pushing my limits and more refining what I already knew.
I mean yeah, once again I made use of my absolutely broken raw physical ability to perform the techniques I was taught to past machine level precision and made my hired dwarf instructor cry (thankfully in a positive way) but that just meant I had to rely on myself to be a perfectionist and go beyond.
I finished quenching the two weapons I had been working on and pulled out another two of my premade forge sticks. I had, in my pursuit of finding something better than generic steel to forge, started dabbling in metallurgy and alchemy in the last few years in between other projects. It had taken a while but I eventually made an alchemical blend that holds an edge extremely well, is almost twice as strong as steel, resistant to corrosion, weighs just as much as steel, and is just in general an amazing upgrade from steel.
Downside? It requires so much magical power to make enough for a single suit of plate armor and greatsword that I could use three Clarent Heir Mordreds in a row. Not saying much when I can spam them like there's no tomorrow but it's not like anyone not a slann or on the same level could pull off a Clarent Heir Mordred even once.
So... Not exactly something humans can make without using a bunch of elementals or power stones which is not at all economically viable. Not that I've cracked power stones yet, those have been on the backburner since I already had elementals in a bottle to generate magical energy on demand. Eh, I would get around to it eventually or someone else would, magic innovation was flourishing right now.
I finished off the last two weapons I had just finished forging while mentally rambling to myself and put the last finishing touches on them. Now to dump them on the captain of the guard, he'll find a use for them somehow. The myriad of weapons, armor, and trinkets I've dumped on him has been staggering over the last few years. The cliche fiery swords, earthen maces that expanded in size and mass at the last second to deal massive harm, spears that shot lightning, chainmail more protective than plate armor, plate armor that let the average man or woman wrestle evenly with ogres, belts that created forcefields, amulets that emitted a healing aura, rings that protected against poison and other ailments.
There were so many items that they were starting to stack up in the armory from the sheer number of them I've created. It was also causing a bit of an identity crisis in my royal guard since the random mixmash of magical items made them look like murderho- I mean wandering adventurers instead of royal guardsmen. I suppose I should actually get around to making mass produced sets of magical weapons and suits of armor for my royal guard instead of dumping my haphazard experiments into their lap to deal with.
Eh, another thing for the pile of stuff for future me to deal with. I shut down the forge and cleaned up as much as I could before hopping into the shower I had for cleaning off all of the grime and soot that always coated my body by the time I finished in here, almost as bad as sand if you ask me. Only slightly better since I can just take a shower and be clean with the soot and grime I tend to collect whereas with sand, I've once taken two showers and still found quite a bit of sand in odd places.
Once I finished up with my shower I got dressed in clean clothes and moved on to the next piece of my day, dotting my I's and crossing my T's on Operation Gardening, name still pending. The greenskins have been a boon as an additional sharpening tool for my armies but I've been guilt tripped by my own conscience to take care of them and then since I was already marching an army down there, I figured I'd continue my work on reclaiming lost holds too.
In just another couple months I would take the majority of my new standing army and remove the greenskins from the southern borders. From there we could go down to Karak Drazh and resupply before going and clearing out Karak Eight Peaks alongside the dwarfs who had been gathering there over the last few years as the new staging ground for their reconquest of their former hold.
I was of course aware that this would be the prime time for the empire, skaven, or anyone else to attack Drachenreich as the Dragon Guard would be at all time lows and only twenty five percent of the standing army would be there to support them. This was actually why I had been forging a few more weapons just in case someone decided to attack the dragon's lair while the dragon was gone. If nothing else, I could make use of That.
With the number of trinkets, weapons, and pieces of armor I was leaving behind, the royal guard should be capable of fending off at least ten thousand enemy soldiers on their own. I wasn't asking much of them in my opinion. Just that the three hundred of them armed to the teeth with magical items should be able to indefinitely hold their ground while outnumbered thirty four to one or even win with minimal casualties. If they weren't at least capable of that then I might as well just recruit a few dozen emperor dragons instead no matter the inevitable aggravation that would cause me and everyone else including the dragons.
Naturally the entirety of my royal guard outside of the half a dozen that regularly shadow me would be defending my sons. The boys were technically capable of defending themselves against most everything but they were still only five years old and should be nowhere near a battlefield despite what popular media said otherwise.
Damn, that reminds me of the depressing fact that Warhammer doesn't have any good stories to read or watch. It's all bland generic stories that had little creativity to them with the occasional folks tale that were incredibly depressing. One day, I would be able to just sit on a comfy couch, watch TV, and eat junk food again. It might take me hundreds of years but I won't rest (too much) until that day comes!
Ha… I sat back down from my 'awe inspiring' pose that I had struck in the moment, luckily in the privacy of my office. I had needed that, I had to remind myself to add some silliness to my days or else I'll turn into a boring workaholic adult and get burnt out by the reality of living in a grimderp world. And then this world would really be doomed, I'd probably end up empowering Khorne from the bloodshed I would unleash so much that it could eat one of the other Chaos gods which would be very bad since that would lead to Khorne eventually becoming the only Chaos god left while holding the combined might of all four of them.
Bah! Enough of that, I needed to focus on what's currently in front of me and not what ifs right now. Fortification of our side of Blackfire Pass was on schedule to complete in the next month, it was no multilayered reinforced concrete wall filled to the brim with cannons like the end goal was but the mediocre single wall of stone and wood with cliffside lookouts along with two dozen ballistas, four dozen catapults, and a dozen cannons. Not much when you consider how large the pass is but it was enough for now.
The infant navy was chugging along as much as it could when the cannons desperately needed were still in the foundry and months away from being placed on the ships. In the meantime, they had strapped ballistas in place instead of cannons and had enlisted the aid of some mages to enhance the destructive capability of the bolts fired by the ballistas. It was a good idea as a short term solution but not exactly something sustainable when magic is more volatile than gunpowder and the use of the still somewhat limited number of decently skilled mages we had to keep resupplying the ships long term.
As I swapped reports, I found some good news. Large scale production of flintlocks and accompanying ammunition and bayonets had begun as expected and by the time I left for Karak Eight Peaks, a grand total of two thousand soldiers would be drilling with them. Once they were ready, then they could be taken on excursions to give both the soldiers and their commanding officers experience in how they should be used and their effectiveness on the battlefield. It's not like I can just drill them a few times and then suddenly have an expert force of musketeers and highly developed tactics for commanding officers to use after all. It takes time for these kinds of things.
Shuffling off those reports, I grabbed the next stack. These ones were covering the current manpower shortage going on. Thanks to the fact the Dragon Guard were only part time, we had been able to sneak by the harvest season by giving plenty of off time for members of the guard to help out at home more as members of the standing army filled in the gaps created.
The shortage was predicted to end in a decade, when the millions of five year olds all reached their midteens and could be counted on to help out more. Ironically, when I had made my half assed suggestion for founding schools everywhere, I was met with tears of joy but not the reason most would think of. Instead of being happy about educating their kids and things like that, they were instead happy to get some free time from the small swarms of children that infested nearly every household. Even some of the nobility were looking forward to safely getting rid of their kids for a few hours a day. Those poor teachers.
Not that this stopped anyone from having more kids. Seriously people, you were already overwhelmed by the kids you already had, why the fuck were you having even MORE? At this rate, I might end up spending money budgeted for things like more cannons and muskets on importing food to feed all of these hungry mouths instead. I mean, it was a good thing that there would be a large population growth soon since we had large swabs of land untouched besides the occasional patrol since we didn't have anyone to make use of it but really? We really didn't need to go through a famine within the first decade of being Drachenreich. Or ever.
It was rather fortunate that I had mages that are conveniently spread out across the country that could be convinced to spend some time improving crop yield and preventing problems from destroying them. The saturation of mages across the kingdom is one of the major reasons I wasn't stressing out more about how half the country was teetering on the edge of starvation.
Between the mages, widespread sharing of halfing farming knowledge, the ability to import food, and the second to last resort of just using every ounce of faith energy generated to flat out make more food? I feel comfortable in not stressing out too much about it. If nothing else, we could just steal food from the empire despite the promise I had made not to step foot there until told otherwise but that was the last resort so it probably wasn't going to happen without outside forces intervening.
Hah… I leaned back in my chair and just closed my eyes. I was procrastinating about all of this. I could have dealt with the greenskins years ago and Karak Eight Peaks wouldn't even take me all that long to deal with by myself even if I factored in dwarf travel time. I could scare off the empire with a big showy bit of magic that they couldn't deny as hearsay and rumors. Hell, if I was willing to trust someone not to fuck this whole thing up, I could have saddled someone else with the throne and had studied how to seal off the polar gates and would have probably made decent progress by now.
Gods damn it! I was over fifty fucking years old now, I really should have my shit more put together by now. Rubbing my face I slumped forward, my hands moving to rub circles into my forehead like when I had a headache. The part of my life that I had spent as Mordred might have kept me from stalling out like I had when I had just been a basement dweller as I so often joked about but even now, twenty years after I had fused with me and two kids later, I still found myself pulling the same stupid shit I had done twenty years ago.
I suppose that just goes to show, even if you were mostly a chimera of dragon, divinity, and fey, being even part human wasn't something you could just move past. Wait, was I going through some sort of midlife crisis right now? I snapped my head up like some anime character in shock. Oh gods, I probably was! Nope, nopenopenope, I was just going to stuff this whole mess in the back of my mind and deal with it later, distant future me could handle it instead.
As I was getting up to find something to distract myself from my probable midlife crisis, frantic knocking on the door came. I quickly adjusted my clothes before opening the door to reveal the messenger who was completely out of breath and very panicked while shoving a letter in my general direction. Grabbing it, I swiftly opened it knowing that the messenger wouldn't have dared act like he did unless it was incredibly urgent.
Ah, I was getting used to this, it had been pretty quiet over the last few years hadn't it? Well, it seemed that the dark elves were coming for Drachenreich and they had a massive fleet along with multiple Black Arks that would arrive in a couple months. Not something my tiny and under equipped navy could handle even with Tilean and dwarf support.
I should probably be worried or something but at this point? It was honestly underwhelming, the simplest way to handle this was just killing them all with a blast of magic. But that also killed the slaves that were guaranteed to be on those ships which was easily preventable and clashed with my morals so killing all of the dark elves via sword was the plan.
It took a lot longer on my part and required a lot more work but I hadn't lost all of my morals yet so this was the result. I guess it was time to get the council in order so the planning for how to handle all of the slaves could be done. I guess my distraction found me.
It was surprising how fast months could just fly by, one moment I was yelling at morons for not taking into account the medical and nutritional needs of potentially tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of soon to be former slaves and the next, I was getting ready to take a short sprint over to the approaching fleet of edgy elves. Edgy elves being my new nickname for them until I get tired of calling them that..
Well, I wasn't actually getting ready because it didn't exactly take long to teleport armor or clothes unto yourself unless you were a magical girl and summoning Clarent from wherever it went when I dismissed it was even faster. Instead I was standing around looking cool while the final touches were being put into place for the refugees we would be taking care of for a bit before they get sent back home, if they wanted to and could be sent back anyways.
It wasn't exactly uncommon for people to discover how much better life was in Drachenreich compared to their homeland and decide to stay instead of go back. Most of the time, it was imperials, almost every single bretonnian peasant that made it here, and the occasional Tilean or Estalian. Surprisingly, Kislevites preferred to just vacation here for a couple months before going back home instead of moving full time. Probably has to do with the climate differences, what with Kislev generally being pretty cold and Drachenreich having summers that made people joke about a dragon's fire being colder.
I shook myself, it wasn't time to get lost down mental rabbit trails, I was going to face fier- I can't even finish half that sentence without choking on my own laughter. The edgy elves weren't exactly a threat to me and even if Malekith and his mother tried to face me together, they were incapable of doing much more than disgusting me considering I was practically immune to magic and physical force. I suppose they could surprise me but the likelihood of that was pretty small, more like nonexistent but you never know, it was technically possible across the multiverse.
You know what? I've been too grim and far too responsible lately, I should do something a little spontaneous to amuse myself with people's reactions. Gotta get those cool mom points for my boys to gloat about right? Grinning to myself under the helmet, I used a transformation that took me a while to figure out how to do without god mode assisting me. I validated memes everywhere.
Stretching like a cat and yawning as I took on dragon form, because why be yourself when you can be a dragon? I was much smaller now, barely enough to be called an adult dragon unlike the far larger and more ancient looking dragon my goddess form gave me but a dragon was still a dragon. Standing, I glanced at the incredibly shocked bystanders gawking. I winced as I noticed a pair of men had dropped a heavy looking crate on their feet in their shock. Luckily, there were dozens of magical healers around because of the reason we were all gathered here so they should be fine.
With an amused huff at the bystanders and a flap of my wings, I lifted off and started my short flight over to the edgy elf fleet. It didn't take more than a few minutes for me to see the fleet on the horizon, I could sense the dozens of dragons with them, oh? It seemed that they wanted to pit dragon against dragons today, judging by the dragon shaped blobs starting to take off anyways. Well, can't disappoint after they came all this way right?
It was a little insulting that they thought that they only needed half a dozen dragons and their riders to take care of me but I suppose they noticed I was a little on the small size and with dragons? That was the single greatest indicator for power and age. Not that these dragons were capable of scratching a scale on my body, well besides the fact that my armor had somehow morphed into perfectly fitted full body armor for my dragon form. The shining silver polish with bright red highlights was probably how they saw me so quickly, they probably thought I was with the high elves.
It was time to get serious. I dove from my high altitude and accelerated to my fastest speed. The other dragons and their riders looked frozen in place as I descended towards them. In a mere moment, I was ripping out the throat of the closest black dragon with my own jaws. A beat of my wings brought me to the second one and I grabbed it before tossing it towards the distant fifth and sixth.
Another beat of my wings brought me to the third dragon and I slaughtered it like the first. Yet another beat from my wings and I was next to the fourth. This one's rider had the beginnings of a surprised look on their face while staring in the direction I had been a few moments ago. A swipe of my claws shredded through both the rider and dragon, killing both of them. I turned my head at the now tangled and clustered trio of remaining dragons. Sparks appeared in the back of my throat as it began to glow before I unleashed a beam of pure lightning and disintegrated the three of them.
I dove downwards at the nearest Black Ark, completely silent as the sound barrier had yet to catch up. I halted myself with a quick series of flaps from my wings, sending gusts of wind that shattered masts and swept the dark elves off their ships and into the ocean. Hopefully there wasn't any of the slaves caught up in that, it would suck for all this effort to be put into rescuing them only for me to accidentally kill them all in the process. Oh, there's the sonic boom. I guess I paused a little too much, time to get back to work.
I transformed back into human form before channelling my magic into my body as I went Fast. I burst through the doorway and into the floating fortress, killing every dark elf I saw and making sure every slave I found was not in risk of dying or agony the moment I left them behind to continue my whirlwind sprint. After what felt like an eternity of running through hallways, killing the Chaos wannabes, and taking slaves out of twisted torture devices, I was finally done with that ship and was ready to move onto the next one.
The situation had changed only a little from the glance around, they were starting to unleash the other dragons they had and were scrambling to get back in order, I could just barely make out the distorted screams for help the dark elves I had sent overboard were making. A quick jump over to the nearest ship and I began the cycle of killing dark elves, removing slaves from torture devices, and running through long corridors and hallways.
By the time I made it topside again, the black dragons were all in the air and headed towards me. Convenient. One more transformation and I was a dragon again. Taking a deep breath, I swept my laser beam attack throughout the sky, the beam of lightning scythed through all of them, disintegrating the lot of them. All of the black dragons have all been eliminated, woo.
After that, it was just the continuous cycle of running through long corridors and hallways, removing slaves from torture devices, and killing dark elves. Well, there was one notable mention, I think I actually found the person in charge during my runs. The elf was the edgiest looking elf in the entire fleet by far, a true symbol and Icon of the edgy elf race. He had been standing next to what was probably his consort judging by the massive slaaneshi vibes I was getting from her. They were both magical powerhouses judging by the spells they were weaving as I cut them down.
Which made it rather surprising when they tried to get back up. I wouldn't have noticed it if I hadn't been checking for useful bits of documents or trinkets like a good murderhobo but unfortunately for the edgiest elf to ever edge in full armor, I noticed.
So I used what I could over my domain of magic, because there is no way it wasn't magic of some variety keeping him alive, and cut him off from all magic. No stands of magic connected to his body, mind, or soul remained, not even his ability to cast magic. Rendering him void of magic entirely which definitely killed him. And just to be throughout, I applied the same treatment to the slaaneshi elf as well which ended up being a good call.
After that, it was just a matter of getting the now former slaves organized and waiting for the rescue fleet to show up. That was going to be a few hours but I was probably going to need that long to get everyone settled. I guess I should have waited until they actually set sail before leaving huh? Oh well, it was nice to take out my stress on morally acceptable targets for a bit.
I've seen people mention Shin Megami Tensei here and there before even if I never looked into it and have seen about 45 seconds of a Persona game snippet but I've never even heard the Bartimaeus Trilogy.
