Apocalypse Reborn: Demon Lord 23

Apocalypse Reborn: Demon Lord 23

…

There isn’t much that can stop a fully leveled, geared-up Champion in the early game. The only thing that came to mind was having enough money to buy out every single mercenary Champion possible and throwing them at the enemy. If you were lucky, you’ll lose them all and the armies you’ve latched them onto but get the kill by throwing enough bodies at the problems. Champions needed to rest, resupply, and recover from battles just like everyone else. If you throw thirty thousand soldiers at them backed by experienced Champions, even the best Champion can be killed if they’re flying solo.

Arguably, given how strong their basic units are in raw stats, the Forgers were the most capable at dealing with solo-Champion attacks. Their units had middling attack, but they were well-armored and magic-resistant from the get-go. If the edges of the map were properly secured, they could bury a Champion in bodies, chunk down their health, and kill the Champion in two engagements and just ten thousand or so dead.

I wasn’t about to test whether I could overcome those odds.

Even if I could theoretically just run away if an army like that did show up, it was just better to bank on a simple fact: the Forgers simply didn’t have enough movement to keep up with me.

With that in mind, I blitzed through the region and targeted every single settlement that they established. They were preparing to unveil the Citadel and take it for themselves by gathering labor from all over the continent and using that labor to craft ingots that they could turn into armor. Anything that required technical skill was reserved for their lower caste, while the people that they enslaved were used as nothing more than expendable labor.

Expendable labor that I could extract and send back to my lands while destroying their own.

It was systemic in a way.

I found a settlement, hit it, killed the guards, and controlled it, and let the enslaved go along with the Forgers that they vouched for. Before a relief force could arrive, I was already making my way out, and they were left only ruins. A few survivors here and there made it clear what they were dealing with, so I brought their morale down a bit, but beyond those guys I didn’t spare anyone else. The Forgers weren’t a people that I could deal with, much like the Children of the Elm, so the government and its military needed to go.

Only time will tell if regular Forgers can be involved in my society without any problems and give me their race’s bonuses.

Until then, I was going to keep hitting the Forgers until they lost the ability to matter on a strategic scale.

…

Interlude: Erlan, the Smith

…

More arrived after us, while I was given the role of leader for those of the Forgers who came after, as I was given the Ancient King’s knife.

We were settled in mountainous lands across the whole continent, through the lands once held by the Academy. We were provided tools, food, and materials to make our own homes. If we lacked people, we needed only ask, and soon a clerk, doctor, architect, and more would arrive. I found myself at the head of a village of a hundred at the start, but it grew and grew, while the supplies kept coming.

Those who arrived told us of what happened in our old lands.

Disaster and devastation struck the upper caste and the king who ruled over them. The warrior-blooded could do nothing against the might of the Ancient King. Like a hero from myth, he stood alone against them, but they could do nothing against him. As the months passed, as more and more arrived, the Descendant whom I met grew larger than I could imagine.

He led entire armies to chase him only for them to falter and fail.

When mercenary champions were called upon, they either fell to him or were next seen in his service in his lands.

When fortresses were constructed to stop him, they fell and burned to ruin, while their defenders died to the last.

The last group that arrived told of a final stand by the upper caste, as they raised the Citadel in hopes of overcoming its defenders and finding safety within its walls regardless of their losses.

Then, after a month without news, I walked out of my home and found him standing in the square of the town I had helped create.

“My knife.” He demanded softly, and I reverently returned it to him. The face of a young man, bereft of a beard and scars, bore down upon me with eyes that spoke of wisdom and clarity that sent shudders down my spine. I knelt out of instinct while he took his knife and examined the village I had helped create. “You did well in a short time.”

“I was helped by my people and yours, my lord.”

“I am not your lord. Not yet.” He spoke, and a cart came forward. A cage with huddled figures lay within it. I knew what was to occur now. He realized this. “They are the last of the nobility of your people. Your former king’s skull will be placed in my throne room. These ones you and those you trust will kill by my command.”

I spoke the names of my comrades, those who I trusted and worked with these past few months, and I felt their presences near me.

Still, I felt so small as I stood before the Ancient King and as the former nobility were all placed on their knees before us.

They were only bound and incapable of running away.

But the curses and insults I expected of them never came.

“They die today, and their children will live. They will not know of your people’s history or tradition. They will be raised as my citizens.” The ancient king spoke, and I almost let loose a sigh of relief that I did not know I had held back. He looked at me, and I knew that he saw through me. I could hide nothing from him. “The Forgers die today, but it will be reborn. No more castes. No more enslavement of other mortals. No more bloodlines to decide who is born to whom. I remove these shackles from you and make you, my people.”

 He gestured towards our new homes, our new lands, and even passively to babes held in the arms of their mothers.

“I will create a nation of the Ancients once again. All will be strengthened. All will be elevated. All will toil for the good of all.” He spoke and handed me an axe. In my hand, it felt as light as a toy, but its edge was without compare. It was undoubtedly a weapon created in the Citadels. A weapon that can hew through steel with ease and turn any warlord into a demigod in battle… a century ago. Before the ancient king who stood before us now existed. “There is no choice, as the enemies of the Ancients remain, and the continent’s defenses are faltering. In but a decade, the world will beset our continent in search of people to enslave and the secrets of the Ancients.”

He looked upon me, and I bowed my head out of instinct.

Then, the command came.

“Go forth now and show me your loyalty. I may one day ask you for your lives, and I may even ask your children for theirs, but rest assured that your children’s children will be born into a world that the Ancients would be proud of.”

His words echoed in my mind as I swung the blade.

…

Eight Citadels were under my control.

In theory, that should allow me to claim the whole world.

Eight Citadels combined gave me the ability to churn out Citadel Guardians that could operate outside of the reach of the Citadels. From the ones I had built after taking the Forger’s Citadel, that was thanks to a series of power sources embedded in the new ones that allowed them to recharge from sunlight at incredibly high efficiency rates and store excess power. Hundreds could be built every day by a single Citadel; thus, with their high DPS and toughness, I should be able to just drown the Ancient’s former foes with numbers.

But that theory didn’t hold up.

First there was the problem with the Sahuagin, who dwelled under the sea. Throwing Citadel Guardians at them would just result in giving them Citadel alloys and even access to the energy conversion methods that the New Citadel Guardians used. Giving my enemies highly efficient solar power and incredible alloys wasn’t exactly conducive towards defeating them. Keeping them off of my land wasn’t victory, either.

Then, there was the size of the world itself. Pumping out Citadel Guardians and sending them out in every direction would spread them thin enough for resistance to be put up. Even with a couple of years of buildupmaking the first wave devastating, the replacement rate was too low to keep the numbers high enough to endanger all my future opponents at a time. If each crisis retained their holdings and population without expansion and the other ones disappeared? That would make sense for my output of Citadel Guardians to automatically defeat.

That would be every Citadel devoting itself to Guardians, too. No contribution to industry, society, economy, or technology.

The default victory was basically just holding the continent and being untouchable until a normal society managed to put something together to win.

Decades of advancement, industrial development, and population moving to reinforce walls of automated killing machines, to spend decades more cleaning up the rest of the planet.

If it was left entirely to the Citadel Guardians, cleaning up the entirety of the rest of the world would take centuries, and every year that passed increased the likelihood that something would be made to counter them. Once cornered and facing systemic death and destruction, innovation and adaptation were sure to occur, and those advancements might include the detonation of fission weapons or similar weapons of mass destruction against my people.

Not only would those be devastating, but they would also beckon others in the stars to check in on us.

Therefore, there was only one option left: find a way to take the planet before our enemies make that mistake.

The only way of realistically achieving that was finding the wonders left behind by the Ancients, as well as developing something entirely our own.

Thankfully, the Academy had something that could help with that.

…

“Airlock pressurized. You may now enter.”

I disembarked onto the Ancient Space Station after a moment. Through a shimmering field of energy, space, and the entire world were visible. I idly considered the possibility of improving the station and turning it into a weapons platform before discarding the idea. We didn’t have enough lift capability, and if we did, it would be noticed.

I left the transport and entered the building.

Apparently, it was a vault filled with ancient artifacts judged too dangerous to be left on the surface.

That proved to be the case, as I found most of the cursed endgame artifacts on the station, which only appeared after repelling the Demonic Invasion from the center of the continent.

Most of the items present offered a lot of power but also corrupted the wielder. If they were too low level, then they’d just turn outright along with their army and start conquering your own cities. I could use them, but the cost outweighed the benefits. I needed my mind sharp and clear. Even if I could grow that much stronger, I was ultimately a leader and not just a warrior on the front.

No, in the end, the treasure hold didn’t interest me.

Instead, I found the closest terminal and accessed it.

The language was unfamiliar to me, but there were plenty of similarities with the modern form to connect the dots. More than a few artifacts also sported the same form of text, which assisted me a great deal. Learning all the buttons and keys on the terminal took a bit more time, but soon I found what I was looking for.

General knowledge.

Nothing on weapons and nothing as incredible as clearance that would allow for the Citadels to churn out military-grade weapons, but instead the fundamentals of science and knowledge in this world. The Citadels offered plenty themselves, which was why they gave a flat increase to science that increased with the more Citadels that you got, but everything in them was geared towards rapid establishment of a stable supply chain and some supplements to industry.

The knowledge that I now had access to was closer to encyclopedic and even had maintenance guides on how to operate the station.

Including the fact that the station had inaccessible areas that maintained and fabricated utility machines that could be outfitted with weapons.

Utility machines that could house the data and use lasers to etch it out.

I ordered for the machines to be built and ready for multiple trips to the surface.

A couple dozen advisors with cores filled with knowledge from ancient times were going to my universities. They were going to be the sources of truth and information for researchers, as well as guides for engineers, chemists, and everyone else who had to produce what was discovered. It wasn’t a war-winner by any means, but anything that could galvanize research even a little was worth my time.

Building the rest of the bots would require cannibalizing the station. Eventually everything was going to be packed up in orbit just to be put into my transport. Most of the corrupted gear I was just going to have purified. The stat loss would be worth it in favor of getting the weapons usable by my existing Champions without any risk of corruption. I could only hope that whatever powered the fabricator could be reconstructed, along with the fabricator and the terminal itself.

Being able to produce armored cavalry with assault cannons as long as I provided raw materials from the Citadel?

That was a great boon.

The station would have been nice to keep, but in the end having technology spread out and having more firepower on the ground was better. Even if I could’ve maintained the station by piloting the transport and bringing raw materials produced by the Citadels up to it, the station was a container. Not a battle station or surveillance center.

Better to pack it all up, put together what was worthwhile on the ground, and use everything else to create bots that could disseminate knowledge perfectly.