Arc#5 Chapter 19: Reclamation

Someone once said that just by thinking of something bad happening, you help it become a reality.

Reivan really wanted to find who said that because they might just be right.

'I can't believe I actually found an esper in my fucking city...'

Just as he thought that Lageton was clean, he found an esper on the last gathering he needed to check. There was just one, but that was still one too many by his standards.

Helen, who was standing right next to him as he stood on the edge of a tall building's rooftop, must have noticed his change in demeanor because she looked toward him and asked. "Did you find one?"

Reivan sighed. "Unfortunately, yes."

"Then we need to kill it fast," she said, turning pensive for a moment. "Come to think of it, if the esper planned to cause an incident, wouldn't it have already done so by now? There's so many people gathered here, after all."

"You have a point..."

"Is it alone? Have you checked everyone else? It would be tragic if we took one out and unknowingly tipped off the other."

"You're right." Reivan licked his lips and pointed out a particularly burly man among the crowd in the plaza below. "Watch that one. The big blonde oaf with a rifle on his back. I'm going to make sure there aren't any other espers here."

Helen nodded and gestured for him to go on, so he did.

Offering up a silent prayer, Reivan examined all the other people in the crowd and sighed in relief when he didn't find any other espers.

'Alright. If it's just this one, then there's not much of a problem other than our abysmal security.'

They would really need to tighten up regulations. It would be very inconvenient to any refugees rushing to Lageton in hopes of security, but potentially letting an imperial esper into any populated city was a recipe for tragedy.

Even Arkhan had a history of entire villages and unprotected cities falling to a single esper.

"I'll deal with this one quietly on my own. Wouldn't want to cause a panic when everyone's finally calmed down a little." Reivan turned to Helen. "But watch out in case I somehow mess up."

"Will you, though? Mess up, I mean."

"No way. But just in case, y'know?"

Helen nodded and gestured for him to go on.

Reivan smiled and turned into a cloud of black mist that rematerialized into his disguised self right in the middle of the festive crowd. He navigated through the forest of bodies and snatched a mug of beer from a man who was obviously too drunk to finish it.

The esper in question looked unassuming and blended in perfectly with the crowd; his clothes were somewhat tattered and dirty from days or maybe even weeks of use, his face was unshaven, his hair was frayed, and he was also armed. With how dangerous the situation was, having a gun was expected among the more recent refugees, so carrying one around didn't even attract second looks.

Practically nobody knew that the man in question didn't need a gun to deal fatal damage to hundreds of people all at once.

'I gotta pull him away from the crowd first.'

Reivan contemplated how he would go about accomplishing such an endeavor but froze.

He didn't even need to think of a way because his target slipped away on its own, not even pretending to be part of the festivities. Fortunately, this further proved that the esper didn't intend to cause a scene for now.

'Today's my lucky day...'

Reivan pretended to be a drunken citizen as he tailed the esper. Along the way, he clinked mugs with drunken men and somehow got kissed on the cheek by a somewhat elderly lady. He almost got into a fight too but managed to get out of it by sucker-punching the moron just hard enough for a knockout.

Finally, the target entered one of the buildings designated as a temporary shelter for refugees. Which was perfect, since there probably weren't too many people inside right now. After all, the free food and drinks given away outside were significantly better than any of the rations everyone had been for weeks—it was all you could eat and drink too, so they could have as much as they wanted.

Anyone still inside at a time like this either couldn't go outside or weren't interested in delicious food for some reason or another.

Reivan hurried his steps, shedding his feigned intoxication to tail the esper all the way until he saw the target enter a bathroom.

'Perfect.'

Turning into a cloud of black mist to close the distance in the shortest time, Reivan seeped through the gaps in the door and reformed within the bathroom, a dagger in hand. Surprised, the esper tried to lash out but was immediately slain by a dagger penetrating the side of its head.

But it wasn't over yet because killing the host body only forced the esper out of it. If one really wanted to get rid of an esper, it had to be killed twice—using special means of attacking ethereal creatures to finish it off.

Reivan naturally had his methods, so just as a hideous spectral face jumped out of the corpse, Reivan swung his other hand and punched out with a glowing fist to shatter the esper once and for all.

'And that's the end of that.'

The corpse fell but he stored it away in one of his spatial rings. He didn't know the person that the esper possessed, but Reivan would give the unlucky fellow a proper burial along with the other esper victims he slew yesterday. Luckily, the corpses were fresh enough that [Supreme Insight] still tacked a name on them, such as "So and so's Corpse" or "That Person's Corpse". If too much time had passed, his ability would have just labeled it "Corpse"—or worse, "Human Meat".

In any case, because he knew their names, he could add them to their tombstone. Who knew, maybe a relative would find it one day and achieve some sort of closure. The last thing he wanted was for them to hold out hope for years only for that hope to never come to fruition.

'This is really distasteful.'

Reivan licked his lips and beat down the disgust he felt. Sure, he wasn't the most innocent person and he admitted that he would kill without question if it was to further his nation's interests.

But there was just something repulsive to killing a person, defiling their body, and wearing it to wreak more havoc. Even he wasn't that bad. He may have stolen Clover Salwyn's identity for a while, but didn't he give the guy an opportunity for a good life in exchange?

He was not the same as these imperial scums. And he was finding himself increasingly proud of it.

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The next few days were relatively peaceful.

A normal ruler would have their hands full managing domestic affairs. But he was a Senior-grade knight with various special abilities and two spiritual companions near the same level—his talents would be wasted if he was made to sit behind a desk all day.

Of course, once things died down he would probably have to take up those kinds of duties, but things hadn’t died down yet.

And besides, there wasn’t much to do in all honesty. The best course of action at the moment was to let the land heal and for the people to gradually rise back up. There was still the issue of currency having lost its value, but he and his staff already had a plan for that.

Elsamamina was also living in the palace per his orders, so it was very tempting to just stay inside and indulge in hedonistic desires. But Reivan was a man of iron will, so he managed to satisfy himself by spending time together at dinner.

Helen, naturally, was present as well. Because of that, supper was always nerve-wracking with his wife and his wife-to-be sharing a table. But he took what he could get. At least they weren’t at each other’s throats because that wouldn’t end well for Elsa if violence entered the equation.

In any case, with Jiji—his “advisor”—back in the palace to hold the fort on the domestic management side of things, Reivan had taken Gwen and a sizeable force with him to reclaim nearby areas.

Reclaiming sounded impressive, but it didn’t actually mean that he would have people live in the reclaimed settlements as is. Rather, the point was to acquire resources and create outposts in the area from which to launch further assaults.

If push comes to shove, they would retreat and fight any opposing forces in the reclaimed lands, essentially turning it all into a “buffer zone” to minimize the chance of combat bleeding into the populated areas.

Furthermore, if there were still people living in those places, Reivan and his forces would forcefully relocate them to Lageton. After all, with the empire sending espers and giant balls of lava bursting out of the ground like some sort of Dark Souls boss encounter, anyone staying in such an unprotected land was either suicidal or mentally impaired.

No matter how much they insisted on staying to protect their property, one’s life was always the most valuable. They could just return once the area was secured in the future anyway, so there was no need to risk it all by staying there now.

Reivan’s party was met with great luck, acquiring numerous factories and production sites. And with the help of the battlemages from the tower, they had managed to find a cache of War Golems—massive steel titans that had served as Arkhan’s foot soldiers against the empire for centuries.

“I’ve seen them a few times back in Vel Ayala,” Reivan craned his neck and narrowed his eyes, his gaze trained on the giant mass of steel. “But these fuckers are really massive. They must be ridiculously expensive to make.”

War Golems were the height of a ten-story building at a glance, and instead of looking like humans, they had six crab legs supporting their hulking upper body. There were a lot of turrets on its shoulders and its arms ended in a pair of pincers—which had cannons within them.

‘It’s very obviously based on a crab-human hybrid of some kind…’

Despite that, it didn’t look goofy at all. Rather, it looked incredibly imposing just on account of its sheer size. There was no way common soldiers were going to look at this and go “Yeah, we can fight that motherfucker!” or something.

Reivan and his forces only managed to reclaim ten of these big boys, but there were smaller golems who were still as tall as three men stacked on top of each other. These were also modeled after crab-men, but they sadly did not have cannons inside their pincers.

These were excellent finds because they were disposable.

Golems weren’t alive after all and so far, nobody had started a “Golem Lives Matter” movement or something along those lines. That’s why he could just leave them in very dangerous areas without much consideration.

Strength-wise, a War Golem would require the aid of a Junior-grade Knight at least, because anything less than that would be crushed under sheer mass or would be too slow to evade. The smaller Assault Golems, on the other hand, would destroy anything below the 100 Might threshold but would still damage those above it, though only slightly.

‘It’s morbidly interesting that the Battle Golems can ride the War Golem by being stored in their stomach… Agh, now I imagined a Helen version of a War Golem…’

Sometimes, he cursed his active imagination.

“Apparently,” Gwen spoke from beside him, similarly observing ten War Golems march back to Lageton, each containing a hundred Battle Golems inside them. “We will have to secure pilots for each one.”

“Yeah…” Reivan sighed. “I thought for sure that they were automated. I never knew they were being remotely piloted.”

“That’s not strange, Your Excellency. The kingdom also thought they were controlled by a form of artificial intelligence. If the mages from the tower hadn’t revealed the truth, we never would have known.”

It was one of the most well-kept secrets of the republic’s army that their combat golems weren’t automated, but rather, controlled by a specialized soldier very far away.

While somewhat disappointing because his small dream of having a maid robot died with the news, it was still impressive. Arkhan had pretty much eliminated the risks that mundane soldiers took in war. Sure, battlemages were still at risk, but they weren’t exactly mundane, given their supernatural powers.

‘We could take this and implement it in Aizen, no?’

The main reason why the kingdom didn’t employ a standing army the same way the empire did, was because they didn’t want to risk so many lives in a fight that could be decided by the presence or absence of a particularly powerful individual.

A Senior-grade Knight would plow through a mundane army in the tens of thousands given enough time. So there wasn’t much of a point to employ such weaklings in war. It would place more burden on their elites, but that was a worthy trade-off.

With these golems, the kingdom now had a way of increasing its forces without placing anyone at risk.

‘And another thing…’

Reivan thought back to Lady Iselle and the rest of the darkin still somewhere in the Outlands.

If these golems could be controlled remotely, they would be perfect scouts to send into the accursed place. Sure, the golems wouldn’t make it very far, but that was a fact for the current golems. Who knew what kind of improvements the kingdom’s artificers would make if they had their way?

According to the mages, there was a separate organization that focused on training golem pilots, and only a few of them were ever in the tower. The smaller Assault Golems stayed within the War Golems’ stomachs not because it was more efficient, but because they didn’t even have enough pilots to use all of them.

Samsara had fifteen pilots, and ten of them were busy controlling the massive War Golems from the safety of the Mage Tower in Lageton. So even if Reivan had millions of War Golems at his disposal, they would all just be mountains of useless steel unless he found the golem pilot organization—which was apparently called “The Golden Gear”.

Yes, he could just have the fifteen pilots he did have to train up some new ones, but there were tens of thousands of pilots just waiting for him to recruit if he played things correctly.

‘How unlucky. So they were based in Southwestern Arkhan.’

Samsara was very far away from there.

Fortunately, because Samsara was at the eastern edge of the former Arkhan, he was poised to control the entire east portion and have a bid for the south and center—where Vel Ayala used to be. The East focused on industrial endeavors, so there were actually golem factories here.

This fact luckily removed any trouble he had with securing the necessary tools and apparatus to chug out a bunch of golems.

Securing the Golden Gear meant that he wouldn’t have to risk the forces he got from Aizen too much. Ideally, he would use Arkhanian forces to defend Arkhanian land.

‘Hm… Rather than march there, it’d make more sense to go by airship—I mean, by sky ark.’

Riding a giant flying ship across the sky was very flashy, and would undoubtedly reveal his location to any enemies who still had working eyes. But to him, the risks were well-warranted. Furthermore, it went without saying that the Golden Gear probably had even more golems at their disposal.

For now, though, he would send a few of the golems and some of the spare pilots to Aizen.

“You did really well, Elder Voltares.” Reivan looked to the side, where an elderly wizard stood, waiting to be addressed. “If you keep showing your loyalty, I won’t treat House Demoscene unfairly.”

“Of course, Your Excellency.” The current head of the Demoscene Clan—one of the Four High Magus Families— smiled. “I’m sure the other three houses will be more cooperative soon.”

“Let us hope so.” Reivan chuckled, gesturing at the old man. “But I won’t forget that it was the Demoscenes that stepped forward first. You have my gratitude.”

Seemingly very pleased by this, the old man smiled.

‘Lip service like this is essential. Can’t forget.’

Reivan then rubbed his chin. “Elder Voltares, remind me if I’m wrong, but your house focuses on having Water-attribute spirit beasts, yes?”

Voltares Demoscene nodded promptly. “That is right, Your Excellency. House Barial prefers fire, Morval prefers wind, and Sentel is partial to the earth-attribute.”

“Ah, then doesn’t that mean House Morval has been helping us from the start? Many mages with avian spirit beasts have been patrolling Samsara’s surroundings.”

It was Gwen who answered. “Most of the patrol team are unaffiliated with the Four High Magus Families, Hierarch Reivan. Though there were a few from each house, actually, being avian doesn’t guarantee that a spirit beast has the wind attribute.”

Reivan’s brows raised, realizing that made sense. After all, Grace—Gwendolyn’s swan-type spirit beast—didn’t have the wind attribute. “Forgive my ignorance. I’m not embarrassed to admit that I’m not very knowledgeable about spirit beasts.”

“But of course, Your Excellency.” Voltares chuckled good-naturedly, but Reivan didn’t miss the wily glint in the old man’s eye. “If you are curious to know more about spirit beasts, I can teach you more about them. Or better yet, our clan has many youths your age that can assist you in these kinds of matters.”

‘Oh, my days… He’s trying to set me up with someone in his clan…’

Thinking about it, such intentions likely weren’t unique to House Demoscene. Once the Four High Magus Houses realized he had dozens of concubines lined up, they were likely to offer some candidates of their own.

And honestly, it made sense to agree. It would solidify the relationship between him and these four ancient families.

‘All I wanted were Helen and Elsa…’

He’d read about political marriages a lot back in his past life, and he always thought they were so outdated and were annoyed at the trope. Now that he was in a position of power, however, he realized just how necessary they were at times.

Times like these.

‘Agh, fuck it. I’ll leave tomorrow’s problems to tomorrow’s me.’

“I’m going to have to ask for your support once again, Elder.” Reivan gestured vaguely in the direction of Southwestern Arkhan. “We will need to send a quick expedition to retrieve the personnel of the Golden Gear that you mentioned.”

“You have it, Your Excellency. You have it.” Voltares rubbed his palms together and bobbed his old little head. “If I may be allowed to ask… Do you intend to go by air?”

“Hm? Of course. It’s the quickest way and we can transport all the personnel and even some equipment through the sky ark.”

“But would that not carry the risk of being discovered by any enemies? I heard espers tried to assassinate you and even infiltrate the Great City of Lageton…”

Reivan briefly wondered where such a grand title for Lageton came from, but refocused on the subject at hand. “There are risks, yes. But do you have an alternative suggestion, perhaps?”

It seemed he was right, because Elder Voltares grinned. “You just mentioned this earlier, Your Excellency, but the esteemed mages of my household mostly have water spirit beasts…”

“Ah.”

Reivan realized what the elder was implying immediately.

‘He plans to go by sea…’

Certainly, there were a lot of merits in that. Argonia had no sea presence in Arkhan’s southern coasts, so any journey through it would be faced with no obstruction and would be relatively more secretive than flying through the air.

Reivan’s gaze met with Gwen, and he immediately realized she had a question. So he nodded to signal her to go ahead.

“If your house does take on this task,” Gwen asked, staring stoically at the elderly wizard. “How will you transport all the personnel and any relevant equipment?”

“We have whales, Secretary Gwendolyn.” Voltares smiled. “My spirit beast just happens to be one. And a few others have whales as well. There will be no trouble ferrying a few thousand people from Lageton to the Golden Gear’s base.”

“Hmm…” Reivan licked his lips as he sunk into thought. Honestly, this sounded like a better idea than going by air, purely based on how much more secretive it was. “I like this idea, Elder Voltares. But I’m curious why House Demoscene is so enthusiastic?”

“I’d like to say that we only wish to serve…” the old man trailed off with a grin. “But I’m sure nobody here would believe that.”

“True enough. So? What is it that you’re aiming for?”

“Preferential treatment, of course,” Elder Voltares shamelessly admitted. “And a small sky ark would be nice.”

Reivan scoffed but found himself unable to suppress a grin. He really didn’t hate these kinds of people; their desires were all laid out in the open and that made interactions much easier. “I can’t promise that I can be too partial to House Demoscene. It would not be wise to break my image of impartiality this early, no?”

“Of course, Your Excellency. This humble one misspoke.”

“A sky ark can certainly be arranged though.”

To that, Elder Voltares smiled so wide his teeth were laid bare.

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More days passed in relative mundanity.

Lageton had received a large influx of citizens forced into evacuation, in addition to sorcerers who had kept said citizens alive through the heatwaves. These sorcerers weren’t battlemages, but rather, mages who had failed to get accepted to the tower in their youth but still retained their skills in sorcery.

They would be a useful addition to the new tower, which would now focus on sorcery. After all, they had “lost” the Sanctuary where they obtained spirit beasts, so the mages were on their own now and were much less picky about who they invited into the tower—which had now been renamed to the Mage Tower.

Reivan hung out in the refugee area to suss out any espers and diligently his among the patrol parties to catch any espers by surprise. Fortunately, none showed up, so his efforts were wasted.

As for land reclamation, Lageton could still somewhat sustain Samsara’s population so Reivan’s staff decided to focus on developing the city into a place worthy of being a nation’s capital—with a thriving population to match.

Good news just kept on coming too, as the temperature stopped being fatal.

It was still at around roughly thirty-eight degrees Celsius—which was still quite high, but was still at a manageable level. Some tropical regions back in Modern Earth experienced such temperatures during the summer, so Lageton was no longer plagued by a supernatural level of heat.

This was achieved by finding all the awakened volcanoes or any chasms where magma seemed to have burst into the surface at some point, then plugging them up with loads of earth with the help of earth-attribute knights and spirit beasts.

Nobody knew when such a method would cease being functional. Of course, Reivan and his staff were aware that it was just a stopgap and were still alert to any more of those giant lava balls.

Despite everything, Samsara’s situation was steadily improving and so was the general mood of the populace. There was even a petition for the factories and production line to be started up so that people could get back to making a living. With the Arkhanian economy all but shattered, it seemed the people intended to sell their products to Aizen—which was certainly possible despite the lack of demand.

What Reivan really wanted them to try was agriculture, but the land was still a bit too damaged for that. Again, all they could do was wait for time to do its thing.

Reivan held a modest hope that things would continue to go well, but one day, on a lazy afternoon, Sir Xander returned from his solo mission to the north with grave news.

The empire was sending an army in the hundreds of thousands in his direction.