Chapter 290: Liar's Game

“Repeat that for me, one more time,” Irene sighed, knowing her ears weren’t deceiving her, but wishing that perhaps if she believed just hard enough, reality would alter just for her alone.

Yeah, right.

“The most recent caravan was slaughtered, down to the last man and woman.”

“Marking the third time this month,” Irene frowned. “Alright, you’re dismissed.”

The messenger left her ‘office,’ though it had been slowly transforming into something a tad bit more presumptuous than a simple office.

Can’t be blamed; the vocation basically demands it.

She wasn’t so ostentatious as to have had office transformed into a throne room, she knew in the end she would always be second to Rory, but that wasn’t to say her office didn’t seem to carry hints of regal aspiration, that if one looked close enough they could see signs that perhaps the Esteemed Luminary wasn’t just the guidepost of Ehkorrus, but herself angling for more.

A rather slanderous take on my goals, but not entirely incorrect.

Years of being Ehkorrus’s true leader, of essentially being the protégée of Rory, whether he realized it or not, had taught Irene that in the end, if she wanted what was best for her people, she herself had to be at least a little selfish, a little greedy.

Was Shadow Leader of Aelia presumptuous? Sure, but she’d made it work; now she just needed to keep that ball rolling.

But neither here nor there.

Regardless of her standing as the stringmaster of the planet, the monsters couldn’t give less of a damn, hence the most recent news she’d received of their third caravan being killed this month .

How?

Ever since the Founders had officially left the planet, it was as if the monsters, by and large, had all decided to escalate. Irene highly doubted it was Aelia’s doing; it was as if the monsters had sensed the biggest threats on the planet were gone.

On one hand, it wasn’t the same sort of danger that the siege waves had once presented; on the other hand, it was far more annoying because of how it impacted things at irregular intervals. There was no localized planning. One would think the spatial gates would allow for bypassing the problem. Except the problem was that, as frequent as gate usage had become with the planet now interconnected, or relatively interconnected, they’d discovered there was a limit on how much they could use them in any given period lest the gates ‘overheat’ from overuse.

And thus, they’d been forced to adopt a more roundabout method of connecting the cities for trade. Rather than direct spatial gates, they’d established a network of ‘Skip Nodes,’ which were essentially short-range hops that didn’t necessitate the same level of void piercing using the extremely dangerous oblivion energy.

The downside was that, between hops, caravans were necessary to physically traverse the lands. Hence, three caravans were lost this month alone.

Annoying.

The populations of every city were growing year by year. After learning of the success of the fertility tax and credit, every location had established its own fertility credit and tax system, even scraping prior decrees if need be.

While the growing populations should have been the answer to their problems, there was still the bottleneck of higher-tier adventurers and the like. Apostolos’s efforts in reorganizing the combat forces into the Three Fronts, the Charters, Garrison, and Cadre were already showing promise. Still, caravan protection was largely handled by Charter members, who were often the least impressive, except in exceptional cases such as Flair. With Kai Rong being the matriarch of the Rong, and others such as Harrison officially joining with the city itself as members of the Garrison or Cadre, Flair had become the ‘strongest’ as far as Charter combatants. That said, Flair spent most of his time at the Reverse Mountains, where the atmosphere was far more suitable for someone of his skill set.

We need more, faster.

The ‘obvious’ idea was through training and proper gear outfitting. The catch-22 was that by giving a young combatant better gear, the ascension energy garnered from monsters was decreased unless they pushed themselves to face stronger monsters with the better gear. That interplay had led to the understanding that, rather than supplying gear to new Charter or Garrison folk, it was better to use a discount program in which the more proven you were, the greater the gear subsidies would be. A well-proven combatant was much more likely to fare well taking better gear against stronger opponents than a newbie, after all.

Tier eight monsters were becoming more and more common, and that was a problem, as tier eight combatants, be they folks part of the Charter, Garrison, or Cadre, were a one-hundred-or-so-year investment. They were still early on the timeline regarding the frequency of new tier eights.

Leaning back, Irene shook her head.

“Headaches, every day is a fresh headache,” She sighed. “Going to have to bring this up as a point of subject.”

As Ehkorrus was both the largest city by population and the most industrious, it was accepted that Ehkorrus was the primary source of caravan protection. Still, Irene found the situation less and less favorable as time went on, with the sole exception of Sky Haven, whose history of explorers had led them to take responsibility on their side; the two already closely aligned cities only further tightened their bonds as a result.

High Crest Sect was almost like two factions in one, and dealing with them was much the same. One could tell when one was dealing with someone who derived their origin from the Monk side of things, generally agreeable people, except they were also very standoffish, rarely seeking trade deals or the like. Meanwhile, those whose history could be traced back to the Rogue were far more likely to involve themselves in the art of the deal, except they were all a bunch of scammers who would try to fleece you at a moment’s notice. Oh, they had very good protection around High Crest Mountain. Beyond those bounds? Well, they chose to let Ehkorrus handle caravan matters.

Tidal Grove was far more uniform in behavior than the High Crest Sect, but they were also stick-up-their-asshole-pricks.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

Not Irene’s words. Definitely not.

Everything, everything , had to go through layers of military review after military review; deals struck would be undone shortly after, and sending too many guards with caravans was strictly a no-go, as it would be viewed as a show of force. If it weren’t for the fact of how E.O.N damned lucrative working with them was, Irene would have given the word that Tidal Grove relationships were to be placed as low priority. But Tidal Grove was beginning to run out of resources, with so much of their energy focused on their combatants rather than their civilians, a problem their leaders had been calculating how best to resolve before Ehkorrus had entered the picture.

And yet, they were still pricks .

Finally, there was Varas, the worst off as far as any city went, having been conquered by the Bird so many years ago and then abandoned shortly after as he took his main ‘flock’ to conquer Ehkorrus. Unlike the others —Sky Haven aside— Varas was more than happy to work with Ehkorrus.

Except Varas had little to offer. They were the least developed city, and, to be honest, it was more like Ehkorrus was investing in Varas’s building and uplift efforts, and, in return, Varas was a vassal state of Ehkorrus.

Unofficially, of course.

So much to consider, and monsters tearing apart their caravans weren’t much help in the headache department.

Faster. More. How?

Irene had one idea: to discuss the matter with Tsarina. While Apostolos’s reforms to the combatants were beneficial, they would take time to truly show their worth. But if paired with pulling back their forces from internal efforts and instead pushing them solely externally, and instead relying on Tsarina’s brood as the source of Ehkorrian internal might, that could alleviate the issue.

But it would also be freely handing a card to Tsarina, something Irene wasn’t particularly fond of, especially not with the title of the second Chief Protector of Ehkorrus still being so new.

While Rory trusted her, by proxy of Roxy’s trust, Irene trusted no one outside her immediate family. Not even Rory, but that was less about a lack of trustworthiness and more about the fact that, as a Founder who had his own priorities, it would be no shock to Irene if the man vanished for decades at a time.

Hell, even her immediate family was questionable, what with Mariah growing aloof and odd over the years, Violet married to Apostolos, and Marcie seldom around except when there was fighting to be done. Gil was, at least, still solidly reliable, thankfully, but he was also busy with being the primary blacksmith of Ehkorrus.

Greg and John, her actual siblings, were the only two she genuinely was able to truly trust and rely on, but they were also far removed from the center of things; John only involved himself due to being the head architect, lowercase a, of the city and thereby an important figure regarding expansion and construction efforts.

Part of her wanted to try to get closer to Roxy. The girl was insanely loyal to Ehkorrus and had capabilities that would make her perfect as Irene’s own right-hand. Still, Irene couldn’t ignore the glaring issues: those same capabilities that would have made Roxy the perfect right-hand were also the ones Irene constantly had to be on guard against. Also, the fact that the woman was insanely loyal to the city as she understood it made Irene doubt that she would see things from the bigger-picture perspective that Irene did.

As a bonus, Tsarina was her trusted…. Friend? Retainer? Their relationship was admittedly hard to place at times. But if she could gain Roxy as her trusted right hand, that would also effectively maneuver the current Chief Protector into her camp. At which point, she would have brought every power center of Ehkorrus into the fold beneath her.

Well, almost every power center. With the continued growth of Ehkorrus, more and more familial clans were establishing themselves; even Apostolos’s family had grown to the point of being a proper clan. But they were all young or still relatively decentralized, only minor speed bumps.

No, the real opposition was the oldest clan of Ehkorrus.

The Rong.

In essence, another headache, this one of Rory’s making. The Rong’s loyalty was first and foremost to the Architect, then to their clan, and finallyto Ehkorrus. Which seemed like a distinction without a difference at first, but oh, was the difference stark to Irene. She knew they were, at best, begrudging of how she ran things. With Rory off-world, Irene could easily imagine a hypothetical future where, if she fucked things up enough, the Rong would decide that they should be the shepherds of Ehkorrus. And as long as they presented their argument of an internal conflict for the betterment of Ehkorrus, Irene could easily see Tsarina letting it slide.

And that was an issue, because if it came down to pure strength…. Irene had no doubts that the Rong were superior. The education and training of the Rong began at a young age; they never produced combatants of a lesser caliber than the Talented. If things ever became a direct contest of strength, Irene felt confident Marcie would side with her, but Kai Rong herself wasn’t a slouch. Plus, there was the future to consider: if the quality of the Rong continued to grow but the talent she could attract didn’t, well, that was yet another factor to calculate for.

Headaches on headaches, on headaches.

While it was good to consider every possibility, some outcomes were more likely than others. For now, the idea of the Rong splintering away or vying for control wasn’t a genuine threat, not unless she ushered in a slew of failures one after the other.

Which was why she definitely needed to get this monster situation handled; losing more caravans would begin to turn judgmental eyes on her leadership.

First, I need to clear my head.

Sighing, Irene sank her mind deeper within herself, as she found herself within an ‘inner world’ of sorts, her mental palace. While mind palace skills weren’t that rare, such a developed version, such as her own, was nearly unheard of. Rory himself was one of the few exceptions, given he was the ‘progenitor’ of such skills.

Within her mind palace, structured as nothing more than a campfire surrounded by a recessed seating area and endless pitch-black forests, the fire roared up, flames flickering into a pattern of sparks and embers that hung in the air.

Irene let out a mental sigh, pleased to escape into her one hobby.

Skill manipulation.

While some enjoyed time with family, others preferred to drink at the many taverns that had sprung up. Others had become rather engrossed in the daily sudoku puzzles in the distributed paper; Irene, instead, found her peace in attempting to tweak or manipulate her skills. While she could hardly call herself a prodigy, it wasn’t as if she’d had anywhere near Rory’s success; she was perhaps the most practiced outside of their rather eccentric Founder.

“Let’s see what progress I can make in this session,” Irene said to herself as her eyes narrowed in focus as she focused on the sparks and embers, her own internal visualization of a skill structure. Rory’s apparently took the form of a stone slate, but his view had been colored by his experience with the literal skill slate he’d worked on decades prior.

The skill Irene was working on was… ambitious. Not necessarily because it was a remarkably complicated skill, but because it was being made entirely from scratch. If she succeeded, she would be only the second person ever, as far as she knew, to have self-made an entire skill.

The first was, of course, Rory, with his Enchain skill, his one and only true combat skill.

The skill in question was a skill she’d codenamed Liar’s Game. Its use was relatively simple; while active, it would prevent her body from reacting to external stimuli outside a preset range of ‘acceptable’ variation—a rather simple starting premise.

But.

But Irene hoped to continue working on it and tinkering with it in the future, with plans to incorporate automatic defense against emotional probing, so that it would free her concentration around Roxy without forcing her to watch herself constantly.

And that was only scratching the surface. Irene might not be a combatant, but if there was one thing she had going for herself that few others outside of Founders had in spades, it was determination to improve, however possible.

Feeling far more at ease after spending her time relaxing by finagling the in-progress skill, Irene found her mind turning back to her little problem, having considered a new idea.

Now, I do believe I have a few favors to cash in, and there was that recent cracked samsara seed that Harrison and a few others traded in for priority in the Cadre consideration list… Yes, maybe I can at least come up with a band-aid solution for some of these recent caravan attacks...