VoidHerald
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Board & Conquest 2: The Arrival
🕑 Added 2024-11-27 11:51:29 +0000 UTCA/N: heya, now that Commerce Emperor has concluded, the poll for the new story ends in two days, but it is still at 50/50 split... and I kinda need to break that deadlock and start outlining the winner.
So I'm publishing additional chapters of each option; if any has changed your mind or if you haven't voted yet, please do so soon!
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Narc was doomed.
Victoire Fleuret was an optimistic woman, but the plumes of smoke obscuring the rising sun and the clamor of clashing steel echoing across the village did not inspire confidence. Her fellow militia members dragged a large number of wounded into the mine where most of the non-combatants had already taken refuge. Montfroid Peak loomed ominously behind her like an impenetrable wall that would allow no escape, its frozen peak gleaming in the sun.
Her wererabbit squire, Filou, trembled like a leaf in the wind at her side, his tiny sword wavering in his gloved hands. While she was equally anxious, Victoire didn’t allow herself to show fear; even when her werebear friend Lourson rushed to her position with his white fur tainted with blood spots and carrying a wounded wererat in his arms.
“The last barricade has fallen!” Lourson warned her with a heavy breath. His improvised breastplate—a half-finished iron plate strapped to his chest—had a few obsidian shards stuck in it. “They’ve got a wyrm with them!”
Victoire clenched her jaw. She had expected as much. Narc was a mining town with less than fifty inhabitants, most of whom had never held a weapon in their lives. They never stood a chance against a well-equipped and determined warband.
“W-what do we do, milady?” Filou asked her anxiously. “Do we… Do we run?”
“There’s nowhere to run,” Victoire said, her hands tightening their grip on her spear and shield. “We’ll stand our ground, Filou.”
“Y-yes, milady!” Though he was only half a man’s size, her squire showed twice the courage than most. “I’m with you!”
“Thank you, Filou.” Victoire nodded at Lourson next. “Bring that poor sod inside the mine for treatment and join us. We may still be able to hold them here.”
Her friend nodded and hastily retreated into the mine. The noise of heavy footsteps echoed across the stone pass leading to the village, followed by the smell of coal and fire. It didn’t take long for the enemy to come into view.
Victoire had never seen magmorians before today, let alone fought any. They made for intimidating foes with their fanged faces, stony horns, coal-like black skin leaking billowing black smoke, and the stream of flames rising from the back of their heads. She’d heard a magmorian’s life only ended with their inner fire, and perhaps she should put that tale to the test. She counted eight of them, each armed with obsidian maces and axes.
Facing such a large group would have already been a doomed effort, and the roaring mass of scales at their back only crushed Victoire’s hopes further. A thick, cart-sized black lizard with vicious yellow eyes and a maw large enough to bite a man in half crawled after the magmorians, its fiery saliva leaving trails of flame in its wake. Victoire could hear her squire’s knees shaking at the mere sight of the creature.
The largest of the magmorians stepped forward ahead of his group and hit the ground with his axe’s shaft. “By order of General Peridot, we claim this land by right of conquest in Lavaland’s name!” he declared in the magmorian tongue. “Throw down your weapons and bend the knee to your new masters!”
Victoire spat at the ground, her saliva turning to steam from the heat soon after. “Your tyrant of a master can stick his ambitions up his volcanic ass!” she replied in the invaders’ native language. “Nine or nine hundred, we won’t let you through!”
“Would you rather die for these animals, human? As you wish.” The magmorian leader glanced at the wyrm at his back, his flaming eyes burning with a gleam of amusement. “Our battle-pet has never tasted human flesh before.”
The wyrm let out a bellowing hiss and crawled forward. The magmorians stepped aside to let it lunge at Victoire. She barely had time to push a terrified Filou out of the way before a massive claw could tear them apart. The wyrm smashed the ground with such strength that it cracked.
“Filou, get a hold of yourself!” she shouted while raising her spear. The tip of her blade clashed with the creature’s armor of scales but did little more than graze it. “Filou!”
Her squire was too frightened to move, so she had no other choice than to grab him under her shield arm to carry him away. The wyrm snapped its jaws at them in an attempt to eat them with savage hunger. Victoire was forced to take a step back after step back towards the mine shaft while waving her spear at the beast to keep it at bay.
“Ten ores it’ll bite her head off!” she heard a magmorian jeer, his proposal laughed at by the other soldiers. It would have been easy for them to press their advantage, but they looked happy to simply watch the spectacle unfold.
Enraged by their cruelty, Victoire dropped Filou behind a rock for his safety, stepped to the side to avoid a bite, and then plunged her spear into the beast’s left eye. The wyrm let out a screech of pain as a stream of steaming yellow blood stained Victoire’s blade, then briefly backed down. Victoire hoped she had intimidated the creature, until she saw its throat’s scales brighten slightly.
She barely had time to leap out of the way before the wyrm breathed a stream of fire at her.
Flames licked her armor and cloak, nearly setting the latter on fire, but she quickly dashed forward in a surge of speed that took the wyrm aback. She focused on the shining outline of the beast’s scales and plunged her spear straight in its gullet.
The magmorians’ laughter turned into shocked silence, and the wyrm’s hisses into gargles. Victoire buried her weapon deep into the monster’s flesh, the sheer heat hurting her through her gloves. She impaled the wyrm’s throat inch by inch while steaming blood dripped onto the ground below.
A shadow passed over her. Victoire looked over her shoulder just in time to see the magmorian leader attempt to strike her from behind with his obsidian axe, only for Filou to jump out of his hiding place and intercept him. Her squire’s sword clashed with their enemy’s weapon and pushed him back.
Victoire swiftly drew her spear out of the wyrm’s gullet, letting it collapse on the ground, and then thrust at the magmorian. The soldier was forced to retreat back to his shocked allies.
“She… she killed it?” one magmorian asked upon seeing the wyrm agonizing in a steaming puddle of its own blood. “Tch, so this dump had at least one good warrior.”
“I’m sorry, milady,” Filou apologized to Victoire, his voice heavy with guilt. “I’m… deeply ashamed of myself.”
“It’s fine,” Victoire reassured him after checking her spear, whose time in the wyrm’s gullet had dulled the tip and damaged the shaft. She couldn’t fault Filou for reacting this way in his first fight. “You’re braver than these cowards.”
“Big talk from future kindling,” the magmorian leader replied with a grunt. “Soldiers, with me!”
His men quickly recovered from their surprise and spread out to flank Victoire and Filou from all sides, only for a thundering roar coming from the mining shift to spook them. Lourson quickly emerged from the tunnel with a warhammer.
“Come forth, if you dare!” he said as he stepped up to his allies’ side. “Back to the flames with you!”
“It’s still eight against three,” the magmorian leader argued back with arrogance, before changing his mind after giving Filou a contemptuous glance. “Well, two and a half.”
Victoire steadied her spear for the clash…
And then lightning struck the mountain.
A thundering boom startled everyone present, whether friends or foes. A bright bolt coursed across the clear and empty sky to strike Montfroid Peak in a flash. Victoire watched on with amazement as the glacier on its top transformed before her eyes, its ice reshaping itself into a tall statue; one representing a man with a wolf’s head overseeing the entire landscape, his hand raised at the horizon.
What sorcery was that?
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Being incarnated sucked!
And of course, Wepwawet had been sent first. Miss Athena couldn’t let the god of reconnaissance go second after all, so he had been the first to be volunteered for the honor of entering Elphion. He recalled stepping into the rune circle, followed by his divine consciousness being flung across the cosmos to its destination. It felt like being thrown into the void with an interdimensional slingshot!
He vaguely remembered a vision of a celestial sphere, then following a mana leyline all the way to a focal point somewhere north of a big landmass, and then hitting a mountain at lightspeed. At least it wasn’t a pyramid this time.
His Idol formed around his essence soon after, shaping ancient ice into an eternal statue overseeing a vast land of snowy mountains. His Influence spread around his Idol in a five-kilometer radius, the extent of his reach from this particular mana locus. Wepwawet’s consciousness swiftly expanded to cover the entire area with information flooding into his mind. He became intimately aware of his territory, sensing every icy river, every hill, every burning house, every cowering child crying inside the mine right below him…
Oh.
Wepwawet looked through his Idol’s eyes and received an impeccable view of a village burning right at the feet of his mountain. He had seen such scenes often enough in Egypt to guess the situation.
He had just arrived, and bandits were already besieging his new land!
As the god of reconnaissance, Wepwawet could find anything he wished to find within his Influence’s limits. He only had to think of the responsible party for his attention to focus on a clashing group at the mountain’s feet. A warband of eight, magma-like humanoids faced a trio composed of an anthropomorphic white bear, a gray hooded rabbit swordsman, and a human woman knight with a spear, shield, and light armor.
The last one immediately caught Wepwawet’s eye, and not only because she was the only human of the bunch. The girl looked around twenty, with short pale silver hair, sharp blue eyes, and the athletic build of an experienced warrior; a familiar aura of latent potential surrounded her.
Promotable [Commander] detected!
All three had the making of future champions, but the woman was in a league of her own.
Father always said that a deity should make a good impression by lording over their power to would-be worshipers. Since gods couldn’t manifest without a hefty cost on mortal worlds, the best Wepwawet could do was project a gigantic illusion of his face onto the clouds above. He then addressed his future and awed worshipers with a well-rehearsed speech.
“I am Wepwawet, son of Set and Nephthys! I am the Opener of the Ways and Protector of the Kind, the Wolf-Lord of the Necropolis! I’m a god!” Only then did Wepwawet remember to add a softer element to his presentation. “And more than that, I can be your god!”
His words echoed across the lands and mountains, and were met with silence. The woman was the first to react by pointing her spear at the magma people.
“Okay, smite them then!” she said. “Smite them, o mighty smiter!”
“W-wait!” one of the magmatic monsters protested, far too late.
Well, since she asked nicely… Wepwawet searched through his deck for the right Miracle. [Raincloud] nay… [Skill: Longstrider]... ah!
Smite
Rank 1 Ritual
Smite a single target within your realm of Influence with a weak blast of [Mythic] power.
That would do.
His power wove a bolt of energy from raw ether and smote the biggest of the magmatic men with it. The blast fell upon the monster from above and then vaporized him in an instant. Naught remained other than a pile of ash.
The other monsters stood still for a second, and then ran for their lives.
Having been summoned to this planet with a hefty mana reserve, Wepwawet decided to indulge a bit; if only so that they would spread word of his awesome power and thus entice new worshipers. He blasted two more while they fled screaming into the snowy plains beyond the village and let the rest disperse.
“They, they’re fleeing!” rejoiced the rabbit swordsman as he began to leap in excitement. “We’re saved!”
“I can’t believe it…” the bear muttered in astonishment. “It’s a miracle!”
The human knight alone didn’t utter a word. She simply looked at her fleeing foes with a mix of astonishment and concern. Wepwawet guessed she hadn’t expected him to actually smite their enemies.
Remembering his stepmother’s words about the value of earning his followers’ affection, Wepwawet followed this display of power with one of mercy. He quickly cast another Miracle and summoned a small rain cloud over the burning village. It was a weak first-rank ritual, a far cry from the awe-inspiring storms he could conjure back in Egypt, but the drizzle extinguished the flames consuming the houses easily enough.
That’s done. Wepwawet turned his attention to the trio next. From their aura, the rabbit swordsman was a rank one fighter and the other two rank two, though the woman had accrued enough experience to be promoted to the next one. Let’s see her stats more closely…
An invisible screen appeared over the human knight and gave Wepwawet pause.
What…
What was this?
Where was the Might? The Defense? The Range, the Movement, and the extra lives?
Wepwawet had trained so long to use the Board & Conquest standard system that he knew it inside and out, yet he had never seen this interface before. None of the godly systems used stats like Skill or Agility anymore nowadays. He couldn’t see any form of health points either.
That’s odd. Wepwawet focused on sending a telepathic message to his teacher to inform her of this new development. Miss Athena? Has there been a new update?
Your connection to the Nexus is offline.
Come again?
That was highly unusual. Messages should easily travel back to Mytholo High. Had something gone wrong with the incarnation rite or the Pantheon System’s implantation? Worry and unease started to settle in Wepwawet’s mind.
He attempted to pull himself back to the Nexus. He knew he wasn’t supposed to do that until class concluded and certainly not right after incarnating into a new world, but he had come to trust his instincts. What would it cost him to check?
He tried to pull his consciousness away from Elphion and to return to the highest of heavens… only to find his spirit bound to his Idol.
Your connection to the Nexus is offline.
Wepwawet stared at the message for a moment, and then tried again, twice, thrice. Each time his consciousness refused to leave the confines of his new territory. An invisible barrier stood between him and the heavens from which he came.
The reality of his current situation fully dawned upon him.
He…
He was stuck!
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Poll Link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/114448120
Other story Link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/story-pilot-2-114371667
Comments
George R
Super excited
CentaureHeart
Still vote for this one ! :)
Julian Hinck
i think this clinched it for me.
Skinnybonz
Let's go, Board & Conquest!
