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Nero Walker, Book 3 Ch.5 (120)
🕑 Added 2024-02-28 23:30:01 +0000 UTCGeneral Branson sat at his desk, fighting against the evils of paperwork. The past few days had been difficult, and as a result, he wasn’t in the best of moods. There was so much to do, and he was behind schedule. The fact that his schedule was whatever he said it was didn’t factor into it at all, at least as far as he was concerned.
He had been forced to waste more than an entire day dealing with Lord Walker’s issues. Even after the council meeting had ended, he was still stuck monitoring the internal investigation, and weeding out all those involved. Even if he hadn’t been personally dealing with it, he still had to sit through the investigating team’s reports and sign-off on their findings.
But now, he was finally getting back to what he should have been doing all along. The city needed to shore up its defenses and increase the army’s presence outside the walls in the wilds. For that, he needed to find more soldiers, increase their stores of supplies, put in fresh orders for weapons, and so much more. The last thing he wanted to be dealing with were the nobles and their stupid games. He had city to save from a density shift and he refused to fail in his duty.
Reaching out, he pulled the freshly finished report from the printer, smoothly tapping it against his desk a few times before stapling it together and setting it in his outbox.
As he pulled up the next item on his docket from the floating holograms on his desk, he heard his door open without even a ping of warning. He looked up to see one of his aides come in with a worried look on his face.
Feeling another crisis incoming, he asked, “What is it now?”
The aide crossed the room quickly, taking up position in front of the general’s desk. Without any preamble, he said, “Sir, it seems we aren’t done dealing with the fallout from the incident with Lord Walker.”
Hearing the name of someone who had recently become one of his least favorite people, he clenched his jaw in anger. “What recent headache has ‘Lord Walker’ gifted us today?” his voice full of controlled anger with a hint of mockery.
The aide could feel the essence in the room trembling, and coughed into his hand nervously.
“Well sir, it seems that the investigation into Lord Blackwood’s network brought to light some problems we have been unaware of,” the aide said diplomatically.
Instead of asking questions, the general just glared at the young man, waiting for him to get the point.
“As you know, the investigators found links to 23 separate individuals currently accepting pay from accounts that led back to the Blackwoods. It seems, that without prompting, they may have done a little more investigating. They used pattern recognition to find similar instances across the entirety of the army. Apparently, it started as a curiosity, but once that the pattern was identified, it was easy to cross-check against it. The results they found... well, they can’t be ignored,” the young man said.
Paling, the general asked quietly, “How many of my soldiers are implicated?”
Uncomfortable, the aide shuffled his feet a little. “I didn’t read past the first few pages of the report sir. Once I realized what I was looking at, I came right in,” he said. The aide lifted up a file in his hand and handed it across the desk to the general.
Roughly snatching the file away, the general flipped past the page with the title and header, looking for the summary page. While looking through the report, he heard his aide say, “It seems that around 20% of our forces have questionable loyalty at the moment. I didn’t read far enough into the report to find out any more.”
The general’s brow was furrowed with worry as he read through the summary. The investigators had really gone above and beyond their original assignment, but he couldn’t really fault them for it. Although the report didn’t provide any answers concerning what the compromised soldiers were being paid to do, it did detail who was paying them. He saw every major house in Dorchester represented. They had all cultivated networks within his army, right under his nose.
A thought occurred to him, and he looked up at his waiting aide asking, “What does this have to do with Lord Walker?”
The aide looked down, somewhat hesitant. He knew how the general currently regarded the new noble. What had first started as mild interest, transitioned into a grudging respect, but after the general had returned from the most recent meeting of the leadership council, it was now a wary dislike. Since then, the general seemed to think of the young lord as an agent of chaos, a harbinger of problems, and generally responsible for nothing good. In the general’s mind, the young man’s only purpose was causing him grief. Every time the general heard the young lord’s name, the aide could see the man’s teeth gnash in annoyance.
Timidly, the aid raised a hand and pointed to the report. “Page three, paragraph two, sir.”
Flipping through the report, the general found the section and read it. The aide could see the general’s face turning red from anger. The report read:
“After reading the transcript from the arbitration meeting in the council hall, we wondered how accurate Lord Walker’s claims actually were. It was with pride in the honor of our forces that we initially started the investigation. We set out to refute Lord Walker’s accusations. There was no way the military was responsible for violating the new lord accords, so we set out to prove him wrong. But the more we dug, the more we found. It is with a heavy heart that we relay our findings to you.”
The general looked up at the aide and asked, “What in the hells are they talking about?”
The aide tilted his head with some curiosity. “Don’t you remember? When you and Lord Walker were discussing the military’s prior knowledge of the assassination attempt, Lord Walker reasoned that Sergeant Blackwood didn’t know who in the military was trustworthy. That was the alleged reason he didn’t report it to his superiors. The investigators followed that line of thought and believed that Lord Walker was accusing the military of being full of traitors.”
The general leaned back in his chair in shock. One random comment from a punk who didn’t want to accept responsibility for not reading his mission packet, and the result is that he had to deal with a fifth of his military being in the pay of the nobles? Now that he knew about it, he couldn’t exactly ignore, now could he? Regardless of whether or not the problem existed in spite of Lord Walker’s comment, he still felt as if the annoying little shit was the one responsible for adding another tedious, albeit urgent, task to his docket.
Rubbing his temples to combat his growing headache, he closed his eyes and said, “Bring in the team that filed the report. We’re going to have to create a committee, possibly a tribunal, to investigate each of these soldiers and find out what’s really going on.”
The aide quickly replied, “Yes, sir.” Then turned around and left the room as fast as possible.
‘He couldn’t have known about this, could he? It was just a guess. It had to be,’ the general told himself.
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After having switched his weapon to one of the spears from his inventory, Nero found the entire situation a little comical. The little monster-dogs continued to try and jump their way over the wall, and in turn he and his team continued to beat them back as if they were were participating in one of those reflex challenges they have at the amusement parks.
It wasn’t even all that challenging. Despite knowing that 50 dogs working together could rip each of them apart, the mud wall made the entire fight rather silly. It was an odd feeling, because Nero also knew that Nick was unable to hold the wall together indefinitely. So soon enough, the situation would lose its humor.
As he used his spear to pierce a dog through its neck, Nero checked how Nick was doing. By this point the old man had given up on doing spells, and just used his sword to hold the line. But, Nero could tell he was struggling. The effort required to hold the wall together seemed more than he let on.
Looking over to his left, he saw Cathleen working with Rose to clear the other side, while Sergeant Wesker continued to massacre the dogs trying to force their way through the passage he was guarding.
Nero shouted, “Hey guys, Nick isn’t looking too good. We’re going to have to try something else. It’s been almost 20 minutes and I’m not seeing the essence field shrinking all that much. Is there really no standard procedure or something we should be doing?”
Cathleen shouted, “The easy way to deal with mobs is to charge the middle and kill things quickly as possible to disrupt the center. Even with how weak this mob is, none of us are geared for that.”
Wesker’s voice was full of anger as he stomped his foot down on a dog harassing his leg. “I hate mobs. Especially when they’re near their spawn point. Damn things are always so strong. We might need to disengage, then re-equip,” he said.
Nero could see everyone nodding at Wesker’s conclusion.
Shaking his head, Nero couldn’t believe what he was hearing. In his head, he had equated a swarm with easiest enemies one could face in the board games he used to play. The very idea of running away in defeat seemed ridiculous to him. But he had to admit, the psychic presence of the swarm was massive, and he couldn’t come up with a good way to fight it.
‘But… they’re just little yappy dogs! Maybe they’re bigger than a chihuahua, but they’re definitely not bigger than a collie. Am I really going to run away from a bunch of collies?’ he asked himself.
Fed up with the situation, his mind raced through his options. He could charge the middle. If he made it there alive, maybe he could do the ‘disruption’ thing they were talking about. It had to be more complicated than just killing things, right? Spells didn’t seem to work, as the mobs essence was still too hard for him to overcome, at least when it was outside of his own essence field. Then it hit him, actual mage armor would be pretty useful in this situation.
“Hey Nick, why won’t an essence shield work to get us to the middle?” he asked.
Nick swiped the head off a dog which had clawed its way up the wall. He replied angrily, “Because essence shields are disrupted by enemy fields. You should know this! It would take a very strong center to create an essence shield strong enough to matter. You’ve been using an essence shield for weeks. I still don’t understand how you’re maintaining it so easily.”
Nero frowned as he kept up his defense of the wall, but his mind worked through the problem. Thinking through the Nick said, he came to an uncomfortable conclusion, one which turned his cheeks red with shame. Every time he thought he had a handle on this world, something like this came along and made him re-evaluate how annoying this place could be. Maybe they were being literal when they called it an essence shield. They didn’t mean ‘mage armor’ at all.
As far as he could tell, the function of an essence shield was condensed essence under the control of the caster, which aided their own essence field in disrupting enemy casting. Was that really all it was supposed to do? Maybe it was never meant to stop another person’s essence, it was only meant to influence the constructs of enemy casters. Stopping weak attacks was just a by-product. Any amount of controlled ‘intent’ behind an attack seemed to make his essence shield completely ineffective. Therefore, it could stop a spell if the enemy caster didn’t fill it with enough center, but it couldn’t stop a knife wielded by someone with their own essence field, since the conceptual fight was actually between the fields.
Frowning in thought, ‘That sounds right… I think,’ he told himself.
Mentally going back to the time when he had faced the assassin in the arena, Nero replayed the fight in his head. The guy was just too low leveled to have an active essence field. If he had put any essence into his blade, Nero would have lost his damn head. He knew that already, didn’t he?
Then, another realization made him stumble in shock. He had been blaming it all on the guy’s not using an essence blade. No wonder Cathleen had warned him of relying on it for defense. It wasn’t just the fact that the guy didn’t infuse essence into his blade, it was that he was just too weak regardless. An essence blade technique would have only compensated for his weakness. Nero couldn’t help but wonder what everyone else was thinking about what he did? Did they think he was fully aware of what he was doing, and was taking advantage of the assassin's low level by being incredibly clever? But Nero was just as low leveled at the time, so did that make him look smart, or stupid?
It felt like he had just learned that the method he had been using to pass the level was, in fact, an exploit that shouldn’t have worked, and his high score deserved an asterisk.
He had been wrong about this twice, at least, probably more. He had listened to their explanation, understood what they were telling him, and he still ended up missing their point. It was infuriating.
Yet, despite how embarrassed he was, the sudden reinterpretation of what they meant by an ‘essence shield’ gave him an idea. Why couldn’t he make actual mage armor? Nick had shown him how to craft a shield spell. It shouldn’t be to difficult to adapt it to a full body spell, should it? After all, there was a mental component to the spell where you had to visualize the size of the shield you were making. Why couldn’t he just imagine a film over his …. Nero remembered the conversation he had in Nick’s lab with Jennings and froze, his spear nearly falling from his hands.
‘GOD DAMMIT! I WAS DOING IT WRONG THE WHOLE DAMN TIME!’ he shouted in his head.
Nero’s anger was unleashed, and he started swinging his spear as if he had gone crazy. Every fuzzy snout that dared show itself over the wall was struck down with the fury of a thousand young masters who had been disrespected by the commoners.
Through gritted teeth, he asked, “Nick, is the shield spell supposed to be part of an essence shield?”
While they both continued fighting at the wall, Nero heard Nick’s annoyed tone reply, “I told you before. You need to listen more, Nero. The shield spell is derived from … wait a minute. Have you not been applying a meta-physical layer to your essence shield?” Nero felt the hair on his neck rise up as he heard Nick bursting into laughter.
The fight was ongoing, and the sound of dying dogs interspersed with their loud growls and barks offered a horrible contrast to Nick’s joyful laughter. Luckily, none of the others seemed to understand what Nick had figured out, they only looked over at the madman, who was still swinging his sword while laughing hysterically.
Nero continued his defense of the wall, despite the overwhelming desire to go crawl under a blanket and hide from the sound of his best friend reveling in his shame.
It only took Nick about a minute to calm himself down. When he finally stopped laughing he said, “So that’s why you can keep your shield up. You only made a condensed essence field, didn’t you. You never got past the first step! I can’t wait to tell the arch-mage… and Sergeant Howard… Oh gods! Vera is going to love this.”
Nero cringed at the thought of Vera finding out about this slight misunderstanding.
Then, like lightning, another realization hit him. If he had a layer acting as a physical shield as part of his essence shield, then it should have stopped any physical effects from getting through, right? So how did Jennings not realize Nero’s shield was incomplete when he launched him across Nick’s lab.
‘That son of bitch knew I was doing it wrong! He didn’t say anything to spite me!’ Nero shouted in his mind.
Then he thought back through the training he had with Sergeant Howard and Cathleen and wondered, ‘Wait, did that mean they knew too? No, that doesn’t make any sense. Someone would have told me, right? I’m missing something stupid again aren’t I? I need to start learning from my mistakes. Slow down. Stop jumping to conclusions.’
He was brought out of his thoughts by Wesker shouting, “Alright, we’re disengaging. This is pointless. Hopefully the mob will lose interest if we get far enough away. The moment I break off, everyone fall back the way we came. We’ll be moving at speed, so watch your footing.”
Before Nero could fully process what the sergeant was saying, he saw the man swing his shield low, knocking back a few dogs that were trying to snap at his legs. While the dogs flew through the air, the man turned and bolted.
Nero joined his companions as they fled through the forest, easily outpacing the short legs of the dogs.
Looking over, Nero said loudly, “Nick, when we get to wherever we’re going, I’m going to need you to explain what exactly an essence shield is, and how the hell it’s supposed to work.”
Cackling madly, Nick laughed at Nero unabashedly. Having solved one the mysteries surrounding his young friend, Nick was overjoyed.
The companions raced through the forest, keeping a lookout for any other enemies, making sure to put some distance between them and the mob before they stopped.
Comments
Adam Roundfield
Arachnophobia (1990)?
Leetle Sheet
I could see that working kinda. But getting a bonfire going would require gathering wood, manually lighting it through essence manipulation when a person is standing right next to it. I could totally see them setting up an ambush point with a bunch of prearranged wood serving as walls of environmental fire. I bet that's how they would deal with undead mobs. But for a forest fire to break out, it would have to be strong enough get the trees burning, not to mention overcoming the local essense signature of the forest. But I could see Nero defaulting to it if he it was a mob of spiders. Media has taught us that 'KILL IT WITH FIRE' is the only way to deal with those. Anyone know where that came from? Now I'm curious.
Adam Roundfield
Only you can prevent... Wait
Jeffrey Shabel
Burn it with fire? Like, normal fire.... from wood... on fire.
