I returned from Verton with mixed feelings. On the one hand, we were teeing up well. I was getting a handle on the systems the setting used, figured out how to make best use of Othai, even figured out some minor exploits. All good stuff. We knew betrayal was coming, and it was just a question of who, how and when, so we could take steps to manage it. We were gathering equipment, and even earning a bit.

  One little mechanic, one teensy, tiny bit of information that I would have loved to have had was that the evacuation missions the Mayor assigned were paid. Yeah. Paid. He somehow neglected to mention that detail. He also neglected to mention it when we brought everyone in. It was Othai who stomped up and loudly demanded to be paid. At which point he equally loudly paid her four hundred rune bones.

  Truso wasn’t in sight, but nobody thought he wasn’t hearing every word. Genuda mercs got paid. End of story.

  So, good news all around? Hah. No. Because I gave Othai a thousand rune bone budget for the mission, and she had spent it all.

  On the plus side, we aren’t in debt to Truso on some compensation money. On the minus side, I’m at net-negative six hundred rune bones for this experiment. Better than I thought I would be, but the math wasn’t mathing.

  The intended gameplay loop was superficially straightforward. Player invests their own money into a few mercs, and evacuates a village using primarily their own awakened. They bring them back to the Mayor who pays out four hundred bones (or whatever). Alright, great, that’s forty pikes right there, or twenty crossbows, for one day.

  I don’t know if there is a cap on how many villages I can rescue in one day, but delegating the job to Othai clearly did take an order. Hypothetically, let’s say I clear every village in manual mode in one day. There are twelve villages. Assuming they all pay the same (and I have no reason to believe they do) that’s four hundred times twelve- four thousand eight hundred rune bones. Which gets me… what, exactly?

  Ten bones a day for pikes, twenty for crossbows, forty for three-handers and I don’t know how much the scouts cost because Truso is still being precious with them. But lets assume one hundred bones. That sounds extortionate enough. Or one twenty. Yeah. Truso is the kind of guy to buy a house for a penny and demand a two million dollar rebate. One twenty per scout, per day.

  Which meant I would have to pay twelve thousand runed bones if I lost a single one of them. A thousand for a pike, two thousand for a crossbow, four thousand per three hander.

  In terms of available troops, assuming more didn’t unlock later, Truso was offering five hundred pikes, five hundred crossbows, one hundred matchlocks, and twenty scout cavalry. Last and certainly least were the five Three-Handers, who’s use was, to put it charitably, situational.

  I don’t think I ever got a price on those matchlocks. My understanding of matchlocks is pretty limited, but they were a blackpowder weapon for sure. So, slow firing and shooting a big round ball. Were they better than crossbows? Not against Hosk so far, but who knows about later?

  Didn’t matter. Back to the math. If I only bought pikes and crossbows, assuming I grabbed everyone, I’d be out fifteen grand just on the daily hire. Fifteen thousand versus the four thousand and change from bringing back villages. All on the assumption that I didn’t lose a single mercenary at any point in this process. And this was just the village clearing part of things. I had to assume there were twists yet to come, and follow up missions.

  I doubt the designers expected me to hire all the troops every day or anything like that, but these were the number ranges we were working with. So I either needed the troops to be a lot cheaper, or I needed troops from somewhere else.

  Two small problems, both of which could be summarized as ‘Genuda.’ Genuda, as a matter of policy, made damn sure there were no other effective troops in Verton, and Truso visibly lost relationship points when I deployed my Awakened without hiring his people too. On top of that was the fact that Truso didn’t set the prices. He wouldnt give a discount even if he could, but the bottom line was that the prices were set by Genuda, not him. So no hope of finessing something there.

  The obvious answer to all this was to buy chests of runed bones in the cash shop.

  This whole thing reeks of whale food. What was more whale-friendly than giving them a map they could steam roll through and get the optimal result on, while the free-to-play players had to grind it out, and maybe even put their whole economy in a death spiral?

  Hypothetically, of course, one could have their economy up and running in their Sky Realm and maybe it was generating runed bones as well as the Sky Gold the Sky Realm ran on.

  I made a mental note to double the beatings I was assigning the person who came up with ‘Sky Gold.’ Every time I remembered that currency existed, I doubled the beatings. I was initially worried the beatings would reach a level that would not be possible to complete in the expected lifetime of the universe. Now that I know it is possible to shove someone into a timeless demi-plane with unaging, inexhaustible dolls possessed by vengeful ghosts, I can simply look forward to the happy day justice is executed.

  Sky Gold. Christ. Rupees or Guilders would have been more creative. Not much more, but it would have been something. Even the coins looked generic. Even Animal Crossing had Bells.

  I stretched in my canary yellow plush throne of doom and blood, retracted the foot rest and stood up. No easy solutions were coming to mind, and I had one order left in the day. My defenses were repaired, that overhead protection was looking very nice, and I expanded the bunker at the bottom of the wall for when people really needed to get out of the way of incoming explosions.

  Time to go fishing.

  I hooked a red worm and gently cast out my line. I hadn’t had the hat made yet, but the cork handle rod was very comfortable to hold. I watched the line drift over the water and land with a plonk. The floater bobbed briefly, then went still. All that was left was the soft breeze and the sound of insects in the grass. The rustling leaves creating a cocoon of white noise. Letting my thoughts transform and fly as I sat and waited for a fish to bite.

  The situation in Verton… no. The situation in Genuda, was like a constantly growing stack of suffering. Like someone was assembling a Pokemon deck, and each additional card was made of pain. I don’t know all the lore, but-

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  A small country develops standing armies. They don’t have much, but they figure out that with discipline and aggression, they can beat the pants off their enemies. So they expand. They keep the discipline, keep the training and a virtuous cycle starts. But was that really the start?

  A small country develops out of the ruins of something that came before. I don’t know what. Some bigger empire, or a confederation, or maybe they were on the border of an empire and adapted to avoid being conquered and destroyed themselves. And once that old power was gone, they imitated it’s path to greatness.

  I mean, I’m guessing, but ain’t that always the way it goes? The Romans ripped off the Greeks, and paricularly Alexander. Then they collapsed and you had all those tiny european countries popping up, all cosplaying as the “True Hiers of the Roman Empire.” One of ‘em was even called “The Holy Roman Empire.” Not subtle.

  And after them you had England and it’s empire building, and Spain and the Dutch and, yanno, the Third Reich. All continuing that story of empire, modeling what they had suffered in the past.

  Not really my field, but hell, those videos had millions of views and you have to watch something on the can, right? And I love my anime waifus too much to disrespect them like that.

  China was the same damn thing, of course. Their history isn’t anything but someone saying “I’m the boss!” and hundreds of thousands of other Chinese people going “No you aren’t!” and a hot second later the world’s population takes a noticeable dip. And then the Mongols come in and flatten everything. Or, not the literal Mongols, but someone off the steppes. I don’t know what it was like in India or Africa, but I have to assume it was similar.

  Then there was Japan. Thousands of years of the Ainu off doing their thing in the woods, then Korean fishermen turn up and things start going wrong at speed. And they all imitate the nearest big empire, AKA China. They make their own emperor, ruler of their little chain of islands. They copy the clothes, the food, the manners. They are so freaking moved by China’s example, they invade. Repeatedly.

  I read somewhere… was it Lady Snowblood? I think it was. After the Meji restoration (as explained in the documentary anime Rurouni Kenshin) the Japanese were deliberately ripping off European manners, culture, technology, and the whole idea of Empire building. Not without strong motivation.

  The Japanese had been watching European powers eat up Asia for two hundred years. It was exactly why they had closed the country to foreigners. Then Perry turns up with his black ships, saying “Knock, Knock, It’s Freedom calling. Now open your ports before I open your skull!”

  Because that was the other part- external pressure. The Romans were a city state surrounded by hostile tribes. Big, powerful, developed civilizations were all around them- Athens, Macedonia, Syracuse, Carthage, and whatever was going on with the Celts. So sayeth Rome II: Total War anyway.

  Same with the Greeks and Alexander- Persia was literally a boat ride away, and not a long one. The Central Asian tribes were constantly fighting each other, so there was a constant pressure to raid the more developed civilizations around them. Then the Chinese felt the pressure on their borders so they expanded. And so on and so on and so on, forever.

  Wasn’t it exactly what was happening in Genuda? There is a small country. They have discipline and unity. They expand, because they are surrounded by unfriendly neighbors. Then they expand some more because theat Ko’Ras empire was out there, and you couldn’t beat them with just a couple of pike squares.

  The nearby countries felt like they were stuck between a rock and a hard place. Annihilation, or at least the loss of their personal wealth and power, was certain. Genuda promises you ‘independence,’ but your military will be their mercenaries, and that means they control your taxes too. If Genuda had your army and your taxes, what was left for a medieval monarch? Art? Religion would be an obvious answer, but I haven’t seen any churches or the like. It would be a cold, humiliating life.

  Then someone from Ko’Ras turns up and says, ‘Don’t believe what you heard. We take really good care of those who surrender willingly. Look at Jim here. Jim was a king of some flyspeck nation. He surrendered, and his life has been a non-stop hedonistic paradise. Jim’s doing great. And now look in this jar, containing the horribly still alive remnants of the last king who told us no.”

  My bobber dipped under the water, breaking the chain of thought. I pulled up a little fish, removed the hook and threw it in the bucket. It wasn’t a real fish, I’m sure. Some creation of whatever this world ran on that wasn’t ones and zeros. I couldn’t help but think of it as a necessary sacrifice for my ambition. I was in that kind of morbid humor.

  Then I hooked another worm on the line and threw it out again. Understanding something and being able to do something about it were two different things. I could see how Genuda got where it was. I could see why everyone was so primed to betray them, and why they took the betrayal so hard.

  Under other circumstances, I might say there was no real right or wrong side. But on one side was Mika, and the other side was Monsters. I had no trouble picking sides.

  That was the other-other thing. Just because you were brutalized and traumatized by your past didn’t change the fact that you were doing the brutalizing and traumatizing today.

  It was a lovely day out on the fishing pond. It always was. It always would be. The wind blew through the trees, the insects made a racket in the marsh grass, and soft white clouds drifted through the pale blue sky. Over and over, unchanging forever. The man holding the fishing rod and the fish going in the bucket were all the same to them.

  The old timer running the fish points shop didn’t have any chests of Rune Bones that I could afford. I noticed that they were there, but they required an extortionate amount of fish points. That was fine. In a couple of minutes, I have a nice, big delivery of Runed Bones right to my front door.

  “Alright everyone, this is the Thirteenth wave. I don’t know if it’s an unlucky number around here, but let’s keep a careful eye out for inexplicable, but terrible, accidents.”

  “Thirteen is an unlucky number, my Lord?” Carousel asked.

  “It is some places. Are there unlucky numbers in Gradden March?”

  “Yes. The first day of every month.” She nodded primly. I grinned.

  “The day the rent is due?”

  “Exactly, my Lord. And taxes every third month.” She slid an unkind look towards Versai, who nobly ignored it.

  Her family had already cashed the check and Gradden March was gone. What was Carousel going to do, file a complaint?

  I snorted and looked out over the clearing. It was giving serious World War One energy at this point. And not fun WWI, the bleak, moonscape no mans land WWI. I already had artillery, and the Mikas were doing a fair impression of a machine gun nest. I just needed barbed wire, trenches and poison gas.

  Actually, I already have a moat and there are all those pits from where the acid puddled. I guess I just needed the barbed wire and poison gas. Maybe the Toads would deliver them to me.

  “Rache, Rikka, get scouting. Remember, safety first. Mark them, don’t try to fight them yet.”

  “Chromed Lightning!”

  “As you command, my Lord.”

  It was comforting to remind them. I wondered if this was what a mom felt like when she sent her kids off. They would probably be fine, but you couldn’t help worrying a little.

  “Carousel, right now you are our only magic user. So unless otherwise directed, I want you experimenting with the Toads. Obviously a breakthrough or a rescue takes priority, but try to play around with the acid. See what you can come up with. Will something happen if you shoot whatever it is that the ice toads are puking up? Let’s find out.”

  “Yes, my Lord. Not too many combinations to try with only two kinds of toads, I’m afraid.”

  “Do you really think there are only two kinds?” We shared a look.

  “Combination play it is, my Lord.”

  I nodded, firmly repressing the urge to say “Attagirl!” My artillery was ready to rock, as always. I reflexively checked my resonance crystals. Still a few short. Fingers crossed for this wave’s rewards. I’m not sure which I was craving more- a sniper or artillery, but I would happily take either.

  Artillery for choice, though. Snipers are more useful in most relic sites, but give me a couple more Radzs and I’ll clear the map before the enemy ever reaches the clearing.

  The first threads of smoke rose in the moonlight. Radz, sitting out on her bastion, wheeled her mortar around and with a thunk, sent the bolt of light up in a lovely arc. The BOOM was a long way off. I’d stopped feeling the need to dive for cover a while back, but my muscles still flinched at the noise.

  Wastet had those sheer medieval walls. Flat, limited bastions. They would have had some quantity of cannons at some point I assume, but I didn’t see any when we were in the other ruin site. That was where I really wanted the mercenaries. If I could put together a decent sized screening force, I’d take all my artillery on the expedition and knock down those damned walls. Hell, Radz could lob mortars directly over them.

  I looked out over the dark forest and tracked the rising threads of smoke. They were coming on a wide front tonight. Unusual for the vanguard of the wave. Maybe this time they were using their nightmarish heads and spreading the toads out. I tisked. For all my criticizing, I prefer stupid enemies. Stupid, predictable, easily exploited enemies.

  Just the dumbest, most stupidest, oblivious… I sighed and gave up. The arc of smoke covered almost ninety degrees in front of me, and we hadn’t seen the first critter yet. No more easily slaughtered columns. We were going to have to earn our bones tonight.