Because I had not been present for their work duties and the results of their equipment efforts, Gryn's party were all gathered at our house in the back yard going over their supplies. With the extra money I had chipped in, as well as smart business, Eman and Layla turned out to have met all of the original needs with coin to spare- without even breaking my gold coin.
Of course, after going over the estimates for the values of their stockpiles, I had already planned to profit from their overstock and instructed them to splurge. Heavily.
Not only did they acquire more and richer materials, they also invested into acquiring alchemy reagents for making general potions and products. With these, not only would I make them a stockpile of health goods to take on their future trips but they would also begin practicing alchemy to make their own mana potions.
The idea was that as they got better in both alchemy and active magic they would be able to make better potions which would, in theory, keep up with their growth and expenditure.
After Gryn and I gave them cursory lessons in using the basic tools of the trade and in what ways to apply their magic, I left them to refining potions and instead moved on to examining their stockpile. Everybody had their own piles already set aside divided by the original plans. In the middle of this, though, were several large bags and boxes of surplus.
There was enough decently ranked hides of both fur and scales among the surplus, enough to make several suits of mixed armor. Since there was not actually enough of either to go around, I could replace certain parts and areas of their suits with a combination of fur and scale. This would still be enough to increase the overall quality of conductivity.
As well as furs were also some blocks and bars of metal and even some carapaces from other magical insects. It seemed like the stockpile of arnid carapaces that they had been amassing for several years had been converted into not only a few dozen magical versions of their counterparts but even some metafly parts and extra filaments. The metals were not of very good magical quality, an alloy of common steel and small amounts of mithril, but they were fairly numerous and still a material that would probably have been impossible to acquire without years of effort on top of my investment.
Because the armor was planned to be mostly insect based as an exotic theme, the metals here were mostly meant for making weapons. However, there was so much here I could not help but wonder at both why and how they possibly acquired so much. They must have caught a going out of business sale or something.
With so much augmented steel to work with, the first thing I did was to start breaking the blocks down to separate all of the mithril in the alloy. After I had a large plate of over ten pounds, I immediately added an equal portion of steel and then began slowly adding more while measuring the changing conductivity in the mithril. Originally, there was roughly one hundred pounds of alloy, now there was a thirty-pound cube of light indigo steel surrounded by misshapen and almost rock-like chunks of crude steel.
From this cube I could easily make everything the others wanted in both weapons and armor augments. A few protective and light-weight bands of this transmuted alloy in every piece of armor would increase conductivity by no less than half of the 'naked' potential. Add a few light weapons and ductile wiring made from this and that would leave behind more than enough metal to make even myself a weapon.
Since I could not use up much more magic than that today, though, I could only take some time to organize the rest of the gains based on used. As it turned out, they had actually acquired the variant arnid carapaces for no reason because of the extra metafly parts. Even then, if I evenly distributed them, there was enough to use five carapaces on each person with a few left over.
As with the leftover metal, though, all of the leftover goods would be going to me as a return on my investment. I would not have nearly enough to make myself a suit of armor, which I had no intention of doing, but there would still be plenty of stuff to make a few trinkets that could bring in enough money to make a suit of armor and weapons. Because of my unpredictable growth, though, I did not plan on making armor until after my next growth spurt.
Why spend so much money now only to need to spend even more in probably just a year?
Once I was done organizing the supplies, I joined the others back at their impromptu work area where they had been mostly focused on preparing ingredients more than making potions. Now that I was here, I basically took much of the ingredients they had been preparing and set to work mixing and distilling them into potions. Since their main goal was to make mana potions to further their training, I decided to make mostly restoratives and curative tonics.
By the time dinner was done, once again a communal stew but this time supplied by my parents, I had already rushed through most of the ingredients they had prepared. The quality of the potions did not fall due to the speed of my work but even so I still imbued mana into the properties of the potions to increase their efficacy. These were the lives of my older brother and his friends they would be preserving, there was no reason to even think about holding back.
I could have even added divine mana to their potions, but even I knew better than to play around with such a vastly limited supply. Even if a single drop could do insane buffs to their stats, I would reserve the divine mana. This small bottle of all mighty energy was going to help me make a name for myself.
After dinner, Gryn's friends said their farewells and left with little to-do's after having come by to drop off the supplies and materials. Once his friends were gone, Gryn immediately retired to his bedroom for the evening. I, too, played the tired card and went to my room but instead of sleeping I played with my wisps.
They were now large enough to begin condensing their cores and their bodies would often fade in and out as they experimented with themselves. Their natural process so far was kind of slow for my tastes, so I took it upon myself to somewhat educate them on how to compact and condense their energies. By doing it myself.
This process was basically the same as reaching out my hand to squish a wisp in my fist but instead of my hand I used my will to manipulate the energy making up their existences. After about half of an hour of randomly doing this, they started to contract and shrink on their own before expanding again rather than blinking. Once they were on the right trick, I could more comfortably get some sleep.
Until only after midnight when someone riding a giant flightless bird stormed up to the property. This was not one of the actual scouts from the highway but instead a summons for my parents to attend a briefing of sorts. Still, this was terrible news.
If the scouts had returned within the past hour, the enemy had already been spotted hours ago and much sooner than the last report. At this rate, we would receive the news of the last set of scouts tomorrow afternoon or early evening and our preemptive would probably be around three in the morning. I was getting tired of having my sleep disturbed!
I went back to sleep soon after my parents left, taking Gryn with them. When I awoke again it was only a few hours later and the sun was not even hinting the sky. This time they had returned and Gryn had come to wake me with news about the briefing.
My older brother was dead tired both visibly by his droopy eyelids and audibly in his softly slurring voice. I kind of pitied him but knew better than to try and use magic to keep him awake. He could and probably had been doing it for himself already. Doing it anymore or now at all would only make the crash worse when he did finally go to sleep.
Not much had been changed here in town except that the deadlines were being pulled up shorter, however the second set of scouts had been sent back with a fresh mount and supplies to reinforce the last set. Together, they would use a few crates of shaped artifacts to set up obstacles along the final stretches of highway. This would not do much more than buying us a few extra hours, but those few extra hours might ensure a decent night's rest if I tried really hard.
The giant trench was already dug completely around the town, the excess dirt was used to make a large embankment on our side, and the trench was already most of the way lined with stakes. The land beyond the trench was cleared for over a hundred yards and would also be lined with obstacles and traps. The plan that the town's leaders came up with was honestly pretty simple, but for its purposes it was effective.
While the trench was more of an impassible wall, the shaped artifacts would be spread out on the other side to break up enemy lines and create clusters of bodies for targeting. As useful as this was for staggering the enemies stretched out from the highway, the highway itself and a few tens of yards to either side was left clear of artifacts and traps. This would cause the enemies to focus their numbers together or disperse them wider and wider about the field.
After my own brief briefing, Gryn went off to sleep and I was not far behind. And I was damned if I thought I would get more than an hour or two of sleep before I was awoken. This time it was my parents waking me up with another heavy breakfast sandwich and telling me to eat on our way to the temple.
On the way to the temple, my parents discussed with me the general layout of either forces and what had been planned for both our preemptive and afterward. The way they talked about it, they appeared optimistic, but the actual words they spoke would usually be seen as anything but.
The town's- I swear this place was a city after this discussion- guards were a standing force of roughly four hundred military style law enforcement and would make up the front lines of our forces. Behind them were Guild mercenaries and general adventurers answering the call to arms for money. Now, as per Imperial law, all individuals who reach maturity- unlock leveling- without a previous combat inclination was forced to learn archery.
Not only did the Empire have a standing legion of ten percent of every country under its control, the people of its main continent were all trained as a population of military archers. Behind our Guild and guards would be exactly one thousand volunteer archers from my home city.
When looked at with such a large ranged body alongside the magical capabilities of the front lines, one would think the odds were somewhat favorable. However, Arguston was a sizable town only a little smaller than our own. With a thousand adults with at least two years of training, our population was already over ten thousand.
An incidental three hundred and thirty three refugees were all the people who had escaped Arguston, that left thousands behind. Even if they used multiple bodies to make a single abomination rather than single body soldiers they still had thousands of estimated soldiers. Add to that whatever remained of the army they struck Arguston with.
Best case scenario, they went with sheer numbers. Worst case, they made thousands of mid-level undead. Their was talk of doing more than just 'expanding' the 'volunteer' numbers. First thing they agreed upon was a raise in the pay of per claimed undead from one silver to five.
They even added a bonus that multi-headed enemies were worth two more silver per head.
Somebody with skill and strength would be able to acquire quite a bit of wealth. I did not know how my own kills would be counted and I did not intend to ask. Unless it was actually brought up to me, I would accept the money or whatever they chose to do with it. If they asked me, I would do something righteous to test my Piety and say that my kills should be counted for the fallen.
At the end of whatever fighting, all the kills unaccounted for were given the usual price and then divided among the families or closest relatives of the people that died. If I could kill or cripple a hundred enemies with my all-out attack, a minimum of five gold would be given to charity. I knew I should instead just come out and say something about it myself, but the literal off-chance of getting paid was too enticing.
Our 'preemptive' roles would be to wait in the midland between where our forces would be distributed, hiding until a time when the full numbers of the enemy would be presented in plain view. From there, we would essentially take turns launching our long-ranged magic attacks to cause damage and encourage the rushing of enemy troops. Depending on their own magical strength, which should only be in the dozens if more than ten at all, the strongest harassers would continue to attack and thin out their numbers before retreating.
My parents were allowing me exactly one attack before I would retreat to behind our lines to act as a healer. Healers got paid differently, but they still got paid. I would probably never actually know what happens to my money until the very end.
*