Gamble for Azeroth 24 (Patreon)

When he was awakened by a desperate thumping on his door, awakening him far sooner than he had planned, he found himself cursing.

“I should have known,” he muttered in frustration, but that was the full extent of his reaction as he stood up, dressed in record speed, and opened the door. “My lord,” the guard said the moment the door opened. “There’s an emergency.”

“Council meeting emergency, or I need to be on the walls emergency?” he asked.

“The first one, sir,” the guard said. “There’s an undead army approaching us, but they are still some distance away.”

“That’s better,” he said. “Help me with my armor while you give me the breakdown.”

“There’s not much to tell, my lord, other than it’s an actual army, with multiple death knights and liches observed by Master Allerton.”

He sighed. He expected that to happen the moment he had slain Nathrezim, but he had been hoping that he would have at least a few days. “Fine. Others have been summoned, right?”

“Yes, my lord. Guards had been sent to them. The council should be ready when you arrive.”

“Good, if you hadn’t called, call Sally as well.”

The guard nodded.

Soon, he arrived at the large inn they had been leveraged as the council room for its proximity to the gates.

He nodded as he entered, taking note of everyone. Allerton was at the edge of the room, a pile of scrolls in front of him as he desperately scribbled. Marta and Osric waited at a corner, looking hesitant as they hid behind Father Aldric, who was talking with Sally.

Sally, to her credit, was keeping her mouth shut even though her expression showed she had no respect for Father Aldric’s very reasonable advice. Any other time, Arvis would have intervened, but right now, he had other priorities.

However, more importantly, she looked less sharp. Something he appreciated, showing that not using the light even for half a day was having an impact on her.

On the other side of the room, Flynn and Halford were discussing the possibility of an evacuation by sea, with Flynn explaining its impossibility. A nice surprise, considering he wasn’t even aware Flynn joined them.

“Halford, you have the floor,” he said even before entering.

"About half an hour ago, our observers at the tower had caught a Scourge army approaching from the southwest, and they immediately raised alarms. But, the latest news suggests that they chose to stop about eight miles away from the walls for reasons unknown. From what we can determine with the spyglasses, their spread is as follows.”

With that, he pushed a drawn map, with the current layout scribbled on it. Arvis examined, easily understanding the aim of the layout. “It looks like they want to have a force close enough to threaten me in place,” he said. “They are far away so that I can’t simply harry them from the walls and retreat, but they are close enough that if I ever leave the city, they can attack.”

The room went still at his declaration. “That’s …” Halford muttered, looking hesitant.

“The cheapest way of taking me off the board without risking any more losses,” he completed. “Any estimate of their numbers?”

“Not reliable, as their presence spread beyond Horizon. “But, even the lowest estimation suggests a hundred thousand, likely even more.”

Arvis sighed. “It doesn’t really matter. The fact that they didn’t attack immediately meant that they had no intention of sieging the city. We still don’t know what their ultimate aim is, but it’s clear they don’t want us intervening in it.”

“Can’t we harass them?” Sally asked.

“No,” Halford answered. “The idea is tempting, but we barely have a hundred cavalry, and only a third of them are good enough to handle tricky hit-and-run tactics.”

“Even if we had ten times the force, it wouldn’t matter,” Arvis said. “We already dealt with a demon lord. There’s no guarantee there’s no more. The moment we attack the wrong place, we end devastated.”

“Not to mention, most of our fighting force is utterly green,” Halford said. “A few days of training is barely enough for them to stand on the walls and hack the climbing undead. Anything more is impossible.”

“I can burn them—“ Sally started.

“No, Sally. From now on, you’re forbidden to use any heavy spells. I need you to be fresh in case they decide to attack. Your potential could be the difference between victory and death,” he cut in. He wasn’t even exaggerating. Her abilities would be particularly useful defending the wall, which would free him to hunt their commanders.

“Yes, my lord,” Sally replied, accepting his direction.

Good.

"Father Aldric. I need you to handle a rotation of priests. At least two of them should always be near the walls, ready to intervene either as healers or to provide protection. We can’t just assume the undead will stay away forever.”

He nodded. “It’ll be done.”

“Excellent,” Arvis said and turned to Allerton. “Do we have anything that can be established?”

“The best I can do is a detection ward, and I have to maintain it actively.”

“Do it, but keep it limited. Just focus on catching any sky raids. I’ll handle the ground attacks. Flynn, you are responsible for maintaining an eye on the seas. Halford? What’s the most optimistic time that I can have a thousand people on the wall that wouldn’t stab themselves.”

“A week, and that’s a stretch,” he said. “There’s only so much time they can train, especially if we can’t rely on the priests to give the occasional boost to handle exhaustion.”

Arvis sighed, then paused, remembering the fertilizer he had acquired. “I might have something for it, but I’ll need to experiment first,” he said. With the combination of Expert Biology, super fertilizer, and Bloom, he should be able to create some food that would work as low-level healing salve while also boosting training effectiveness.

After all, Expert Biology didn’t just include information about plants, but also on how the human body worked, including how to optimize physical training.

"Pull every able-bodied person off non-essential duties, and start training. The more people who can defend themselves, the better. Osric, you’re responsible for militia parts. Halford, you’ll have the ones with more potential as soldiers.”

“It’ll be done, my lord. But don’t expect a miracle,” Osric said.

"I’ll take what I can get. Marta, your assessment of the supply situation."

Marta consulted her parchment. "That’s one thing we have no problems. We have many wells, rain cisterns and underground water sources, designed to keep a much larger population going. Food storage is full as well. Our biggest issue is the weapons, but everyone with even limited blacksmithing experience is working around the clock on it."

“Flynn. How many people can you move if the situation collapses.”

“Depends on where.”

“Tyr’s hand.”

“Six hundred at most. We can probably move a thousand people to elven lands in each trip, but—“

“No, that’s out of the question,” Arvis said. “I suspect their land will be the next target, and I’d much rather have real walls between us and the undead than a bunch of trees.”

In reality, Arvis wasn’t as dismissive of elven defensive capabilities, but a casual disdain was easier to explain than a complicated political situation and how it would affect a bunch of human refugees.

“Keep the ships ready for evacuation just in case. If the siege happens and the walls breach, take as many as you can, and sail to Tyr’s Hand.”

“And you—“

“Don’t worry about me,” Arvis said. “It doesn’t matter the situation is. I’ll be at the walls, fighting.” It was a promise that was easier to make thanks to Safeguard Ring that would evacuate him, not to mention all of his other abilities. Not to mention, it sounded better.

The reaction around the table was complex. Halford's expression carried something that might have been shock. Father Aldric nodded slowly, the priest's expression suggesting he would be on the walls with him. Sally straightened with a fierce expression, showing that not only she wanted to be there, but she might be looking forward to it.

Flynn, who would be leaving, raised his flask in a small salute that managed to be simultaneously mocking and respectful. "To not running, then."

"To not running," Arvis said with a chuckle while others merely glared at the pirate.

That wasn’t the end of the council meeting. The presence of the undead army meant changes in virtually everything, but he only stayed twenty minutes, leaving after making the strategic comments.

It was much better for him to experiment.

&&&

He picked a garden plot that was close to the walls. His presence was a good source of confidence, and more importantly, Bloom allowed him to identify the presence of the others.

He started experimenting. Not with the Uber Fertilizer immediately, as he only had one bag, and he didn’t want to waste it for experimenting. Luckily, his earlier experiments in Windrunner Estate had already provided him with superior variants.

He just needed to adapt them somewhat.

“Apparently, I owe my thanks to Sally,” he muttered as he closed his eyes, carefully reaching Twisting Nether in the same way she did, pulling mana. It was a tricky process, far more difficult than just pulling the environmental mana.

Even with Polymath, he could feel every leakage hurting his body directly, and without Natural Restoration quickening his healing, he would have been in a much more troubling case.

It was tricky. Maybe it would change in the future, but trying to reach the Twisting Nether to replenish his reserves was challenging. He had to stand still and focus perfectly. Even using his abilities at the same time was out of the question.

Luckily, it didn’t take long for him to come up with a workaround. He just released the mana. For any other mage, that would have been too convoluted for it to work. However, Bloom worked with environmental mana just as easily.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was much better than just relying on the environmental mana.

Especially since, the more he worked, the faster he was able to pull mana, his limited reserves notwithstanding.

Using that mana, he started producing the result in mind. Luckily, he wasn’t actually trying to create a real healing potion, which was a rare and complicated product. What he hoped to create was a nutritionally dense food, one that could also have a limited healing effect.

Expert Biology provided the framework for the nutritional context, including why meat was treated as a fundamental part of a warrior’s diet due to something his skill called proteins and amino acids, and more importantly, how even a careful combination of legumes, wheat, and a few different types of beans could be used to compensate for a lack of meat.

They wouldn’t have been as efficient as directly consuming wheat, but he had already solved the biggest part of that problem with his earlier experimentation, by creating superior variants. All he needed was to set a recipe for the exact combination, and distribute the bars for the trainees to consume.

The challenging part was to infuse the healing effect. The idea was good, but in practice, it was much more challenging. Allerton explained to him just how many enchantments the mage greenhouses had for growing healing plants, a careful combination that required constant attention from apprentices.

They also aimed to create potions that could rival the direct attention of a priest. His aim was much lighter.

“Could it be?” he found himself muttering as he brushed his finger along the Sword of Vengeance, wondering if he could actually raise a plant infused with light. After some thinking, where he pondered over the information he got from Adept Conceptualization, Bloom, and Expert Biology, he came to a conclusion.

It was not only possible but it was also actually relatively easy.

He decided to start with something simple yet distinctive. White Lily, a good base to work on.

The first attempt was simple. He simply channeled a thin thread of Light into a seed, and observed what happened. The results were underwhelming at a glance. All he got was a lily with a weak glow. Its holy presence was almost nonexistent. Only due to a combination of Bloom and Sensor, he caught it.

Yet, it put a huge smile on his face. It was enough to show the viability of the path. He used the same technique he had used for other food back in Windrunner estate, creating several generations of white lilies. When he reached generation twenty, he could feel their holy energy.

“It’s psychotic,” he muttered. He was doing his best to convince Sally to moderate her usage of light while he was growing a plot of literal blessed flowers.

“That’s enough for the experiment,” he said. Technically, the lilies could be empowered even further, but the current situation was enough to add the weak regeneration effect he had been hoping for.

More importantly, he realized that stronger holy energies required much more mana to be grown quickly. Technically, he could use the Uber Fertilizer to bypass that fact, but after some consideration, he decided to not do that, at least not yet.

That would be far more useful during the siege, allowing him to weaponize bloom properly.

Instead, he had focused on growing enough weak holy white lilies while asked a team to harvest them. At the same time, he summoned Allerton.

“I see you’re busy, but isn’t flowers a bit of a —” Allerton said, looking at the garden, only to pause. “Are these lilies infused with holy light?”

“I do what I can,” Arvis said. “If anyone asks, just say that we’re blessed. It’s easier that way.”

He nodded. “It’s fascinating, but are you sure it’s a good way to spend your time? The holy energy in them is pretty weak. We can distill them to turn into a potion, but I can’t imagine it being worth the effort.”

“No. We’re not going to use them as a traditional health potion, not even a weak version,” he said as he passed Allerton the recipe he had prepared.

He frowned. “This is not a potion recipe, but a basic salve. It’s basically cooking.”

“That’s the point. The plants there have the materials the body needs to repair itself during heavy practice. Lilies are there to…“ he started, then gave him a ten-minute explanation on exactly how it worked.

“Wow, so lilies are there as a catalyst, allowing the trainees to recover far faster than usual. It’s genius,” Allerton completed, his earlier disinterest gone. “I wonder why no one had thought of it.”

“My best guess, no archmage cares about making soldier training slightly more efficient, not when they can just summon an army of elementals. And, other mages are more interested in doing things to impress the archmages.”

Allerton shrugged. “That’s a reasonable summation of Dalaran.”

“Can you take over observing the preparation of the bars? I would assign someone else, but I would feel better if you could observe it. As long as you can multitask it with the detection ward for the sky.”

Allerton nodded. “It’s doable, since cooking the mixture doesn’t need any mana, just some attention.”

“Excellent,” he said. However, that didn’t mean his job was over. He still needed to coordinate with the farmers responsible for the gardens, using Bloom to grow them quickly while they harvested and processed.

But, while he worked on that task, he was already considering what kind of plant he could weaponize. Lilies were good as an ingredient, but they were hardly the most ideal weapons.

So, while he worked on the ingredients, he also picked a new plant to experiment on. Vines. Quick to grow, relatively strong, and most importantly, perfect to be manipulated with Bloom to turn into an impediment or a direct weapon as needed.

During the experiment, he didn’t use any fertilizer other than a tiny bit to test its effects, and confirmed that it worked even better than he expected. By using the Uber Fertilizer, the need for had been significantly reduced.

It was surprisingly effective.

“That only leaves one thing,” he muttered as he turned his attention to his biggest problem. His Mana Reserves.

He could feel that the constant use of Twisting Nether was expanding his reserves somewhat, but the improvement was … limited, especially when he watched Sally throw more mana than he could even contain with her spells casually.

No wonder he was never able to make progress as a mage.

Still, he practiced. He might never have the reserves that would impress a mage, but that hardly mattered when his fighting style consumed only a limited amount. The larger the reserves, the more devastating attacks he could pull.

“At least I have a workaround for my abilities,” he said. His reserves might be tiny, but the speed he could pull mana from the Twisting Nether was paradoxically quick. It probably related to Adept Conceptualization and Polymath, the former allowing him to handle the mental aspects, the latter allowing him to improve his capabilities with a shocking speed.

“At least I can finally use Call Lightning,” he muttered to himself as he continued to operate. It was one ability he had never tried to use despite its potential, prevented by mana usage.

It would still be challenging, and he would require him to stand still for several seconds to first cover his immediate surroundings with mana, but at least he was no longer helpless against flying enemies.

The best part, it would mix well with Allerton’s air detection ward.

With his advantages slowly stacking, a sudden siege was no longer hopeless.

Still challenging, but not hopeless.