The Hundred Reigns 274: King of Spiders (16) (Patreon)

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A high level Rogue was a terrifying force. 

Simon had transformed a large wing of Bert’s manor into a recreation of the Mechanical Tower’s mapped levels in preparation for the upcoming heist, using golems, turks, and copies of what security systems they could identify. The goal was to recover Fablan’s stolen dracolith—which they used as a substitute for the Crafter Crestone—and then teleport out safely. It was an extremely difficult gauntlet that took Renal and his team of Fangs a good hour to clear, with significant injuries. 

Elsa cleared it in three minutes. 

A week had passed since Velvet’s and Silk’s merger had allowed the former to transfer all of her Assassin experience into the Rogue Class, putting her total level at an impressive 77. Unlike her more paranoid component, she had had no issue joining Simon’s Party and letting him take a look at her stats in return for another experience boost.

The Rogue was the ancestor of all Spy, Assassin, and Thief Vassal Classes, which it bundled together into a devastating package. Elsa could do more than steal items or buffs; she could pilfer mana, breath, and even identities. She could borrow the visage of others and wear them like new clothes, leaving her faceless victims to suffocate. It could fool most divination spells the same way his Anathemic Secrecy let him falsify stats, though powerful ones could still pierce through her disguises. 

She was no slouch in combat either, combining blinding speed with Ninja Techniques and crippling Assassin ailment abilities supported by her anti-Artificial weaponry. Simon put those to the test with a second trial where she was tasked with eliminating every enemy in her way, which she did with expert care. 

She wasted no time gloating or toying with her prey like Velvet might have, but she also showed none of Silk’s hesitation when striking. Simon watched her through his Dungeon’s walls as she beheaded golems by striking at their weak points, disabled traps by throwing a dagger at the exact spot required to disrupt their mechanisms, and ran on walls too fast for gravity to catch up. She tore through the very same defenses Simon had struggled through when he first dueled Bert with ethereal grace. 

It was almost arousing. 

“Bert should review your security system,” Elsa said once she teleported back into his office upon clearing the course, her hands juggling the dracolith. “It’s painfully easy to bypass.”

“Remind me to move my valuables to a hidden safehouse,” Simon mused. He had already placed Valravn’s puzzle box to an Imperial Intelligence-controlled location Elsa probably didn’t know anything about. 

“You think that will stop me?” Elsa mused upon sitting on his lap and tossing the dracolith over her shoulder as if it were a worthless trinket. “Don’t I get a reward for completing the test run?”

“You have one last trial left,” Simon replied as he seized her by the waist. He knew how she ticked by now. “I currently have forty items in my Inventory. One of them is your reward, while everything else is a bomb ready to go off.”

“One chance in forty not to die?” Elsa’s smug smile borrowed so much of Silk’s. “Those are beginner’s odds.”

“Except I also falsified my stats, so you won’t magically know which item you should pick,” Simon teased her as he kissed her on her naked neckline. “It’ll all be skill and luck.”

“Now we’re talking…” Elsa’s hand grabbed him by the back of the head and then pulled his lips towards her own. Her blue lipstick tasted painfully sweet. 

Poison negated by Unyielding Essence. 

“Looks like I win,” Elsa said upon letting him go, a necklace now suddenly in her hand. 

“Another poison?” Simon mused. She liked to test her new concoctions on him as a game, or maybe as a challenge. 

“I have to try them all, just in case.” Elsa studied the necklace, a dark metal choker with a black jewel hanging from it. “Is this a miasma crystal?”

“You can’t fathom the number of demons I had to distill into a single piece of manalith to create it.” Though it was worth the effort. “This Black Pendant should vastly boost your Strength, automatically poison any weapon you touch, and let you teleport back to my office in a pinch.”

“I like it.” Elsa put the choker around her neck, then opened one of his desk’s drawers to take out her dreamshade pipe. “I take it that we’re ready to begin?”

“Yes, Chrom just informed me he completed the device.” Simon lit the pipe with a weakened Hellfire spell. His lover had unfortunately inherited both of her components’ vices. “Vouivre is in too.”

“I hope she lives through it. Stealing from her hoard won’t feel exciting if she’s dead.”

“I’m still considering whether or not to make the puppet conspiracy public. It could disrupt the Crafter’s operations and focus its attention elsewhere, but I fear it might also tip it off.”

“We can reveal the truth through lesser Musan tabloids,” Elsa said immediately. “They’ll print anything shocking to boost sales, and the puppet show won’t be able to track it back to us. The confusion will benefit us now that Muse is planning to roll out their vaccines.”

Simon raised an eyebrow. “Why’s that?”

“Because everybody will distrust the government’s vaccines once the rumors come to light. If they can turn people into puppets, what do they put in those bottles?” Elsa breathed dreamshade on his lips. “We’ll be able to sell our safe, foreign-made cures at double the price.”

It was becoming increasingly clear to Simon why Valravn had split Elsa into two warring components; she was simply far too ambitious, ruthless, and driven to play second fiddle to anybody. 

She was the true Prince of Spiders. 

And she was amazing in bed too, if into rather extreme pleasures. While he had tried to keep an open mind and did find uses for the ropes, Simon had to call it quits when she introduced him to… sharper implements. 

A man had to learn how to say no. 

“Very well,” Simon decided, his hands roaming across Elsa’s back. “It’s a date.”

—------

Operation Towerbreak began on the Fifth of Vendemiaire at midday, with Simon’s team infiltrating the Mechanical Tower through the front door. 

That part was rather easy. The Bert Trading Company had spent months cultivating goodwill with the Crafter by selling it Rhaptan artifacts, so simply proposing a direct sale of the most important artifact found in the forgotten city was enough to earn them an audience. Simon, Bert, and Odette Kano were invited to board an airship to the Mechanical Tower, with Elsa hiding in her lover’s shadow.

Unlike last time, Simon was ushered into the guest area on the upper levels rather than the medical laboratories below. Rather than sinister cells and operation tables, this area was both pleasant and partly exposed to the outside. Resembling a serene park, it included vast gardens of colorful flowers and ponds facing paved floors where puppets could serve beverages to visitors at rounded tables. A half-dome of glass both allowed the sunlight in and gave visitors an incredible view of the empty wasteland surrounding the tower, while an advanced vent system pumped fresh air mixed with colorful fragrance into the room. The sound of birds mixed with ambient music for a harmonious mix.

Simon could have found this place enjoyable, if it didn’t reek of artificiality. The flowers were too well-organized and cut, with not a single blade of grass out of place; the passageways between the ponds were straighter than arrows; most tables were empty, with no other guests for the dozens of puppet waiters to pamper; and even the fish and birds were mechanical replicas of real animals. 

It’s a snowglobe, Simon realized. A pure imitation of life. 

“Welcome, Lord Belias, Lady Einganah,” their host said upon shaking Simon’s and Odette’s hands. Rather than sending a Carlo of Muse puppet to greet them, the Crafter instead assigned the task to one of its official apprentices: a handsome, well-dressed middle-aged man with olive skin named Turing. “Thank you for coming personally.”

“We almost didn’t, with all the rumors surrounding your employer, but Ludwig convinced us,” Odette replied, while Simon sensed Elsa shifting from his shadow to Turing’s and then to the nearby walls. “Is there any truth to them?”

“None at all,” Turing lied. The Cobweb’s patsies had released the puppet conspiracy story a bit less than a week before today, to ensure maximum reputational damage. “Replacing our esteemed thinkers with life-like puppets… Surely any sensible mind could see through such nonsense.”

“Everyone knows no puppet is so advanced as to fake humanity,” Bert said with a smug, sly smile. The public scandal that followed the tabloid revelation had put him in an unbelievably good mood. 

“Indeed.” Turing invited them to sit around a roundtable near the half-dome’s edge, with turks swiftly serving them coffee. “What are you the Lord of, Mr. Belias?”

“You wouldn’t find it on a map,” he introduced himself, having come wearing expensive clothes marking him as a man of ill-gotten wealth. Odette, meanwhile, pretended to be his mistress. “Suffice to say, I would rather that word of our dealings do not leave this room.”

“Of course, of course.” Turing studied the item they had come to sell: the very tablet recording Einganah’s summoning ritual. “It is quite the piece of history.”

While Bert and Odette distracted Turing by discussing the tablet’s history, Simon checked his surroundings. While most of the turk waiters looked rather helpless, he detected a dozen golem guards disguised as statues and assumed the mechanical animals could attack on a moment’s notice. 

“I’m backstage, following the powerlines,” Elsa informed Simon through telepathy. “How long until Team Distraction arrives?”

“Minutes, if they respect our timing.” Simon sipped his coffee and checked the clouds outside. One of them was approaching the tower by following the wind. “How are you faring so far?”

“Going further than I ever did as Silk thanks to my new Perks.” Elsa marked a short pause. “It’s getting creepier. A real dollhouse.”

Simon was about to ask what she meant when an alarm soud suddenly came out of the birds, startling almost everyone. “What’s going on?” 

“An intruder is violating our airspace,” Turing said, looking at the horizon until he spotted her. “There it is.”

Simon looked at the sky and noticed a winged shadow approaching the Mechanical Tower from the south. Shots rang out from above in response to its approach, as the Musan Sniper fired at the challenger from miles away. 

“Oh, a dragon. Of course it’s a dragon.” Turing didn’t look surprised in the slightest. “One of these creatures attacks our tower once every few years in the hope of looting its treasures.”

“Should we take cover?” Odette asked with a frown, feigning worry.

“No need, this is a mere minor inconvenience,” Turing reassured them with supreme confidence. “Please enjoy the sight of our cutting edge defenses teaching this intruder some humilit—” 

A mighty beam struck the Mechanical Tower’s shields with enough force to cause a small tremor. 

More projectiles followed, from mighty fireballs to jets of pressurized water. The true, massive size of the dragon approaching the tower came into view, her five crowned heads eager to sow devastation. 

Conquering Telluria had given Vouivre quite the boost. 

The cursed Musan Sniper quickly escalated in response and answered the attack not with bullets, but with mighty beams of blue light surging from the tower’s top. The very air crystallized around it, and clouds touched by the light turned into ice on contact. 

Frost damage… usually smart choice for a dragon, Simon mused as Vouivre shrugged off the beam and the alarms rang ever louder. A pity I’ve found your weakness. 

Even the best sniper could only fire one way. 

Projectiles struck the Mechanical Tower from the northwest instead of the south, spells and manalith shots raining from a particularly large cloud. They struck its magical forcefields and barriers shielding the building, causing energy surges to ripple through the sky. 

Simon watched as panels hidden on the tower’s sides slid back to unveil mana cannons that immediately retaliated. Projectiles flew through the cloud, only for a howling horde of specters, demons, and mephisgoats to emerge. They spread like a cloud of locusts, probing the barriers for an opening, their magic lighting up the heavens with sparks and light flashes. 

In truth, the ‘cloud’ was a phantasmal mist summoned by Voltobauta’s flying ship, The Ravenous, to obscure its movements. Granny’s coven worked on the deck to both maintain it and shield the vessel’s approach from detection, thus allowing them to assault the building. 

“A minor inconvenience?” Simon asked Turing, an eyebrow raised. As expected, more panels slid open to unleash a swarm of clockwork dragons, mechanical birds, and miniature airships to stop the attackers before they could find an opening in the defenses. Go on, empty your halls, look at the sword outside rather than the dagger within. 

“This is a coordinated attack!” Bert shouted in false panic. “What is our air force doing?!”

“How did they get so close?” Turing wondered out loud, his expression of displeasure at the scale of the attack, but a bit too subdued for a normal person. He rose from his seat and turned to his guests as turk waiters gathered around them. “My apologies, but I must ask you to follow us and abide by our staff’s instructions.”

“Of course,” Simon replied as he played along for now. They just had to wait a little longer for most of the security forces to fly outside. “Will we be teleported to safety?”

“You are safe here,” Turing replied simply as he guided them towards the elevator they used to move from the airship bay to the guest area. The turks worked together to move the stone tablet. “We will take you to a secure floor upstairs, where our master’s cutting-edge, golem-reinforced facilities will ensure no harm comes to you until the intruders are dealt with.”

Simon considered his timing when Elsa’s words intruded upon his thoughts. “I’ve found brains in jars.”

Simon blinked on his end of the telepathic line. “Where?”

“Four hundred feet southeast of the park. They’re all connected to cables leading to the upper floor.”

This is it, Simon thought, the pieces falling into place. That’s how it works. 

“Deploy the device and bring in the reinforcements as soon as the power goes out,” Simon informed Elsa. Renal’s crew and Chrom Cruak waited outside the tower for a Skeleton Key-powered teleportation into the building. 

Turing and two turks escorted them into a vast mechanical elevator, whose doors shut behind them the moment they walked inside and whose platform began to move up. The rest of the workers carried the tablet through another passage, likely to safeguard it elsewhere. 

“Do we strike now?” Bert asked with a hint of nervousness through his Brand of Sloth. “If they take us to the top—”

“Soon,” Simon reassured him, before issuing orders to Odette and him. “Wait for the lights to go out, then destroy them.”

He sensed Chrom’s device activate a second before everything exploded.

Nicknamed the ‘Pulse Machine,’ the weapon harnessed the power of the Archer, Goatfish, and the Scales. Hiding something so powerful from sight had required a combination of Simon’s Anathemic Secrecy, Elsa’s Rogue Perks, and other types of extensive shielding, yet she had managed to plant it into the Mechanical Tower’s manalith conduits. 

As a result, a massive pulse of miasma was unleashed straight into the building’s energy grid. The elevator’s lights flickered before every single one of them exploded in quick succession, unleashing a flood of lightning in all directions. The two nearest turks were incinerated on the spot, while bolts burned large patches of Bert’s false skin. Another struck Simon and dispelled his Fiendmask, revealing his Overlord armor for all to see. 

Medium Lightning damage!

Simon wasted no time blasting Turing with Hellfire Gaze before he could even realize what was going on. Odette instinctively put on her Merchant outfit to protect herself, though she miraculously avoided any blasts, and the flashes soon gave way to near-complete darkness save for the flames consuming the automatons. 

As planned, the entire elevator’s machinery shut down all of a sudden as most of the energy grid went down. Lingering enchantments kept the anti-teleportation barrier up, but not a single pulse of mana continued to course through the Mechanical Tower. 

Simon half-expected to fall a dozen floors, but good engineering ensured various safeties kept the elevator in place. He quickly called upon his Abyssal Chronicle and checked its map to confirm they had stopped somewhere between the guest floor and the top. 

“We’re in,” Renal informed him through telepathy, having been teleported inside by Elsa using the same gem trick Simon used in his previous reign. “The lights are all dead, but the golems are still kicking.”

“Follow the cables on your way up all the way to the source. We’ll take an alternative route and link up with you there.” Simon stored away his Abyssal Chronicle and activated his Wicked Angel form, his head and wings puncturing the elevator’s ceiling. He then swiftly shrouded himself in a Nightveil to better hide his identity and ensure the likes of Vouivre wouldn’t hear anything about the Overlord raiding the Mechanical Tower. “Destroy any construct in your way.”

“I knew it,” Bert hissed upon checking Turing’s body and finding a face of wood beneath his molten skin. “I knew he was another fake!”

“What else did you expect?” Odette replied as she sacrificed vast amounts of wealth from her own Inventory to summon Xenophon as a level 61 eidolon again. “We’re ready to proceed.”

“Odette, buff us; Xenophon, cover our rear,” Simon ordered as he opened his Inventory and manifested two golem-puppets for Bert to use, and then began to tear through the elevator’s doors bare-handed. “Let’s pick this tower’s brain and pluck out my Crestone.”

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