PW Chapter 279: Army’s Arrival (Patreon)

About a day and a half after the conclusion of the fight against the attacking army, the call went up along the walls of an approaching army. It would have incited a panic, if not for the fact that the Duchess had promised to send reinforcements, the enemy’s highest tiers had retreated, and the approaching army was flying the Duchess’s standard. As it was, the identity of the approaching army was guaranteed. Of course, the doors weren’t thrown open before verification was made, but it didn’t take long for the Golden fist to send Miriam to the gates and give the confirmation that it was friendlies incoming.

Greely was the one to confirm that they weren’t under attack again, and he didn’t need to say anything as, instead, immediately starting to pull back the defenses along the side of the city where the army approached. From where Purcell was situated, on top of a mountain, it was easy to see the army’s approach, and though it wasn’t a massive contingent, there were over one hundred people approaching. They ran along at a good clip, and it wasn’t more than a couple minutes after the first warnings went up that the first of the soldiers were arriving at the wall.

Cheers went up from the defenders as reinforcements arrived, and in a few short minutes, the soldiers were through the gates and into the city.

Astrid watched from on the walls, wearing most of her equipment, but with her helmet and hammer still currently shunted into her personal equipment Skill space. Her shield was out and on her arm as she continued to provide it with mana. With the severity of the damage it had sustained, she thought that the enchantments would be ruined, and the shield wouldn’t be able to repair itself. Fortunately, it turned out she was wrong in thinking that, and now, after a few days of focused effort, it was starting to look like a shield once again. It was still at least a week away from being complete again, but maybe it’d be serviceable if given enough mana and time.

“Don’t you wanna go down?” someone asked, though Astrid didn’t look to see who it was. It was one of the soldiers she had come to know a little bit better over the past days, but she didn’t have a firm grasp on each person’s voice and name just yet.

“I’m good for now,” Astrid shook her head. “I know just about anybody I would want to talk to anyways, and it’s only been two days since I left the camp they came from.”

A few conversations started as she shrugged away their interest, but Astrid instead looked for the Golden Fist. It wasn’t hard, considering the waves of mana that most of the party constantly emanated, but the fact that they were accompanying this army confirmed something Astrid hadn’t expected.

Though they tried to hide it, Aleksandr and Isana both remained within just a couple meters of someone who wore nondescript armor. Leah and Miriam both ranged off from the squadron, but the supporter and frontliner both stayed close to her. That was, at best, particularly suspicious. If Astrid hadn’t known who they escorted, she might have missed them. They were short, but definitely taller than who Astrid might have thought it was. Looking down, though, she could see that the boots boasted small heels, maybe two or three centimeters, and something else about the leg seemed to say that the person was wearing something else to elevate their height.

The armor seemed to be largely masculine, with the hips relatively narrow and the shoulders broad, the breastplate coming to a point in front of the chest, but Astrid knew that it was the Duchess who stood there in the middle of the army. Did they know she was there? Or was Saul’s absence explained as protecting her back in Stahlstadt?

“Why the…” she wondered to herself, cutting off any more words that might betray the knowledge she gained. The fact that the bulk of the Golden Fist was here was enough of an indication that Ruth was nearby, and now she saw where the woman was. Even so, Astrid wasn’t going to tip her hand, because evidently, there was a reason why she didn’t want to be seen.

“Will you come see me?” Greely asked, giving her a summons that she’d been avoiding for the past days. She’d largely tried to avoid interacting with him and thereby all of the emotions that confronting him again would bring up, but now, she wasn’t going to get any further opportunity to. Well, technically, she could probably just ignore him and run away, but that felt decidedly juvenile. With a grunt, Astrid turned to make her way towards the center of the city.

Walking through the city, Astrid gained a fair amount of attention. It didn’t matter if she wore her armor or not, there weren’t many people anywhere near her height wandering around. Whether it was the dark armor and draconic helmet or the bright red hair, she would draw attention, so she simply gave casual greetings to people who reached out to her while continuing towards her destination. It wasn’t long before she followed the subtle pulsations of mana towards Greely’s seat of power. There, she found the rest of her party, who had all split up that morning to do whatever suited their fancy. Muti’d said something about a hunt, and Astrid didn’t want to try to find out what or who was the prey.

“Good morning,” Greely smiled. His eyes, still clouded by cataracts, stared directly towards her, and Astrid kept her face impassive as she nodded once.

“I’ve neglected to thank you all for your help. You, at your level, took on a massive risk to help this city. I cannot overstate how many people you’ve saved. Thank you, Wanderers. You’ve done this people an immense service at even greater risk to yourselves. Thank you.”

Unable to maintain a completely unfazed face at that, Astrid smiled more broadly, but she didn’t engage further with him. She’d decided to come at his request to not be childish, but she couldn’t help but not want to have casual conversation with him just because. 

“Is that all? I appreciate the thanks, and I’m sure everyone else does. But that seems to be a shallow reason to be summoned.”

He looked at her, then took a long, slow breath.

“I believe I already apologized for this, but it bears repeating. I am sorry for my weakness preceding the beginning of the Wandering Trials. My thought was to prevent something just like this current war from happening, but it was a vain hope. I should not have been so easily cowed by others who continued to pursue evil.”

“You’re justifying yourself,” Astrid shook her head. “Or, at least you’re trying to. The problem isn’t that you were trying to stop a war. The problem is that the Guild always acted like they’ll take care of all the delvers and they didn’t. You personally took innocent people who trusted you and put them in a position where they would be made into slaves or killed, and you didn’t warn them. You can hide behind hopes for no war or how it wasn’t technically your responsibility to warn the others all you want. The truth is that you decided there were sacrifices to be made to try to preserve peace. Those sacrifices were innocent people you could have tried to help. Instead of doing that, you watched them go and knew what would happen to many of them.

“I can see what you were fighting to prevent. War is a terrible thing, and I hate it. I hate that I’m here, I hate that people need me to kill to keep them free. I remember walking past the crumpled bodies of people whose lives were snuffed out by my attack. Their blood still soaks my skin and the experience from killing them remains in my Status, no matter how much I wash. I’ve made the decision to continue  on this path, though. The threat of violence from the nobles is something that needs to be resisted violently. You were a coward. Hopefully you’ll be brave now. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

He started to open his mouth to say something, but instead of arguing or disagreeing, he just nodded. “Very well. I will continue to apologize for my indecision, though. I can give my reasons for it, but as you said, it doesn’t matter, and I don’t blame you for not wanting to talk about it.”

Having said that, Greely shifted, his hunched, apologetic stance becoming much more serious as he reminded Astrid that, while she could stand against Misha, she wouldn’t have a chance against him, even though he was probably lower level than the General. He then looked at Skandr meaningfully, and the Wizard nodded as he whipped his fingers through a series of sigils. As the glowing characters hovered in the air, a wall of wind started to swirl around the six people, and Greely nodded his thanks.

“As you all know, reinforcements have arrived. However, that is not something that necessarily requires your attention. Instead, it is who has come alongside them.”

“The Duchess,” Astrid nodded. “Are you just letting us know that she’s here or is there something we need to do?”

“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you were able to piece together her presence here,” Greely mused. “Regardless, I don’t know why she’s here. It doesn’t make sense, but with the Golden Fist here, I can discern that she journeyed here. No doubt, she’ll soon tell us why she’s here, and if you are willing, I would like you to be present when she presents herself.”

“You’re not talking about her showing herself to the whole city,” Benedict said. “I guess she’ll talk to you and Isaiah to give you more information than most people deserve to get or something?”

“Not deserve but need,” Greely answered. “However, yes. Just as the leader of a city does not talk about the reasons for taxation to his citizens, there are plenty of reasons for which the Duchess may choose not to explain her entire thought process behind her coming to the citizenry. As those people who will be entrusted with her safety, though, a greater understanding of her goals is necessary.”

Astrid started to open her mouth to say something, but Skandr’s face twisted, and he whipped around to face the wind wall he had created, just behind Astrid. She turned, but a voice spoke over the constant hum of wind.

“I wasn’t attempting to startle you. I apologize.” Right behind Astrid stood Leah Bladedancer. The woman wore her equipment, but didn’t have her helmet or blades out. She raised a hand in apology. “At your earliest convenience, the Duchess wanted to request your presence in the Count’s home to discuss her presence here as well as what next steps she might have for you all. Fortunately, you’re all together, except for Isaiah. By the time you show up, everybody should be together.”

She didn’t say anything more as she raised two fingers in a casual salute in a goodbye and stepped back out of Skandr’s protective spell. As soon as she was gone, Astrid looked at Skandr, narrowing her eyes.

"What was it that had you so freaked out?”

“I don’t know if it’s a passive or what,” he explained, “but as soon as my spell started to touch her, it destabilized. I couldn’t control it hardly at all, so I thought it was an attack.”

“I wouldn’t put it past them to have it be both,” Astrid grumbled. “Though I suppose it’s probably just a question of her being over 100 levels higher than you and famously uses a lot of wind. A passive increase to her control over all wind or something nearby her should be pretty likely to have.”

The party continued making comments to each other as they all made their way towards the Count’s home. That Greely walked next to them was something that had Astrid feeling a little strange, but she didn’t comment on it. She had enough of talking to people about ways she felt they had failed. The Golden Fist, Greely, nobles in general… she was done.

Getting back to the moment, Astrid followed Greely’s path towards the Count’s home, and, before long, found herself walking up the stairs to the unfamiliar building. It was located right next to the fortress built around the entrance to the Dungeon branch, so she had seen it plenty while she and her party had made this place their base. Of course, she also had no reason to ever directly interact with the nobleman, so she knew nothing of him. Apparently, the Guild and he had worked well together. Combining that with the fact that he was still here after the Duchess had made Purcell a training ground meant that, at the very least, he was on their side.

Walking up the stairs into the large, fancy building, Astrid was struck by how little she cared about things now. When she was younger, she respected the nobles, looked up to the Golden Fist, and worshiped the Duchess. She shook her head in almost disappointment as Greely opened the front doors and poked his head in.

It was a quick and relatively quiet conversation had between him and some servant, and it wasn’t long until they were being escorted through the building to a private office. Inside, there were walls of folders, each one painstakingly labeled by the month and year, and there were at least ten years worth of documents lining the walls. Astrid didn’t pay any more attention to the room as she met eyes with Ruth.

She still wore her disguise armor, but her helmet had been removed, and her dark hair curled over her shoulders and down her back. Astrid had no idea if that was a result of a Skill or simply that she had taken the time to take care of her appearance like this before calling for company, but she could see either one being equally possible.

“Hello, my friends,” the Duchess said with a smile. “I hear you were pretty heroic.”

***

“I know we talked about this being a possibility,” Ruth said once the story was finished being told, “but I don’t think that anybody was planning on you fighting an established Adamantium tier. You were supposed to be focusing on only the recently evolved.”

Astrid leveled her gaze at the beautiful woman, and the Duchess shrugged with a smile. “I’m not saying you had any other option, but it is, at the very least, extremely impressive what you were able to do.”

“If only I hadn’t been caught by Gregor,” Astrid said, her excitement at reliving the party’s victory waning as she remembered carrying a hero’s corpse back to the walls.

“We all expected something like that to happen,” Isaiah shook his head, trying to stop Astrid’s regret. “You were in the most dangerous position, and we all knew it. We brought a bunch of low Mithrils to an Adamantium fight. It’s only pure luck on our side that you were able to kill Misha before Gregor overwhelmed Greely’s defenses.”

Astrid didn’t answer, and after a few seconds’ pause, the conversation resumed.

“In terms of highest tier combatants, we came out on the losing side,” Ruth continued, her tone uninflected by emotion. “Pauline was significantly stronger than Misha. She was higher level and a direct combatant instead of a leader. Her loss is a heavy blow. However, your presence was able to save us from losing Greely as well as the entire town. Is this the best news? Of course not. However, it is, undeniably, good news. Everybody in this city remains free and you were able to strike back.”

“I was able to see the Sniper as well,” Isaiah said, taking everybody present by surprise.

“What?”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“This isn’t something you keep secret!”

It was only a few seconds before the Wanderers and Greely got control over themselves, and Isaiah continued his explanation.

“I wasn’t able to get close, but I think I recognized him. Stefan Archer is what he went by some twenty years ago, when we worked together on a raid. I would imagine that he still goes by something similar, but I haven’t heard anything from him in nearly two decades. We’d been casual acquaintances before that, so I don’t know if he had always been in the Marchioness’s employ or if he was taken sometime after. I would imagine it is the second, but I cannot say for certain.”

“What tier were you at that time?” the Duchess asked, her eyes intense.

“We both participated with the hope that our actions would allow us to complete our evolutions into Mithril,” he answered. “I succeeded, he failed. He was disappointed and went elsewhere to find a possibility to complete his final requirement. I can’t say that I tried to keep up contact with him at that point, though. We were only working together for a few weeks. I wouldn’t remember him at all if our paths hadn’t mirrored each others’ so much.”

The conversation exploded from there as dozens of questions about Stefan’s Skills and personality came up. Astrid allowed it to go that way for a short while before she raised a hand and interrupted them. 

“I’m happy to learn more about this man, but I don’t really care about it right now. Instead, I have to ask why you’re here, Duchess.”

“That’s a good question,” Ruth smiled. “And it’s all of you and this place.”

“What do you mean?”

 “I want to use Purcell as a staging ground.”