On Astral Tides: From Humble Freelancer To Astral Emperor

One Hundred And Twenty-Six

“But before that, while we have some peace I want to see if we can further improve our gear, and maybe make something for Grulgor too.”

“That oaf-oaf?” Shaeula scoffed. “He is hardly worthy of your largess, yet…” she let out a muted sigh. “I suppose it makes sense, he is an asset to us, even if I can-can barely stand the sight of him.”

I’m proud of how you keep growing. I must have had a fatherly smile on my face, as Shaeula flushed.

“Stop looking at me like that-that. I am not-not so shallow I can not-not appreciate his efforts.” She protested, and so I rubbed her head, causing her to let out small noises of embarrassment, but she made no effort to shy away.

Yeah, her verbal tic still spikes up when she is excited or embarrassed. Knowing better than to say it, we returned to the shrine, where I called over the kobold miners. As expected their haul was lower, but we still had materials, so I quickly started processing them. Iron was converted to steel just by adding charcoal by burning some wood from around the shrine with flame essence. We also had quite the pile of smashed armour and useless weapons that the orcs had so graciously left us after their defeats. Melting this all down into ingots and adding around 3% carbon, which was the ratio I remembered from school for ‘spring steel’, allowed me to create a metal flexible and hard to deform. As I worked, I could feel my abilities in Ether Crafting growing a little, giving me deeper understanding of iron and steel. I wonder if iron counts as part of the earth element?

Grulgor returned as I had a large pile of steel ready to go. He still had the crude plates hammered into his body, providing decent protection, but with proper armour… yeah, he’d be an unstoppable tank. Over the next few days I can armour up the other trolls too…

Once the plates were stripped from Grulgor I spent time shaping an extremely thick armour for him, full-plate style, though he had an open-faced helm, as when I went for a narrow slit he started roaring about not being able to find or see his foes. When he was done he looked… well, like a three metre plus giant of cold steel, an iron golem. The armour didn’t have any fancy decorations, but it was solid, and gleaming brightly. Grulgor was puzzled at first as I was dressing him, and it took me a while to figure out how to make straps of metal to hold the weight together, as leather would be useless. In the end they were supplemented by spikes sticking into his body, holding them in place. His own regeneration then locks it to him, making it nigh-impregnable.

Once that was done, it was time to make him a weapon. Forgoing finesse, I made him a long-handled flanged mace, the head many kilograms of hard steel. Anything Grulgor hit with that would be leaving nothing but a mist of blood and ether behind, that was for sure.

“Grul likes this. Grul will use it to smash and crush and kill!” he gurgled, picking it up and swinging it around. Yeah, I pity his foes, no question about that.

“Cool, glad you approve.” I said. “I’ll run maintenance on it from time to time, but try not to break it. I’ll also make these…” I quickly turned a portion of the steel into large balls that could be thrown by him and the trolls. Portable troll artillery…

Grulgor grabbed a handful of the ammunition and was off, eager to whet his new equipment in the blood of our foes, so I turned to our most important task. I first ran maintenance on the pinwheels, repairing the slight damage to the wires that functioned as the weapon. Once that was done I crafted a harness for Shaeula out of lightweight materials, making sure to make it pretty. It had three open slots on the back, and those I filled with new and improved bluesteel batteries, having a greater capacity than mine. I made myself a similar harness, though more rough and ready, and also recycled my batteries, ending up with three new ones myself.

By the time I was done many hours had passed indeed, so it was probably morning over in the Material. I hope Karen-chan isn’t too hungover and made it to the shrine… I’ll check later.

“All right then, this is a scouting mission, to find the enemy Territory. Shall we go?”

Shaeula nodded, leaving the defence to the kami and her Kamaitachi. We headed out, moving rapidly with our high stats, and were soon out of my Territory, heading in the direction we suspected most of the attacks were coming from. As me moved north towards the distant Setagaya ward, we discovered a lack of any sort of life. There  were a few scattered enemies, and we could sense presences in buildings, but… Shouldn’t there be other Territories? If there are … how did Exposition-san put it, several thousands in this country alone… call it three thousand then, though it may be a few more or less, then that’s about nine hundred in Tokyo. Shouldn’t there be some around here? Although I suppose Tokyo is pretty massive…

Picking up my thoughts, Shaeula agreed. “This area has been scavenged dry, master. Perhaps there were other Territories, but they have been plundered, only a few remaining. I fear our numbers are woefully few, compared to our enemy, so while we can hold-hold our own in battle, we can not-not expand rapidly.”

“Yeah it’s like we are playing Warcraft 3 with just a bunch of high-level hero units. Sure, we can spam ultimate skills and wreck mobs of normal troops, but we can be outmanoeuvred and can’t be everywhere at once.” I made the simile, and she looked puzzled.

“Warcraft 3 was pretty fun, though I hear the remake is ass. If I can find an old version that works give it a play when this is over, you might enjoy it.”

“I shall bear that in mind, but is it the time for such banter?” she asked, and I had to agree.

“I get it, I do. We’ll focus.”

We were going roughly parallel to the train that usually took us into Tokyo proper, so some of the sights should have been familiar, and a few were, buildings I recognised, but others had fantastical shapes, or were areas that had expanded far larger than they should have been on the Material plane, dungeons perhaps. These we bypassed, making a note to explore them when the current crisis was resolved. We were still some distance from the administrative high-rises of Setagaya ward, but before that there were still some impressive sights.

“Akio, I see-see something.” Shaeula said suddenly, pulling me into cover, somehow ending up on top of me as we crouched behind a wall of rusted metal. As I looked to where she was peering, I could see an indistinct misty shape moving through the air overhead.

“Another ghost girl?” I mouthed at her, and she nodded. Once it had passed we relaxed.

“So, we are headed the right way. The attacks are coming from the north.”

“I believe I can eliminate her-her.” Shaeula whispered to me. “I can strike her unawares and blind their eyes-eyes. It is simple for someone of my powers.”

I shook my head, unconvinced. “No, I think we should hold off on giving away our position for now. Besides, they already know where our Territory is. There’s no point tipping our hand. When the time is right, that’s when we’ll strike. Anyway… if I had to guess, if the scouts are out again, that means another push is likely coming. It’s just the two of us, feeling brave?”

“Who do you think you are speaking to-to?” she puffed out her chest in pride. “Together, we can destroy any number of such foul perverted beasts!”

********

“And that’s twelve!” my spear slammed through the breastplate of the orc in front of me, wind energy humming as it pierced metal and flesh alike. The orc staggered and then disappeared, leaving me free to avoid the crude club the next was wielding. I lashed out, slicing off an arm, and as it staggered, bellowing in pain, I punched it in the face again and again until I felt the skull crack and the orc vanished. “No, thirteen!”

“You are rather behind me master, I fear. I have passed thirty.” Shaeula crowed, her pinwheels adopting a series of figure-eights’ around her, hacking orcs to pieces with ease. “It is a shame we had no stakes for this wager-wager, I would like to add to the favour you owe me!”

Yeah, I forgot about that. I wonder what she is going to want…

Putting that aside I hurled blades of wind at the remaining orcs who were throwing rocks and other debris at us from the sides. They fell, cut to bloody ribbons, and as Shaeula swept the other flank the battle came to an end, the ether ours.

It isn’t a huge amount, but it replaces a percent or so from what I spent, so that makes me feel better…

Looking at the dropped armour and weaponry there were only a few pieces, the gear of our foes definitely suffering. There was of course one… downside… to that, in that the orcs’ lower bodies were only covered by cloth. It was enough to make me wince, so it must have been far worse for Shaeula. They need to die for soiling her eyes, if nothing else.

“Think that we were spotted by any ghosts?” I asked, and Shaeula shook her head.

“I did not-not see any nearby. I believe we simply intercepted a force on route to a staging point near our Territory. This should have relieved the pressure on our kin.”

“Yeah, but just how long can the candidate running this keep up the pointless losses? I mean, I’m grateful for the ether and xp, but if it was me, I’d have got frustrated and come up with another plan by now. They must be really hands-off.”

“Indeed. We should make haste and use our advantage before our foe-foe becomes desperate.”

Pushing forwards towards a pocket of high-rise hotels and shops that catered to tourists from poorer counties that had quite the chequered reputation with Tokyo residents, being well known as a hotbed of crime and … adult activities, we spotted another pack of a dozen orcs coming our way. I barely had time to react before Shaeula sent out her wind-weasels, blasting through them, bodies tumbling, torn apart, to burst into glimmering silver rain.

Yeah, she really, REALLY hates these orcs…

Pressing onwards we collected out bounty, and then a pair of the giant beetles were next, lumbering down the highway to our left. They were a bit away from us, but we could handle them easily, with Shaeula’s ability…

********

“Look out!” I said, slamming Shaeula to the ground, shielding her with my body. It had been pure chance I caught sight of the bolt of aetheric light flying our way, and without thinking I knocked her aside instinctively. The bolt shot through where she was standing moments ago, impacting the ground with the noise of a car crash, blowing a crater in the pavement, showering us with debris, the shockwave buffeting our hair and clothes.

Sniper Emplacement? Stronger than mine, for certain. Maybe Rank 2 or more?

Helping Shaeula to her feet, we darted for cover. No more bolts came, but we couldn’t be careless. We crept closer from another direction, darting around the back of various shops and offices to keep us out of line-of-sight. After some careful minutes of this, we ran into a defensive barrier, the force stopping us in our tracks. As the message scrolled silver across my vision warning me, and the slow trickling drain on my aether reserves started, more bolts of energy came darting at us. These were slower, but still hard to dodge, sending cracks through stone and iron of the buildings around us.

“Back into cover!” I ordered, and we retreated, the bolts of bright aether chasing us away.

“So, looks like we found it.” I said, eyeing the near-invisible barrier that was keeping us out. “And unlike ours, this Territory isn’t upgrading. And unlike Vegas, this person didn’t neglect their defences. This is going to be a problem…”

“They can not-not protect everywhere, can they?” Shaeula suggested. “We should explore the extent of this Territory and find areas where their defences fail them. That can then be our-our ingress.”

“Yeah. We might have to watch for the Sniper, but that’s our best bet. All right, keep your eyes open and if we see any opportunities to cause damage we’ll take it…”