Amazon Apocalypse 6: Chapter 21

Getting confirmed as Knight Commander of the Black Knights turned out to be a rather simple process, despite the lofty badge I’d be getting for it.

“Having this position was something I bargained for with the other sorcerers when I was made marshal. I always planned to hand off command of the knights to someone else if I could someday find someone worthy of the title. My daughter thinks that’s you,” Sorcerer Mourningstar stroked his beard thoughtfully.

I got the distinct impression he was delegating his workload to me, just like I’d done to so many others. This must have been how being on the other end of that felt.

Nonetheless, I shook hands and accepted the badge with pride. There was a little ceremony to go with the appointment of the office, but it was clear the sorcerers were not used to the formalities martial orders normally required.

Sir Sandon an announcement with trumpets, marching, and probably a feast when he took control of all the remaining Omykir knighthoods we’d encountered. Terrance had a whole ceremony whenever one of the Chain Brigade left the penal legion to become a normal citizen. Even Dan’s zombie survivor group had a formal ceremony followed by a round of drinks.

“Stick this gold thing on your armor so everyone knows you’re in charge. Make sure to tell them that’s what it means too, since they’ve probably never seen it before,” Sorcerer Mourningstar said as he handed me the badge.

I did as he instructed and stuck the golden badge on my armor. Sitting there, it looked like a whole long of nothing. Anyone else would have their work cut out for them just getting the Black Knights to recognize the appointment to command.

Thankfully, I’d just spent most of the morning beating fifty of their number to a pulp. And I was willing to do it as many times as it took until this shiny piece of metal on my chest started looking like a symbol worthy of respect.

In fact, I discovered I was rather eager to do just that, though I’d have to make it quick. The last thing I wanted was for one of the sorcerers to get wind of my promotion and try to get me to do something unpleasant. Starting a confrontation now would throw everything I was working on into disarray. I was going for stability, security, and predictability. The last thing I needed was any sort of wildcard getting in my way.

“Hey, I heard about your promotion! I’m coming too!” Liliana said.

I groaned. There were most of my plans. But I’d adjusted on the spot when accepting this position. I could do so again with Liliana now. Or as many times as it took.

“You don’t even know where I’m going. Or if I’m going. For all you know, I plan on spending the next six months drilling recruits into new Black Knights.” I stared at Liliana.

She crossed her arms. “I didn’t hear a denial in there. So when are we leaving?”

“First, I want to round up at least a hundred men. You can do that, right?” I asked.

Liliana flashed me a smile. “I did it once before! I’m sure the boys in black will jump to join me when I mention I’m setting out for another raid.”

***

It took nearly an hour for Liliana to round up twenty more knights, by which time I’d beaten another fifty into the dirt, bringing my total number up to a hundred.

“I take it people heard about your last raid?” I asked when I eyed Liliana’s sorry bunch of recruits. Most of them were Black Knights in name only and didn’t even have black armor, just black tunics full of holes.

“Shh! You mean my narrow almost-victory!” Liliana hastily shushed me, eying her recruits side wise.

“We’re here to fight for the cause! Let’s save some people from those evil Sage guys!” said one of Liliana’s recruits. He was a young man with cat ears thrusting a fist in the air, looking around at his fellow knights like looking at heroes in the making. I overheard him introducing himself as Katar to the others in his unit.

I winced at the naive innocence. It wouldn’t last the night. But by then, we’d hopefully be too far away from town for these guys to risk deserting.

“Alright, come on. Onward to glory and victory,” I waved my hand, and the knights followed me in a half-march. Half of them were marching, and the other half were walking in a way that spoke of either complete inexperience or a bad hangover.

I accepted them for what they were for now, though in the long-term I’d be changing things. I’d learned a lot about drilling recruits into soldiers thanks to the campaign on Ladwick, and I figured the process would work just as well here. Once I perfected it, maybe I could even do it again in Crownhill, assuming I could find enough people for a standing army.

Eventually, once we were clear of the city, I turned and addressed the Black Knights, both the new and the old among them.

“I have been appointed Knight Commander. The Order of Sorcery has given you all to me so that I can turn you into proper soldiers,” I said.

“We’re soldiers already. Knights, even. We’ve got the armor to prove it,” one rough-looking man spat and rapped on his breastplate. He was developing a few bruises from our earlier training session. I thought I'd broken his jaw, but either he'd healed already or he was tougher than he looked if he was still talking.

“Armor does not make a knight. And the ability to fight doesn’t make one a soldier. It’s clear I’ll have to start from the bottom up,” I said.

“Fuck that,” said one of the Black Knights I hadn’t beaten the crap out of yet. “I joined up with the order to get strong and steal shit. If I wanted to go through some stupid boot camp, I would have joined the sages.”

The others, who already knew what I was capable of, started backing away from their less knowledgeable peer. I grabbed him by his chest plate, picked him up, and slapped him across the face.

He was angry at first and reached for his sword, but I grabbed that and bent it over on him before slapping him across the face again. Now, he had two matching welts on either side of his face.

“Any soldier of mine is going to be disciplined, upstanding, and capable in all military endeavors, or they won’t be a soldier of mine for long. The Order of Sorcery might have had low standards for you, but not me. Got it?” I shouted in his face in my best drill sergeant voice.

He didn’t get it that time. Or the next. But by the third time, my words seemed to finally be seeping through his thick skull. Thankfully, pretty much everyone was following orders while I was watching. I suspected we’d have a few deserters late into the night. I’d let some of them go, mainly all those who were young and only now realizing how far in over their heads they were, or that the Black Knights weren’t as polished up close and personal as they might have thought. The less savory types wouldn't escape my attention so easily.

The only ones who weren’t escaping my grasp were the walking wounded I’d beaten up earlier. Most of those guys would no doubt turn to banditry at the first opportunity. Hell, even if they stayed, there was little chance they’d like what I planned on turning my segment of the Black Knights into.

Over the course of the next day, I had the Black Knights train together. Their level of experience varied widely, which was something to be expected from any feudal-style force. After watching a few fights, I picked out those who knew their way around a sword and made them trainers for the rest.

The marching wasn’t too important, and we could skip most of the exercises a traditional force might need to do. Most of the Black Knights were fairly high leveled at the C and D-Grade, which made pushups and sprinting redundant. The most important thing was the teamwork exercises.

After I had a sense of who was good at what, I started breaking down the group into teams of six to ten, then from there into two larger units of sixty each. They would all have names, banners, and comrades they could recognize in something somewhere between the army structure of old Earth and what I’d learned leading a Glacian legion.

While most of the group trained, I had a few units peel off at any given time and patrol the area, scouting for monsters. Meanwhile, I picked my officers out of the group and handed out multiple levels of authority.

“You’re making this a lot more complicated than we did. I just picked the strongest knight and made him the commander, then told him to tell everyone else what I said to do,” Liliana said, hands on her hips as she tried to make sense of the command structure I’d assembled.

Unlike their previous command structure, this one was based on leadership ability and competence, rather than sheer levels. I still tried to organize units so that commanding officers were at least fairly strong among their units since anything less might lead to discipline problems.

That did leave me with a couple of powerful troublemakers that only I could hope to lead, but I’d take care of them soon enough.

Together, we found several small villages and encampments that had survived prior stages of the integration. Most of these were tribal folks akin to the ogres, trolls, or gnolls, and the only thing we could do was wipe the rest of them out. But on one rare occasion, we stumbled upon what looked to have been a campground deep in the wilderness.

“What are these things even made of? Is it some strange type of pottery? But what is it supposed to do?” asked Katar. He poked the plastic casing of a television.

“It is impressive craftsmanship,” I noted, pointing out the straight, smooth panel at the front of the television, the clear windows, and the smooth walls and doors made to the specifications of modern machinery.

“I’ve seen things like this only once before. There is a powerful faction to the south of us with similar architecture. We should be wary of them. They are powerful and better organized than most. During my last encounter with their kind, I barely escaped with my life despite all my wit, cunning, and skill,” Liliana said in a hushed whisper.

Next to her, Katar looked alarmed at this news and continued in a low and worried whisper. “What if they’re still here? Can we beat them with the forces we have? What do they look like?”

Liliana shrugged. “Like me. Perhaps slightly larger noses and ears than average and heftier average builds, but not far enough beyond norms to make mistaking one of them for one of us easy. But they're very different underneath. Last time I encountered them, a single one of them was enough to defeat a hundred of Black Knights. If they're here, we need to run.”

Katar looked increasingly worried at the news.

Meanwhile, I fought the urge to pinch my nose and rub my ears. Were they really big by Architect standards? I knew humans of Earth were a bit more ape-like than the Architects, but I figured we were closer to them in appearance than many other races in the Arcadia Multiverse. I’d have to ask Mimiko or the Goddess in Jade the next time I saw one of them.

Eventually, we stumbled across the human survivors in question, who were camped out in the forest. There were only five of them in total, and all low leveled.

I waited with bated breath to see what the others would say.

“Is that them?” the Katar asked in a nervous whisper.

Liliana waved her hand dismissively. “No, no. That’s just some normal fishermen. The scary people from the south are much more intimidating.”

She waved to get the attention of the group of five humans. Two men had fishing poles in the water, while one woman tended to a fire, and two children played in the water away from the fish.

“Hello, survivors! Fear not, we of the Order of Sorcery have come to rescue you from the evil Sages of Camlaan! Also, any rumors of us being the evil ones are lies spread by our enemies,” Liliana said.

The three adult humans looked at one another, entirely unconvinced. But much to my surprise, Liliana was able to convince them that she meant them no harm as long as they had no plans to make trouble and that if they were tired of living in the wilderness, they could find civilization at the Order of Sorcery’s citadel. Despite her earlier claims of big noses and ears, she didn't seem to recognize the humans before her as any different from her own people.

All in all, it was a rather pleasant second-contact experience between humanity and the Order of Sorcery. I suspected things would have likely gone differently if Liliana had run into these humans before I’d gotten the Black Knights under control, but things seemed better off now.

The fact that Liliana was willing to so quickly accept humans into the Order of Sorcery’s city was a point in their favor regarding future cooperation between our peoples, though I suspected her friendly and welcoming attitude was one she and her father shared, but not the other sorcerers. Otherwise, the Order of Sorcery would have already repaired their reputation as bloodthirsty heretics and killers.

We left the humans where they were to fish, spent a few hours clearing out all the nearby monsters that could threaten them, and then went on our way. Had I been alone, I would have pointed the humans in question in the direction of Crownhill as well, but there was no good way to pass that information along while Liliana was clinging to my side.

We continued, moving deeper into the countryside and further away from the Order of Sorcery’s citadel. We drilled as we moved, and the Black Knights made remarkable improvements as they all raised their sword proficiencies to something somewhat respectable. They were far from masters, but as long as they kept drilling as much as they were, they’d be decent swordsmen in a few months.

The following day, I received more interesting news.

“Sir, we’ve reported something strange. There’s an encampment nearby populated by strange people with horns,” one of the Black Knights said.

“Describe them,” I said, and the Black Knight gave me a perfect description of an oni warrior. I hadn’t thought we were close enough to New Kyoto to encounter them, but apparently, we were.

I turned to Liliana expectantly.

“Do you have any spells for scouting?” I asked.

“Uh...” Liliana looked at me guiltily.

“You don’t?” I asked, arms crossed.

“Don’t be like that! I filled all my spell slots with different types of fireballs and lighting bolt attacks! I didn’t have any room left for scouting or navigation,” Liliana replied, hands on her hips. It didn’t do much to hide the guilty expression on her face.

I lay a hand on her head. “The next time you have the opportunity, you’re going to replace at least three of your offensive spells with utility abilities. One for scouting, one for navigation, and one to get you out of danger fast.”

Liliana looked like she wanted to protest, but she slumped her shoulders and nodded in agreement.

“Fine. It used to be that my cultivator abilities would make up for any shortcomings elsewhere,” Liliana explained defensively.

I had suspected it was something like that. The presence of the natural energy matrix flowing through a cultivator’s body made them faster and stronger than a normal mortal. But Liliana wasn’t fighting normal mortals anymore, and if she didn’t take things seriously, her next fight against a B-Grade would kill her. Hell, I would have killed her during our fight if I hadn’t decided she was more useful to me alive back there.

“Now come on, I’m going to show you how to scout by hand, so you know what to look for when you have a spell that can help you do the job.” I grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her along behind me until we were deeper in the forest, scouting out the enemy.

“Oh, did you want to get me alone?” Liliana smiled coyly at me, then pulled her top down so the cut was even lower.

“Focus,” I said, grabbing her by the back of the head and pointing it in the right direction. Liliana was pretty cute, but there wasn’t really any way I could even kiss her without taking my armor off. Besides, I’d already decided not to go around having romantic encounters, at least not without letting Sakura, Bridget, and all the others feel them out first.

“Aww. You mean this really is some boring scouting mission?” Liliana pouted.

“Yes. See there? Those are tracks. The enemy settlement isn’t far.” I took Liliana around several corners and through several trees until we reached a clearing. This would have been far faster if I could fly, but again, I was limited by my current disguise.

We made good progress despite that and soon were overlooking something that seemed halfway between a Japanese Feudal Castle and a train station. There were even workers laying down tracks to the fortress.

“Stay quiet and watch a moment. Then tell me what you see,” I whispered.

Liliana looked. “The people down there are building a fortress for the red people with horns.”

“That’s right. It looks like those Oni warriors have coerced the people down there to work for them. I think they are one of the other big factions. We should be careful.” I led Liliana to the obvious conclusion, hoping she’d come up with the idea I’d come up with minutes before when I realized how close we were to an oni encampment.

“Those red people must have enslaved the poor workers down there! Maybe we should save them. Then, we can ask them what’s happening,” Liliana suggested.

I rubbed her head fondly again. “If that’s what the Order of Sorcery orders, then I’ll see it done. Come on, let’s get back to the knights and plan our attack.”

Soon, the oni of New Kyoto would have to turn their attention away from Crownhill to deal with a new and very unexpected threat.

<Note>

This reminds me a bit of what Carter wanted to do with the Ogres and Trolls by setting them against one another, only this time he's doing it a little more skillfully, which makes sense considering how he's grown.

The only danger is that the Oni and Black Knights level up a ton by fighting one another, but that shouldn't be too much of a concern as long as everyone back in Crownhill is clearing out monsters regularly and picking up new survivor bands to grow Crownhill's population.