Swarming Sovereignty

As it turned out, Lia had only a single ability that strengthened conversion, her race.

There weren’t any numbers for it or anything, but Lia didn’t need them; the Supreme Empress race was tied to the Pride Title, and having such exaggerated effects as she had seen with the ships was supposedly par for the course with Sin and Virtue Titles.

That being said, while she was in the process of combing through all of her abilities, she had gained a Title that would help.

Lia wasn’t quite sure what anachronistic meant, but she could only assume it related to the ships somehow. She had received the title at the same time as an EXP drop from one of the conversions, and she hadn’t done anything else recently that would qualify her for the Title.

She was a little disappointed that it wasn’t a Special Title, but it was workable. Somewhere around the time Ira had nearly killed her, she had begun to ignore regular Titles; Conqueror of Death’s prevention of instant kills and the dramatic increase to her survivability it provided were simply too valuable to even consider equipping other Titles for any extended period of time. Changing equipped Titles took a minute or two, but if it she just did it while doing conversions in a safe place, it would probably be fine.

With that taken care of, Lia began checking the various apps her tablet had, seeing what new information had been filled in by her experiments. To her surprise, the information was quite a bit more detailed than she had hoped for, even going so far as to pick out certain “key attributes” of an object and their relative strength when used for converting.

For example, the carts she had used to help the “normal” people get a ship to convert had a “storage” value of five, a “movement” value of five, and a “vehicle” value of two. Even more than that, though, it gave her a list of recent conversions, including their statuses, and the estimated total values of each attribute that had gone into them.

It also had a compendium of known conversion results, containing all the information from the conversions Lia had done since gaining the tablet. It looked rather bare at the moment, and something about seeing the empty pages filled Lia with a desire to fill them. She knew that she could probably never truly fill it, as there were a nigh-infinite number of possible conversion results, but she could at least make it less…lonely.

She spent the rest of her time at the shipyard engrossed in her tablet, making notes and writing down things she wanted to try, and all too soon she found herself being teleported back to her home, Amelia rushing over and catching her in a hug.

“How’d it go?” She asked.

“From what I gather, it’s a huge success.” Lia replied. “The current plan is for me to go to the rest of the shipyards under our control and convert all the ships there, too. Though…I have been thinking, and I think we should start gathering a bunch of flying monsters for me to have on-hand while I do. And, if it’s not too much trouble, could you create a bunch of weight-reducing and flight-granting magic items? I want to try making a flying ship.”

“That seems reasonable.” Amelia replied. “I should be able to whip up a bunch of those without too much issue. As for the monsters…I’m not sure how feasible that’ll be, I haven’t been paying enough attention to know. If my Worship wasn’t sealed or I had more free time I could make those, too, but…well, I suppose there’s no but, if you want me to, I’ll make some or get some.”

“That won’t be necessary for now.” Lia said. “I’ll just take any we get naturally within the next couple of days.”

“Any what?” Rose asked, walking into the room. “Welcome home, by the way.”

“Flying monsters. I want to make a flying ship.”

“I’ll get the word out,” Rose replied immediately, “that seems a pretty high-priority use for them. How was the other ship?”

“A lot worse. Basically everything you liked about the command center place was gone, there were no one-way windows, and the deck didn’t seal itself up when it went underwater. I reconverted it so it’s in line with the others, now.”

“Good to know.” Rose replied. “We’ll have to trouble you with the rest of our ships, then.”

“Yeah, I told Amelia that was the plan.” Lia confirmed. “By the way, do you know what the word anachronistic means?”

Rose frowned. “No, why?”

“I got a Title for converting a bunch of things into ‘anachronistic’ objects, and the title makes making ‘anachronistic’ things easier and strengthens their ‘anachronistic’ parts.”

“I have no clue, either.” Amelia said. “Maybe Connie would know? I believe she’s in the kitchen right now.”

Lia nodded, then headed to the kitchen, where Connie was indeed in the process of making dinner. “Hey, Connie, I’m home.”

“Welcome home!” Connie said brightly, putting down the knife she was using to cut vegetables and coming over to give Lia a hug. “How was it?”

“It went really well, and the tablet has been really, really nice.” Lia replied, hugging Connie back. “Uh, quick question, though, do you know what anachronistic means? Amelia, Rose, and I don’t.”

“I do, but where’d you hear that word?” Connie asked curiously. “As far as I’m aware, it’s not even close to being in common use on this plane.”

“I got a Title that mentions it. Apparently, I made anachronistic things via conversion.”

Connie raised an eyebrow. “Mind reading that Title out to me?”

After Lia did, Connie continued. “Okay, so anachronistic basically means something that’s in the wrong time period. For instance, the SPS and your tablet are both very anachronistic devices. In this case, I imagine you’ve made something that wouldn’t otherwise exist until your plane’s technology advances further, because I highly doubt making something primitive enough to be anachronistic would be worth a Title. Do you have any idea what it was?”

“The ships I made were really fancy.” Lia said, holding out her tablet. “Here, I’ve made notes on their features in my tablet, take a look.”

Connie took the tablet, scanning over Lia’s notes. “Yeah, that’d definitely do it.” She said. “I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting you to be able to do something like this.”

“I’m assuming it’s because the buff I get from Supreme Empress is sort of tied to Pride.” Lia said. “Otherwise I can’t imagine the difference being this marked.”

“That’s gotta be it.” Connie agreed. “You really shouldn’t be boosting your conversion strength this much otherwise…is Pride taking better conversion capabilities from races to be buffs and applying them to you? That doesn’t seem right, you’d have the innate benefits of everyone’s races if that was the case, and you don’t, so…maybe the buff is just a lot stronger than expected? It does specifically mention you being the swarm’s ‘Pride’ in its description, it’d make sense to give a powerful buff to expanding the swarm, Pride abilities usually do help in expanding your dominion…”

Connie blinked, then shook her head. “I should think about this later, I’m going to ruin dinner if I spend any more time thinking instead of cooking. Anything else you need before I get back to it?”

“No, just that, thanks.” Lia replied. “I’ll get out of your hair now. Love you!”

Lia watched in satisfaction as Connie turned bright red and squeaked out a “love you too” in response, then left the kitchen. It had become something of a guilty pleasure to watch Connie grow embarrassed over displays of affection, but Connie had made it clear that she liked it and just needed time to get used to it, so Lia didn’t feel that bad about it.

“Connie says that anachronistic means something in the wrong time period.” Lia relayed to Amelia and Rose. “She’s assuming that it’s in reference to the ships being more futuristic than they should be, and I agree. It wouldn’t make sense to get a Title from making something more primitive than our current stuff.”

“Ah, yeah, that sounds about right.” Rose replied. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if people from more technologically advanced planes built ships like that.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Chrys asked sleepily, walking into the room. “I just got up from a nap and I’m hearing about ships?”

“I went to our shipyards and made living ships.” Lia explained. “I got a title because of it so we were just talking about that.”

“Oh.” Chrys replied. “Well, we can do that over dinner, right? It smells like it’s almost done.”

“That sounds like a plan.” Lia said. “I’m sure Connie’s making something delicious, as always.”

“I’ll go see if she needs any help.” Rose volunteered. “Would you all set the table?”

“On it.” Amelia replied.

“I guess I’m not doing anything better.” Chrys yawned.

“I don’t think we need three of us to do it,” Lia began, “but I’d feel awkward being the only one not helping, so count me in.”

---

Rose couldn’t help but feel a little unfulfilled when she got back home. When, after dinner had concluded, there was still no move from the opposing army, she and Amelia went around and planted some of Rose’s plants in strategic locations, then went back home. But…she hadn’t done anything that required her to fight all day, and she was getting a little antsy.

Fortunately for her, it seemed that she might still get her opportunity. As she and Amelia arrived back in their living room, Lia looked up from her book. “Amphi’s been looking for you.” She said. “We’ve found the dragon that Ira trained up and she wanted to know when a good time to confront it would be.”

“Now.” Rose said eagerly. “I needed some exercise and this sounds like just the thing.”

“I want to come too.” Lia said. “There shouldn’t be a problem with this, right?”

Rose hesitated, then nodded. “It’s a monster, it shouldn’t be anything you can’t handle. We’ll take Ophelia and Nailah as well, the five of us should be overkill for it. Still, we shouldn’t get complacent; there’s a nonzero chance it’s devoured other high-leveled monsters in the time since it was freed from Ira’s control.”

“I’m gonna rest here until we’re ready.” Amelia said, sitting down on one of the chairs in the room. “Call me when it’s time to go.”

Rose nodded. “Lia, go get ready, I’ll be back with them in about ten minutes, so we can talk strategy.”

After Lia nodded, Rose headed out of their house and went to find Ophelia and Nailah. Fortunately, they both had a body at home, and they were more than happy to help deal with the dragon. So, in no time at all, everyone had gathered and it was time for Rose to lay out the strategy.

This dragon had made its home in a cave somewhere in the Spine, which was about what Rose had expected. Dragons often liked to nest in caves, for the simple reason that they created natural choke points. A dragon would generally carve out a large room for it to live in, and when it detected intruders, it would simply unleash its breath into the rest of the cave, damaging or outright killing the invaders.

Conventional wisdom was that it was better to lure dragons out of their caves than it was to charge in blindly; a dragon’s breath was a fearsome thing, and sufficiently powerful dragons threatened even max-level people with it. Instead of taking potentially multiple breath attacks on the way in, waiting it out was a much safer choice. Everything had to eat, and dragons in particular had voracious appetites, necessitating somewhat regular hunting. Even if it didn’t want to, it would have to leave the cave eventually.

However, with Amelia in play, things were different. It wasn’t unheard of for high-level mages to be able to block one or two uses of a dragon’s breath, but that often took most of their Mana and removed them from the rest of the fight. But Amelia had them outclassed in both skill and Mana capacity; Amelia had, in the past, stated that she was more than confident that she would be able to outlast any dragon when it came to energy reserves. Breath weapons, though powerful, cost a lot of Stamina and Mana, and by walking into the cave and braving those attacks they could drain the dragon’s resources before fighting.

When they actually reached the dragon, the fight hopefully wouldn’t be too bad; even if dragons carve relatively out spacious areas for them to live in, they were still very small compared to open sky, greatly restricting the dragon’s movements.

Once Rose had finished the briefing and everyone had signaled that they were ready, Amelia teleported them all away, landing at the mouth of a cave somewhere else in the Spine. Rose cautiously led the group further into the cave, focused intently on the area in front of her. Sure enough, after only a minute or so she could feel Mana gathering deeper inside the cave, followed shortly by an icy breath roaring down the cavern towards the group.

Amelia simply raised a hand and the breath dissipated harmlessly as it reached them. Once the breath had stopped, the group began to move once again, and after another minute or so were greeted with another breath attack. Dragons were, fortunately, just monsters; their intelligence was nothing to write home about, and they would never dream to think that something would be able to fully stop their breath so many times. As far as they were concerned, they just needed to keep attacking and their problem would eventually vanish.

It ended up taking two more breath attacks for the group to leach the lair of the dragon, the mouth of which was blocked by, well, the mouth of the dragon. That wasn’t much of a problem, though, Amelia just stepped forward and cast a spell, and the dragon was flung back into its cave, leaving ample room for the group to enter. Amelia and Lia began casting spells to try and restrict the dragon’s movement, while Rose, Ophelia, and Nailah all went in to try and cocoon it.

To its credit, the dragon did have some fight left in it; it managed to break free of Lia’s restraints and took a few swipes at the people up close while charging up a breath attack, but it wasn’t able to. Amelia kept its mouth clamped firmly shut with a spell, and after a couple of moments Lia was able to get her restraints back on it.

By that time, Rose, Ophelia, and Nailah had already started covering it in modeling wax, and the battle was effectively over. It only took another minute or so to get to the point where it was barely able to move even without magic keeping it down, and another minute later it was entirely cocooned.

“Excellent work, ladies.” Rose said. “Lia, let’s use this dragon for that flying ship you were talking about. We’ll find the best ship we have, and in conjunction with the best materials we have, we’ll make something special.”

“Ah, the living ships went well, then?” Nailah asked.

“Better than we could have hoped.” Rose confirmed. “The seas will be ours, no doubt about it.”

“Well, I’m tired.” Amelia said. “Lia, put the cocoon in your storage and I’ll teleport us home.”

Lia did as instructed, and, the moment after she did, the five found themselves back in Rose’s tree. “Thanks for your help.” Lia said. “You two get some rest, okay?”

After promising that they would, Ophelia and Nailah left, leaving Rose and her lovers to head back home. A shower and a bed sounded awfully nice, and Rose was looking forward to seeing what Lia would make out of the dragon the next day. So, she gave her lovers a couple of quick kisses, then set off to get herself clean.