The Mook Maker

I couldn’t shake the feeling that each of our successes so far were nothing but preludes to the deadlier challenges which followed soon afterwards. 

 

Each time I was under the impression that I measured all the threats in this world, the threats escalated. 

 

Our little expedition was a profitable endeavour, yielding us a good portion of the equipment we desperately needed. Better yet, all of it was left there for us completely unguarded, ready for taking, at least relatively speaking. 

 

There had been one of those super-human warriors the locals had shown to command from time to time. He had one of those damnable ‘caster women’ with him, which caused quite a lot of pain even with her single spell, but neither of those provided a significant challenge to my girls. 

 

The situation could be worse. 

 

I knew for a fact that local ‘elites’ could be significantly stronger than the warrior we found in that camp - I’d seen those after all, there had been ones who could bear the brunt of a full-scale charge of thousand of my monsters, survive the impacts that would kill a lesser man, or resist our magic - the one we found in the camp didn’t seem capable of any of that, and was practically a loser in comparison though he certainly did have abilities of his own. 

 

Which, in a way, explained why such a man was part of, or perhaps the leader of, the group scavenging the battlefield - he wasn’t up to the standards of the local ‘elites’. 

 

The fact I was unable to tell the difference between the relatively weak and the dangerous ones was alarming, despite the notable disparity in their skills and abilities on the greater scale. The system, unreliable as always, considered them all ‘major’ for some incomprehensible reason, but it was a statement we would receive only after they died and was essentially useless in identifying threats. 

 

This worried me greatly.

 

Every man could represent a threat to us, and we wouldn’t know until it was too late. 

 

In addition to them, the female spellcasters, who stood out not only by their colourful dresses but their unique ability to ‘seal’ my followers and hostile on-sight attitude, were proven to be more common than I initially assumed them to be. 

 

I didn’t have an idea whether I should call them sorceresses, priestesses, or perhaps simply ‘casters’ as the system messages called them, but one was certain - if a group of humans simply looting the dead on the battlefield had one of them, we could run into more of them in even the most unexpected or unlikely situation. 

 

That worried me even more. Their ‘sealing’ inflicted permanent losses, not to mention the agony resulting from the feedback between me and my monsters, along with their tendency for rallying against us. The hatred was certainly mutual.

 

There wasn’t any way to tell whether their power scaled up, but it was fair to assume it did. 

 

One of them, still holed up in the besieged castle, posed quite an issue. 

 

At least, she didn’t do anything since disturbing the ‘Displacers’ ability to target the fort with their portals, but that ability alone was cause for concern. 

 

It didn’t mean she couldn’t do more. My inability to set apart the relative power levels applied to them as much as it did to the local super-powered warriors. The only difference between them was that their ‘caster’ caste had the uniform robes of office, allowing me to spot them in the future, while the true range of their spell-like abilities was largely still a mystery. 

 

Although their dress code made it convenient to spot them, I couldn’t be even sure those spellcasters were exclusive to one side, but finding answers to that was a secondary objective right now.

 

Even though I now knew for a fact humans were fighting each other, I wasn’t able to tell which faction was which. 

 

The castle, and my girls ‘sealed’ by the ‘caster woman’ hiding within, were the priority, regardless of which side she belonged to.

 

Finding a way to communicate with humans was preferable to fighting them, in the long term, to minimise the suffering my people endured each time they reformed.

 

Thus I planned to deliver the ultimatum: Let my little people go, or suffer the consequences. 

 

Although the vast majority of the humans in these lands were unfortunately hostile, such an attitude wasn’t truly universal, and among the aggressive, fight-mongering natives an odd few whose views differed from the rest yet lingered. 

 

This made diplomacy extremely difficult, but not completely out of the picture. 

 

The messengers were, however, out of the question - we tried the emissaries in our earlier encounters, and those were, almost always, attacked on sight, regardless of who we sent. It didn’t matter if I went alone, sent my girls, or even a human sympathiser, the result was always the same - battle. 

 

Hence, I was determined to send the letter, and the locals alone for a while to question their life choices instead. 

 

As we knew almost nothing of the language, I planned to have pictograms burned into wooden planks, then have the piece thrown into a portal with the other end above the courtyard hoping it wouldn’t shatter on impact. 

 

Crude as it was, without paper, ink, and an actual translator, it was the best we were able to do.

 

My wooden ‘letter’ may drop on someone's head, but I hope they would understand that if they didn’t release the still-sealed girls I would start dropping heavier things on them. Even without divining the exact meaning, they should recognise the threat. 

 

But in the meantime, I had to test whether this barrier that blocked ‘Displacers’ ability to teleport within the fortress wasn’t a shield mundane projectiles would bounce off of.

 

To that end, a ballista recovered from the battlefield would help. Whoever fought there left behind a lot of things for the looters to pick through. 

 

It was almost too easy when I thought of it. It inspired a certain sense of paranoia that the next skirmish may become a considerably greater mortal peril.

 

Ballista seemed to be a mundane way to test the defences - one which, unlike the ‘Displacers’ portal, didn’t require anything inherently magical at any stage. I had more than one of these, though not all of them were in working condition. 

 

I expected at least a few of them wouldn’t be damaged beyond useability, should my monsters learn to work them.

 

The triple bow contraption wasn’t exactly the most complex piece of engineering, but it still required a trained crew, and it felt like quite the counterintuitive way to launch the oversized arrow. It would have to do. Easier than building our own. 

 

We retrieved several of those siege engines, it was likely intended to be a local version of the field artillery, hence available for the army away from the conventional fortifications.  We aimed it at the forest, for an exercise where the locals couldn’t see us fail. 

 

Helmy, in her full set of armour (cut to make place for her tail), standing at attention with the helmet tucked under her arm, somehow managed to look very professional, as befitting the commander overseeing the soldiers, but it wasn’t her ‘Purifiers’ that manned the siege engine. They, aside from the various camp tasks, were going to make the ‘art’ doubling as the message.   

 

“Helmy, how are we doing with the letter?” I asked 

 

“Neither I nor any of my sisters have the fine control over our flames, Master.” She answered, “It is still amusing us, Master.” 

 

It sounded like they simply enjoyed the mere process

 

She sounded quite mature - Helmy, after her evolution, grew more than in size, though she didn’t seem to have lost the brutal ferocity. However, without humans nearby, she looked quite collected, not to mention as charming as Tama when Tama was an ‘Alpha’. 

 

“I see,” I said, disappointment evident in my voice. 

 

“We can heat the metal, and do the carving, Master.” The reddish vixen said, disappointed: ” “It doesn’t do justice to our looks.”

 

“Just a simple drawing, just enough to recognise a Purifier or Eviscerator, as I planned. Just for the humans to make the connection. It’s a letter, not artwork.” 

 

I wasn’t entirely certain whether I explained my idea in a way my girls would understand.

 

“Yes, Master,” Helmy replied, spacing out as she relayed the instruction, seemingly unbothered by the lack of spoken details, almost as if she could read my thoughts. Perhaps she did.

 

Truth be told, a few hours ago I didn’t even know how they communicated, and the fact I didn’t hear their voices in my head at the moment, didn’t mean they didn’t read my thoughts anyway. There was still a lingering sense of connection, making me comfortable among my own, implying the link persisted somewhere at the back of my brain.

 

“Thank you.” 

 

“Anything for our beloved Master,” Helmy answered. 

 

She did manage to sound creepily obsessive this time - though, it shouldn’t be particularly alarming - it was Helmy's normal way of being, she just did not express it in words when she was just a named, but ordinary ‘Purifier’. 

 

My thoughts were better directed elsewhere. 

 

I watched a few of my monsters work the ballista. Four ‘Corruptors’ struggled with it, assisted by a duo of ‘Defilers’. My cute little lizards weren’t exactly the strongest, due to their diminutive figures, while their ratty cousins were not faring much better. 

 

The contraption creaked as my girls struggled to attach the bowstring to the pulling mechanism, preparing the siege weapon for fire, while others readied the oversized projectile. 

 

I felt bad watching them struggle when the huge ‘Ravager’ could do it without much effort, but it seemed to be a way to employ those few with the least combat-effective power to participate in the fight, hoping that their connection would make them share the instruction. 

 

Besides, I kept Kuma busy with heavy lifting, and I wasn’t making an effort to increase their numbers as it would either require abusing the system-encouraged naming mechanics or killing a large number of humans.

 

Some of my girls should try acting as archers too, I realised. Bows were in surplus after our battlefield clearing, and we didn’t search all of it yet. 

 

So far, the ‘Corruptors’ worked in complete silence, with Mai still absent, while, Miwah, Narita and Helmy and I oversaw the preparations. Narita loomed far too close this time.

 

“So, what do you think, Master?” Tama's voice sounded out behind us, causing me to look over my shoulder.

 

My other fiery vixen fulfilled the order and changed to an outfit other than the robe used by the local ‘casters’. She now wore a relatively dark tunic draped like a short dress, contrasting the silvery fur of my anthropomorphic fox, and a wide colourful belt I was certain belonged to a different set of clothes – maybe even ones that weren’t supposed to be worn by a woman – but she combined them in a way which accentuated her curves. 

 

The small crowd of ordinary ‘Purifiers’ following us everywhere made space to allow an unobstructed view of Tama posing.  This set the ‘Purifiers’ to giggling girlishly.

 

“Excellent,” I said, despite the fact it was apparently cheaper clothing than she had access to previously, thanks to our limited supply.

 

Tama, however, seemed pleased with the praise. Her three tails, no longer weighted by the wide skirt, spread behind her. 

 

“If I knew you liked me wearing less that much I’d have swapped sooner, Master.” The vixen crooned, with a provocative smile on her foxy face, flirty as always.

 

I was certain she looked absolutely scandalous for the local sense of aesthetics - but it was the best she tolerated. Unlike Helmy, and their smaller, ordinary kin, she didn’t like the idea of wearing armour, and I needed her previous outfit to send the message, should our efforts with the picture fail.

 

“This isn’t why I wanted the dress,” I said, 

 

“I am always eager to please, Master. With or without the dress on.” Tama purred flirtily, maintaining the smile on her foxy face and looking quite smug. It was unsurprising, my fiery silver vixen was simply being herself, but I had other things in mind.

 

“So, did you prepare the doll?” I asked,

 

“Yes, Master.”

 

The original dress, one so typical for the local spellcasters, was now stuffed with hay to create the primitive dummy which I planned to have burned in a spectacular fashion. A cohort of our fox girls happily raised the improvised effigy, more than eager to execute the plan.

 

“For Master!” They announced pride in their voices. 

 

Although wasteful, and not feeling particularly smart, I considered it as one of the ways that would send the inhabitants of the castle a message that their ‘caster’ woman caste was our true enemy and their problem. The idea of communicating through images was seriously hindered by the actual ability to draw anything, and the necessity to do this in the black and white in a situation where the colour could be an identifying factor, and may even hold some meaning I wasn’t quite sure to discern. 

 

It also required the drawing to be unambiguous, which was almost equally difficult.

 

I had my doubts about my decision, though looking at the joyful, yellow eyes of my little fox monsters, they considered the idea of setting something on fire at the very least exciting.  

 

I would have to make a final decision sometime later on. 

 

A loud twang followed by moans of pain interrupted my thoughts, causing me to turn only to witness one of my precious little lizard girls harmed in the misfire, covering the contraption with blood. She whimpered in pain.

 

The other one was apparently hit when the winch spun out of control, and her jaw was broken, while the other had her arm completely mangled by the mechanism. 

 

Narita with her ‘Defilers’ was quick to heal them, and the greenery around us faded as the spell gathered energy for its function. Their injuries regenerated in front of my eyes. 

 

It still made my heart sink a little. 

 

Even with instant healing through the life-transference magic, and the respawn mechanic guaranteeing near-immortality, I couldn’t bear the idea of them suffering grave injuries and serious pain. Only the heat of battle made me forget it, for a brief amount of time. 

 

Perhaps employing the least resilient breed was a mistake, but at the same time, it was a way for them to participate in combat at a distance. 

 

“For. Master!” The two little scalies now recovered, sensing my discomfort, spoke in unison to assure me no lasting damage was done. 

 

“Narita?” I said, “I want one of your girls with each ballista crew.” 

 

With barely a few of those things working, it wasn’t a lot. 

 

“Yes-yes, Master.” The girl answered, without leaving the position at my side. 

 

At this pace, we wouldn’t be quite able to utilise a couple of siege crossbows we had in any effective way anytime soon, and that was under the presumption they would be used merely as a way to test the defences. 

 

The accuracy requirement was minimal. I merely wanted to hit the area of the fortress from a distance to find out whether the unseen barrier Sora spoke about deflected mundane arrows, yet I failed in simply hitting the hillside.

 

“Please continue, and be careful,” I said, and my little adorable reptiles obeyed. 

 

At least, we weren’t in the line of sight so humans could laugh at our incompetence.

 

“Still no movement from the castle?” I turned towards Miwah,

 

“No, Master.” The werewolf answered, her gaze suddenly directed towards the horizon, “The woman can see us though, I think, we retreated, and she didn’t hit us. We will run around the different directions to test if the caster moves to the other wall.” 

 

“Thank you. Keep my girls at a safe distance.” I said, reaching for her in a comforting gesture, even if she didn’t need it. 

 

“Yes, Master.” 

 

I was relieved at the fact there was a limited range for those cursed ‘sealing spells’ though the chance I would sweep the sorceress, or whoever she was, from the battlements with a ballista shot was next to zero.

 

Sending the ‘Purifiers’ too close to attack with the fireballs, however, wasn’t an option. Tama tried that before, and few of my little foxies paid dearly for that, even with purposeful distractions, and attacks from different sides. 

 

I sighed. 

 

The ‘Corruptors’ began cranking the siege weapon again, it clanked and creaked in protest, almost as if seriously testing the strength of the material, but my girls didn’t hesitate to continue despite their previous injury, entirely dedicated their task with admirable enthusiasm.

 

I waited in silence, watching. 

 

They finally inserted the bolt, and with the usual cry “For Master!” announced they were awaiting my orders.

 

“Clear the area! Fire!” I ordered, aware that the bowstring couldn’t be held in this position for very long. 

 

The little ‘Corruptor’ pushed the triggering mechanism, with a yelp of pain as she interacted with something intended to be hit by a mallet.  This time the siege engine actually fired, and the oversized bolt buried itself in the dirt a few hundred metres away. 

 

I jerked at the loud sound, and at the fact that Tama decided to hug me from behind at the same time. 

 

The test fire into the fields at our side of the hill was successful, though. 

 

Estimating the range of this thing would be difficult, though I was certain it was much greater than the bowmen and would fulfil my requirement: testing the defences of the castle. 

 

As long as the bolt flew just above their battlements, I would be satisfied.

 

Now I was worried since I didn’t have an alternative, should the bolt indeed be blocked by some invisible force, because then I would be forced to risk the ‘Purifiers’ in an attack, or scrambling for alternative methods to penetrate the shield. 

 

This would require an entirely new breed of monsters with different abilities, which I could only obtain after sating the system’s apparent bloodlust by killing several ‘major enemies’. Though the safety of my girls weighed much more than the lives of the chronically hostile human natives, I was still somewhat opposed to the senseless slaughter. 

 

It also meant actively looking for trouble, risking the clash with the better-prepared, stronger enemies, with a more exotic array of powers at their disposal, ones we might not be able to beat even with our numbers. 

 

The concern that easy victories and how we found the ballistae was one, comparatively speaking, were nothing more than the preludes to larger battles, came back. 

 

“For Master!” The ‘Corruptor’ healed for the second time announced, ready to repeat the process. It even gathered the attention of the other monsters, with one ‘Purifier’ being quite excited about creating a fire arrow. 

 

It was probably a valid tactic against the caste but didn’t require a test.

 

“No. Start moving the ballistae in firing positions, to hit the castle.” I said looking around, attempting to discern our location as I felt the need to point towards the location. My girls didn’t seem to have any problem with orientation, though their small form struggled with the contraption. 

 

“For Master!” 

 

The ballista was quite cumbersome to move, as in fact, it didn’t have wheels, instead, it stood on four legs to help with stability, but my monsters didn’t protest against the difficult task. 

 

I was certain this wasn’t the intended way to move it, as we had a cart-wheeled version somewhere as well. Not everything retrieved was in the best condition seeing it was abandoned under dubious circumstances. 

 

This raises a question about the nature of the local conflict the humans engaged in independently of their clash with us. 

 

“Kuma and her sisters will be there in no time,” Miwah remarked. My hulking, bear-like followers were, after all, our primary way of transporting things, considering our incompatibility with the local animals. Horses and oxen often either fled or ended up as food, which was extremely unfortunate considering their undeniable usefulness and value. 

 

I have to find a way to control the local’s horses as I didn’t want my ‘Ravagers’ playing beasts of burden. 

 

“Try to position the siege engines to fire from different directions,”  I added, looking for my arriving bear ladies. 

 

“Yes, Master,”  Miwah answered before they did.

 

Kuma, along with several of her kin, arrived soon after and dropped from the shifting ‘Displacer’ portals, where the small, kitten-like creatures opted to ride on their considerably more massive cousins' shoulders, perhaps to better direct the portals. 

 

A few stumbled in the process, we were getting considerably better at coordinating teleportation.

 

Sora dropped from one of her rifts with the appropriate feline grace nearby as well, making me wonder whether she managed to find the remnants of the army that left so much of their equipment around, assuming it still existed.

 

“Anything?” I asked, 

 

“We retrieved most of the stock, picking more requires us to do more scavenging, Master. Army that left it behind isn’t anywhere nearby, it seems locals deserted that area.” Sora said, with a soft meow which fit her cat-like appearance. She, as I realised later, seemed to guess the untold question. 

 

“Nevermind, we can try to send more of our girls later.” I decided. “Please designate a few Purifiers or Eviscerators for the job.” 

 

There was no point in attempting to hold the open field - if we were in the valley entirely surrounded by mountains, the narrow passages seemed to be more strategic spots for us to occupy. I just needed to know where they were.  

 

“Yes, Master.” 

 

“Do the humans know we dropped on the looters?” I asked after a brief moment of silence. 

 

“No. There is a village, but it is abandoned.” She declared.

 

Although it certainly made sense for someone to claim salvage where no one could dispute it, it didn’t shine any light on the nature of the conflict locals were tied within. 

 

“Anything on what happened out there? Where was that battlefield anyway?” I asked. It sounded rather unlikely that whoever was in charge on the human side of the battle didn’t miss his soldiers and equipment. 

 

“It’s past the westernmost access to the valley. It would seem that the plains stretch further beyond the mountains.” She answered, her gaze suddenly moved to the horizon.

 

“So that battlefield. Their army tried to enter a valley and was defeated before we showed up. Or did they try to bypass the valley?” 

 

“I don’t know, Master.” Sora shook her head

 

It raised quite a few questions about the local conflict, and whether this valley along with its city and castle defended itself against the foreign invasion - but no, it wasn’t important. 

 

I didn’t know whether the ‘elites’ we encountered were in the same faction as the people who held the castle or were in fact, enemies. 

 

Even if the force in the castle surrendered, we couldn’t tell where we were in relation to the sides in the human conflict - we would be on the border south-north, or east-west, or in fact be in the middle of the one faction’s territory! 

 

Sora, with her excellent spatial orientation, still couldn’t gather information on such a thing. 

 

I wanted to throw my hands in the air in frustration. 

 

It would be, for our safety, better to lock all access to the valley, but it would trap all the humans in the castle, the city, and in all surrounding villages, in here with us. 

 

Even if they abandoned their precious fort, they would be still stuck in this valley, urging them to rather reject any offers with no better options, and fight to the bitter end.

 

“Master, I think we have the image you requested,” Helmy announced, interrupting my thoughts on the matter, with the mob of her lesser kin struggling with the large piece of wood, eager to present their artistic work to me.

 

They worked, actually, quite quickly. I was impressed.

 

“For Master!” The little foxies cried in unison as they slowly dragged their creation in front of me.

 

I looked at it, a quite large piece of wood plank, roughly cut, with notable burn marks licking it, and the primitive set images burnt into black lines in the centre. 

 

It wasn’t the prettiest of artwork - an amateurish doodle depicting the long muzzled, animal-eared creature with a fluffy tail in the cage, and the simple stylized castle with the large flame around it, with the scribble of arrow suggesting what leads to what - but considering what we had to work with, it was an excellent piece of work.

 

There was a set of images portraying a fleeing monster, an empty cage, and an untouched fort. 

 

I briefly glanced at the face of my companions. 

 

They didn’t say anything, they likely conversed about it through their telepathic connections.

 

Tama did make her best vulpine grin though, and Miwah went to inspect the piece with her sharp claws, although no one made any objection. The little ‘Purifiers’ had to drop the plank.

 

I was in dire need of reassurance that this was going to work, but my girls weren’t able to give me one, all equally in the dark regarding the local customs. I didn’t even know if the local script is supposed to be read horizontally, or vertically! 

 

As the group of the ‘Ravagers’ moved the ballista away, I nodded, mostly to myself, and said: 

 

“I think it’s about time we tried diplomacy again.”