Chapter 198: Tired

    December 31, 624

    I pulled into the terminal, feeling the cold air carried from Stronghold Charlie stream out through the open door, stepping into the comparatively warm atmosphere of the Capital. It was the difference between negative 10 degrees and 30 degrees, which may as well feel like the difference between winter and summer.

    There were a few other soldiers who got off with me, most moving to greet and hug family that were waiting for them. There were bright smiles all around, decorations put up all around the structure and pillars that reminded me once again that it was Christmas time. My thoughts ended up drifting toward Umara and how, yet again, she wasn’t here with me. I felt lonely while bypassing everyone and leaving the Terminal.

    I was greeted with a luxury set of wheels outside, something similar to a short limousine, low riding with a full metal exterior. It had to be heavy but with enough money and magic, it didn’t matter how much weight was on those wheels.

    Ovidius was standing outside, taking a step forward to greet me when I approached.

    “John, it’s good to see you back.”

    “Good to be back. Eager to get down to business?”

    “Sawn is eager, but please let him know if you need the rest. We know that you’re a busy man on the front lines, and there’s no reason to focus so much on work when Christmas is here to be celebrated.”

    He finished speaking while opening a door, letting me climb in. The interior sported a wrap-around couch with plenty of legroom and headspace. Sawn sat on one end dressed in a light suit with an overcoat. I took one side of the cabin, Ovidius taking the remaining end before closing the door.

    We started rolling promptly, Sawn nodding to me when we made eye contact.

    “How was your time at the Treehouse?”

    “Relatively good. My responsibilities have practically disappeared since I’m gone half the time now. Not necessarily good for my reputation but I don’t really care much about that at this point.”

    “Indeed. Your worries are better placed elsewhere, such as developing what you’ve coined magitech. How much thought have you given your work since you left?”

    I shrugged, “Plenty, but I’m limited until I can get my hands on a workstation again. Oh, what did you think about the little work I did manage to finish before leaving?”

    I noticed Sawn’s eye gleam, his demeanor shifting a bit as he leaned forward, “Ovidius and I have studied your work, and you must know John, what you’ve done is nothing short of revolutionary. We wish to consult you on how exactly you came to develop those arrays, the design philosophy, if you will. Your improvements to efficiency can be applied across the board and we want to do so.”

    “How much of an improvement to efficiency did I manage to squeeze out?”

    “Strictly 6 times without factoring in size, which you’ve reduced by 4 times.”

    “Oh, good.” I nodded, “So I wasn’t totally crazy.”

    “What do you mean?” Sawn asked with a raised brow.

    “I just realized that the design was really inefficient, but I thought that there had been a reason for it since it was so obvious. I wasn’t sure if the changes I made were going to entirely disrupt or destroy the formation. But since it worked, that means my theories regarding how enchanting works were proven.”

    “You say it was so obvious. I can’t wait to hear what made it so.”

    Sawn smiled and leaned back into his seat. His compliments made me a bit proud.

    Ovidius asked me about where I thought I was in the learning process as we made our way to the Magic Spire. Once there we got out and went straight to the top floors where I was led to a new office on the 88th floor. It seemed to be newly built because I didn’t recognize the entryway, though it blended in with the rest of Sawn’s office fairly well.

    I didn’t want to fight so hard. I didn’t want to watch people die. I didn’t want to crunch mortality rates and hand in reports estimating incurred losses, treating tens of thousands of soldiers as mere numbers on a paper, as if it would change anything about how the war would actually go. I felt my head spin whenever I tried to put it in perspective, just how many people I had sent into battle, just how many people I had briefed, told to be careful, knowing that they would die no matter what I told them, yet witholding my knowledge in case they attempt to back out and preserve their lives out of fear.

    I thought of myself as important enough to do whatever necessary to avoid dying meaninglessly, yet I had sent out thousands beyond the wire knowing that their sole purpose was to die on those red biomats and take as many monsters as they could with them.

    I knew that I would go out and fight, and I had done so, but I only ever went into battles I knew I could either win or escape from. I never went into any battle willing to lay my life down. I thought it was a waste, as if it wasn’t a waste for entire companies to die in my stead. Was that just a natural consequence of their weakness? If they were stronger, they should be able to survive too, right?

    There always had to be people to send to the slaughter. There always had to be the masses that could be sent out at the direction of those smarter than them. After all, the enemy had to be fought. The Scourge wouldn’t rest until it had taken over this world and turned it into its nest. It was okay to continually send out thousands to die, because they would either die fighting, or die worthlessly among their families, nothing more than food for the monsters.

    No, the problem wasn’t the thousands that died. The problem wasn’t me, either. I was doing my utmost to get the most value out of every soldier I sent beyond those gates. I made sure that I could multiply the value of every platoon and company by utilizing tactics. I made sure the generals were equipped with the best, most up-to-date intel so they could make better decisions, so that more avenues of attack were open to them.

    I made sure that there weren’t traitors leading even more men to the slaughter. I used my knowledge to prepare against threats that even the Kingdom’s military didn’t yet understand. I was proactive in my fight against the Scourge. I used nearly every waking hour to contribute to the war in some way, sparing no small amount of my energy and mental integrity.

    In other words, I wasn’t wasting energy. I was using my energy, constantly, to do some good.

    The problem was the other people who weren’t using their energy. The people who were wasting it. The people with the most energy to use.

    The Marshals. The Sovereigns.

    Where were they? Why weren’t they constantly on the battlefield? In a single day a single Marshal Warlock could wipe out at least 10 thousand monsters, if not more, and they could do it again after 12 hours of rest. Under optimal circumstances they could slaughter at least 70 thousand lesser monsters a week, 280 thousand monsters a month, over 3 million monsters in a year. And that was a single Marshal. Sovereigns had multiple times the power, all stuffed into a single body that could be moved anywhere without inhibition, relying on nothing more than food and water to sustain. They were the single greatest weapons that humanity had to offer against this existential threat.

    And yet, I had witnessed the Marshal of the Treehouse engage the enemy all but once. Day by day I felt him through my Aura simply sitting within the base, all that energy doing nothing. Wasting.

    In the two weeks I had spent working with Major General Quill to wipe out the flanking Scourge force during the first phase of Operation Breakwater, Marshal Boores would have had more than enough time to take them all out single handedly and with ease. On top of that, we wouldn’t have had to sacrifice half the force. We wouldn’t have lost half our Brigadiers.

    And during that time, Marshal Boores was doing nothing but sitting at the top of the headquarters building, going through what little paperwork he had to handle and holding meetings with the Generals to discuss battle plans.

    How many lives sacrificed, how much energy wasted, all because a single Marshal was too afraid to encounter a strong enemy on the battlefield that could match him.

    Oh the irony that, in their strength, they found cowardice. Instead of seeing how much they could do with their power, they were fearful of how much they could lose. And so they sent thousands to die in their stead, slowly delaying the day they would have to fight for their place at the top, not realizing that by then, everything around them would be reduced to blood and ruin.

    And here I was, attempting to multiply the force that these little minions could exert, trying to extend the lifespans of thousands by mere days or weeks, when in the end none of my efforts or the products of my industry would match even a single month’s worth of exertion from a single powerful being, let alone the hundreds located everywhere else.

    No wonder I felt so hopeless. No wonder everything I did felt so inconsequential. No longer blinded by the sheer volume of information going through my head I could finally step back and see where the real problem lay.

    In a way it was no different than the conjectures I had already reached before. The Kingdom was complacent. More than that, I believed they were scared. Knowing the sheer power of their enemy revealed to them by the survivors from the Pillars of Creation, their spirits have already been culled. They didn’t want to believe that the time was coming to truly fight for their lives, and were throwing numbers at the problem in order to indulge in their blissful ignorance and bountiful power just a little while longer. Even worse, some of them were ready to turncoat and join the enemy so that they may preserve their lives at the expense of humanity itself.

    And yet, despite what I knew, and despite my indignation, I could do little about it. I could arm the thousands I sent into battle with information and weapons, tools that may revolutionize this world’s warfare, and all it would do is provide another layer of comfort for the demigods that sat behind the hundreds of thousands on the battlefield.

    But I’d have to do it anyway, because it wasn’t fair to everyone else for me to withhold what I could do just because I was mad at the leaders. It wasn’t their fault.

    In the end, it always came down to the same conclusion. Yet every time I reached it, I was further drained of my spirit. I could barely muster the energy to be enraged. It was so typical and I was so powerless that I just went with it, knowing it was all I could do.

    I could only do what I could. I hated that. I hated knowing and being aware.

    I couldn’t even be mad at the real problem, because I knew that it could be solved. I could only be angry at the people who refused to solve it.

    Despite having slowed my mind down so much, slouched against the cold glass wall in my chilly room, I found myself completely drained of energy. My only choice was to go to sleep there, slumping down against the floor when my mind finally gave out.