knock knock

“It is open”, I yell.

A nondescript soldier enters the room, “Comrade Jared? Jack lost contact with you earlier.”

I still need to get used to that name...

“Yeah, he ran away without saying anything. Didn’t know where he’d gone to. And my time limit was almost up”, I say pointing at the ‘Sun Guard Ring’, “so I had no choice but to return here. At the entrance, no one knew what to do with me so they told me to go to my room until further notice.”

The soldier stands there for a moment, seemingly confused at what I meant by that. Doesn’t seem like he knew about my case, so just a messenger.

“Understood, typical Jack again”, he facepalms, “I’ll pass that along.”

“Did they say anything about what I should wait for?”

He answers, “Nothing for today. But I was told that most likely captain Chloe will take care of you starting tomorrow. You should be on the training grounds at 800 then, someone will be there.”

“Is she someone important I should know about?”

The soldier replies, “She’ll be your acting superior, that should be important enough for you.”

“Got it.”

With that, the soldier leaves my room.

With nothing better to do, MP and SP depleted and physically unable to sleep I turn to Elly, (So I have the whole evening and night to earn exp, the best way seems to be trying to ‘learn’ in some way?)

Elly agrees, (I think so too. I’d suggest starting going over the titles first.)

(Again with the titles), I sigh, (at the moment I’m more interested in those mansion things. Truth be told I don’t really want to take such a responsibility on myself but from what our new friend told me I’m just one small requirement away from qualifying. So before I check out your titles and accidentally make a choice that snowballs into a takeover I’d like to at least understand what I’m getting into. Eva may have said that ‘fate’ isn’t real but this whole thing is too many coincidences for my taste.)

She thinks for a moment, (What if they chose this starting location in hopes you’d take the government seat eventually?)

(Wouldn’t make sense. Jeff emphasized too much that they have very little information, so they shouldn’t be able to make such a choice. Unless that part was also a lie. At least the part about being able to regain my memory was wrong according to the truth gem.)

She tries to make excuses for the devas, (What if it was true until you became undead?)

(Then he should’ve told me. He tried a lot to make that option unappealing to me. Though, now that I think about it, he never offered me a better alternative.)

Elly puts on some calm instrumental music and I dig through Jeff’s notes searching for info on ‘Lord’s Mansions’.

TL;DR: he knows nothing that helps me in any way.

There are volumes upon volumes of assumptions about how they work on a technical/magical/biotechnical level. But most of this makes little sense to me. Not even a hint of what the practical features are.

I get a headache from this.

Did that madman really write a whole library of notes on a topic under the assumption that whoever has to read them is from a world that even has such niche knowledge?

Shit, he makes plans upon plans for centuries and never even considers that he has to introduce someone from a world that isn’t sufficiently advanced. To me, all of that is just technobabble, ‘Sine Half-Wave Interference Theory’ my ass.

I should’ve just taken the eternal office job, the pain would’ve ended sooner...

(Yeah, all of that crap is useless to me. Not a hint of what I'd be getting into with the whole 'Lord's Mansion' business. At least none I understand... Now what?)

Elly answers, (I assume your tutor will know a bit about this, so interrogate her later?)

(I meant besides that, Elly.)

She replies, (How about you marvel that you spent eleven hours on this fruitless endeavor and gained only 27 exp for the headache? Total is 114 exp by the way.)

(I ... WHAT?)

I cautiously gaze behind the window curtain. Yep, it is already morning.

I make my way over to the training area and hide in the hallway. The clock over the door says it is 20 minutes before the meeting time.

There’s some commotion going on outside, maybe I should check that later.

A few minutes later I’m greeted by a voice, “There you are, you fake.”

If it wasn’t for [Appraise], I wouldn’t really be able to tell this armored person apart from any other. The face is well covered. The armor doesn’t live up to the fantasy bikini armor trope either, it is proper armor.

“Fake? You’re one to talk.”

She’s taken aback, probably didn’t expect me to figure out she’s a shapechanger, “D-don’t you dare tell anyone about that! And stop wasting precious mana on peeking at a lady. That’s rude!”

What? Does that mean she uses the skill only to remedy a few imperfections? Eh, not my problem.

She sets her helm to hidden, revealing a normal human head, with brown hair and eyes. Probably not worth remembering if we're talking about a shapechanger.

“So you’re Chloe?”

She responds, “You’ll address me as ‘captain’ Chloe.”

“I’ll think about it, C.C.”

She scoffs, “So as luck would have it because I’m dealing with YOUR kind we get to use the sole indoor training room, that one is nicer than the outside areas. So follow me, the rest of the group is waiting there.”

We start walking.

“Uh, ’Group’ doesn’t sound too big, how many are we talking about?”

Chloe answers, “Just five more. Beginner groups are kept small because of the party size limit, which makes it easier to organize dungeon dives. You should’ve gotten a Class Core with the uniform because of your... circumstances, did you already use it?”

“No, still have it. My stats are too low to take the ‘Survivor’ class as Therese ordered me to. The other trainable classes seem even further away than it. Not that I want any of them in the first place.”

She sighs, “Why couldn’t she just put you under a cook or some other production job, those ignore the stat and core requirements. Or just fork over a total of five cores, that’d skip the stat requirements as well.”

“You can do that? You make it sound like you have Class Cores lying around by the dozen.”

She shakes her head, “No, not really. Collectively we find maybe two to three per year in the dungeon.”

“Is there another way to get those aside from dungeon diving?”

Chloe explains, “None that we know of. Just kill a lot of monsters in a dungeon and eventually you get lucky. Well, ‘lucky’. While you are under our watch, you're supposed to hand them over anyway. What we don’t understand is why we can get cores – or any item really – from monsters only while they are in a dungeon. Any monster you kill outside? Nothing. Even if they are the same type. Don't want to imagine how much better our position would be if they did; probably another 2-3 cores per year at least just alone from the floods. Well, we have to keep going to the dungeon even while there are billions of monsters outside.”

“Why? What could they possibly drop that is important enough to weaken the fortress’s defenses?”

“Materials, food ingredients, rarely a couple of drops of blood for you monsters. Without a ruler... regular food production is greatly reduced”, she looks dejected.

“That reminds me, Jack showed me the Lord’s Mansion yesterday but he ran off before explaining what it really does.”

She lectures me, “...we could start expanding the fortress, create new buildings. At a minimum once a ruler is back in office things like the fields will yield a lot more and the tax money can be put to some use again; we’re currently paying a ton in taxes and only a fraction is for upkeep.”

(So they can’t manually build houses, Elly? This world is weird.)

“That sounds very important”.

Do I really have to take this responsibility on myself?

Chloe dissuades me, “If you even consider taking it over – DON’T!! Every Lord’s Mansion requires a nobility title among other things; a vampire with that title would become a Vampire Noble. When that happens they lose whatever was left of their humanity. If there’s still some hope for you now, after that the ‘you’ will be gone.”

“I’ll... keep that in mind.”

Better not tell her then that I already have the relevant class... or that I'm just a beer and a spell type away from conquering that place, “Not that I’d even have a way to tell what the remaining requirements are.”

She agrees, “Yeah, true that. There are myths that the Lost Ones of old could but we haven’t seen one of those in decades.”

We finally arrive at the training room. The other five are present and running laps. While in armor. The mere thought that I’d have to do the same kills me.

I hold back on appraising all of them, it would be hard to explain to Chloe how I have 1500 MP to spare despite being level 1 and can still do whatever she has planned for my training menu. Just one slip-up with the appraised info and we'd have an uncomfortable talk.

Chloe calls everyone together.

“This is Jared, he came with the latest group of refugees. You can introduce each other sometime later. Jared is a Silver Elf Wizard. We have no one that can train him in magic classes so it has been decided that he’ll take the Survivor class. In other news, earlier today this year’s monster flood has begun.”

I guess that is what the commotion was.

Chloe continues, “As such our schedule will change. Effective after I’m done. For the near future, we will keep our dungeon visits on Thursdays, so tomorrow. The schedule for those days remains unchanged. On all other days, you’ll perform unsupervised warm-up practice for two hours, then head to the western gate and assist in defending it, the other gate will be taken care of by some other groups. You’ll listen to whatever captain is on duty at the time. I’ll supervise Jared for the first week and then join the captain rotation afterwards. Any questions?”

No one says anything.

She orders, “Then finish your warm-up and afterwards head over to the gate” - and with that, the meeting is already over.

Chloe moves over to me, “This way I don’t have to shout so much. The original plan assumed we’d still have at least another week before the flood starts so we had to change a lot of things around.”

“Bluntly speaking, how can you even supervise me for ‘only’ a week? Therese made it sound like it’d be an indefinite thing.”

She answers, “That is for a state of normalcy, this... is a minor crisis. As long as you behave the problem called ‘Jared’ is not even on the radar.”

“I can work with that.”

She gives me a Training Spear, “Use this and not a regular weapon. Now hit the practice dummy with it a couple of times.”

I do so and my SP doesn’t decrease but neither do I get a damage readout, what a strange thing. I continue for about an hour and then my SP goes down by 100 and I gain 7 exp.

Chloe explains to me, “You can also run laps instead, which gives about the same result as long as you alternate the training methods every once in a while.”

I run laps, hit the dummy and do sit-ups for another four hours. Another 30 exp.

Enough for today, “I’m tapped, down to 56 SP. ”

She responds, “Understood. Well, a couple more levels and you can last another hour.”

“Now what do I do the rest of the day, you got a library or something?”

She thinks about it, “There is one but you need special authorization for it.”

I can almost hear a blue-haired girl scream in terror.

“Why is that?”

Chloe explains, “Just a precaution. We have no way to produce new books until the fortress awakens again and even then books are expensive.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

She thinks for a moment, “It is really weird how much you’ve forgotten.”

She probably suspects there’s going more on with me.

She asks me, “Your MP is still full, right?”

“Yes, why?”

She says, “I don’t have a training method based on MP but I think it’d be useful if you at least cast some spells at the flood monsters.”

“Yeah, I can do that. Though I could really use a shower to get rid of the sweat.”

“Eh, just use household water magic. Here, today it is on me. I’m not using the MP for much else anyway”, her hand glows blue for a moment and then the sweat and dirt on me are gone.

“Thanks.”

She gestures for me to follow her, “Now let's go.”

We leave the facility and head towards the gate.

On the way there, we pass what looks like a garbage dump. Little in the way of food leftovers but more fragments of furniture, tableware, some split arrows, dented helms and armors, and a few weapons.

Different world, same garbage disposal problems.

We arrive at the gate. I can see that five soldiers are crammed into the gateway at the same time and fighting off monsters while a captain shouts orders at them and other soldiers are on standby, probably waiting to switch when another soldier gets hurt or depletes their SP.

We head through a side tower to the top of the wall.

“Shit, this looks bad”, Chloe concludes, “they said that the flood would get much more intense this year but not like THIS. Can’t even see a single blade of grass between the monsters.”

I take a look myself, “I thought the ‘flood’ would be a bit less literal than this.”

On the upside, this should help me a bit depending on how good aoe spells are.

Earlier I saw no archers while we entered the fortress, still see none, “Is no one else is up here?”

She is confused, “Why would there be?”

“Archers? At least observers if any bigger threats are approaching?”

She explains, “Don’t have many arrows left. Maybe a dozen or so. We keep them in reserve in case some fliers appear. Can’t produce new arrows until this fortress gets finally a new ruler.”

Sigh, another flag set.

I look around and find some loose stones.

Below us is an unending mass of monsters, can’t even see an end to it.

“How about this?”, I throw one stone into the monsters below, it dissolves on impact.

And another stone.

Great, even weaker than my staff...

I try to throw a third stone but it won’t leave my hand. I forgot, attacks require SP and I’ve blown it all on training earlier. But I don’t regret that.

Chloe looks at me in confusion, “Nobody has a throwing skill so the damage is low.”

“Low damage is better than none. And if I saw right earlier you can only have a handful of soldiers fight at the same time so most are just standing around waiting their turn.”

“Even so, where would we get enough stones?”, she asks me with a dumbfounded expression.

“Does it have to be stones? Maybe some parts of garbage could be used. A chair to the face should hurt just the same.”

She thinks for a moment, “I will ask for some volunteers to give it a try. Depending on how this works out this would also reduce the need for new garbage dumps.”

She asks, “So will now cast some spells or not?”

“Yes, sure. Any idea which element would be best? I have lightning, earth, ice and dark.”

She responds, “No idea, elements are not something I usually have to pay attention to. To most people here they are just a waste of space in the [Appraise] readout. Well, if they can even use that in the first place.”

(Elly? Your opinion?)

Elly answers, (No idea, too many different types.)

[Appraise] reveals next to the Baby Slimes and Dire Wolves I already know a few more monster types.

(I don’t think I could even damage that thing...)

Elly answers, (Well, we have the meat shields below for that.)

(But can they even damage it? It has massive defenses and resistance on top.)

She says, (If you can damage a dummy they can smash that rock, no problem.)

I'll accept that for now.

 Just a big centipede. Except that the mandibles are more like sabers. At least it has no skills or stats to back that image up.

I ask Elly, (And Rapid Regeneration is?)

(I don’t have fire but compared to some of the other monsters they are just tanks, not actual threats.)

Speaking of, one of the big threats is...

I don't like its stats.

Elly begins chanting, (Even in your isekai, F.O.E.!)

(If there are such strong monsters among the hordes it seems likely that our friends in the gate will get hurt a lot and quickly... I’m not even sure I could survive a single ram attack.)

I think there are more creepies than the big deer monsters, so I try a stone aoe spell. That should be 145 MP for 110% damage to a lot of targets. I reach out my hand and a big rock shoots forward. It smashes into a crawler and shatters into smaller rocks that hurt the nearby monsters.

Too many damage popups...

(Considering the golem has about twice the magic defense as I have magic power 105 damage is actually quite a lot.)

Elly guesses, (Maybe Gzeph was on to something with his written argument that defense is useless?)

(No, we’ve just now clearly seen that it is worth something. The near-defenseless slimes took almost triple the damage of the golem, that is a massive difference.)

If I hit the same crawler three times with that area spell they’ll be dead. I don’t have the fire element for the slimes or water for the golem and the deer is way too sturdy.

As selfish as it sounds I need the exp more than maybe shortening the flood by a day. So I focus my remaining six stone canons so I can at least kill as many Crawlers as possible for me.

...no idea how many monsters I’ve really hit and disposed of, way too many damage popups.

I’m now at 128/1143 MP.

Wait, what was that just now in the damage readout?

I look around and find a 'Dire Wolf' that is slightly off-color.

I don't like the looks of that skill.

I step back in shock, (That skill looks nasty. Is there any way to stop the bleeding in time?)

Elly denies that possibility, (With what we have, no. Seeing the messed-up state of that skill, the bleeding would be even stronger than what Tevin suffered from.)

I frown, (The deer would one-shot me with their tackle, this wolf spells guaranteed doom with a bite, is there anything here that doesn’t send me to the grave with a simple high five? ...at least that confirms that not even living beings are safe from that glitch crap. For good or bad.)

Well, I’ve only enough for a simple stone bullet. Guess I’ll just be selfish and go for the exp.

28 MP left.

(You’ve just gained a 23 exp. Total 174. Only 826 until Lv2!!), Elly notifies me full of enthusiasm.

(Guess magic is worth something at least. Say considering I could still damage the golem despite its massive magic defense I want to try the big aoe, rain shape or whatever next time. Please, remind me.)

She happily agrees, (Sure, will do. Worst case you waste a single day. Since you won’t have enough afterwards for even another aoe projectile you could combine this experiment with a status effect.)

(I doubt that it will work.)

She lectures me, (Don’t say that yet. This isn’t a game – status effects COULD still end up being powerful! Or did you already forget how a little bit of bleed was already a death sentence for the two kids last time?)

(Obviously, you won’t let me.)

3QGN73

As clarification, no one in universe can read the glitch characters - if you want to generate them yourself look for a 'zalgo text generator'. If you have trouble reading them most of those sites also come with an 'unzalgo' option.

Btw. I'm replacing the random §%$/§$ button mashes of earlier chapters with proper zalgo characters with maybe a joke or something in the following days. But nothing plot-critical.

 

Just for fun imagine if MC didn’t have the 50% exp and 20% HP/MP/SP penalties and was instead a proper level of 15 or so. Double the MP, double the exp gain, roughly double the damage, so 7-8 times the exp per day.

Even with all those handicaps this little bit of aoe casting gives him already as much exp as 3-4 hours worth of intense training. If he hadn’t those it’d probably be closer to 25~30 hours worth and then he’d just snowball out of control power-wise.

Why then aren’t other mages dominating the scene? There aren’t many offensive casters around and this monster density in a flood is unprecedented.