Broken System Ch. 59-60 (Patreon)

Ch. 59 - What Now

As it turned out, Lord Grevin, Lord Pauciss, and the overseer they’d slain on their hunting expedition the other day, Mage Brogen, had amassed a great many trinkets and weapons of interest in their quarters and personal armories. That was the good news. The bad news, though, was that most of it was too complicated for him to understand.

All of their belongings were exquisite and included items of silk and gold. Most of them were utterly mundane, though. Tucked away among these objects were things with a hint of magic, though. Not all of them were complicated enough that his system identified them in any concrete way. The toga that billowed with its own breeze and smelled of the sea seemed to be nothing but a strange fashion choice, and the bronze cuirass that glowed faintly turned out to be nothing but very shiny armor.

Some objects, though, like the Dragon Scale Shirt or the Five-Edged Blade, were identified instantly by his system, even though he wasn’t entirely sure what the difference was. Some, like the blade, were very straightforward; it was super sharp and cut through things very easily. Other things, like the Bands of Starlight, were less so. Other things, like a wand that he found in a hidden compartment under Lord Grevin’s jewelry box, didn’t even display a name. They just asked for a password and would not identify what they were at all.

Armor: Dragon Scale Shirt

An elegant shirt with unexpected defense. +2 APP, +8 Armor, -5% damage

Weapon: Five Edged Blade

23 damage, -50% to opponents armor

Accessory: Bands of Starlight

+10 Manipulation to a single act of treachery, once per night.

Benjamin found a Rod of Obedience in Lord Pauciss’s home, but he immediately destroyed it after harvesting as much data as he could from its log files. He didn’t learn much except that it was mostly used by the overseer, and it was used only infrequently with a few of their most willful slaves along with new arrivals.

He made the note that resistance seemed to be possible, at least for some, and made it a point to track down those people and talk to them later to try to figure out what made them different. “What does a taskmaster need a whip for when he’s got one of these,” Benjamin sighed as he smashed the thing.

“I don’t know - a whip can be kind of fun with the right partner,” Juliana said with a musical laugh, but she stopped instantly when Benjamin shot her an especially cold look. “Sorry, she muttered. Gallows humor is important in these situations.”

On that, he could agree, but he said nothing as he continued to look through the belongings of the dead men. There was more than magic that was important here. The papers that each man had were voluminous, and while some, like grain quotas and shipment schedules, could be set aside, Benjamin quickly found himself with a variety of letters, missives, scrolls, and journals from all three mages.

Most of it could probably be safely burned, but he didn’t want to destroy anything until he’d read it at least once. After all - they knew next to nothing about their enemy besides how evil they were. Even their magic system was still mostly a mystery.

Benjamin mentally added a screenshot ability to his to-do list.

I could carry a lot more of this junk away if I could just file images away and move on, he thought as he reflected on his half-full sack. Maybe I could even get some image recognition and then write a program to classify the data and…

He shook his head as he added up how many hundreds of hours it would optimistically take to implement those features. They’d just struck a blow against these mages and almost certainly kicked up a hornet’s nest. There was no way he’d find that much time for some serious coding any time soon.

“Why do these mages communicate with paper?” he asked Juliana. “Aren’t there better, magical choices?”

“They did speak through mirrors or send spirits for urgent messages,” she agreed, “But apparently, they didn’t trust those methods entirely. I don’t really understand why,” she answered with a shrug. “Paper was preferred for most things, though we are far from the center of things.”

“Yeah, these don’t seem like the type of men who enjoy being stationed in a backwater,” Benjamin agreed.

“Oh, this isn’t a backwater,” Juliana corrected him. “This is the backwater of a backwater. The cities of Zuul-Tel and Marsen along the great river - those are backwaters. Even the great ports along the coast are backwaters, but here? This plantation is nowhere. This is where the summoner lords send their fifth sons with no prospects.”

“I see,” Benjamin said, even though he didn’t. He had found a map, and he would have to quiz Juliana and the other people he’d freed when he had time. They needed a goal, after all, and the Throne’s emissary hadn’t provided them more than a direction. Should they move seaward toward the center of things or strike at the farther outposts first? Would they be more effective if they took out other soft targets like this plantation, or should they strike somewhere that was a harder target before their enemy realized the danger.

Part of Benjamin wanted to attack the most difficult, challenging target he could, but thinking about it for more than a few seconds inevitably made him wonder who he’d lose as the result of that choice. Raja? Emma? A hundred strangers? It might well be all of the above.

The summoners seemed to keep insane creatures available for any occasion, and once they figured out how he was stealing their slave armies and blocked it, they would be well and truly fucked.

He didn’t dwell on that, though. Instead, he asked her about different things he saw in the correspondence as he tried to make heads or tails of Rhulvian society. Juliana was of only limited help there.

“I mean, outside the royal family of Rhul, there’s a dozen or so major houses, and then somewhere below them, there’s like a hundred minor ones, vying for power,” she answered with a shrug. “I’ve never exactly been in the position to ask questions, but I’ve picked up plenty in the conversations I’ve been present for during meals and, ummm, other times.”

“That sounds precarious,” Benjamin said truthfully. “If their politics are in that much chaos, how do they ever get anything done long enough to put an army together and start invading the world?”

“How should I know?” she answered. “I think that’s just how they like it. As to the invasion part, did you know they’ve been at this for less than a century, and they’ve already taken all the best bits of Aavernia? Crazy, right?”

“Well, a century is an awfully long time,” Benjamin sighed, rubbing his eyes as he swept the rest of the remaining papers from the writing desk into his sack.

He’d been hoping for a spellbook or a system operating manual or even a dog-eared copy of Runic Magic for Dummies, but he’d found none of that. Just insipid gossip about the goings on of their betters and status reports about all the different plans in motion. Some of the damn things had even been written in code. It seemed to be a primitive substitution cipher that was noted in the margin, but it certainly spoke to the deep strain of paranoia that ran through the Rhulvinarian culture.

He was still pouring through the conflicting messages that alternately spoke about how much he valued his cousin Ronolo’s friendship and what a snake that man was, depending on who they were addressed to when Matt finally interrupted. “Everyone is gathering to discuss what happens next, and I thought you’d want to be there.”

“How’s Raja?” Benjamin asked as he stood and stretched.

“How do you think he is man?” Matt shrugged, looking at his haul. “Weren’t you supposed to be looking for magic weapons, not scraps of paper?”

“Papers win wars,” Benjamin answered as he shouldered his stack of miscellaneous things. “But don’t worry, there’s a few things for all of you in there too.”

They walked together downstairs as Benjamin explained some of the strange things he’d found in his search. “Everything leaves me more questions than answers though, like - why bronze? Why not steel?”

“No steel anywhere?” Matt asked. “That is weird.”

“That’s just it,” Benjamin explained, “The only steel I’ve seen is in the garden tools. Steel plows and shovels, bronze swords and armor. I’m not sure what to make of it.”

The meeting was already in full swing when they arrived. The people they’d freed stood around the center of the plaza. Some of them held torches, which were the only light source besides a thin waxing crescent moon, as they gathered together and debated their future.

At first, Benjamin only listened at the outside edge of the group. It was an important moment, of course, but some of these people had been forced to serve the Rhulvinar for over a decade, and this was their first chance to make a decision in all that time. There was no need to rush it.

A few speakers argued they should use the same martial skills they’d been forced to learn by their former owners to slaughter them mercilessly. A few of them reminded him of Matt: healers and holy men who only remembered the outline of their life before they’d been summoned here, but certain they’d never killed as much as a ladybug before they’d been forced to come here and murder until their soul was dyed so red by violence that they’d never be clean again.

Others argued that they’d been given an impossible gift and that more fighting would just throw their lives away. “We can’t beat them,” one particularly sad old man said imploringly. “We need to flee, so far into the wilderness that they’ll never find us and start a new life somewhere safe. We can live free and—”

He was shouted down by arguments that nowhere was safe. Not really. For a time, the gathering dissolved into a shouting match, and Benjamin was more than a little afraid that the disagreement might dissolve into actual violence. Sadly, that made far too much sense after watching Emma and Matt come to grips with the violent programming they’d been loaded with.

It was only when Carlos broke all that up and insisted that it was “Time to hear what the heroes that freed us think about all this” that Benjamin finally moved toward the center, but only at Matt’s urging.

“You’re the leader here, not me,” Benjamin hissed to Matt, but his friend just shook his head.

“You’re in these guys’ heads, not me,” Matt answered. “You tell us what the plan is, and I’ll figure out how to make it happen.”

The words were humbling, but even with that vote of confidence and Raja and Emma watching from the sidelines, Benjamin wasn’t quite sure what to say. He’d never been good with crowds, and he was fairly sure this one was the largest one he’d ever stood in front of.

“I agree with both sides, actually,” he said, clearing his throat. “There is no right answer. Not for any of us. I wish I could tell you I had a plan that took all of that into account, but I don’t.”

There was grumbling at that, and murmurs rippled through the crowd, but he ignored them and continued. “If we stay and fight, then some of us will die. The same is true if we run, even if the summoner lords don’t find us. From what I’ve seen, every scrap of land in this world is owned by things that aren’t very friendly to humans. So, wherever we go, we will find more battles to fight, even though I know we’re all tired of it. There is no promised land.”

“So then, what should we do,” someone called out from the crowd. “What’s the answer?”

“To do what we can.” As Benjamin spoke, he used lesser illusion to put a large image of the map of the region he’d been studying over his head. “The right answer is to save as many as we can. I believe that each of the dots on this map is another plantation just like this one, with dozens or hundreds of souls suffering the same fate as every one of you until yesterday.”

He paused for a moment to let everyone study it before he started adding little red arrows. It was a clumsy thing closer to a generic painting app than a work of art or a strategic military map, but he could work on improving the presentation next time.

By my count, that means there are thousands scattered all over the region, and at least for right now, no one is ready for us. Not one of those damned mages even knows there’s a problem, but tomorrow? Next week? Someone will, and by next week, everyone will. So I ask you, what is it you think we need to do? Escape while we can, or do our best to free everyone that's still a slave to the summoners?”

Benjamin had barely finished his question when the crowd started to roar. At first, he thought that he might have angered them, but as he studied their faces, he understood. Somewhere along the way his rambling speech had convinced them, and whether they wanted freedom or vengeance most of them couldn’t bear the idea of leaving everyone else in chains they’d so recently been freed from themselves.

Ch. 60 - Heading Out

After the shouts died down, there were other passionate speeches, but now the tone had been set, the decisions had been made, and slowly but surely, the tone became more celebratory after that. Benjamin wanted to believe that was because of the hope and optimism he’d given these people, but it turned out mostly to be the rice wine and the beer that slowly spread amongst the crowd.

It was explained to him that these were normally luxury goods made only for the cities and their overlords, but Benjamin didn’t see the need to make getting drunk a political act. He was just happy to do it for the first time in forever. He chatted with a dozen people he’d remember the names of as the world spun happily around him.

He tried to tell himself that they should celebrate only in moderation in case they were attacked, but the constant toasts that people offered in the name of him and his friends forced him to abandon that early on. Still, there was singing and dancing, and even a little music played on wooden flutes and simple drums. There were even a couple women who made it very clear they’d love to show him their gratitude in private.

Benjamin almost went along with it, too. He was fairly sure he’d never been this popular back on earth, but then he’d never been a freedom fighter either; he’d just been a gamer who was going to grow up to get stock options and get paid so well that he could just barely afford to live like a poor person in any other part of the world.

This was definitely better, even when you considered the constant fear of death, but ultimately, he had to change his plans and gently let down the women that slowly gathered around him when he saw Raja sitting there quietly, staring down at a mug of barely touched beer.

“I can’t…” he slurred. “My friend… ssshe died lassst night and were ssstill in mourning for her.”

He couldn’t let himself be too happy when his friend was like that, and he spent the next hour trying to console him or at least get the man well and truly drunk. He was mostly successful in the last one, and after he poured Raja into a bed in the mage’s home that they had taken over, he passed out in the overstuffed armchair since he had no wish to invade the bedroom that Juliana had claimed as her own or interrupt Matt and Emma who were very obviously having a good time down the hall.

. . .

The day that followed was a busy one. At first, Benjamin feared that the brightness and volume would make being productive impossible, thanks to his rising hangover, but Matt showed all of them a new use for his lesser cure spell, and soon enough, it was like it had never happened.

After that, the four of them sat around demolishing a few loaves of freshly baked bread while they discussed priorities. The biggest problem quickly became portage. There were enough weapons to arm everyone, more or less. There was even a fair amount of armor for those that were most willing to fight.

87 people would require a fantastic amount of food every day, though, and even if he had the mana to cast that damn feast spell he’d located so long ago, it was no longer on his spell list because, apparently, he’d gotten so many offensive and elemental spells that most of the utility spells had vanished completely.

Of course, he could reconstruct it from scratch, but he’d need an example to work off. He made a note that he needed to figure out what filter it was that hid all of the other spells he could no longer choose, but not right now. Right now, he had more important things to do, though - like figuring out how to haul tons of food and figuring out a means of transport for the old, the infirm, and those who relied on crude prosthetics rather than actual legs.

Unaddressed, any of those things could slow them down to a painful degree. After all - the nearest plantations were only two days away, according to the map. There were roads that led straight to them, but those factors would do little good of the news of what had happened here outpaced them.

There were only a few draft animals, and most of the wagons and carts were built to be pulled by humans. That made a horrible sort of sense to Benjamin since the summoners really only saw their fellow men as animals, no matter what they said. In fact, it was blatantly obvious that the few horses that had been kept for the summoner lords themselves were treated better than the men who worked the fields.

Many of the freedmen outside took great joy in taking turns riding them since it was something they’d normally never be allowed to do. Some of those attempts and the accidental dismounts that quickly followed inspired gales of laughter.

“Come on, Benji - take a ride,” Emma teased. “You know it’s been a long time.”

He was about to retort that he’d actually never ridden a horse, but when he figured out what she really meant, he flushed. Matt answered before he could lash out at that. “Enough Emma. Today is not the day for that.”

She looked at him with annoyance but said nothing. Benjamin did likewise, even if it was only because he was glad to see the rough edges in their relationship were healing, even if it had taken the better part of a year to get to this point. He doubted they’d get married any time soon, but he had noticed she was wearing the ring again, and that was something.

‘Maybe we could tame some of those turtles,’ Raja scribbled, making Benjamin smile.

“I wish I could figure that magic out,” Benjamin answered. “We’d get you a whole army. Make you the turtle lord of our little nomad army.”

‘Not army. Only four.’ he shot back. ‘Leonardo. Donatello. Michelangelo. Raphael.’

When Benjamin read that one out loud, everyone laughed. Well, everyone except for Raja. His smile was a thin, pathetic thing, even in this moment.

The poignancy of that moment forced Benjamin to turn back to the task at hand as much as anything. They worked out the best plan they had with the resources at hand, which turned out to be bringing less with them.

As much as it pained him to put the torch to the food they couldn’t carry after accounting for all the people who couldn’t march, eventually, he agreed it was for the best. The oxen were much too slow after all, which meant they had to make do with the few horses they had instead.

That meant that they had many more people than flour sacks, but it couldn’t be helped. Especially not after they devoted one wagon to just barrels of water. It was more than they needed, though. Even theoretically, and Matt made a good point about that. “The next plantation is only what? 3 days away? We’ve still got food and water for almost a week.”

“But when we get to the next place, won’t that just make our problem worse?” Benjamin asked, picturing an ever longer wagon train with more and more hungry people around it?

“How so?” Matt answered with a shake of his head. “They’ll have wagons too, I’m sure, and at least as many things to loot as this place has. We rob a few more of these hell holes, and soon, we’ll have enough to haul whatever you like.”

Benjamin wanted to believe his friend, but he wasn’t sure. His lack of certainty wasn’t enough to stop them from making plans and setting everything in motion. The delays were enough to make him insist on extra watches and sending scouts further afield, though. It had been more than 24 hours, and the risk was growing.

Part of him was certain an ambush would happen in the form of fire that rained from the sky or a giant army charging out of the wall of grass at any moment, and no matter how often Jeong or Carlos tried to persuade him that the barrier runes would detect anything before it became a problem, it did not ease his fears.

“If they worked so well, then why didn’t they detect us?” Benjamin asked. “We skulked around the edges of this place for days before we made our move.”

“Well, they could have, in theory,” Carlos answered. He didn’t know much about the controls involved or how exactly the mages made the runes stronger or weaker, but he did know that they usually kept the settings low enough that it would take a whole tribe waiting in ambush or someone to actually touch the walls to set off the alarm. “Keeping it on max would make it trigger on the wildlife all by itself, you see? It would be going off all the time, and Mage Brogan thought it was better this way.”

“How is it better?” Benjamin asked in confusion. “He’s dead now.”

“Well, easier, at least,” Carlos laughed. “If the beast men come to the wall first, that gives us a better starting point to hunt them down and take out their nest.”

A little shudder went through Benjamin as he thought about that man. Out of everyone they’d been forced to kill, he was happiest he’d killed him. Who summoned goblins as bloodhounds? What kind of monster killed his own slaves rather than let them surrender?

By sunset, they were ready to go, but Benjamin saw no need to get such a late start and expose everyone to the dangers of the grasslands. Instead, he put out the order that there was to be no drinking, and they’d set out at dawn, burning the whole place down on the way out. A little rest was probably needed, though. Matt’s debuffs had gotten better, but they still weren’t gone yet.

Not that those were stopping his friend from doing a little healing here and there. Benjamin couldn’t blame him for that, though; some of the people here were in pretty rough shape, and even if getting everyone fit to move wasn’t the best decision tactically, it was still the right thing to do morally.

Magical Exhaustion: Spells 10% effectiveness due to excessive mana usage.

The next morning, he was as good as his word, and the wagons started rolling just after the sun had fully risen. They lacked the horses to spare for out riders, but they put their fleetest warriors well ahead of the wagon to scout for trouble, and at Raja’s insistence, they built a crow’s nest on the sturdiest wagon. It was a silly-looking thing, but after a few hours on the road, Benjamin had to admit it was a great choice.

It was little more than an arm-thick pole with a few pegs for climbing and a tiny platform on top. It even had a bit of rope for their archer to hold on to if the roads got rough, but ten feet above the ground, or fifteen feet if he stood, he could see well past the walls that closed in tightly on both sides of the trail.

By noon he’d spotted a dozen boulder tortoises, a herd of megabuffalo, and even once in the distance, he’d seen a group of centaurs by using his eagle eye ability. Though none of them ever got close enough to become a threat, the last group was enough to keep everyone on edge even hours after they disappeared. Benjamin had seen how big the arrows those monsters fired were, and he could think of lots of better ways to die than being pinned to the ground like an insect while he bled out.