Broken System Ch. 68-69 (Patreon)

Ch. 68 - Something New

The Rhulvinarians would have chosen a wand for this task. Benjamin was certain of that. Something gilded and lacquered like so many of the little trinkets that he and his growing army had looted from the plantations they’d liberated so far.

Doubtlessly, he could have chosen to make a few of those. There were plenty of sticks and arrows and whatever else lying around that could have been used, but it wasn’t really his style. Why everything should be reduced to a wand made very little sense to him - it wasn’t like they were going to be conducting an orchestra. At least not in anything but the most metaphorical of ways.

Benjamin could see how a general and a conductor had some similarities at least, but a wizard was murkier. Why should a wizard need a wand in the first place? He wondered. Was there something special about its shape?

The quality of the materials seemed to be directly related to the amount of mana a given object could handle, like some sort of etheric electrical circuit, but he wasn’t exactly building a bomb, so he didn’t need steel, gold, or precious gemstones. At least he didn’t think he did. He was only making something that could cast a single spell and execute a script.

Instead of a wand, he took inspiration from the violent centaurs they’d been saddled with and went with a signal horn like the one most of them carried. He smirked at that joke and thought it was actually clever enough to tell them, but he decided not to. Instead, he focused on his task.

Either they wouldn’t get it, which would be a fine excuse for Thorga or one of the others to tell him how weak and stupid he was again, or they would, in which case they would probably take offense and try to kill him. Horse humor was probably best for another occasion.

To Benjamin, a horn had a certain significance, anyway, so it made for a nice fit. After all, he, and by extension, anyone who actually blew the thing, was going to be offering the masses of enslaved humanity a literal wake-up call.

When he started, he didn’t think it would be that hard. Certainly, no harder than making his ring of disguise had been. With it, he’d been creating something that would hold a single pre-programmed illusion and apply it to the wearer, and in this case, he was loading Data Leak with a small attached script file so it could be applied to everyone who heard the low note it made.

So, he set about scribing that spell into the item. It was a little finicky but not necessarily difficult process that required refactoring the code of the spell and the way that it executed. One day he’d make a simple conversion app to automate this task and do the grunt work for him, but he hadn’t been planning on making more magical items quite so soon, and certainly not horns of rebellion, as he liked to think of them.

If anything, he’d been thinking about making a packet sniffer of some sort next. Even if he only vaguely knew how to go about making something like that, he wanted something to capture and record the spells and the commands that the enemy mages were using. That way, he could start to explore their systems for more vulnerabilities.

If he was really lucky, he thought he might even be able to siphon some of their password or maybe even their seals from the message traffic that was runic magic, but all of that would have to wait until later. Now, he needed to focus on locking together the chain of runes in just the right way so that when anyone with enough mana blew the horn, it would activate the attached spell.

It wasn’t very hard. In less than an hour, he’d made the prototype out of a silver-chased ivory drinking horn that he’d modified slightly with lesser creation. It was just one of the many similar pieces of loot they’d stolen on their rampage, and if it worked there were plenty more just like it to be converted. With any luck, he could have a dozen of them ready to go in a few hours, provided that this one worked.

When he was finally done and explained his plan, Matt nodded approvingly, and Raja just laughed. ‘You’ve got an app for that!’ he texted, making everyone in the party chuckle.

Benjamin configured the spell in this version to trip his resistance alarms, and when he blew on it and activated the spell, he saw those activate. That was the good news.

Mind Control Magic Detected! Attempt failed!

The bad news was that when the spell activated, and 8 mana ran coursing through the fragile horn it burst into flames a moment before it exploded in a display of tiny red fireworks. Fortunately, the only part of Benjamin that was hurt was his ego.

“Hey, it worked!” He said, trying to reclaim his dignity while more than a few people laughed. “It’s just only going to work the once…”

Obviously, that isn’t going to cut it, though, he thought to himself as he tried to figure out where he’d gone wrong. Looks like I’m going to have to pay more attention to the materials after all.

They set up a fire on the coals of last night's fire and set to work melting down all of the silver they’d liberated so far. That required them to improvise a set of leather bellows and start breaking down extra wood on the wagons to get enough firewood, but eventually, they had a boiling cauldron of molten silver. Into this, they plunged one drinking horn after another until they had 10 ugly ruined horns and more than a few minor burns on the people who were trying to make this crude process happen as quickly as possible.

Benjamin tried the same spell again, but this time it exploded in shrapnel instead of bursting into flames. This time, Matt activated it since he was a lot tougher than Benjamin just to be safe, but he came away unscathed as the blast of silver and sparks shouted outwards.

“Are you going to waste the whole day with this foolishness while the noose tightens?” Thorga asked shortly before noon. “The mages are afraid of the grass sea, but we will not let you cower here forever.”

“I’m getting close!” Benjamin said, not entirely sure that was true. “I promise you. If you want your grand war that sweeps across your sea of grass in every direction, this is how we get there.”

That the item’s destruction was far less total this time told him all he really needed to know. It turned out that the ring of disguise had been so easy to create because of how little power it used. That meant that Benjamin’s only choice was to reduce the power of the spell.

That was easy enough to do since, fortunately, it was just the recursive casting loop he’d installed in it that made it so power-hungry. Removing that cut the power requirements in half at the cost of making it far less complete. It would no longer attempt to recast every time it took someone over, practically ensuring it would have to be cast multiple times, but there was simply no other option he could think of quickly.

On the third attempt, it finally worked. The note of the device was still a flat, ugly thing that had been made deeper and quieter because of its silver reinforcement, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was that, in the end, it was still entirely usable, if a little warm to the touch.

“You really think that’s going to be enough to replace you?” Matt asked. “A Benjamin in a box?”

‘More like hoodoo in a horn,’ Raja typed up as he laughed. The speed at which he responded made Benjamin wonder how long he’d been waiting to press send on that one.

“Pretty much,” Benjamin agreed. “This is enough to defeat the current security that the mages of Rhulvinar have built into the systems they use on their slaves. Now that I have the proof of concept locked in, I need to tweak the command it gives the people it's freeing before it wipes the bound to serve debuff and take some security precautions, but aside from that, we just need to figure out how to divide up the forces and make a few more of these, and then we can head out.”

“Going to password lock it or something?” Emma snarked.

“That too,” he shrugged. “More than anything, I just want to give the mages that try to investigate the aftermath of what we’re about to do enough to throw them off the scent.”

They all got to work after that. Matt started to divide the best part of the hundreds of men and women into seven smaller groups of about thirty people. This happened slowly in the background while Benjamin worked hard on tweaking the magic in the item he was crafting from the beta state it was currently in into something ready for mass production.

Unfortunately, that still meant that the eighth group, consisting of those too old or too cripled by earlier fighting to be of much use, was by far the largest. It had well over a hundred people in it and would be a problem that would have to be dealt with, but not today.

Benjamin didn’t worry about that, though. Instead, he focused on the task at hand. He added a simple password prompt that each warband leader could set, but that wasn’t the important part. The important part was that he added a small script that would create as much garbage data as possible to replace the relevant log files once it commanded everyone subject to the spell to rise up and slay their masters. That way, if an assault was unsuccessful and survivors were captured, he could muddy the waters as much as possible by making them think he'd gained access with existing passwords.

Of course, that wouldn’t do them a lot of good when the Summoner Lords inevitably got their hands on one of the horns, but he had not yet figured out how to code a self-destruct mechanism into the device. That would be right at the top of his list in terms of features for future projects, though.

By the time people had begun cooking dinner, Matt was giving everyone a speech about what the goals were and what they were going to do, but Benjamin wasn’t paying attention. His friend could fill him in later. Instead, he was putting the finishing touches on the last of his 7 horns. He thought about making a few more just in case but decided against it for now.

What he was building was simple and crude, but it was undoubtedly the most powerful and important thing they’d done so far. Before now, he’d been the only one who could break the chains that shackled the minds of every man, woman, and child that had been stolen from other worlds and brought as slaves in this one. Now, more than half a dozen people could do it, and soon, they’d be spreading in every direction.

By this time next month, there would be thousands of free people fighting to free tens of thousands more. He couldn’t think of a better plan, and he was grateful that they’d finally stumbled upon it, even if it had taken more fae meddling to inspire him to do it.

Ch. 69 - Divide and Conquer

By the time he was done with his work, Matt had completed his speech as everyone was starting to feast on roasted meat, frybread, and the last of the beer they’d brought with them. The centaurs chafed at having to stay in such a place for one more night but were apparently mollified by just how aggressive Matt’s plan was.

Benjamin wasn’t sure about the details, but listened in between bites as Matt handed out the last of the horns and explained the plan to the captains of each group.

“At dawn, we will all head in different directions,” he explained. “The centaurs have promised to lead us to the next plantations that seem poorly defended. If you defeat those opponents and survive, then there will be another battle, and another, and another. There are apparently hundreds of those awful little farming communities working together to feed the beast, and it’s unlikely that all of us will survive the effort.”

“If I fall, someone will replace me,” Jeong said with a laugh. Most of the leaders that Matt had selected joined in with nods or similar words at that. Some even offered toasts.

“Someone will replace us all,” Matt agreed. He’d been getting his anger under control a lot more ever since he and Emma had gotten back together, but while he spoke passionately about this topic, Benjamin could hear the rage in the background of his voice like distant thunder. “We’ve all had our lives stolen from us, but we can’t start building new ones until we’ve taken the bastards down.”

Everyone agreed with that, and the rest of the dinner was mostly just boasting about the glory to come. Benjamin waited until that was over and people had started going to bed before he asked what the four of them were going to do in all this.

“Are you splitting us up too?” he asked. It seemed like the wisest course, given their levels and powers, but it was something he definitely didn’t want.

“Of course not,” Matt scoffed. “We’re together until the end, for better or worse. We won’t be going with any of these groups… Well, not for more than a night or two, anyway. After that, we’re going after the biggest game around.”

“Arden?” Benjamin asked, instantly certain of his friend’s meaning. It was the biggest settlement and the only real city in the area. Not that he had any idea how a city of magicians and mind-controlled slaves would look, of course, but it was the only target in the area that he knew of.

Matt nodded. “We have to attack it before they figure out how your spell works, so we’re going there directly after we see how Kalinomia’s group does against plantation 116; then she’ll proceed west, back toward the frontier while we move north to the city itself.”

“And what? We immediately unleash anarchy?” Benjamin asked. He could certainly do that, but there was no way of knowing how that would play out.

“We could do that if you think that’s best,” Matt shrugged. “I figured you’d want to put on the face of your favorite summoner, creep around for a few days, and see what we could learn before we unleash hell.”

“Well, the longer we linger, the more chance we have of being discovered…” Benjamin said doubtfully. There was a smile growing on his face, though. If they could somehow sneak into that city and stay undetected for a few days or a few weeks, the possibilities of what they could learn would be limitless. “But the more valuable the whole thing will be.”

“That’s pretty much what I was thinking,” Matt agreed. “We spy, we probe, and we blow the whole city up as soon as someone catches on.”

Benjamin immediately started to think about how one would blow up a city literally rather than metaphorically as they’d done so far but rejected it. Far too many innocent people would die, but then, with so many summoners in one spot, he expected the death toll would be abominable.

As mages, they were powerful enough, but each of them seemed to have a few pets on standby, just waiting to be summoned. It was like the evilest possible version of… for a moment, he sat there with his drink in hand as he tried to remember the name of the game with the little red and white balls you’d capture creatures with, but it was already gone.

It’s definitely what these assholes do, though, he thought to himself as he took another swig. They enslave people to fight their battles, plow their fields, and serve their dinners, and they summon monsters to keep themselves safe.

He brooded on that all evening, letting the sheer nature of the evil they faced bring his mood down, which was difficult considering the otherwise celebratory atmosphere of the gathering. Still, he didn’t rain on anyone else’s parade and kept those dark thoughts to himself.

. . .

In the morning, the groups assembled before dawn. Even the eighth group, which had no battles to fight or long journeys to make, was getting ready. The centaurs had promised to lead them to a hidden refuge until Benjamin and his friends had taken Arden and were ready to receive them.

Part of him felt that was the equivalent of letting the fey take hostages, but there was little else he could think of to do with so many people who couldn’t pull their own weight with all the challenges that lay ahead. His only consolation as the giant group began to scatter and head in eight different directions was that the centaurs assigned to lead that group seemed to deeply resent it.

These monsters lust only for freedom and battle, he told himself; if we’re going to be betrayed, it’s going to be the throne that does it.

Benjamin spent the time he should have been spending working on packet sniffers and traps, wondering what ulterior motives the Arboreal Throne and the Throne of the Sky Sea might have, but he had trouble coming up with one. They were, after all, on the same side, at least until the Summoner Lords were dead or at least driven out of their respective kingdoms, weren’t they?

While he brooded, they traveled much faster than usual, both because they’d abandoned all their wagons in the name of speed and because now that they had a guide, they were avoiding the roads and going straight to their destination. They had brought a horse, but that was a prop for Benjamin, so that he could look the part when he put on airs and tried to enter the city of Arden.

None of that was relevant, though, as he stood with his friends at the edge of the tall grass and watched the rest of the group continue forward without them toward the unsuspecting plantation. After marching all day, they’d rested only two hours until the moon had set, then the three centaurs that were still with them kicked off the raid by launching several arrows with deadly effect, taking out almost every sentry on this side of the compound, breaking it wide open for Kalinomia and the other members of her band that followed.

The result was quick and bloody. From the time the feisty Greek woman hopped the wall until the time the fighting was done was less than five minutes, but a lot of people died in that time. Benjamin had worried that this group’s lack of familiarity with each other would have hampered them, but he needn’t have bothered. He should have been worrying about the icy berserker that one of the mages summoned.

Before that moment, it was a textbook operation, but after that, everything was chaos. She blew the horn as soon as they’d lost the element of surprise, but in the next minute, before the last of the resistance had been dealt with, 9 people lost their lives.

Benjamin felt partially responsible for that bloody toll, but there was little he could have done from here. Raja might have been able to turn the tide, but in Matt’s eyes, that would have defeated the point of the exercise, and he said as much as it became clear the conflict was over. “They’d been able to do with thirty what he and his friends had managed with four or five,” he argued. “As far as I’m concerned, that’s proof that this can work.”

“Maybe,” Benjamin sighed, “But next time, don’t ask me to sit it out. It feels like shit.”

Matt didn’t argue against that. No one did. It was easy to look around his friends and see they all felt the same way. There might have even been a trace of empathy in Emma’s eyes, hidden behind all of the blood lust.

By the time they reached the central plaza, Kalinomia’s men were ripping up the runes of the beacon to make a surprise attack that much less likely while others explained what was happening to the newly freed souls that were still in shock.

All told, her little army of 31 had dropped to just 22 in the aftermath of the assault and then it increased in to 74 in the space of a few minutes as they took count of the new recruits they’d freed. It was a scene that he hoped played out over and over again in the days to come. It was hard not to smile about that as he picked through the rooms of the plantation’s former governor.

Benjamin found a piece of equipment that he thought would be perfect for Matt, but otherwise, he focused on the correspondence that each of these summoners seemed obsessed with as he sought to understand how widely the rumors and the understanding of the quiet war that he and his friends were inflicting on the Rhulvinarian’s went.

Accessory: Bands of Blood

+50% critical damage, +10 to medicine checks.

“Not going to join in the festivities?” Kalinomia asked, surprising him with her sultry accent as he sat in the bloodstained room, leafing through documents for clues.

“Are you sure that we have time for another party?” he asked, setting the letter he was reading down to rub his eyes.

“Every day we risk our lives is one that we should celebrate, as far as I’m concerned,” she smiled. “Can’t say I’ve found many on our side that disagree.”

“Well… Maybe they would if they knew how easy it was for one of the summoner lords to just appear through one of their gateways in our midst and just start killing everyone,” he sighed in frustration.

The Greek woman was a lithe killer with a tight, muscular body and skills that were very similar to Emma's. Someone had built her from the ground up as a sort of assassin, but Matt had mentioned that she’d been the personal servant of the mage that had summoned the soul-sucking fungus jellyfish at plantation 127, which seemed to be what these monsters did with all the attractive men and women they kept. Neither that, nor the fact that she was a level lower than Benjamin, gave him doubt that if she wanted to kill him at such close range, there would be nothing he could do to escape.

She didn’t look like she wanted to kill him, though. In fact, she was smiling.

“You know Benjamin, you’d be cute if you worried less,” she laughed. “Here I wanted to come up here and thank the man that made all this possible, if you know what I mean, but since you seem perfectly content to sit there under your own little raincloud maybe I’ll just leave you be.”

“Listen - I’m sorry but—” he started to counter, but she talked over him.

“I thought that the quiet guy that was the genius behind setting us free would have more insight than that, but honestly, you don’t know shit,” she continued. “I’ve had to serve these monsters up close and personal for half a decade. Many of those you’ve freed have had it even worse than that, and I promise you - all of them know that a Summoner could murder them on a moment's notice.”

She raised her glass to that and took a drink as if to emphasize the point, “Everyone knows that, but you, I think. That’s why we celebrate each victory. Because all of us could die at any moment, you included.”

“I’m sorry,” he answered, not sure what else to say.

“I know,” she agreed as she got up and walked back out of the room. “You should work on that.”