City of Sin (Yanyu Jiangnan)

World Of Millions

Looking at the imperial capital where the skies looked like a disaster had just occurred, Richard muttered under his breath, “I still feel like this entire thing with blood sacrifices and souls is a huge price to pay. It doesn’t even seem stable.”

“At least it might succeed,” Nasia said sarcastically, “The person being teleported can take care of the instability. Who’d want to explore the void if they aren’t even legendary? Faelor might be primal, but their strength is at least their own. And you? You can teleport legions between planes at an incredibly low price, but what if the Eternal Dragon stops taking care of you? Forget everything else, will you even be able to return to Norland by yourself?”

“I have the coor…dinates,” Richard trailed off. He could be considered a master at planar geometry now, but even he couldn’t make those calculations easily. The coordinates he did remember all came from the system of the Church, described in simplified divine tongue to only represent the real coordinates.

This was the point of registering planes with the Church. It resulted in simplified coordinates that could be used to construct Lighthouses of Time, praying to the Eternal Dragon to keep the channel anchored. The stability of the passage was then strengthened by timeforce, reducing the dangers of teleportation greatly and throwing out most complicated calculations for the dragon to take care of.

A quick estimate revealed that he was only performing a tenth of the total calculation himself, with the risks thus being reduced by a similar degree. Spatial magic had developed quickly in the past millennium, but coordinates were all restructured into the simplified ones from the Church of the Eternal Dragon. Many grand mages could pass between the myriad planes themselves, and it relied on the assistance of the dragon.

Perhaps less than half of the legends within Norland actually qualified to explore the myriad planes.

Richard turned around to look at the paladin who was behind him, “You’re pointing me in a dangerous direction…”

Nasia shrugged, “I’m doing no such thing, just bringing your attention to a possible situation in the future. The actual chances of such a thing happening are none of my business; if not for our cooperation, I wouldn’t be bothered. By the way, these bugs of yours look rather cute, even if their shells are too soft. How about you give me a few hundred of them?”

It was only then that Richard snapped out of his daze, noticing the low shrieks of the cloned brain beneath him. Nasia was stabbing its shell with boredom, the metallic black being poked full of deep holes. He immediately felt his face twitch for a moment; both of her swords were legendary items! Even the broodmother herself wouldn’t be able to block such a thing, forget the cloned brain.

He ignored the greedy request entirely. After several boosts, the cloned brain’s value was second only to special units like Phaser, the unicorn, and the Thinker. Each one needed some divinity and two days of production time, an enormous drain on resources. He had only built up a hundred or so himself in the past decade, there was no way he’d sacrifice years of the broodmother’s time to give Nasia hundreds.

However, the idea that these things were cute was still food for thought. It might have been a joke, but it could also be indicative of Nasia’s tastes. Putting away any possible interesting histories, he looked at the capital that was covered in fog, “Looks like some extra profit is falling into our lap.”

“The exploration of any plane is bound to have unexpected harvests. Even a plane limited to level 10 will have something interesting or useful,” Nasia stated.

Richard nodded, having the cloned brain fly back to base.

……

A few days later, the Crimson Dukedom’s army reached the imperial capital and set up a huge camp several kilometres from the city. More than 300,000 soldiers were encamped in such a vast area that one couldn’t even see the ends, but few of those were actually going to be in combat. Many of those here were logistical troops; they could fight, but Richard had no intention of letting them enter the battlefield.

Built upon a snow-capped mountain, the Empire’s capital was called the Frozen Throne. Spread out along the incline, the city’s walls had not been torn down during its repeated expansions and were instead maintained in pristine condition. This gave rise to a tiered city with many layers of walls, making defending the place easy. No enemy had ever gotten to the core of the city before.

While most mountain cities were vulnerable to prolonged sieges, the Frozen Throne despite its million residents had three rivers passing through it that provided a constant source of water. As for food, the entirety of Faelor had never faced a problem with that before; as one of the most fertile planes, even the cold north with only one harvesting period had no lack of provisions.

The Crimson Army was in no hurry to attack the city. Richard dispatched thousands of rangers to wander around and cut off supplies, but this didn’t have much of an effect either. The stockpile of rations could last an entire year, and materiel was already piled up like mountains within.

In the command tent, Richard looked like he was in a daze as he stared at the enormous map in front of him, going through a miniature version of the Frozen Throne whose details were constantly being improved. Hundreds of birds were scouting for him in the sky, while moths and rats were sneaking in through the rivers and sewers to check out everything within. The city was just so enormous that they would still need a week to cover everything, but thankfully the Thinker could take care of updating the map. Despite a lack of combat ability, the special unit was one of his most useful subordinates.

When the last detail was added to this map, the imperial soldiers’ terrain advantage would be rendered void. Outside of a few cordoned-off areas, Richard’s knowledge of the capital would be even better than that of the imperial guards, and his ability to coordinate large numbers meant the alley fights would be to his advantage. Still, 200,000 soldiers with nowhere to run was not a force to be underestimated, and there was also a legend aiding the defenders. He would be patient and carve away at their advantages bit by bit.

“My evolution is done,” the broodmother suddenly snapped him out of his thoughts. He was disoriented for a moment, she had been silent for months, but that was quickly replaced by delight. Her upgrade had worryingly been delayed by an entire month, especially since this was the most important one since she had broken out of her shell. This evolution had been a long time coming; a year in Norland and ten in Faelor.

A deluge of information was promptly transmitted over, overloading his mind instantly. Thankfully, the broodmother had taken care to organise the data into levels, each single level within the limits of his ability to absorb. Still, it occupied all of his attention in an instant, to the point that he didn’t even notice that she hadn’t called him Master for the first time.

As per his decision, the broodmother had chosen to maximise her survival with this advancement. From amongst her countless options, she had chosen a core ability called World of Millions. It allowed her to nurture numerous tiny broodmothers within her body, each the size of a mere fist. Producing ten of these miniatures required a unit of divinity and an appropriate amount of the world’s origin energy, but once created they would go into hibernation with her soul brand upon them. Whenever required, one of them could evolve into her true self.

If in danger, the broodmother would just catapult the countless miniatures into the outside world, launching them all across the plane. Even if her main body was destroyed, these clones could still grow. Only one of them would ever grow to become a new broodmother, the others continuing in eternal sleep, but they were all extremely adaptable and wouldn’t be destroyed unless they were thrown into abyssal lava or some other such powerful thing. Every miniature had the energy stores to last for centuries before they were rendered useless. With the World of Millions, the broodmother was basically indestructible in this plane.