Godfather's System

105. Development - 3

It didn't take long for me to arrive at the hunting outpost. Rather than going in directly, I stayed outside, observing the changes. Even during the night, it was a dramatic sight.

It was fascinating just how much improvement it had gone through in less than a month. Its walls stood even higher than the walls of Town Yoentia.

Two layers of enhanced wood, with the inner layer littered with defensive towers. Each tower with a ballista in place, ready to take down a large beast the moment the patrols couldn't handle it.

The mood of the patrols was quite positive.

Most importantly, the population had increased significantly. It wasn't anywhere near the town's, but even with a rough count, I could approximate that the numbers reaching five thousand. I had no doubt that most of those people were farmers and other classes with little practical combat application, but for my purposes, that wasn't a problem.

I gave them protection, and they gave me experience. An equivalent exchange.

Interestingly, I could even see that, toward the south, there were several farms, with crops already growing. A good idea to reinforce our self-sufficiency, even though it technically wasted quite a bit of manpower.

It was never a good idea to be dependent on external sources while potential unrest was on the way, especially considering the number of farmers we had at our disposal.

After examining it for a while, I slipped inside the outpost. None of the guards were good enough to notice my presence even as I stood in the shadow of one of the towers, Concealment and the darkness allowing me to stay hidden.

I expanded my Charisma to cover the whole outpost.

[+12 Experience]

[+82 Experience}

…

[+46 Experience]

A flood of notifications appeared, rapidly replaced by the new ones, though, at this point, they were familiar enough to ignore easily.

"Not bad," I thought, happy with the number of monsters attacking the outpost, especially since I was able to handle them easily.

A quick calculation based on the experience I was able to collect showed that I would average almost a million experience points every hour. A shocking number compared to the earlier gains. Unfortunately, as the Experience I needed to level up got higher and higher, it was not enough.

Pity I couldn't risk going into a dungeon yet.

Luckily, that wasn't the only way I could increase the amount of experience. "It's time to test your strength," I said as I glanced at the guards who filled the walls, and used my Charisma as a spike … and, suddenly, the monsters that were attacking the town multiplied.

"Beast tide!" the guards began shouting as anyone that was outside the walls — not many in the middle of the night, the reason I risked the operation — retreated back to the town, while the people started to rush toward the walls, their bows in hand.

"Terrible," I murmured as I watched them rush toward me without a hint of organization, people blocking each other. They had been fighting well while they were operating as squads, but the same didn't hold true during a battle.

Since I had time to spare, I cheated a little, and used the Charisma connection I established to resolve the worst problems. I made sure to boost the courage of the fighters whenever they faltered, using the command feature to make the nearby squads move closer whenever someone received too much damage to recover quickly, and pulled several other tricks.

It was useful, certainly, but intensive work. The more I focused on my orders, the less I could use my Charisma to collect experience. I made a mental note to have a talk with Jertann about adding some emergency drills to their training schedule.

Luckily, it took a while for the monsters to reach the walls, which allowed a semblance of organization to be established.

At the same time, the experience I was gathering increased five times.

"A big loss," I murmured as I watched the monsters. Things might have been different if I used that trick before my promotion. More Experience would have given me even better abilities.

But that was life. I didn't consider such a possibility, which cost me quite a bit. Luckily, I still had one more promotion to go through, and for that one, I would make sure to prepare better.

I turned my attention to the current situation, considering whether to increase the power of my Charisma connection. It would have allowed me to get more Experience, but after some consideration, I ignored the temptation.

I didn't want people gossiping about the sudden and temporary reduction in their gains.

Hours passed, and when the color of the sky started to shift into a soft blue, six hours after I had first started my meddling, the outpost was already exhausted from the repeated monster attacks. Not only were the people in the outpost exhausted, but I was exhausted as well.

Maintaining two Charisma fields, one constant to gather the Experience, the other intermittent to gather the beasts, was not exactly a walk in the park.

The results were worth it, though.

[Experience: 45,192,012]

The Experience might have been the most important gain I made, but not the only one. The next biggest advantage was the coordination and competency of the outpost. Under a constant, intense siege for six hours, the outpost guards started to coordinate much better.

My occasional subtle orders with Charisma further helped the coordination. Ultimately, handling a siege of mindless beasts was a straightforward challenge, especially with the exaggerated number of ballistas that were there to handle any dangerous buildup of beasts that would have otherwise overwhelmed the defenses.

However, that led to another discovery.

There was no experience gained for the beasts killed by ballistas. An interesting difference. For some reason, the System didn't grant that experience, but the arrows were fine … and I observed to make sure the distance was not the issue.

An interesting benefit.josei

I still had two hours, and I could have used that time to gather more experience, but I decided against it. Everyone was already tired and tense, and it would be more beneficial to use my remaining two hours to stick around while they recovered.

I didn't want them to suddenly have an accident. I didn't have any actual evidence to believe that, but if I were in the place of my enemies, I would have used the rare opportunity to poke around to create some significant damage.

The opportunity was simply too good to miss.

And, it happened barely twenty minutes after the first stop. The suspicious thing was the subtle flash of Charisma I could detect. Ordinarily, I wouldn't have felt that from such a great distance, but the feeling of one of my connections snapping off was too distinct to miss.

I rushed in the direction of the lost connection, afraid that they had been killed.

Luckily, I didn't find what I was afraid of. Instead, I found a patrol group, coming back casually, though with two unfamiliar faces joining them.

The unfamiliarity wasn't suspicious, but the weight of charisma pressuring the rest of the group was. What was more suspicious was one of them was dragging a large cart behind him.

I could have attacked them directly, but instead, I decided to take a different path. "Go back to your base," I ordered the whole group without even revealing myself. The original group continued toward the outpost in a dazed manner, unable to handle the weight of my charisma, even with reduced impact.

It was a bit different for the two unfamiliar faces. Their eyes widened, and they tried to resist the order. "Go back," I ordered again, this time focusing the order on just two, which was finally enough to trigger their movement…

They started walking, their steps mechanic, unable to resist the pressure of the order, dragging the cart away. I made them drag it for ten minutes before I bothered to ask any questions. "Tell me why are you here?" I asked.

One of them managed to resist the order to speak, showing that even when focused, Charisma wasn't exactly a panacea. Useful, certainly, but had its limits when the target was trained. Whoever arranged them was smart enough to send spies with some training to keep secrets.

I expected the second one to stay silent as well. He certainly managed to resist strongly.

Then, he made a mistake, and tried to use his Charisma to create a shield. One that shattered almost in an instant, which damaged his resistance. "W-we're here to destroy the outpost," he answered.

I was surprised, as I didn't expect a direct Charisma conflict to have such an impact. Still, it was useful to know. "And, pray tell, how exactly are you going to achieve such a task?" I asked, enjoying the helpless expression of the other saboteur.

I could hardly feel any mercy against the men who planned to destroy my base, probably killing hundreds of people in the process.

However, I didn't feel angry either.

It was a lesson I had learned early in my life. Once you stepped into the darkness, the stakes were different. It was as pointless as getting angry against an enemy on the other side of the battlefield.

It was life.

"We were going to use an explosive at the center of the outpost," he said even as he pointed at the cart.

The moment he pointed at the cart, the other one used the opportunity to rub his ring. I might lack the ability to read the meaning of the resulting mana flare, but his desperation was intense enough to make it unnecessary.

A suicidal last stand, I realized, and the growing glow of the cart gave me a good clue about where exactly was the explosion.

I had just made an arrogant mistake, I realized, immediately acting. First, I reached out to grab his hand, flaring my mana as hard as I could manage, and flooded his ring. It was the detonator, and since it was already triggered, the worst it could do was to do nothing.

[-19 Mana]

Maybe it could somehow impair the explosion. Or, if I was really lucky, prevent the detonation completely.

I started running rather than waiting to see the rest, not even trying to drag the two with me. I had no idea how strong the bomb they brought along was, but considering their objective was to destroy the outpost, it couldn't be too small.

I wasn't enthusiastic about pitting my Health against an unknown weapon.

That turned out to be a good decision, as just a second after I started to dash away, its distinct blue glow intensified further. Soon, it turned into an explosion, rapidly growing. I waved my hand to create a blue shield that took my remaining mana.

[-61 Mana]

the impact enough to throw me toward a tree as the explosion covered the sky.

I pushed healing energy into my body preemptively just in case, ready to inject far more.

[-73 Health]

My enemies weren't as lucky at the epicenter.

I rushed toward them, to see if I could do anything to help … but unfortunately, they ended up charred, their secrets gone.

"Another lesson about the dangers of the world," I said as I took a deep breath. I was happy that I was alive…

Yet, I was frustrated by my own mistake. I could have avoided the whole mess if I had done the smart thing and incapacitated them before trying to interrogate them.