Riches and Bitches: I have a gate to an isekai and leveling-up system!

Chapter 296: You can hide from our eyes, but can you hide from the swarm?

"Do we have any equipment to map this entire area and update it on the go?"

I raised my eyes and looked at Makary, putting all the intensity into my look that I could find within my soul.

'We…" Makary hesitated for a second.

The man squinted his eyes a little bit.

"We have one Maglev constantly on the task." After the initial hesitation, Makary suddenly spoke out as if there was absolutely nothing wrong with the situation. As in…

As if he didn't catch my drift earlier.

"That's not enough," I sternly pointed out. "I mean, it's one thing to know how she will move the survivors of her army. But I don't need a legitimate map to deal with her armies."

I shook my head before allowing a small, confident smile to appear on my lips.

"We need this kind of map to stop that princess from doing something that's beyond our ability to anticipate."

On the outside, this was the main reason behind my freakout. Just by judging how seemingly random and inconsistent my own abilities were, I could draw a logical assumption over how the princess's abilities would be equally as unprecedented.

"Are you sure she's THAT dangerous?" Makary asked, squinting his eyes right as he crossed his arms over his chest. "I mean, she managed to outrun the traced barrage so I know she's fast. She survived the barrage once it reached her, so I know she's tough…"

Makary shook his head.

"But is she really that much of a threat?" Makary then asked, pressing his mouth together so that his lips formed a thin, straight line.

I took in a deep breath, taking some time to take what I could say about the princess, translate it through the actual problem at hand, and then speak up the words that would both fit the context but also answer Makary's actual question.

And, at least according to my hopes, he wasn't asking about the golden princess's ability whatsoever. The only reason why he brought up her achievements was to make it clear to anyone listening that it was the golden princess who was at the core of our debacle.

"Let me put it this way," I sighed, showing a resigned look on my face before shaking my head and looking over at Madam. "I don't mean to assume stuff, but would it be correct to claim you are more or less as strong as that princess?"

Not really filled in on the topic, Madam could only answer the question she heard rather than the question I had in mind when speaking out. After all, how could I expect her to replace anything I said about the golden princess with the implications of what I was worried about when it came to the origin of all the dark aura in my life?

"I'm stronger," Madam replied while only bothering to slightly raise her left eyebrow as she spoke. "But outside of that, yeah, we are pretty much on the same level. But it's an oversimplification of the situation so gross, it's hardly any different from an outright lie."

That much I could tell myself. Just a single glance at how Madam and Etaria moved while in combat was enough to figure out that their powers, although within the same order of magnitude, couldn't be any more different.

Madam's movements were full of grace yet underlined by the animalistic sense of a predator. On the other hand, Etaria's movements were refined, bearing a lot more strength than her relatively feeble frame would make others assume… But also lacking this wild edge I could sense from Madam.

Still, while the topic of Etaria's personal strength was worrying… it was the potential versatility of her abilities that I acted as if I was worried about.

"Since you are, while operating within this gross oversimplification, on the same level as that princess, can you outline the limits of her abilities? Can you tell us what should we expect from her?"

This question I already knew the answer to before Madam could even open her mouth to speak up on the topic.

The weave of my own, system-born spells was complex… but also logical. Rather than mystic magic, it was more of a logical and gradual process that shaped and exploited forces modern Earth has never heard of.

In other words, if the aura was a force beings of this world could use while spells were the encoded framework for said aura to bring forth established results… Then it wouldn't be that far off a stretch to claim that magic of this world was, in general, pretty much the same as programming back on earth.

A useful tool that one could quantify to a certain degree when it came to the complexity of the coding, the intensity of the force used to activate the code, and all sorts of other parameters… But still, nothing more but a tool with its own, intricate logic behind it.

And with the parallel to coding, it would take an idiot not to realize just how vast was the sea of potential ways for a person to use this 'coding' to their own advantage was. The number of spells one could create with the spellweave made it near impossible to predict what kind of powers Etaria had at her disposal, even for someone on the same, supreme level as her.

"There's no way to predict what kind of spells she can use," Madam said, proving all of my deductions thus far to be on the point. "When it comes to fighting, an able fighter would be able to deduct the general idea behind the enemy's spells and powers from the flow of aura, but that's the limit. In general, you can find out what the other party is capable of by observing them in action."

"Oh…" Makary was just a tiny bit faster than me to jump on this opportunity to move the events and our preparations along. "So you want to observe her real-time not because you are a damn voyeur but to make figure out what she can do before she does it?"

I took a second to process Makary's words… Only to hit a roadblock when it came to translating my response to make it fit both the official problem we had on hand but also the actual threat of the dark aura's origin casually standing within our midsts, without a single soul capable of observing them.

"I didn't realize you thought so little of me," I countered Makary's small bait before shaking my head. "But yeah. I think we need to observe her to know in advance if she will try to do something. And for that very reason…"

I hesitated for a second before going as far as to give the Maglevs floating in the air nearby a quick glance.

"For that very reason, I don't think using Maglevs for the task of mapping is a good idea. Not if we want them to be ready to intervene at a moment's notice."

Just like any other advanced piece of equipment, Maglevs needed quite a lot of maintenance if one wanted to use their full potential. And while it was possible for them to operate both as a gunship and as a scouting slash mapping ship at the same time… Without proper, ample preparations, they could only operate at a fraction of their true potential.

That's why, the idea of using Maglevs to map out the area and keep tabs on the princess meant giving up on their full battle potential, something that might be more than necessary to handle the threat of the princess… or the threat of the being that was the reason of all my current worries.

"How about the swarm, then?" Makary suggested, not even seeing it worth his time to discuss the considerations I had when it came to the Maglevs. "That's what it was invented for, so it would be stupid not to take advantage of it now."

I raised my eyes to the man's face before taking a moment to process his suggestion.

"Aren't those only capable of, like, tactical grade of mapping?" I asked, recalling the time when I saw Makary's scouting party use the swarm of micro-drones to learn the location of the nearby living beings before they could ever hope to notice them with their own five senses.

My question, though, only made Makary smile a bit.

"That swarm was of a field level. Its ability is limited by how one could only carry a few kilos worth of the drones on one's own back," Makary explained only to shake his head while allowing his smile to grow wider and wider. "You will have to trust me on that point, but the strategic grade swarm…"

In the end, Makary didn't finish his explanation. Instead, he simply waved at one of the nearby men of his who stood close enough to listen in on our conversation. And before I could even voice out a single complaint, Makary's men already moved to one of the commanding trucks we've brought over by now.

"And so, the main event of the day begins," I muttered to myself when a mere minute later, the air around the aforementioned truck suddenly turned dark when a mind-boggling number of those extremely tiny robots suddenly invaded the air itself.

"Any specific requests for how we should map the area out?" Makary asked before reaching out for a standard-looking tablet and bringing it down, to where all four of us could see into it.

The picture displayed on the tablet was pretty much the same as what we could see on the massive holodesk within the commanding truck before.

It consisted of the map of the area around us along with a myriad of greed dots depicting our allies, a small swarm of gray dots depicting our own forces, and then several hints of red at the very end of the projection, where the surveilled area reached out the place where Etaria decided to regroup her forces.

"Just start where we are and expand the scope outwards," I requested while leisurely shrugging my shoulders. "Also, it would be for the best if you left the processing of the data to the AI," I then added another suggestion before putting a sleazy smile on my lips. "I don't know about you, but I don't feel like sitting before the screen and analyzing every tiniest picture with my own two eyes."

Makary gave me a short look, before simply nodding his head and turning around.

"I guess this is as good of an idea as any," he muttered with his back already turned only to whistle to attract the attention of his men operating the hive off the back of an armored truck.

Makary was always a man of a few words. That's why when his men noticed Makary's presence and saw him wave his hand…

They didn't bother waiting for any further confirmation and simply activated the swarm.

'Now then, dear Irene,' I thought, feeling an immense sense of relief wash over me when all the pieces of my plan finally started to fall into their designated places. 'You can use your overwhelming power to hide from our eyes, but can you trick the sensors of thousands upon thousands of microdrones?'