Chương 115: Chapter 192: Commander Oh

This feels wrong. How so? The way his Party is moving around, dodging us, not making any desperate attempts to clear a Key Site and run. They're buying time, but something about it feels…dangerous. Like there's a guillotine blade hanging over our heads, and they're just waiting for it to fall. The question is what, and when? Caddock, High Paladin level 63 Will laid out the map of the Floor.

"Wow." Anna said, eyes wide as the map responded to Will's mental commands, expanding to about six feet across, revealing the Floor. There were large swaths that hadn't been filled in yet, because Will hadn't directly seen the terrain yet. Phantom Eye (x16) 160 Charges Remaining Will sent the eyes straight up, looking back down at them. The eyes vision went dark for a moment as they climbed up through solid sandstone, a moment later, they broke out into the light of day.

Will squinted reflexively at the sudden light and sixteen new viewpoints. Drawing from his previous experience with the technique, he kept them clustered tight together and looking the same direction, fusing them into one view until they were high enough that they could begin to spread without causing him a headache. The massive grey map with a few patches of terrain began to fill in, gaining color and even a little texture as his eyes filled in the details.

"That…is a good map." Anna said, holding her breath for some reason. Can I mark on this thing? Will wondered before putting down his finger.

"There's a fort at each of these Key Sites," Will said, tapping one of them with his finger. The fort was on the map, but the scale made it nearly impossible to see. The map shifted, causing the miniscule fort to expand for better visibility. The scale was off now, but it was better for studying and making plans. So the default is everything having the same scale, but I can make some things bigger for legibility.

Will turned his attention to the other Key Sites, and they each expanded to reveal the exact composition of their defenses, save for the soldiers guarding them. Wait… Will mentally grabbed one of the forts and expanded it further.

"Eek!" Anna stumbled back as the fort exploded upward, pushing the rest of the terrain off the edge of the map, dominating the entire space, its walls becoming nearly three feet tall. Will focused his attention on the wall and discovered a patch of fear. Right there was a little patch of the amorphous clear stringy goo that he'd learned to associate with fear. Fear is a terrain. Someone was feeling fear right there.

Was it someone in a fight, someone listening to a scary story or just getting cussed out by a superior? Will had no idea, but he knew for a fact that there was a person there. Will cocked his head and turned his attention to his Phantom eyes. Yes. I can see it. A pair of guards and one is being aggressive towards the other. Will deliberately looked away from the scene and paid attention to his map. After a few minutes he looked back. The argument was over, and the fear was gone.

The problem was that his map registered the fear as being there until he reconfirmed it visually, at which point is registered the change. Ah, it doesn't track changes in real time. If it did though, I could track people with even a bit of fear in their hearts. I need real-time terrain tracking. Can I make the fear easier to see? Color. Glow. The map broke into a splotchy patchwork of fear glowing an eye-catching red. Will studied the blobs of fear marching back and forth across the walls of the fort.

Any soldier in wartime had at the very least, the haunting tension of the possibility of a sudden attack. With fear highlighted and glowing, Will was able to easily make out the positions of the soldiers inside the fort. I mean, I could already see them with my Phantom Eye… Despite the situation, Will was looking ahead and thinking of what kind of shenanigans he could pull as a Lord. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

The perpetrators of crimes always had a hint of fear of being caught. Will could produce a map, hand it to his guards with the 'fear of being caught' terrain highlighted. The guards would then track down anyone who did anything wrong and arrest them. Will could isolate and highlight different kinds of fears and his guard could react with the appropriate responses faster than anyone could believe. Fear of drowning. Fear of being hurt, fear of loss, fear of monsters.

Will could absolutely invade his citizen's privacy and expose anything they attempted to hide. Attempting to hide things implied a fear of it being discovered. Will could highlight for that. … Is this ethical? Well, it's only a consideration if I get real-time terrain tracking… Which I am ABSOLUTELY going to do.

"What's this stuff?" Anna asked, poking the red glowing blobs of fear.

"Fear." Will said, rubbing his chin as he thought.

"Seriously?" Anna asked.

"Mhmm." Will glanced up at Anna, who was absorbed with the three-dimensional map, her eyes glittering with wonder.

"Can you ask Loth to spin her wand?" Will asked, squeezing the for back down, causing the rest of the terrain to come flooding back in, including the abstract symbol of a wand where loth was carrying his Wand of the Undead Retainer.

"Okay." Anna's eyes went vacant for an instant. On the map, the wand began spinning rapidly. Will had sent a handful of Tangled copies with the two groups, to act as communication and cannon fodder. It was a bit callous, but All of Brianna was on board.

"That's good, now let's ask June's group." On the map, his Amulet began spinning rapidly. So the only things that do track in real-time are me and my Abilities and Manifested Relics. How can I fix that? Will thought, glancing up at Anna leaning over the map, studying the terrain in fascination, running her fingertip over a particularly large tree that stood above the canopy.

"Anna, can you communicate well enough with your other selves to track enemy movements in real time?"

"Huh?" Ann asked, glancing up at him.

"Could you show me where bad guys are that the others are seeing?" Will asked. It wouldn't get all of the enemy's troop movement, but it would be far better than nothing.

"Hmm…Yes, but I can only process one conversation at a time, so I would have to…" She glanced up at him and paused.

"… Make some copies." Anna darted into the back of the cave and came back with eight more Annas. She seemed to be more shy about people watching her split than she was about anything else. More than them seeing her naked, even. If will had to guess, it was because in her mind, being seen splitting into multiple copies marked her as 'disposable' and 'not human', while being naked was simply a fact of life that they had grown accustomed to over the course of their Climb. If anything it humanized her.

Feelings are weird. As Will was contemplating Anna's perspective, the nine Anna assembled around the map, their expression vacant as they communicated with their other selves.

"Here's what we can see…" Anna said, her fingernail growing into a large black talon. A moment later, the shiny black talon changed shape into a pawn and snapped off her finger. She placed the pawn down just a few hundred yards from Loth's position. In a matter of seconds, the other eight Anna had begun filling the map with shiny black pawns to represent the enemies she could see.

"Could you add your copies to the map too?" Will asked. Anna nodded and made ruddy brown pawns representing herself, placing it down on the map.

"No, no, no." Will said, shaking his head and tossing aside Anna's first Ria-pawn.

"Make them queens." Anna gave a choked laugh, her nine copies covering their faces for a moment before nodding. Instead of just making queens, she made rooks, knights, bishops, and a queen.

"Ria." She said, pointing to the knight.

"Bee." She pointed at the bishop.

"Me." She pointed to the rook.

"Jean." She pointed at the queen. In front of Will, the map was dotted with red allies and black enemies.

"Can you move them in real time?" Will asked. Anna looked a bit uncomfortable but nodded before her nine copies reached out, their fingers growing long and curled, each digit able to move a single piece. It was a bit weird looking, but Will was absolutely not going to pay it any mind, given how awkward Anna was feeling about herself.

"Tell Loth I want traps along this ridge here, please." Will said, motioning on the map., watching how they were moving.

"This group is going to flow down and around this natural barrier, splitting themselves up. If we make this ridge impassable, we can smash one side while the other gets caught up in Loth's traps." Anna nodded, her eyes going vacant.

"And tell June's group to go southwest about…" Will measured the distance with his fingers, comparing it to the legend on the map.

"Two miles, and set themselves up to ambush." Loth's wand moved over to the ridge, and in a matter of minutes, he got the report that she had finished. The wand faded away from the location just as the pawns began to split their forces around the ridge on the map, while the eastern group of pawns began walking past June's group.

"They're engaging." Anna' said, her expression vacant. Will saw two knights and two bishops split off from June's group and stream towards the eastern group of enemies. Anna gave a sharp inhale, and one of the knights toppled over.

"They have a summoner and someone who-" Will watched as another six pawns were placed on the board, acutely aware that each one of them was a life, and he was possibly throwing away the ones on his side. One of the Ria had already gone down. How many more? In the space of the next breath, one of the enemy pawns was toppled over, and the others weren't far behind.

Over the next thirty seconds, the western enemies tried to cross the ridge and reinforce their besieged members, only to run into Loth's traps and come to a grinding halt. … June sent Ria and Bee in as cannon fodder, drawing out their counter-attack against 'disposables'. When their most problematic units were revealed, she used the Family Gathering set to create Snake-arrows that killed her enemies without risk of thorns or triggered Abilities.

Tactically it was a sound decision, but it hinged on the Tangled girl's disposability. It did not escape Will that he was callously using Brianna for the exact purpose that her Class had been designed for. Fitting into the mold that she head been tortured into fitting. Am I better than Frederick? He used mind control, I used camaraderie and kindness. I know she hates this. It's not what she wanted to be, not what she wanted to do and I'm going to use her to crush… thousands of people.

If she stays with me, how many more people will she be killing? How many more times is she going to experience death because it's 'convenient' for me? Tactically expedient.

"Will?" Anna asked, studying his face.

"Mmm?" Will asked, snapping back out of his thoughts.

"I chose to do this." Anna said, watching him with Jean's iron will behind her eyes.

"All of me did. Don't hold back on our account. Use us." Is she worried about MY feelings? Will thought, his eyes hurting for some reason. I don't have feelings. I'm a guy. And part snake. That's twice as heartless, mathematically.

"…If you insist." Will said.

"How much Charge has this group made so far?" Will asked, turning his attention to the far west and pointing at one of the earliest groups of Ria that they had seeded across the map as they headed east, currently hiding and building up Charge.

"They could split into sixteen."

"Total?"

"Each." Will's brows rose. It had only been a day.

"Do so, and have them attack right here." Will said, pointing to a choke point that would see one of the southern forts cut off from the others.