Chapter 67: BATTLE OF THE SWAMP (4)

Red hit the mute button on his end for a moment, and looked at the Omni-Web data.

The Druid wasn’t lying. It was a basic military strategy. If Aurelius secured the southern forest, he could build a supply road right up to the edge of Bastion, entirely bypassing the traps Gorak and Razor-Fin had set in the western bogs.

Furthermore, 7,000 followers was the magic number. A Major Domain Shield would force Aurelius to fight a protracted, traditional siege, draining his DP immensely. It made perfect, logical sense to accept the merger.

But Red wasn’t just a logic engine.

He thought of Krug, tending the Violet Flame with absolute, unwavering faith. He thought of Iron-Scale, charging into the dark with a Star-Iron blade. And he thought of the Root-Father, the Druid’s former Elder, who had sacrificed his centuries-old life just to give Bastion a fighting chance, while the Druid hid in the south.

’You didn’t care when the Sun King was marching on my people,’ Red analyzed, his violet eyes narrowing at the burning Druid. ’You only care now because your bark is on fire. You are a fair-weather shareholder. If I let you on the board, the moment the stock drops, you’ll sell me out to Aurelius to save yourself.’

Red unmuted the channel.

“It’s a solid pitch, Druid,” Red said. “But I’m afraid I’m going to have to reject your application.”

The Druid froze. “What? Are you insane?! You need the 5,000!”

“I don’t need dead weight,” Red stated bluntly. “Your methods and ways are different from mine. You don’t understand the value of the followers, and I will not let your cowardice infect my pantheon.”

“He will encircle you!” the Druid screamed, genuine terror and fury mixing in his voice. “He will crush you from two sides!”

“Let him try,” Red said softly. “I already have a plan for the southern flank. And it doesn’t involve bailing you out of a bad investment.”

Red leaned forward, his shadowy face filling the Druid’s screen.

“Burn well, Neighbor.”

Click.

[ CALL ENDED ]

The Rotting Druid sat on his throne of dying moss, watching the wall of white fire consume his life’s work. His followers huddled around in the center of the grove, trembling in the unbearable heat.

He had begged Red. Red had hung up. Now, with the heavy marching of three thousand Paladins shaking the earth just a mile away, the Druid swallowed his pride. He opened his interface and dialed the one person he hated more than the Spiral.

[ OUTGOING CALL: AURELIUS (RANK 9) ]

The golden avatar of the Sun King appeared, looking smug and pristine.

“Golden King,” the Druid choked out, dropping to his wooden knees. “I yield. Call off your fire. I offer you my forest, my followers, my absolute servitude. Spare us.”

Aurelius looked down at the pathetic, burning Treant-God and laughed.

“Yield what, exactly?” Aurelius sneered. “You have eighteen hundred followers, Druid. Do you know what that means? It means you don’t meet the System’s threshold. You don’t own that territory.”

The Druid’s green eyes widened in horror.

“You have nothing to offer me but kindling,” Aurelius stated bluntly. “I don’t need your permission to take your land. I just need to step over your ashes. Burn well, stick.”

Click.

The vanguard of the three thousand Paladins breached the final clearing. They formed a tight, disciplined wall of golden shields, their swords blazing with holy light, ready to slaughter the remaining 1,800 forest-dwellers.

“Purge the rot!” the lead Paladin shouted, raising his glowing blade.

Suddenly, a sharp, clicking sound echoed over the roar of the flames.

A single, massive insect, a swamp locust the size of a human forearm, covered in a carapace as hard as iron flew directly out of the smoke and slammed into the Paladin’s golden visor.

The Paladin flinched, then swung his blade with supernatural speed.

Schwing.

The locust was sliced neatly in half, its green blood sizzling against the hot armor. The Paladin laughed, kicking the twitching bug away.

“Look at this!” the Paladin mocked, pointing his sword at the Druid. “Even the bugs are throwing themselves at us! The swamp is out of weapons!”

But it wasn’t a random bug.

If the Paladin had survived the previous night’s hunting parties, he would have recognized it. The four hunting teams that vanished in the bogs hadn’t encountered terrible mud and toxic water, they had reported the constant, maddening buzzing of giant insects scouting their positions.

High in the Void, Red watched the single locust die on his Omni-Web monitor.

“You think I’ve been sitting idle for two weeks, Aurelius?” Red whispered.

20 days ago, Right after Red returned from the Conclave, realizing he would be facing an army of thousands with a population of one thousand, he knew he had a fatal math problem.

He couldn’t just spawn intelligent followers. The System required souls, faith, and time for that.

But Red had a PHD in logistics. If he couldn’t manufacture workers, he could manufacture natural disasters.

While scouting the deep mud near the Bio-Reactor’s thermal vents, Red had found a clutch of eggs. About a hundred Swamp Locust eggs. They were dormant, holding no intelligence, no faith, and no souls.

The System merely registered them as “Biological Matter.”

Because they weren’t followers, Red could interact with them differently.

He had been saving up his SSS trait charges for such situations.

He placed his spectral hand over the mud pit, and dumped every single charge he had, stacking the modifier beyond its normal limits, which was 1000x.

One hundred eggs became ten thousand. Ten thousand cascaded into one hundred thousand.

He placed the massive, writhing clutch near the Bio-Reactor’s exhaust pipes, incubating them in the extreme heat and toxic runoff. They hatched in days. They ate the mutated swamp flora. They grew massive, armored, and incredibly hungry.

But they didn’t count as followers as they possessed no intelligence to worship him. Although Red didn’t need them to pray.

Sure, he gained some faith from them, but it was slow and that wasn’t his main goal.

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