“Alright everyone, we are all set, let’s get us another fae!”

It-Has-Pockets and her assigned troupe of kobolds had fallen into a routine. After the sites had been prepped and allowed to age both in terms of weathering and in the spread of rumors and tall tales told over a mug of ale, they were primed for what her Dual-Blessing of [Memories of the Flight] enabled for her to do. It in itself was a more advanced version of [Storyteller], where her words could become reality, provided she told a convincing narrative.

“Convincing” had often proven to be the watchword for her work. Reality only gave her so much slack before it decided to undo her work, and she had painstakingly labored to explore the limits of what she could and could not get to stick. As her repertoire of Skills grew, she leaned on the insight the world provided to help fill in the gaps in her narrative. This had allowed her access to some words that she perhaps did not really know or understand, but they usually worked out.

And on this day, one much like all the others, the “usually” part decided to remain absent in about the worst way possible.

“Actually, a little more lighting over there on the door, please.”

A pair of kobolds obliged, and soon the entrance to the fortress was properly illuminated for this performance.

“After a failed engagement with the Court of ‘redacted’, Lance Commander Nomohika Jora of 5th Company ordered a retreat through the nearest portal to the mortal realm.” Her eyebrows furrowed at her own words, a tell to anyone watching that she didn’t really understand what she was talking about, but she decided to roll with it as normal. “Damaged, but still operational, he and his three subordinates of the Court of Supreme.. Macaw… Mee-chaw, er, something like that. Anyway, they found themselves thrust into our world, not even a mile from this very location. Seeking refuge to regroup and recover, they immediately set themselves to the purpose of occupying this fortress.”

So she spoke, and so the world humored her. Only after she spoke did she notice the whelp next to her throwing a fit of concern, for her Emperor had been observing the proceedings through it. It clawed at the emergency flare nearby, its efforts frantic to use it for its intended purpose. It had skipped over the colors intended for lesser concerns, and it went all the way to the red flare, the one reserved for absolutely dire situations.

It-Has-Pockets’ blood ran cold as she gave the order for a nearby kobold to deploy the flare immediately. However, her story had not yet been told in full, and so she needed to continue narrating lest she lose any claim she has to it.

“However, the fortress was not lax in its security, and the defenders would not yield their territory without a fight. They soon learned the meaning of terror as an errant shot from an A-LR Particle Cannon clipped the top of the turret on the northeast corner. What little of it that had been hit had been simply obliterated. The actuators on the firing arm had been damaged, but the targeting solution was being recalibrated such that future shots would not be so inaccurate.”

As she spoke, a massive portal opened in the distance. Four metal giants emerged out of it, each of them clad in strange armor, their forearms bereft of hands in favor of strange tubes angled horizontally. One limped noticeably, but it made no cries of pain, nor did their unchanging faces display any emotion. The others showed signs of damage as well, with some sections of armor being scorched black or stripped away entirely, not to reveal flesh and blood, but more metal and strange machinery that the defenders did not have words for.

However, the red signal flare had already been deployed, and so the defenders just had to hold out until reinforcements arrived. There was a contingent of Adventurers nearby explicitly for this purpose, but they were not adequate enough to completely counter any threat deserving the use of the red flare. They could, however, interdict the enemy, and through such efforts, some of them may survive long enough for help to arrive.

These metal giants were of different shapes and sizes, and they advanced in a formation that suggested hostility. The squat one with what one may describe as “chicken legs”, such that it had no discernable distinction between torso and head, also had very boxy shoulders, each with a 4×5 array of small tubes that went into it. And from those tubes streamed forth something loud and angry, and where they struck the fortress walls, explosions followed as kobolds cried out in dismay.

In short, It-Has-Pockets fucked up, and she knew it. Worse, the portal did not close, and whatever these metal giants were running away from had decided to give chase. In their approach to the wall, the last one got sucker-punched by a beam of orange energy that left its armor glowing red hot. It twisted at the torso to retaliate, its upper body not flexing like a person’s, but rather the whole thing rotating as if it were a separate entity, all the while it continued to limp towards the fortress.

To make matters worse, another portal opened on the far side of the fortress, and another next to it, and more metal giants entered the world, with these ones being half again as tall as their comrades, which easily made them as tall as the walls themselves. That put them at about 4 stories tall, which made them no small adversaries. The walls of this fortress were more for show for the sake of the story than anything practical, and they were not fully designed to withstand a siege, much less to handle whatever weapons these enemies wielded.

The defenders, eager to imprison some fae, now found themselves trapped in turn, for the landscape outside the fortress had turned into a storm of deadly attacks that moved at high speeds. The inside of the fortress was not much better, and any pretense of defending the walls soon gave way to panic as everyone retreated towards the secret underground treasure vault. It could very well double as a tomb if the shaking of the fortress were any indication.

“Hope was not lost, for although all manner of enemies appeared as if from nowhere,” It-Has-Pockets continued as she hastened to the vault, the whole time internally chastising herself as her narrative went from bad to worse, “so too did unexpected allies that would help to turn the tide.”

“Mecha! The word is ‘Mecha’!” Those are mechs!”

I was already scrambling to summon forth my children and any Platinum or Diamond Adventurers I could get ahold of. Nabonidus had already shifted his full attention to what was unfolding, and the situation warranted a full response. Soon, everyone and his brother would somehow converge on that fight, and I needed to be there to oversee it.

Direct participation would unfortunately be less than ideal. I have too much metaphysical weight, and even my very presence can shift the story that It-Has-Pockets is telling in strange ways. Essentially, there must be some aspect of fairness, and since I am such a heavy-hitter, something must happen to balance the scales. No one wants to pick a fight with something that can contest an Emperor, and so I have to wait in the wings and offer support. However, the enemy has already taken the field, and so my children should be more than fair to even the odds.

From what Nabonidus had told me so far, the solution to one problem would beget another, and this whole affair would be an exercise in bloody mathematics to ensure all the people I care about come out of it alive.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

In hindsight, I really should have briefed everyone in my inner circle about every possible kind of weapon and adversary that I knew about through my many past lives. Sure, some people in this world knew of the concepts of big giant metal armor suits with lasers, missiles, and cannons as weapons, but those were mostly theoretical, with the prototypes stashed away in the most secure vaults of some temple or another. The gods had forbidden certain kinds of technology to be implemented beyond mere prototypes, and so the general masses were mostly oblivious to certain things.

How could I have predicted that mechs would be an issue?

Well, The Devourers fielded twisted and deformed versions of aircraft and artillery, all of it above and beyond what our own [Mages] and [Engineers] could replicate, but those had been far more of a tangled and unpleasant mess of machine and malformed flesh. These new adversaries were the real deal, and so I was working hard to relay relevant information to everyone who would be fighting against these mechs.

In simple terms, crack them open and rip out the person inside of them. The pilot is typically in the chest or the head. Failing that, go for the legs so they can’t walk any more.

The closest this world had to “guns” was something like the Gyrating Automatic Targeting Laser Induction Nanomagical Gun or the Target Obliterating Magic Induction Gnomish Urban Neutralizer, but those were less physical and more magical in both how they worked and what they targeted. They were anti-magic weapons, and there was no gunpowder involved, much less anything as technologically advanced as railguns and lasers. Even our own cannons and other forms of artillery used shot that only physically hit with about as much force as a kick from a mule, which was very survivable for anyone Silver or higher. If these mechs were truly more mechanical than magical constructs, then we would be just as well off using feather dusters as weaponry.

Fortunately, some of the more powerful magical Abilities were remarkably similar to technology. Tight beams of light that melted or obliterated everything on the receiving end were known, and the concept of missiles that cause explosions where they hit were a familiar sight on the battlefield. This world does have giants, and certainly there are giant monsters deep in the wilderness, so the Platinums and Diamonds should not be out of their depth when it comes to drawing parallels between our current foes and what they had faced in the past.

However, with everything Nabonidus is telling me, this fight is only going to get weirder by the minute. I will need to assign excitable and curious kobolds to wiser and older ones so that they can casually narrate exposition in the background. If the nearby Adventurers are paying attention, they may glean some clues as to what they are facing via the dialogue between those kobolds. Unfortunately, kobolds are not all-knowing entities, and they sometimes make stuff up in order to stay in character. With the fae being highly susceptible to shared belief influencing reality, this could also come back to bite us. We will just have to burn that bridge when we get to it.

By the time I arrived at my shrine outside the city to teleport to the closest intact shrine near where this fight was going down, many of my companions, children, and allies had arrived. The members of my flight were of course fully capable of teleporting on their own, but it was more efficient for one person to pay the cost in mana for a group. Seeing as how they would all be in a fight soon enough, that cost fell to me. The rest were either in other cities and would need to sort matters for themselves, or they were too slow to rally in time and would have to wait for the next wave.

Naturally, my shrine near the soon-to-be-dungeon in question had been obliterated in the fighting. Ergo, we would need to deploy nearby and fly over to the combat zone, which would easily take over ten minutes, which is an eternity for anyone under heavy fire. It had already been three minutes since my whelp alerted me to what was going on as I passively listened in, so the situation could be dire.

All was not lost. I could still reel in a very powerful fae, and with the circumstances of the battle going from performative to entirely real, the weight behind it would be far more impactful for shaping a dungeon and imprisoning whatever we can. I would probably be busy with emergency repairs and construction to shape things up for what this dungeon would need to be, for the situation has evolved above and beyond the scope of what the fortress there was built for. While I have some experience at World’s Hope with affecting repairs during a battle, this would be a first for actually designing and constructing new infrastructure that was aesthetically relevant to the story being told, all while being actively attacked.

This would be a story for the ages, and I hope to be the victor that gets to write it to my tastes.

Beneath the earth, something ancient and forgotten slumbered. Long ago, a war raged in the heavens and on the mortal earth. This ancient entity had lost that war, and, being too difficult to kill, it had been imprisoned. It slept, it dreamed, and it conserved its strength, waiting for the day that it would know freedom once more. But that which sleeps does not eternal lie. With strange ion cannons, even it could be freed.

Beneath the earth (but not as deep), something less ancient but equally forgotten lies dormant in its tomb. Death had not been the end of it, nor its ambition to conquer the world. Its undying legion had been buried with it in its tomb-city, and they would rise again to serve their king and conquer the earth.

In a cavern only slightly beneath the earth, a last holdout of [Cultists] of The Devourers were conducting a secret and profane ritual to summon forth one of their masters to this world. However, the shaking of the earth above caused one [Cultist] to make a mistake. Dark arts committed by secret cabals tend to be unforgiving, and one thing led to another that sent a spike of energy deeper into the earth. Their ritual failed, and the depths of that new hole was soon plumbed by that very same [Cultist] who was ceremoniously kicked into it.

In a secret underground treasure vault within a fortress under attack from giant metal men, It-Has-Pockets and a good number of the surviving kobolds took refuge. Though It-Has-Pockets continued to intone the words of her story, some of the kobolds were busy panicking like professionals. In their panic that was purely performative and not at all related to their imminent demise with little chance of being resurrected in a dragon’s egg, a few unnamed kobolds noticed a crack in the floor.

“How deep you think it goes?” one asked.

“All the way down,” another answered.

“I smell fresh air wafting up,” the first continued. “If we keep digging down, we can escape.”

This kobold continued to frantically widen the deep crack that went into the earth, even though the others tried to stop him.

“No, you fool! We aren’t meant to find the solution to save the day. You know not the powers you meddle with!”

So their conversation went, and in their scuffle, one bit another, and a drop of blood fell down and down and down that very same hole.

A particular [Cultist] had somehow survived the fall, even if his body was broken and mortally wounded. He found himself in a strange tomb, and there was a sarcophagus both conveniently nearby and conveniently empty. With great effort, he dragged himself towards it. With a final push of effort, he pulled himself up and over the edge, his body falling into it in such a way that it was properly oriented. If he was going to die, he would at least secure funeral arrangements for himself, or so was his reasoning. The nearby lid would be a luxury he would have to die without.

“Rise, my soldiers! Rise! Your king calls you to obey once more.”

Apparently, it was much harder to die in peace than he thought. An army of undead was awakening, which was a far more noisy process than he imagined it to be. The scraping of bone and metal upon stone was annoying by itself, but the pattern being repeated thousands of times over was a cacophony. Unfortunately, he could not do much about it, since his body was broken.

However, being a [Cultist], he has a few Abilities that involve sacrificing his life to some effect. Feeling petty and spiteful, he channeled all his life energy and mana into a blast at some very important looking crystal and metal thing near where the voice of that “king” he heard had been. The device shattered, the tomb ruptured, the [Cultist] died, and a crack opened up in the floor, one that went far deeper than this tomb.

And down that crack, unseen by all, fell a drop of blood, one that had entered the tomb from the same large hole that had seen the [Cultist] arrive in said tomb. And down that drop of blood fell, deeper still into the earth where an ancient power lingered for just the smallest taste of life to revive itself.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep