Chapter Thirty: Preparations

Chapter Thirty: Preparations

The next week was a blur of frenetic activity as the monastery prepared for the expedition. As Tom and Rosa had entered the monastery for the first time, he had noted the hustle and bustle, thinking to himself that the level of activity could not be regular.

He was correct. The monks had already been hard at work, both preparing for the larger scouting expedition, and also for their eventual war of extermination. But after their meeting with Sunrise and Sunset, preparations of the monastery reached a fever pitch.

The Abbess and Abbot had begrudgingly accepted Darius as an addition to the expedition, and he was sent to their healers contingent to make necessary arrangements for the mission.

Tom and Rosa were welcomed wholeheartedly after demonstrating their martial prowess, and were invited back to the monastery each day that week for training and other preparations.

Tom was surprised to find that none of the monks held even the slightest grudge at their own being bested by outsiders. Even more surprising, none of the opponents he had faced directly held any kind of animosity towards him.

The monks were utterly pragmatic where combat was concerned. They viewed the experience as demonstrative almost to the point of being enlightening.

For them, martial arts were a way of expressing their devotion to Goddess, for being able to better destroy mana beasts and other profane entities was akin to prayer for them. Both Tom and Rosa found themselves harangued for more duels throughout the week. Abbess Sunrise stepped in after three days of constant bouts to put a more reasonable limit to them. They were encouraged to train, of course, to better learn how to work with the monks for the expedition, but there were other types of preparations to make too.

After the meeting, Tanya was housed in the monastery directly, to better facilitate communication with Wayrest. Tom and Rosa, though staying with Rosa’s family in Horizon, also became pseudo-liaisons for Wayrest during their time at the monastery each day.

Negotiations were flowing smoothly. General Steel was still acting head of the Council, and was extremely keen to utilise Wayrest’s new resources to help the monks.

Since the siege, the Hunters and Guards had combined to break apart any large pockets of resistance to stop any orc armies from reforming in the Deep. It had been a gruelling exercise, but they had managed it.

There were still tens of thousands of orcs spread throughout the Deep, and exterminating them would be the work of years. Extreme vigilance and dedication would be necessary. But for now, the Hunters were sufficient for the relentless pursuit of their eradication.

Over the course of the siege, the civil war, and now the eradication efforts, a huge amount of new Idealists had manifested in Wayrest. Everyone, villagers and city-dwellers, farmers and nobles, old and young, had suffered. Everyone had been forced into unusual and unique circumstances. Convictions had been tested, broken or forged anew. Moments of enlightenment had fallen like rain.

Although Wayrest had been scoured, many hidden gems had been revealed. They had suffered, but grown stronger for it. Thousands of new Idealists had added their strength to Wayrest.

The stories of the exploits of the Hunters during the siege had led to many of these new Idealists joining their ranks. It still seemed odd to Tom that people would actually want to join them. The restrictions on Ideals had been lifted, and membership was purely voluntary now.

Val had given him some insight into the matter. The conditions in the city during the siege and the civil war had been volatile. Villagers fleeing the village rings in the night as orcs swept in, pillaging. Neighbour fighting neighbour over ideological differences, over food, over weapons, over safety, all while a voracious horde pressed upon their walls. People became heroes and villains. Some rebelled, others stood firm. Some became vicious, others found new depths of charity. All were tested.

It was no wonder, then, that many of the new Ideals manifested were those that would have seen people exiled were it not for the change in Church doctrine. And, even though that no longer meant mandatory exile to the Hunters, the hardships people had endured had given many new perspectives on life.

Though they had not been Hunters, though they were no longer required to join them, the paths they had been unceremoniously thrust down resonated with them. So when Val had called for recruits, they came in droves.

But the Hunters were not the only Idealist faction that had grown. The Guards, stalwart defenders, the Idealist army of Wayrest, had also seen their numbers swell. Many of those who had risen to protect themselves, their neighbours, their city, and had manifested Ideals for it, had found a new home with them. Many more had joined purely because of the sheer heroics General Steel had exhibited during the climactic battle of the siege.

Of course, there was no shortage of those who had learned to survive unseen, to make stealth and speed their armour during those dark times. Many people had their faith tested, and found unshakeable resolve. A few, rare and precious, had found deep reservoirs of kindness, compassion and caring. And so, the Watch, the Church, and the Healers had all grown too.

General Steel, being the martial genius he was, had many ideas for how best to utilise this new strength. Val, as Huntmaster, and the new Director of the Watch, were both adaptable and pragmatic and were more than happy to test his plans.

New combined unit tactics were being rolled out. The Guards still made the bulk of Wayrest’s Idealist forces, but under General Steel they were reorganised to work more closely with the Hunters and the Watch. To every Guard battalion an attache of Hunters and Watchmen were given, to act as irregulars and scouts, shoring up the Guards’ weaknesses and providing them with much higher tactical flexibility. They were branded as Wayrest’s new Expeditionary Army.

More traditional units still existed as Wayrest’s Defence Force. Guards still patrolled the walls. The Watch still patrolled the village rings. The Hunters still patrolled the Deep. It was their task to keep Wayrest safe. The task would mostly rest on them to exterminate their remaining infestation.

For the last month or so since its formation, the Expeditionary Force had been blooding itself in the Deep, honing their tactics at both battalion and unit level. Many of the members, whether they were the mainstay Guards or attached Hunter or Watchman units, had not been soldiers or warriors before the siege. These initial extermination efforts into the Deep were a chance for them to learn how to properly utilise their new Ideals, especially in combat, and how to operate as soldiers.

It was a very effective method of training. Ideals had progressed rapidly, and even more were manifested. There was a reason Wayrest had its Reapings, after all.

The individual battalions, of which there were ten, were five hundred strong each. Each was further broken into four companies of one hundred, then divided into individual units. The remaining one hundred from each company was filled out with Hunter and Watch detachments, along with a small complement of Healers. Each battalion also had an attached enchanter, alchemist, and a team of engineers.

All said and done, Wayrest had strength to spare. The village rings were being rebuilt and repopulated. The Defence Force had the infestation under control. The Expeditionary Force, however, was in need of work.

And General Steel had just the place he wanted to send them.

Tanya spent every waking minute of the week using her long distance communication skill to negotiate between the Lord General and Abbess Sunrise and Abbot Sunset. Once the expedition left, she would be spending only slightly less time in conference.

Both Sunrise and Sunset were happy to accept help from Wayrest, but they needed to mount the expedition first to scout the enemy. It didn’t matter how sharp your sword was if you had nowhere to strike with it. They also needed further time to marshall their full host of Idealist monks and soldiers.

Wayrest also needed to elect a true head for the Council and put an end to the emergency measures enacted after the siege before they could vote to send the Expeditionary Force to assist Horizon with the infestation in the Proving Grounds.

There were some other minor details to work out as well. Overall command of the combined forces was one such issue, but General Steel was happy to cede to the monks so long as the Expeditionary Force retained a fair amount of autonomy.

Horizon was also keen to utilise Hunters to form clean-up squads for the Grounds after the battle, but was stuck on the Monastery’s insistence that they train with the monks first. The Monastery also wanted to send monks to help clear the Deep of orcs once they’d dealt with the bulk of the infestation, but Wayrest was not insisting on them being trained with the Hunters, preferring instead to put them straight to work.

Personally, Tom thought each training with the other was the best way to move forward. It would benefit both groups, and only delay them bringing additional man-power to bear on the problem of eradication by an insignificant amount in the grand scheme of things. Still, their leaders quibbled back and forth about what, to Tom at least, seemed like trivialities.

Other things too, such as matters of costs for supplies for the Expeditionary Force and other matters of ongoing cooperation, such as mutual defence, and a potential combined sort of Expeditionary Force to hunt further infestations, were unable to be sorted within the week, though Sunset would continue to negotiate them while Sunrise accompanied the expedition.

Tom and Rosa’s spirits were buoyed though, as they helped to work out the fine details of the agreement. After travelling through the Grounds, worrying about Rosa’s family, it felt like now they were making real, measurable progress, both on a macro-scale with the negotiations, and on a micro-scale, in terms of their individual progress as Idealists from their training with the monks.

Although Tom found helping with the negotiations satisfying for the progress made, he would not lie to himself and say he enjoyed them more than the training.

Most days, he sparred against Mateo, his first opponent that he had fought in the hall. Without the use of his expensive alchemical poisons, which would be a waste for training, and defeat the point of it besides, Tom had a much harder time against the monk, winning only two in every five bouts. Still, over the week, he steadily improved.

It turned out Mateo held the Ideals of the Warrior, the Avalanche, and the Glacier. His fighting style revolved around smooth, flowing movements and inexorable, heavy attacks, and using them to finish a fight quickly. As Tom’s skillset leaned towards defence and damage sharing, and with his familiars subbed for extra speed, strength and reflexes, their every bout turned into long, drawn out affairs where they both had to dig deep if they wanted any chance of victory.

Over the week, he also trained with Lyanna. This, apparently, inspired jealousy amongst the monks, and they often watched their bouts with naked envy. The woman had taken the loss graciously, and wanted to train against Tom more. She felt she had plenty to learn from him, and plenty to teach him too.

To that end, they sparred unarmed, her restricting her strength and speed somewhat to account for the difference in constitution without him using poisons. His unarmed combat improved drastically, especially his footwork and striking.

He was also interested to learn more about the woman’s Ideals, information which, surprisingly, she was happy to share.

Her Ideal of Faith had two passives, one of which increased her strength, the other which increased her speed. A third increased all of her attributes based on her faith in herself, a rather nebulous ability. The fourth was the channelled cycle skill she had used in the duel.

Her second Ideal, Asceticism, Tom found absolutely fascinating. Once again, she had two passives, the first increasing her speed and defence when not wearing armour, and the second increasing her reflexes and strength when unarmed. Her third skill was a weapon ritual which gave enormous bonuses when subsumed, and much less when summoned. But her last skill was the strangest. It was a personal storage space skill that allowed her to bend space around her slightly when it was empty.

As she was one of the few Idealists he had met with more passives than he had, Tom learned a lot about leveraging them in unique ways from her. She seemed to recognise how much Tom appreciated this, and took extra care in mentoring him. After all, she was a decade older than him and several tiers higher in her progression.

Tom was disappointed to learn she wasn’t joining the expedition. As powerful as her skills were, she had no easy way to shrug off debuffs.

It was a sobering thought that a monk as powerful as her was not fit for the task. Tom just hoped he was equal to it.