I took a long look at Rache, trying to sort out what I was feeling as well as what I was thinking. Rache was willing to talk about things related to scouting, if I remembered correctly. She was a lot more alert than the Mikas, if “alert” was the right word for it. Responsive, maybe?

  Two Relic Sites, and they were connected. What could it possibly mean? I thrummed my fingers silently on the microfiber of my throne. I had a lot of speculation, none of it with much basis. Tabling that for a second. The animal den thing was a low priority. The totem and rug we got off the tiger scorpion thing were “Oh. Cool,” not “Oh cool!” At best they were situationally useful.

  The fishing platform was a little more tricky to evaluate. On the one hand, it screamed “limited time mini-game.” On the other hand, even if it was, accumulating a serious quantity of points would take a long time and almost certainly require some sort of Pay To Win.

  “Rikka, do you know if the fishing platform is permanent, or if it’s only there for a limited time.”

  “Your subordinate is incompetent.” She bowed her head. I waved away the apology and frowned.

  Not at her- she looked like Yoruichi in peasant garb, how mad could I be?

  No, I was just calculating what would give me the most bang for my order. There was the timber site, of course, and those resource sites did produce good stuff daily. Would it be worth it to spend an order building a road out there? Actually…

  Was there some way to get Rikka skin tight black leggings? And maybe change her hair up a bit? I forcefully shook my head. This wasn’t the time for that. At least I should wait until I can find gold-iris contact lenses.

  Timber had become a material we were short of, at the moment. We had a bare handful of hedgehogs left, and the expanding harvest range of the workers was only netting us a handful of trees a wave. Wood was useful for more than hedgehogs, of course. We needed it for construction work all over.

  It seemed crazy but… realistically, what would give me the most immediate benefits? Not the relic site. I learned my lesson there. Slow and steady does it. I could only launch one expedition a day so I might as well go after I had collected the rewards from the Eleventh Wave.

  Something about that statement tickled my hindbrain. I looked over at the Snoot of Joy for inspiration. A golden Dachshund statue had to inspire something, right? I kept looking at it until something clicked.

  Was it one expedition per day or was it one expedition per day per Relic Site?!

  It had never come up before. And there was no way to test the question now. But the idea set my mind on fire. Two sites, probably connected somehow. How irritating would it be if you had to alternate one site a day, back and forth, for who knows how many waves? Not that I would put it past the Devs. But there was a fine line between padding gameplay and actively wasting everyone’s time. It would be interesting to see where this particular setup falls.

  I nodded slowly. “Marci, to the Throne Room please.”

  I had had the foresight to pack all my workers off to the dorms for a good rest before sending out the scouts. Evicting the Blue Roses in the process. Ah well. Suffering is part of life. I miss out on what will surely be the glorious return of Hunter X Hunter, the Blue Roses get to stand around on a battlement all day.

  Marci… didn’t exactly look rested and refreshed, but I would swear she looked better than she did before. At least she didn’t look quite as willing to launch an industrial action.

  “What?” She asked, in her usual debonair way. Then, to my utter shock, she tacked on “Tower Master?”

  “I wanted to get an estimate from you. Amount of time to build a road from here to the newly discovered Red Teak resource site.”

  “One… barely.”

  “Barely?”

  “It’s at the far edge of how far out we can build a road in one order time. No chance of doing anything else in that time either. It’s straight up the road until we reach the spot we make the extension from, and then we’ll be digging and laying the rest of the way. And it’s not a small distance.”

  Holy crap. The dorm rest thing was real. It was one hundred percent real. And… the dorm had limited slots available for rest, because the longer an Awakened rested, the more bonuses they would build up. I’d have to check what they were, exactly. I couldn’t recall.

  A lot of base building games had a similar mechanic. You could put your summons (or whatever) in specific rooms and have them do a job which would generate resources or something. But they would get tired, eventually, so you had to give them a chance to rest in their dorms or in a break room or something. It really encouraged padding out your roster, so you could keep the rooms running all the time.

  “Dumb question but what if you didn’t build the road? Could you get to the resource site and harvest timber?”

  “Not in one order, no.” She gave me a filthy look. It was almost refreshing. My body is unused to such high levels of Management-Labor cooperation.

  “Right, because it is very far away. Got it. And if you did have a road and went, say, tomorrow?

  “Can do it in one.” Marci said, in the tone of one admitting that, theoretically, one could bunny hop from Battery Park to Hoboken eventually.

  “Good stuff.” I nodded. I opened my mouth to give the order, then hesitated. I was looking for what would benefit me today. The road wouldn’t. At most, it would give me a benefit tomorrow. But there was a chance the relic site would give me an advantage today. I quickly reviewed our defenses. They hadn’t been substantially changed from the Tenth Wave in terms of design. They had just been heavily reinforced. Was there something I should use this order on?

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  No, not really. “Give me one minute, please.” I checked the Gnome Market. Happy day- they were running a special discount on caltrop fields. Each field covered ten square feet, and they only cost fifty runed bones each!

  “I’ll buy Ten!”

  “I’m sorry, Valued Customer! Our special promotional offer has a four item limit! You can buy Caltrop Field at its full price if you want to buy more!”

  I’d never seen it in the store before. “How much is it normally?”

  “Two hundred Runed Bones, and worth every bone!”

  I gagged. Then I bought four. Goddamn bait and switch…

  “Marci? Build that road please.”

  “Yes, Tower Master.”

  “WAIT! I just remembered something!”

  “Yes, Tower Master?”

  “Back to the dorms for a minute, Marci. I forgot I had one more thing to do.”

  “Versai, join me in the Throne Room please.” It didn’t feel like the right place for this, but she would rather die than let me visit her room, and I didn’t feel comfortable inviting her over to my little house, so. Limited options for places with any degree of privacy.

  “Yes, Tower Master?”

  “Remind me, can you go out on the balcony?”

  She reached over and touched the air in front of the balcony. “It seems not.”

  “Ah. Damn. Okay. Anyway.” I shifted around. I don’t know why this felt weird. I wasn’t romantically interested in Versai, but I also didn’t have any kind of model for this that wasn’t some kind of romantic thing. I’d also rather jump from the balcony than blush and stammer “It’s not like I like you or anything, baka!”

  “What is it, Tower Master?” She looked concerned. I grinned a little and waved it away.

  “Well, after the whole music box thing, I wanted to do something to remind you that you aren’t alone anymore.”

  She staggered, then gave me a look I couldn’t read. “Say that again?”

  “You aren’t alone, Versai. It had to have been Hell. The only one who remembered the Tower and the battles, over and over. Explaining the world to new Tower Masters, over and over. Meeting the same old awakened faces and they never recognized you. Over and over again.”

  She didn’t say anything. I couldn’t read her at all, and I felt the need to babble bubbling up behind me. I cut it off hard. “Here. For you.”

  I handed over the gift box I got from Soft Feathers.

  She opened it slowly. A look of wonder stole across her face, and she lifted out a little wobbling red dome, decorated with bits of crushed nuts sitting on a little gold-colored tray.

  “A jelly dessert. A real jelly dessert. We used to have them as special treats when we were kids, and there would always be trays of them at balls. There was an utter scandal over Baroness Keva eating one and making the most hungry eyes at Count Wedermane. Not minding at all that Wedermane’s wife was standing right next to him. I was there. I laughed myself sick watching everyone squawk and squeal, scandalized. There was a wide ranging debate over exactly what the symbolism of it all was, and even some calls to ban jellies.”

  She giggled. She picked up the little spoon that was in the box and scooped out a bite. Her eyes squeezed shut, as the flavor and memories hit her together.

  “Dad, My Lord Father, would serve them at big banquets too. Apparently they are a pain to make. It was a great way to show off. Uncle Sebastian would always grab one or two and make them wiggle where only my sisters and I could see. He would wiggle them all around while making the silliest faces, and we couldn’t laugh or we would get scolded for breaking decorum. But the jellies looked so silly, wobbling and bouncing around. Sometimes, they even looked like guests at the party. Uncle would slide his eyes over at someone, then slide them back to us, and the jelly would wobble in the funniest way you ever saw.”

  I smiled, encouraging her to talk but she didn’t see me now. She was back in Gradden March, back at the capital, back in a time and place where things made sense. When she had her family around her, and colleagues who respected her, and a queen worth fighting for. When she wasn’t just monster bait, but the champion. The person her queen sent out to get things done the ‘easy’ way.

  “The Queen didn’t like them, but it was a texture thing for her. She liked deserts that were crunchy. Loved cookies and biscuits. You’d never think it to look at her, but she did. That’s how you knew you were in good with her at a banquet. If she liked how everything was going, she’d bring out cookies and little glasses of strong, sweet wine. If she wasn’t happy, well. Jellies or no dessert at all.”

  That was almost cute, given what she had told me about her country. She spooned up another tiny bite. “Except that one time we visited Earl Ypren and he had the bright idea of a jelly studded with cookies. It didn’t work at all. It wasn't exactly funny, watching her dissect the dessert. It was fascinating. Everybody knew the Earl had messed up, but the Queen wasn’t about to fall out with him over dessert. So she made it excruciatingly awkward, carefully scraping every tiny bit of jelly off the cookies. I had a hell of a time keeping a straight face, but Uncle Sebastian had done a good job training all of us by then.”

  I honestly thought that was going to end with something horrifying. My image of Versai’s queen was currently around “Maleficent” verging on “Cersei.” Sounds like she was more human than I gave her credit for being.

  The last Queen of her nation, holding the line against endless hordes of monsters. Corrupt ministers, cowardly nobles, rot in the church, all the usual Feudal politicking that comes with not having a big standing army that belongs to the kingdom alone. Versai described her as a hard woman. I could believe it. Versai must have been plenty hard too, to be her bodyguard.

  She scooped another bite into her mouth. And another. She didn’t cry, or laugh. She was just lost in memory.

  She didn’t say anything more. Versai took her time and slowly ate it all up. When she was done, she carefully put the spoon and tray back in the box. The bluest eyes I had ever seen stared into mine. “Thank you. Thank you very much. It has been… forever.”

  I smiled, or tried to. “You aren’t alone anymore. And, here.” I pulled the rest of the boxes out of my inventory. “I don’t have an unlimited supply or anything, the shop isn’t consistent about keeping things in stock. But… enjoy.”

  A little while later, I sent out my workers and put everything in place for the coming wave. I didn’t rush Versai. She had more than earned a break.

  A caltrop has two related jobs- stopping people moving by poking holes in their feet, and stopping people from moving by making them scared they are going to poke holes in their feet. It works on cavalry too, and like a minefield, it’s most effective in tight quarters.

  If I could keep the monsters contained in narrow channels like before, I’d absolutely lay down a carpet of them there. But I can’t. And there really wasn’t much point in putting them at the bottom of the moat. What are they going to do that a thirty foot drop isn’t? No, I had a simpler, dumber, idea. I’d put them on top of my roof.

  If any monsters were going to be throwing murder baboons again, they would have to get through the gap between the overhead cover, and the battlements. The overhead cover was quite high on account of the pikes, so it’s not like there wasn’t a sizable gap there. I wasn’t too concerned- I’d noticed that the monsters had strong arms but bad aim. If the baboons smacked into the walls and fell into the moat, that was fine. If they smacked into the walls and blew up, that was less fine, but still acceptable. But if they landed on the roof, they could scurry around where we couldn’t spot them, then drop down and kill our people. Not fine.

  So I stuck the foot stabby things in the most logical place. On the roof over our heads.

  The life of a genius is lonely. We endure, for the sake of the world.

  Marci and the Judiths came racing back just ahead of the setting sun. Not sure how that worked, but they were hauling down that road.

  “Scouts, get out there. Same as before- mark ‘em, don’t get tangled up with ‘em, and if you are hurt, come straight back. Artillery, fire as they come into range. Miyuki, start circling the walls and keeping an eye out for stealth units.” I had already put everyone where I wanted them. It wasn’t too difficult to plan out now. The experience of ten waves had added up.

  Miyuki started her patrol. Goddess, please let me draw another sniper soon. These concealed units are doing my head in, and I don’t like just having one of any type of unit.

  Yoko had her incense up and spreading around the Rampart. The Mikas were in place, locked in and waiting for the enemy to show its ugly face. My artillery was holding still, waiting. The moon cleared the trees. No drums or strange weather, this time.

  There were noises in the woods, strange Kree-Kree-Kree sounds. A pillar of smoke rose up, and Radz wheeled around to drop a mortar on it. I flinched at the explosion, and then again when the forest suddenly glowed with burst of lime green after the blast. Rache came racing across the clearing, barely a stitch on her.

  “MEDICS, Stand by to heal!” She was getting progressively more naked just in the short time I was looking at her. There was something green on her, eating away at her. Then she was covered in bandages and sticking plasters, the two medics working to keep her alive. They kept going. And going. And going. It took an agonizingly long time before they stopped.

  “Sorry boss. Some horn-toad looking critters out there, and they spit some nasty stuff.”

  Ranged units. I knew it was coming. But the one-two combo of thrown murder baboons and ranged units was sick. And, judging by the secondary explosions, they blew up when you killed them too.

  I started grinning. This isn’t great. Of course it’s not great. Acid is nasty stuff, a Damage Over Time effect. Really. It’s not good. But they blow up, and I’d bet they spill their acid where they fall.

  “Artillery, hold your fire until targets reach the clearing. Rikka, fall back.”

  The Eleventh Wave probably thought it was getting the drop on me. Funny. I felt the same way about it.