Empire of Zero part 2

AN: Ok, so in this part there will once again be a unit codex at the end, though this time it will not only show off a unit that was brought over from the Empire Total War game, but also some enemy units. Do keep in mind that I started writing this chapter just after I uploaded the other chapter, shortly after posting I left to go on a vacation with some family members. At the time I started writing this I didn't have internet on my laptop for 7 days because of the fact that the location of the vacation is a bungalow park in the middle of nowhere.

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Very nice place to rest and relax, very bad if you want to do anything related to the remainder of the world. Because of that this chapter will most likely have large parts of text written before I've had the chance to read whatever comments there were about the last one. While that will only be the first 25 pages or so, that's still some 7k words.

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Anyways enough of that, I hope you guys will enjoy this chapter, as always, please review on what I can do better, though no outright flames since I will not take those seriously nor can I actually better myself with those. However I do know I have likely left some mistakes in this even after checking it over for nearly two weeks before I put it online.

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It is after all 110 pages long in my word document so the chance of me actually managing to pick out all mistakes isn't high. Thus you are better off writing a well-reasoned argument about what went wrong, giving me the chance to do better either next time or during the rewrite of this. Thank you for the consideration.

Disclaimer:

I do not own anything related to the Zero No Tsukaima franchise, nor will I probably ever do so, with the only thing I own in this story being the OC's I introduce. For the Total War side of this, I only own a digital copy from Empire Total War (plus most of its DLC's) and a CD Gold version of Rome Total War, and a such I do not own the actual rights to anything, that is in the capable hands of Creative Assembly (though I was at one point not so sure about that capability when they made Rome Total War 2, but hey, they managed to do much better again afterwards, so they're still the most capable at handling strategy games in my opinion) I also do not make any money off of this story in any way, shape or form.

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''Language'' = Regular spoken language in a language that is natural to the person. (Meaning one of the languages that they speak so fluently they literally think to themselves in that language. And yes that doesn't have to be your birth language if you grow up with two or more languages being spoken near you consistently.)

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''Language''=

Text written like this means that it is a language not natural to the person, in the last chapter I made I wrote it down in the language of origin no matter if the person listening to it can understand it or not and you just had to realize if they knew what was being said from the surrounding text.

In this chapter however I'm making it so that as long as the person understands the language but it's not their native language, it will be written in cursive English (for instance while Piet van Vlimmeren can both understand and speak French, it is not his natural language so it will be written in cursive English. However if somebody were to speak to him in for instance Arabic, he just wouldn't understand it at all so it would be written down in cursive Arabic.)

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Language= Text written like this a form of mental communication. For instance the whole VR to reality transition will cause the generals to develop slight psychic bonds with their troops. Not hive-mind level psychic connection, but closer to the level of Jean Grey connecting all X-men team members through their minds connection.

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Language= Text usually involving someone trying to forcibly have another person either submit or perform an action through active mind control. Will also be used by both sides during such a battle if it causes supernatural powers to be exhibited in the outside world or by a single person exerting high levels of supernatural power in a ritual/spell.

With supernatural powers I don't mean regular magic but more like as in close to Godlike levels of power being used to force a person's will or desires upon reality (like say teleporting a large group of people between worlds while also granting a large number of them actual physical bodies, life and free will).

Steve POV

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Sure thing my friend, continue on with the negotiations, I'll organise our forces into setting up camp. This is all very interesting, but also worrying, an advanced society that loves to act out the past would most likely have been easier to deal with then a society with actual energy controlling humans calling themselves mages.

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The good part about this though is that we almost certainly won't have to deal with advanced fire-arms considering how all their constructs only had melee weaponry as far as what we could see. Though they do know fire-arms exist considering they used at least somewhat correct terminology for the one that Piet was using but seemed to be surprised that we used them centuries ago so the advanced fire-arms can still be crossed out for the most part.

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A disadvantage is though that there will most likely be no modern plumbing system in place, which will heighten the chance of us or other members of our armed forces getting sick way too much for me to be comfortable with. Lets hope these people have some kind of replacement system for it that is based on their 'magic'. If not, we'll need to create a sewer system the moment we get an area where we can start up a town or city.

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Though for most of us, this might just be an escape away from home, away from being tortured with the knowledge of all those we cared about that aren't alive anymore. A second chance at life so to speak, with both new possibilities we never even considered but also new dangers we always considered little more then fairy tales and things of a past that is far behind us? Food for thought for later on, right now I'll need to get started on that encampment for our troops to temporarily reside in.

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Hmm ok this will be interesting to actually work out. As far as I can see we do not have enough equipment to setup an encampment for an army of our size, the only ones with the gear and supplies to build an encampment are the settler infantry units and we only have four groups of them in total with each only having enough supplies to make temporary residences for four or five times their number. We'll need to ask the locals for supplies, anyone volunteering to go ask?

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While I let it be silent for a moment mentally, the rider rode up to me and spoke relatively loudly ''Commandante, nous havons permission for la settlement du une campe'' Why the hell are you speaking in what even I can understand is badly mangled French mixed with a few English words lieutenant? After a moment I got a reply.

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Because sir I wanted to make our regular troops seem a bit incapable of communicating efficiently, so that if they have some kind of listening spell listening in on us they will underestimate our capabilities if for some reason there aren't multiple generals in the field.

Since they probably know you and the other generals can communicate perfectly fine with each other, but they do not know anything about the communication methods between the troops of different groups that they consider to belong to different factions, especially since we were originally marching to fight each-other.

I have to admit that is a good idea. ''Good, go back and report our need for more supplies to create a camp.'' Understood lieutenant, and well done for coming up with the idea on the spot. Can you go to the castle and tell one of the other generals about our supply problems in public? This way at least some of them won't understand fully that we don't have to talk in person to each other to transmit information.

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He nodded, then saluted and yelled out loud ''Oui Commandante!'' while mentally replying with a Sir, yes sir! After which he rode off in the direction of the castle again. Wait a second… damnit reacting to messages will now take a whole damn lot longer if we keep having to send people back and forth to verbally bring over the orders to keep up the ruse of us not having a reliable form of fast communication… we need to introduce the telegraph or something similar to this place fast.

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3rd person POV, inside the dining room of the castle with the diplomats

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Once a servant had arrived to tend to the guests horses, the group walked inside with the headmaster leading the group over to the dining hall to continue both conversation and negotiations, where the headmaster started up once again ''Please sit down everyone, doing so will make this conversation a bit less uncomfortable, while my secretary will ask one of the maids to supply some food for your guards.''

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While seemingly somewhat wary, after a few moments of exchanging looks between each other and getting hopeful looks shot in their direction by Louise, the three generals agreed and sat down, with Louise and Saito in the middle of their group, while their 4 men decided to sit on the outer edges of their group at the main table. Meanwhile Matilda stepped outside and asked a black-haired maid that walked past to get some refreshments for a group of 13 people.

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''So, while a round of introductions has probably already happened outside, I hope nobody minds if a new one happens now to ease communication.'' After getting no rebuke from any of the people currently there, he nods to himself and continues ''I will start this one myself, my name is Osmond Osman and I am the headmaster of the Tristanian Academy of Magic, which the building we are currently in is part of.'' To answer the strange looks he got from some of the extra-dimensional visitors.

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''And no, I'm not joking with the name, that is my actual name. My parents simply had a strange sense of humour.'' After getting some non-plussed looks sent his way, he sighed and motioned for the person next to him to continue, which happened to be Jean Colbert ''My name is Jean Colbert as you already know, and I am a professor at this academy.''

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After this it was Tabitha's turn once again ''Tabitha d'Orleans. Noble from Gallia.'' Kirche who was next spoke, though she was still visibly somewhat shaken from the earlier conversation outside ''My name is Kirche von Zerbst, a member of the Germanian nobility.'' Matilda, who had come back and sat down on the other side of the headmaster while Tabitha was talking, now introduced herself ''I am Matilda Longueville, the headmasters secretary and the main person to go to in case of logistical matters.''

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Saito POV

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Ok so we should also introduce everyone including all the current guards. Shall we let everyone introduce themselves this time around? Also Piet, though it was effective, a bit less thunder and lightning, it probably won't impress them as much when you're sitting down instead of towering over them. I could almost feel Piet grumble at that statement.

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Honestly though while it was necessary at that point, if we keep doing it the whole thing would lose effectiveness at some point in the near future which would be bad if we ever came into a situation where we need to cow people in a non-violent but still aggressive manner afterwards.

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I will not go on the attack but if one of them is stupid enough to do something like the redhead tried back there I will react. Both our men and Ms. Vallière deserve much better than the drivel that she spouted when we were outside. That is probably the best I could expect from him, it's a wonder everyone has been handling this situation so well ever since we arrived here anyways.

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I can all but feel Louise puff up with pride beside me from her inclusion in that statement, that just does it. The moment this is over we're going to look into that girls past and if necessary call whatever equivalent this place has to child services on her family, her level of confidence is somewhere close to that of people that were systematically abused in their childhood. If there is no child services… lets just say that those people won't even dare speak a bad word to Louise ever again once Steve, Piet and Pierre are done with them.

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For the sake of keeping face can you also re-introduce yourself Louise? At least some of them won't know about our ability to non-verbally communicate at some level of range yet, and it is best to keep it that way so we can surprise enemies with it when on the battlefield. I looked at her, as though to ask for confirmation on the idea of re-introducing ourselves, instead of simply wanting to be able to see the emotions on her face.

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I agree, as long as you will explain some more about both it and the world you call home Sir Hiraga. While she communicated this, she looked at me in the physical word and nodded to me, causing me to give her a smile. Most certainly milady, though call me Saito, I was never one for titles and if I'm allowed to call you Louise you should most certainly be allowed to call me by my first name. I got a shy smile in return along with her reply You have yourself a deal Saito.

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Well since Pierre was the one to give our names last time around and they probably have the at least somewhat true impression that I'm the most talkative one of our group, I should start with the introductions this time around. ''My name is Saito Hiraga, or Hiraga Saito as it is pronounced in my homeland. I am a general in the great army of the British Empire, or Great Britain as it is called nowadays.''

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I gave a slight nod to Piet who sat on my left side ''I am called Piet van Vlimmeren, I am the general of the United Provinces forces seen outside, though our name has been changed since the time the scenario of this simulation happened and it is currently called the Netherlands.''

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Wait I know that it's called La Néerlandais in French as I heard him call it that once while he and Pierre were talking about their home countries in French, so it's one of the few words I understand in it, just how deeply does the translation go that it turns around how I understand the language completely? Its almost as if it is second nature to me now?

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While thinking this I heard one of our guards on that side introduce himself as ''Jean-Pierre de Beaufort, member of the generals bodyguard in the French Royal army.'' Hmm it doesn't translate last names though, with only Piet's name it could have been a coincidence, with two different last names from two different languages however it cannot just be one, whomever originally designed this spell must have been a really intuitive and capable person to be able to make it do that.

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For it to be able to get the meaning behind what words are said and thus be able to discern whether something is the name of a person, country or group it not only forces the spell to gain the ability to not translate things when necessary but also to discern the exact intent from the person speaking. Though why does it not keep the names of their armies/countries in the original language?

While thinking about that I heard the next soldier introduce himself ''My name is Didier de Bordeaux, member of the generals bodyguard in the French Royal army.'' After that it was Louise's turn, causing us to turn towards her ''My name is Louise de la Vallière, I'm a member of the Tristanian nobility and fourth in line for the Tristanian crown.''

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Ok we already had that once but… wait a second… she's fourth in line for the crown?! Looking around the room I can see that pretty much nobody else seems to have expected this either, that statement including the staff members of the local academy except for that headmaster. Wait a minute… I kissed a princess… not the crown princess but still a princess.

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Why didn't she say anything about this while we were outside? Wait no that information could have turned her into a hostage if we had had hostile intentions, so the whole hiding it was a good idea, though still if she is the fourth in line for the crown then why the hell would she allow that girl Kirche insult her without going against her?

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Her status as a member of the royal family and probably the lowest ranked heir to have a realistic chance to actually become head of state should have given her immunity to that kind of behaviour since any person residing in a foreign country is usually very wary of making a person that is part of the highest levels of the native governmental hierarchy mad at them.

Miss Vallière I apologize if my behaviour was disrespectful in your eyes, we were treating you like a foreign dignitary while we should have treated you as a member of a foreign monarchy, my deepest apologies. Hopefully that will sooth any problems she had with our behaviour that she was to shy to speak up against.

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Standing up, I then knelt before her to show my respect towards both the title and the person, because being as humble as she is with her rank shows a very strong personality and sense of duty that should be respected. Though that makes the whole thing of hunting down those that are responsible if she has been abused a lot more problematic since those people are most likely also members of the royal family possibly including either parents or older siblings whom will have a higher claim to the throne and thus some level of diplomatic immunity.

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Saito speaks the truth on this matter your highness, we weren't behaving as we should have around royalty, I ask you to forgive our actions and we will do whatever we can to make up for it. Was Pierre's reply, who then also moved to kneel before her, after which Piet chimed in Milady I agree on this with both of my companions and would like to apologize for any misconduct, how can we make up for that?

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While the words might not have seemed so in and of themselves, the emotion in Piet's mental voice showed how much he'd already come to respect and care for this young lady we met less then an hour ago. It took us more then a week to get anything even close to this out of him while she got it within half an hour, she really is something.

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Though his behaviour is somewhat understandable, Louise unconsciously exudes this aura of hidden care for others. I do not understand how the others outside of us do not see it. She's also very beautiful, both inside and out. Maybe not a beauty in the most conventional way, but most certainly beautiful. And also has a near angelic voice to listen to, both in mental and in physical conversation.

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Wait very much not the time for that lets get back on track. And why are Piet and Pierre suddenly looking at me like that? Probably seeing the question written all over my face Piet said in English ''You were talking out loud idiot, though luckily for you it was in English so hopefully for all of us lady Vallière didn't get the ability to understand it from you during the bonding ceremony or she will be embarrassed even further and it could possibly even create a diplomatic incident.

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Especially if the local rules regarding social interaction with potential romantic intentions towards royalty are as strict as they were back home and she takes affront with such things being said in the open like that.'' Shit. Why in Kami's name did I feel the need to fuck this situation over sideways after it already was new territory to begin with?

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I might sometimes accuse the others of not being very social but I'm just as bad myself only on other parts of the subject. As I look up at Louise I see that her expression is focused on something very different, as if she hadn't even noticed that we were talking at all and, damnit my head! AAARRRRGHHH! The pain! What in Kami's name is going on with the information overloads I've gotten in the past fifteen minutes!

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Louise POV (from the moment she re-introduces herself)

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I hear the room fall silent after my declaration with both the men that I've summoned and those that I've known for years being completely surprised by this. The headmaster being the only exception, considering he is the one that I pleaded with for my status to be withheld from public knowledge at the school as much as possible. Some people who looked into me more deeply might have figured it out, but since most only saw me as a failure the number of people that put in that much effort is probably zero or something very close to it.

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Hopefully the men around me won't be mad at me for deceiving them like this outside even though they were supposed to become my familiars, actually they did all become my familiars even, the only difference from normal situations is it being one primary familiar and hundreds if not thousands of minor ones. And well, the whole them having their own free wills of course, but that is besides the point for now.

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Miss Vallière I apologize if my behaviour was disrespectful in your eyes, we were treating you like a foreign dignitary while we should have treated you as a member of a foreign monarchy, my deepest apologies. Saito isn't mad? He thinks I might be mad at them because they didn't treat me as a royal family member immediately?

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Of course I'm not angry, how could they possibly have known about this? As I turn to look at him I suddenly see he is on the ground, kneeling before me… why? Even if I'm a member of royalty, I'm also still only a teenager and the fourth in line for the throne, which as Eleonore loves to remind me doesn't give me all that much importance. I need to get him to stop soon, before his pride is damaged too much from showing such respect and submissiveness towards a failure like me.

Saito speaks the truth on this matter your highness, we weren't behaving as we should have around royalty, I ask you to forgive our actions and we will do whatever we can to make up for it. Not only Saito, but Mr. Pierre thinks the same way? And not only that but he knelt before me too? Why? I'm not that important, I've never amounted to much to this point, and probably never will despite what I've declared while we were outside. Milady I agree on this with both of my companions and would like to apologize for any misconduct, how can we make up for that? Not only them, but also Mr. Piet? Just why?

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I'm not important, I'm a nobody who's only true accomplishment is summoning an entire army. You didn't just summon them my inheritor, you also gave thousands life, cloth, weaponry and real bodies. A failure you are not, and never let anyone tell you such a thing. In. Brimir's. Name. Is. That! That voice isn't human that is pretty much certain. As I turn to look around me I see that everyone is frozen? What?

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''I transported you to my realm temporarily to talk for a moment, the connection I share with you and your familiars through the sheer amount of runes present is strong enough for me to be able to do this unlike in most other situations where a human or humanlike being is summoned.''

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I register the words, but what? Not important what did this beast do to everyone around me! No matter whether I'm a failure or not, I will not give up without a fight no matter what power this being has! I'm a Vallière and we do not surrender, no matter the odds! I turn around aiming my wand at the source of the voice and preparing to cast a spell the moment it turns violent.

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? POV

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Her determination to defend them, however misplaced, is truly something to respect. The void has chosen at least this candidate of my inheritance well. ''I am of no danger towards either you or your allies young one, though in this realm outside of the physical magic is not truly useful anyways. The only reason we're even appearing to speak towards each other instead of simply communicating through telepathy I believe one of your familiars called it?''

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She gives me a hesitant nod but doesn't lower her weapon and instead keeps herself at the ready for a fight in case my words were false. Not bad, not bad at all. ''The only difference between that and what we are doing now is that this realm is of the mind alone, so while both our bodies resemble the one you use in life and the one I used to have in my prime, that is just the physical representations we feel the most comfortable with and has little to do with anything else.''

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''You speak as if you aren't alive anymore, but you are clearly here in front of me? What do you mean with that?'' A light smile graces my face, the void certainly has chosen correctly with this one. ''While in a way you could still consider me alive, my physical body itself has long since died off.'' She looks even more confused at this. I should probably explain some and with the reaction I got the last time this happened I best not tell her my identity right this moment.

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After summoning a chair for her where this non-corporal body can actually sit on I begin. ''Let me tell you a story young one, though do please sit down, the tale will take a while. You have not to concern yourself with what is happening outside, we are currently in a time-dilation dimensional realm, meaning that even if we spend hours in here it will only be a second or so for the regular world.''

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She hesitantly takes my advice, obviously still concerned, but sits down and looks at me, now with curiosity and determination in her eyes alongside the already present confusion. ''I will, though if I feel that you are a threat to those I care about I will do whatever is possible to destroy you this I swear.''

It wasn't finished with a yell or even loudly at all really, but that steel her voice contained when she said it, if this was the physical world I would be very afraid for my health no matter how large the difference in both power and experience is supposed to be. Yes the void most certainly chose well.

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''I understand, though you have nothing to fear. Now to start with the story you should know that those soldiers you summoned weren't from a strange far-away country, they were instead from another planet in probably another dimension entirely.'' I was, as expected, interrupted here. ''Dimension? What in the Founder's name is a dimension? And how do you mean other planet?'' Hmm so that did get her attention, and good to know this was the right choice on what action to perform.

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''A dimension is a bubble of reality that contains 1 version of the universe in it. A planet is another name for a world, so say Halkeginia is located on a planet called Aethir for example, then the planet both the people you summoned and myself originally came from has many names, but one of the most accepted names in my time among the learned and wise was Terra, which when translated means roughly 'The ground which we stand upon.'

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The reason why I do not know if it is simply a different planet in the same dimension or another dimension entirely is because of the fact that neither science nor magic has developed far enough on our side of the connection to accurately judge our location in comparison to the location of my original home-world to see if we exist in the same dimension, or possibly even the same galaxy. Though the whole other dimension is more likely since until a century ago time didn't work the same between here and there.''

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She was staring at me with blank eyes. Okay, yeah that explanation went straight over her head… damnit the only reason I know this myself is that I can tap into the combined knowledge of those that have had to bear the runes of a void familiar at some point in history, and with the large amount of people currently bearing such runes that knowledge has grown a lot since the time when I originally designed the spell. How did I expect a teenager from a world where magic is seen as the only way forward to understand all this without giving her some time to learn about possible ways of improvement of society outside of magic.

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''A planet is the designation of a world. A world is what contains continents, with Halkeginia being one of such continents. Can you understand this so far?'' She nodded, seemingly both intrigued and a little annoyed. Reasonable enough reaction considering the situation, let's hope it remains that way. ''A star system is one like what we have here, with a few planets orbiting a sun while there are sometimes also moons orbiting the planets.

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That number has chances of being 0, or 1, or 2 or any other, however it is usually not too many because of the fact that the larger the amount of moons around a world the higher the chance that some of them will start interfering with each-other as they all try to orbit a planet. Understood?'' She once again nodded, though this time the curiosity and intrigue were definitely starting to overshadow her annoyance, which is a very good sign.

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''A galaxy is a group of at minimum hundreds of star systems that are within a relatively close distance of each-other, the exact number of star systems and how close the systems really are to each-other being very different for each galaxy. Still understood?'' She nodded once again. Good this is going much better then last time around with that arse who's in charge of Gallia. Why did one of my descendants have to be that insane? Nevermind, back to the topic.

''A dimension is as I said earlier the easiest to imagine as a bubble that contains a version of reality, which means it contains a large number of galaxies.'' Now I can see her eyes start to nearly pop out figuratively at the sheer size of that idea, good as long as she actually believes this it will be much easier to explain the other things about my home-world to her later.

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''Now that you realize just how big that is you probably realize why I do not know where the other world is.'' She nodded, but then seemed to realize something that made her frown very heavily. Should I ask her about it? No, I can do that later, I'll just finish the explanation first and then answer any questions she has.

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''However as I said the highest chance is it being a different dimension entirely seen by the fact that while more than 6000 years has gone past since my arrival here, only 1100 or 1200 years have gone past there. The only reason why it is still an option that time does work linearly is because of the chance that the portals that bring people over can be affected by time travel somehow due to the fact that some of the familiars summoned belonged to a later time period in the other world when compared to other familiars summoned during the same year.''

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''Assuming that what you are stating is the truth, which I can somehow feel is at least partially correct even though I've never heard of any of this information before, how does the spell connect the two worlds? I doubt that I personally posses enough willpower to perform such an action in any way shape or form, and even if I had enough it was never my intention to do something like this and the more complicated the effects of a spell are the more important the intention behind the casting becomes as far as I know?''

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''That feeling of somehow knowing that something you hear is at least in the right direction to being correct even though you have never heard of anything like it before is most likely you subconsciously accessing the cumulative knowledge of all the people currently baring your familiar runes.

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And once again, I tell you: do not doubt your own abilities so much. For your information you gave the raw power, though admittedly the main reason it worked was because the familiar ritual doesn't actually use the foci in your hand, or in other words your wand, to channel the magic, it instead uses your own body alone.''

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She is now gaping at me, which is understandable since I only found out about this after years of intense research on the spell to try and devise a way to send both familiars that do not remain with us and possibly cases such as myself back home. And I was the one who invented the damn spell in the first place. With the Church of the Founder forbidding any deep research into the subject, the chance of her finding anything more then the bare bones basics about it is very small.

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''Your main problem is most certainly not raw power young lady, and the combination of determination and intent you had when you were performing the summoning spell caused this to happen.'' She looked at me aghast ''Wait a second… does that mean that I just need to stop using a wand and my spells will start working? Its that simple?''

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Hmm though an interesting theory, most certainly not with her current spell types. If she tried casting those explosions with her bare hands there's a 50/50 chance she'd actually damage her hand instead of causing it to hit the target since they are the basic spell of her Void repertoire, meaning that she hasn't been able to get used to how to truly control void spells when using them without any form of foci.

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''The answer to that is both a yes and a no.'' She looked even more confused then she did before I started with this. Sigh I really have unlearned the mechanisms of social contact while stuck here for all those years. ''The main reason behind those spells failing has nothing to do with how good a mage you were in the first place, they just have to do with your elements. And yes I'm saying elements, you have 2 elements your magic is suited to but sadly enough unlike regular mages you can't use the other elements at all.''

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''What do you mean my elements? I have never been able to do any magic of any of the four known elements!'' I looked at her ''First off there's five elements even according to that pentagram style magic system, however even then one of your elements falls outside of it entirely.'' She looked ready to interrupt me with another question but I cut her off beforehand

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''I'll answer the question if you let me talk for a moment without interruption alright? You can accuse me of heresy or anything equally ridiculous afterwards, deal?'' She looked extremely irritated now but nodded. Ok while less good then it was going moments ago its still better then the conversation with Joseph was at any and all points. ''Good. So let me explain like this: the five elements of the pentagram, earth, fire, water, wind and the supposedly 'lost' element of void right?'' She nodded at that.

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''You simply don't qualify for any of the first four elements, only as the fifth one. And before you go screaming that its not possible for you to possess the so called 'holy' element and how I would not possibly know anything about it, I was one of the first void mages in recorded history that actually managed to gain some form of control over the power without going insane, if not the very first one.

So yes I know a bit about how to recognise another one. Also secondly why do you think I'm having this conversation with you? I've been having this same conversation with any void mage in recent history that managed to summon enough familiars for their runes to actually gain enough power to form the connection between me and the mage in question.

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Let me tell you this: you are the strongest, most competent and most intelligent person I've had contact with in multiple millennia, and before you start 'that is because there haven't been void mages since the time of the founder and so you've been stuck here without company for close to 6000 years!' like the last idiot did when I called him the most insane person I'd met in the same span of time, there have been a number of them.

Not many, but enough that I've met a good thirty or so people in here and even then those were only the Void mages that summoned 3 or more familiars, the ones with 1 or 2 didn't even meet me, not regarding that one exceptionally strange case where a female void mage had summoned a familiar that was limited to a single large metallic body, but who's mind was in actuality a hive-mind of hundreds of highly intelligent beings that functioned in said single body?

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Still don't know how that worked, even with the knowledge I passively gained from their memory. They could have been a force of change and also did some good for the place, but after she had been declared an outlaw by the church they fled the place through a portal back to the hive's original dimension.

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And yes before you ask it was most likely a different dimension because they, the hivemind, kept talking about how the planet was in a location outside of his galaxy with none of the other galaxies or stars aligning in any way they could calculate existed back in his home dimension.''

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And I've gone off track once again. Damnit, staying here and only conversing with another person once every few decades at the very best, once in every other century in most cases cases has not been good for my mental health and ability to hold a conversation centred around a specific subject, especially not the fact that at least half of those that I did meet were fricking insane. Sigh lets get back on track once again. ''Anyways lets go back to the main conversation, your main element is void.

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Yes as in the legendary void wielded by the 'founder' Brimir. Your secondary element however is one you might be either even less at ease with or actually more at ease depending on how much you believe of the shit that the 'Founders Church' throws everywhere, namely energy manipulation, or as you people call it: nature magic.'' She looks at me with wide eyes her mouth slack open while she was softly muttering ''what… how?.. can't be.''

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Taking pity on her I tell her ''I can tell you that yes, it is possible, and no the elves aren't 'enemies of the founder' that's just some shit the popes in Romelia added later on to give their followers an enemy they could stand against united. How I would know this is simple: if you hadn't noticed yet I am Brimir, the man beyond the world, the traveller eternal, the holy founder and whatever other title they have attributed to me over my long life.'' She looks ready to cut me off again ''Believe it or not I do not care too much, the main thing I want to tell you with this is simple: the elves weren't some unified enemy against me.

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By Odin's beard I was married to one of them. It was the main Elvish nation that I had come in opposition of, leading a large group of newly awakened native human mages, a group of allies back from my old world, whatever elvish freedom fighters I could find and the familiars I had summoned against that oppressive regime, eventually managing to secure a costly victory and driving them back into what is nowadays considered 'the holy lands'.

After that I set up governments everywhere I could, assisted the people in becoming able to lead themselves, however the war and my summoning of many beings had caused something I didn't expect but really should have: the population started seeing me as God or at least a divine being of some kind.

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After looking for years, I finally found a way for us to return home should we want so, however by that point everyone except for me had settled down already, gotten families, become community leaders andsoforth. I myself had long since fallen in love with an elvish lady years before that, she was young for her kind even though she was already close to two centuries old.

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Together we had five sons and a single daughter, though none but my daughter actually showed much sign of having elfin heritage with my daughter having both the pointed ears and energy manipulation, while in all my sons that heritage was dormant and they instead were all void mages of differing amounts of power. I set up academies for young mages to study at on multiple places on the continent in safety without fear of being attacked because of their powers, and I was at peace with it for a while.

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That is until I received news about the Alvanian empire having killed most of their non-elvish slaves and any elves that spoke out against this decision, as a form of revenge for us rising against them in rebellion, causing me to go into a blood rage, recruit whatever forces I could and attack them, no matter the consequences.''

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I was very much not proud of this part ''After years of a bloody war of attrition in which both sides lost thousands of lives, I found out it had all been a ploy by a third party, namely some magical humans calling themselves the 'true followers of the founder' that had decided that any elves still in the 'holy lands' were monsters that needed to be eradicated.

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All those years of fighting, with nothing accomplished but the deaths of tens of thousands and close to a hundred thousand badly injured on both sides, for nothing. After this we were too weary of fighting to still go on and simply left, never to return again, while I would die from an ambush during our retreat back to lands held by our own people.

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Within a few generations after my death most of the elves that were still on our side had integrated into our society, with a mix of their children and those of the early mages forming what could be considered the modern mages over time. My children all prospered and became the kings and queen of their own countries, with my sons ruling over all the current nations with the exception of Romalia, which was under the control of my daughter.

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However, in the shadows there was this movement that had caused the second great war, the followers of the founder, that decided they didn't like how things were going and were slowly exerting influence over the magical population of most of the countries, poisoning them against the non-magical population, giving them feelings of superiority.

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While at first my descendants were against it, eventually one by one the royal families of all countries except Romalia had been convinced of their righteousness and how magic should be the determining factor on who would lead the people. My daughter's descendants however kept going against it, but after a brutal coup d'état which killed all members of that family still in the country at the time, they could truly start changing the world to what they considered paradise.''

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I could feel both sadness and rage to overcome me once again at the same time. After all this time, I still cannot get over why they tarnished both my own and my children's legacy and killed so many innocent people with it. How did they ever get it into their heads that it was a good idea to do this?

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''Through gradual changing of the history books, the instilment of a single state religion in all countries with false accounts of both wars, my own still remaining popularity being used to promote said religion with them twisting my deeds and actions into something they had never been and lastly a heavy promotion of hate towards the remaining full elves, they got their paradise.

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And because it had been so gradual after the initial fighting with remaining loyalists to my daughter's bloodline, there wasn't any large scale resistance, with people thinking that this was how it always had been by the time we reach 4500 years ago. Everything I cared about either dead, destroyed or twisted beyond imagination into something I could never have even imagined to be possible. And I was stuck here the entire damn time, watching everything, unable to change a thing.

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Hearing them condemn my daughter as a traitorous beast that was only spared because I was tricked into a pact after defeating the elves. My wife being seen as an indoctrinated slave only following me because she was forced to do so by runic shackles which were a so called 'punishment' for some kind of past crime.

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This instead of the reality of her being my rock, the one that kept me sane through all that madness that were the early years of the rebellion, the one that stood by my side in battle of her own free will and bled for our cause willingly. For the rights of the common people in the first place long before she actually became my lover, and on it went.''

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I was now openly crying but I didn't care anymore, I had enough of having this conversation with people only to be seen as either a worthless liar or a weakling that got what he deserved. I just wanted to finally pass on, and hopefully spend time with my family in Valhalla or whatever other afterlife there was instead of being forced to watch as everything we built together was spit upon and ground down in my own damn name!

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But no, not even that peace was given to me, because those poor indoctrinated fools kept praying for me I was stuck here until one of those that visited me finally both accepted my words and had the ability to actually do something about it in the long term. I hoped that this one was finally the one actually able to do so.

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Louise POV

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This history, it isn't just a tale, it truly is this mans life story. He also does look a lot like the few paintings of Brimir I've seen throughout, though in those he looks less… human probably? Yes, in those they always depict him as a conquering hero for holy mankind, but never much about him as an actual person, and strangely enough though everyone knows that his children took over power there is never even a single mention of his wife's name anywhere.

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More than enough statements about her being a powerful mage, loving mother and a standard for all women to live up to, but literally nothing else. He could very easily be right about this, it would also make much more sense then the official story produced by the Founders Church.

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When looking back to it now it doesn't make much sense, just how would a cunning, extremely powerful general that defeated a whole race of Elves while leading a rebellion with a small army behind him suddenly be tricked into striking a deal with a random elvish woman after he had actually established 5 kingdoms.

Even more so how could he be possibly be tricked by such an elf if he was both the so called paragon of loyalty to his wife and attacked any elf on sight according to the history books? While I'm not certain I can believe he's Brimir himself, I can easily believe he's either Brimir trying to set things straight or one of his sons trying to set things straight and stop this pollution of his father's legacy.

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The only real problem I have with this is how he survived if his physical body died? I mean I know elves live a lot longer then humans and he had a familiar bond to one, which would enable him survive as familiar bonds cause the one with the shortest lifespan to gain an extended natural lifespan closer to the other, no matter if the one with the shorter is the familiar or the summoner.

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It's one of the main reasons why people want dragons and gryphons so much, those both can live to see half a millennium pass if they do not die in battle and would also extend some of that same life-span to the summoner adding in close to a full century of life outside of the regular time if one does not experience death in either combat or another form of conflict.

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So if he had said his body was still alive I could believe it somewhat considering both the power accredited to him and the fact that elves can live for millennia at the least if not killed by either something like illness, poison, accidents or combat. Possibly much longer but we simply don't know because we haven't interacted with elves for so long.

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However he himself admitted his physical body had long since died, so how? ''I do believe your story of who you are, but what I do not understand is the how behind it? How are you still alive if your physical body has been dead for such a long time? Are you a nature spirit right now or something like that?''

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He looked at me, probably surprised by both the question and the fact that I believed him in the first place. From what I can gather that doesn't seem to be the usual reply, and with this revelation some of his earlier statements make a lot more sense then they did a few minutes ago.

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''As strange as this may sound somehow the original religious belief of the population shortly after I freed them from slavery and during the fighting years of the rebellion started the process of something called a legend in physical form which makes the personal prowess of a person prayed to and believed in by the masses stronger, however it only functions correctly if that person's body is actually strong enough to endure the process.

My body was actually strong enough for it due to the mixes of tests I had done early on with all kinds of runes and potions strengthening me in all kinds of ways unthinkable to most. The problem with this was that it came at a cost: while my body was now much stronger, I would have died if it wasn't for my beloveds healing magic ensuring I survived all encounters during which she was nearby.

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While the growing belief from them strengthened me, shortly before the point in time where the second war started it became much more extreme in the span of months, causing me to develop some truly supernatural powers, which had the effect of once again enlarging the slowly growing religion which led to a circle of constantly getting somewhat stronger and coming closer to what some people would call a 'divine' status.

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However, after the war ended in our retreat and my subsequent death, I had gathered too large an amount of power and what I most certainly hadn't known beforehand was that I had also become an integral part of my own system of the void. This caused me to live on in here, watching the world change anywhere were I had followers, without being able to interfere at all, with my only companions being the seldom visitors and extremely irregularly the sentient force that is what had become of the 'Void' personified.''

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Wait a second, did I just hear that correctly ''The element of Void has become intelligent enough to choose a personification that chooses to meet with you sir?'' He nodded ''She does, and yes you also heard that correctly the void identifies herself as a she. She sees me as a father figure, her creator so to speak since I was the first void mage that didn't go on a mad rampage because of the power trip and side-effects that it gives you when used without a foci such as a wand, enchanted jewellery or a stave.

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Since even the most primitive of wands were very uncommon things back then, these side effects kicked in pretty much every time a void mage used their power for the first time in their lives.

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This was made worse by the fact that the Empire of Alvenia'' he probably noticed my very confused look at that considering he sighed and shook his head as if he was berating himself ''The original Elven empire, though it has been dead for a long time by now, collapsed less than a century after the second war was over.''

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Yeah I probably should have been able to guess he was referring to that place when saying a nation name on something bad that has happened in his lifetime to void mages considering his own group had and still has a religion revolving around them.

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''Anyways, back to the history, it was made worse by the fact that the Empire of Alvenia would use these people once their element had been discovered as cannon fodder in a charge against the armies of rebels that sprung up on a regular basis. Like I explained earlier, I was far from the first to rise in rebellion against them, I just happened to lead the first truly succesfull rebellion of that time period.''

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Hmm though it is strange that he's using relatively modern terms to describe certain things, he did say earlier he has the ability to gain information from all the runes of current and past void familiars, and considering just how many familiars I've gained the more modern vocabulary is probably caused by the influence of such large numbers of people with different languages and words to describe things for him.

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''I do have a question though, if you don't mind sir?'' He looks slightly surprised, but nods ''Ask away young Louise and I might have an answer for you.'' Ok here it goes ''Can you tell me how many other void mages are currently alive that have actually summoned their familiars yet?''

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I can almost see that he is counting in his mind ''Lets see, there are, including you, 4 void mages right now that have summoned familiars already, including you 3 of those also actually know they are void mages and at least a rough version of what that actually means while one is unsure though I cannot visit her since she only summoned two familiars instead of three or more, however the one void spell she knows has been very useful to her in the past and is still useful right now.

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There are also another 6 void mages around who haven't summoned a familiar yet, though with 4 of those it is because they are assumed to be commoners and as such not considered to be able to use magic, 1 is the very rare class of dual elemental and as such due to the element she currently uses was never realized to be a void mage, while the last is currently a first year at her magical school and will only perform the ritual next year.''

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I started looking at him with hope in my eyes, causing him to chuckle slightly and shake his head ''And no I'm not going to tell you about the one's that haven't discovered their own abilities yet,'' causing me to pout at him ''and don't look at me like that, I literally cannot talk about it because I swore an oath to Elizabeth'' and there is my old friend confusion again ''The personification of the Void.''

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Yeah the concept of the most powerful branch of magic that he seems to have a father-daughter relationship with, very understandable that he doesn't want to break her trust. ''So even though I want to I cannot talk to you about that, considering Isabelle sees freedom of choice as an important part of existence, she isn't interested in me telling on her about this.''

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However then he coughed slightly causing me to look up at him from my sullen stare at the ground, he was smiling slightly ''I never said I couldn't speak about those void mages that are already active young one, only not those that haven't been discovered yet. You see one of the main reasons why the Void users are often feared besides the fact that they controlled that very element, is the fact that they are near always on the extremes of a spectrum.'' Is he now just trying to confuse me with terms I do not fully understand?

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''What I mean with that is that they much more frequently then regular people can actually be placed in the black-white perspective of the world, completely good or completely evil, completely sane or fully insane, etcetera. Normally people fall into a shade of grey on all these subjects, or at the least can be put into either category depending on your point of view of the world, but at our very core us void mages are much less easy to categorise in such a way.

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For example, the current Gallian leader and their strongest Void mage of this era even if either of the others find out about their own ability, king Joseph, is an insane and evil but extremely competent man that spent most of his time searching for some kind of emotion to actually fill up the emptiness in he kept feeling.

After meeting with me because of the multiple familiars he summoned however he decided that he was born as the saviour of the modern founders religion and had to gain leadership of Halkeginia to take the fight to the Elves, so that he could then replace me as the church's main holy figure to ensure an as he put it 'weakling' like me wouldn't be the one to bring them into the afterlife. He thinks residing here is supposed to be a glorious reward with ultimate power over life and death and that I'm just too weak to make use of it.''

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What… just how did the man even think that such a thing was possible? A large part of the reason Brimir even remained here was because people had been worshipping him for thousands of years, and from how he talks about it he is close to going insane from seeing how everyone and everything he cared for died without him being able to change a thing.

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He literally tells he would have done anything to change things if he could and he lead a rebellion against beings much more powerful then humans with himself at the frontlines in at least some of the battles… how could anyone think that he has power over what happens outside of this in any meaningful way but that he's just too weak to use it?

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He probably noticed my stare at him after that sentence ''No I didn't give him any indication that that would even be possible, in fact as far as I know it is impossible considering I don't even do any of that. I'm literally only a watcher and cannot even interact with the physical world outside of having conversations with the personification of the Void and the people that visit here once in a while.

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I have no control over any kind of afterlife and cannot influence the decisions of the living outside of having a conversation with Void users that come over every once in a while, most certainly not the almost mind control like abilities he thinks are part of the role.'' He sighs, the pained look on his face easily visible, even for a person like me who hasn't known him for more than a few minutes.

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''I'm no more than a lonely old man that wants to move on from this sort of existence and go, hug my wife and children to me in the afterlife, talk to my grandchildren about things, feast with those I consider my brothers and sisters in arms. I do not know if Valhalla exists here or if I can enter it as a being no longer mortal myself if it is here, however I hope that it is since that is where I could meet all those that I loved, with every single one of them being a warrior worthy of entering it, and possibly meet others that have had to deal with this sort of thing throughout their lives.

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Watching for centuries as the people they once knew aged and died, their children grew up aged and died, and so on, until you were still watching at the point in time were the generation of your great-great-great grand-children had long since bitten the dust and been completely forgotten aside from some legends about them, then still have to watch on not being able to change a thing afterwards.''

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We both sat there for a while after that, though I couldn't even begin to guess how long it was, before he finally looked at me and began talking again ''Thank you for listening and your support my young friend, I needed to get that off my chest, and with nobody to talk to it might have come off more angry then it was supposed to be. We can continue later on about the other void mages, but I would rather switch the subject for a bit if you don't mind?''

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If he considered that more angry than what it was supposed to be, just how calmly could he handle things in life? He just spoke about how not only was his life's work ruined, but how his name was being used for evil causes and turned against those very people he cared about, he's entitled to a large amount of anger right now. Also as long as he will tell me about the other already active Void mages eventually, I suppose it won't be too much of a problem.

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''Sir, you weren't coming off very angry at all and even so you were talking about the horrible things that have been done to your legacy and family, it would have been more then understandable if you did get very angry at these things. And we can drop the subject for now and go on with something you are more comfortable with currently.''

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He nodded, a seemingly thankful look on his face. ''Okay so now that we've gone through all that lets get back to our earlier conversation. I had explained about your elements already right, and you now believe you actually possess them?''

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I nodded, because while I wasn't sure yet about just what to do with said information, the remaining information he had delivered made it clear enough that the chances of him not being the genuine article were low, and why would a Void mage lie to another person about them being one.

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Especially when the Void mage couldn't actually interact with the world around them. The nature magic is somewhat less comfortable, but it would explain some things including how I never really get tired from using magic, even after extremely willpower intensive things such as my summoning earlier today.

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I did still have a few questions on the subject though, and this was probably the best time to get answers about them. ''I do have a few questions about them though if you don't mind?'' He shook his head with a small smile ''Teaching people about magic are some of the best memories of my life, sharing my knowledge with an eager student will be far from a burden, instead it will allow me to prepare you better for what is to come.'' I gave him a thankful nod, causing his smile to broaden slightly.

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''First, can you explain some more about Void magic in general, and why there is so little that is known about it?'' I'll probably need to know a lot more about that sort of thing, especially since one of the other Void Mages is the Gallian king, if he finds out about me and decides I'm an obstacle, then even with the army of familiars I've summoned I still won't have a very high chance of survival at the moment.

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''My young friend, the first thing you need to know about Void magic is the mistaken assumption that the modern Halkeginians live under that it is an extremely powerful holy element that makes all of its users have godlike powers. This assumption is in the case of most void mages simply false.

While Void users are more powerful than the average mage to a significant degree, it is closer to the difference between line and triangle mages when comparing the average power levels of the adults belonging to both groups, rather than roughly the same power difference as there is between a dot and square mage as the Church of the Founder would have you believe.''

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Not too strange, considering that even though it wasn't very high with the number of Void mages he mentioned that there were throughout history, if all of them were extremely powerful it would have been way too noticeable for the church to actually cover it all up well enough that somebody with my mother's level of connections wouldn't know about it and recognise the signals when I was younger.

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''However because of the fact that unlike mages with affinities to other elements void mages cannot naturally use any other element that isn't also their secondary element nor can they use the so called 'spells without element'. Cases of people's secondary element being say, water would have them never be noticed at all by society, and simply assumed to be a regular water mage that doesn't have too much power most of the time.

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This not having much power idea comes with the fact that as Void always remains the primary element, people will have less power with the secondary element of water just like the power difference between people's regular primary and secondary element, though in this case they cannot use any other element nor the so called element-less magic.''

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That does make some sense, though what does he mean with the most of the time? ''That does sound reasonable, though what do you mean with most of the time? What exceptions are there to this, and how do you recognize them?'' wait a minute ''Are the exceptions cases where instead through some convoluted way the void strengthens the magic instead? But how is that possible with what you just told me about how its impossible to combine void with regular magic?''

He grinned at this ''You see, when I said impossible I was oversimplifying a bit'' I nodded, causing him to continue ''You know the theory about how willpower resides in your body and you use it, as if your body was a water-ton, your willpower the water inside of the ton and spells being used out water leaving, while the ton gaining more water because of it raining being like you regaining willpower?''

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I nodded again, though I hadn't heard of that specific analogy, I had heard similar ones. ''Now imagine what would happen in case that water ton somehow had the ability to drain some water out of the air itself, on days that it didn't rain enough for it to be filled up completely.'' Huh?

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''To explain it simply, the air everywhere has a bit of water in it that can with the right equipment be taken out of it. Imagine the water mage with the primary element of void and the secondary element of water using the void as a tool to drain a small amount of willpower out of the air and give it to the mage like such a device would drain a small bit of water out of the air and give it to the water-ton in our example.'' That doesn't sound too unreasonable actually, wait a minute…

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''Are you telling me the Hexagon class mages of the Royal families were in reality just mages that turned the void power they possessed into a non-physical device to draw power from literal thin air for their magic?!'' He nodded, seemingly happy that I understood it, and now I am a bit embarrassed by how I was shouting at somebody that until this point has only been helpful to me, whom is also trying to assist me in gaining the ability to control my magic better.

Hmm okay that does explain somewhat better how Henrietta suddenly gained in power. Wait she hasn't done her summoning yet, which means that she will likely summon something similar to me? No never mind, Brimir literally just told me that he has met with less then 40 people while here, and the last one was King Joseph De Gallia.

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That man is close to fifty years old right now meaning that it has probably been three decades or more since he last saw a mage with void powers come here, even though he talks about multiple other void mages actively using their power being currently alive and spread through multiple countries around the world, meaning that the chance of summoning multiple people isn't very high.

''Now can you explain to me why my magic seems to cause explosions when I try to use a normal spell? Why doesn't it simply either do nothing or cause something that is more closely related to either the element of void or nature magic?'' At this he seemed to think for a moment before answering.

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''A good question, you see the effects of Void magic depend somewhat more on the personality and mentality of the person using them when the raw power is being used, causing them to automatically select a single spell as the effect no matter your chant as long as it isn't another void spell.'' Is this his way of saying that I have a sick mind considering the closest spell to my personality is an explosion?

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He must have noticed my expression because he continued ''Let me set something straight right now, void magic has a relatively small amount of spells in comparison to regular magic when used directly such as through a wand. When used indirectly or combined with a secondary element it can do all kinds of strange, dangerous and/or wonderful things, but on its own it boils down to a very simple repertoire. For instance, how many different water spells can you think off right now?''

''I could probably sum up some 40 of them right now, why?'' He nods at this then reacts by saying ''Not too bad, now would you like to know how many void spells I, the person who has been around for more than 6000 years while paying a lot of attention to void magic itself and even conversing with the physical representation of the Void knows?'' Yes please is my thought as I nod to him.

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''I know a total of 12 void spells that are really Void only.'' …what? I know he said few, but I didn't think the number would be that low! He must have seen my confusion, since he elaborated ''You are probably wondering about those miracles that I performed with the power of the Void according to the Church?''

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I nod, yes I thought those would be void only at least. ''That was me combining my primary element, the Void, with my secondary element, water to heal people, heighten the fertility of farmlands and turn the water inside and on my opponents bodies against them or in some cases certain results being attributed to me that were actually caused by the actions of others.

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The control the water that is in blood one is a reason for concern, since powerful water mages might be able to achieve the same effect if they realize it wasn't the Void element responsible for doing this, but mainly water element magic instead. Let's just hope nobody has figured that one out yet or else I might be heavily disadvantaged in battle.

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''The spell that created the inner wall of Romelia wasn't my doing, it was my daughter and several of children strengthening their Nature magic abilities with their void element to raise a defensive wall around a certain perimeter, making it much more durable then any wall made from rock should have any actual right to be. This is also why there is a certain level of magic resistance in the wall, for some reason structures made by or enchanted with elven magic diminish the power of any elemental magic cast at them.

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The heal wave spell that the Church considers the 'ability of the holy void to regenerate the flesh of its followers' is actually me strengthening a somewhat primitive version of the nowadays used 'Regeneration' spell that speeds up the natural ability to heal from wounds by 12 times for the next 60 minutes, back then it was only 8 times faster for the next 45 minutes, to become an area of effect spell with a 25 meter range while doubling both the duration and strength of the original healing spell used.''

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Hmm the idea behind the last two are quite interesting, so with the void I would be able to strengthen my own Nature magic abilities to either turn any spell into an area of effect spell, or to strengthen the effects of the spell itself. Very nice, I can even play it off as simply casting regular magic by pretending to use my wand while doing it.

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Yes, then mother would finally be proud of me! Her child that never cast magic successfully suddenly casting square class magic very well, simply because she is too powerful to use the appropriate amount in any other spell. On the other hand this would probably be suspicious to a number of people so I need to think well about whether to use it or not.

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''Now I'm sure you want to know what exactly the full unaltered Void spells I know are right?'' I nod in response to this, causing him to continue ''Well the ones I know are: Explosion, Dispel, Fog of War, Animate, Alteration, Wave of destruction, Summon Familiar, Music of the Soul, Raw Blast, Wall of the Soul and Puppet Master.''

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Okay, but now focus, you still need to learn about the others involved in this. ''I thank you for the explanation on this Lord Brimir, however if it is no problem may I now ask some questions about the other current active void mages?'' He seemed to sigh but nod, while giving me a slight smile.

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''Alright, you've indulged an old man enough for now and we do need to end this conversation at some point otherwise my dear daughter will kick you out to have her papa-time.'' He said the last words with a smirk and I could swear I heard a growl somewhere, but looking around didn't show anyone. Ok I do not want to interfere in that family relationship, it is probably the main thing that has kept him from going insane so far while he's probably the only human she can communicate with more than once in their lives.

''Ok so is there currently an active void mage in Albion'' he nods ''has said void mage chosen a side in the civil war between the Reconquista and the Loyalists? And if the answer on the previous question is yes, what side has said void mage chosen? Also is the Void mage male or female and roughly what age is he or she?''

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''To start off, the Void mage hasn't truly chosen a side, though she and her familiars have mainly clashed against the Reconquista so far since the Reconquista tends to be involved in attacks on innocent civilians quite often, however on the other hand she has very good reason to hate the current king so the chance of her siding with the Royalists is extremely low. And yes, the Void mage is female, she's about your age, a few years older I believe, though I'm uncertain about her current exact age since I only took an interest in her life relatively recently.''

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At that moment what looks to be a dark brown or black haired young woman with red eyes, slightly shorter then me but with roughly the same figure otherwise, walks into the room, before going to stand by Brimir's side. Where she promptly starts glaring at him, probably for the 'papa time' comment. I do not want to interfere in this, to do so would probably be a very dangerous mistake, potentially a lethal one. Though she does actually look cute with that glare… what am I thinking? Bad Louise, bad Louise!

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Meanwhile Brimir greets her with a ''Hi there sweetheart.'' then continues talking as if nothing has changed ''She's also a half-elf, and doesn't seem to know what to do with her magic besides her basic spell, however unlike yours her basic spell was Alteration, which can change the short term memory of a small group of people in a way the user wishes.

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This meant that it was very useful against small groups that tried anything against her, but on a proper battlefield or just against larger groups, it would eventually fail due to the maximum power that can be supplied to the spell and the fact that it can't change anything other than the memories of the past few hours.''

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Half-Elf? Just whom are her parents? No it can't be…. if that is true then the Reconquista, while still a foolish group with morals and ideas that are just completely suicidal, actually had a legitimate reason for rising up against the crown, if he's not only willing to kill his brother, but actually did kill him for his choice of a romantic partner like they claimed it to be.

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Though it does strike me as strange that they would use something in which they acknowledge the Elf was a victim as the rallying cause for a rebellion against a mad king. If he's really insane enough to do things like that he has probably done a number of other things they could have used to rise their forces around, for whom they would not have had to hide all the details of the case from the general population.

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Wait a second, maybe they are thinking of convincing the girl to join them, have her hide her Elfin heritage and then use her as a puppet to legitimise their government in the eyes of the Church? ''Now that you say it, with the moves they have been making till this point that has a good chance of being at least the plan that was told to most of the rebellions higher ranked members, though the chances of it being the ultimate plan is very low.'' Did I start thinking out loud again? Damnit, I really need to stop doing that.

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''While the theory is sound and could actually work, the problem with the idea is the fact that while she despises the current king for the responsibility he has for her parents deaths, some of the Reconquista's special forces have been sent to attack her, and most of these special forces are the Gallian Madman's secondary familiars and the woman in charge of them is the King's main familiar.

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Chances are thus high that they are instead trying to annex the country by having the girl be leader in name only for a while, then having somebody reveal she is of Elfin blood and perform a coup in which the next government becomes a Gallian protectorate of some kind. While I would have looked further into this possibility, the Gallian palace currently has some kind of anti-scrying ward even my power can't get through due to it being connected to the faith of another 'God' of some kind.''

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That once again makes a disturbing amount of sense and is a cunning, if somewhat simple, plan. This does give a signal though, even with him being an insane madmen that's apparently incapable of feeling a large part of the emotional spectrum, he is still either a cunning and intelligent man or at the very least willing to listen to very cunning and intelligent people that are advising him.

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Neither is a very good thing for my chances of survival in case he does decide that I'm a threat that needs to be removed. ''What exactly was the Elfin girls name? Also whom are her familiars and what are their capabilities? Are they from your home dimension? Possibly even your home-world?''

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He waves his hand and an moving image appears of the girl, showing a tall, blond haired woman with a very buxom figure looking slightly older then me. It would probably have felt like looking at a blond haired version of Zerbst if not for the fact that the moving picture shows her tenderly hugging and otherwise trying to give support to a very young and very distraught girl in her arms that probably just recently lost her parents, maybe she had even seen it happen herself in this civil war. Well the young Elf is distantly related to the Princess so she might have gotten her nurturing side that from her side of the family?

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Probably not, but she's already a much better option for an ally than that mad Gallian King, even if she is an elf. Though to be honest that last thing is bothering me a lot less now that I know that some of the people that freed us, fought for us and died for us were actually elves deciding to side with us over a mighty Elfin empire, so I believe I should treat them with the same level of courtesy I would treat a fellow human. Especially this girl, since she seems to care for that human child as if it were from her own womb.

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''Those familiars of hers are very interesting people yes, anyways the name of the girl is Tiffania and she runs an orphanage, her two familiars are both males of approximately the same height as the tallest of you familiars, and both are also extremely powerful. They are facing a large problem however, unlike with your familiars where most of their newly gained advantages were those of either bodily instincts or a slight strengthening of that which was already there in their minds, these two young men both got decades of memories downloaded into their minds.''

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I'm not sure how I know the rough meaning of the word download, but I'm becoming rather frightened what might have happened to these two if the meaning of the name I have in mind is true. ''What was the reason that they had this 'download', and why don't my familiars seem to have had much of it?''

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''The girls familiars, Daniel Phantom and Zuko Lee, have the problem of the abilities that their simulated selves possessed being powered at least partially by certain ideals, memories, emotions and faiths. And since the familiar summoning spell wants to give the mage the strongest possible version of the person that they are delivering…''

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With dawning horror I realised exactly what he meant with that. ''It tried to force those ideals or even the whole personalities of the person they were simulating, whom probably had a painful and troubled history, onto their minds while they were already being summoned into an entirely new world with very few or even no friends and no family or other forms of emotional support to fall back upon.

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And even after all that they now also have to use those powers to defend a person that they see as a defenceless young woman and a group of orphans while stuck in the middle of a warzone were both opposing sides hate at least one of the people they are trying to protect, most likely worsening the effect even more. While almost certainly mourning for either lost family members or lovers and on top of that potentially becoming attracted to a supernaturally beautiful woman.''

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Damn it all! I cannot just let them be forced to deal with all that on their own. ''I don't care for the consequences currently, once I've got a place where I can permanently station my familiars and give them housing, I'm putting an expedition together to go assist them and get these people to safety! I'll have to ask either the princess or my mother for one or more airships, but once I relate to them that it's a rescue operation of one of the last surviving members of the Royal Family of Albion they will almost certainly give those.

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And if they refuse then by hell and high water I'll just have to hire or commandeer a small merchant fleet to transport my army over. I will also not have Albion become a puppet state to a madman and tyrant in Gallia just because said man has aspirations of becoming a God! And if the bastard ever dares to even try to do the same thing to Tristain I'll storm down the doors of his damned palace and kill him with my own bare hands!''

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Brimir POV (just before Louise starts her declaration)

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''The girls familiars, Daniel Phantom and Zuko Lee, have the problem of the abilities that their simulated selves possessed being powered at least partially by certain ideals, memories, emotions and faith. And since the familiar summoning spell wants to give the mage the strongest possible version of the person that they are delivering…''

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With the look of horror that dawned on her face, I think she fully understood what I was alluding to. ''It tried to either force those ideals or even the whole personalities of the person they were simulating, whom probably had a painful and troubled history, onto their minds while they were already being summoned into an entirely new world with very few or even no friends and no family or other forms of emotional support to fall back upon.''

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Then she stood up and turned away from me slightly, hiding her face for a moment. ''And even after all that they now also have to use those powers to defend a person that they see as a defenceless young woman and a group of orphans while stuck in the middle of a warzone were both sides hate at least one of the people they are trying to protect, most likely worsening the effect even more. While almost certainly mourning for either lost family members or lovers and on top of that potentially becoming attracted to a supernaturally beautiful woman.''

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She then turned towards us with her eyes full of determination and steel in her voice and has she always been this muscled and this much taller than Elizabeth? What is happening? ''I don't care for the consequences currently, once I've got a place where I can permanently station my familiars and give them housing, I'm putting an expedition together to go assist them and get these people to safety!'' When did that wand in her hand change into a sword-wand, also since when did she have power literally radiating out from herself so much its actually part of the visual spectrum?

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''I'll have to plead with the princess or my mother for one or more airships, but once I relate to them that it's a rescue operation of one of the last surviving members of the Royal Family of Albion they will almost certainly give those, especially if it can be done without having to face an entire Reconquista army.

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And if they refuse then by hell and high water I'll just have to hire or commandeer a small merchant fleet to transport my army over. I will also not have Albion become a puppet state to a madman and tyrant in Gallia just because said man has aspirations of becoming a God!''

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She was had by now fully turned back towards us, however the area had begun shifting with the ground under her right foot going up slightly and her school clothing shifted into armour that looked as if it had just been worn in battle instead, while the entire area around us turned into a large field that showed signs of recent combat. ''And if the bastard ever dares to even try to do the same thing to Tristain I'll storm down the doors of his damned palace and kill him with my own bare hands!''

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''This I pledge, as Louise de la blanc de la Vallière, the 4th in line for the throne of Tristain, to be the shield of the oppressed and the sword of the Princess, to strike down her enemies and save our people from oppression, no matter if that oppression is from outside or within!'' At this she jabbed her sword-wand into the air, a bolt of dark lightning leaping out and into the sky of this realm while a non-existing wind blew her hair behind her.

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Okay this is extremely unexpected. As I looked at Elizabeth she seemed to be just as stunned by the situation as I was and was also looking at Louise with what seemed to be hunger, causing me to turn back to Louise, who only now seemed to realise what had just happened. I wordlessly conjured a mirror in front of her, causing her to look at it in amazement.

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Okay, I'm still shocked, I'm pretty much seeing a pink haired slightly shorter version of my biological daughter now standing in front of me. What is going on here? Just what is going on? I've been here for thousands of years and I'm met dozens of people and none of them ever had something like this happen?! Then I heard my adopted daughter talking.

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''You have just proven yourself worthy, like my father did when he first decided to start leading his revolt against the Alvanian empire. Because of this, I will give you and your soldiers all the remaining information in a compressed file. Sadly enough I cannot keep you here any longer, we cannot give you much more time then the others, good luck to you Louise le blanc de la Vallière.''

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After this Louise starts disappearing, with time starting up again causing me to look and hear her main familiar comment upon her beauty. Shortly afterwards both she and all her familiars gain a very bad headache from the information being downloaded into their minds. ''Was that really necessary? We could have talked more to her and explained things better?''

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This gave way to Elizabeth's reaction of ''We might have been able to, yes, however she needs to figure things out for herself in at least some part to truly reach her full potential. This means that she also cannot have you or me just give her all the information she needs, because then she will start to rely on it leaving her extremely vulnerable in situations were we aren't allowed or even able to interfere.''

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There is a grain of truth in there, more then a grain actually, however its not the full story. ''You also hated how she pretty much looked like a more muscled and slightly taller pink haired version of you, especially at the end there right?'' She blushes and starts stammering out negative responses to that claim.

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''Or was it the fact that she has a young man that likes that look a lot even though all the spirits and other similar beings derisively call you all kinds of insults because of your similar physical looks? Though if that is the truth then why did you give her the remaining information, if in compressed form, and why did you try to give these people to her at the best moment possible giving her an army of thousands instead of dozens at best?''

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She mumbled something in response that I couldn't hear while beat-red, hmm this is going to be very interesting. I know very well that she isn't really interested in the male attention the girl got, but more likely interested in the girl herself. Now I just have to continue trying to get her to admit it, that would be better for the both of us. Alas, it doesn't seem that such a thing will actually happen today.

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Louise POV

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Ok just why did she suddenly kick me out? She said something about time but then why first let me have all kinds of general conversation with Brimir instead of just giving me the information upfront? And when would that information download start? While coming to I suddenly hear Saito, though it seems I caught him while he was in the middle of talking about something.

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''…Though his behaviour is somewhat understandable, Louise unconsciously exudes this aura of hidden care for others. I do not understand how the others outside of us do not see it. She's also very beautiful, both inside and out. Maybe not a beauty in the most conventional way, but most certainly beautiful. And also has a near angelic voice to listen to, both in physical and mental communication.''

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I can feel myself turning beet red, I haven't heard anyone compliment me like that in my entire life. It can't be really true, I mean I look like a child according to nearly all other students on this school and he's just seen Kirche, he can see that I'm not very beautiful in comparison to most others here. Still… no matter what else happens, the compliment is very nice and also very much appreciated. But wait, how did I understand the language he was talking in? It wasn't Tristanian that I can be certain of.

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I then hear Piet say ''You were talking out loud idiot, though luckily for you it was in English so hopefully for all of us lady Vallière didn't get the ability to understand it from you during the bonding ceremony or she will be embarrassed even further and it could possibly even create a diplomatic incident.

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Especially if the local rules regarding social interaction with potential romantic intentions towards royalty are as strict as they were back home and she takes affront with such things being said in the open like that.'' As I see Saito's face pale, I know I will have to inter- AAAAGGGGHHH- the pain, damnit the pain! Why do these information downloads have to be so painful!

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3rd Person POV

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While Louise and all her familiars are suddenly subjected to extreme pains to the head, the group in the hall can't do anything other then keep watching them while they themselves are frozen for moments. When the group finally stops yelling in pain, the headmaster snaps out of it ''You four look them over to see if they are alright and what the cause of this is, I need to go outside to see if the group at that camp of theirs will need mage healers in case they got badly injured.''

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After heading out and checking up on the camp he found out that there were few major injuries, with most of those already being treated by the time he got a few of the Academy's healers out to treat them. While not badly needed, it was appreciated nonetheless by the army and the healers were thanked for the assistance. The whole incident would cause a rise in the opinion of the army about the academy staff.

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Meanwhile Louise and the three generals had met with a lieutenant that relayed a message to them from the fourth general about what supplies they would need to set-up a temporary camp. During this time, Louise and the men also had a discussion about the possibility of gaining some of the land the orcs were on now to create more permanent residences for their troops on in return for driving the Orcs away from the land.

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After that discussion was done they quickly went over the compressed information given by Elizabeth and Brimir about themselves and their troops, before deciding that they would need to reveal some of it to the headmaster and other members of the academy leadership to ensure trust was gained between both groups.

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However they would also need to try and find a way to keep Kirche and Tabitha out of the discussion, since Kirche wouldn't have a reason to keep a secret and considering Tabitha was part of the d'Orleans family which was in turn a cadet branch of the Gallian Royal Family, chances were high she was here as either a Gallian spy or as a diplomat in training and would thus report back to the mad king.

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After the whole ordeal was over, the group reconvened in the hall, though this time Kirche von Zerbst was notably absent, which most of the others were thankful for. Tabitha also wasn't there, apparently her familiar had become a bit fussy and needed attention, something which extra-dimensional group and Louise were all very grateful for.

After everyone was seated once again, the introduction was restarted with Pierre starting up the last remaining ones ''My name is Pierre de Alain and I am a general in the French Royal Army. I hope we can have business that is fruitful for both of our sides.'' After this he nodded to the soldier on his right who nodded in return and continued as the next.

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''My name is Richard de Bourgogne, I am a soldier in the French Royal Army and a member of general De Alain's personal bodyguard.'' After which the soldier on his right spoke up ''Roland de Korlandais, also a soldier in the French Royal Army and a member of general De Alain's personal bodyguard.''

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After this Pierre spoke up, having been designated the spokesperson for the group beforehand. ''Okay so first things first, we apparently do not have enough supplies to set up a full camp for the night on the type of terrain around the academy. While we do not need anywhere near as many waste-holes and latrines that a regular army of our size would need due to the troops having been given a near perfected digestive system that allows us to absorb close to all the materials we eat and more efficiently disperse the nutrients in them than a regular human would.

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We do need more tents, sleeping bags and food for some of the men, while permission for the horses to graze is also a necessity if we want to keep them around here for today. For any move after this the Professor suggested we move to take out the Orcs that have captured land nearby and ask permission from the current monarch to use part of the land to build a more permanent form of housing for our soldiers.''

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At this the headmaster turned to his assistant, who then turned towards Pierre with a thoughtful look ''Exactly how many sleeping bags and tents would you need? And food for how many of your soldiers?'' After visibly doing some calculations Pierre gave a reply ''We have food to feed the French, Dutch and Italian armies however after that we wouldn't have enough to feed a number of men from the British armies, 320 of the 932 British troops wouldn't have enough food for a decent meal.

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Tents or at the very least sleeping bags of some kind we need enough to fit another 600 soldiers, with the Papal and Dutch armies not having enough tents for all their soldiers. In exchange for these supplies being given to us we would be willing to patrol the area and roads around the academy for you and perform excursions against bandits and other similar groups. We would also be willing to assist in researching the design of several devices our world had that this world might lack, especially in the area of book production and farming techniques.''

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The group on the other side looked intrigued by the offer, especially professor Colbert who was thinking about what those techniques could be. ''And what exactly would the improved book production technique be? Cheaper writing materials? An easier way to teach people how to write so it will be less expensive to hire scribes? A more efficient tool to write with then a feather?''

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The general D'Alian shook his head but signalled general Hiraga to explain the situation, whom promptly did so, with some visible excitement ''The easiest ways to increase the quantity and availability of books drastically are two things: a basic printer, and lead pencils. Both of these would lower the costs of actually making books significantly to start with, causing more people to learn how to read easily and repeating the cycle of books becoming somewhat cheaper until all of the costs for them are the cost of writing the original version and the materials to print all the copies.

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Another way to vastly increase it is building some self-inking pens, however to actually make those in large enough number to have a significant effect would require a certain industrial base that your country currently simply doesn't have. We could revisit that option later as it is a very useful concept, however right now it just wouldn't be a practical thing to try to use.''

The professor seemed very interested in this and a friendly scientific discussion might have broken out if not for the secretary choosing that moment to interfere ''I think we should first ensure the logistics of the food and materials are done before further discussion is had, whom of you is the best at organising such things?''

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The Generals exchanged some glances and nods before D'Alain spoke up ''General Churchill or General van Vlimmeren should be our best options at logistics, Churchill was a naval officer in command of a number of ships before we joined the simulator program and van Vlimmeren has been not only the commanding officer in multiple campaigns but also a politician of some respite.

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They are also the only ones among the high-command of our army that actually had a formal officers training and graduated from the academy instead of getting promoted into their positions while on the field of battle, thereby unlike us they aren't missing a number of lessons on how to best manage supply lines and such which we only got from Churchill and van Vlimmeren while in the field.''

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General van Vlimmeren spoke up ''I'll work with her, General Churchill doesn't speak the local language so they'll need an intermediary anyways. If neither of you nor our hosts have a problem with this?'' The other generals waved his concern away while Louise thanked him. After getting a nod from Mathilda before she moved to the hall he followed after her with the door closing behind him.

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Piet POV

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So the number Pierre gave back there is a near exact number right he got from you right? Not some actual half-way correct guess that you humoured not wanting to start a discussion? I could literally feel his sigh across the mental connection. Yes Piet it's a bit different from the real number but only because we didn't know how to explain the fact that Pierre would know off the top of his head exactly how many tents and how much food the men had with them.

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Instead of the numbers given we need food for 309 men only, with enough of either sleeping bags, tents or rooms to house 595 of our soldiers. I still do not understand how the simulation gave us this much gear, but it's a lot better then having to depend fully on the locals for such things. The rations were actually from the Dutch and Papal armies only for some reason, having been meant to last them multiple days instead of the single day they will last now for the entire army.

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While I was having this mental conversation with Steve, the lady -Mathilda I think her name was? I recognised her from somewhere I think, but how could that be?- and I arrived at what could only be the kitchens, were she opened the door before yelling ''Marteau!'' before backing off and closing the door again.

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My confusion at this action was probably shown on my face since she gave the explanation of ''Marteau is the head-chef of the Academy, and as such probably knows more about the current food-stores we have then I do. Future cooperation will also be easier if you know whom to speak to if I'm not available to assist on the subject of supplies and other such things.''

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Reasonable enough of an answer from her, also good of her to already be prepared for the possibility. Though it might also indicate that she intends to leave in the future for extended periods of time to perform business in the headmasters name, which might be less of a good thing since she seems to possess a significantly higher level of professionalism then that man does.

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While the headmaster hasn't done anything wrong, he did have this mischievous look in his eyes which might spell trouble in the future if left unchecked. Hearing the door open, I turn towards it to see a tall and broad man, slightly taller then me and build like a bear, walk out of the kitchen. ''Good day to you Miss. Longueville, and whom is this guest you brought with you?'' With the last only being added after he noticed that she wasn't actually alone.

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He then looks me over and comments. ''Finally found a good man for yourself and itching to introduce him to everyone?'' I look close to twenty years older then the woman…. wait never-mind I'm in a medieval world right now, age differences probably don't matter much for relationships here. Consent might also be an oft not applied concept, though Louise's reaction towards Saito seems to suggest otherwise so I won't judge on the last one yet.

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''He is not courting me Marteau, this is General Piet van Vlimmeren, one of the commanding officers of the army that Miss de la Vallière summoned.'' The man turns back towards me, now with a vaguely hostile look having entered his eyes. Is he some kind of medieval version of an anti-war protester? On the other hand he might also be angry at the idea of a large army of soldiers now being stationed at the academy, since in medieval times large armies did oft cause much pain and grief among the local populace of wherever they were stationed.

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''So a member of nobility has been summoned and he is now demanding for him to be served the best food there can possibly be no matter how unusual the time is for it? Is that it? Also why would one of those mages actually deign to hang a rifle over his back like a 'common' soldier instead of only a wand-sword as befitting of his rank of a proper mage general?''

Oh, almost forgot this a class based society were the ability to shape the supernatural is related to if you're part of the nobility or not. And this guy probably doesn't have a very positive opinion about nobility after having to clean up after teenage brats with a much too large ego for years.

Ok how to best diffuse this situation, having the person that will be in charge of ensuring we actually have enough food unhappy with us isn't a good thing. ''Sir I am no member of the Nobility, local or otherwise. Of our four generals, only one is a nobleman and even then he only got it because of the British Empire's system where any man or woman who has done great service to the country gains a title of nobility, with the importance of said title depending on just how great of a task they performed.''

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It seems to have worked at least somewhat, since he is calming down, but he's got a pensive look about him so something else might happen soon still. ''Then if not through the channels of nobility, how did you gain your rank as general?'' Now I'm slightly confused, even if nobility determines a lot to these people, shouldn't they also have very experienced soldiers not part of nobility that rise in rank naturally? Even if said rank is far below general they should know of the overall process right?

Oh well, it's no problem to explain. ''After finishing basic training, I went to officers school, being named an infantry Lieutenant upon finishing the education. Afterwards through a combination of years of experience, talent and battlefield promotions to replace out of action officers I eventually reached my current rank. The other generals underwent roughly the same process.''

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Now I've got to play dumb for a bit, it will probably give us some new information on just how much some of the seemingly better informed members of the local populace actually know of the system. ''Don't you have the same process around here? Miss de la Vallière hasn't had time to mention much of anything about such things yet you see.''

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''You two can discuss the finer details of this no doubt interesting topic later gentlemen, right now we need to get back to the topic of how to supply that army currently stationed on the academy grounds.'' Damnit, will have to do this some other time then. The head chef has changed to a more professional attitude in barely a second, I should probably do the same thing.

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''Ok so how many soldiers are we actually talking about here? Also, is it only food that needs to be supplied or do you also need other things such as tents to sleep in, tools to repair your weapons, leather or cloth to repair clothing and armour, andsoforth?'' Hmm the first two I know already, last ones not so much.

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General Churchill? I get a mental response that I will just have to interpret as an affirmative. Are we in urgent need of anything other than the tents and the food? Or are we good so far on most things with low food reserves and few tents or sleeping bags to sleep in being our only immediate problems?

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No problems so far other than those two, so you won't have to worry about that. By the way, setting up what we already had is going much faster then expected. As such I can spare a few units to bring supplies over to our encampment, do your Blue Guards infantry regiment and some of the British line infantry regulars sound alright to you for such task?

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While the Blue Guards are not the best unit for such a task, they probably do need the humbling it brings to ensure they won't cause as many problems with the regular troops as their historical namesakes did. I'll send a message to you when I need them, good luck with getting everything organised back there.

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I left the 'deep in thought' stance I'd taken while communicating with Steve, though luckily said conversation cost much less time then a face to face one of the same length would have taken. ''As far as I know we have no other needs as of right now, the only thing we really need is food for 320 soldiers and a large enough number of tents or supplies to build such to house 600 of our soldiers.''

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Marteau could be seen doing some mental calculations upon hearing this, after which Marteau replied ''The food is easily doable, we could make close to double of that even on relatively short notice such as this situation. However for housing we only have enough actual tents for some 400 people.'' Damnit, not good.

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''However, we do have about 250 guestrooms here at the academy for visiting parents and the more important members of the entourages of foreign dignitaries whenever they visit the academy. Only 50 of those are currently occupied, and if we put some of the spare beds in a few of the remaining ones we could easily fit the remaining 200 soldiers in 50 of those rooms.''

That is a very good solution but there's probably a catch to this. At that point Mathilda decided to speak up about it ''While a nice idea, there is a problem here. Those rooms will be put to use during the visit of the princess in two weeks, so we need to have an alternative form of housing for those soldiers by that point in time. Could that plan you told us about with the Orc tribe be ready by then?'' I nodded at that, two local weeks meaning 10 days, that should be more then enough time for us to gain that alternative form of housing our troops. Probably some distance away from the academy too.

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''The plan to get another form of housing will have been put into action at latest by this time next week, at earliest in the next three days so we will easily be able to move them out of those rooms by that point. It is mainly a stopgap measure for today and tomorrow, to ensure we our men won't have to sleep out in the cold without any form of protection or warmth. After that we should have somewhere between 360 and 750 less soldiers stationed in this area since they will be patrolling the region we will have freed from the trolls by then, giving us more than enough local housing with those added tents.''

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At this both of them nodded, good, maybe there won't be any problems with this. ''I'll send my lieutenant back to the camp and have him gather some of my troops to transport the supplies, if neither of you mind?'' Both Marteau and Mathilda signalled it wouldn't be a problem for either of them, though Marteau apparently did still have a question. ''I'll have some of my co-workers meet your soldiers at the door, what colour uniforms will they be wearing?''

''The soldiers will be the Blue Guard infantry Regiment and some men of the British line infantry regulars, with the earlier unit wearing the same colours as their name suggests, the British units will be wearing red coats.'' Marteau nodded and went back into the kitchen to start on his part of organising everything.

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I meanwhile started walking back to the Hall following the secretary, in comfortable silence, or at least on my part it was comfortable don't really know how it felt to her. Hmm ok so I'll just put this through to both the Lieutenant and Steve. Lieutenant Jacques, meet me at the door to the main hall were the others are conversing I need to speak to you in public to pass through orders.

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General Churchill prepare the pre-discussed soldiers to transport the supplies. Full Blue Guard infantry unit, some forty British regulars. The number isn't entirely necessary to transport the supplies, but I don't trust the locals fully. After a few seconds and a, Sir yes sir, from the Lieutenant I got Steve's answer. You think the local nobility will try something against our people if the numbers are small enough that they won't be finding dozens of rifles aiming at them when our troops get sufficiently angered?

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You did hear the conversation I had with the locals right? That Zerbst girl was surprised as hell I even dared to speak up to her in such an instance. And she didn't seem to be a complete idiot. So its very likely that the actual idiots will try something even if there are dozens of our troops nearby. I let my mental voice turn cold as ice. However in that scenario they will be filled with large amounts of lead long before they can even finish the first word of their supernatural chants.

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Let's hope our new patron cannot overhear these directed mental conversations or we might have traumatized the poor kid with the fear that our troops will start butchering the students if they even look at us the wrong way. While that might be mentioned as a joke, it's a real possibility. Need to check up on that one fast and apologize to her for filling her head with such a fear if it is the truth.

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Something to ponder upon later, it seems we've reached the doorway to the main hall again, and there is Jacques. Upon me walking into his field of vision he salutes me ''Greetings General van Vlimmeren. Is there something I can do for you.'' I nod and order ''Yes lieutenant, go back to the camp and gather the Blue Guard infantry regiment and some redcoat regulars, we'll need both groups to transport some supplies from here back to the camp.'' The Lieutenant nodded, saluted again and was about to run off only for some shouting in the hall to interrupt us.

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The secretary rushes to the door and forces it open with me and the Lieutenant running in after her, only for me to bump into the secretary with enough force to nearly bowl her over. Why did she stop? What the hell?

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…. Why the fuck is Louise sobbing in Saito's arms while they are softly muttering to each-other with him periodically glaring at an unknown female mage that looks a bit like Louise over her shoulder, with all our soldiers keeping Osmond and Colbert down on the ground with swords near important areas of their bodies, while Pierre has the target of Saito's ire forced to her knees with his sword being held at her neck execution style … ''I want an explanation for this and I want it now.''

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Just what happened here?! And why did none of you notify me about this?! I mentally shout at nobody in particular. First things first Jacques, secure the secretary to ensure she doesn't try to attack us. Do not use lethal force however. After he nods and complies, disarming the unresisting woman and holding a dagger at her back. With that seen to I open communications to Steve.

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Divert all of the redcoat regulars you've gathered and some of the Blue Guards to the main hall instead and have them run here, we are in a potentially hostile situation and I need re-enforcements now! Keep the main force of Blue Guards to bring the supplies, but have them on full combat alert!

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Pierre turns towards me while forcibly turning the young woman with him to ensure he can look at me without letting his guard slip, before he starts talking, his voice harsh as steel. ''You see general while you were away from our location we started discussing the plan of us going on to take care of the Orcs in the town they had occupied and stationing some of our troops there.

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But we were suddenly interrupted by a young female that later turned out to be Louise's sister storming into the hall while shouting at Louise about how she was a 'useless mage', a 'disgrace to the family', and how she was going to 'marry the viscount as a proper little lady to set things right.' Disgusting retch.''

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The continuation of his speech was once again impeded by him glaring fiercely at the woman he was holding forced to her knees, whom I only now noticed only and one arm forced behind her back by Pierre, the other hung in a way that signalled at least one of the bones in it was broken. ''Then when Louise offered counter arguments she ignored them all and grabbed Louise trying to force her to go along with her out of the hall.

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General Hiraga was the first of us to recover from the whole ordeal and charged at the woman, throwing her into the wall with enough force we assumed she would be temporarily knocked out and putting Louise behind himself with his sword drawn and aimed in the bitches direction. This action caused the headmaster to aim his staff and shoot some kind of wind spell at General Hiraga, pushing him away from Louise and throwing him into a table.

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This caused me to throw my service dagger into the man's hand, forcibly removing the staff from it, after which our soldiers mobbed both him and the professor and forced them to their knees. Hiraga was already up again, however he had to throw himself into the way of a spell heading for Louise, fired by her sister, giving him a shallow wound across his back.

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In reaction to this Louise fired a relatively weak explosion at the bitch, slamming her into the wall again, leading to me forcing her to her knees with my sword aimed at her to keep her from attacking any of us again. That sound just a few moments ago was the bitch coming to and starting to make a noise, forcing me to silence her by hitting her with the hilt of my sword then threatening to cut her down if she didn't comply with the command to be silent.''

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This whole thing is giving me a bad headache. ''First thing first, nobody is grievously wounded right? Everyone will be fine for a while even without medical attention? I mean I can see that… what is the name of the 'bitch' actually, we can't keep calling her that no matter how true it turns out to be?''

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Louise spoke up without turning her head from where it was buried in Saito's chest. ''Her name is Eleonore de la blanc de la Vallière, my older sister. She's a researcher at the University de Bruxelles, and seems to vent the anger about all the problems ever occurring in her life on me. She also seems to always have believed my ability to send explosive beams of magic at people's faces is somehow caused by me being too weak to be a regular mage, and ignores any evidence on the contrary.''

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Ok now that we know the name… wait a second… did Louise just speak in English? I hadn't even noticed I had slipped back into English before she spoke. No matter, we now have to ensure what this is all about. ''So to sum it up Eleonore decided that since according to her you were weak that you wouldn't summon anything anyways, making her believe the best course of action would be to forcibly pick you up after said 'failed' summoning and then push you into a marriage you didn't want.

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Our people decided they didn't like it and beat up not only her but also the two school teachers that thought it was a good idea to interfere on Eleonore's behalf.'' I look around to see that the only wounds on our side besides Saito are some light scorch and burn wounds along Roland's left arm. ''Two of ours and all three of them got injured during this, none very heavily. Good enough summary?''

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Then Louise turned for the first time and nodded at this, I could see her tearstained face, though she attempted to cover it up with a watery smile, which quite obviously failed. Damnit I hate this society enough already that if the girl asks I will start a revolution immediately. Sadly enough she is loyal to the bone to both her family despite how they treat her but even more loyal to the current heir to the throne. Any kind of coup or rebellion is out of the question for now.

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Then Saito pulled her into a hug once more and kissed her on the top of her forehead, causing the fake smile to turn into a real, if somewhat small, one aimed at him. Ah young love. Or at least affection. Though very fast, it's probably still better for them both then that her intended would be for her. Especially considering how much she seems to either hate or fear the idea of getting married to that man.

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''Restrain these three and keep them under watch, Pierre, I'll take over Eleonore, you go get a doctor or whatever the local equivalent is.'' Then turning towards Mathilda ''Please sit down next to them we won't harm you but I am not taking any chances with any of you anymore.''

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While she finally seems to be regaining her composure she is still somewhat out of it and follows the command obediently with Jacques keeping an eye and weapon on her, while I head over to Pierre, taking the young woman from him and roughly dragging her to one of the chairs. Pierre himself heads out the doors and walks into the direction of the infirmary we had seen earlier while having that group discussion about our new situation.

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Less than twenty seconds after he left four of the Blue guards storm in through the door and look around to see that the situation is already more or less resolved, they salute us, with two taking up positions on the inside of the doors and two taking position out, with most of the following Redcoats taking up positions along the walls and four of them going over to Saito and Louise and taking up defensive positions around them.

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Ok so now we've effectively taken the academy leadership hostage….. shit this is going to turn out badly for us isn't it? Pointing to a random four of the soldiers along the wall I order them to relieve me and the guards from having to guard to guard our new prisoners, meanwhile ordering another four to assist me in taking care of all the wounded, both our side and theirs.

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Eleonore POV

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Why is the light burning in my eyes, wait why can't I move my hands! Its all coming back to me now, trying to ensure Louise goes with me to ensure she marries the viscount and doesn't run away from it after failing her summoning ritual, being thrown against a wall by a foreign soldier, losing my ability to see for a moment but then seeing the young man standing up from some other persons hit.

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Intending on firing a line level air blade spell at him only for my aim to go awry due to pain and my wand turning towards Louise, causing the faltering intent to lower the spells power to barely dot level but still sending it, but then the young man tackles Louise down and takes the hit for her, after which she sends one of her so called 'explosions' at me in rage… then nothing until coming to again.

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Opening my eyes to look around I see that a water mage is tending to my injuries, but with soldiers holding some kind of muskets aimed at us. Wait how did an army not aligned to royalty produce enough muskets to outfit seemingly all their troops with them instead of using the easier to make harquebus for less important soldiers?

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They must have a lot of people working on supplying them with new ones. Doesn't matter much anyways, they are still commoners as far as I can see that attacked Tristanian Nobility, with possible exception of that young man since he moved fast enough that chances are high he is a wind mage of some kind.

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I hear a cough and I see that opposite of me now stands a tall dark haired man, a number of scars on his face, his hands planted firmly on the table that would have towered above me, even if I was standing before him. And that man is also glaring at me, very harshly, with cold blue eyes freezing me in place as if he was turning the very air around me into ice. The following silence as I cannot look away from his armed, angered and scarred large frame is very uncomfortable. Please say something.

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''Now that you are finally done with your beauty sleep child.'' I take that back, please go back to being silent, this is making me feel pretty much exactly how I felt whenever mother was angry at me when I was young. Only with more danger of him actually trying to kill me. ''Can you explain to me how you got it into your tiny foolish head that it was a good idea to attempt kidnapping an armed young woman who's single magical capability seems to revolve around firing explosive projectiles?

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Especially since the strongest of those explosions can destroy entire stone buildings? And even if that wasn't enough reason to make you rethink your plan, what was your reason for going through with it when you noticed she was surrounded by familiars she had just summoned who were all not only armed but also ready to fight and possibly even die to ensure she stayed safe?!''

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He's lying, she can't be that strong, she's just a weak mistake! Also, she failed her familiar summoning, she must have, why else would she be having a conversation with the headmaster and another teacher here in the great hall! Also that wasn't kidnapping, it was just ensuring she would fulfil her duties to the family!

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Now I just need to tell this boorish man off and ensure everything is as it… ''He is speaking the truth girl, you really made a large mistake in trying to do this. The only reason they didn't kill you on the spot is that Louise managed to stop them by informing you were really her sister. My own attempts at stopping them only ended up with us wounded and knocked out by revenge attacks from her soldiers.''

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I turned to look at who said this and saw it was the Headmaster of this academy. How dare this man go along with their little play! ''I never took you for a man fooled by some theatrics headmaster, I always thought you more intelligent then that. It's obvious though that old age has dulled you to the fact that since my sister is incapable of real magic, she just hired a group of mercenaries to act as her familiars…''

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Then suddenly the young man that threw me around is in my face and even though he is shorter then the older man, he's even more terrifying, because where the other man had a look that made me freeze in place, this man has a burning fire that makes me feel as if I'm going to be burned alive at any moment while he's glaring at me. ''One more comment girl, one more comment and I'll ignore Louise's request of sparing you because you are a family member of hers and I'll instead burn you alive at the stake!''

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Involuntarily making myself as small as possible while whimpering at the man I slowly nod, I am at a severe disadvantage with several strong men, possibly even mages, that were either hired by my sister and came to care a lot about her or with just how loyal they are acting possibly actually summoned by her and because of that all want to kill me in horrifying ways, with the only thing keeping them from actually doing so being a request made by my baby sister.

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Oh how I've always loathed my baby sister for her weakness in caring for people outside of our family, it's now possibly the reason she has a small army ready to follow her to their deaths. Because if the most likely possibility is true, and these are just mercenaries she somehow convinced into following her, then she has already charmed them enough for them to willingly go into open rebellion against the Tristanian crown by killing the second in line for the throne.

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If the less likely possibility is true, then Louise has just summoned the most dangerous familiars she could have summoned shy of a dragon or a griffon: a number of well-armed and loyal human soldiers who will stand by her side to fight, including at least one mage with how they managed to win against not only me but also both the headmaster and another teacher.

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I need a way out of this, wait I know it! A duel between me and three companions against her and three of her familiars, with the amount of capable scions of nobility on this academy, there will be more then enough willing to fight by my side to earn the favour of the second in line for the throne that also happens to be the heir to the Vallière family. Now just how will I lure them into accepting this challenge?

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''But back to our question, even if you thought we were mercenaries, that still doesn't explain how you expected to be able forcibly take your sisters while there were a number of armed soldiers nearby willing to fight for her while she still has explosion magic? Without any kind of forces fighting for your side with even the academy teachers here only interfering out of a combination of reflex and the thought that we were going to kill you? Are you really enough of an idiot to not realize an explosion to your face can kill you just as easily as any other human?''

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How dare this man insult my intelligence as such! I'm a well-known researcher in the field of communication by proving the impossibility of magical communication between mages and familiars! ''Maybe because I'm the second in line for the throne so nobody but the most foolish mercenary would interfere into my business and Louise is my sister and a younger member of house de la Vallière, and as such supposed to follow my orders no matter what they are?''

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From the corner of my eye I can see some of the men aiming their fire-arms at me. As if they will actually fire those unless I try to attack Louise again or kill the men before me! Even if they fire at me those things the chances are high they aren't well trained in actually handling them, the weapons look literally brand new, they probably got them only a few hours ago from a weapon smith. This means their aim will be horrible, and they'll be just as likely to hit the professors next to me as they are to hit me even at this distance.

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''And just how little do you know of your sister that you think she would just comply with you on all fronts and let you force her to the altar with a man she doesn't want as her husband at all?'' I turn to look at who said that, and it's another dark haired huge man, though this one is in a very different uniform from the first, it looks a lot like those of most lower class nobles in the military do. That filthy lowborn scum, how dare he question my knowledge of her! Also with how she looks, she should be happy any man of high noble birth is interested in marrying her at all!

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Calm down, calm down. While most of these men are simply commoners they still have me tied to a chair and one of them is already up again after receiving multiple hits of wind spells oft used to incapacitate rowdy prisoners and rebellious crowds. For him to still move this fast means that at least he, but probably also that older man, are mages mostly focusing on strengthening their physical bodies. While less useful in a proper fight or a duel, in a relatively small space as this it gives them a large advantage over me.

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Wait a second… the men here are all wearing very different uniforms. The last man to speak is probably the leader of those in light grey or white coloured uniforms, while the man with the freezing blue eyes is either the overall commander or the leader of some kind of blue clothed group like the two standing by the door. The younger man in the uniform with the red overcoat is despite his young age probably the leader of the red coated troops stationed at the walls.

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While normally this might make it easier, now it only makes it worse if anything. Louise somehow managed to convince not one leader, but the leaders of at least two probably three different subdivisions of a group that she is the one they should be following. ''So that was your whole play Eleonore? It wasn't because one of your suitors once again ran away from you after they spent more then a few minutes talking to you? How many times is that by now anyways, the ninth? Maybe tenth? Or possibly even the eleventh?''

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That little bitch, how dare she! That's it I'm challenging her to that duel and the combined capabilities of me and the best of the academy's students will break her and her little mercenary friends! ''I'm challenging you to a duel little sister, a four versus four, at the open field near the academy!'' She looks at me as if I'm boring her and not even worthy of her attention, oh I'm so punishing that little bitch once we get home.

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''What time dear sister?'' If this continues for much longer I might just attempt to kill the little bitch. Not a good idea with both muskets and swords still aimed in my direction, I need to leave and fast. ''In two hours little sister. You better be ready, I'll be dragging you back home after this!''

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''I'll leave you to your delusions dear sister.'' She then made a strange motion with her hand, though it seems dismissive. The soldiers that had been holding me into the chair step away, allowing me to stand up finally. ''Now shoo Eleonore, the adults here have to talk so you'll need to leave the room. We can't have our discussion interrupted again by a child throwing a temper tantrum like you just did.''

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The nerve of that little bitch, oh I'll have her beg for something as sweet as pain once we're back home. Storming out of the door which is opened for me by the guards, I see that there are another two on the other side, but that a small crowd of nobles is now watching the doors. Good, this will give me the chance to recruit some noble companions for my duel with the little bitch and her mercenaries.

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I walk up to the crowd, which is being held away by the commoners whom had muskets with knives attached to them while they were guarding the door. ''My fellow members of nobility, my name is Eleonore de la Vallière, the current heir to the Vallière fortune.'' I let that sink in for moment before continuing. ''My younger sister Louise de la Vallière is a classmate of yours, and currently believes she can get away with just ignoring orders from the head of the family.''

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Technically that isn't true, since mother didn't order me to do this at all. However she would almost certainly agree with them, she never involved herself in my rightful berating of Louise after all, and is probably as ashamed of her incompetence as a mage as I am. ''To end this problem I have challenged her to a four on four duel, with by her side three of her so called 'familiars', however I need daring nobles to stand by my side to teach these fools a lesson, who is with me?''

A number of the interested stares is suddenly replaced by looks of fear and a number of the crowd takes a few steps back and I can hear the mutters, which mostly go something like: ''In no way am I going to fight commoners armed with muskets in a duel to the death, even though we'll win for sure a single lucky shot and I'm dead. Not risking it.''

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A young man with blonde hair and a well kept appearance however steps forward and gallantly bows his head. ''I, Guiche de Gramont, hereby come to fulfil my part of the alliance between our families to support you, the heir, in this dispute with your rebellious sister. May Brimir's grace shine upon us and grant us victory over these opponents.''

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''I thank you Guiche de Gramont, and I accept your support wholeheartedly. Is there anyone else willing to join us?'' Wonderful, with the Gramonts being a military Earth mage family, he can summon up a number of golem soldiers to act as mobile walls to not only stop the opponent from getting close to us, but to also take the hit if they attempt to shoot us with one of their muskets.

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Though in all likelihood Louise will choose the three that are seemingly the leaders of the group inside, meaning that with the exception of the blue clothed one they'll only be using swords or low quality magic spells. Hmm that might actually be somewhat of a problem, I need more information on those enemies. Let's hope that the young Gramont and whomever else joins me knows more about them.

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Sigh nobody else is stepping up, are the current generation of nobles just so greedy or is it mostly fear of fighting an opponent that might actually fight back instead of just targeting a dummy of some kind. ''My brother and I will join you if you wish lady de la Vallière, though we should find a less public room to talk about our strategies for this.''

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As I turn to look at her I see a face I know from my political lessons. Katherina du Mott, the second child of the du Mott family, however because of her brothers incompetence in any area regarding ruling over anything most likely to become the actual heir to the count du Mott. Especially with her brother having been arrested enough times that by now law enforcement groups around the country have already learned to recognise him from crowds, and will probably have him jailed when he tries anything outside of the du Mott county.

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While her brother isn't a good option in any way or shape, I do need three others for this fight and nobody else seems to be interested in joining me. Besides, the de Gramont kid and the female du Mott should prove more then enough to handle three noble disgraces that don't seem to understand just how much conventional magic outmatches physical enhancing magic if the latter is used alone. In the meantime I can focus on my sister then take down whomever the male du Mott is having trouble fighting.

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''I accept your offer with much thanks, lady Katherina du Mott, lord Robert du Mott. Your idea bear merit lady Katherina, let us gather in a more private room and convene about how we are going to handle the situation upon our hands and deliver justice upon them.'' As I walk away with the three young nobles in tow, I cannot help but grin. I will get my revenge on them for attacking me so unreasonably and dishonourably in that hall.

AN: Okay, under this AN there will be a full unit codex of all units that are shown/discussed in this chapter both from Louise's side and that of her enemies. Including the unit types that Eleonore can call upon in any way, shape or form during the battle through magic. I've placed it here already because I originally intended to add the fight to this chapter, until I realised that the whole thing already had 28000 words. After that I decided to cut this chapter off at Eleonore recruiting allies to fight for her.

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After this in every chapter I will only show the information about the units mentioned here and in the last chapter when Louise is scrolling through them to look up their information/looking into whether it's worth recruiting them and when battles have caused changes to those units (losing troops, gained a large amount of combat experience and as such improving, etcetera).

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The stats of enemy or allied units mentioned in a chapter will be at the chapters unit codex located at the end of every chapter. All other units that were summoned over but haven't been mentioned in the last chapter that also won't be mentioned below this will be part of a codex in a separate chapter after this. The codex in here will be a lot smaller than the one I had originally planned, what with me once again realizing that this was going to become way too long if I also added all the units of the Dutch/French/Papal army to it.

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Another thing, like I said in the last chapters AN, instead of the 6 month turns in the actual total war game, turns now take 1 month, so a unit that takes 1 turn takes 1 month to recruit, a 1 turn unit takes 1 month to recruit, etc. Due to this however I had to change the recruitment time of some units to keep it more reasonable and not have them be massively OP (like suddenly being able to train say a unit of line infantry in 1 month meaning that a relatively small area of only a few thousand inhabitants could recruit close to their entire population into a professional army within a few months before simply abandoning the province as a form of scorched Earth tactics).

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The reason behind 1 month: I first considered taking two months, then remembered how long building things can take in the game and the rough time-line of familiar of zero, which is by the time the entire thing ends slightly less than two years? Which wouldn't work with my idea for the first units recruited in Tristain to have their first taste of battle at the defence of Tarbes during the first Reconquista invasion.

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Another thing I will mention as a fore-warning: Yes I know Brimir is long since dead in the series and cannot connect to the living, not even the people that inherited his power etc. I have watched a number of the episodes, though it has been a somewhat long time since I last did, and know that the past of the series is very different from the one I am both explaining and alluding to in this chapter.

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I also know I just created a competition for Louise's affection between Saito and the personification of the void. Deal with both things, in this story females won't be chasing Saito's affection en mass and I needed some tension on that front. I also think Louise being the target of another girls romantic intentions is not explored much outside of stories where Louise takes Saito's role as the harem protagonist and suddenly has the princess, Tabitha, Kirche and Siesta all after a roll in the hay with her. (For some never explained reason she sometimes also has one of her sisters as a romantic interest?)

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As for the Brimir thing, what I'm trying to do here is what I also tried in my other story: make it so that a combination of enough people truly believing in you, an object of strong supernatural power near you and a body that can handle it will give you a level of 'godhood', not only so that I can potentially use this sometime much later in either this story or a sequel if I ever decide to make one, but also so that I can give Louise more of a reason to fight against the current system without it being completely out of character.

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That Godhood isn't meant as in literally becoming a god with a creation legend or something like that, but more just that you will have a very high level of power that nearly nobody actually has making some of them think of you as a 'God' or some similar religious figure. One of the main reasons why I find this concept intriguing to explore is because of how interesting a conversation between them and their 'God' can be to write, but also the reaction from people who didn't believe in said being.

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For the last thing, just think about how much more interesting the Avengers movie was made by the fact that 'proof' of the Norse 'Gods' existence was shown to everyone and that Stark and Rogers (played excellently by Robert Downey Junior and Chris Evans respectively) reacted respectively with a ''Your move Reindeer games'' and ''There's only one God ma'am, and he most certainly doesn't dress like that.''

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I don't know about you people, but that was one of the most interesting things about the movie as a whole, even though 'Gods' were walking among them, very few people suddenly started having an existential crisis or something similar, they just noted it down and moved on, even fighting said so called 'God's' in person and giving as good as they got.

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I am hoping to recreate similar situations in this story as it progresses, though I will probably fall short of the excellent work done in the Avengers movies. Ok I apologize for rambling there for a bit, lets move on to the last point before the Unit Codex of this chapter.

Lastly for anyone that is angry with me for having Eleonore involved in this as part of the early conflict, I needed a way for the whole group to bond over a fight, while also creating some kind of conflict between Louise and some of her family members (otherwise there wouldn't be a real reason for her to strike out on her own, instead she would just have her familiars live off supplies given by her family).

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And yes I know I've written Eleonore as an extremely foolish bitch in this chapter. She isn't going to be, she's just very out of touch with how the world works. I made her a slightly more extreme version of her canon persona, a highly intelligent researcher that isn't able to handle the idea anything she views as true might not be so and is also somewhat out of touch with reality. With her personality representing that of the average Halkeginian researcher.

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And yes I know I'm now describing an oxymoron, since usually intelligent and capable researchers actually invite criticism and counter-arguments so that they can refine and strengthen both their own capabilities and the quality of whatever theory/product they are working on. This I do to represent Halkeginian research: its oft wrong, primitive and based only on trying to prove the assumptions of whomever is the most influential researcher involved in the project.

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The reasoning behind why I think research over there is that way is actually relatively simple. They have a church more repressive and controlling then the Catholic Church during the renaissance, their technology hasn't actually advanced much at all even though they had a semi-stable world structure with structured conflict and no kind of 'Dark Ages' at any point in their history for nearly 6000 years, at least on a governmental front, on a humanitarian and scientific front they've been in a dark age for nearly five thousand years.

Meanwhile spells and such are also looked into mostly in the way of 'let's unearth this ancient treasure, it might be important' instead of actually making something new themselves. This means that there has been pretty much no progression outside of single people making personal spells by altering pre-existing ones to suit the needs of the situation more, making a position at a spell-researching institute be pretty much just a place to earn prestige and little else.

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This while it is a society where magic is considered the determining factor on what you may be able to reach in life to the point that just being able to do magic at all immediately makes you a member of the higher class (nobility) while not being able to do magic makes you part of the lower class (commoners). This leads to my point that the average researcher will be a bull headed prejudiced buffoon there mainly to gain some prestige for a later political career.

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Anyways enough of the talk, onto the unit codex of this chapter.
Unit Codex:

United Provinces Codex

Blue Guard

Category:

Infantry

Class:

Elite Infantry

Men:

160

Range:

70

Accuracy:

55 (59 with runes active)

Reloading skill:

60 (64 with runes active)

Ammunition:

15

Melee attack:

12 (14.4 with runes active)

Charge bonus:

15 (18 with runes active)

Defence:

20

Morale:

12

Unit limit:

1

Turns to train:

4

Recruitment cost:

1690

Upkeep cost:

420

The Blue Guards are the elite bodyguard unit that serves the rulers of the Netherlands.
All royal guards think of themselves as the elite of their national armies. Sometimes, they are court regiments where a martial appearance is valued more than real soldiering. The Blue Guards, however, have a tradition of fighting, and can shame any line regiment with their discipline and skill. This does not make them popular as they are, of course, all gentlemen and superior to any mere common infantry.

Historically, the Blue Guards began as the personal bodyguard to Protestant William of Orange (later William III of England and Scotland). They followed him as he drove out the Catholic King James II after the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688. They were at the forefront of the attack during the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland in 1690, wading across the river to fall upon James' line.

With William's claim to the throne secure after James' defeat, the Blue Guards remained his personal bodyguards until his death in 1702: William could not bring himself to really trust Englishmen. After his death the Blue Guards returned to the Netherlands, and resumed duties there, playing a key role in the War of Spanish Succession.

Abilities

Can guard

Can hide in light scrub

Can hide in woodland

Grappling hooks

Inspires nearby units

Resistant to morale shocks
Good stamina
Heavily degraded Gandalfr runes (These heavily degraded versions of the original ones only give a fifth of the original's boost, but are still a force to be reckoned with. This means that while they get some more competence when wielding any weapon or driving any vehicle, their ability will only increase slightly.
However the degradation with the ability to control vehicles is a lot less prominent than it is with any of the other abilities given by the runes, allowing them to still reach mediocre level of competence with any vehicle. Also, like the original version it allows for psychic communication with the summoner.)

Technological abilities

Socket bayonet

Chevaux de frise

Earthworks

Fire and advance

Fire by rank

Improved platoon firing

Square formation

Requirements to recruit

Building (minimum level):
Army staff college

Territory:
Unit can only be recruited in the home province of the faction.

Numbers:

1 full unit of 160 is available, though only 4 individual soldiers were involved in the main events of this chapter.

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Codex of the Armeé Royal du France:

Generals Bodyguard

Category: Cavalry
Class: General
Men: 32
Melee attack: 9 (10.8 with runes) (7 when on foot without runes, 8.2 when on foot with runes)
Charge bonus: 14 (16.8 with runes) (5 when on foot without runes, 6 when on foot with runes)
Defence: 10 (7 when on foot)
Morale: 12
Recruitment cost: £800
Upkeep cost: £50

These tough warriors and soldiers have only one task: keeping their commander alive and well in the swirling chaos of battle. A general can only do his duty properly if these men keep rough and unpleasant fellows from interrupting his calm deliberations about how to kill as many of the enemy as possible for as little loss as possible.

Only the most loyal and fiercest fighters are assigned to a general's bodyguard. Good manners are a bonus, of course, but a strong sword arm and a deadly aim are more use! Their equipment is generally of the finest quality, and their pay is often supplemented from the general's own pocket: they have a sound financial interest in keeping him alive, as well as their honour in carrying out a duty successfully!

Abilities:

Can rally routing troops
Can fight dismounted (However it has a negative effect on combat effectiveness)
Inspires nearby units
Heavily degraded Gandalfr runes (These heavily degraded versions of the original ones only give a fifth of the original's boost, but are still a force to be reckoned with. This means that while they get some more competence when wielding any weapon or driving any vehicle, their ability will only increase slightly.
However the degradation with the ability to control vehicles is a lot less prominent than it is with any of the other abilities given by the runes, allowing them to still reach mediocre level of competence with any vehicle. Also, like the original version it allows for psychic communication with the summoner.)

Requirements to recruit:

This type of unit can only be formed upon the recruitment of a new general, with all non-standard abilities and looks depending on the general in question and their recruitment ideology.

Current number:

1 full unit of 32 mounted soldiers.

Enemy armies:

Gramont's forces during the duel

Special Units:

Eleonore de la Vallière

Category: Leader
Class: General/politician
Men: 1
Range: 15 to 40 (Lowest the airwave spell, highest a version of the wind blade spell.)
Ranged damage: 1 to 30
Accuracy: 15
Ammunition: 1 to 50 (lowest the airwave spell, highest a version of the wind blade spell.)
Melee attack: 5
Charge bonus: 3
Defence: 3
Morale: 4
Command capability: 1 to 5 command capability (depending on the situation)
Morale bonus: -1 to +2 morale (depending on the situation)Eleonore de la Vallière is at the age of twenty-three the oldest daughter of the de la Vallière family, and the second in line for the Tristanian crown. Her father was the bastard half-brother of the previous king, her mother Karin 'the Heavy Wind' de la Vallière.

She is 165 centimetres (5 feet and 5 inches) tall, and looks like a shorter version of her mother with differently coloured hair. Unlike her youngest sister Louise, Eleonore doesn't take much after her mother personality wise. Nor does she take after her father much, like her other sister Cattelaya does.

Unlike any of those other four family members she fully buys into the 'Noble invincibility' idea, meaning that she thinks that in any kind of direct conflict, no matter if this is in matters of warfare or in matters of the alone mind, a commoner will never be truly equal to a noble. This mindset in combination with her standing as the at the time third in line for the throne allowed her entrance in Bruxelles Magical research academy.

In here she, through making a case in which she only mentioned arguments for her study and didn't debunk any that could potentially disprove her case, proved in the eyes of herself and most of the academy staff that any form of mental or other magical communication between a summoner and their familiar was impossible.

After this she got her own, if small, department to run studies with on the Bruxelles magical research academy. The young woman knows very little about how other people work and most of her opinions on people are based only on assumptions, nearly none at all from any kind of research into them or actual personal interaction with them.

Abilities

Line wind mage (Allowing this person to perform multi-element Wind based magic spells.)
Skirmishing (Due to training in guerrilla warfare, this person can if necessary skirmish against an enemy force)

Traits

Theoretical knowledge of magic (due to hours of studying for theoretical knowledge of magic and the potential applications of many spells to a much higher degree then a regular mage, this person can now more easily devise tactics both with and against groups of mages. +1 command when fighting against an army mostly consistent of mages, +1 command when leading an army mostly consistent of mages into battle)
Nobel invincibility (This person buys into the idea that commoner soldiers are unable to defeat noble soldiers in direct frontal combat if the armies are somewhat close to each-other in number.
-2 command when against armies comprised mainly of non-mage units, +2 morale when leading a mainly magical army against non-mage opponents, -1 morale if leading an army consistent mainly of non-magical units.)
Researcher of the Tristanian magical academy (+5% prestige with the nobility)

Requirements to recruit:

As the heir to her own faction, this person cannot be recruited as a subordinate unless you take control of either that faction or a faction they have sworn allegiance to.

Guiche de Gramont

Category: Leader
Class: General
Men: 1
Range: 15 to 55 (lowest an earthquake spell, largest range one on the Rock punting spell)
Ranged damage: 1 to 35 (lowest the Rock punting spell, highest the earthquake spell)
Accuracy: 30
Ammunition: 3 to 45 (Lowest on the Earthquake spell/bronze golem summoning, highest on the rock punting spell)
Melee attack: 7
Charge bonus: 4
Defence: 5
Morale: 6
Command capability: 7 to 10 command capability (depending on the situation)
Morale bonus: +1 to +3 morale (depending on the situation)

Guiche de Gramont is the fourth son of the famed general Adrien de Gramont, most famously known for being one of the main reasons behind the Germanian defeat in the Germanian-Tristanian war of the 5970's. The general took it upon himself to train his sons as the next generation of officers for the Tristanian army in case of another such war happening.

Guiche, while not the best of his brothers, was still a diligent student and is as such much more capable, both as a combatant himself and as a field officer, then most others his age. However due to inexperience in commanding flesh and blood troops in the field, where he instead is used to commanding easily replaceable golems against armies of the same unit types, he isn't fully suited yet to actual battles against human armies.

He is still a capable combatant and has done very well in the Tristanian youth duelling circuit. However the combination of this and his charms has also allowed him to indulge in a vice, he is a playboy, with him abusing the interest of several females in him even though he is engaged to a young woman he intends to marry down the line.

Abilities

Line Earth mage (Allowing this person to perform multi-element Earth based magic spells)
Golem specialty (A combination of a large amount of training and inborn alignment allows this person to summon golems much more efficiently than most other mages of the same element would be able to do.)
Can hide in woods
Can hide in tall grass
Good hunter (Is competent at tracking both animals and other people when hunting)
Good rider (Ranged capabilities don't diminish if the soldier was to engage in mounted combat)
Inspires nearby units

Traits

Competent commander (+1 command)
Theoretical knowledge of magic (due to hours of studying for theoretical knowledge of magic and the potential applications of many spells to a much higher degree then a regular mage, this person can now more easily devise tactics both with and against groups of mages. +1 command when fighting against an army mostly consistent of mages, +1 command when leading an army mostly consistent of mages into battle)
Charismatic (+1 morale, +5% influence with both the common and the higher classes)
Infantry commander (This person has experience commanding infantry into the field of battle. +1 command and +2 morale when leading a mainly infantry based force into battle.)
Born to fight (+2 command when fighting on land)
Pawns in battle (Due to extensive amounts of realistic battle training and also some skirmishes with bandits, but always while in command of constructs of some kind, the tactics used will cause dissent among flesh and blood soldiers. +1 command, -1 morale)

Requirements to recruit:

The only groups that can recruit this person to their cause are the Tristanian Royal Family, high ranking members of the de la Vallière family and other members of the Gramont family.

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Robert du Mott

Category: Leader
Class: General
Men: 1
Range: 10 to 40 (lowest the flame whip spell, highest a fireball spell)
Ranged damage: 1 to 6 (lowest his version of the fire-ball spell, highest the flame whip spell)
Accuracy: 10
Ammunition: 10
Melee attack: 3
Charge bonus: 2
Defence: 2
Morale: 3
Upkeep cost: £20 (Can also be paid in political favors)
Command capability: -5 to 0 command capability (depending on the situation)
Morale bonus: -2 to +0 morale (depending on the situation)

Robert Mott is the oldest son of the current Count du Mott, said count being a small-time nobleman that managed to land himself the position of Royal Messenger due to a combination of diplomatic skills and an extreme loyalty to his country. However the son hasn't inherited his fathers charisma or the undying loyalty to the country. He also doesn't have much if any capabilities on the martial front, neither in personal combat nor strategical.

He has sadly enough inherited something else from the man: His insatiable lust and the idea that the commoners are little more then cattle to serve the will of the nobility. This in combination with his inflated sense of self has oft caused him to get in trouble with other more level-headed members of nobility and the staff of the Tristanian Magical Academy.

The headmaster has been trying to get him expelled, however the boys father has made many contacts during his time as Royal messenger, one of those contacts serves as the judge assigned for all legal matters pertaining students attending the Tristanian Magical Academy. This has caused the young man to be cleared of all charges four times after he was arrested by the academy guards for attempted rape of a maid twice, assault on a teacher once and lastly once for killing the familiars of two other students.

Abilities

Dot fire mage (Allows for the use of dot level fire spells.)

Traits

Friends with the law (Can come off scotch free from nearly any problems with law enforcement in or around the academy of magic in Tristain because of being favoured by the local judge.)
Buffoon (due to a combination low intelligence and a dislike of studying opponents can easily manipulate or fool this person into making mistakes, both on and off the battlefield. -2 command, -1 morale)
Coward (-1 morale)
Nobel invincibility (This person buys into the idea that commoner soldiers are unable to defeat noble soldiers in direct frontal combat. -2 command when against armies comprised mainly of non-mage units, +2 morale when leading a magical army against non-mage opponents, -1 morale if leading an army consistent mainly of non-magical units.)
Hotheaded (Easy to anger and with little capacity to patience, -1 command during battle, -2 command during sieges)

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Katherina du Mott

Category: Leader
Class: General
Men: 1
Range: 40
Ranged damage: 2 to 12
Melee attack: 5
Charge bonus: 3
Defence: 3
Morale: 5
Recruitment cost: £150 (As a mercenary leader, she is one of the few generals that can be recruited by outside forces)
Upkeep: £20 (Can also be paid in political favors)
Command capability: 5 to 7 command capability (depending on the situation)
Morale bonus: 1 to +3 morale (depending on the situation)

Katherina Mott is the oldest daughter of the current Count du Mott, said count being a small-time nobleman that managed to land himself the position of Royal Messenger due to a combination of diplomatic skills and an extreme loyalty to his country. While his daughter inherited at least some of his diplomatic skills, she lacks any of his loyalty to his country.

This causes her to be viewed as a dangerous opponent by most political factions since nobody knows where her loyalties truly lie and what her actual goals are. She has also inherited some of his near insatiable lust, though not to the degree her older brother has and hers targets males instead of females.

This makes it easier for her to find willing assistants to relieve said lust instead of having to try and force herself upon people and lastly while having the typical mage superiority complex over commoners, she does understand they can be very dangerous to her if it comes down to it, unlike her brother who has the same views as their father on them.

She has been in trouble with the schools law enforcement once when she tried but failed to feed a male servant a love potion addled drink, however the servant was suspicious and had it examined by a teacher who then found out about the love potion inside the drink. She was cleared of the charge by the same judge that cleared her brother of all his crimes.

Even though she isn't the official heir to the family title as she is the second child, considering the chances are not only high her brother will end up in jail shortly after graduating the academy but also the fact that she is more competent then her brother, their father trained her to be able to take over as his heir. She also has created a small band of female mercenaries called 'the fourth daughters'.

Whom as the name suggests are fourth daughters in families both noble and commoner that want to make a name for themselves. They are oft accused of being involved in petty crimes, however the influence of the father of their commanding officer keeps the organisation as a whole from being targeted. Their loyalty is to Katherina alone however, as they despise both Count du Mott and his eldest son. They are not as well trained as the average member of the Tristanian Royal Military, however they are much better trained then most other mercenaries, levies and even most of the professional soldiers of Tristanian nobility.

Unknown to most of Tristain she has lead these mercenaries in battle several times against uprisings in their lands, these uprisings oft having been caused by her father's or brother's behaviour towards the common people. While it makes little difference reputation wise due to most people not knowing of these conflicts even happening, it has honed the skills of both herself and her soldiers in battle.

Abilities

Dot level water mage
Healing (this person specializes in healing magic, causing her magical abilities to heal others faster than those of the average water mage.)

Traits

Charismatic (+1 morale, +5% influence with both the common and higher classes)
Infantry commander (This person has experience commanding infantry into the field of battle. +1 command and +2 morale when leading a mainly infantry based force into battle.)
Competent commander (+1 command)
Born to fight (+2 command)
Healer (+10% chance of wounded troops surviving the battle)

Requirements to recruit:

To recruit this person you also need to recruit the mercenary company fourth daughters .

Other units

Gramont style Bronze golems

Category: Infantry
Class: Golem infantry
Men: 4
Melee attack: 6
Charge bonus: 7
Defence: 6
Morale: - (due to them not being living thinking beings they do not have morale as such, and can only be routed if the controller becomes either unable to continue fighting or is routed. Otherwise these units will continue fighting on until their own destruction or until their caster runs out of magic)
Recruitment cost: £0, medium amount of magical power from the caster (half of the total power belonging to most dot class mages)
Upkeep: Minimum amount of magical control and a medium amount of magical power from the caster (about the same amount of power per minute the average dot class mage regains for the same duration of time.)

These golems are essentially non-sentient distance controlled units, with this specific design type created by the prominent Earth mage family de la Gramont. They have some advantages over flesh and blood soldiers, but also have a roughly equal amount of disadvantages. While these aren't some of the best, they also aren't anywhere near the weakest golem types. Their main advantage over other golems is their speed, since they are roughly as fast as most heavy cavalry units. This makes them an excellent flanking force to turn the tide of a battle with.

Like all golems, they have the advantage of being able to be summoned up near anywhere as long as there is an earth mage capable of doing so and always following orders unlike flesh and blood soldiers, but to their disadvantage unlike flesh and blood soldiers they cannot function at all anymore when their leader gets taken out of the fight, nor do they have the ability to take initiative should their leader not be able to judge the situation that they find themselves in correctly.

After that these golems also have the disadvantage that they'll be unable to react at all should their leader panic or take his mind off of the battle for more then a few seconds. This in combination with the fact that golems cost more magical power in upkeep the farther they move away from the mage means that very few armies use Golems as their main disposable infantry units and oft instead usually recruit levies from around the country to do that same job.

Requirements to recruit:

Having an Earth mage in your forces that either is a member of the de Gramont family or has studied under a member of the de Gramont family in how to construct these golems.

Numbers:
unknown

Gramont style Earth Golems

Category: Infantry
Class: Mob golem
Men: 32
Melee attack: 2
Charge bonus: 3
Defence: 1
Morale: - (due to them not being living thinking beings they do not have morale as such, and can only be routed if the controller becomes either unable to continue fighting or is routed. Otherwise these units will continue fighting on until their own destruction.)
Recruitment cost: £0, Low amount of magical power, minimum control
Upkeep: £0, An insignificant amount of magical control and a small amount of magical power (Per minute usually about half of what the average dot mage regains in that same amount of time, however the amount needed will rise quickly if the golems move a significant distance away from the caster.)

This is one of the weakest golem types around, however they have one advantage over every single other golem type: they are extremely cheap to summon and maintain and thusly can be summoned in somewhat large by even some of the most incompetent earth mages alive. This causes them to be what the Gramont family uses as the training tools to train their sons and daughters in the art of warfare without risking the possibility of losing actual valuable personnel during these training exercises.

Like all golems, they have the advantage of being able to be summoned up near anywhere as long as there is an earth mage capable of doing so and always following orders unlike flesh and blood soldiers, but to their disadvantage unlike flesh and blood soldiers they cannot function at all anymore when their leader gets taken out of the fight, nor do they have the ability to take initiative should their leader not be able to judge the situation that they find themselves in correctly.

After that these golems also have the disadvantage that they'll be unable to react at all should their leader panic or take his mind off of the battle for more than a few seconds. This in combination with the fact that golems cost more magical power in upkeep the farther they move away from the mage means that very few armies use Golems as their main disposable infantry units and oft instead usually recruit levies from around the country to do that same job.

Requirements to recruit:

Having an Earth mage in your forces that has studied under a member of the de Gramont family in how to construct these golems.

Numbers:
unknown

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