There were three general ways to take over a society. Number one: enter pre-existing institutions, do whatever one needed to rise up and create power structures within, until one’s position becos unassailable and subvert the entire thing from the inside. This was the covert approach, commonly used by a small group that shared an unpopular vision they wanted to push, without having to resort to violence. Number two: by ans of force, be that physical or intellectual, put pressure onto the target until it was forced to budge on at least a few core issues, infusing what had previously existed with fresh ideas. This was the reformist approach, usually employed by people who had a basic appreciation for what was already there and wanted to see it nudged in a hopefully beneficial way. Number three: through might alone, the target was utterly demolished and one was then left to replace it with whatever else one desired. If this ca from the inside, it was called a revolution, from the outside, it was conquest, and in both cases, it was the sledgehamr solution that usually caused a lot of trouble. Conquerors usually had more to gain from the latter approach, since they had no previous attachnt to what they took over.
Whenever one identified that they wanted to take over a society, one also had to decide which of these three approaches to take. There was a ti and a place for all of them. Generally, John preferred to co as a reforr or a conqueror, that entirely depended on what the target society was. Little Maryland, Order of the Golden Rose, or Amacat? Reforming was enough there, the fundantal power structures here were functioning and just had to be optimized to serve both him and the people better. New Libraria, the Small Lake Pact, or the various small slaver guilds he had t in the uncontrolled territories? Ti for the sledgehamr.
There were, of course, degrees of how much violence needed to be deployed. Sotis it was just the way a group handled its power distribution chanism that needed to be replaced. Sotis it was the people that required to be removed. The brilliant thing about democracies was that such removal could be handled via elections. On the opposite side, monarchies (and aristocracies in general) had the issue that option one and two were out from the get-go. There was no infiltrating the nobility and a king that didn’t want to reform didn’t have to. They just sotis relented because an unruly mob outside the palace showed that option three was very much on the nu if the taxes kept rising. This made monarchies inherently volatile, always peddling between total collapse and incredible success, all depending on the monarch. Republics were more of a steady middle road. Not that they were perfect.
“The point is,” John explained to his incredibly bored girlfriend, “that there is no way I can subvert or reform this system.” On the display of his smartphone, a picture of a foreign letter appeared next to an English one. He had extracted it from the book he was currently reading. “Which ans I need to completely crush the opposition. Usually, I’d be willing to entertain imprisonnt, but with their numbers and our short-lived stay here, that’s not exactly an option.”
“Hmm, I guess I get that,” Rave said. She perfectly got it, she just liked to speak that way. Laying on her back on the table, she tossed a spherical asuring tool up into the air repeatedly. “Is the book interesting?”
“It’s about gardening, not particularly,” John responded truthfully. He held the book with both hands, turning a page in search of certain letters. When he found them, he cross-referenced them with his notes. Once he had a new insight about grammar, word construction, or other text related stuff, he used his Interface with his phone to adjust his notes.
Over the course of the last four hours, he had deciphered most of the languages inside this library. The basic language, the one used for the nas on the map, was the easiest to figure out. It was the English alphabet with different shapes and a slightly different system of capitalization, utilizing little hooks attached to the letters to signal what the correct phonetics for the first letter was. Evident by the books it was found in, it was the youngest of the writing systems. If John had to guess, either the Emperor or soone else had gotten annoyed with what previously existed and decided to use their immortality to streamline things. Of the other three major writing systems he had co across, two were focused on syllables and another was a horrid mixture of hieroglyphs and syllables. He hadn’t been able to crack that one so far.
He closed the book and got ready to fetch the next one when he got a sudden update on the third Quest of the Adventure.
Gaia had reacted appropriately to his violent actions and given him a Quest to do what he wanted to anyway. The Lords had to be taken care of before anything else and Siena was out there taking them out one after the other. She was the best for such a covert mission. The rest of them were still inside Ramun’s tower, probing its many floors for its secrets.
There wasn’t much. There wasn’t even a bed. John was already wondering if they should leave for the night or stay. He was tilting towards the forr, but only after he had done a few other things. Once he was done with this place, he could let the dust settle for a few hours and continue his work in the morning. Already he knew that this wouldn’t be a quick endeavour. The world was too vast and too many things uncertain. If his level estimates were accurate, clashing with the Emperor directly would be quite dangerous. He would have to rely on Eliana and their sheer numbers.
“I’m so fucking boooreeeeeed,” the pretty little psycho exclaid. The feeling was shared by the rest of the won in the room, save for Momo. Being the bookworm that she was, the sassy support had enough enthusiasm for the rest of them about the library.
“Two more Lords before we move out,” John promised her and placed the book down. “You know, if you’re gobbling up the books, you could at least help with my notes on the language.” No answer, Momo was too busy sticking her nose between the pages. “Adorable, distracted little fairies say what?” he raised his voice a little louder.
“What?” Momo finally snapped out of her letter buffet and then looked around confused when everyone was giggling at her. “What?!” she repeated, minorly annoyed, which only caused further amusent.
“Your retarded ass would know what is so fucking funny if you didn’t inhale so much book dust that it clogged up your fucking ears,” Eliana cackled.
“Love you too, cumbucket,” Momo returned.
“Oh no, such a giant fucking insult! How will my submissive and breedable womb survive getting drowned with nerd-spunk?”
“It wasn’t an insult; it was a statent of fact.”
“And we’re not having sex here,” John told her. “Any new insights on the text systems?”
“Uhm, let see your notes.” Momo ca over and grabbed his smartphone.
While she went ahead and got caught up on what he had categorized so far, Beatrice ca back up the stairs. “Reporting: the servants remain braindead.”
“The proper way to say it is ‘abused into mindless loyalty’,” John reprimanded her. “A bit of basic respect for the people here, please. They didn’t choose to get born into a world where you have to ruin your brain to eat.” The Gar looked at the cast-iron corpse of Ramun. It had been moved to a corner in the room where it lay like a broken display piece. The Baroness was right next to him. ‘I wonder if he chose two maids for any particular reason. Was it just pure coincidence or is there a remainder of appreciation for the female form inside those tal shells? Neither of them had any Libido, so sexual interest can’t really be it.’
‘I found the Baroness’ base of operations,’ Siena suddenly chid into his mind.
That made John redirect his attention. He had been following Siena with the Mandala Sphere, using the eye in the sky to check which districts of the city they hadn’t yet checked for an Ironborn. That let him estimate, despite the smog, that Siena was inside the mountain. A complex of rooms had been worked into the grey stone, like a massive ant farm.
Had it been nearby, John would have considered relocating there himself, but it was on the other side of the massive cave opening out of which the pollution spewed. There was no sense in hurrying to explore the entirety of the city. ‘Do a quick scan and tell if you find another study,’ he instructed her.
The main reason why Siena was out there assassinating targets that each of them could have killed with a hand tied to their feet was that they had no knowledge of the way mbers of the Iron Domain corresponded with each other. Obviously, they lacked the technological prowess to produce a smartphone, but there were many magical tools that could allow rapid long-distance communication. If they had sothing like that and managed to communicate with the surrounding areas, news of a barony getting annihilated would spread rapidly. There was no direct reason to be afraid of counterasures, but why rob oneself of the advantage of surprise?
The caution with which John approached this may have been unnecessary, however. All of the towers Siena invaded had an area dedicated to writing, with letters being scattered all over the place. Checking the contents, in the limited way they could so far, had revealed much of it to be correspondence between various Ironborn. Either letters were the honourable way to contact soone or magical communication was limited/non-existent. John was not entirely sure what it was yet and would remain prudent until he was.
Siena’s quick scan of the environnt revealed nothing of interest. A couple of servants inhaling ttle in their quarters, speaking in hushed tones about the aristocrats, doors secured with trapping chanisms, secret passages, and other varieties of hidden corners, so of which looked like they had been untouched for decades.
There was still much to explore when he told her to leave. There were still two Ironborn to kill.
“Alright, here you go,” Momo handed John back his smartphone, “I finished off the remaining alphabet of system one and two. Still not entirely sure about three though.”
“Fantastic,” John humd. While Momo returned to her reading, the Gar’s girlfriend sat down on top of him.
“Ya sure we can’t pass the ti in a fun way?” Rave asked, her arms wrapping around his neck.
In an overly dramatic fashion, John bonked her with the spine of the book closest to him and declared, “Begone, thot!”
“But why?” Rave cried and adorably pushed her lower lip forwards. “Love , tiger,” she whined and blinked at him with big eyes. The blatant manipulation worked flawlessly. Heartstrings tugging, John put the book back down and leaned up to kiss the first of his girls. She gave him a quick peck and then pulled back. “Since you’re so reluctant,” she playfully complained, before getting off him.
“Being surrounded by squalor and misery doesn’t really put in the mood,” John defended himself. “Plus, for all we know, the Emperor could sense our presence in his Kingdom and suddenly manifest right next to us…” John paused, his paranoia telling him that that was going to happen at the exact second he said that. Nothing did happen, so there were only snickers by harettes that knew why he had stopped. “…and I don’t want to be caught with my dick out.”
“That makes up like half the excitent though,” Rave pointed out. “Having sex in dangerous situations is fun.”
“Are you cum-dispenser aware that I’m the only Polish girl in this entire fucking world?” Eliana threw in a complete non-sequitur.
“Uhm, I’m not sure that’s entirely true,” John responded and pointed at Lydia. Since she was queen of Rex Germaniae, it was easy to forget, but she had been born and raised in Poland. When it ca to her direct ancestry, she was half and half.
“One, two, either way, critically endangered fucking species – you’re morally obligated to breed my fat ass imdiately! You can pump the royal cunt full after I’m bloated with baby juice.”
“You’re really needy for a pregnancy today,” John remarked.
“KNOCK UP ALREADY!” she scread in return.
“Ya know the deal,” Rave reminded the pretty little psycho. “I get my vows, ya get your baby.”
“Just because I fucking know it doesn’t an my stupid fucking brain doesn’t let know that I am fertile as fuck.” Eliana paced up and down the room. “All of you are easing over your periods with magic and shit. anwhile, I have this one fucking egg that I keep at peak condition, so I can get knocked the fuck up imdiately.”
“Well, to be frank, you’re doing that to yourself,” John comnted. “We’d have a date for the wedding, so you’d be able to prepare maximum fertility anyway.”
“I’m not wasting any of my fucking eggs, you absolute asshole!” Eliana sounded genuinely offended. To be fair, her getting John’s kid was easily in her top three priorities in life, if not number one. Only other contenders were survival and their continuous relationship. “You know won are born with a set amount of ovum, right? What the fuck do I do if I turn thirty-thousand and I’m out of that shit? Do I just NOT have another baby?!”
That was an interesting question, actually. “Lydia?” John turned to the queen, who had been ignoring the entire discussion in favour of slowly learning this new language herself. “Do you know anything about this?”
“When it cos to pregnancy, even in the Abyssal context, you are already conversing with the expert,” the royal responded.
“Fair enough, so,” he returned to facing Eliana, “explain this to . Wouldn’t Abyssal won of a high enough power level stay fertile forever?”
“Fuck no… or maybe yes, I don’t actually know,” Eliana paced up and down faster. “Useless fucking scientists haven’t researched what the fuck happens exactly with the ovum of Abyssal won. Obviously, the loss of eggs doesn’t accelerate with age, like it usually does after thirty and forty. Best fucking case: Abyssal won only lose the one that lazy nerds didn’t fertilize each month, instead of the thousand that just get tossed the fuck out because nature is a cruel bitch.”
“…Remind , how many ovum would a woman have at the relevant age?”
“About 350’000 by the start of puberty.”
“If we stay with the best-case scenario, wouldn’t that translate to-”
“29’166 years and six to seven months, I did the fucking math, yes.”
“Didn’t ya die though? How does that factor in?” Rave asked.
“Regenerated my useless, ugly body, so it doesn’t fucking matter and I was obviously breedable afterwards.” Eliana frowned, recalling that she had previously been ‘pregnant’ for a couple of hours. “AAAAHHH!” The pretty little psycho grabbed a random tool from a nearby shelf and tossed it across the room. It shattered into a myriad of pieces upon impact, bronze screws flying everywhere. “Biology fucking sucks!”
“You can put your own blood on fire but you can’t generate so new eggs?” John wondered.
“I fucking can!”
“…Then why are you so upset?”
“What if they aren’t as fucking good as the natural ones? What if I make a mistake putting that DNA shit together and I pop out abominations with sixteen limbs and beaver teeth for genitals? What if I’m capped at 350’000 kids?!”
John and the rest of the harem exchanged so hesitant glances, while they waited for Eliana’s mood to swing to sothing approximating reasonability. Not that she was necessarily wrong in her line of thought, it was just taken to a logical extre that was completely absurd to consider in their current situation.
“You fucking cunts are so lucky!” Eliana did not calm down imdiately, instead pointing angrily at everyone except Nia. “You won’t have to worry about this shit.”
“Wait a sec,” Rave raised her voice in confusion. “I get the Artificial Spirits and elentals, that’s going to be dealt with by John’s Perk BS, but how am I and Lydia not affected?”
“Because you perma-fertile cunts are half elentals, so you don’t just use eggs but so magical essence mingling fuckery, like gods do. Success rate drops of a fucking cliff, but it’s not fucking zero!”
“Huh. Neat.”
“Eat my ass, lucky, seizure hands-having bitch!” Eliana shouted, only to suddenly sink down to the floor. Her expression shifted from angry to unhappy, while she wrapped her arms around her knees. “Sorry… just bothers the shit out of … didn’t an to snap at you…”
“Won’t lie, that was a bit much,” Rave reprimanded. “I get this is very important to ya and all that, but ya don’t need to get that caught up in a problem three millennia from now.”
“Thirty millennia,” John corrected. “Point still stands. Besides, you are a human god. You may be exempt as well.”
“Oh… Yeah…” The pretty little psycho sounded even more deflated, despite the potentially good news. “...sorry…” Eliana dragged a single finger over the floor, now a picture of absolute misery. There was no chance the Gar could see her in that state and not walk over to pull her into a tight embrace.
Luckily, they had the ti to cheer her up.
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