Summon Perfect Warlady Chapter 14

Yeah, another one of these. 

I got sick this weekend (which is my most productive writing time), but after 20 hours of straight bed rest I'm only a little miserable. It meant I got maybe a thousand words written in that time, though. Haven't even started on Psychoprotective 3.01. 

But I still have more of this banked up, so you get this instead of nothing. I'm quickly running out of backlog, though, I got chapter 15 ready for November 1st and that's it, so I may end up actually having to skip an update as soon as next week if I don't get it back in gear. Just giving y'all a heads up.

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As it turned out, what she wore underneath the transformation did have an impact on the appearance of the magical girl dress. Ace had given her three outfits: first, a nice and snappy WWI-era German officer’s uniform. It even had pants. Second, the elegant red dress she wore to the victory party. Finally, he gave her a flight suit-like garment that made her look like she fit in with her knights, harness and all.

The first transformed outfit reminded her of a school uniform that she saw in a mecha anime she liked, the shoulders and long sleeves gave the impression of an officer’s jacket without actually being one. The skirt was even shorter than the one made from her orphanage dress, and it wasn’t pleated either. Her legs were mostly covered, though, from the thigh high boots, which also had a slight heel to make her look a centimeter or two taller. She thinks she liked this one the best.

The second one, once transformed, turned into a shrine maiden-like outfit, with a red skirt that was below her knees and sandals. It was… okay. Definitely her least favorite of the three, but she’d wear it every so often.

The last one turned into a chinese style dress with long gloves and socks held on by… she knew that the legs were called garters, but she had no idea what to call a similar thing holding her long gloves to her sleeves. It also had high heels, which were surprisingly easy to move around in. It was probably another thing to thank the royal special for. The bonuses of the outfits did not apply when transformed, though, so there was no reason to switch between unless Tanya was ready to commit to a rather expensive armor set with non-defensive bonuses.

With Tanya’s additional juice supply, which she mostly dedicated to Ace’s work as she really didn’t need more than three caster levels worth of juice to practice with, the equipment for her knights slowly started to come in. He assured her that he could adjust the equipment once he figured out how to do the transformation action feature, with minimal loss. He also leveled to three after a few turns of doing this, becoming steadily more efficient in creating the advanced accessories.

“Okay, so with my new level, and the stuff that’s already been paid for, that means you guys have me for… thirty more turns?” Ace asked.

“Thirty-one and two thirds, actually.” Tanya corrected. “Has Lord Bernhard still been Ditto-ing you every turn?”

“Not every turn, but yeah, first thing in the morning, talk to Lloyd, then get back here to work.” Ace replied, waving his hand vaguely. “I don’t envy that guy, sewing together Battle Bears and duds again instead of working on these sweet Accessories.”

“Jetstone did lose a lot of those bears from my attacks.” Tanya acknowledged, “It may be unpleasant but it must be done. I’m sure you’ll get tired of making these before the full supply is created.” The plan was to create enough accessories for six stacks of knights, and eight extra for warlords and attrition. That should be enough for long-term use. With her date-a-mancy skill, she could cut that down to four stacks of twelve, which could be led by each of her current warlords, or three stacks of sixteen when she gets good enough, which would free up Victoria.

She’ll need to keep using her juice to supplement him, though, as the debt couldn’t even handle a quarter of the juice needed to create that many sets of accessories. She’ll need to contract a Magic Kingdom dollamancer to finish the job, she suspects. Or perhaps linking? The twoll workshop and stack of assistants did cut off a whole caster turn of juice per set…

It isn’t important, she’ll figure something out.

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“Yeah, like that yer honor.” Vinny said as King Ansom danced on his carpet. “Ya gotta feel the beat, yannow?”

“I don’t think I feel it, Vinny.” Ansom said, but he was doing a reasonable job maintaining it.

“Yeah, you just lost it.” Vinny admitted. “Hey Princess, get him going again.”

Tanya gave an annoyed glance at him, but put her magic wand to her lips anyway before blowing out a steady beat of C notes. She’s found that she could make the thing act like whatever handheld object she wanted, this time a flute.

Dance-fighting could be learned, but according to Sizemore, when one was just a warlord and not a rhyme-o-mancer, it required that they find their personal dance style. This was not easy.

Count Doombats was nominally here as a Transylvitan diplomatic delegation to discuss Faq, but as he and Ansom were personal friends, it quickly turned into having fun, and in this case, fun was just screwing around in the airspace, with Ansom on his flying carpet and Vinny using his flight special.

Tanya had spent most of her juice already by lending it to Ace and Sizemore, so it was fine to schmooze a little with the King, no different than going to the karaoke bar with the boss.

Ansom seemed to get a little into it, and Tanya started spending a trickle of juice, focusing on her date-a-mancy bond with the king and letting her fingers go where they may. The magic of rhyme-o-mancy responded, guiding her to make a tune in a genre that she couldn’t quite identify. It wasn’t rock music…

Ansom’s moves started becoming much more fluid as he was as guided as her music was, dancing in a way that finally struck Tanya as to what it was: it was disco music! He moved his hand up and down, pointing diagonally as he shimmied his hips like he was in an 80s dance club.

“Now you’re getting it!” Vinny said, joining him in his dance. He stretched out his hand to Victoria. “Care to dance, sweet cheeks?”

Victoria turned to Tanya, and at her nod, started to dance along with the vampiric warlord. Tanya knew that Victoria popped with knowledge of ballroom dancing, she had practiced with her before the balls in Jetstone, but she didn’t expect her to immediately go into a disco-appropriate dance, and for Vinny to follow suit.

After a minute or two, Tanya cut off the juice and removed her lips from her wand, watching Ansom as he continued to dance without the music.

“I think he’s got it.” Vinny stage-whispered to Victoria, who had returned to Tanya’s side. Vinny nudged Tanya’s chair with his boot. “Hey buddy, you okay?” Ham, the knight that was Tanya’s chair today, one of five that had that name, gave an affirmative noise. After the last time, she had ordered her knights to not speak when acting as her furniture, so he said no words. “Okay then.”

Given how happy he felt through Tanya’s date-a-mancy senses, which always sharpened with physical contact, Tanya responded by glancing at Victoria, who swatted the man for her. “Chairs don’t grunt!” Victoria said scoldingly.

Eventually realizing that Tanya had stopped playing and the music Ansom was dancing to was just his imagination, the King took a deep breath. “That was bracing!” He exclaimed, smiling widely.

“You did good, Ansom.” Vinny replied, “Now, whenever you get into a dance fight, you gotta get back into that groove and start funking out, just like that.” When one learns to dance-fight, it’s usually only defensive in nature, they need to respond to someone else’s dance-fight instead of initiating it. It can be mastered to the point where the warlord can initiate a dance fight, but that requires several victories under his belt, or dance-fighting subordinates.

“Thank you Vinny, for doing this. I’ve been going stir crazy on that throne, and this was just the thing I needed.” Ansom said, directing his carpet to return to the tower. “Let’s have some lunch, shall we? I ordered the scouts to carry over a live chicken for you.”

“You know me too well, yer honor.” Vinny replied as he followed him.

Getting up off of her subordinate, she ignored the disappointed sigh and followed her boss.

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Returning wasn’t all sunshine and roses, there was one question that hung over them: the question of the gems…

Sizemore and Maggie had followed her instructions to keep any of the larger gems, which they understood to be ‘anything bigger than ten thousand’ secret from Ansom so he wasn’t tempted to send it to Jetstone. The problem, and Tanya uses that term loosely… was that most of them were that big.

It was an anomaly. Tanya didn’t trust anomalies. There were, fortunately, enough smaller gems that Ansom didn’t see anything unusual about the treasury’s slow climb, but the fact that not even a tenth of the wealth extracted from Gobwin Knob’s mine was considered a typical income for a mine was absurd.

Fortunately, Tanya was able to hide the gems in her room, condensing many large gems with moneymancy into fist-sized gems worth a hundred thousand shmuckers each. Her wall safe was starting to get full with them. She disguised this as ‘moneymancy practice’, continually making and claiming large gems, so the treasury number would fluctuate by a hundred thousand or two back and forth for a turn.

“I can’t believe our luck.” Sizemore said as they all had their evening meal in Tanya’s room. The gems, two million shmuckers in total, shined like the life-changing wealth they represented. “We could be the richest side on Erf…”

Maggie hummed primly. “Well, I wouldn’t go that far…” Her gaze never left the glimmering gems. “...but it puts us on the list, certainly.”

"What do we do about it, though?" Tanya asked, unsure. "I expected maybe enough to hit level five on the capital, not… this." A level five city cost approximately half a million shmuckers. They could get four with this much. If anyone knew how much money they were sitting on… it would not end well. "I used Mathamancy on your reports. This was less than a 1% chance. Way less."

"Perhaps the Titans have some great enemy that we need this to fight." Suggested Maggie.

Maybe Being X? No, that’s silly… Who is our greatest threat? "Wanda…" Tanya spat. The Arkentools would be something that required this many resources.

"Or Charlie, yes." Maggie said in agreement. "I imagine his coffers would make this look small."

"Even ignoring the mining income, our forces are not yet enough to outpace our city income." Tanya said, "Perhaps we could hire some casters to translate that money into power?" Her boosted leadership meant that they didn't care about the caster bonus to golems…

"That would be a bad idea." Sizemore warned, "At least, not in large numbers. I'll ask around at the Dirtamansion, and the Pyrite Bay. I'll get some help producing more of my golems. That'll be subtle." As she understood it, the Pyrite Bay was the dittomancy guild. They could duplicate Sizemore at the start of turn, investing their own juice into the copy so it could cast dirtamancy as well as Sizemore could. It was not a cheap service, but if you really wanted more juice for your casters it was a popular option. It was why dittomancers were one of the wealthiest casters. As she understood things, it was also how Jetstone got so much use out of a level one dollamancer. Golems also had the advantage of having far lower, about a quarter, upkeep than units of similar strength, at the cost of being unable to level up and an inability to mitigate it further with food. The caster psudeo-leadership bonus normally made up for this, and there were spells that further augmented golems, some of which simulated level ups.

"Headmaster Isaac may be willing to take on paid work again, Princess." Maggie said after they all thought some more. "After all, our reputation in the Magic Kingdom is mended. If nothing else, he is very interested in the question on whether or not you can link up, now that the immediate threat is handled."

Tanya hesitated. Sizemore spoke of the two-caster links quite positively… but in ways that reminded her of college, and how some of the other students described occasional marijuana use. "I do not believe we have a current need for much… Except perhaps tutoring…" she's managed some foolamancy, but she could stand to learn more. "Or scrolls." She added. You could never have too many scrolls.

Maggie hummed at the deflection. "I will reach out for continued lessons." She said, "I'm sure Count Harbinger would have some ideas on how to keep King Ansom deceived about Yojo Mojo's wealth."

Tanya thought about that. They did seem rather trustworthy, they stayed on with Gobwin Knob even after the royal embargo… and they seem to have kept her status secret… "Yes, do that." She said, nodding to herself.

She just needs to remind herself that things could be a lot worse…

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Count Harbinger's primary solution was just to teach her how to manipulate gems without using the treasury or her purse as a middleman. Fusing, splitting, even a spell to simply alter the physical size of the gem.

There were limits, of course. The size of a gem did correlate to its capacity… but the vast majority of gems were far larger than they strictly needed to be.

Grand Abbie Janis, on top of that, was able to arrange for a large amount of Rands to be purchased from the Glade of the Hippiemancers at a rate of 250 shmuckers each, which was a little lower than the standard conversion of 300. Only one in twenty casters had higher upkeep than that, but that was the rate the Gild Bank charges sides for those that have such casters. The reason for the discount was that they paid in small gems, which allowed the hippies much more flexibility in distributing their surplus. Both sides profited from the exchange, Tanya's favorite form of agreement.

A lot of them were earmarked for Tanya's own upkeep, but more could be banked up and spent on Magic Kingdom services under the auspice of 'Sizemore's hard work.' If King Ansom's Chief Caster deemed that reserving some of his juice to earn Rands from the Magic Kingdom every turn to be better for the side than spending every drop on city upgrades, it was not his place to question that. Who's to say that Sizemore hasn't been doing that all along?

In Tanya's opinion, the Magic Kingdom was aptly likened to the United States during the world wars. They mostly care about money, they have enormous resources, and anyone who gets on their bad side is going to have a terrible time conducting a long war.

It wasn't a perfect comparison. You couldn't drag them against your enemies by asking for loans like you could the Americans, for example. While the Gild Bank did give loans, the terms were invariably usurious. They were more like Yakuza loan sharks than a proper financial institution. She couldn't imagine how bad it would get if they didn't have to compete against Rands as a store of wealth.

Nevertheless, while it was nigh impossible to be universally liked by the “free casters”, due to factional politics, she put a high strategic priority on maintaining Sizemore’s good reputation and allowing Yojo Mojo to be painted with that same brush. Their initial good relations with the Great Minds that Think Alike and the Glade of the Hippiemancers was a lucky opportunity that she would be a fool to waste, on top of that. Also, a supply of Rands was incredibly useful, as the more powerful casters tended to prefer being paid in Rands, due to their high marginal value to them and because getting Rands is rather difficult for sides with bad reputations in the Magic Kingdom.

Headmaster Isaac, on the other hand, was paid for his knowledge, something that he admitted was preferred to being paid to cast. Under his tutelage, Tanya advanced substantially in her Foolamancy, to the point that he declared her a Novice Foolamancer within a tenturn. It was her third such award, as she had similarly been declared a Novice Mathamancer and Adept Moneymancer by Count Harbinger.

That was not the only thing he was paid to do, however… He was also being paid to safely break links.

"Think of the first spell you've ever cast." Instructed Maggie, "There is a comfort, a clarity of purpose, when you cast within your specialty. Focus on that feeling. Become your function."

Sizemore and Ace interlocked their fingers with hers as Maggie's eyes blazed with energy. "MAGI."

They were inside Ace's workshop, with the worktable removed and replaced with a set of small cranes around a blank area. The area cleared was about as big as one of the gigantic battle bears of Jetstone, which were about forty feet tall. But they weren't dealing in plush today.

As it turned out, making exceptionally large Dirtamancy golems was significantly more complicated than doing so with Dollamancy. It could be done, a Chief of Stuff that Sizemore had consulted with confirmed it, but Sizemore was unwilling to pay the man's price for a sample golem to study. As he was Chief Caster, Tanya couldn't countermand that order. Not that she knew what the price was.

He was, however, willing to put his head together, both metaphorically and eventually literally, with a fellow Adept golem maker to resolve the problem.

As it turned out, Ace pointed out that the reason Battle Bears were made of canvas and filler was because of its light weight. The reason why Heavy Metal golems were larger than Hard Rock golems was because metal was stronger per kilogram.

Therefore, by linking Sizemore's understanding of material composition and structure with Ace's familiarity with the design of non-homogeneous golems…

The golem was taking shape. It was surprisingly humanoid, and at a glance, the internals were more hollow than not. The outer plating was made of a dense material, while the interior was of a lighter material, structured like a monument, internal struts keeping things together without functional joints.

The three casters were silent as they constructed the golem, but even to Tanya's perception of their heartstrings, tangled together in a way that seemed more accidental than deliberate, she knew that internally, the three were constantly speaking of their creation.

Part of her itched to fix the lazy tangle of strings, to interlink them in an equal, symmetric set of knots, but she refrained. It might help the link… or it could ruin it. She didn't know.

In the end, the golem, looking like a full Mecha, this one reminded Tanya of an Evangelion, Unit 02 to be specific.

[Unit Two, Heroic Mecha]

Combat: 20

Defense: 14

Hits: 80

Move: 12

Specials: Golem, Heavy, Siege, Synchronization

Subtracting her in-hex leadership of six, that was a very impressive number. 160 upkeep was massive for a golem, though. Battle bears were only 120…

That special, though… Analysis said it was an odd version of the Mount special, more Thinkamancy than Date-a-mancy. It could take a Knight or Commander within itself, protecting them and allowing the "rider" to fully control it.

Tanya frowned. "I thought the plan was to invent a golem that wouldn't need a linkup to remake?" She asked of the gestalt.

"We got inspired." Was their simultaneous response. "It will serve you well, Princess."

Tanya floated behind it, and at her will the back of the golem opened up, allowing her to slot herself inside. Her vision was suddenly replaced with the golem's as it closed behind her.

"Try Transforming!" Ace said eagerly, his linkup mates echoing his words. The heartstrings twisted as the link shuddered. His face went slack before going back to neutral.

"Ordinary Girl." Tanya said, before following it up with "Royal Tiara Magic!"

As usual, her wand vanished from her hand when she untransformed, but when the transformation sequence finished, she could feel the golem's body as her own.

[Princess Tanya von Degurechaff, level 6 Mecha Pilot]

Combat: 47

Defense: 41

Hits: 100 (100)

Move: 28

Specials: Golem, Heavy, Siege, Synchronized, Tanya, Royal, Recon, Leadership, Caster

Magical Bonuses: Leadership x2, Barrier, Shockamancy

Huh, it even has an AT field… Tanya grinned as she looked at the scaled up version of her wand, already deployed as a lightsaber. No flight, though. With one of these… she probably could have destroyed any of the Coalition's hexes that didn't benefit from Ansom's bonus completely alone. Yeah, the Battle Bears have comparable base stats, but that's what shockamancy is for.

…this was so broken! "Can you make one for Victoria?" She asked, opening up the back and realizing she was now wearing a skin tight red suit now that she could feel her real body again. It looked surprisingly nice, despite her being much younger than the original wearer.

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As it turned out, with all of their and her juice, plus a good chunk siphoned from the tower, they could just barely make three before the Headmaster insisted that they be delinked immediately.

Without her artifacts, the other golems were not nearly as impressive when piloted, as the Barrier specials that Ace gave her knights were less capable than the one she had. Instead of providing hits, it instead negated one attack beyond a certain strength. Good for soaking tower shots or dwagon bites, not so good for translating onto a golem.

For this reason, King Ansom took one of them, which Tanya named Unit One, for his own personal use, designated one for her, and left the last one to her discretion, along with instructions to Ace to make him a set of accessories that synergized with it, and insisted that Sizemore create golems to the original plan.

Tanya was completely unsurprised when Ace produced a blue plug suit with white armor around the shoulders that provided the full power barrier special to the wearer. It was based on the signamancy of her armor when she transformed within one of the Mechas, but how he knew that the one made for boys was supposed to look like that… Signamancy was still quite mysterious. She asked for a white one for the pilot of Unit Zero, the last one, though. So that one was on her.

Still, the Heroic Mecha were a very potent force, but they were probably best reserved for a defensive role. They compromised her Move, after all.

The regular Mecha, on the other hand… Sizemore leveled up to five the instant he finished one, although it took him five turns to manage it, after a few failures. It was identical to the piloted kind, with the sole exception of the broken special, with 125 upkeep. Their signamancy was more ‘Gundam’ than ‘Evangelion’, though, bulkier and less fluid with their movements. Two of them could push a maximum size siege tower eight hexes per turn on even terrain, and Sizemore could make one every other turn by dedicating most of his juice to it, as it cost eight caster levels of juice to make, which was somewhat more expensive than a battle bear, which cost seven. King Ansom ordered twenty-four of them, an eight-stack for each of the Heroic ones to lead them in battle.

They eventually figured out why the golem gained in strength when it was inhabited, though: it effectively leveled up to match the level of the pilot, which is why Ansom gave it six attack, defense, and move, plus thirty-three hits, while Tanya only gave it four and twenty. Her scout special accounted for the additional move, and unlike a normal mount it used up the move of the pilot in proportion to its move.

Tanya wasn’t sure if beating each other up while wearing the mecha, which she called Synchronization tests, was actually useful training, but it sure was fun. Even if Ansom won more often than not; his battle experience eclipsed hers.

Victoria was promoted to Warlord, as despite being knight class, she had no Knight special, and so was now able to train on Unit Zero for the event in which it was needed. Despite only being level four to his five, she was much better at controlling the Mecha than Lord Webinar was, and she looked better in the plugsuit. Although that was probably not a fair comparison, she looked better than Lord Webinar no matter what either of them was wearing. What Lady Dora saw in the man Tanya did not know, but she did appreciate the man’s reliability, as his boss.

In the end, the golems were more of a defense force until it came time to conquer a side in its entirety, so they were labeled as a ‘side secret’, and Headmaster Isaac was paid a modest fee to keep their experiments confidential.

Thus came and went Tanya’s sixtieth turn on Erf…