Bone Golem

My northern army was the fastest to set out. Adrian CMXXVIII already had authority over the population, so despite their power now being a rival to hers they were still obedient. It would get more difficult for her if any decided to test that authority. She was more competent for the moment, they were all inexperienced and didn't know how to utilize their power yet, but that would change. My backing was also a significant factor in her authority, but I wouldn't stop challenges in private.

For the moment, though, her army was the first out of Adrian. Her formation was orderly, being led by hound and human scouts followed by the majority of the army with the ogres in the rear. Everyone was getting along fine, except for Adrian CMXXVIII. I still caught her looking back into the army with rage in her will as she saw the humans getting along fine with the food goblins and other inhuman creatures. She seemed not to notice that her own orders had ensured the integration. She gave duties according to capability, regardless of race, making them interact with each other. Given their common worship of me, they all had enough to build at least basic rapport with each other.

The only other times she looked back were when she wanted to stare in fear and horror at the brood constructs in the middle of her formation for a while. She still tried to force herself to be uncomfortable seeing males of each race but food goblins walking with tentacles of brood construct harvesting from them constantly as they marched. She only succeeded in being uncomfortable looking at the female food goblins, but even that would fade with time. They were mine. How could something that belonged to me be disgusted by something else I owned?

Her constant self-reminder of how disgusting my influence was on her population was a necessity for her to maintain her self-destructive pattern. The fact that her efforts were getting emptier with every repetition didn't seem to register to her. Simply looking and calling it disgusting and horrific while being utterly indifferent was all she was doing by the time the first day of marching was over. The ogres didn't need to sleep as much, as they were all third composites by now, but the humans would catch up fairly soon. The lord template was good at mitigating rest deficiency, even better than the ogres were. The ogres were only better because they were fourth class while the lord template was only third. Had the humans put in appropriate effort, they could even come close to matching the ogres with correct usage of their active circuits.

The next day she'd realized that her self-reminder was no long effective and tried to look for other targets. To her disgruntlement, she couldn't see any of her people suffering. Many were friendly with the monsters they now called brothers in faith. She tried remembering the broken bodies of her people during my invasion, but she wasn't an overly compassionate person. Every time she tried, she remembered the corpses she'd left in her own wake. Her rebellion hadn't been a peaceful shift in dynasty, the only difference between her rebellion and my invasion was the scale and the result. I'd killed more, but the population was more satisfied under me than it had been under her. They were more powerful. None died of hunger due to the cruelty of Grace and her family. None were cheated of anything, all resources were allocated due to my will and nobody was dissatisfied with it but her.

She was still resisting her loyalty, despite the impossibility of it achieving what she wanted it to, but she was being forced to admit that it was resistance due to pride and rage rather than any form of justice or seeking benefit for others. She'd known she was a selfish person, but the sharp variance between herself and her population was shoving it right in her face.

After accepting that fact, her internal struggle became a lot safer for her. She wasn't deceiving herself on either side. She knew her loyalty to me was due to my meddling, and she accepted that the only reason she was refusing to submit was her own pride and arrogance as a lord. It was a pure struggle between parts of herself. She still wouldn't last a week, but at least there was a much lower chance of self-destruction now. One side would win and she'd accept it as an honest loss. Of course, her pride was incapable of separating the pieces of her will-core that were orbiting mine, so she was doomed to failure. The struggle was valuable, though.

As I'd thought, it wasn't even four days out of Adrian before she lost the will to fight and finally succ.u.mbed to my influence. As she did, though, something interesting happened. She formed a second will-core as Angie had. Now that I had two points of data, I could find a pattern. Or several. I didn't have anywhere near as much information as I needed to know what the cause was.

I could understand the effect, though. I watched it happen in real time, observing all of the nearby worshippers carefully. In both the cl.u.s.ter that surrounded my will-core and their bodies. The effects were simultaneous. Around my will-core, the non-consolidated fragments were shoved away from the new will-core. In that same moment, the humans near her felt suppression. It still didn't answer why they felt suppression from my constructs, but I knew that they could somehow feel that their connection to me was lacking in comparison to hers. That wasn't entirely right…they could feel that her status as a worshipper vastly outstripped their own.

Testing another idea, I built the same will circuit into the new core of Adrian CMXXVIII. Her power skyrocketed to heights she probably wouldn't have been able to imagine before, but none of the surrounding people had noticed. So her power wasn't why people had been suppressed by Angie. I had been a little worried that humans had some means of sensing the power of other creatures that went unnoticed by their conscious mind. If it existed, infiltration would be more difficult but it would explain their fear of my constructs.

Well, on the plus side, Adrian CMXXVIII wouldn't have trouble with a backlash against her orders anymore. Since her suppressive force was based on the state of her shards around my will-core it wouldn't matter if there were those within her army that outstripped her in power or technique.

Thinking back, Adrian CMXXVIII had revealed deep embarrassment and rage when I announced her leading my northern campaign. I didn't care enough to address it while we were preparing the army, but now that it was simply marching the issue was becoming irksome. The state of her mind was important to me, as she was the source of inspiration for self-destructive will expansion. Maybe if I understood her more, I could give her an even better method than I'd already started using to advance will. "Why did you dislike my appointment of your leadership?"

She jumped so hard a horse she was petting grunted and almost knocked the wagon it was pulling over. After calming down again she looked around, looking for a target she could associate with me. Eventually she just gave up and started marching again. The p.l.e.a.s.u.r.e in her will was apparent, though. "I didn't dislike the appointment. The choice of having me lead an army made sense. I would think having someone who hates you leading one of your armies is a bad choice, but you trust that magic. As do I." That didn't answer my question at all. "I disliked you doing so with so little respect. There is only one Adrian and there has only ever been one Adrian, and I was conquered. Thoroughly. So thoroughly." She cleared her throat, her face flushing. "Ahem, only historians or the ancient would know that I wasn't the only ruler Adrian ever had, let alone announce it to the public so brazenly." She gasped suddenly, horror and shock flooding her will. "I don't mind it anymore, my God! A conqueror has the right to flaunt his supremacy over the conquered. If you d.e.s.i.r.e my humiliation it is my greatest duty, privilege, and p.l.e.a.s.u.r.e to oblige!" Judging from her will, duty and privilege were incidentally linked to p.l.e.a.s.u.r.e in that instance.

Ah. That made sense. Adrian had probably been the lord for longer than any civilians had been alive. She also called Celius and Agatha without mentioning their sequence. Maybe it was rude. Niceties weren't the type of thing to make it into books. The content was there, especially in novels and other fiction, but it was accepted as normal. The connection of only addressing the lord by the name of the city without reference to their sequence was only contextualized with recognition that there had been a sequence. The lords in fiction were always immortal beings that always survived or were destroyed with their evil city along with them. Always seen as the first and last. "If you were conquered, what's your name? Your name, not your old position."

Adrian CMXXVIII went stiff for a moment before blushing profusely. I wasn't sure why she was embarrassed and happy, but she was. I delved a bit deeper and saw that it was due to her details being asked for instead of taken. It proved to her that I cared more about her divulging the information than I cared about the information itself. In her mind, at least. "Samantha. Before I was Adrian I was Samantha. Guess I am again, now. Your conquered Samantha." She glanced backwards, euphoria filling her will. She didn't say anything, but the gratitude she had toward Adrian and the events that happened there that allowed her to be conquered by me were clouding her will-core. "Was there anything else you wished of me, my God?"

I didn't answer as I knew a soldier was running up to her. "Commander! We've spotted something different. It's an army of humans…but not humans." The soldier was very confused, but I wasn't. It was an army commanded by necromancers. Most of the leaders were non-necromancer humans, though. The rank and file was made of monster forces as well as golems. That much the soldier understood. What he didn't understand was how the non-necromancer humans could be called humans, as they were clearly different from humans while also looking so similar it was hard to see them as anything else. Samantha readied her forces for battle as the beasts of burden in her army started advancing in class.