LIGHTNOVELONLINE The Years Start Coming
Year 3
The campaign in Northrend went quite well. Alas, Draenosh failed to kill the Lich King as he was taken out before the Blight shrouded the battlefield, but he did survive and joined the assault to retake the Undercity. He did so without Ti’va, as Aerith was busy assisting the Alliance forces during the same battle. They had a common enemy, but once the Dreadlord and the Royal Apothecary Society were both wiped out Onyxia needed to be in position to avert war between Varian and Thrall.
Jaina was blessedly accessible, willing to spare a moment to speak with a respected mercenary band from Dalaran. One of Onyxia’s spare necklaces had a charge available, letting her capture the Lady of Theramore. In all likelihood the woman would have interceded to prevent war either way, but both ensuring her assistance and capturing her was far too good an opportunity. A few days of effort on her part would get the leaders of the Alliance well in hand.
Draenosh, being a heroic survivor of the Wrathgate, made sure to include lamentations for the Alliance soldiers in his speech afterwards. He didn’t lay it on too thickly of course; they were honored foes who deserved better than to be murdered with treachery. He spoke of Bolvar, their commander, in his heroic final moments. Officially the Paladin had saved Draenosh to spit in the face of the Lich King. It was plausible enough to pass muster with most orcs, who knew almost nothing about the Light, and the Bloodknights of Silvermoon that questioned it were taken aside to have it explained. Elves all, they came back as firm supporters of Draenosh Saurfang. Likewise, Sylvanas belonged to Onyxia the moment that she consented to a handshake from the new hero of the Horde.
The rest of the campaign in the north was difficult, but possible. Nearly every member of the Scourge high command could be instantly defeated with a touch from a properly armed member of the retinue, with the San’Layn in particular being fully subverted over the course of a month. Once their use as infiltrators was spent, they turned coat during the invasion of Icecrown to join the Knights of the Ebon Blade. It was a suspicious chain of events for an entire subfaction of the Scourge to break free, but hardly unprecedented.
The retinue spread out to blanket the continent. All outstanding missions were still in play, so I considered her completion of a few dozen missions across Northrend to be far more important than even her long term goal to pick up Amitus by ushering in world peace. Most gave far more interesting prizes than anything I was getting in the main timeline; lures, talents, even expanded tech trees. Not necessarily great, but I wanted it all. The completionist in me demanded it.
••••••••••
I smiled as I read the report declaring Abby to be promoted to beta tester. Tara, good ol nearly robotic and selfless Tara, had chosen her for the position. In turn, she purchased Eliza immediately, and likely had been told of her original form based on other purchases. With that, everyone that I cared about enough to drop a Soul on saving was covered.
With that in mind, I considered my options again with a much greedier eye. After all, I had arranged for their continued existence. I’d paid back my debt to my retinue, so I was in the clear to burn my credits as I saw fit. Naturally, with the giant network of several thousand testers I’d just flooded the pipes with, I chose to invest two credits into a Meeting Place. It was a long term investment, a way to keep in touch with friends and family, an emergency time out, and potentially a market where I could get useful items from offworld.
Even if only two percent of my retinue members actually decided to spend the necessary credits for a green orb, that was quite a large community to draw upon. In addition, it would passively become a nicer place to visit just by having people buy in. I didn’t have any insight on how the scaling on that worked, but unless it was incomprehensibly slow for normal people I would probably get a nice little pad before my next test was over. For two souls? Absolutely worth it.
As far as my day to day? Systematically capturing everyone and everything on Azeroth was not exactly convenient, but it was really the only way to even temporarily wipe out the Curse of Flesh. I only needed to meet the conditions for a few minutes, really, but Sargeras was taking a while to properly take down. Not unlike the old gods, he was able to pick up on my capture procedures and start in on counterplay. Hopeless, given that he couldn’t comprehend my ability to resurrect, but it kept me occupied.
••••••••••
Year 5
Onyxia sighed as she looked over the reports on the new continent. After her father’s cataclysmic exit from Deepholm, he’d flown around for a bit and caused quite a ruckus. Taking him down was not too terribly difficult; her amulet could still instantly capture even him if she conserved the charges.
After that, the glorious union of Horde and Alliance returned to their new favorite pastime of exterminating the Twilight Hammer Cult, the centaur, and the demons. Any faction that would need to be captured en masse to be pacified would need to be exterminated or enslaved by other means. It was as simple as that. Simple, however, did not mean easy.
Deescalating conflicts to the point that they no longer counted for the mission was not always easy, even when the entire retinue had Siren Song and a half dozen other lures on top of it. Further, she had to couch her message carefully; it would not do for the leaders of the major factions to be seen as tyrants who worked from the shadows. Accurate, but inconvenient. She very much wanted to get her hands on Azshara if at all possible; her glamor aura would do wonders to keep the worms from asking inconvenient questions.
Better to channel the violent urges of her subjects against those who refuse to integrate. The Quillboar had been surprisingly amenable to peace when the concept of a border was explained to them and viciously enforced. Their spiritual leaders needed to be captured to come to the negotiating table, but what they really wanted was an ethnostate controlling the Barrens. Well, the Barrens and bits of Durotar, but the Razormane were pragmatic enough to accept the river as a border.
It was inconvenient for the orcs and tauren, even crippling, but they came around eventually once a treaty was signed allowing for caravans on predefined roads. Anything that the people could be made to accept without outright rebellion was good enough for Onyxia. Lures and careful management would ensure that simmering resentment would slowly decline… for the most part. If not, the dead didn’t start any wars.
••••••••••
For his fifth isekai, none of which lasted more than two weeks so far, Netorarian was placed into the body of Grom Hellscream. It was the first time I’d thrown him into a leadership position; he unfortunately wasn’t getting the message by being repeatedly thrown into hack and slash settings. Oh sure, he planned a little more, slowly got better at actually bringing supplies on expeditions, but he would only address whatever killed him last time then step on a new trap.
Grom was a good match for Rari mostly because he was already canonically a fucking berserker nut job. He was other things as well, but being a hot head was one of the most prominent traits he had, and having his ass pulled out of the fire by others was a recurring motif. I considered putting Flavie in the body of a genderbent Thrall, but thought that it would be better for Rari to have an effective mentor. Yes, Thrall was young enough to be Grom’s son, but he still had a lot to teach. Instead, Flavie was a shaman advising Grom; providing him advice he proceeds to ignore was her primary role after all.
The voyage from the Eastern Kingdoms to Kalimdor was slightly altered, allowing Netorarian to participate in more noteworthy events. I was utterly shocked when he seemed to actually pay attention to early diplomatic efforts with the Darkspear trolls. I think he might have legitimately never thought of recruiting allies without brainwashing; Thrall convincing an entire small nation to provide martial and magical support to him by teaming up against mutual enemies seemed to appeal to his still-simplistic worldview. And then he got killed when a powerful murloc sorcerer incinerated him because he tried to fight an army of the fish men solo. Because of course he did.
He had nearly a century left to learn, but I was starting to lose my patience anyway. I instructed my modding team to give him a timeline where he couldn’t use violence to solve his problems. Somewhere to force him to be tactical, or resourceful, or diplomatic. I wasn’t actually picky, I just needed him to learn how to use literally anything but brute force. Expand his horizons, dammit.
••••••••••
Dear Valued Employee,
We commend you for your hard work in the last testing cycle, however we have concerns about your current leadership style. While we support creativity here at The Company, we must remind you that the role of a team lead is to focus and guide his coworkers to being their best selves. 100% of your fellow game masters rated poorly in their performance reviews due to a lack of compliance with Company Policy, which in turn brings your score down.
Your compensation has been recalibrated to reflect this, however we believe you have great potential. To that end, we are placing you in charge of managing a team of five people overseeing the testing environments for 200 new testers promoted during your last project. We are certain that you will excel, though if you find that you are unable to maintain an adequate level of quality we can of course transfer you to a less stressful position for the good of your psychological profile.
Cheers,
HR.
••••••••••
Name: Abercrombie the Embalmer
World: Ivalice, War of the Lions
Tier: Free to Play
Modifiers: Customized appearance
Budget: 0
Origin: Ramza Beoulve, squire. Adjusted to be female per appearance alteration
Eliza: Elyzabeth, chemist
Drawback: +2 Limited Selection: Commander (you can only capture individuals that willingly submit to your command in a military context already),
Soul Purchase: -1 Tagalong: Eliza, -1 Permanent Purchase: Appearance Change (you may always fully customize the aesthetic appearance, including sex but not species, of one member of your retinue once. If done within ten minutes of entering a new body, this will be retroactive.)