Chapter 610 - Overthrowing the Tyrants III (Patreon)

“Let us not impose too much on Anurak’s hospitality.” Arachne stood up and stretched. I grabbed a cookie for the road, the vast privacy shields we’d put up dropping down. “One of the first concepts I’m going to reiterate here is operational security. It was one thing as a Sentinel to keep information from the target, but with the way we worked it wasn’t of the utmost importance. The systems and procedures I designed kept in mind that many sentinels, while I would never call them unintelligent, got to their position of power generally by the application of violence. There is nothing wrong with that, but our policies and procedures were put in place for a, shall we call it a less complex mindset? There is the problem. Your talents make you well suited to handling the problem. End of story.”

I nodded as I followed Arachne down the tunnels, able to sense the endless Pekari all over the tunnels, most of them just resting and being still. 

“Makes sense. There was far more caution in the roving ranger teams than operations as a Sentinel.” I said. 

“Exactly. Now, we play the grand information game. Lies and knowledge are our weapons, deceit and misdirection our shields. Information is prized above all. Given your relative discomfort with lies, I will strive to give you the needed tools and mission scope that you’ll need. I expect you to use them to a minimum, if at all. It will significantly limit what you’re able to do, but that is an acceptable price.” Arachne sighed longingly. “What you could do with a different mindset…”

Given that I was basically becoming a Shadow Sentinel, being ‘acceptable’ was good enough in my books. At least Night wasn’t having spasms of laughter at the idea anymore!

She led me to - was that a train!? I’d seen all manner of industrial wonders in the Pekari lair, manufacturing the golems on a gigantic scale. If I were so inclined I’d be the greatest [Thief] or [Stealer of Inventions] ever - there were endless ideas and methods surrounding me, things I was passively absorbing and filing away in my [Archives]. The information and operations stuff was super interesting, but hold up. This was literally revolutionary.

“Hang on, change of subject, sorry. Is that a train!?” I asked Susan, using the English word for it. She looked unamused.

“If you mean a train, then yes.” She said, giving me the High Elvish word for it. I assumed there wasn’t a Creation word for it, otherwise the word and the concept would’ve been dropped into Night’s head. But… fuck, language was weird. I wasn’t going to spend too much brainpower on it, I was frying my head just thinking of basics.

It was quite literally a wonder. Sleek and smooth like all the Pekari designs, the engine was three times as tall as I was, and completely empty on the inside. I was more than a little disappointed at that revelation, my imagination having already conjured up fantastical magitech images… and I would’ve totally stolen the designs and tried to do something with them.

Hmmmm… Maybe there usually was something there, but Arachne knew me too well, and had it removed. Then again, there were no subtle tooling marks or anything else on the inside that suggested…

I spun off a parallel thought to continue speculating wildly about the train and if it usually looked like that or not, and trying to do some rough calculations to see how possible doing it myself was. I was hilariously outclassed, of course, and…

Focus.

The first car was a luxury car. Fancy doors, no windows, but two cabins and a ‘lounge’. The cabins had storage, beds, even a little desk and chair! With plenty of space, no cramped ‘how many sardines can we pack in here’ nonsense. The lounge had scattered plush swivel chairs, a wall of drinks, and a stasis box filled with food. The food was already heavily-preserved food, heavy on the bread, cheese, and sausages, and I was a hair concerned with how long they’d been in there. The blood was dried into a thick brick, which didn’t look appetizing in the slightest. It wasn’t like the Pekari tunnels were regularly filled with living people, and extra preservation elements weren’t usually used on ‘this is good for a year on a shelf’ food. I wasn’t concerned with food poisoning, so much as the taste. Rancid food tasted gross! No obvious heating elements, but then again, I came with my own set, didn’t I?

After the train and the luxury car were endless industrial cars. Some flatbeds, quite a lot of cargo, and a number of cars that were simply odd skeletal-like metal frames. If I had to make a wild guess, the Pekari soldiers could fill up on them and slot in exactly for bulk transport around Anurak’s domain.

Susan boarded the first carriage of the train as we talked.

“Sorry, distracted, but I have to know more. Trains? They’d change literally everything. You know about them, you’ve seen how they work, how did Exterreri not adopt trains?”

Susan smiled mysteriously. 

“There’s a number of issues. The biggest one is the infrequently-used rail system is entirely powered by one Immortal at the cusp of ascension. Good luck finding one willing to run trains for you. A second issue is historical. We managed to get to that stage once, rails in place for the wealthy and for industrial purposes. Unfortunately, the environment that led to it was heavy on mages and golems, and the Golem Wars were particularly annoying.”

We settled down in our chairs, and the train lurched into motion a moment later. Threads radiated out from Arachne, covering every surface and entwining themselves along the train in both directions. 

“Tell me more?” I asked. Susan had to know how tantalizing I found the little morsels she was feeding me. 

“Naturally. While I may appear all-knowing, there is a limit to what I know. Hence requesting your assistance with the New Remus Empire, and I currently don’t know how many parallel thoughts you are able to have at once currently.”

“29.” I answered after checking my level. “Why do you ask?”

Arachne didn’t directly answer, instead a number of threads lifted up from the ground.

“Alright, that’s a good number.” She said. “I’d like to ask that you fully split your attention. 20 thought processes to learn from the threads and words I’m going to write out, 4 to synthesize and see how all the pieces connect together, 1 to coordinate, 1 to organize the information in your memory skill, and 2 to work as ‘overflow’ or distraction thoughts. This should take roughly 11 days to complete. We will need to do basic exercises to put it into practice after, at which point your background should be completed.” She looked endlessly amused at the ‘distractions’ part as the threads started to writhe and write. A quick sandwich was made with her threads and passed over, along with a bottle of water. I split my mind as Arachne had asked, and each one focused on a different set of threads, [The World Around Me] letting me see them all without needing my eyes.

This would’ve been impossible otherwise.

Each set of threads contorted themselves into words, and nearly as quickly as I’d read them, moved into a different arrangement. Like this, I was able to ‘read’ 19 different lectures at once, all while Arachne continued to talk with me. 

It was a flood of information, like drinking from a firehose. Except I was a gigantic dry sponge, all ready to soak up the knowledge… I was torturing the metaphor. Wait, no more metaphor, had to handle another overflow thought!

“As you’ve seen with the System, bonuses are possible when the focus of a skill or class is narrow enough.”

“Which is generally moot, since the most efficient non-boosted tasks remain the most efficient boosted tasks, since boosts aren’t discerning.” I said.

“Exactly.” Arachne agreed. “Golems generally aren’t economical to move around. Interesting things are possible when a Classer goes deep into the specialization, like the liches animating bones up in the Necrocracy, the dwarves occasionally dabble with pilotless suits, and naturally, our good host Anurak, but in the prior era, they were disfavored. A number of eras ago, however, they were in favor. Treatises were written about how they improved every aspect of life! How they were the ‘Immutable Future’, how they replaced irritating apprentices, and so much puffery you’d laugh yourself sick. I must confess, the utility some of my threads have are related to the control I saw golem masters have, and the ability to make their lives easier. I could go into great depth about how powerful [Golem Masters] had entire cities and industries bent towards them, how they ended up ruling, but in the end, it turned to warfare and collapsed, as always. One unfortunate trend was distance control and orders. In order to have golems operate outside the normal range of influence, the [Golem Masters] would infuse them and their skills ahead of time, which continued operations even after the original caster was dead. There was an utter lack of mercy, and I will confess to breathing a minor sigh of relief every era where the practice continues to be disfavored.”

In threads, in front of my eyes, Arachne traced out a few more words.

I suspect Anurak himself suppresses the practice, wanting to be the undisputed master of the craft. Best not say that here. 

At the same time, I was being bombarded on all fronts with threads.

To continue the operational security discussion from earlier. Currently, the New Remus Empire doesn’t know we are in opposition to them, nor where the opposition is coming from. Anurak is giving us a hand, given how he makes the Pekari an easy target to hate. The members of the 512 are exactly the type of sufficient force that’s able to put him down for good. With no true fixed base, it becomes hard to hit us. I believe you were trained on a similar saying, ‘movement is life.’ Since you don’t need to know about other members involved in this, you’re not being told about them. Similarly, they’re not being told about you. You will only ever communicate with me. It is possible we will use drops to pass information along, but you won’t be told who’s retrieving the information, and they won’t be told about you.

Steganography and cryptography go hand in hand. While you have the mental faculties for proper cryptography, and I will have you memorize a number of one time pads in case you need to pass a message, simple possession of an encrypted message is enough to broadcast your status as a spy, which defeats the purpose. The true art is hiding a message in plain sight. I will confess, given the detail-heavy nature of what information I hope you’ll gather, simple steganography will…

Intelligence and counterintelligence are arguably the same thing. We will do our utmost to only act on the information given when it can be corroborated and reasonably gathered from other sources, as to not endanger you, but make no mistake. This is a dangerous game we play, and the people on the other end of the board are no amateurs. When gathering information, I suggest you pick a number of other targets. Observe what they learn, and what papers cross their desk. Only report information that has passed by all of them, and preferably, not you. Your skills should be greatly beneficial in that respect. Then, if their counterintelligence work figures out that the leak is coming from their organization, suspicion will fall on the targets who have the ‘correct’ informational overlap, instead of you. Don’t act or pass on information that’s only presented to you, unless you’re willing to run the risk of being burnt as a spy.

What you learn from other people is just as important as what you can learn from papers. You’re far too dedicated to your lovely wife for me to suggest any sort of honeypot work, and by the same measure, you’re practically immune to anything of the sort. I will go over the signs, mostly to spare you the embarrassment of having you accidentally lead people on. Again.

Hey!

Let us talk of MICE, the four things that get an agent to turn. Money, Ideology, Coercion, or Ego. I will be frank, you agreed to work with me on this on the ideological aspects. You believe what they’re doing is wrong, and you are taking steps…

Propaganda is a concern, and you’ll be inundated with it. Most of it will be subtle, and you are fairly willing to go with the flow. It is a concern of mine that you’ll get swept up in the current, and I believe this is one of the more important aspects…

Part of me wants to skip the topic of assassination, but you need to know the basics, to predict others’ behavior if nothing else…

Paperwork related sabotage…

Surveillance…

Runic work and talismans…

Smoke and mirrors…

Information is good, but knowledge is better. Hold up your fingers with your answer. For your cover story, you are: 1) A wandering healer. 2) A displaced scribe. 3) A…

I could feel a headache forming, my mind burning with the deluge of complex topics assaulting me from all sides. Arachne did not hold back. She knew how fast I could think, she knew how well I could analyze the world around me, and I was effectively getting an entire year or three of education in a matter of days.

I was a little sad I wasn’t a Steam Classer, I could’ve made steam come out of my ears. I had an overflow mind to handle it, but I wasn’t going to use it on a mild joke.

A shame [Luminary Mind] was capped. The experience would be nice to ensuring it stayed capped.

I was curious about a thousand things, and the coordination thought process got to decide which sounded the most interesting - which had two other thought processes fight over who got to use the right hand to flash hand-signals to ask another question. The left was busy answering Arachne’s quiz questions.

“You’ve seen it often enough, how would you take over the world?” 

Wasn’t the best question, but it was the one I was most curious about.

Arachne didn’t even blink.

“Slowly.” She said. “A core culture of meritocracy, administration and a modestly strong martial framework. Expand and consolidate, then a new wave of expansion and consolidation. Digest and integrate each part before leapfrogging to the next to prevent internal problems. I’ve got a whole eight volume series on the subject, I can get you a copy if you’d like the full details. I try to place it on everyone’s desk who looks like they’re taking a stab at it themselves.” Her face twisted unhappily. “The issue it ran into the only time we tried it was time. Doing it properly takes so long, some idiots start the next Immortal War and ruin everything.” She shrugged. “Either it’s so unstable that it falls apart, or takes too long. I wish that wasn’t the case.”

Interesting.

“Now, what about the question you’re so eagerly and poorly trying to ask me with your hand?”

Wait, I was still doing that!?