Board & Conquest: A Godly LitRPG

Chapter 114: One Year Later

Every day of Vestri’s life was a waking nightmare.

It always began at dawn, with his legs moving him out of bed and his arms feeding him more food than he needed, since he was eating for two now. His hands would then put a beanie on top of his messy hair to better hide the thing, and then he would sleepwalk his way to the golem factory.

The thing controlling his body followed a rigid maintenance schedule when it came to its host’s needs. It forced Vestri to sleep eight hours a day—not one more hour, not one hour less—fed him at regular intervals, and went to the toilet once at noon and once at sunset. It was careful to let him grow his hair so it could hide more discreetly, even when they had to remove the beanie for checkups. Vestri thought it should have gotten caught by now, but the safety inspector never checked his hair for some reason. Maybe he was under their control, too.

Otherwise, the thing had no concern for Vestri’s mind. It wasted no time on hobbies, friends, or social activities. All his body’s days were spent working on golems during work shifts, and making bombs outside it.

In many ways, Vestri had become like the machines he polished day and night. He had no existence outside work, no value as an individual beyond production.

Vestri didn’t exactly remember the day when the thing caught him. It was soon after the time the sky cracked open over Stalheim a year back or so. Vestri recalled the moment vividly, when the Lord-Ruler’s mightiest warriors left to wage a battle they never came back from, and all statues of Lady Axomamma across the land exploded at once. He thought the end of the world had come, and he recalled his relief when the rift closed.

Alas, it had only been the prelude to days of terror. Stalheim had barely pulled itself out from a civil war a few years back, and Lady Axomamma’s loss almost reopened those wounds. Countless ambassadors from all over the world came to visit the Lord-Ruler to represent their gods.

Perhaps that was why the thing chose that moment to take Vestri over. The chaos provided the perfect smokescreen. It had dug its way into his head, taking over his body and entrapping his mind behind his eyes.

Vestri had a mouth, but he couldn’t scream.

That day began like so many others, with him walking towards Automatown’s golem factory to start his shift. One of the many underground cities of the andvari lit up by crystals, Automatown was dug in a great cave supported by iron pillars and kept ventilated by serpentine pipes stretching all the way to the outside world. A great statue of the Elephant God Ganesha—the country’s new patron deity since Lady Axomamma’s banishment from Elphion—watched over its people and showered boons upon them. Hundreds of engineers toiled in its metal factories to produce golems for Stalheim’s army and allies. It was a good and well-paid job. Vestri remembered liking it once, even doing it with pride for his country and people, until the thing controlling him robbed him of that pleasure.

Most of these machines were deployed against the Brood in Kathay nowadays, where they would relentlessly attack nests of monsters in operations that would almost certainly kill any living soldier. Vestri’s bodyjacker would spend most days pretending to work on outfitting them, but then sneakily remove or sabotage pieces. Not many, or else it would be noticed, but enough to ensure one golem out of ten would break down at the worst time.

His body was walking among the lines of engineers when the ground began to shake, followed by a rumbling noise echoing in the distance.

His flesh might not have been his own anymore, but Vestri’s mind remained free. He remembered his surprise, and he could sense the thing’s curiosity as well when it turned their shared head towards the noise’s source.

A great tower was rising up in the middle of Automatown.

Vestri had grown used to witnessing divine miracles over the past year, but this one felt different. The building seemed unlike Lord Ganesha’s usual creations. It was dark, tall, and covered in greenish alien eyes. One of them instantly turned towards Vestri’s location, followed by many others.

The tower was so far away, but he knew—knew—it was staring straight at him… and the creature hiding atop him.

His suspicions were confirmed when greenish light erupted from the eyes, identifying three people among the crowd of workers: Vestri, the safety inspector, and some engineer he had seen a handful of times.

“Three of them, Ser Filou!” Vestri heard someone shout in the distance beyond his gaze. “I count three!”

“Catch them!” someone else shouted. Vestri spotted a wolf-faced golem towering above the crowd and marching straight towards the safety inspector alongside a hooded figure. “Go, Bernadette!”

And then they ran.

The thing forced Vestri’s legs to move on its own faster than ever. He immediately realized the creature wanted to run back home—perhaps to ignite the bombs stockpiled there or to destroy the evidence.

Whatever its goal was, it never got anywhere close. Something big and hairy tackled him from behind and forced him to the ground.

The thing looked up at its attacker with Vestri’s borrowed eyes. He found himself staring back at some big, hairy beast the size of a horse. It reminded him of those ‘anteaters’ that thrived outside Stalheim, yet it was covered in stony scales and with a flexible trunk whose end was a snake’s head, and had a wererabbit riding it.

“Worry not, sir!” he told Vestri. “We are here to save you!”

Vestri’s body thrashed around in an attempt to escape the creature’s grip, to no avail. The trunk searched under his beanie, sniffing while at it, and then began to suck the thing off of him. Vestri sensed it trying to scramble his brain on its way out, only for it to relax and harmlessly slide off him as if lulled to sleep. An immense weight was lifted from Vestri’s skull in an instant, followed by a surge of joy when he saw the thing that had tormented him for a year disappear into the snake-trunk’s gullet.

“Are you alright, sir?” the wererabbit asked with a voice full of concern.

And then Vestri could, at long last, weep in joy.

—---

Three.

Wepwawet’s Champions caught a total of three lunarian parasites by the time the day concluded. The task force had refined these captures down to an art form, so they thankfully suffered no casualties among the population.

“I can’t believe we’ve cracked another spy ring,” Ganesha complained in their shared realm of Influence as they observed the situation in Automatown. “Are they popping up in every single one of my cities?!”

“I’m afraid it’s likely,” Wepwawet replied. “Stalheim’s production is too integrated into the Divine Peacekeeping Force’s logistics to avoid sabotage attempts. Three’s relatively few, so the lunarian who was in charge of those parasites has to be hidden far away.”

According to the data they had gathered over the year, Bernard and other Crafters had narrowed the range of lunarian telepathy to a twelve-mile radius at maximum. Any parasite that stumbled beyond that perimeter usually entered a state of stasis as it waited for a new lunarian master to initiate psychic contact.

Locating and neutralizing the parasites was only half the problem, but multiple sting operations helped triangulate their lunarian handler’s rough location. Even if the wiser lunarians usually moved on after their parasites were found to avoid capture, it disrupted their clandestine activities for a time.

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Wepwawet kept thanking his intuition for picking Hastur’s Panopticon of Terror after the Third Incursion. As it turned out, the tower’s ability to see past divine protections to check other gods’ hands in B&C games also extended to all forms of dissimulation. Its eyes could pierce the veil of any Miracle… including the one Beelzebub used to protect his parasites from discovery. Wepwawet identified dozens of spies when he first tested out the Miracle in Narc all those months back and quickly set out to purge his territories of any lunarian presence.

Unfortunately, Beelzebub’s telepathic network of spies was a worldwide threat, and Wepwawet could only summon one instance of the Panopticon within his Influence at a time. He had found something of a workaround, though: namely, summoning the Panopticon on top of Slimon. The ooze’s immunity to physical damage meant being crushed under a colossal tower was hardly an inconvenience for him. His body quickly slipped out of the foundations to reform within minutes while other members of the task force moved to capture any lunarian parasites uncovered.

It was a shame they could only begin to do those sweeps in Stalheim recently. Verglane, Lavaland, and Valentine had been positively infested with lunarians, and it had taken months to purge them all. Wepwawet then had to focus on countries suffering from the Brood infestation to prevent spies from facilitating a potentially catastrophic breakdown of the frontlines.

In short, they were playing a global game of whack-a-mole, and Stalheim, for all of its manufacturing strength, was far from the most important area Wepwawet had to oversee. They had been making progress, but two new parasite infestations seemed to pop up each time they uncovered one.

Bernadette, Picky Brainsnatcher; Merlin the Hood; and Igor, Golem Assistant can now Rank-Up!

At least this helped the task force’s newest recruits Rank-Up.

“Alright, boys and girls, bring the victims to the closest infirmary for immediate debriefing, then gather at the Altar for a Rank-Up,” Wepwawet ordered his troops. With a little luck, one of the hosts could provide a clue that would lead them to locating the local lunarian overseer.

“Got it, boss,” the Hood replied upon grabbing a former andvari host with one arm and holding a bottled, screeching lunarian parasite with the other. “Igor, go pick up the slime.”

“I’m fine!” Slimon boasted upon slithering up from beneath the Panopticon’s base. “A true slime-squire does not flinch away from pain, and bounces back from anything!”

“Your lack of backbone truly helps in this case, sir,” Igor replied with a deadpan tone.

“Bernie is still hungry!" Filou’s mount complained. “Can Bernie eat another cricket?”

“Later, Bernadette,” Filou replied as he scratched the anteater behind her ears.

You’ve truly blossomed into a fine knight, Filou, Wepwawet thought as the Anti-Lunarian Taskforce gathered. The wererabbit had easily and naturally settled into the role of leader, even in the company of assertive personalities like Slimon or the Hood. Igor is growing well into his new role, too.

Wepwawet always suspected that the golem might gain the spark of a Champion one day, a suspicion which had been confirmed four months back when Igor awakened his potential during an operation. Spending all that time in the company of people like Slimon and Filou likely helped.

The slime’s decision to become Filou’s squire still baffled Wepwawet to this day. It was apparently part of some ridiculously complicated plan to earn Princess Treasure’s affection, despite the fact that he could simply tell her how he felt. At least this kept him out of trouble.

The Hood—whose true name was apparently Merlin of all things—was the taskforce’s most recent recruit, having joined Wepwawet’s Champions only since last month. His Lady’s control over her newfound fiefdom of Saguenay was secure, and while she was growing into a potent local divinity, she still lacked the power to select Champions. The Hood retained some disdain for Epona, so he instead chose to enlist in Wepwawet’s army rather than with Valentine’s.

Finally, Bernadette was the result of Bernard’s and Wepwawet’s experiments at creating a lunarian predator through Castle Neigebleue’s monster spawning ability: the brainsnatchers. The only one of her newborn kind to have become a Champion—probably because she was the race’s progenitor—she had the ability to detect telepathic communications and extract lunarian parasites without harming the host. She was more or less a hunting hound optimized to hunt alien creatures.

Pity she was barely any smarter than Grudu. At least she was no dragon.

“Automatown’s clean now,” Wepwawet informed Ganesha. “I don’t detect any other hidden parasites. What’s the next city on the cleanup list?”

“Myrkheimr,” his friend replied. “It’s a pretty big mining town near the Valentine border.”

“Oh, isn’t that the place where Kale and your Champion went on a date?” Wepwawet chuckled to himself. He was quite happy to see mortals from different civilizations forming bonds.

“Indeed. Speaking of girlfriends, how are things going with Arty?” Ganesha giggled in amusement. The god was extraordinarily proud of having set up his best friends for life. “When’s the housewarming party?”

“As soon as we can afford it. I admit it’s been nice to have our own space.” Artemis’ family was nice, but a bit too much to bear on a daily basis, so the couple eventually settled on moving into an apartment downtown. “That and it keeps my father from drunk dialing us in the middle of the night.”

“Oh, about that…” Ganesha cleared his throat. “How are things going with your dad?”

Wepwawet shuddered. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Victoire’s spear gored the monster through the throat, its acidic blood raining down on the surrounding vegetation.

Moments like this made her very thankful for her choice of weapon. One of the Brood’s nastiest natural weapons was their caustic, acidic blood. It had proved potent enough to melt through stone and metal, not to mention flesh and bones. Most swords and armor dissolved at first contact, leaving warriors powerless in close quarters. Her own dragontooth spear managed to resist the acid blood well enough, and its range allowed Victoire to keep the monsters at bay, but many soldiers tended to suffer terrible wounds even in victory.

Victoire’s own group had been no exception. Their warband had started out with an escort of eight scalekin guides whose corpses now littered the ground save one. Only four Brood warriors had fallen upon them, but they had done so with such speed and savagery the assault had taken its bloody toll.

“I think that was the last of them,” Goreville said upon looking at the beheaded Brood warrior at his feet. His own sword’s edge had dulled from the acidic blood. “I’ll need a new one. This one is spent. I miss my old sword…”

“I can hear Mistouffe’s teeth grinding at the hole in the budget from here,” Jasper commented. The magmorian had had more success than the werewolf in today’s hunt, largely because he usually settled on burning the monsters and letting his flames do most of the work. “When are the corrosion-proof arms coming in again?”

“Anytime soon,” Renarde replied as she looked around the jungle, stepping over the remains of Brood warriors while doing so. They hadn’t expected to encounter a warband so deep into the Wyld. “I would have thought we would have all received such weapons by now.”

“There’s just too many nests closer to more sensitive areas,” Victoire countered. “Weaker warriors need better gear more than us. Plus retrofitting Brood corpses into weapons take time.”

Tiamat’s Brood was nothing if not resilient. The invasive species had managed to build extensive nests in Kathay, the Wyld, Shadazar, and even Mortis. Their lifecycle was as cruel as it was destructive: queens laid eggs that hatched larvae that would then attach themselves to any organism bigger than a dog, then merge with them and mutate into workers, warriors, brutes, or new queens that would repeat the process by building themselves a new nest. They had thoroughly decimated the local wildlife of any area where they appeared and constantly pushed to expand their territory, something they were frighteningly talented at since they could infest fish and birds alike. They had decimated dozens, if not hundreds, of villages over the last year.

Nonetheless, the Divine Peacekeeper Force had managed to contain the threat through a combination of newly crafted weapons, acid-proofed golems, and aerial bombardments. They had successfully confined the Brood population to specific areas of Elphion, and hoped to reduce its population by thirty percent within five years; then eradicate them within ten.

Tiamat might not have defeated any god, but she caused Elphion more misery than Whiro and Hastur combined, Victoire thought as she surveyed the vegetation. Even then, the Wyld still overflows with life.

It was her first time venturing so deep into the jungle, and she had to admit she preferred the icy plains of Verglane. Every inch of the Wyld was thick with colossal trees often taller than hills, vines thicker than snakes—and that often hid actual snakes—and bushes that crawled with all kinds of wildlife both beautiful and dangerous. She sensed danger and movement everywhere, with no way to see any farther than a few meters. They would have easily been lost without their guide, a varan scalekin called Bernum.

“This is the place matching your maps,” he informed Renarde with a hiss. “I do not see any ruins.”

“They have to be somewhere close,” Renarde insisted upon bringing out a staff of blackstone from her travel bag. The alien metal vibrated in the air. “See? We’re close to a powerful psychic presence.”

“Are you smelling anything, Goreville?” Victoire asked.

“I think so.” Goreville sniffed the air and then pointed at a spot of wildgrass. “Jasper, can you clear that?”

The magmorian raised his blazing sword and quickly torched the area, with Victoire extinguishing the flames with her Blessing of Winter before they could grow out of control. Once the smoke and dust had settled, the group found themselves staring at a smooth floor of glistening dark metal.

Blackstone.

“As I suspected, the structure is buried underground,” Victoire mused upon spotting a handful of carvings on the blackstone. “Is this it, Renarde?”

“Yes, I’m sure of it.” The werefox bard grinned ear to ear. “This is the Lunarian Betrayer’s resting place.”