Board & Conquest: A Godly LitRPG

Chapter 118: Spaceship Production

And so began the preparations for Operation Artemis.

While the pantheon decided to directly repair Thoon’s ship in the Wyld rather than to move it to avoid the risk of revealing its existence to the world—the jungle providing ample cover—Horus’s flying island of Sekhem was chosen as the assembly place and launching point for their newly built spaceships. Not putting all their eggs in the same basket would also reduce the chances of Beelzebub successfully sabotaging the plan.

Spare parts production centers would be established in Stalheim, Verglane, and Valentine, alongside training camps for their future ‘astronaut warriors.’ Wepwawet asked Bernard’s crew in Neigebleue Castle to hasten the creation of brainsnatchers so they could unleash the warbeasts against the lunarians, while Ganesha would hasten golem production.

“If you have any old warriors on their last legs, send them to Mortis for undead recycling,” Hel said. “I’m about to introduce a new undead retirement plan.”

“Undead retirement plan?” Wepwawet asked. He had never bothered to learn much about Mortis’ culture beyond what its military could do to help against the Brood and Titans.

“My civilization revolves around the world’s first and best undead pension program,” Hel boasted. “Anyone who dies in Mortis rises as an undead due to the land’s peculiar necromantic energies; so in exchange for future immortality, its living citizens must work to pay for the lifestyle of their undead aristocracy for a given number of decades before retiring. It’s a win-win.”

“Is that sustainable in the long term?” Ganesha asked, being the expert at addressing the elephant in the room. “If the undead population continues to increase, so will the economic burden on the living grow.”

“That’s why the war against the Brood was so good for our economy!” Hel grinned in triumph, as if that had all been part of some master plan. “All the bored, old, undead rich folk went to fight to kill time, and every exorcism is one less burden on the pension budget!”

Artemis glared at her. “Is that why your corsairs picked fights with everyone?”

“You’re still not over that?” Hel rolled her eyes. “Wepwawet said we could discuss war reparations after the whole Brood business is over.”

“Yes, we will,” Wepwawet replied. Even though the likes of Hel and Anansi had yet to make amends for earlier transgressions, settlements would wait until after they had expelled the Titans from Elphion. “I can use my Neigebleue Castle Dungeon to create training rooms capable of simulating Lune’s thin atmosphere, so if you have creatures you think might do well, you can send them to me for training.”

“I believe my demons could handle the moon’s atmosphere well,” Ishtar said. “They were created by the lunarians as bioweapons. Surely Archon considered the possibility of using them against his kindred in some kind of power struggle.”

“They’ve also shown vulnerability to Archon’s mental control,” Horus pointed out. “I doubt he left his minions vulnerable to other lunarians, but we should have this Thoon extensively test their resistance first.”

“Our blackstone circlets successfully protected my Champions from him, so I would assume they would protect demons too,” Wepwawet replied. “Nonetheless, sending a demon up there would also allow Ishtar to summon Molek on Beelzebub’s doorstep.”

“We can just send Sacrifiboy,” Ishtar said with a shrug. “I can revive him if he dies in transit.”

“Sacrifiboy?” Ganesha looked aghast. “You call your professional human sacrificial Champion Sacrifiboy?”

“It’s not human sacrifice, he’s a demon. Besides, why do you seem so shocked, my dear elephant? He likes the nickname.”

Wepwawet shuddered. He had spent enough time around Soumis to know how this would turn out.

Sensing multiple Champions trying to connect with him on Elphion, Wepwawet decided to cut the meeting short. “Anyway, let us gather in a week from now to check on everyone’s progress. We have only months to put our Champions on the moon, and no time to waste.”

Once the class dispersed, Wepwawet reconnected to the source of the prayers. To his surprise, the attempts at contact didn’t come from the Wyld and Thoon’s lair, but from his capital of Narc.

The place had changed quite a lot in the year that followed Hastur’s Incursion. It had continued to grow at a good pace, especially with the growing shipyard in Cape Narc to the north and the rise of financial institutions Mistouffe had skillfully developed in partnership with their neighbors.

Nonetheless, a major obstacle to the city’s continued prosperity had been the toxic marshes Whiro had sown across the landscape. It had taken the better part of the year to clean them up, but Wepwawet now enjoyed a view of vast wetlands rather than a poisonous swamp.

“What is it?” Wepwawet asked upon materializing his spirit next to his Idol to find quite a few Champions waiting for him there: Mistouffe, Alpine, Lourson, Lord Raymond… and a certain golden dragon. Ugh, that’s not a good sign.

“How good to see you again, Your Godliness,” Alpine said with enthusiasm before presenting her god with a bottle filled with hazardous material. “Here, I wanted to give this to you personally!”

“Alright…” Wepwawet wasn’t sure what to make of that gift. “Why a bottle full of poison?”

“Because that’s the last drop of venom in the entire region!” Alpine replied with a wide smile. “We are officially done!”

“We have cleaned the wetlands of the last toxic residue,” Lourson explained. “The rest has been stored in secure containers.”

“Is that so?” Wepwawet rejoiced. Finally, some good news! “At long last, Whiro’s plague has been purged from this world.”

Whiro’s attack had crippled Verglane and Lavaland’s development for over a year, but now that these wounds had healed, the two civilizations could begin to prosper again… if they survived the Season of Dragonstars.

Quest: Robo’s Revenge, completed! You have earned the Ecocide Cauldron Rank 10 Artifact!

Ecocide Cauldron

Rank 10 Artifact.

Summons a colossal, magitechnological cauldron producing four ranks worth of polluting slime creatures per minute—such as four Rank 1 Slimes, two Rank 2 Slimes, or 1 Rank 4 Slime. The slime production and the form they take are random, but the creatures obey your commands.

Wasn’t that the very same Artifact Whiro used against them during his Incursion? Using it on Elphion would likely lead to a catastrophic ecological disaster, but Wepwawet couldn’t wait to drop it on the moon and give the Titans a taste of their own medicine.

Quest: A Capital of Legend, completed! You have earned the Skill: Citystep Rank 6 Revelation.

Skill: Citystep

Rank 6 Revelation

Teaches a Champion the Citystep Perk: Allows the user to instantly teleport from one city to another in the world, so long as they have a target address and the cities share a direct or indirect connection, like a trade route.

Nice, nice, if a bit redundant with the Altar teleportation network. It might improve their logistics and–

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Wait.

Any city in the world? Would that include Lune? If the lighthouse connections counted as direct routes to the moon… He had to test that out as soon as possible.

New Quest: A Capital of Myths

Transform Narc into a capital capable of supporting over one-hundred thousand inhabitants.

Reward: Revelation Miracle.

Over one-hundred thousand? A tall order, but Wepwawet hoped to reach that number in a few years, alongside the million-worshiper benchmark. Forming the Divine Peacekeeper Force had the welcome side effect of spreading awareness of its godly participants to the other civilizations; so while each deity continued to hold dominion over their given territory, some of their citizens had come to form cults dedicated to foreign ones or honored them as a pantheon.

It feels so good to add new Miracles to my side deck without the pressure of having to choose what to permanently discard, Wepwawet thought as he set those new cards aside for now. I’ve put too many Quests on the backburner.

Perhaps he should ask Ishtar for advice. After much pressure, the goddess had admitted how she had collected so many powerful Miracles. The information Isis had shared with the Assyrian-Mesopotamian Pantheon–and that let Beelzebub to abuse backdoors into the System–also allowed them to detect which ‘forbidden’ Quests had been added to Elphion, intel which they had then shared with their representative. Wepwawet had hoped to pursue one or two, but the threat of the Brood, the constant lunarian sabotage, and their hunt to find Beelzebub’s Idol had distracted him for much of the year.

He should probably look to strengthen his deck in preparation for the final battle with Beelzebub.

“I’m most pleased by your success, you’ve all done an excellent job,” Wepwawet congratulated his Champions. “Not gonna lie, I feared you were about to report some disaster or something.”

Alpine winced, and Lourson shifted uncomfortably. “Well…” the weregoat scratched her cheek. “There’s something else.”

“Minion Wepwawet,” Glatisant cut in with all the pompous arrogance of her kind. “Allow me to introduce you to the most revolutionary, the most visionary, the most forward-thinking undertaking that minionkind has ever seen!”

Ugh, I knew it. Wepwawet struggled with the urge to go on a vacation each and every time a dragon opened its mouth. “If this is about finding a husband for Victoire again, the answer is still no.”

“While that is indeed a troublesome problem, the task ahead of us far surpasses it in scope: the preservation of princessness—nay, of all of the monarchist ecosystem—itself!” Glatisant set her foot down, her head held high. “The Season of Dragonstars, although named after my honorable kind, threatens to destroy all of this world’s remaining monarchies and the minion ecosystem they depend on to survive.”

“... I’m aware, yes.”

“Hence why I, Glatisant, unparalleled genius before eternity, have found a solution!” Glatisant snapped her claws. “Show him the miniature, Chief of Staff Raymond.”

“Chief of Staff Ray—are you kidding me?” Wepwawet stared at Raymond in shock. “Are you really going along with this?”

“I have no choice,” the Glarmes Lord-Commander complained. “I… I have reviewed the records of our order, and we are honor-bound to fulfill the quests of Lady Glatisant as proof of our knighthood. It’s why she’s called the Questing Beast.”

“Indeed, it is handwritten into your minionly chivalry code,” Glatisant boasted, much to the knight’s annoyance.

Wepwawet gave Raymond a look full of compassion. “You have all of my sympathy.”

Lord Raymond collapsed to his knees. “The order I devoted my entire life to… a dragon’s creation… it is a most horrifying thought…”

“Young Raymond, I understand the burden on your shoulders, but you must understand the true depth of your vows,” Glatisant replied in her own, strange attempt to cheer him up. “It is your order’s task and destiny to protect the royal line which I have ennobled. Your predecessors only had to oversee one kingdom, but you will now have the honor and duty to protect a hundred!”

“I…” Lord Raymond seemed torn. His order had more or less lost its purpose when they lost the Kingdom of Valentine and when Victoire refused to restore it, so they had been somewhat adrift for a while. “I… I am not sure what to make of this.”

“Me neither,” Wepwawet replied.

“Don’t worry, Big Boss, you’ll love her plan!” Mistouffe argued. Having become chief of the Verglane Central Bank and the richest investor in the realm, she had taken to wearing rich purple clothes and shiny rings to flaunt her wealth. “I was totally on board with the plan once I saw the economic benefits!”

Wepwawet had his doubts until Raymond brought out an expertly crafted miniature of the newly cleaned wetlands beyond Narc, with the one small additional detail that almost every inch of the region had a castle surrounded by a village around itself.

“You want us to build a fortress network?" Wepwawet inquired.

“No, these are castles, since they will have princesses inside them,” Glatisant replied with pride. “Here’s my proposal: using these unexploited, democracy-free lands outside the city limits to create the world’s greatest monarchy reserve, full of castles that can both shield a highly refined breed of nobility from the outside world and host the minions they require in safety.”

“You realize castles won’t protect their occupants from a blackstone meteorite, right?” Wepwawet replied with a deadpan tone.

“Of course, that has already been taken into account.” Glatisant pointed her claw at her head, then looked down on Raymond. “Flip it.”

Poor Raymond flipped the miniature, revealing a dense network of tunnels and bunkers beneath the castles.

“The castles are merely decoys in order to provide princesses with a feeling of familiarity, while actual living infrastructure will be underground,” Glatisant explained. “Using magically advanced vault techniques originally developed to protect my hoard, and then refined by minions over centuries–”

“Wait, wait, you created the original Royal Vault beneath Saguenay?” Wepwawet inquired.

“Yes, of course. I used to stash my hoard there. The point is that we will create a robust network of self-sustaining underground castles that can house princesses and minions alike in safety for a few hundred years until the surface becomes livable again.”

“We’ve had a huge housing problem for new immigrants anyway, so I figured we could buy two cakes with one coin,” Mistouffe said enthusiastically. “Plus, imagine the revenue we will receive from tourism alone! Visitors love to see castles and princesses, whether they’re chests or jewels!”

Wepwawet pondered the proposal. The truth was that Glatisant…

Glatisant was right.

Wepwawet couldn’t believe that he was actually agreeing with a dragon for once—he felt dirty just thinking about it—but Glatisant had a point: they needed a way to protect people and store supplies should the worst come to pass and the Season of Dragonstars started to displace the population. Wepwawet doubted they’d be able to invade Lune before one or two more meteorite showers hit Elphion.

Unfortunately, while the idea was sound on paper, she had clearly missed the main issue why they never mass-produced these vaults.

“There is a major problem with your plan,” Wepwawet pointed out. “Creating the magical vaults is long, difficult, and expensive. There’s no way we can build more than a handful of them in a year.”

“That’s what I told her, too, but then an idea hit me!” Mistouffe raised a paw. “I was talking to Bernard about those brainsnatcher creatures he kept breeding, and I asked him if the big spooky castle could make any kind of beasties. He told me no, only creatures of a certain ‘type.’”

“Yes,” Wepwawet confirmed. “Artificial, Undead, Elemental, or Slime.”

“Yes, that’s what he said.” Mistouffe smiled wickedly. “And then I asked him what type the castle itself was.”

Wepwawet stared at Mistouffe in disbelief for a second as the magnitude of what she had just said sank in. She had stumbled upon an idea so wild, yet so simple, that even a god like him had never even considered it.

“Our Dungeon can reproduce,” Wepwawet whispered to himself.

“Yes, it can!” Mistouffe boasted. “Bernard said the new castles will be pretty small compared to their parent, but they can copy the shape of the vault with a tower on top, maybe a few rooms too!”

“Which will be a good enough base to expand,” Glatisant added with a nod. “Minion Bernard confirmed that the Castle Neigebleue could create an acceptable princessly seat once per day.”

“I’m not certain that allowing sentient monstrous castles to proliferate is a good idea,” Lourson pointed out.

“I will, of course, monitor the population growth to ensure it does not devalue princessness with commonness,“ Glatisant reassured him. “Do not worry, Minion Wepwawet, you may proceed with your other duties and leave the rest of the program to me. I shall thoroughly select all of our monarchy breeds and ensure they eat a proper diet of cakes in the morning, freshly hunted meat in the afternoon, and vegetables in the evening–”

Wepwawet zoned her out as a flurry of plans formed in his mind. Glatisant’s plan, while interesting, was less consequential than the revelation that Castle Neigebleue could spawn other sentient structures rather than just specialized monsters. He specifically recalled that Beelzebub fought him in Promesse by sending a Rank 5 spaceship Artifact-Creature at him.

Castle Neigebleue could spawn creatures of Rank 6 or below, so maybe it could ‘give birth’ to a living Artifact-Creature spaceship with Thoon’s guidance. It would then only be a matter of copying the resulting creature as an Artifact Miracle—the same way Wepwawet had added Castle Neigebleue to his deck—for any god to mass-produce it.

In Wepwawet’s mind, it was more or less inevitable that the lunarians would learn of their plans to build a fleet to attack Lune. Beelzebub had to be aware that doing something so drastic as to begin the Season of Dragonstars would result in scrutiny. It had to be one of the reasons why he started resorting to it, alongside the sheer setup required in bringing two moons close enough together. He was abandoning subtlety for brute force in the hopes that he could devastate their civilizations before they could develop a way to retaliate.

Wepwawet was confident they could hide Thoon and his followers’ existence by only informing their Champions, so Beelzebub would likely devote all of his resources towards sabotaging the inevitably much more public spaceship construction. Deceiving him into focusing on the wrong target might save them all.

Glatisant wants to create Potemkin castles, Wepwawet thought as he looked over the miniature, and we’re going to give Beelzebub Potemkin ships to worry about, too.