A week has passed in a sleepless blur … and not the kind of blur that a newly engaged man should be suffering from.
Unfortunately, when the world was on the brink of destruction, there was no such luxury.
At least he wasn’t wasting his time.
His attention was mostly split between training others and his own studies, while Sylvanas and her rangers focused on evacuating the Eastern part of Quel’Thalas. Troll raids were getting more and more common as the trolls realized the weakness of the elves, especially for the last day or two.
It would have been much worse if it hadn’t been for Arthas’ attack, which kept the trolls on the defensive and fearful, allowing Sylvanas to evacuate the villages that were in most danger of the fall of the magical defenses without dealing with harassment.
His schedule was busy.
He started his day at the ranger camp by dawn, teaching the elves about Water Breathing Style, and it was working even better than he expected. For one, he had allowed the rangers to spread the teachings openly, meaning any new arrivals were already familiar with the basics.
Moreover, as he taught, he was getting a feel for exactly how to educate them. Having ten permanent assistants who learned the fastest also helped, allowing them to work in his absence.
He stayed at the camp until nine in the morning, then he moved around the elven towns along the western coast, which previously had been villages, now growing far faster.
Most villages were holding ten times the population they were designed for. It would have disaster if most of the elves were not capable of some simple utility spells, making their settlement easier. Visiting those towns, he displayed the Water Breathing Technique while picking talented candidates for rangers … which also helped to break their expectations about humanity.
For all their prejudice, most of them had never even seen a human from a distance, let alone interacting, and first impressions mattered. Even if he was not exactly a fair representation of the average human.
It helped that most elven villagers hadn’t seen a human all their life, but they had constantly dealt with noble nonsense.
At noon, he traveled to Stratholme. With his most recent upgrades, he was able to run faster at his base speed, which meant he was even faster using Momentum. The travel time reduced to two hours, and that was with him taking indirect paths, using it to patrol widely, to make sure there was no undead buildup or demonic ambushes.
There was none … which didn’t make him feel any better about what the Scourge was planning. He even went to check what their main army was doing, only to see that the army was sitting in the middle of nowhere, waiting.
For what, he had no idea.
Under his rule, Stratholme was thriving once more.
Elven rangers were doing an even better job than he had expected, rescuing a lot of isolated refugees. Even now, Stratholme’s population had surpassed two hundred thousand, a shocking number.
Feeding all that would have been a challenge, requiring him to dedicate most of his day using Bloom, but establishing a sea trade route with elves solved it. With most of the countryside intact, the elves’ food reserves are more than enough to feed the general population.
It meant he was able to use his Bloom in more practical things, such as generating better ingredients for his training booster food. He even tested his ichor-fused blood as a fertilizer, and the results had been incredible.
However, even with his regeneration, he couldn’t use his own blood for irrigating whole fields, so he left that discovery alone. Instead, he focused on expanding the available farming products from food to crafting materials, including far more superior breeds of flax and cotton, so that they could weave stronger cloth, which was to be used in the new uniforms he designed.
Prototypes were coming along nicely. He had designed multiple variants, some with armor plates, better for knights and paladins, while others used layered cloth and leather in quite creative ways.
With Bloom, he even grew some new flowers with far brighter colors, allowing the uniforms to maintain paint shades that would make a noble jealous. He picked black and green as the main colors.
They were a departure from both the gold and crimson of Quel’Thalas, and the blue and silver of Lordaeron, and it was intentional.
Technically, the outfits for elves and humans were different, knowing neither group would want to look like a united army yet, but he pulled a trick there.
House Godwyn uniforms were mostly black with green accents, and Windrunner ones were green with black accents. He even adjusted the design of heraldries, keeping the core elements the same while adjusting the details to make two sigils look like a pair.
Someone else might have dismissed it as a waste of time, but he disagreed. A crisis was the best way to establish a new identity, so that when they won, it would have already settled.
If they lost … well, then it wouldn’t be a problem, but he was feeling optimistic. The Scourge might have their plans, but he has his own as well. All he needed was a few months, maybe half a year, and he would be confident to stand against the Scourge.
Instead of wasting time with hypothetical scenarios, he focused on teaching volunteers in Stratholme, but there, he had two different tracks.
First, he had developed a hammer variant for the Retribution Breathing style, his abilities with blunt weapons rose after he had asked for a few quick lessons from the rescued paladins. In some ways Retribution Breathing fit even better with hammers, and even Sally had switched to using a mace.
He insisted Lady Blaumeux — as she insisted to be called rather than her first name — to stay using a sword, because he already identified her as the best person to take the Sword of Judgment once he got his hands on a superior weapon.
There were a few candidates. The first target was the Ashbringer, once he found where the body of Mograine had been dragged to, as the stories by the paladins told him that it was significantly superior to his current blade.
But even if he failed on that, all that was needed was a lucky roll to upgrade him.
When that happened, Lady Blaumeux was the best candidate to wield. She and Sally were the only two having the raw power to handle it, and he was reluctant to give Sally a weapon that amplifies her rage by pure light infusion.
For rather obvious reasons.
However, unlike his teaching with elves, teaching Retribution Breathing wasn’t his primary focus. Most of the human volunteers had never held a weapon, and previously he had left their training to Halford.
Teaching skills changed things. He had redesigned their training program from scratch, and made sure to spend several hours each day teaching them. Then, their training food got even more superior, the Staff of Regrowth and his improved reserves allowing him to grow more nutritious ingredients, which made them get stronger faster.
Also, it turned out that underpowered application of Rally was just as effective as a training tool, and his actual army was growing to a surprising degree. A week later, the more skilled recruits were showing enough skill to join the army as footmen.
Even system approved, as earlier during the day, he had another reward.
[Feat Achieved! Establish a competent army of five thousand soldiers
+1x Gold Advantage Random Gacha ticket]
[Illumination]
{Common Ability: Allows you to conjure bright points of light that you can telekinetically control, you can also consume more energy to make the lights semi-permanent.}
[Adept Blunt Weapon Mastery]
{Rare Skill: You are very talented at wielding blunt weapons such as hammers and clubs. When you are holding any blunt weapon you can exert almost supernatural levels of strength with them.}
The ability was rather useless, something he could easily replicate with a spell, but he still picked it over the skill. Because, picking it finally raised his Ability slots to three, meaning he could keep Bloom, Momentum, and Rally active at the same time.
In comparison, learning how to use hammers somewhat better wasn’t as critical. Especially when he was merely Adept. With all his advantages, a day would be enough to surpass that as long as he worked with the correct teacher, and he was halfway there already.
Things worked well. People of Stratholme questioned his abilities even less than the elves; with most people claiming that he was blessed by the light. He kept an eye on that story to make sure it didn’t escalate, but otherwise, he let them talk.
At night, he studied. His study time was split into two. From evening to midnight, he found the most capable expert on an important topic, and studied with them, with a wide range of topics, including forging, farming, engraving, working with both human and elven experts.
He hadn’t been entirely honest with his trainers. He usually made a point of reading enough to fake his own expertise, and questioned them on the detailed techniques and asked them to explain, making it look like he was interviewing them for a critical mission.
Trying to explain why their leader was obsessed with learning the better way to stitch enhanced clothes in the middle of a war was unnecessarily troubling.
It helped that his excuse wasn’t a lie, as those sessions also doubled as an audition. There were a lot of critical tasks they needed to complete, from building new magical defenses to properly arming his growing army.
A lot of experts had been assigned to critical tasks thanks to those interviews.
Working with trainers put his Prodigious Pupil trait to best use, allowing him to become a jack of all trades.
After midnight, he locked himself in the Windrunner library, learning about magic. Windrunner library was extensive, and the fact that Archmage Rhonin left his notes inside helped him even better.
Mysticism had already raised his reserves to a respectable level, but Magic Well’s improvement was a whole new world. He didn’t have an exact comparison, but he wouldn’t be surprised his current reserves were greater than the average Dalarn archmage.
He did his best to learn across all disciplines, glad that Adept Conceptualization helped him to adapt to different types of magic, but he had three real focuses. One, ice magic in general, which was important to counter lich while also having a weapon effective against human opponents.
The second was teleportation magic, though his current focus was on Blink. Even with his reckless habits, long-range teleportation was dangerous, especially after the Scourge invasion had wreaked havoc on the leylines.
The third and most important focus was how to build and dismantle magical defenses. Building magical defenses was critical. Normally, large-scale magical defenses required either intersections of leylines like Dalaran, or something truly special like the Sunwell.
Luckily, he had his Magic Spring, which was strong enough to replicate an average leyline, which meant he could deploy magical defenses wherever he wished to as long as he had a couple of hours preparation time.
The strategic opportunities that offered was incredible.
However, even more urgently, he needed to learn how to pass through magical defenses. The reason was, once again, the elven politics.
More accurately, the Sunwell, and its corruption.
Despite what he initially expected, a week had passed, but the corruption in the Sunwell wasn’t getting any better. Instead, slowly but noticeably, it was getting worse.
Sylvanas had communicated his offer of help, explaining to the council that his unique application of the Light could help, but his offer was resoundingly rejected.
He would like to say he was surprised, but he was not. In terms of Silvermoon politics, Sylvanas had already been a marginal figure, and that didn’t improve once she resigned and instead decided to focus on building a new power block out of elves whom the nobles dismissed as commoners and peasants, not even important enough to live in Silvermoon.
Even for Sylvanas, getting access to the Sunwell was tricky. A human was even more out of question. It would have been challenge even in peaceful times.
And, current situation was far from any kind of peace.
Initially, he had been hopeful about Prince Kael’Thas’ arrival, hoping that after living in Dalaran, but it turned out to be another empty hope.
Kael’Thas was archmage first, elf second, and noble third … unfortunately, all three of those roles carried a lot unfortunate biases that made it very easy for Kael’Thas to make horrible political mistakes.
And, not just in terms of dismissing him. According to Sylvanas, Kael’Thas was quick to dismiss the Silvermoon Rangers as unimportant.
It probably didn’t help that he was surrounded by his mage advisors who had fed him a distorted version of the events. Kael’Thas only granted a quick meeting to Sylvanas, and from what she had told him, the whole meeting was underlined with the implication that Sylvanas and her rangers failed in their mission, and Quel’Thalas’ current situation was their fault.
Apparently, Kael'Thas believed that only by the sacrifice of their precious king and other mages’, they had been able to push back the undead army.
A horribly inaccurate version of events, but Arvis recognized that particular narrative battle was not worth fighting. A king only knew what his advisors told him to, and Kael was surrounded by nobles and mages.
Worse, he lost his father, and the story of his father sacrificing himself heroically to save the kingdom from the incompetence of rangers were easier to believe than his father being an utter waste of space that refused to take the threat seriously until it was too late.
Trying to change Kael'Thas’ mind would take a lot, and ultimately, it wasn’t worth the potential benefits. Even if he was more favorable to him and Sylvanas, his priorities would stay the same. Hold a fancy funeral for their king, fix the corruption of Sunwell, and repair the walls; in that order.
To his credit, at least Kael'Thas ordered a portion of the Silvermoon army to the troll border to prevent incursions.
Nowhere near enough numbers to actually prevent the disaster, but every bit helped. He probably never realized that without Sylvanas evacuating the eastern border, his weak response would have caused another disaster. Still, after dealing with Silvermoon politics indirectly, Arvis was learning to treasure even a hint of competence.
But, all those combined meant that he couldn’t just trust elves to handle the Sunwell. He wanted to breach the defenses and see for himself.
If he could fix it, perfect.
If not, at least he could prepare for the disaster.
&&&
In the evening of the seventh night, his reading was interrupted by a ranger. "My lord. Alchemist Camberon has arrived."
Arvis nodded as he walked to greet the guy. A show of respect was required for multiple reasons, the biggest being he didn’t actually join the growing Windrunner faction, but because Sylvanas called a major favor, the only reason he was even willing to leave Silvermoon.
He would have visited him directly, but he didn’t want to step into Silvermoon, not wanting to deal with almost inevitable assassination attempts.
When he arrived at the entrance, Camberon had ignored the rangers and was walking toward the tent where they had set up as an alchemy workshop, insulting every ranger on his way. “I can’t believe I have to work in the middle of nowhere, trying to teach yet another talentless pupil…” was the lightest insult he used.
Yet, as Arvis watched him disappear into the tent, he couldn’t help but smirk. He was used to elves being haughty due to their nobility, disliking those that they saw below them. Camberon’s attitude was more indiscriminate, the crankiness of an old man who preferred working alone, which somehow made him more endearing than annoying.
That was confirmed when he entered. Seeing a human didn’t change his attitude, nor did revealing his name. “I don’t have all day. I have already neglected my experiments enough. I promised two hours of consultation. If you want to waste it by talking, it’s your problem.”
Arvis nodded and pulled a stack of paper. The first page was the recipe for the potion he was trying to brew, while the other pages had the reports of the alchemical breakdown of the ingredients.
Since Sylvanas had warned him about the limited time he would have, he made sure to work with Allerton for some time to shore up the basics, to maximize the impact of an expert, which he wanted to use both to create a superior potion variant of his enhanced training food.
“Who is the idiot that prepared those ingredient analysis reports?” he declared with a sudden anger and threw them on the ground. “They are all wrong.”
Arvis smirked as he passed one of the sample ingredients, realizing the source of his annoyance. After all, those ingredients, he had improved after a hundred cycles each, a process that got even more efficient wielding the Staff of Regrowth.
He was dismissive as he cut a small part, squashed with a pestle, and cast an unfamiliar, extremely complicated, arcane spell. Watching Camberon’s expression shift from dismissive to confused, only to shuffle to immediately serious, was incredible. “Where did you get this lily?” he asked with the intensity that others usually hid for questioning murderers.
“I raised it, of course,” he said as he reached, took one of the seeds, and threw it on the ground, growing it with Bloom.
He waved his hand dismissively. “It’s not what I’m asking, boy. Do you have spiderwebs for a brain? I’m asking about the source of the seed?”
“Oh, that?” he said. “I modified with my powers—“
“Don’t lie to me. Magical adjustments don’t transfer to the next generation. You can maintain it through grafting and cuttings, but eventually, it destabilizes.”
That made Arvis smile. As he read, he realized that while mages focused on their magical transformations; they lacked the knowledge his Expert Biology granted.
“Do you want me to show you?” he asked. “Give me a random seed, and I’ll show.”
Camberon reached into his pocket, and pulled out a seed. He touched; his senses confirming it to be a common thistle. “Alright. Let me turn it into a holy thistle,” he said. Since they were at a tent, he just dug a corner, planted, and grew it while focusing on transforming it.
After all the practice, every generation took only fifteen seconds.
Camberon looked dismissive at first, but his expression turned into interest when he had reached the eighth generation, and astonishment when he reached generation twenty, with the thistle radiating a subtle but unmistakable holy energy.
“T-this?” he said, looking shocked. “Can you do this to every plant?”
“Yes, but the more potent the magical essence, the more time it would take. A potent ingredient would require weeks of dedicated effort,” he said. But then, he paused. “Not an effort I can make for anyone outside my own faction.”
Camberon caught the implication and grumbled, but he didn’t bite the obvious invitation. Still, that had been a long shot. Instead, they started focusing on how to design the new potion, which wasn’t easy, not even for a true master of the art, which Camberon clearly was.
More importantly, he was a surprisingly good teacher … well, for him. For anyone else, he would have been an annoying teacher. He explained everything only once; his explanations were always badly structured, and often, halfway into an explanation, he went on a tangent to focus on a connected principle, jumping topics.
He suspected that without the combination of Polymath and Prodigious Pupil, he would have failed to follow Camberon’s explanations. But, the combined impact, especially with the other assisting traits like Library Mind, allowed him to benefit from it greatly.
So much so that, he subtly changed the topic from alchemy to arcane containment, dissection, and analysis methods, which Camberon was just as much an expert in. As a master alchemist, he needed to build a lot of special wards for his gardens, both to protect them from interlopers and to maintain some precise conditions.
His rudeness didn’t diminish in the slightest, but its impersonal nature made it a fun quirk rather than an insult. They talked until dawn, his promise to stay only two hours forgotten.
Camberon left only at dawn, and only because he had an obligation even he couldn’t get out of, funeral of King Anasterian. He couldn’t help but feel annoyed about timing, as he felt he was close to recruiting Camberon successfully.
However, he didn’t try to convince him to stay and ditch the funeral, because the funeral was the opportunity he had been looking for.
The best time to visit the Sunwell.