Chapter 479: The Han Civil War V

I paused before I dove down to the Sixth’s camp, debating how I wanted to do this.

The Sixth was in full swing. They’d already felled a few hundred trees and assembled an entire fort out of wood, tall walls, walkways and all. It was one of the things the Legions were very, very good at, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Katerina ordered the Ironside Brigade to assemble a full fortress every night of campaigning.

Difficult, yes. Left a trail of forts other people could use in our wake, for sure. Amazing protection that other armies could only envy? Absolutely.

At the same time, if we ever needed to retreat, we’d be able to go straight to one of our old forts and bunker down, making us a tough nut to crack.

It was a bit of a tell that the Ironside Brigade wasn’t a Lithos operation, it was an Exterreri one, but that decision making occurred at the Legata’s level, not mine. If she judged the risk-reward to be worth it, I wasn’t going to argue.

Blazing down with my wings sparkling was the opposite of plausible deniability, and I had justified leaving with all the bells and whistles as maintaining the charade that I wasn’t in the Sixth. Coming down like a divine angel of mercy was the opposite of subtle.

The question was, how did I get back in?

I could try to sneak in of course, but that would be a terrible look if I got caught. Exterreri troops weren’t dumb, and we were at war. If I was caught, they’d try to immediately execute me as a spy. Trial? Talking to their boss? No need! We caught a spy!

Hmmm. At the same time, they couldn’t actually execute me. I was extremely difficult to kill, and I would match my full power and skillset against all the cancelers the Sixth had combined.

It’d be humiliating if I was caught though.

I tabled the idea. It wasn’t unworkable, it would let me stretch out some old skills of mine and stay in practice.

I could walk up to the guards and say ‘hi, I’m coming back from a patrol’ or something. I was part of the Sixth, I knew the ins and the outs. I knew the passphrases and challenge questions.

I also knew I’d be asked why I was out of uniform, why I was alone, where was the rest of my patrol, and other awkward questions. If we were still in Exterreri, I was confident I could just breeze right past the guards without being challenged. But we were in the early days of a foreign campaign. I bet everyone was on their guard.

Huh.

At the same time, I bet I could just walk in, and if I was ‘caught’, congratulate them on ‘passing’ the security test, and could I please see Katerina? It should get me through with minimal fuss. Being a human here would help. Most of the natives were dullahans, and we stuck out like a sore thumb.

I weighed the two options against each other, and shared them with Auri.

“What do you think?” I asked her.

She thought about it for a bit.

“Brrrpt!!”n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

I grinned at her. Yeah, alright, the look on Katerina’s face when I uncloaked in her office would be priceless, and the two methods were about even on the balance of things. A guaranteed ‘something is weird’ versus a coinflippy ‘everything is fine’ versus ‘big mess’.

I had confidence in my abilities, and while people guarded from the sides, it was rare that people guarded from straight up.

Time for the Elaine infiltration special!

Auri and I quickly came to an agreement where she’d wait. The little phoenix wasn’t quite the master of sneakiness, given that her methodology was something along the lines of ‘burn all the witnesses’ and that wasn’t what we wanted to do.

In a move I was doing often enough that I was seriously debating taking a week off to perfect, I lined myself up over the real command structure - the big fancy one was a fakeout - drew the Greater Invisibility Jiwa rune, and dropped my wings right before it activated.

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the General Skill [Free Falling]. Would you like to replace a skill with it? Y/N]

Free Falling:

For some reason, you keep going up really high then letting yourself drop to the ground. Why!? How are you still alive!? Anyway, take this skill to steer yourself better and make less of an impact when you land.

I chuckled at the notification, enjoying my brief flight.

Although, was it still flying when I wanted to hit the ground? The definition of flying was ‘throw yourself at the ground and miss’, but I wasn’t planning on missing.

The fort rushed up at me, and I flipped myself around in the air, going feet-first, ready to land and roll. [Persistent Casting] was permanently on myself, and I didn’t need to worry about injuries - just being so obvious that even my greater invisibility couldn’t handle it.

To my great surprise, I landed softly, barely needing to bend my knees to absorb the impact. I ducked into an alley beside the command post, getting out of the way of the patrols, spending a quick minute trying to figure out what was going on.

[Strength: 71]

[Dexterity: 24,260]

Ah.

AH.

My strength stat was in the dumpster. With my biomancy changes, I was ‘only’ 4 times as strong as a ‘normal’ woman with my fitness.

However, I was getting it back in spades with my dexterity. I effectively had about 250k points in dexterity once my biomancy changes were factored in with my stats.

Actually…

I knew what my baseline improvements were. The School had helped me measure before and after. I felt like an idiot that I hadn’t thought of doing this before. The System was infinitely customizable.

Katerina was in a meeting anyway. I wasn’t going to try to pop in when she was busy.

After a few minutes of hiding behind barrels and playing with my System - staying on task wasn’t always my strong point, especially when the stakes were relatively low - I had a new and improved stat sheet.

All my [Parallel Thoughts] had gone into different designs and iterations, each one trying different things and ways of coaxing the System to display what I wanted.

My stats improved what was already there, but what was there was an elvenoid chimera, not a human. My thinking was still very human though, and I got my stats to reflect what my baseline improvement from a human would be.

Stats

[Strength: 71 (Effectively: 568)]

[Dexterity: 24,260 (Effectively: 258,320)]

[Vitality: 49,132 (Effectively: 767,688)]

[Speed: 36,364 (Effectively: 715,753)]

Much better.

Sure, I couldn’t quite pull off the sorts of bullshit someone with 258,000 points of dexterity could do - no running on leaves for me - but I could jump on a sword and run down a spear. Similarly, my vitality wasn’t actually at 767,000 points, but I was about that tough, given my subdermal layer of scales.

My speed was about right though.

Okay cool! Stats fixed! Strength utterly embarrassing! Fortunately, most of what I needed to do in life didn’t require tons of strength, and when it did, I had magic backing me up.

Plus, like. I was getting something for my strength tanking like that, namely, absurd dexterity. I’d have to play around a bit to see what, exactly, I could do with it, but it wasn’t like 500 strength was so low I couldn’t do a pullup or anything like that, and [Sunrise] covered the stamina aspects nicely.

Content, I refocused on my mission. Katerina’s meeting was ending, and the poor woman seemed to somehow have a whole pile of paperwork already.

I knew there was an Optio and three whole lines of [Scribes] dedicated purely to handling just the Legion’s work - and she had that much work already that couldn’t be delegated!?

Yikes.

I sent a prayer up to the gods for Katerina and Leonidius’s good health. I was two heartbeats away from being in charge of that mess myself.

A pair of soldiers came down the alley looking for something. I decided to put my new dexterity to the test.

I was completely invisible. Only someone bumping into me could cause an issue. I placed my palm against the wooden sides, feeling my hand get an impossible grip on the tiny variations in the grains, the tiniest angle in the wood feeling like a steep slope.

I clambered up the wall like a spider, resisting the urge to hum a tune to myself. Greater Invisibility could handle small sounds, but I’d just end up breaking the skill if I talked too much.

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the General Skill [Climbing]. Would you like to replace a skill with it? Y/N]

Nope, thank you for the offer System.

It was a thrill, watching the soldiers walk around below me without an idea I was there. The soldiers grabbed the barrel they were looking for and left without even a glance up.

Secret! Hidden! Stealthy! I still had it.

I briefly debated letting Katerina know that security was a little lax, but then again… it wasn’t exactly fair, was it? At my power level, if I truly intended the Sixth harm, I didn’t need to sneak in. I could knock down the front door and come in blasting.

I suspected she wasn’t exactly happy with me, and I had the thought get through my thick skull that maybe saying ‘by the way you’re bad with security’ wouldn’t be taken as a ‘look look I’m trying to help!’ so much as a ‘I’m being a gigantic pain in the ass’.

I paused, hoping the System would recognize my growth, maybe offering a social skill for once.

Even if it was as mundane as [Know when to stay quiet] or [Keeping my mouth shut] or something.

…

Nope. Damn.

Well, the room was empty and closed, and her wards were starting to go off. For once she didn’t have her endless entourage of [Scribes] and [Messengers] hanging around. It was the perfect time to drop in and face the music.

I focused on [Blink]

, my body repositioning itself a moment later. At 240k magic power, I almost had enough to instantly teleport.

A quick twist, and still invisible, I landed on the floor with cat-like grace, trying to figure out the best way to approach Katerina. Saluting in front of her? In the chair? Emerging from a shadowy corner?

“SENTINEL DAWN!” Katerina roared at me, and I jumped up and dismissed my invisibility, saluting the Legata.

“Sentinel Dawn here and reporting ma’am!” I rattled off. “Ma’am, how did-”

“SHUT UP!” Katerina roared at me again, her eyes blazing with uncontained fury.

I shut up.

“Do you have any idea what you did!?” She slammed her quill down on her desk so hard it broke, got up and started stalking around me. “Do you have any idea of how much trouble you caused!? Going AWOL! Leaving in front of the entire Legion! Having your wyvern spook the town! It. Is. A. Disaster. Almost all our plans, gone! Out the window! Everyone saw you leaving from a line full of [Batteries]. We can’t do that anymore! We’ve needed to shuffle a third of the lines around just to disguise your new deployment, and we didn’t even know if you’d be around! I’ve had the entire command structure asking me which plans we needed to operate on, and I couldn’t tell them because I didn’t know! Because you didn’t tell me! I’ve had half the Legion despairing that their War Sentinel very clearly LEFT US right before we deployed! ‘What does she know that we don’t?’ they keep asking, and even now that you’re back, I can’t bloody well TELL THEM because that destroys the ENTIRE POINT of plausible deniability! What sort of lacking discipline…”

Katerina was pissed, and she’d clearly had a lot of time to think about all the problems I’d caused and her need to fix them all.

I… hadn’t quite realized the full impact of my actions, and Katerina was letting me have it. Rightfully so. I only answered with a “Yes ma’am” or a “No ma’am” when needed, standing ramrod straight, staring at the wall.

Eventually Katerina was done lecturing me - that, or she didn’t have enough time to lecture me more, needing to get on with the rest of her work - and sat back down at her desk.

She didn’t ask me to sit.

“Right. What do you have to say for yourself?” She asked, tired and weary.

“Ma’am. Over 100 levels gained in the week I was gone, ma’am.”

Katerina paused in grabbing a new quill.

“At what quality levels?” She asked.

“Ma’am. 50 in a black quality class, 55 in a dark green class, 20 in a light green class.”

The quill fell from Katerina’s hand.

“You have a black quality class?” She whispered.

I continued to stare at the wall, using all my willpower not to grin at her shocked reaction.

“Ma’am. Yes I do. Over 7 million points of magic power and control at the moment. Mana’s a little lacking though.”

Katerina leaned back and stared at the ceiling, looking like an old woman for once.

“By the gods…” She muttered, then got back ahold of herself.

“Right. Dawn, as you know, both Dawn and Elaine are a little too well known in the Sixth. ‘Legionnaire Elaine’ is about as obvious as possible with recent events, and I’m not even going to entertain Dawn, in any language.” Katerina gave me a significant look. “I had a number of interesting names for you to use while here, such as Eve, Lilith, or Venus.”

Those sounded pretty good, fun pseudonyms. I could absolutely nail Venus.

“Instead, because I’m displeased with you, because I’m petty, and because you need the reminder not to be a complete idiot, while we’re here you’re going to be Bunny. Legionnaire Bunny.”

My facade cracked a bit at that. Bunny!? I was going to be called Bunny!?

Katerina got an evil smirk at the look on my face.

“Now, I know we discussed disguises, and I know you’ve got your storage skill. Use my office as a safe space to get your gear together, otherwise there will be even more questions than we can answer. Auri can stay with command, nobody will blink an eye at it, and it’ll cause all the right rumors I need to foster. Then go report to your new line. First cohort, first century, fifth line. Hop to it!”

The Look on Katerina’s face promised she was going down a rabbit hole of puns.