Chronicles of the True Wizard

In the tower, Felix sat in the center of his bedroom and thought through what he wanted to do over the next few days. He wanted to sit on the roof, but there was a chance someone could see him there and with Grim posing as him, that wasn't the best option.

I'm not sure I want to give the grimoire of forbidden knowledge a ton of mana then leave it alone in the city. It might try to sacrifice the town or summon a demon. Maybe I should soul bond with it, then I can keep track of what it's doing and what's happening in the city.

Felix began creating balls of mana from ambient as quickly as he could and placing them in his inventory. He didn't use his pool because he didn't want the mana to have an affinity for him, which would make it difficult for Grim to use. He stopped after creating a dozen balls of about 250k mana each, which took him around 3 days. While he couldn't exactly practice his spell formation at the same time, the process of creating the consumables alone was great training for his general mana control.

Ok, so the center of the tutorial is a giant ocean. Unless an island has randomly appeared or has been floating above us all this time, the boss is something water based. Hopefully that means lightning is effective. I should probably go scout the area to be sure.

Felix flew from the top of his tower north east, to the center of the tutorial map. It was possible somebody had seen him, but he didn't care that much. He rode his surf board through the sky as it was likely that was how he would be fighting the boss. He traveled over the ocean far enough that none of the land around him was visible over the horizon. He used his map to make sure he was directly in the center of the map because there wasn't any indication of a boss of any kind. He stood on the air above the ocean with nothing but water and sky in sight. He looked up hoping to find a floating island above him but found nothing but stars.

Oh man, whelp.

Felix stowed his surfboard and dove into the sea below. He swam downwards using a strong light spell to be able to see and a couple of force spells to propel himself faster. He was very glad for his diving ring as he was already feeling the pressure on the rest of his body from the seemingly endless depth. After swimming through the sea for what felt like an hour, Felix turned off his light to confirm, there was a slight glow below him. He swam down a few hundred meters and found a large stone tablet, a hundred meters to a side, laying flat on the ground. On the tablet, the image of a large tentacled creature was glowing with a slight pulse. The creature looked like an octopus except it had large spikes on it's head and much more than 8 tentacles. It also had 9 eyes which looked odd to Felix, but he wasn't sure if that was normal for octopi.

It's probably soft and has lots of tentacles, blades are probably a safe bet. Other than that I practice some more with lightning then worst case I can fall back on Force Bombs or Fire Balls.

He didn't think he would be able to figure anything else out so he shot upwards and out of the water. He flew back to the tower and got to work on training.

The first thing Grim did was figure out how prepared the city already was and to make sure they were working on the basics. He wanted to go scout out the enemy, but in another 10 or 15 days, they would be more prepared and he would get more useful intel. As of right now, they were likely spread out all over the place and possibly still training individually. It was unlikely the two forts had met up or even started working together. In the meantime though, he could make sure the city was creating bows and arrows as well as cannon balls and medical supplies which would be useful no matter what.

He first headed over to the walls to get an idea of what was already there. He was also looking for Noah, but he figured he would come across him eventually. The walls were full of activity as people carried and set up cannons and ballista between the turtle cannons and serpent's wrath terminals. Cannons and ballista were fine, but they were also slow and inaccurate. They were great against enemy siege weapons, but Grim was seeing a lack of high fire rate or precision weaponry.

He then flew through the city, starting at the entrance to judge how everyone was currently preparing. As he flew through, people appeared tense but no one seemed to be preparing much, other than the people on the walls. There were some buying armor and weapons, but people were always doing that. He continued through the entire town before he headed back to the wall and floated in front of the least busy looking individual then wrote in the air, "Where can I find Noah?"

The man was taken aback and took a few seconds to recover then he tentatively said, "Check Henry's forge." Grim floated off before they asked any questions. They should forget most of the interaction in a few minutes anyways. Overall Grim's assessment of their preparedness was abysmal. Felix's upgrade tokens helped a lot but ultimately, they didn't have an army to take on the attacking army which was worrying.

Most worrying of all though was that although the city was relying on crafters to create solutions, they didn't have enough answers to traditional siege methods. The solutions that crafters were able to create tended to be specific answers to specific problems. The city as a whole didn't have great answers to dynamic problems, things that came up that they couldn't predict. From what Grim had seen in his universe, typically that was handled by individuals, strike teams and more general use tools.

Their best answer currently was throw Felix at the problem, unfortunately, Grim wasn't Felix and he had more limitations than Felix did. His casting was slower, his mana pool wouldn't regenerate as quickly, and he wasn't able to just pull super powers out of his pages like Felix seemed to be able to pull out of his ass. If he got the single use batteries from Felix, his mana pool would be much larger, but it wouldn't regenerate. He would have to conserve mana in case the siege lasted for a few days or more. Though at that point, hopefully Felix would be back.

He knew where Henry's forge was, he had followed Felix when he enchanted the armor of Tri-Peak and Grim's memory was perfect. He didn't have hands to knock on the door but he should be able to simulate Felix's heavy handed knock with some simple force spells. BANG BANG BANG

"ALRIGHT, I'm coming." Henry yelled from inside.

A moment later Henry opened the door, "Please stop hitting my door that hard. The entire damn building rattles. Every time you knock, I think someone brought a siege engine to my door."

Grim used some very light force spells to lift the shoulders of the robes and simulate a shrug.

"Come in" Henry grumbled as he stepped aside. Grim floated into the room and Henry closed the door behind him. Though the temperature didn't bother him, Grim was a little worried the robes might catch fire so he cast a simple cold spell to keep the robes from combusting. As he floated in, he noticed Noah was having a tough time with the heat as he was dripping in sweat so Grim floated over next to him and extended his cold spell to encompass Noah as well.

Noah sighed in relief, "Felix, what are you doing here?"

Grim wrote in the air in front of him to respond, "Here to organize the defense of the city."

"I see. What about that project you were working on?"

"Taken care of."

"Well… alright, I guess." Noah looked at Grim for a few moments with a confused expression.

It was time to get to business, "Update me on all the plans for the siege. What is everyone doing, where is everything going. What are our options and what are we planning for?"

"Oh uh well, we've got the cannons and ballistae, that the crafters have been working on, going up on the walls around the gate now."

Henry added, "I've also got the crafters working on grenades and other weaponry we can lob at the enemies."

Grim waited for a minute until he realized that was it.

"Alright here's what I need, Noah go get me the biggest and most accurate map you can of the city layout and arrange to have my feast table moved into the lobby. I know it sucks to get up there but suck it up. The lobby of my tower is now the war room. I want the map there before midday then we're going to start actually planning for the siege. Henry, get all of the wood workers and carpenters on making long bows and arrows. I want as many as you can possibly make at a ratio of 25 arrows to each bow. Don't make them fancy, no tips at all. Just straight, sharpened sticks with fletching." Grim wrote out in increments.

"Uh, alright. Yes sir… Can't we just use the projection we used back in the castle?" Noah awkwardly saluted then headed out of the building.

Henry seemed to be a little put off at first but recovered after a few seconds and nodded.

Grim followed Noah out of the building and down the road while Henry went in the other direction.

"Why are you wearing the mask? And is there a reason you're writing everything out instead of… talking?"

"Magical experiment gone wrong."

"Oh shit, how long till it heals?"

"A couple weeks probably. This is the best I can do for now."

Noah nodded, "What changed your mind by the way?"

Grim lied, "You, I thought about the lives we could save. I still don't want to just go crazy and kill people but I can at least help."

Noah smiled and blushed a little, "Thanks, Felix."

Noah led Grim to a few buildings where he recruited some people to move the table then led them all to the tower. It took 4 people with strength focused builds to move the table, but they managed to do so without damage to the table or the walls. They also moved all of the chairs into the lobby as well then left after Noah thanked and paid them a small amount.

"As for the map, we can just use the city planning projection from way back when. Forgot about that?"

"I did, mind pulling it up for me?"

"Sure thing." Noah pulled up the city projection and had it project itself on the middle of the table.

"First things first, how long will our food and water supply last? Do we have water towers or tanks to store water just in case? How much is in the warehouses?"

"We don't have water towers but the town gets all it's water from mountain streams and wells."

"We're going to need tanks of some kind for reserve water, just in case. I know we have the water cannons on the walls that we can use if all else fails, but those take a long time to recharge. What about food?"

"We are currently moving as much as we can into warehouses."

"How many trained fighters do we have?"

"Not sure. Lot's of merchants privately hired guards, along with immigrants over the last couple weeks, those are most of the combatants in the city."

"Alright, with this map done I've got a different task for you. I want you to go and find someone to organize the melee combatants, archers, casters, the food and water, Henry for the crafters, and finally the civilians. Choose whoever you think will be the best representative for each and offer for them to be a part of the council. Every morning, starting tomorrow, when the tutorial countdown reads 16 hours we're going to meet here and update each-other. You have until then to find someone for each of those categories."

"Sure, shouldn't be a problem. What about all the preparations happening right now?"

"Just leave it be for now. Make sure no one fires a cannon or activates any spells at all. No weapons tests, nothing until someone orders them to. Bring Amelia too to represent the live repair team, if she's up for it. Every time you find someone, send them to me as soon as possible and I'll give them preliminary marching orders."

Noah nodded and left the tower at a slight jog. Until Noah sent someone up to meet him, Grim began planning the siege defense based on the map in front of him. The town was surrounded by mountain peaks on each side except for a large gap in the front. The cannons and ballistae were being set up around the gate facing forwards. Other than that though, there was nothing. If Grim were setting up a siege on the city, he would have people climbing the mountains and attacking from there. If he didn't have access to complicated magic items, simple hang gliders or parachutes would easily get people over the walls. He would also launch flaming projectiles like logs and stones directly into the city from the mountains. It would be a pain to get things up the mountains, but it wouldn't be impossible.

A thick wall surrounded the city, but it's height was also eclipsed by the height of the mountain peaks around them. It would be nearly impossible to get through the walls and the other way to get around them was to tunnel. Grim wasn't sure how that would be possible so he didn't worry about it for now. The last option was to either use battering rams on the gates, force a surrender through damage to the city or starvation, or circumvent the walls entirely. While Grim knew, from dictionary definitions, about towers to get over walls from back on earth, he also knew about more convoluted methods magic and stats allowed for.

With a catapult or trebuchet, you could launch people over the walls to cause chaos. They were very likely to survive if they were strong enough and it would allow them to wreak all kinds of havoc. They could also use grappling hooks with chains or other difficult to cut ropes. It also wouldn't be impossible for them to cut down trees that were long enough to create a ramp over the walls that would allow anything inside.

As of right now, the city didn't have anything to deal with most of those attacks. Cannons were a decent start, but they were also an inefficient solution to these problems. Not to mention the more appalling methods of attack through disease or chemicals. If the city relied solely on the upgrades from the world bosses, they would run out of mana and be overrun in less than a day. . . . . .