NOVEL WEB Chapter 133: SPS
Rose ran her fingers over the slate in her hand, marveling at it for what seemed like the millionth time. It was, in a word, revolutionary; she knew she had asked Connie for a device that would potentially shift the tides of the war, but she hadn’t expected something this powerful, and certainly not for how cheap it was.
Relatively speaking, anyway. It was the largest purchase they had ever made, costing just over two hundred thousand Blood Money, but Lia’s income had skyrocketed since Aura and the Glens had been fully converted, and they had been able to afford it, if barely. Still, for how influential a device it would inevitably end up being, it was a small price to pay.
The device in question was the battlefield visualizer she had asked for a couple days ago, a device Connie called the “SPS”, short for “Swarm Positioning System”, and it was so, so much more than Rose had hoped. By tapping into the swarm management Skills Lia had, the device was able to accurately place the location of any group, provided it was more than five or ten people in size, or it contained particularly powerful members of the swarm such as Ophelia and Simona.
But that wasn’t all. While she couldn’t bring up the actual status window of any particular member of a group, she was able to see a significant amount of information on the group as a whole. This included the names of their races, notable Skills or race traits, average stats, how injured the group was on average, the amount of modeling wax they had on hand, and many other minor things.
Furthermore, it contained a world map that updated itself whenever a member of the swarm saw an area. At the beginning, it was populated via the collective memory of the swarm, meaning it was rather sparse outside of The Glens and Aura, but she had more or less an overview of the terrain of the civilized world, as well as the locations of large cities and other significant landmarks outside of the swarm’s holdings.
And those were all passive functions of the device. She could “tag” groups however she wished, making notes on them that would stick until the group was no longer large enough to be able to be shown. Rose couldn’t imagine the amount of sophisticated work needed to allow it do do something like this, but it was even able to “remember” groups, reapplying their tags if enough of the original group’s makeup remained after it reformed or split off from a larger group.
And, if the group was absorbed into a larger group, she could see what previously-tagged groups it had absorbed and what tags those groups had. The tags weren’t just for display purposes, either; she was able to search the device and show all groups with a certain tag or that fit any number of criteria, such as if the group contained someone with a certain race or Skill, or even had a certain race trait, or if the group’s average in a stat was above or below a certain amount, or any number of other things.
She could also have the device enter “planning mode”, where she would be able to move the positions of groups, split or combine them, and otherwise maneuver them however she wished on the world map. Likewise, she could create enemy groups which she could manipulate in much the same ways.
The device was easy to use, too; it interacted with the system itself to display information, and the visual display was incredibly flexible. She could zoom in and out on the map as she wished, even going so far as to let her view an area as if she was there on the ground herself. There was also a function that allowed her to write down notes and link them to places on the world map. These notes could also be tagged and searched, allowing her to easily keep track of points that had strategic value.
As for the display itself, it was similarly flexible. The tablet could project an illusion of the area above itself, or lay out flat to imitate a traditional map. The flat map was nice, too; if she placed the tablet on a surface, the display would expand to fit the whole surface, at least up until a wall or other similar obstruction stopped it, or if the surface had a sharp drop, like the edge of a table.
The device was keyed to her, Lia, Amelia, and Connie, and only the four of them could freely use it. They could call it to their side from anywhere, even if it was in dimensional storage, provided one of the others wasn’t actively using it at that time. They could also designate people who could use it temporarily, and running the device itself took a surprisingly little amount of Mana, small enough that it would be offset by the natural regeneration of the user unless they were weak.
The splitting function wasn’t totally precise unless she was splitting off previously-tagged groups, sometimes requiring a little fiddling with the parameters to get what she wanted, but that was her only complaint, and it was a nitpick at best. All in all, the device was a marvel of magical engineering, and an item that would allow Rose to conduct war with precision the likes of which the world had never known.
And apparently that wasn’t even the end of it; if Lia was able to level up her swarm management Skills enough, Connie thought she might be able to upgrade the device to relay messages to groups and transmit battle plans by moving the groups on the device. Rose would have been satisfied with just the functionality that showed individual groups and let her move them without even being able to look at the information on those groups, but this was truly above and beyond anything she could have dreamed of.
After she had received it, Rose had taken an entire day to familiarize herself with it, create a tag system and tag all her troops with it, take stock of the current state of their defenses and villages, and write notes and tag anything of strategic value. Fortunately, her presence wasn’t required on the battlefield during that time, but that was no big surprise.
She was having the army avoid another large-scale battle for the time being, instead opting to harry the opposing army with periodic raids. This was for a couple of reasons; for one, the troops needed time to rest after a major battle. Healing magic took care of most physical injuries, but it did nothing to help with physical or mental exhaustion.
More importantly, they needed time to refresh their stock of monsters. She was trying to minimize loss of sapient life, and having monsters to act as shields was vital for that. There had been some concern about whether or not burning through so many monsters would actually save lives in the long run, as having weaker forces would mean harder battles, but Rose was confident that it would.
Not only was it fantastic for morale, it came with the added benefit of keeping a “core fighting force” safe. While overwhelming an enemy with sheer numbers worked, it was inefficient; similar results could almost always be achieved with a smaller, more skilled, higher-leveled force.
Using monsters as disposable soldiers allowed her to have the best of both worlds. Monsters were unique in that they needed no training whatsoever. They had no ability to adapt to a situation or think for themselves and were thus less flexible than regular soldiers, but they were ready to fight from the moment they were converted. This made them threats than the enemy couldn’t simply ignore while retaining their disposability, with the only limiting factor in their production being actually finding the monsters, which wasn’t much of a problem.
And, since the monsters were taking the brunt of the casualties, people, who had significantly more potential due to their intelligence and ability to make decisions for themselves, would be able to level up, evolve, and develop into a force that their enemies would have a hard time matching, one that would swell with every victory.
But that was in the future. The swarm was currently in its most vulnerable state, where they were still outnumbered and lacking in the number of high-leveled troops they had. Fortunately, raids that would normally just harass an enemy carried significantly more weight when the swarm was carrying them out.
Rose estimated them to be anywhere from one and a half to two and a half times more effective than they would be for a regular army, all depending on who ended up being converted. The numbers showed that roughly half of the soldiers who were converted stayed on for the current campaign. That number shot up to three fourths when you considered soldiers who were willing to fight, but not against their home country.
However, most of those soldiers had no problems with giving away whatever information they had on their old army, and even if the enemy was trying to keep as much as possible from the rank-and-file soldiers, every bit of information helped. Furthermore, the raids ate at the enemy’s morale. With each raid that succeeded, the opposing soldiers knew that more and more of their comrades would pick up the fight against them, and it showed. On one unique occasion, a soldier had even voluntarily walked out and surrendered to the raiding party; his wife had been taken and converted in the previous raid, and he cared more about being by her side than he did about anything else.
Those sorts of benefits were almost as important as the change in the number of soldiers they had, and that was why Rose estimated that the raids could be as much two and a half times as effective as normal. It was an aspect of war that many newer commanders didn’t fully grasp, as it was much easier to deal with quantifiable metrics such as number of troops and their level, but it was vital to understand nonetheless.
As far as Rose could tell, the plan was working. The opposing leadership had told their soldiers that they had won that first major battle, pointing to the number of monsters killed and the fact that the swarm retreated. While it was advantageous for Rose for them to think that way, she found herself hoping they didn’t actually believe it; if they did, it meant that the opposing commanders were either ignorant or incompetent, and if they were incompetent, Rose may have been being even more overprotective of Lia than she already was.
Regardless, Rose counted that battle as a solid win; she had been able to feel out how the enemy general commanded and grow the swarm whilst keeping sapient casualties on both sides to an astonishingly low number. They had technically lost more soldiers than the enemy, yes, but that was never the point.
Every single person they converted mattered, both individually and collectively; individually, each person was precious and unique, and they either brought something new to the army, or could be brought to safety, away from the terror of war. Collectively, each person they converted brought them closer to being out of their relatively vulnerable state.
Once the number of sapient people in each army was roughly equal, the war was effectively over. In her mind, it would no longer be a question of “can they beat us” and would instead become “how much damage can they do”. The only potential wrinkle in that would be if the Lord of Monsters showed up and decided to nigh-exclusively focus on the swarm, but that was…unlikely, to say the least.
“Sorry everyone, I got held up lecturing the kids.” Titania said, opening the door and walking into the room. “They’re trying, but unlearning everything that Amelia’s old family taught them isn’t easy. Still, we’re making progress, I think those two should be ready for a more permanent home soon.”
“I’m surprised they’re as well-behaved as they are.” Amelia snorted.
“We have you to thank for that.” Nailah said. “If we tell them that bad behavior would make Lia very disappointed, they tend to listen.”
“And they haven’t called you out on it?” Amelia asked, raising an eyebrow.
“We had Lia back us up once, and after that they realized that we weren’t just saying that.” Titania replied. “Anyway, I’m the last one to get here, right?”
“Yes, but everyone else was early, you’re still on time.” Lia said. “Take a seat and we’ll get started.” She waited until Titania sat, then continued. “As some of you know, I’m technically supposed to be taking a break this week, but I wanted to be here for the talk about our road to the Glens. We’ll start with that, and once that’s done I’ll hand control of the meeting over to Rose and be on my way. Ophelia, what are your findings?”
“As you may have guessed,” Ophelia began, “the part of the road that’ll be in the Glens isn’t much of an issue. But, of course, that was never the issue, the issue was finding a good route through the Spine. After talking with Lily, we decided that the most convenient endpoint for the part of the road that’s in the Spine would be near the border of the Glens and Aura, so I spent most of my effort looking for a route that would end there. I have a rudimentary map that I’ve made, I’ll pass it around so everyone can see.”
“Actually, I have a better solution.” Rose said, placing the SPS on the table and activating it. There were a couple impressed oohs and aahs as the map spread itself across the long table, already zoomed to show the area of the Spine that landed between the capital and the rest of civilization. “This is the SPS, or the Swarm Positioning System, and I’ll explain a bit more about it later, but get used to it; this will be my main tool for any sort of battle planning, and potentially even civil planning as well.
“The map shown here is almost perfectly accurate, updating itself whenever a member of the swarm views an area. Any place that hasn’t been seen by a member of the swarm since we got the device yesterday is filled in with the latest memory a swarm member has of the area, or is marked as pure black if no swarm member has ever seen the area, such as the case with several areas of the Spine that are shown here. The blue dots you might see are groups of members of the swarm, for the purposes of planning the road you can pretty safely ignore them.
“There are more features I’ll get to later, but for now I’ve given Ophelia the ability to add notes to the map. Ophelia, if you concentrate on adding a note, you can draw lines, write text, or a bunch of other things. If it’s not too much to ask, could you sketch out your proposed route on the map here? It’ll let everyone see it at once and I’d like to both have it noted down here and to get you used to the device.”
Ophelia, eyes glinting with excitement, nodded. “It would be my pleasure. While I do, though, where did you get this? I assume Amelia made it?” As she spoke, a path began to inscribe itself onto the map, following Ophelia’s mental directions.
“No, actually.” Rose said. “We got it from the Dimension of Discounts, it was a very, very expensive purchase, but I can already tell that most of you see the value in it.”
“You’re telling me.” Amphi breathed. “I’ve never seen a map like this before, it’s so…lifelike, and the attention to detail is astounding.”
“This is normal in other planes, apparently.” Amelia said. “Well, not all the extra features we have, we have some rather significant upgrades, but Connie says that, where she’s from, almost everyone has a map like this in their pocket at all times, in something called a ‘phone’. I think Izumi has one, you should ask her about it sometime. The map will only work for her plane and will be out of date, though, there’s some device needed to make it work that we don’t have yet.”
“I’ll do that.” Amphi said excitedly. “I’ll have to see if she knows how to make this device, I want to get one to all our scouts as fast as possible.”
“Alright, done.” Ophelia said, nodding in approval as she looked over the map. “The red line is the proposed route if it were to be done just by laying road and not altering terrain, the yellow lines are potential places where we could build tunnels to shorten the road, and the orange squares are the locations Lily and I thought would be good for those miniature forts we were talking about having so travelers could rest safely.”
Rose quickly tagged all the proposed fort locations and the road, then smiled at Ophelia. “Thank you, Ophelia.” She said. “Please, continue.”
“Right, so as you can see, if the road was to be done without any landscaping, it wouldn’t be very straight. Ideally, we’d take at least a few of the shortcuts, if not all of them, but it’d all depend on the amount of labor we can safely allocate to the project. Uh, Lily, can you talk a bit about what we would need to make the road itself and any tunnels?”
“Of course.” Lily said. “Most of the work can be done by drones, and the road can simply be made of modeling wax that was made with dirt, much like how our initial burrow was made of the stuff, for those of you that were there. As for the tunnels, we would need a lot of burrowers, but dirt modeling wax is nearly as good as stone when it comes to supporting structures, and stone modeling wax is even better. We should have to worry very little about structural integrity so long as we dig carefully.
“As for the numbers, I have a list of the number of workers I would like and a time estimate for completion of the road, with additional estimates for the time needed to make each tunnel compared to making the overland route. This does not account for any interruptions such as groups being attacked by monsters, and we will need a security detail for our workers, but such things are unfortunately out of my area of expertise.”
She stood up and began to pass around papers to everyone who was seated at the table. “So, first, work groups. They’re going to need to consist partly of drones and partly of creatures who can efficiently make modeling wax from inorganic materials, and my estimations show that a three to seven ratio would allow for the most uptime on construction work. Groups should be no larger than one hundred for maximum efficiency…”
