NOVEL NEXT Big Money
6/17 early morning
I stepped into my chambers at the Eternal Palace and smiled. I knew damn well that the Aspects (plus Soridormi) hadn’t been waiting for me long, but seeing the five of them artfully posed as I entered the room gave me one hell of a sense of power. I didn’t quite have the full set, but I wasn’t far off either.
“Eros,” Alexstrasza purred my name, “did you need us for business or pleasure today?”
“A little of both.” I admitted while I crawled into the bed with Lividia right behind me. “I’ve already had a pretty big day, and more planned tomorrow. Do any of you know how to give massages?”
It seemed like a waste for the first night with four out of five Aspects, but I’d been running around to every listed Titan facility on Azeroth over the last few days. I hadn’t been moving with peak efficiency, but I’d still been very active even when goofing off. I didn’t get exhausted during sex, but after? Well, as much as any hero ever gets exhausted.
While Alexstrasza used a combination of healing flames and her strong fingers to give me an excellent massage, I finally checked the two available upgrades for Neltharion and Azshara. Both were, predictably, fairly powerful. I immediately dismissed anything that just gave me or the upgraded waifu a power boost. With any luck I’d be unlocking a Titan transformation by the time that I got home. Elune had been a bust there, with her species listed as Unknown. Personally I thought that was bullshit, but I suppose canon was a bit cagey on the subject.
Agility: Charismatic Sociopath: Social talent (and sharing) is upgraded. The less you (or a retinue member) care about an individual, the more insight you will have into their wants, needs, and expectations when you try to manipulate them.
Stamina: Essence of the Black: Erich gains the Dragon Heart and Dragon Scale heritage talents keyed to the black Dragonflight, giving him a powerful dragon body and supernatural fear aura on par with Deathwing himself. This also unlocks other Dragon Heritage talents for purchase.
Spirit: Dragon Soul: All dragons in all timelines, regardless of their normal personalities and affiliations, will default to a cooperative and trusting disposition with members of your retinue until threatened or deeply offended. The Bronze Dragonflight will be an exception until Nozdormu can be captured.
Neltharia’s upgrades were a pretty even split between raw power and social manipulation, which fit Deathwing well enough. Charismatic sociopath didn’t excite me, since while it gave an edge it was also full of caveats. That left Essence of the Black and Dragon Soul, which were both quite good in their own rights.
Essence of the Black was just a raw power spike up front, but it followed up by unlocking several strong upgrades in my shop. The big ones would be the ability to capture someone in five minutes by biting them and drinking a bit of their blood, a passive lure that makes powerful women fall madly in love with me given time at almost any distance, the ability to travel within my own multiverse (possibly allowing access to my isekais), and the ability to give my girls a substantial power boost by feeding them my blood or semen. All very handy, but also relatively involved. More importantly, I could technically just buy it with credits if I really wanted; that was a death knell in a consideration like this.
That left Dragon Soul. I was very much in favor of my retinue having easy access to dragon diplomacy, captured or otherwise, especially since basically any dragon was a high roll on Across All Timelines. I could still remember how deadly Lividia was when I first recruited her, even before her holy glow up, and she was less than a year old.
Moving right along to Azshara.
Strength: Vision of Perfection- Azshara’s glamor becomes strengthened further, allowing her to redefine someone’s ideals based on her own thoughts and actions. Her appearance, morals, and behavior can be placed as the ideal that they strive for, either in themselves or a mate. Azshara has fine control over how this power affects any given individual.
Agility: Queen of Madness- Azshara gains the ability to fracture her mind with the same level of proficiency of an old god. Combined with her own ability to send forth projections of herself, this will allow her to effectively be in 100 places at once.
Stamina: Flower of Life- all living things within 100 miles of Azshara will flourish and grow in accordance with her will, and both animals and nature spirits will be passively captured within 168 hours, less for non-sentient creatures. Animals will become elven-hybrid servants, people will be beautified and empowered or subjugated per her preference, and plants will grow into elaborate structures in accordance with her whims.
Intelligence: Divine Vessel- the child that Azshara is carrying will absorb all of her power, authority, and knowledge, leaving her as a tier one version of herself. All night elves and Naga will instinctively recognize her as the rightful ruler of their people.
Spirit: Cherished Heart of the People- All Elves in the Zin-Azshari timeline will be captured. In addition, Across all Timelines will gain one additional charge per day per retinue member (rather than per amulet) which can only be used on elves.
Azshara’s upgrades were about breadth over depth, with the exception of Divine Vessel which was a bit quirky. Quirk aside, there was no reason whatsoever to turn Azshara into a tier one nobody except for the kinky power move. So yes, I considered it, but it would have run directly counter to the guidance I laid out for my isekais. There was nothing that depowering Azshara would give my newborn daughter that couldn’t be attained in a different way. In fact, she could do a power transfer the same way Aegwynn did if I really wanted.
Queen of Madness was also pretty meh. I already had Xal’atath and nearly a thousand tier 9 astral projecting body splitting archmagi. Another victim of the march of progress. Vision of Perfection was nice and all, but I did not need more fucking methods of capture. If there had been nothing better available, then it would have been kinda funny to send Azshara through a portal via cart-chan and have her enslave an entire world by being so damn lovable. Alas, I did have better things to do.
Flower of life seemed useful, and of the final two it certainly won on cool factor alone. It would have been another absurd isekai, giving her an army of animal hybrid minions and nature spirits alongside a giant palace made of trees and vines. To be perfectly frank, however, I wanted to diffuse power across my whole retinue.
Cherished Heart of the People’s first effect, instant capture of the entire elven species in that timeline, was a formality. A very nice one, but I was already capturing tens of thousands of Kaldorei citizens per day. The real prize was the upgrade to Across All Timelines. One free elf per day per person for anyone lucky enough to be in the Warcraft universe meant explosive growth. In ideal situations, that meant more than doubling the retinue every single “day.” Add to that the strong tendency for Elves to be military veterans or spellcasters, and this seemed like it would be an extremely practical upgrade.
••••••••••
“… Dalaran.” The thought dawned upon Sally as she pushed the cart full of wooden planks to the patched wall on the edge of town. The city of elves and magi, though only four days away by foot, had been of little use to her people last time, so she had dismissed them as irrelevant. They were too much of a gamble, when they might choose to ignore the pleas of a teenage girl. She felt it in her gut though. The prophet wanted her to send someone there. Someone in the retinue.
She only had a week left, and was doing everything she could. She’d already managed to capture both of her parents, and was teaching them what little she could remember of the Light; more priests could only help even if they were all mere initiates. Her retinue consisted of her father, her mother, Jimmy, and Renault Mograine.
She and Renault had forged a letter from Highlord Alexandros Mograine describing the situation to the north. Her penmanship was imperfect, but poor Father Donovan didn’t notice that the Ashbringer was writing oddly in a letter sent to his son, not when he warned of a threat that lined up with everything else the Father had heard. The warning had been enough to post lookouts and focus on patching the town’s walls. Veterans of the second war, including most of the wedding party, had taken to carrying their weapons at all times, just in case.
Beyond some basic precautions however, most didn’t take it seriously. The plague was alarming, but as far as the people of Southshore knew it was far to the north. More importantly, the Knights of the Silver Hand were aware of it and surely would keep it contained.
It would have to do. Tony was gathering troops to reinforce their position, and would likely be leaving Stormwind today. When Cathy had called earlier in the week, he’d only had two dozen warriors and a ship. It wasn’t much on its own, but the ship alone would serve as salvation for a hundred or more non-combatants. Hopefully he’d have more when he arrived, but Southshore only had about 50 properly equipped defenders to start with. Everyone who would stand against the dead for even a few moments would be more than welcome.
Sally dropped off the materials before rushing off to find her father. He had received more than a few strange looks when his face and body had suddenly softened into a more feminine shape. Thankfully he had the Whitemane family’s signature hair already, so at least the shift to white hadn’t been seen as strange. Not like mother, whose brown hair had shifted towards blonde even as she lost ten years and gained two cup sizes. The quick capture was worth it, but having her targets transform to look more like her adult self certainly made it unsubtle.
“Papa. I think you need to go to Dalaran.” Sally pulled off her necklace. “This should make sure you can get help from the magi two days from now. Can you get a horse?”
••••••••••
As Tony was strapped to a table, he idly wondered if this was actually his best play.
After his timely intervention managed to warn Tiffin Wrynn moments before a disguised dragonspawn threw a rock hard enough to cave her skull in, he’d been invited to dine at the palace. Tiffin’s collar bone was broken, but priests were seeing to her right now. She was stable. All of the work Tony had done deescalating tensions with the Stonemasons guild had mostly gone to waste, since it had never actually been a random citizen, but he still pulled out the win last second.
Prevent the murder of Tiffin Elerian Wrynn
Reward: One copy of Vanessa VanCleef at the height of her power.
Patron: Covert Talent Sharing
He’d accepted the invitation to dinner at the palace; between his Rustic Charm, Social Talent, and being the man of the hour he’d managed to enlist dozens of volunteers to go to Southshore over the course of the day, plus Vanessa and Ursula. Then he decided to take a risk when Lady Katrana Prestor approached him.
Now, he wasn’t a total dumbass, but he could tell that Onyxia didn’t want him dead for some reason. She was up to something, and she wanted to use him. That, and she was pretty clearly charmed by his perk. All that went a long way to explaining why she almost immediately made him an offer to get to her bedroom, and a follow up offer right after: undergo a ritual to become a dragon and she would take him as her lover and co-ruler.
Tony was pretty sure that he was gonna get turned into a dragonspawn, but given how much the dragon liked him already and the fact that he was mostly immune to mind control, corruption, and unwanted transformations he figured he might as well roll with it. It’d be a power boost, and if she actually intended to keep him as a bed warmer, which she seemed to be serious about, he could be pretty sure to touch her first thing in the morning.
As it turned out he was mostly right on the money. What he didn’t expect was how much becoming a dragonspawn would alter Onyxia’s view of him. She went from seeing him as a peasant boy that was a potential obstacle to an utterly trustworthy slave.
All of her wariness? Gone.
All of her respect for him as an individual? Gone.
Rustic Charm went into overdrive; while she didn’t feel any innate submission to him, he was like a little girl’s first puppy to her. He listened patiently to her plan to use him to assassinate the queen, going in close to her and pulling a knife when she let him shake her hand. Probably would have worked, especially if he’d yelled some shit about the end of corrupt nobility or whatever. Instead he surprised her by asking her, in his most pathetic and needy tone of voice, if she loved him.
“Of course I do you… you…” she looked at him searchingly. “What the hell are you?”
“For the moment, I’m the boss.” His smile grew. “Shit. I just thought of something. You think you could get me close to Nefarian? We’ve got shit to do in Southshore first, but… wait. Shit. I can’t use you in Southshore if I want to use you to get to Nefarian… eh, I’ll figure it out. Get the king to send more troops up North if you can.
Meanwhile, Tony didn’t even realize he’d finished his second mission.
Neutralize Katrana Prestor as a threat to Stormwind
Reward: Tony regains access to the magic circles app.
Patron: The nearest black dragon whelp of compatible sexuality will be captured whenever a member of the retinue enters a new timeline
••••••••••
“So… I’m not sure how to say this, Lord Bismark.” Stevie shifted uncomfortably, “but we broke it.”
The gnome held up a necklace, one of the ones my gnome squad used for testing, with a sheepish look. The crystal was spiderwebbed with cracks, and when I touched it I couldn’t access the menu.
“What the hell happened?” Seemed like the logical question.
“Well, that’s the good news.” He smiled hopefully. “We did manage to finish the first trial, we just… eh… weren’t sure if we should continue after this. Come outside.”
We left the lodge his team had been provided with, and I found Trixie the Titan waiting outside, sitting in the middle of a huge area that seemed to have recently survived a tornado. She towered over the remote building Azshara had provided for my R&D department, each of her feet almost twice my size and the rest of her body roughly matched human proportions. Or, given the order of events in this universe, I suppose Vrykul proportions were essentially tiny scale models of titans.
“We believe that the transformation into a Titan may have been a bit much for the amulet to handle.” Stevie explained. “In addition, Trixie has been having trouble with fine motor control.” He gestured vaguely at the shattered thousand year old trees.
“Damn.” I noted, “Have you tested, you know, how durable she is? Or in general how good she’d be in a fight?”
“Yes. At the moment we have determined the things capable of marking her skin to include spells cast by a magister level arcanist or greater, Ulthalesh, weapons forged from Saronite, and gnomish death rays. According to Trixie the resulting injuries are consistent in sensation with severe skin irritation until her regeneration is able to remove the injury. About ten to fifteen seconds.”
“Have you found anything that could actually injure her?”
“Certainly! If the average Kaldorei soldier can cause minor skin irritation with the right weapon, then obviously a stronger warrior could cause greater injury. Unfortunately she also has strong reflexes and minimal kinesthetic awareness. Our on-site Kyrian is still resurrecting everyone after the last stress test made her kick.”
I thought about it. High up front cost in the form of an amulet, plus she was in absolutely no state to fight right now. I had two subjective days to clear things up here.
“Ok. I assume she can’t make herself smaller? Did she try making herself a Visage?”
“Unsuccessfully, I’m afraid. I believe that may be a quirk of specifically draconic biology.”
“Alright. I think we can afford to dilute the Titan dna a bit for the sake of usability.” I decided, “They’re supposed to be much stronger than the Old Gods if I remember right. Let’s make some dragon hybrids.”
I called in a pair of my girls that I could probably afford to go without for a few days, if I really needed to. One who always wanted to be more powerful, and another who loved learning; both had served me well for a long damn time. They would get to me within the hour, but I really needed to check in with the person most qualified to teach a few nascent Titans the ropes. I passed through a portal, and found someone who absolutely deserved more attention than I’d given her.
“Erich, I presume?” Boomed the voice of Eonar. “I’ve been expecting you.”
••••••••••
Company credit budget: 9
-1 permanent purchase: Lividia
-1 permanent purchase: Talaada
-2 Letter of Recommendation: Child by Lividia, Child by Azshara, Child by Aegwynn, Tony, Nefaria, Vanessa, Onyxia, Sylvanas, Sally, and Abby (subject to change)
-1 Animal folk become more human looking, generally looking like basically attractive humans with pronounced animalistic traits.
-1 PvP is never incentivized. Should two testers come into conflict it will be on entirely personal grounds. Drawbacks involving PvP can override this; you knew what you were signing up for.
Remaining budget: 3 credits