The Wrong Hero

Chapter 75 - Final Preparations

After the meeting, Dante took a little extra time to rest before heading out. They'd have plenty of time to meet with the army and could do the same thing they did to get to the Spirit Tortoise, so there wasn't any need to rush.

His shield continued to be an issue. While resting, Mirellia had healers, craftsmen, scholars, and alchemists look at his shield. None had seen anything like it. When he returned at night, they attempted to repair the Holy Weapon. Nothing seemed to work.

Dante updated Siltvelt on the situation and had a message sent to Warbaldt. The Claw Hero would return to the village for Dante to bring him back. Dante asked Gaelion to come, but the dragon refused. He'd be too large of a target, physically speaking, and the idea of fighting against a Guardian Beast went against his nature—according to him.

On the second day, Dante made contact with the traveling army. A couple portal skills back and forth—this time with Rifana—had Aultcray there with them. With Lilith's aerial view, they were able to find a good location to fight the Spirit Tortoise that was along its projected path.

With the site of the battle planned out, they returned to make any preparations they needed before fully joining with the army.

Dante went to Lurolona to get his finished armor. Parts of the Wave bosses were used in its construction, but the base of it was dragon scales. As such, the top resembled scale armor with the lower half offering protection through larger scales acting as plates. The scales were from Gaelion's child that remained on the mountain near Mirso, though the scales took on a darker blue than before. The dragon emperor didn't seem to mind his child's corpse being used in such a way.

Elrasla continued training the others until a bit before sunset, not wanting to push them too hard. The battle would be taking place late next morning. Most of the hero party members were only barely able to grasp the concepts, with Rishia able to use it somewhat practically. Atla refined her understanding of it a bit more, as well as the other heroes with the Energy Boost power up.

Eventually, it was time to bring everyone in. Aultcray was already with the army, and Mirellia joined him in planning when she arrived. Their daughters remained behind, with Melty staying in the capital and Malty—oddly enough—going to Lurolona to take Aultcray's place. It seemed being around Dante and his party helped with her unease around demi-humans.

Melromarc and the nearby nations weren't the only ones that supplied troops. Aside from Warbaldt, Dante brought in more people from Siltvelt. Werner, Jaralis, one of the generals sent to Q'ten Lo, and a number of elite warriors. Ushan was with their main army and wasn't likely to make it. Searching for them would've taken too long, and Dante figured the more souls the Spirit Tortoise gathered, the stronger it would be. It seemed likely since Takt probably wasn't going to use them for the world barrier.

It was shortly before sunset that the meeting with the army leaders took place. The heroes, their parties, and group leaders were present. The gist of it was what was discussed in Melromarc before, but more details were put in place. When certain groups would move, what spells would be cast, contingencies for when things went awry, and so on.

Like the invasion of Q'ten Lo, Dante didn't add much to the conversation. Outside of his diminishingly useful information about this arc from the books, he didn't know much about real warfare and large-scale battles. It was better this way. He always knew he functioned better as weapon than a tactician.

A resource they wanted to tap was Reiko's monsters, but they really couldn't. The necessary main ingredient aside, they had neither the time nor resources for them. Reiko could make multiple strong monsters in a day, ones stronger than the yetis, but the gains weren't equitable. The time and energy required to make a single monster that would give a level 100 adventurer trouble could be used to make dozens around the strength of the yetis, which could easily overwhelm the same adventurer. The cost increased exponentially, or at least quadratically. If there was a more efficient way, Reiko didn't know it.