Ascension of the elder

Chapter 162: Space cowboy

"No worries boss they call me Gary the goat fiddler."

"Riiiight."

Kyle didn't know how to respond to that declaration so he simply looked at Gary who looked back at him.

"Now I'm sure you want to know the reason behind my nickname?"

Kyle panicked at this as his mind had already run through some dark places which he didn't even know existed within his psyche and he didn't want to go there again.

"Yeah I'm going to have to go with no, let's try and keep things PG-13 for the moment shall we."

Gary had a confused look on his face at this.

"What's PG-13? Anyway it's a really interesting story and it all starts when I was a lonely young boy with only the goats for company."

"Nope, nope let's get this back on track shall we. You guys were dispatched here to report about a developing situation correct."

Kyle wanted to get this conversation back on track and avoid any mental damage to his girls if they heard of Gary's exploits with animals of the farm yard variety. Crippled Carl stepped forward as this leader of this little band of degenerates to inform Kyle of what has transpired.

"Sir one of the noble families in the hub city of Golden Plain has managed to seize total control. He did this by successfully enlisting the aid of the local imperial garrison and elements of the garrisons in the surrounding towns."

"Well good for him but you wouldn't be required to tell me this if that was all correct?"

Carl shuffled uneasily at this, he knew Kyle was smart just based on what he had heard but this was the first time he had encountered him in person and there was a pressure Kyle exuded which made him fearful.

"No sir according to their movements and the fact they are marshalling their forces outside of the city aiming north lord seven believes they are aiming for new Grange City. With this in mind he seized some of their lieutenants for questioning."

Carl allowed Kyle to mull this over for a minute, Kyle thought of the possible reasons for this action and seeing Carl wanted to say more decided to stop his thoughts and hear the rest.

"Please continue Carl."

"Well sir the information that Lord Seven managed to "extract" from these captives showed they had a great understanding of the previous forces present in the city and their respective strength levels."

"By previous I assume you mean before we took control and began the systematic strengthening of all forces within the city now under our banner correct?"

This wasn't really a question but Carl nodded none the less confirming that the information was largely out of date. This information was more detailed than it should have been for an outsider to glean which led Kyle to one suspect.

"James?"

Again this wasn't really a question but Carl and the rest of his band of merry morons nodded in response. Kyle didn't ask anything and simply clasped his hands under his chin and began thinking about this situation.

The enemy city would need to be annexed and this was a good excuse to use force. The enemy personnel would be mostly made up of commoners drafted to make up the numbers with true cultivators being far fewer in number.

Due to the training the personnel under Kyle had undertaken even if they were outnumbered three to one by cultivators of equal strength they would still come out on top. So the question would be what is the best way to defeat this enemy while keeping the numbers casualties to a minimum.

Kyle knew the answer and it was simple assassination and illusions. By removing the leaders of this little insurrection they could seize an essentially leaderless city without much bloodshed. They would still deploy their standing forces away from the city to give them some training in logistics and deployment in a large scale.

You may wonder why they simply didn't just use the city defences and wait for the enemy to attack and the answer to that is twofold. Firstly most of Kyle's forces were new and untested and this would be a good training exercise in a largely controllable environment. Secondly he didn't want to just eradicate a large human population.

Currently humans are on the sparse side and with his new means of helping with child bearing their numbers would gradually increase, this however would take a long time and with a sudden drop in the number of people in a nearby city there would be a greater drop in the birth rate.

"Lotus I have orders for you to pass on."

As Kyle spoke his shadow stretched and grew until a beautiful young woman stepped out from within. This was a little trick Kyle and Faye had created to help in the day to day, a member of 'Steel Lotus' with a high enough attainment would study dark magic until they could utilize a new magic called shadow hide.

This magic would allow them to hide within the shadow of their designated target. Kyle used this to have an assistant who could pass on orders quickly. This skill sounded powerful but there were several downsides to it.

The first flaw was that when someone was in your shadow you could feel it. It wasn't an uncomfortable feeling rather it was just awareness. Secondly when the cultivator was exiting the shadow they would be very open to attacks so it wasn't suitable for battle.

The member of 'steel lotus' kneeled before Kyle and bowed her head; Kyle looked at this with a wry smile and shook his head.

"I told you before you shouldn't kneel like this."

The young lady raised her head and looked directly at Kyle before she spoke.

"Sir this may not be required but we all feel it is necessary to show our respect."

'Steel Lotus' didn't fall behind 'Shadow Hand' in their loyalty to Kyle and the fact the bandits four didn't bow down or something similar showed they were outliers who hadn't been fully trained yet. Miranda, Clara and Elena didn't really react to this but Kyle distinctly heard Miranda mutter.

"Good she knows her place I'll have to commend Faye."

Kyle was mildly disturbed by this but chose to ignore the bad feeling in the pit of his stomach and instead focused on the 'Steel Lotus'.

"I need you to pass messages to Faye and Ash. Tell them the current situation and tell them we are going for wolf pack tactics. This is a low kill order so I want the leaders removed with minimum collateral damage am I clear."

The wolf pack tactics were simply to split the forces any way possible with the lowest casualties so they could break the chain of command. Doing it in this way they could also have their teams gain firsthand experience.

"Yes sir I will pass on the messages, what about our main forces?"

The main force was the bulk of 'Death watch' and she was asking if they should be ready to go.

"Have our main force prep and make it noisy, I want the enemy's eyes to be fully on the main force."

While the 'Steel Lotus' and Kyle were talking Kyle's girls were whispering amongst themselves. Once Kyle finished speaking Clara spoke on their behalf.

"Kyle could we join the assassination teams. We are already as strong as the other girls and we want to get firsthand experience."

Kyle looked over at the girls and saw their earnest faces but there was also something else there and he wondered if there was another reason for this request.

"That should be fine but is there something you're not telling me?"

The girls looked at each other but strangely it was Elena who spoke first while the other two weren't sure what to say.

"We don't want to be just dead weight or some kind of ornament trotted out on special occasions."

Miranda and Clara looked at each other in shock before looking at Kyle to gauge his reaction. Kyle thought for a moment before walking over to the girls and crouching down in front of them.

"Listen to me, you are not nor will you ever be dead weight. Why do you think you've gone through so much training? This will be a good opportunity for you to put your training to the test and get names for yourselves amongst the larger community. Lotus inform Faye the girls will be joining you."

Lotus nodded before she disappeared and the girls followed shortly after. The four bandits who were still standing awkwardly watching this spoke to themselves.

"So these are the brides of Kyle."

"I know people think they represent some virtues but they're cute."

"So we've seen the representation of love, obedience and the ethereal."

"Wasn't there another what did she represent again oh yeah chaos."

Kyle could hear this and turned towards them with a strange look on his face.

"You know I can hear you but I only have three girls."

Carl looked at his friends quickly before responding.

"Sorry sir these are just stories we've heard, you are almost always seen with four girls and people have made assumptions."

Kyle sighed a little dejectedly but at least the people like his girls but who is the fourth?

"Can you describe the fourth bride to me? I need to straighten this out."

Gary was the one who responded to this while scratching himself without a care for politeness.

"Well as I heard it yur worship she's about the same height as the others and cute as a button. They also say you don't want to anger her or she'll burn your hair off and the only one who can control her is you."

Kyle was getting a bad feeling about this.

"Did you happen to catch her name?"

Douglas responded to this as he had recently picked up the name in the local pub.

"Yes sir I believe her name was..."

He didn't get a chance to finish his sentence as a pressure wave pushed out through the bastion causing Alfred to activate the local null arrays to suppress this pressure. Kyle recognised this mana signature as Space magic.

"SUSAN!!"

Kyle rushed out leaving only a blur and a confused quartet, Kyle moved through the halls at his fastest speed. He was no more than a blur to those who saw him as he raced to one of the testing chambers where he felt the spatial fluctuations were the strongest.

He smashed through the door and saw Susan trying to contain what looked to be some kind of portal or more likely a black hole. Susan could apparently hear Kyle and turned towards him with a look of panic on her face.

Kyle rushed over and managed to grab her as the force of the portal spiked and they were pulled in. Kyle could had a terrible feeling of vertigo for a mere moment before he found himself standing on what appeared to be solid ground and looked around feeling more and more confused but at least he still had Susan in his embrace as he said.

"Where the hell are we?"