“In a few hours, as the guards change shift for the evening, our allies will move to suppress the Duke’s forces and loyalists.” Lady Versi spoke softly, not entirely comfortable discussing such a matter in the castle itself. It did seem odd to be planning this when the Duke was in the same building…

“Officially,” Julian spoke next. “The mages are uninvolved, but they will be, shall we say, suggestively placed to impose pressure and if push comes to shove that ‘officially’ can be shoved out the window.

“Politically, the Duke was isolated to begin with.” Lady Almistraus smiled with mischievous cunning, “With the current situation as it is, it was not hard to swing his political allies to our side.”

Lucas looked to Heidall next, who sighed. “I will do my part, and the Church will announce its support for our cause.”

“Wonderful,” Lucas then turned to Blade. “And what do you bring to the table?”

Blade snorted, “I literally just joined and you are already asking for things?”

“Yup.” Lucas didn’t back down, “You said you could offer services that we would not have, but if you came with nothing to bring to the table besides threatening my life…”

Blade held up his hands in surrender, “you know for someone who had their life threatened you are remarkably unafraid, but as it happens the Demon Adders did not come to the table empty handed.”

“Thank you for wasting our time by pretending otherwise,” Lucas’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “It is not like this is an important meeting at an important time on the cusp of an important event. Surely not.”

Julian sniggered and Lady Alimistraus only managed to main decorum by turning her own laugh into a cough and sipping tea to pretend she was soothing her throat. Lady Versi and Heidall simply frowned, and Blade seemed lost at how to respond.

In the end, he appeared to simply ignore Lucas’s remark. “Our acolytes can… ‘remove…’ Their officers when the time comes. Without leadership, your victory will be assured.”

“If you can remove them without killing them,” Lucas had no intention to hand Heidall a duchy with a decimated command structure after all. Some losses were acceptable, but losing enough officers to make a difference in this battle would have effects elsewhere as well.

“It is not our preference, but it can be done if you insist…” Blade did seem a bit disappointed.

“Well aren’t you bloodthirsty,” Lucas considered that it might be unwise to use so much sarcasm with an assassin, but that is a benefit to being perceived essential. “Just to be clear, killing people is the exact opposite of my goals here.”

Well, technically he did not actually need men to survive. I mean, it would raise all kinds of ethical questions, but realistically human population growth is determined by the amount of women in a society and not the amount of men… Actually, Lucas was quite glad that this world did have gender inequality to some extent. In this type of scenario the very last thing you would want to do is commit women to the fight, they are simply too valuable. But explaining that makes him sound like a sexist asshole, honestly he will have to find a way to have female mages withdrawn from the lines… But now he is just distracting himself from the anxiety of his current situation.

“Your goal is to defeat the demons,” Blade replied. “If a person is in the way of that, why not eliminate them?”

“Because if I cannot directly influence the battle I will win this war through attrition.” Lucas gave a quick rundown of his general strategy to Blade, it was very basic, but he only needed a working outline right now. “With food and medicine the population will boom due to a combination of increased life expectancy and infant survival. The demons will be consumed in a wave of flesh.”

“That is…” Blade sounded slightly disgusted, “you would simply create numbers to throw away? The other heroes helped people survive and you are sending them to their deaths.”

“I am going to help them survive their regular lives,” Lucas corrected. “That many of them will be sent to the front lines is not any different than it is now. I am not sending anyone anywhere, much less to their deaths. However, that is not particularly important at the moment.”

“Much as I might disagree with some of the things Saint Lucas is saying,” Heidall commented. “He is right in that much, we should move him and the ladies to the safe area and get started…”

It hurt Lucas’s pride a little that he really had no ability to take part, but he quickly smothered the emotion under his logic. Simply put, his knowledge was too valuable to risk, so realistically even if he could hold his own he would still be protected as much as possible.

“What are you thinking about?” Lady Alimistraus broke the silence of the room, it was only Lucas, Lady Versi, and her in the room. Their were mage guards outside the door of course, but no one had spoke for the past hour in the room.

“Haha,” Lucas laughed, and admitted. “Honestly? I was having the wonderfully arrogant and asshole thought that I was too valuable to risk in combat. It is true, but I find it interesting that it feels so wrong to think and say.”

“Why would that be an arrogant thought?” Lady Versi asked in confusion, “A general is more valuable than his troops, a noble more than his peasants, and so on…”

“My world does not really think like that…”

“What was your world like?” Terrasin asked, and Lucas supposed that telling them stories of Earth would help pass the time. If he was not doing something, he would likely go mad.

“Though it can vary greatly depending on where you live,” Lucas thought back longingly. “Overall, even the poor can afford a higher quality of life than the nobles here have.”

“How would that even be possible?” Lady Versi frowned, “surely there must be someone doing work, some lower class.”

“Of course,” Lucas chuckled. “But that does not mean much. When I was getting my education, there were times where I was legally below the poverty line. However, the quality of life and the affordability of technology were such that I had a home with air conditioning and heating. I had machines that brought fresh water straight into my house, machines that could make ice for me on demand, the ability to turn on lights without smoke and with the ability to light up the night for hundreds of hours.”

The two were looking at him with a bit of an awed expression, but Lucas did not really notice.

“Though the things I truly miss are my computer and phone,” Lucas sighed. “Even trying to explain the internet to you is probably a waste of time, but it could be accessed with certain types of technology and more or less contains the sum total of my world’s knowledge and culture.”

“That sounds…”

Terrasin never finished the thought as there was yelling from outside the door. Lucas frowned, this was supposed to be a safe area! He gestured for the two women to go further back into the room and looked around to consider what he might use as an impromptu weapon.

The door burst open to reveal the enraged face of the Duke’s second son, and several soldiers filed in behind him.

“Tyr, wasn’t it?” Lucas said calmly, even if he felt like panicking and screaming. He shoved the feeling down as well, he had to think his way out of this and emotions were not going to help. “I must confess, I did not expect to see you here.”

“You fucking asshole,” Lord General Tyr Are swore as he brandished a sword. “To have taken our hospitality and spat on it, have you no shame?”

“To be honest Tyr, I really don’t,” Lucas shrugged. “Your father is not very good at his job, and that makes my job harder. For that matter, I don’t feel gratitude for your hospitality because it was owed to me from the beginning.”

“Don’t be so arrogant,” Tyr spat. “You might be the ‘hero’ but you are before the Duchy of Are! Show some respect!”

“See, if you had gotten a person from a different culture, that might have happened.” Lucas mused, “but my country has no respect for the concept of nobility, I don’t think of you as much different from the soldiers behind you. If anything, the fact that you were born into power instead of that power being awarded to the most meritorious of it is actually fairly despicable to me.”

“Brave words for you to say considering your situation.” Tyr growled and the soldiers behind him chuckled at that.

“Well, considering that if you kill me you will anger every other human nation and possibly doom the human race to extinction, I wouldn’t call it brave…” Lucas shrugged, “You really can’t oppose me, just give up and you might even retain your position if you are competent.”

“Or I capture you and torture the information you have out of you before executing you like the dog you are!” Tyr advanced towards Lucas, who was swearing under his breath when his bluff had failed.

There was nothing he could use as a weapon, even the furniture was too sturdy to break apart for a club… Lucas’s mind raced to try and figure a way out.