More murmurs. “Then...is there nothing we can do?”

Silent laughter was on Ilsandre’s face at this. “Man, you really do think little of me, huh? I bet you think I only even stick around Cradine for the creature comforts.”

He really did laugh out loud at the horrified look on the face of the captain who had been dumb enough to speak up at that point. “Relax man, I know that I invite that kind of reputation. But no, if I was okay with my hometown being destroyed, I certainly wouldn’t be here. I definitely wouldn’t be in this room right now, subjecting myself to your pleasant company at the very least.

No...in fact, I’ve been anticipating something like this happening. So, after I first encountered a Monster Lord for myself, I took a few decades and came up with an array capable of banishing one from the physical plane. But as you can imagine, there are a few difficulties.

For one, it needs a tremendous amount of mana poured into it in order to activate it. I can activate it, of course, but if we go with that, we run into the other problem—once activated, the array takes 30 minutes to complete the banishment.

Surely even you guys see it by now. For the array to definitely work, the Monster Lord needs to enter its recovery state. And I may be very powerful, but even I’m not good enough to force one into licking its wounds and have enough mana left in the tank to activate the array.

I know what you’re probably thinking next. True, I might be able to recover enough mana before the Monster Lord recovers itself, so this is the part where I bring us back to where I’ve seen two Monster Lords fighting each other. The one who lost the fight I saw was brought a lot closer to death than when I fought one before it triggered the recovery state. Surely someone else in this room is smart enough to know what that means.”

And indeed, another one of the captains spoke, with a shocked look on their face. “It means that a Monster Lord’s recovery state isn’t an involuntary response. So if it senses something that can threaten it in spite of its defense while in that state—!”

Ilsandre gave a short, approving nod. “Bingo. I haven’t actually seen a Monster Lord exit the recovery state early, but the evidence suggests they can. I can weaken one enough that it uses it, but as for keeping it in one spot on my own if it tries to break out of the array, on my own I only give it a 30% chance.

So no, I can’t quite do this by myself. And the monster tide would overwhelm any force that tries to break through it.

Oh sure, the stronger teams in this room would take a few tens of thousands with ‘em. If every adventurer team present put together tried it, it’d be more like a few hundreds of thousands. But even if I joined in, we’d run out of gas before it ran out of monsters.

The way I see it, Cradine has dealt with frenzied monster tides before, even if it has been a few decades. It’s less risky to fight defensively in the kingdom y’all have toughened up, even if this monster tide is one of the bigger ones we’ve encountered.”

“That may be,” said the guild master, “but because of the enemy’s large numbers, we aren’t going to be able to keep them contained to the border towns. We’ll need to evacuate the small villages, not just on the frontier, but even in the inner kingdom.”

“And,” now the palace official spoke up, looking very awkward, “the crown had invested a great deal in the mining operation. Rebuilding people’s homes is likely to be greatly delayed...”

A rumbling laugh was heard—from our own table. “Are you soliciting for donations?” said Bruzigan, standing up. “Oh very well. In this isolated kingdom, it isn’t as though there’s that much to spend gold on, anyway. Assuming we all get through this, Justice pledges 2,000 gold pieces to the relief efforts.”

It wasn’t much less than all the gold we had at this point. Bruzigan’s words rippled through the entire meeting like a wave. I could practically see the thought process travelling from person to person. Few of the other teams really wanted to blow their money on relief efforts, but how bad would it make them look if they refused?

The teams who truly fought for the kingdom rather than glory for themselves, a minority though they were, were quick on the uptake. Their captains quickly followed Bruzigan, each of them pledging more, and in one case, quadruple what we had. From there it was like an avalanche, and by the time it was done, over 50,000 gold pieces were slated to go to the relief and rebuilding effort.

From there, the meeting was mostly about which team would go where to augment and coordinate the defenses of various towns. As one of the stronger teams available, we were assigned to a border town that was more like a fortress town.

Soon after, everyone hurried to leave—except for Ilsandre, who approached us before we could. “Hang on just a sec. Justice, isn’t it?”

“Is there something you need from us?” said Mewi, using his best friendly voice.

“You could say that,” said Ilsandre, his body language casual to the point of making a point of it, “I didn’t have to come here in person. The guild master already knew about my plan, he could have explained it to them in my place. But I came anyway, ‘cause I wanted to meet you. The group that reached SS class in just a week.

You sorta ruined my big plan though, getting them all to sign off on relief efforts like that. Now that was impressive. I may be the strongest guy the Cradine Kingdom has ever seen, but I got no talent for herding cats like that. If threats are no good, I’m basically a useless negotiator.

Like with this right now, for instance. I really wanna see what you guys can do, and my plan was to offer to open my own coffers for the relief effort on a bet, but since you solved that on your own I have no idea what to offer you guys.”

Anna came up with something to say to that first. “What kind of bet?”

“Sort of a half-spar. I was gonna challenge you to see if any of you can even damage me at all.”

I raised my eyebrows—this sounded like my area. “So we wouldn’t really be fighting, I’d just be attacking you?”

“I’ll dodge and block, but not attack back. Why, do you have something in mind to bet? And what do you mean just you?”

“Lheticus is a Pyromancer, our damage specialist,” said Bruzigan, “his fire spells have the highest attack power out of any of us. If he can’t damage you, the rest of us trying would just be a waste of time.”

Then he gave me a look. “Do you have something in mind for a bet?”

“Sort of? I figured if I won, Ilsandre could just owe me a favor.”

Ilsandre laughed. “Owe you a favor? Them’s pretty big stakes, there. I wasn’t going to for the original idea, but if you’re gonna be like that you’re gonna have to put something up in exchange.

Let’s say that if you lose...you’ll have to face one of MY attacks.”