As it turned out, Lia had only a single ability that strengthened conversion, her race.
Supre Empress (Kitsune):
The Supre Empress is a unique Calamitous race for the leader of the swarm. The swarm contains so of the most important people in the history of this world, many storied objects, and has proven itself a player on the world stage. As leader of the swarm, you are its Pride, and its strengths beco yours.
The Supre Empress excels at bolstering the strength of those under her command, providing vastly decreased Mana and Stamina consumption of buff spells or Skills, and an equally large increase to their effectiveness. If a swarm mber has an ability that passively buffs other mbers of the swarm, you are considered to always have the benefits of that ability even if you are out of range of the ability (if multiple mbers of the swarm have the sa or similar abilities, only the most powerful applies). Creatures personally converted by you gain a boost in power, and all bound races have their bindings slightly loosened.
There weren’t any numbers for it or anything, but Lia didn’t need them; the Supre Empress race was tied to the Pride Title, and having such exaggerated effects as she had seen with the ships was supposedly par for the course with Sin and Virtue Titles.
That being said, while she was in the process of combing through all of her abilities, she had gained a Title that would help.
Mad Swarntist
You have managed to create multiple anachronist objects through the creative use of conversion. Future anachronistic objects beco easier to create via conversion, and the anachronistic parts of those objects are stronger.
Lia wasn’t quite sure what anachronistic ant, but she could only assu it related to the ships sohow. She had received the title at the sa ti as an EXP drop from one of the conversions, and she hadn’t done anything else recently that would qualify her for the Title.
She was a little disappointed that it wasn’t a Special Title, but it was workable. Sowhere around the ti Ira had nearly killed her, she had begun to ignore regular Titles; Conqueror of Death’s prevention of instant kills and the dramatic increase to her survivability it provided were simply too valuable to even consider equipping other Titles for any extended period of ti. Changing equipped Titles took a minute or two, but if it she just did it while doing conversions in a safe place, it would probably be fine.
With that taken care of, Lia began checking the various apps her tablet had, seeing what new information had been filled in by her experints. To her surprise, the information was quite a bit more detailed than she had hoped for, even going so far as to pick out certain “key attributes” of an object and their relative strength when used for converting.
For example, the carts she had used to help the “normal” people get a ship to convert had a “storage” value of five, a “movent” value of five, and a “vehicle” value of two. Even more than that, though, it gave her a list of recent conversions, including their statuses, and the estimated total values of each attribute that had gone into them.
It also had a compendium of known conversion results, containing all the information from the conversions Lia had done since gaining the tablet. It looked rather bare at the mont, and sothing about seeing the empty pages filled Lia with a desire to fill them. She knew that she could probably never truly fill it, as there were a nigh-infinite number of possible conversion results, but she could at least make it less…lonely.
She spent the rest of her ti at the shipyard engrossed in her tablet, making notes and writing down things she wanted to try, and all too soon she found herself being teleported back to her ho, Alia rushing over and catching her in a hug.
“How’d it go?” She asked.
“From what I gather, it’s a huge success.” Lia replied. “The current plan is for to go to the rest of the shipyards under our control and convert all the ships there, too. Though…I have been thinking, and I think we should start gathering a bunch of flying monsters for to have on-hand while I do. And, if it’s not too much trouble, could you create a bunch of weight-reducing and flight-granting magic items? I want to try making a flying ship.”
“That seems reasonable.” Alia replied. “I should be able to whip up a bunch of those without too much issue. As for the monsters…I’m not sure how feasible that’ll be, I haven’t been paying enough attention to know. If my Worship wasn’t sealed or I had more free ti I could make those, too, but…well, I suppose there’s no but, if you want to, I’ll make so or get so.”
“That won’t be necessary for now.” Lia said. “I’ll just take any we get naturally within the next couple of days.”
“Any what?” Rose asked, walking into the room. “Welco ho, by the way.”
“Flying monsters. I want to make a flying ship.”
“I’ll get the word out,” Rose replied imdiately, “that seems a pretty high-priority use for them. How was the other ship?”
“A lot worse. Basically everything you liked about the command center place was gone, there were no one-way windows, and the deck didn’t seal itself up when it went underwater. I reconverted it so it’s in line with the others, now.”
“Good to know.” Rose replied. “We’ll have to trouble you with the rest of our ships, then.”
“Yeah, I told Alia that was the plan.” Lia confird. “By the way, do you know what the word anachronistic ans?”
Rose frowned. “No, why?”
“I got a Title for converting a bunch of things into ‘anachronistic’ objects, and the title makes making ‘anachronistic’ things easier and strengthens their ‘anachronistic’ parts.”
“I have no clue, either.” Alia said. “Maybe Connie would know? I believe she’s in the kitchen right now.”
Lia nodded, then headed to the kitchen, where Connie was indeed in the process of making dinner. “Hey, Connie, I’m ho.”
“Welco ho!” Connie said brightly, putting down the knife she was using to cut vegetables and coming over to give Lia a hug. “How was it?”
“It went really well, and the tablet has been really, really nice.” Lia replied, hugging Connie back. “Uh, quick question, though, do you know what anachronistic ans? Alia, Rose, and I don’t.”
“I do, but where’d you hear that word?” Connie asked curiously. “As far as I’m aware, it’s not even close to being in common use on this plane.”
“I got a Title that ntions it. Apparently, I made anachronistic things via conversion.”
Connie raised an eyebrow. “Mind reading that Title out to ?”
After Lia did, Connie continued. “Okay, so anachronistic basically ans sothing that’s in the wrong ti period. For instance, the SPS and your tablet are both very anachronistic devices. In this case, I imagine you’ve made sothing that wouldn’t otherwise exist until your plane’s technology advances further, because I highly doubt making sothing primitive enough to be anachronistic would be worth a Title. Do you have any idea what it was?”
“The ships I made were really fancy.” Lia said, holding out her tablet. “Here, I’ve made notes on their features in my tablet, take a look.”
Connie took the tablet, scanning over Lia’s notes. “Yeah, that’d definitely do it.” She said. “I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting you to be able to do sothing like this.”
“I’m assuming it’s because the buff I get from Supre Empress is sort of tied to Pride.” Lia said. “Otherwise I can’t imagine the difference being this marked.”
“That’s gotta be it.” Connie agreed. “You really shouldn’t be boosting your conversion strength this much otherwise…is Pride taking better conversion capabilities from races to be buffs and applying them to you? That doesn’t seem right, you’d have the innate benefits of everyone’s races if that was the case, and you don’t, so…maybe the buff is just a lot stronger than expected? It does specifically ntion you being the swarm’s ‘Pride’ in its description, it’d make sense to give a powerful buff to expanding the swarm, Pride abilities usually do help in expanding your dominion…”
Connie blinked, then shook her head. “I should think about this later, I’m going to ruin dinner if I spend any more ti thinking instead of cooking. Anything else you need before I get back to it?”
“No, just that, thanks.” Lia replied. “I’ll get out of your hair now. Love you!”
Lia watched in satisfaction as Connie turned bright red and squeaked out a “love you too” in response, then left the kitchen. It had beco sothing of a guilty pleasure to watch Connie grow embarrassed over displays of affection, but Connie had made it clear that she liked it and just needed ti to get used to it, so Lia didn’t feel that bad about it.
“Connie says that anachronistic ans sothing in the wrong ti period.” Lia relayed to Alia and Rose. “She’s assuming that it’s in reference to the ships being more futuristic than they should be, and I agree. It wouldn’t make sense to get a Title from making sothing more primitive than our current stuff.”
“Ah, yeah, that sounds about right.” Rose replied. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if people from more technologically advanced planes built ships like that.”
“What are you guys talking about?” Chrys asked sleepily, walking into the room. “I just got up from a nap and I’m hearing about ships?”
“I went to our shipyards and made living ships.” Lia explained. “I got a title because of it so we were just talking about that.”
“Oh.” Chrys replied. “Well, we can do that over dinner, right? It slls like it’s almost done.”
“That sounds like a plan.” Lia said. “I’m sure Connie’s making sothing delicious, as always.”
“I’ll go see if she needs any help.” Rose volunteered. “Would you all set the table?”
“On it.” Alia replied.
“I guess I’m not doing anything better.” Chrys yawned.
“I don’t think we need three of us to do it,” Lia began, “but I’d feel awkward being the only one not helping, so count in.”
Rose couldn’t help but feel a little unfulfilled when she got back ho. When, after dinner had concluded, there was still no move from the opposing army, she and Alia went around and planted so of Rose’s plants in strategic locations, then went back ho. But…she hadn’t done anything that required her to fight all day, and she was getting a little antsy.
Fortunately for her, it seed that she might still get her opportunity. As she and Alia arrived back in their living room, Lia looked up from her book. “Amphi’s been looking for you.” She said. “We’ve found the dragon that Ira trained up and she wanted to know when a good ti to confront it would be.”
“Now.” Rose said eagerly. “I needed so exercise and this sounds like just the thing.”
“I want to co too.” Lia said. “There shouldn’t be a problem with this, right?”
Rose hesitated, then nodded. “It’s a monster, it shouldn’t be anything you can’t handle. We’ll take Ophelia and Nailah as well, the five of us should be overkill for it. Still, we shouldn’t get complacent; there’s a nonzero chance it’s devoured other high-leveled monsters in the ti since it was freed from Ira’s control.”
“I’m gonna rest here until we’re ready.” Alia said, sitting down on one of the chairs in the room. “Call when it’s ti to go.”
Rose nodded. “Lia, go get ready, I’ll be back with them in about ten minutes, so we can talk strategy.”
After Lia nodded, Rose headed out of their house and went to find Ophelia and Nailah. Fortunately, they both had a body at ho, and they were more than happy to help deal with the dragon. So, in no ti at all, everyone had gathered and it was ti for Rose to lay out the strategy.
This dragon had made its ho in a cave sowhere in the Spine, which was about what Rose had expected. Dragons often liked to nest in caves, for the simple reason that they created natural choke points. A dragon would generally carve out a large room for it to live in, and when it detected intruders, it would simply unleash its breath into the rest of the cave, damaging or outright killing the invaders.
Conventional wisdom was that it was better to lure dragons out of their caves than it was to charge in blindly; a dragon’s breath was a fearso thing, and sufficiently powerful dragons threatened even max-level people with it. Instead of taking potentially multiple breath attacks on the way in, waiting it out was a much safer choice. Everything had to eat, and dragons in particular had voracious appetites, necessitating sowhat regular hunting. Even if it didn’t want to, it would have to leave the cave eventually.
However, with Alia in play, things were different. It wasn’t unheard of for high-level mages to be able to block one or two uses of a dragon’s breath, but that often took most of their Mana and removed them from the rest of the fight. But Alia had them outclassed in both skill and Mana capacity; Alia had, in the past, stated that she was more than confident that she would be able to outlast any dragon when it ca to energy reserves. Breath weapons, though powerful, cost a lot of Stamina and Mana, and by walking into the cave and braving those attacks they could drain the dragon’s resources before fighting.
When they actually reached the dragon, the fight hopefully wouldn’t be too bad; even if dragons carve relatively out spacious areas for them to live in, they were still very small compared to open sky, greatly restricting the dragon’s movents.
Once Rose had finished the briefing and everyone had signaled that they were ready, Alia teleported them all away, landing at the mouth of a cave sowhere else in the Spine. Rose cautiously led the group further into the cave, focused intently on the area in front of her. Sure enough, after only a minute or so she could feel Mana gathering deeper inside the cave, followed shortly by an icy breath roaring down the cavern towards the group.
Alia simply raised a hand and the breath dissipated harmlessly as it reached them. Once the breath had stopped, the group began to move once again, and after another minute or so were greeted with another breath attack. Dragons were, fortunately, just monsters; their intelligence was nothing to write ho about, and they would never dream to think that sothing would be able to fully stop their breath so many tis. As far as they were concerned, they just needed to keep attacking and their problem would eventually vanish.
It ended up taking two more breath attacks for the group to leach the lair of the dragon, the mouth of which was blocked by, well, the mouth of the dragon. That wasn’t much of a problem, though, Alia just stepped forward and cast a spell, and the dragon was flung back into its cave, leaving ample room for the group to enter. Alia and Lia began casting spells to try and restrict the dragon’s movent, while Rose, Ophelia, and Nailah all went in to try and cocoon it.
To its credit, the dragon did have so fight left in it; it managed to break free of Lia’s restraints and took a few swipes at the people up close while charging up a breath attack, but it wasn’t able to. Alia kept its mouth clamped firmly shut with a spell, and after a couple of monts Lia was able to get her restraints back on it.
By that ti, Rose, Ophelia, and Nailah had already started covering it in modeling wax, and the battle was effectively over. It only took another minute or so to get to the point where it was barely able to move even without magic keeping it down, and another minute later it was entirely cocooned.
“Excellent work, ladies.” Rose said. “Lia, let’s use this dragon for that flying ship you were talking about. We’ll find the best ship we have, and in conjunction with the best materials we have, we’ll make sothing special.”
“Ah, the living ships went well, then?” Nailah asked.
“Better than we could have hoped.” Rose confird. “The seas will be ours, no doubt about it.”
“Well, I’m tired.” Alia said. “Lia, put the cocoon in your storage and I’ll teleport us ho.”
Lia did as instructed, and, the mont after she did, the five found themselves back in Rose’s tree. “Thanks for your help.” Lia said. “You two get so rest, okay?”
After promising that they would, Ophelia and Nailah left, leaving Rose and her lovers to head back ho. A shower and a bed sounded awfully nice, and Rose was looking forward to seeing what Lia would make out of the dragon the next day. So, she gave her lovers a couple of quick kisses, then set off to get herself clean.
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