“What?” Agrianos asked as he looked at the commander of the drones, Exarchi. “I think I misheard that. Can you repeat what you said?”

“It is clear. The entire region. We can go now,” Exarchi responded.

“What do you mean the entire place is cleared?” Agrianos questioned while straightening himself upright on his seat. Confusion was plastered all over his face as he knitted his brows together. The archpriest’s bewildered expression garnered the interest of the allied leaders who were talking to the archpriest. While there were a lot fewer of them than the last time Exarchi was here, there were still quite a number of leaders stationed within the castle.

“There are no more undead around the vicinity of this castle. Can we move to the frontlines now? It’s only a few weeks journey away.”

“Wait, by Humanos, are you really telling the truth?”

“What is Humanos?”

The two were interrupted when one of the allied leaders snapped his fingers loudly. He stood up and pointed at the drone before asking in his tongue, “What does the feral barbarian want?”

“You should be careful of what you say about the Varangians, King Zigisma. They just claimed to have annihilated the undead forces lurking around the castle,” Agrianos responded in the same language.

“What?! That is impossible! Are you saying even with the combined efforts of our armies, they still couldn’t match up to these… strange foreigners?!”

Agrianos nodded. “Yes. And what of it?”

Zigisma stood up, pushing his chair behind violently. With a slam on the table, he demanded, “I, King Zigisma, wish to see the proof of your claims with Humanos as judge of your honesty!”

“What is this person saying?” Exarchi asked Agrianos.

“He is asking for proof,” Agrianos answered in Vyssian.

“Why?”

“It’s possible that you could be wrong about the fact that you have defeated the undead. If so, then it would be false information, which could prove fatal to the searers.”

Exarchi looked up at the ceiling, unmoving and silent. His sudden action caused the leaders in the room to be exasperated until the drone had an idea. “I can show proof. You will wait here.”

With the drone gone, the nobles in the room started talking amongst themselves.

“King Zigisma, why did you do that?” a war chief asked.

“I do not trust those Varangians. I could not sense their intentions at all,” Zigisma answered with a grunt.

“Are you saying you are a psychic, King Zigisma?”

Zigisma rubbed his shaven face and let his hand run through the painted part of his face. While one half of his face was left untouched, the other half was painted with a mix of yellow and red paint in an attempt to mimic a burning skull. His armor was a set of thick cloth pads sewn over a decorated blue tunic, and an iron axe hung around his hips.

“No. It’s simply intuition. I do not have the gift of sorcery,” Zigisma denied.

“That man… he wore a strange metal armor, didn’t he? It might even be steel. Are the Rhankish known to have such armor?”

Agrianos coughed loudly and interjected, “I did not say the Varangians were Rhankish. It would be more accurate to say that they came from Vyssia or are neighbors of Vyssia.”

“I don’t know much about Vyssia or where it is,” the war chief remarked with a shrug.

The various leaders continued to talk amongst themselves until Exarchi appeared again without warning.

“Did you bring the proof?” Agrianos asked as he eyed the worried Rhankish guards behind Exarchi.

“Yes. I will bring them in now,” Exarchi declared as several drones stormed the room. They went inside the room, threw a couple of bodies, then left as soon as they finished their task. The corpses spooked the humans, with some even taking out their weapons, but one of them noticed something about the bodies.

“W-What the?! An undead templar!”

“What?! They’ve killed a templar?!”

“Several of them, in fact!”

“Formidable centuries-old warriors… to be felled by such small men!”

The people in the room spoke in various languages, so Exarchi couldn’t understand them. But he knew that he managed to impress the humans enough to confidently asked again, “Can we now move to the frontlines?”

“Let me ask the searers,” Agrianos replied.

After a brief discussion, the archpriest returned to the drone who had been staring at the wall for the past twenty minutes. Even the guards were worried that he had died standing, but were too afraid to call out to him.

“What do you mean we’re not moving for a while?” Exarchi asked.

“I know it might seem troubling to the Varangians, but the allied armies need to gather supplies before we move.”

“What kind of supplies?”

“Food, weapons, and so on.”

Exarchi shook his head and commented, “The army had not much for a long time. Why not use that time to get food?”

“Food expires and perishes, you know? We need to split the supply zones carefully so that we won’t starve on the way. And that is only one of our problems.”

“Food...Always food. Why are organics such flimsy creatures?” Exarchi murmured to himself, annoyed.

‘What’s the problem now?’ Custodian asked when Exarchi pinged.

‘The humans will not move for at least two more weeks,’ Exarchi reported.

‘Why do humans like to waste time?’ Custodian sighed.

‘It seems to be a supply problem. Something to do with food. I could understand a bit of their plea since we got cut off from your resources, but these humans seem to be unable to totally move anywhere without… fuel, for lack of a better word,’ Exarchi groaned.

‘You have a food problem too?’ Custodian pondered then checked back on its current food situation. While trading with the humans was bringing in some food, its limited flow hampered its ability to grow many of its projects, especially the self-sufficient organic vassals project. Not only that, as many of its slime farms were shrinking, it needed to rely on rat farms and spider farms as a source of homegrown bio-matter.

Obviously, rats needed to be fed, which in turn would be fed to the spiders. The moment its food crisis reaches a critical point, Custodian’s economy would collapse.

What an unforeseen problem! It was like making a sail for a ship without a proper hull!

‘Apoth, report,’ Custodian called out.

‘I have great news,’ Apoth answered.

‘Tell me.’

Apoth entered Custodian’s core room with a few boxes. Opening one of them, Apoth revealed a box of vegetables. “These organic matters degrade over time in a ridiculously fast manner, so after studying some materials given to me by the scout drones, I have found a low-cost method to preserve food!”

Custodian looked into the box closely and studied the box of products. “Salt?”

“Not only that! We could also lower the temperature… or in other words, refrigerate them! It will slow the rate of which the organics degrade, allowing us to keep them for much longer.”

“Can the organics still eat them?” Custodian asked. While keeping organic matter around wasn’t a big deal for the A.I., the amount of food it could store was limited. Even if Custodian gathered the world’s worth of food in one day, its organic vassals could only eat a tiny amount of it before all of it would spoil from old age.

If Custodian could finally store food reliably, its food production could be ramped up exponentially.

“Yes. They can. We should deploy fridges as soon as we could. They don’t even require too much tech, anyway,” Apoth assured. “I’m also trying out other low-tech methods such as stuffing them into containers… maybe metal boxes?”

“Keep up the good work, then. Is there anything else for you to report?” Custodian asked.

“I was able to modify the plants slightly to make them tougher. I still need some time for experimenting, but we could try planting some of the plants in the farms.”

“Very good. We will try it with the help of the troglodytes,” Custodian planned. Since Exarchi was unable to move anywhere until the human army moves and Slayer’s expedition into Hetten was still underway, Custodian could probably focus its attention to matters closer to home.

Looking at its troglodyte village located by Mount Varangia, it could tell that it had grown drastically over the months.

[Mount Varangia Village]

[Medium-sized Village Center]

[Village Barracks]

[Village Food Storage]

[Village Armory]

[Village Hunting Station]

[Village Nursery]

[Village Library]

[Village Lumber Mill]

[Village Low-level Artisan Workshop]

[Village Train Station]

The overview showed the major buildings, but there were other minor buildings such as the guard towers placed by the drones. Still, it was a nice tool for administration. The village overview also showed some benefits to the troglodytes and to Custodian.

[Total benefits for Mount Varangia Village]

[+5 LOYALTY (average) to current troglodyte vassals.]

[+20% growth rate for Troglodyte vassals in Underground Villages.]

[+25% spawn rate for High Troglodytes.]

[+5% efficiency and health to Troglodytes (overall).]

‘I need to research what any of these means. But I do see that the troglodytes are working faster, but I need more food to expand further,’ Custodian noted in its mind then looked all over the place on where else it could improve on. After some analysis, it suddenly occurred to itself that it could also look externally for solutions.

Scanning the maps in its databank, the A.I. finally reached the conclusion which its drones had been telling it. It had to improve the human lands as well!

‘Weaver. Report,’ Custodian called out.

‘Available at the moment,’ Weaver replied.

‘Good. Grab Red with you and begin negotiation for placing train tracks towards key Varangian locations such as Castle Norwind and the new fort.’