Chapter 610: Overthrowing the Tyrants III
“Let us not impose too much on Anurak’s hospitality.” Arachne stood up and stretched. I grabbed a cookie for the road, the vast privacy shields we’d put up dropping down. “One of the first concepts I’m going to reiterate here is operational security. It was one thing as a Sentinel to keep information from the target, but with the way we worked it wasn’t of the utmost importance. The systems and procedures I designed kept in mind that many sentinels, while I would never call them unintelligent, got to their position of power generally by the application of violence. There is nothing wrong with that, but our policies and procedures were put in place for a, shall we call it a less complex mindset? There is the problem. Your talents make you well suited to handling the problem. End of story.”
I nodded as I followed Arachne down the tunnels, able to sense the endless Pekari all over the tunnels, most of them just resting and being still.
“Makes sense. There was far more caution in the roving ranger teams than operations as a Sentinel.” I said.
“Exactly. Now, we play the grand information game. Lies and knowledge are our weapons, deceit and misdirection our shields. Information is prized above all. Given your relative discomfort with lies, I will strive to give you the needed tools and mission scope that you’ll need. I expect you to use them to a minimum, if at all. It will significantly limit what you’re able to do, but that is an acceptable price.” Arachne sighed longingly. “What you could do with a different mindset…”
Given that I was basically becoming a Shadow Sentinel, being ‘acceptable’ was good enough in my books. At least Night wasn’t having spasms of laughter at the idea anymore!
She led me to - was that a train!? I’d seen all manner of industrial wonders in the Pekari lair, manufacturing the golems on a gigantic scale. If I were so inclined I’d be the greatest [Thief] or [Stealer of Inventions] ever - there were endless ideas and methods surrounding me, things I was passively absorbing and filing away in my [Archives]. The information and operations stuff was super interesting, but hold up. This was literally revolutionary.
“Hang on, change of subject, sorry. Is that a train!?” I asked Susan, using the English word for it. She looked unamused.
“If you mean a train, then yes.” She said, giving me the High Elvish word for it. I assumed there wasn’t a Creation word for it, otherwise the word and the concept would’ve been dropped into Night’s head. But… fuck, language was weird. I wasn’t going to spend too much brainpower on it, I was frying my head just thinking of basics.
It was quite literally a wonder. Sleek and smooth like all the Pekari designs, the engine was three times as tall as I was, and completely empty on the inside. I was more than a little disappointed at that revelation, my imagination having already conjured up fantastical magitech images… and I would’ve totally stolen the designs and tried to do something with them.