>>5336104Barnham learns the lessons he saw from Griffith and Vlad, uniting them into his own ideals. "This palace is overblown. I don't need luxuries when I can't defend my own people. That's where noncombatants will stay."
"W-What did you just say?" Michelle couldn't understand his reasoning for leaving the place he always stayed at to relish in the glory and peace from showing prowess in his fights.
"I can't move houses by my own. I know building wall after wall will take time and resources, even with the added magic from Vlad's magical plants and the protective wards from our magician unit protecting us from a distance, not many will be able to live there. Only the ones who are prepared to face the consequences of warfare should live fighting to see them. Those who can't fight will still have other functions and needs that are irrelevant to our current predicament... Yet those are the ones who shall live to tell of my greatness. Of the leader who had a layer of walls solely for himself. The strongest should stay in central display, not hide behind the weaklings or let them fall first."
"So you'll break conventional formation and stay in the front line by yourself as a leader? This is madness!"
"I do not recall hiring you as my counselor, Michelle. As a non-combatant, you should know you cannot alter my decisions, even if you're related to one of the lords." Still confident in his decision, Barnham made a cut at his throat to visualize what would happen to those who disavowed his decision. A threat as full of intent as the pain Barnham couldn't feel, but one that would effectively scare off Vlad's mother.
Giving the approval to himself the following day, Barnham spent the rest of the season telling the supervising magicians to learn more of magic, especially ones that could cast elemental damage, transfering destructive power to the outer walls better than any archer or catapult could.
Additionally, the learning of flight was something Vlad approved of in magical training. Despite never seing a witch fly, he knew that it was possible for ones to dominate the currents of the sky thanks to the sylphs, and with Jodi's harpies always eager to see people levitating in a broom, they would naturally show the way to the clouds.
As the walls were built between kilometers of magical runes, rings of forestry and tents for his best soldiers, Barnham finally came to accept that he was still only one man. Should any somehow bypass his vision inside the dark circular tunnel that would serve as the main entrance towards his coliseum and the mountain where the poor lived, he would miss on his exponential growth from eating his enemies.
And that's where he finally found a use for the Pishachas he stored for so many decades. Like the animal that he was, he would let the controlled savage animals live together as he blended with the layer of neither human, nor animal entities.
