What did you do with the dice?

"To kill him, at least three members of the parliament would be needed. To capture him alive, five would probably be needed." The six-tailed fox sighed, "Never mind. We'll meet on this battlefield someday anyway. It won't be too late to capture him after we capture the kingdom. A divinely blessed person like him wouldn't abandon the kingdom and leave.

Your current mission is to lead your troops to capture the city in front of you.

But we can't let them get away so easily. Send some hobbits over to test and see if the wizard is still alive. If he's dead, have the hobbits kill as many of their men as possible."

The legion commander was overjoyed after hearing this and immediately stood up and accepted the order: "As you command."

----

"Alas, the Hobbits are both my success and my failure." Rusalka sighed.

Most of the soldiers around did not understand what Rusalka said. No matter what Rusalka said, they just nodded in agreement.

Sanita: (Although I don't understand the reason why you quoted this allusion, what have the Hobbits become to us, but I know you just wanted to say it casually.)

"Reporting to Captain Rusalka, many hobbits are flying in from behind the army! Should we stop the army and fight them?"

"What the hell? We're on the run... executing a tactical retreat!" Rusalka was so angry she almost wanted to smack the messenger on the head. "Damn it! Let the surviving longbowmen fire back freely, and the team's speed remains unchanged."

Messenger: "But on horseback, the accuracy of the bow and arrow is..."

Rusalka: "They have no chance of hitting the target in the air, so you just go and give the order, quickly. Wait, how long have you been a messenger?"

The young messenger rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "The previous messenger was seriously injured and is still unconscious. I'm the fastest on horseback, so I was just chosen."

Rusalka thought to herself, "No wonder. Then remember, a qualified messenger shouldn't have his own ideas. Go quickly."

The messenger nodded, saluted Rusalka, turned around and rode away to deliver the order.

Rusalka: (He's like that teammate in the game who pouts at you when you're giving orders. It's so fucking tiring.)

Sanita: (It's normal. This isn't a game. You just click the mouse and press the keyboard, and the army will perfectly execute your orders. They're all living people. Now they obey your orders and perfectly execute and convey them because they trust you to lead them to survive, or because of your Charisma of 20.)

Rusalka: (Thank goodness! The hobbits are here now. Will you continue sleeping?)

Sanita: (Alas, how can that be? It seems I can't take this long rest. I'll prepare the air ban spell.)

When the vanguard of the hobbit arrived above the team and launched a missile, the light of the anti-air magic flashed and directly shot down the four or five hobbit that were enveloped in it. They were then quickly hacked to death by the following infantry.

When the other hobbits in the back saw this, they became like frightened birds and quickly turned around and flew away, fearing that they would be caught in the range of the magic.

Rusalka: (Why didn't you wait until they were all in range before firing? They all ran away after we killed a few of them. Now they don't dare to come again.)

Sanitta refuted him with Rusalka's words: (Wait a minute, we're executing a tactical retreat! Our goal is to drive back the Harpies and reduce our casualties, not to compete with them in a KDA battle, understand? Our goal now is to escape alive.)

The Hobbits escaped with one strike just as Sanitta had said, and the team never encountered any followers since then. There were a few spies from the Dog tribe who wanted to follow the team, but they were all beheaded by Phoenix who was wandering around the team, and Sanitta hung their heads on the team's flag.

In this way, even if the other party wanted to check the movements of Rusalka's army, they could only find a high ground and observe with a telescope from a distance, thus losing the most intuitive and reliable source of intelligence.

----

Since the troops only brought baggage and some light weapons that were easy to carry, such as blade carts and ladders, as well as a dozen small crossbow carts and a magic cannon mounted on a large truck and transported by pack animals, and since it was originally a baggage train, the carriages had sufficient supplies. With people taking turns to rest on the carriages, the team's marching speed was still guaranteed.

In less than five days, the army reached the border of another marquis's territory. After taking a quick look at the map and finding a village sign on it, Sanita told Rusalka that this was just a small town in the barony called Capeson. Rusalka nodded and said, "Then this is it," and then ordered the army to turn around and go to the small town in the barony over there for supplies.

Well, Sanitieta really wanted to tell him that the permanent population of a small town was only a few hundred people, but the army and the wounded who had been on the road for days really needed to find a place to rest. The military chaplain had been working around the clock to stabilize the injuries of the seriously wounded. If Rusalka hadn't taken the time every day to give the soldiers a few sips of holy milk, there would probably be a large number of non-combat casualties on the road.

But even so, traveling by carriage all night without enough food would also cause "blood loss" for the wounded. Rusalka could only get a little milk every day, which did not mean that all the wounded could be cured. Therefore, finding a place to camp, rest and fill their stomachs was indeed the most important thing at the moment.

At the very least, it can alleviate the soldiers' depressed mood after losing the battle.

So, Baron Capeson, who had recently heard that the army of the El Empire was marching all the way from nearby and even massacred several villages, was very worried that the army of the El Empire would "pass by" his territory. Finally, he got the information he was worried about - an army of several thousand people was entering the barony and heading towards his town.

The good news is that this army is not the army of the El Empire, but the human army.

But don't be too happy yet. The direction this army is coming from is exactly the direction the Ai'er Empire's army is heading. If the spies on both sides are not deaf and dumb, then there are only two possibilities:

First, this army completely wiped out the nearly 3 invincible troops of the El Empire.

Second, this army escaped from the nearly 3-strong invincible army of the El Empire.

No matter what the situation was, facing this number of people who could flood his small manor with just a spit from each of them, Baron Capeson decided to take the initiative to talk to the other party's leader - if the other party came with bad intentions, he would die anyway, so this would make him appear to have some backbone.

He quickly prepared a carriage, took the maid and the butler with him, and after some thought, called half of the guards in the manor. A total of 12 people went to the town in a "major" manner.

A day later, he knew that he probably didn't need to enter the town. Rusalka had already commanded the army to station at the gate near the town. Except for a road leading to the nearby farmland, other places were surrounded by tents.

There are patrolling knights everywhere. Just by looking at the situation, it feels like the whole town is protected by a heavy army. It feels very safe.

The only drawback is that the town is indeed theirs, but this army is not.

Moreover, looking down from the high slope, there are still many military equipment in the army camp, and even a large magic ramming vehicle used for attacking cities or breaking through gates. Baron Capeson is very confident in the defense of his town. He believes that if they order an attack on the town, the enemy commander may be able to drink a bowl of hot meat porridge in the mayor's office within an hour - this still includes the travel time.

As expected, there was not a single guard on the town wall, not even a single person. However, this was normal. Faced with an army that was powerful enough to attack a viscount's town, it would take courage for ordinary people to even go up to the town wall to take a look.

As for those who are wearing armor and holding weapons and staring, courage is not a necessity. What is needed is a lack of brains.

The only ones who were happy were probably the merchants in the town. When the army camped nearby, showed no hostility, and even sent people in to ask the mayor if he had any supplies to buy, those merchants were like hungry wolves smelling meat. They loaded their belongings with carriages and carts and drove to the town gate to set up stalls all night.

They were also the only ones who had the courage to "confront" these uninvited guests, spitting and talking incessantly to the soldiers who surrounded them.

"No, I can't buy it for a penny less. I shipped this fruit from a large orchard in the south. Where else can you find such fresh dragon fruit except here?"

"Look at it, look at it. It's made of the finest fabric, made from the silk of cave spiders. Even a knife can't scratch it. But don't really scratch it with a knife, or you'll have to buy it if you damage it."

"Well, Junye, if you can help me promote my noodles and invite your comrades to come eat here, I'll give you a 5% discount!"

"Their noodles are just lumps of dough thrown into water, but mine are rolled out by hand with a rolling pin early in the morning. I'll give you a 4% discount."

"You... stop spitting blood at me. Okay, I'll serve it to you right away. The most important thing right now is to serve the food to the general. I won't bother with you for now."

Rusalka didn't bring much money with him when he went out. He didn't have a dimensional pocket, so when he touched the pocket in the interlayer of his armor, he only found about ten gold coins. This shattered his idea of ​​treating the entire army to a good meal.

Just when he was about to ask Sanita to think about how to use his name to get these businessmen to "actively donate military funds to his army", Phoenix took out a box from the black fog and handed it to Rusalka.

When I opened it, I saw a box full of gold coins. After weighing it roughly, there were at least fifty of them.

Rusalka, who was not much moved by the fact that a whole war was fought and so many weapons were thrown away and burned, was almost moved to tears by Phoenix's action.

Rusalka: (So I'm the protagonist of a science fiction novel? Phoenix actually gave me her private money to spend. I really don't have the words to describe how I feel... For now, even if Phoenix admits that she opened the city gate, I don't think it's her fault. It's my fault for not being good enough to her. She didn't turn over a new leaf in time. It's all my fault. To put it bluntly, I opened the city gate for the El Empire. I'm the traitor, and Phoenix is ​​a good cat.)

Sanita: (Come on, Phoenix lent it to you because she knew you'd pay it back eventually. Who doesn't like money? Phoenix is ​​much smarter than you think. Otherwise, why do you think she has the key to our treasure house?)

Rusalka: (Fuck, is Zundu fake? Well, Phoenix gave me 50 gold coins back then, and now I'm giving her 5000. You can't leave until you finish them! Someone, feed Miss Phoenix the gold coins! [This is from the movie "Justice, My Foot")

Sanita was stunned by Rusalka who was speechless with excitement one second and started talking nonsense the next.

Chapter 104 Upgrade Settlement

During the long rest on the night of camping, Rusalka and Sanitita calculated their experience points. The benefits of this war were very high, allowing them to successfully reach level 8. And thanks to the dragonborn, their experience bars were only a little away from level 9.

The only thing that made Sanita a little confused was the mechanism of [Progress Points]. Ever since he had exchanged 10 points for legendary actions, he had fought two decent wars so far, but the progress points had not moved at all.

That is very confusing. What process does the "process" in this process point refer to?

Unfortunately, this broken system is just as Rusalka said, it only pops up prompts, but there is no instruction manual or auxiliary AI. Sanita has a lot of questions to ask, but he can't find anyone to ask.

When the two of them reached level 8, Sanita still chose to be a first-level poet and take the pure support route, but he made a bold decision that he would never do when playing board games. He gave up his expertise and chose to add two points of intelligence attribute to himself, bringing his intelligence to 18 points.

After adding points, Sanitieta felt that the "magic power" in his body had undergone a significant qualitative change: "Sure enough, the attribute values ​​of this world are much more powerful than those in the board game. The intelligence attribute will directly affect the capacity of my native mana tank, the recovery speed, my casting speed, and my understanding of these magic.

If I'm a 'genius' mage with a promising future at 16, then I've reached the pinnacle of human mage talent at 18. My mana can even support me casting a 'top-tier' spell on my own without any external aid."

Sanita used the remaining 5 free attribute points to strengthen his [Magic Hands] talent.

[Magic Hand+]: Once a day, when casting a spell, you can use additional mana/rings to treat any item in your hand as all the materials required to meet the casting conditions. Based on the item and the rarity of the target materials, the mana consumption is determined and settled as a whole.

In this way, as long as you can learn the world's top magic, and have enough magic power, as long as you have a spell material that is not too rare, you can release something that is comparable to a killer move.

Sanita, level 8 bard, hp50.

When he was about to tell Rushaka next door about the information he got after the upgrade, he found that the PL channel could not be used in the upgrade interface. When Rushaka was adding points, even if he exited the interface, he still could not send the PL channel.

This was the first time he discovered this problem, because before, the two of them upgraded separately, and then started Rusalka's leopard leap after getting up the next day, but they did not think about exchanging information with each other to complement each other's upgrades.

Tsk, this restriction is indeed a bit unexpected, because the attribute points will definitely not be paid attention to at level 4, which is the first time they upgrade. At level 8, when it is time to pay attention to it and discover the secret, they missed the opportunity because they could not share information, so they have to wait until level 12.

This also means that the development of one of the parties will be restricted, unless both parties dare to take a gamble and add attribute points.

Sanitta felt that Rusalka would definitely not increase his attributes, but when he thought about the fact that he had no other points to increase except for the perception of 18, and he couldn't really increase his intelligence, he felt relieved.

After adding points, Sanita told Rusalka about his discovery, but surprisingly he did not get comments from the latter such as "Cheat", "Mage is the boss", "Is it too late to brush up points again now", but Rusalka put on an attitude of "That's it?" and shared his upgrade with him in the PL channel.

Rusalka: (I debated for a moment whether to go with 5+3 or 4+4, and ultimately chose 4+4 because I wasn't sure what the effect would be if I added a dozen more. It would be foolish if it didn't work, but the 4th-level Warlock actually gave me a feat. Of course, I'm not as crazy as you about adding attribute points, and I don't have any attribute points to add. I can't add intelligence, right?)

Sanita: (It seems heroes and bears sometimes see eye to eye.)

Rusalka: (What do you mean? I was just about to get to the key point.)

Sanita: (Okay, okay, I’m a bear.)

Rusalka: (That’s more like it, but brother, don’t underestimate yourself. Actually, you…)

Sanita: (You are a dog.)

Rusalka: (This is absolutely amazing! This is such a rip-off. Anyway, I just wanted to pick a feat, but after searching through everything, I found nothing good. I originally wanted to pick a crossbowman, but then I realized that switching weapons in real life isn't that convenient, and I can't carry a greatsword and a heavy crossbow at the same time. So I looked at this panel and asked, "Can I give up the feat and get points or some other enhancement instead?")

Sanita: (And then?)

Rusalka: (Hey, guess what? This system, which is so far from being a fart, actually spoke. It answered me [yes].)

This really shocked Sanita. No one would have thought that in that closed space where he was alone with a panel in front of him, and in the black fog interface where he could only browse the complete skill list, he would speak to himself and ask questions.

Moreover, Sani Tower spoke at the beginning, such as asking where this place is, where the exit is, whether there is an instruction manual, and showing the specific numerical effects of skills, etc., but the system has never responded. I didn't expect that Rusalka's casual question would really test out the key words?

It turns out that when upgrading, you can ask the system about the content of the upgrade and the allocation of points. In other words, there is a high probability that the system can consult it "some questions about related content when it is "doing a certain job."

This discovery is indeed much more important than just attribute points!

Sanita: (What did you change?)

Rusalka: (I didn't exchange my specialties for points. Each speciality only gets 10 points, which isn't worth it. So I asked the system to show me resources that could replace my specialties. A lot of things popped up in the upgrade window in front of me. I looked and saw that most of them were upgrade packs I had never seen before. Not only did they cost me specialties, but I even had to use the 25 points I earned from leveling up.)

Sani Tieta: (Indeed, there were a lot of village skill "upgrades" in the previous rulebook that weren't written in the rulebook. I guess it's because the effects of these upgrades themselves don't look like the "data visualization" of a board game at all, but more like real-world effects.

For example, when upgrading my magic hand, a proper board game wouldn't consider multiple casting materials and mana consumption. It's better to say that there's no concept of mana in DND, so this is a hidden skill in the upgrade box.)

Rusalka: (Yeah, and then I found an upgrade that reminded me of a part of my deck when I opened the card.)

Sani Tower: (What structure?)

Rusalka: (Do you remember the free 0-cost [Personal Talent] you received when you opened the card? It's the gift that's similar to the Art Talent. It's the effect we were looking forward to, and the DM created it for us.)

Sanita: (Remember, my personality talent is [You Do This!], which allows me to use a reaction before making a saving throw to transfer the save and its effects to you. The difficulty of this saving throw is +10-(level/2), rounded down. Since we're level 8 now, that's 6. But in real life, we don't roll dice for saving throws, so I don't know how the difficulty is calculated.)

Rusalka was stunned. He hadn't seen his brother's card, so he really wanted to pin a question mark to his brother, but unfortunately he couldn't.

Good man, he had ill intentions towards me when he opened the card, right? It's hard to imagine that if, during a real group play, Sunita got a disgusting big exemption, and I was about to laugh at him, he suddenly came up with a hand of "You do this!", I would definitely feel as uncomfortable as if I had been fed shit.

Fortunately I traveled through time, thanks DM.

However, it was actually very suitable for Sanitieta to choose this, because he had seen Rusalka's card at that time. Rusalka had the noble talent of [Outsider], and mental immunity could be passed directly without a test. In this way, Sanitieta could enjoy Rusalka's immunity with just one reaction.

I don't know what happened after I traveled through time. I guess the DM tampered with my memory, just like the false memory he gave me when he tricked me into joining the team. Sanita knew very well that he must have studied Rusalka's construction, and many of his own constructions were coordinated with Rusalka's. But after traveling through time, he couldn't remember what specific things were in Rusalka's construction.

I guess it's to prevent myself from using the PL channel to control the dual opening of Rusalka.

Sanita: (So what's yours?)

Rusalka: (My personality talent is [Twelve Trials]. The effect is that when I escape near-death for the twelfth time in a battle, a powerful effect is triggered. The downside is that I lose my [Reaction] action. I was wondering why I didn't choose Shield Master. It takes 10 points to learn a single Shield Break spell. Turns out I didn't have a reaction action. Luckily, without this reaction action in real life, it seems nothing has changed.)

Sanita: (Not to mention that this negative effect is too outrageous, you want to be on the verge of death twelve times in a battle?! No, brother, are you serious?)

Rusalka: (I remember the trigger condition was this, but I forgot the exact effect. Anyway, I remember it was very vivid. When the DM gave it to me, I was so happy. I just thought of this right away. It's so cool!)

Sanita: (No, I'm just curious. If possible, I'd like to have a conversation with you back then. How did you plan to trigger this thing?)

Rusalka: (Well, I always thought "personality skills" didn't cost points and were just purely for visuals, so I didn't really think about it. But I remember buying a build with similar synergy, which is why the DM gave me a nerf.)

Sunny Iron Tower: (Even in DND, you know that even if you self-destruct the moment you see the enemy and lie on the ground, even if your teammates try to pull you out 12 times, it still takes 12 rounds? You finished two games in that time. What was going through your mind at that time? I'm really curious if you, sitting in the coffee shop at that time, escaped from the mental hospital next door at No. 600 Wanping South Road.)

Rusalka: (Since I nearly died resisting against the Dragonborn this time, I've learned from my mistakes and decided to spend 25 points and my expertise to enhance this skill, turning it into a [Expertise] skill.)

Sanita: (You're crazy, what did you enhance? You can't turn it into the original Twelve Trials of Hercules, right? That would be awesome.)

Rusalka recalled the skill effects: (That's not so bad, let me think about it. [Twelve Trials]: Loses the [Reaction] action and becomes a unique [Expertise] skill. The effect is upgraded to the following.

1. Every time you get out of the near-death state, you can remove all abnormal states on your body, restore one ring with the current highest level, and additionally restore [number of near-death times in this battle * 5 health points], gaining stackable resistance to attacks that put you in the near-death state, which lasts until the end of the battle.

2. After escaping from the near-death state for the 12th time in this battle, the effects of all previous ones, including this one, will be superimposed, and all resources obtained will ignore the upper limit. After that, all dice points will default to the maximum value, and the effect will last until the end of this battle.

If the second characteristic is triggered, the feat will be lost immediately after the effect ends, but the negative effects of the feat will still be retained. It will take at least 30 days and 30 long rests (both conditions are required) to regain the feat.

Sanita: (How should I put it? Although you looked very embarrassed the first 12 times you were on the ground and yelled for the jungler to save you, the twelfth time you were lifted up from the ground by the medic and used your invincibility was really manly. Oh, I see. You have more than one combat continuation skill, and the purpose is to use it to help you recover more health with this skill. You didn't intend to activate the second effect at all, right?

Otherwise, I'd like to ask, how do you know that in this world, if you fall to 0 HP, you're considered near death, and I can just touch you and you'll gain +1 and then get up from the ground? And even if there's such a setting, do you really think the enemies are all AI or real friends playing together? Would they not finish you off if you fall?