Infiltrating the Enemy Camp
I'd told Hendrick I was going out to scout the terrain. In truth, I wanted a look at the Ernest Fief army — and not just from the outside. I wanted to see exactly what they were doing.
"Arme. Think you can get inside that camp?"
"That? Easy as breathing."
I told her to slip in, draw blood from one of the Ernest soldiers, and bring it back. She cocked her head.
"Blood? What for?"
"I have an item that lets me take another person's form. The catch is, it needs the target's blood to work."
"Ah. So you want to walk in as one of them. That means I'll have to kill whoever I bleed."
"Can you?"
"It's not my specialty. Doesn't mean it's hard."
Thief and assassin are, strictly speaking, different classes. Even in Solari World the game treats them as separate jobs. That said, the two share more than a little common ground — overlapping skills, and above all a professional devotion to not being seen. Arme was the best thief alive. Assassination was well within her reach.
"Lord Walker — infiltration? Isn't that dangerously reckless?"
The knight assigned to me looked genuinely concerned.
"Reckless or not, Coulon Territory needs this done. I am not so small a man that I'd spare myself when a greater cause is at stake."
The knight was visibly moved. Naturally, it was complete nonsense. The most precious thing I owned was my own life. Without the Transformation Potion, a stunt like this wouldn't have crossed my mind.
Arme activated her stealth skill and melted into the enemy camp. She was the thief of the original protagonist's party. I doubted anyone on that side could see through her concealment.
She was back a short while later, carrying a small glass vial of blood and a set of leather armor with an insignia stitched to it.
"Bert Hux. That's his blood. And that's his armor."
"Good heavens — you went in and assassinated him? That's an extraordinary talent!"
The knight was practically bouncing. I checked the insignia on the armor she'd brought. A silver wagon wheel, spattered with dark blood. The blood had probably sprayed when Sera — no, when Arme — killed him.
"This looks like a household retainer's mark. A wagon wheel… that would make him the logistics officer."
The administrative and military structure of Solari World is laid out in far more detail in the lore compendium than it ever was in the game itself. That particular book is a sore point among fans — the setting contradictions are so thick they actively dragged the work's reputation down. You can find two conflicting facts on the same page. I skimmed those parts. Every fictional world has its wrinkles, of course, but the ones that catch the eye still catch the eye.
Setting the trivia aside and speaking in broad strokes: this world's armies have two ranks. Enlisted and officers. The enlisted are mostly slaves and commoners. Officers are a thin mix of commoners and nobles.
Armies here aren't raised by a centralized state. They're organized around powerful regional lords, which means they function more or less as a family's private troops. Most officers, therefore, come from the household's vassal retinue — men who advise the lord in peacetime and become commanders and staff in war. Bert Hux had almost certainly been the man who handled the Ernest family's money and stores before this territorial war broke out.
"The logistics officer! Well done, Arme."
She'd walked into an enemy camp and quietly murdered a key officer like it was nothing. No question about it — she was a member of the original hero's party, through and through.
"He was wandering around the perimeter on his own, scouting. A man that careless was going to get himself killed sooner or later. He was a bit of a dullard, but security inside the camp itself was decent enough. The tents where Count Ernest and the senior officers sleep have stealth-detection devices."
"Stealth detection? Something that can see through even your concealment?"
"For now, yes. Rich people install them to protect their property. Given enough time and the right counter-gear, I can disable them. Not in a situation like this, though."
The knight added a word of his own.
"Our side fields the same devices. Anti-assassination measures."
Fair enough. Solari World was crawling with thieves and assassins who, if not quite Arme's caliber, were more than good enough. Leave a camp unguarded and both sides' commanders would lose their heads before the first real battle even started — the same way that dullard Bert Hux had just lost his.
For all I knew, they'd already sent assassins of their own. The game had never depicted it, but that didn't mean it wasn't happening.
I mixed the blood Arme had brought into a Transformation Potion. The idea of drinking someone else's blood sat poorly with me, but I shut my eyes and knocked it back. It tasted like bitter, sour herbal medicine. Even if it were good for my health, I wouldn't have touched the stuff twice.
"Vile. Barely better than a mana potion."
"Just hearing that makes it sound disgusting~"
Sera said, peering at the bottle. A girl who hated bitter things would never drink this of her own free will. Not in this lifetime.
The moment the potion went down, my body began to change. My arms and legs stretched. Fat melted off me at a staggering rate. White smoke rose from every inch of my skin. The transformation was acrobatic, violent — and, thankfully, painless.
"What a remarkable item, Master. You've changed completely."
In a single breath I went from Derick Walker, the obese merchant, to Bert Hux, a lean and handsome officer. Shedding that wretched pig's body left me with a strange, almost giddy sense of freedom.
"I feel lighter."
I changed into the leather armor and became, to the last stitch, an officer of the Ernest Fief army. Sera pressed her nose to my chest and sniffed.
"The smell's the same, luckily. Just the body changed."
"Wow. You look exactly like that guy."
"Magnificent, Lord Walker! Where on earth did you acquire such a wondrous item?"
All three of them were staring. I rolled my new shoulders and flexed my fingers. A little awkward, but I'd adjust. Derick Walker's body hadn't been mine to begin with.
"Good. I'm going in. Though 'infiltrate' isn't quite the word. I'll walk through the front."
Even my voice had changed — lower, huskier. Bert Hux's voice, presumably. I liked it better than Derick Walker's. I forced a laugh, just to try it, and the pig-squeal that used to bubble up through all that jiggling fat was gone. Deeply satisfying.
"You'll have to fool the sentries at the gate first. You sure about this?"
Arme, the professional, was looking at me the way you'd look at a baby left beside a campfire.
"It'll be fine. I've been watching. Officers have been coming and going from that camp all afternoon — terrain scouts, most likely. The sentries aren't logging them in any detail."
From what I'd observed, the Ernest army's perimeter security was sloppy. They didn't look like a force with much experience fighting territorial wars. I could see five or six holes from where I stood. Of course, holes or no holes, without the Transformation Potion this would have been a fantasy.
And infiltrating as an officer, no less. If this goes well, I might walk out with their operational secrets.
Surface-level information I could have sent Arme to fetch. That wasn't what I wanted.
"Alright. I'll stealth in ahead of you. You follow. Hux's tent is the one on the far right with the blue flag. Red flags are senior officers. Blue flags are junior officers, mercenaries, and mages. No flag means enlisted. Meet me at Hux's tent. And I'm saying this again — the red-flag tents have stealth detection. I can't go near those. Remember that."
"Understood. Go ahead and wait for me."
I sent Arme in first, then approached the camp myself. Two sentries stood at the entrance with spears. The sun hadn't fully set, so they were checking faces as officers came and went, waving them through on sight.
"Supply Officer, sir! You're back?"
"Nothing of interest out there."
"Good work, sir. Though — terrain scouting on a day like this. They're working you hard."
The way the soldier spoke, Bert Hux had been reasonably well-liked by the men under him.
"The Count tore into us over today's defeat. Ordered every officer to comb this area so we don't lose the next one."
I made it up as I went. A rank-and-file sentry had no way of knowing what the officers had actually been told, or what they thought about any of it.
"Ah. That explains it. Morale among the men is in the dirt after that loss. Hard on everyone, sir."
"You think you're the only ones suffering? Anyway. I'm going to rest."
"Of course, sir. Get some sleep."
The sentries stepped aside without a flicker of suspicion. I found the tent Arme had described. As the supply officer, Hux had rated a tent to himself — though calling it a tent was generous. It was a portable warehouse. Crates of provisions, water casks, arrows, spears, swords, hides. There was barely room to put a foot down.
Food crates, water, arrows, spears, blades, leather… nowhere to stand.
A private tent, in theory. I doubted Bert Hux had been particularly fond of it while he was alive. In front of a heap of supplies lay a corpse in its underclothes. The original Hux, naturally.
"Found it. Was worried you'd get your ass lost out there."
Arme was waiting. She gave me a quick briefing on the camp's layout.
"See the red flag in the center? That's the command post. Officers are in and out of it constantly. The tent stuck right next to it is Count Ernest's. You can see the knights on watch — two of them, rotating."
"Could you get through and kill him?"
"Not a chance. Even if I somehow pulled it off, I wouldn't make it out alive. You're not about to order me to try, are you? Because I swear to god, I'll lose my mind."
"I was only asking."
I hadn't expected it of her. Maybe once she'd grown into her full potential — but as she stood now, assassinating a noble under knight guard was beyond her. And as she'd said, even a successful kill she didn't survive was just a failure with extra steps.
"We start with what's in here. He's the supply officer. He'll have supply records."
In the corner of the tent sat a small wooden box, already open, packed with documents. The paper was the high-volume stock produced by the Magic Tower — poorer archival quality than fine parchment, but cheap enough that it got used for everything.
Most of it was the Ernest army's supply planning. Current stocks of food, weapons, clothing, and medicine, itemized down to the last count. Hux had been a competent officer, apparently; the ink on the most recent pages was barely dry.
Walking out with these documents alone would be a major coup. An enemy's supply situation is precious intelligence in any war. But I wanted more than that. I wanted their operational plans — specifically, I wanted to know whether their movements matched the sequence I already knew.
"Hey! Hux! You in there?"
A gravelly male voice barked from outside. It sounded like a man who lived at the bottom of a bottle. I went rigid. Anyone who addressed an officer named Hux that casually outranked him.
A choice, then. Order Arme to kill him, or play Hux and pump him for information. Both options had a risk attached. I took the second.
If he sees through it, I can always kill him then.
"Yes. I'm here."
"Coming in."
I flicked a look at Arme. She stuffed Hux's corpse behind a stack of crates. The supplies were packed so tight there was barely a gap, but she found one and vanished into it. Stealth was her art.
The man who ducked through the flap was short, thick, and bearded like a bandit. His insignia was a sleek helmet — the mark of a guard captain, if I had it right.
A brutal face, a nose like a fist, and an expression that advertised the kind of pigheaded stubbornness you could feel from across a room. I'd met men who looked like that in the real world. The kind you didn't want to share air with.
"Hss. Reeks of blood in here. Your lot got hit just as hard, looks like. What a goddamn day. Days like this, you drink. You got any liquor left? Don't tell me you don't."
He demanded a drink before he'd even sat down. The way he asked, this was not the first time. A guard captain, in the middle of a war, strolling in to cadge alcohol. The Ernest army was a disaster of an organization. And the original Coulon forces had lost to these people…
"Of course. Right here."
I pretended to rummage through the supplies and quietly pulled a bottle of wine from my inventory. I keep all sorts of junk in there. Fortunately, alcohol was among it.
"Huh? Never seen a bottle like this. Looks expensive. You've been sitting on this?"
"On a day this ugly, a man ought to drink something decent, don't you think?"
"Heh. Fair enough. You're being awfully agreeable today. If you were always like this, you'd be a dream. You'd be perfect if you'd just drop that stiff attitude of yours."
So Hux had been the diligent type. Being murdered at his desk was, if nothing else, a testament to his work ethic. A bit of a dullard, maybe, but a decent soldier.
At any rate, this man wasn't suspicious of me, and that was what mattered. When a person suddenly changes, you'd think you'd notice. Whether he was just that oblivious, or I was just that good an actor, I couldn't say.