After it was all over, Caster called every lieutenant and honorary lieutenant for a meeting, except Kai, as he was in the dark city.
Sitting on the massive table, Caster sat at the end of it, while all of them sat on the sides of it.
The people sitting here were: Sunny, Effie, Nephis, Cassie, Gemma, Tessai, Harus, Sheishan, and Kido.
Caster spoke up after everyone settled down.
"Today, I will assign you all tasks."
All of them nodded.
"First and foremost, I want to know how many of you have fully saturated cores?"
Gemma spoke up.
"I do."
Sheishan and Harus spoke up in unison.
"I do as well."
"Me too."
After that Effie spoke too.
"You already know about me."
Caster nodded to each of them when they spoke up.
"Okay, so out of the nine people we have, four have saturated cores? That's better than I expected. Okay, so out of the four of you, I want both Gemma and Sheishan to teach the people. Make them skilled. I want you to determine who's strong enough to start hunting outside."
"Okay."
"...Fine."
"Harus and Effie... I want the two of you to hunt together and bring me shards. I currently need about 1300 shards to get my third core."
"What? You're gonna make me hunt with him??"
Caster simply looked at her with a deadpan face.
"Okay, okay. I get it. It's important. I'll do it..."
"Good."
Without even considering Harus' opinion on this Caster spoke again.
"Moving on, Tessai and Kido. I want the two of you to actively hunt a lot and saturate not just your cores but those that hunt with you. Like, once your cores are saturated, get cores to saturate your cohorts. Once they are saturated too, let them hunt by themselves. You both will join another cohort after that. Yes, don't get shards for me. I have two capable people for that task already."
Tessai nodded but Kido wanted to protest.
"But what about the artisans? I need to lead them, and I also need to grow the crops."
Caster gestured for her to calm down.
"I was just getting to it. First, for the farm, they don't need you all the time do they? Once in a while just to check up on them. Plus the crops are already mutated by your aspect, no? They just need maintainence."
Kido nodded.
"Well, yes. That's true. But what about the artisans?"
"Don't worry about that, they don't need that much of guidance either do they? They are mostly self sufficient. I'll give you a list of things to get the artisans to prepare, take the materials from the hunters for them, if needed. Just get the artisans working for supplies as soon as possible."
The list would mostly consist of arrows, but also mundane armors and swords, carts, nets, stretchers, splints, spinal boards and lots more. These are things that will become useful for the injured in the final fight, and allow maximum number of them to survive.
"As for Cassie, you will be in charge of memories. Buy any weapon and armor memories that people are willing to sell. I'll give you a collection of shards for them. Ask me for more as soon as you run out of them. We'll need those memories given out to those without any memories. Also, announce people to not absorb fallen shards, if they end up getting them. Ask them to sell those shards to you for 4 awakened shards instead. I have a need for them."
Looks at the others.
"You guys as well. Get me any and all fallen shards that you can get."
Looks back at Cassie.
"Oh right, also buy any useless memory that you can get. There's supposed to be a use for them."
Cassie nods.
"Okay. I'll work on it."
"Sunny and Nephis, for the moment I want you both to hunt with weaker cohorts, and get them all strong. Focus on saturating your cores too. But most importantly hunt. For the next 40 to 45 days. After that, I want you both to fully focus on yourselves and go hunt together in the dark city."
"Fine."
"Okay."
Both had one word replies. Typical of them.
"And Sunny... I want you to especially focus on killing all the stone saints you can find in the dark city, when you start hunting there, with Nephis."
"Huh? Okay... but why?"
"I don't know either exactly, the book said to kill stone saints. Oh right, you don't know about the book. Basically I have a prophetic book that occasionally gives me information that I might need. It has been completely accurate so far, so I have decided to trust it."
"Is that how you knew we'd be coming?"
Nephis asked.
"Yes. Sorry for not telling last time."
"That's... okay."
Just like that, the meeting continued. They discussed the details of how things would go, but Caster's overall assignings remained the same.
There were seemingly a lot of issues with the management, so a lot of discussion needed to be done to find out optimal solutions for them.
Because there would be people who would be working in multiple places, placing immense burden on them.
Like some of the artisans would have to train to get stronger, make equipment for the battle, and do patrolling for the castle, but some would only be training or guarding. It was not just unfair, but also inefficient. So solutions for them were considered.
Caster and the lieutenants also thought of completely ignoring some tasks, like long term maintainance for the Castle and cleaning up and stuff. It was decided that the castle's cleanliness must be maintained by every person, not people in particular. It would rid of useless labor being used that way.
Food problems would not keep up as long as there were hunters that hunted a lot.
They also decided to create the fighting formations and train people for the battle of the spire, not train to get stronger in general.
Meaning a group of people would just be archers.
A group would just be tanks.
A group would just be the dealers.
A group would just be the medics.
A group would just be the healers.
And much, much more.
The formation decided was for the highest efficiency for the spire.
They also decided to announce all the major things through the lieutenants afterwards.
"As for me, I will just hunt as much as I can. Alone. To reach titan core as soon as I can."
Apart from the current stage, it would almost never be possible for him to get shards so fast. Because he is too strong for most awakened creatures.
Saturating his core right now would be immense progress.
In total he'd need 28,000 fragments. He has collected about 1800. That's a little over 6% of the way there. And it's been nearly three months on the shore already.
His pace would increase immensely now as well.
"I will also now go and hunt some of the cancerous people at the castle. Those that are the worst of the worst and would most likely only be a variable. I've already identified about a couple dozen such people. And I won't care even if they are close to any of you. If I decided that they deserve to die... then I will kill them."
Each one of them nodded simply. They were all sort of spooked.
However, after that Caster brought forth another topic.
"Let's think of all of our preparation again..."
Caster spoke about things regarding their strategies, the objective clarity, end state vision, the monsters and the terrain, that Caster got a lot of information about from the book of books and shadow slave.
Discussed the need for mundane weapon and tools creation by the artisans again, going over that list.
Stabalized the heirarchy and thought of what special roles to give to certain people.
But a lot of this couldn't be decided right now, so they waited on some of it.
The most important thing that they planned was the psychological preparation. They would have the lieutenants constantly motivate people for the fight, never let the atmosphere go down in the dumps. If that would be possible, otherwise, tough luck.
And just like that, the meeting ended, every lieutenant becoming immensely busy instantly.
Now that all was set and done, Caster only had a few, not so complex things to do for preparation.
***
A bit later, Caster was just laying on his bed. Thinking.
The reason why there's such a massive difference in Nephis and Caster's plan is because Caster got Gunlaug early. He has ten months to prepare, nephis had 1 month.
Nephis, if she had overtaken the castle early, could have raised a bigger group of awakened, but she wanted fast and efficient, no matter how brutal, results.
Which she did get in the end. But Caster knew he could do better than that. And in the end, the result would be much better than that.
This would create a massive change fromt he original fate, so the fate restoration's rebound would be just as massive.
He wasn't prepared for it, but Kim Dokja said only he would be able to fight against it. Which means, he musn't give up. And progress towards his 2nd stage of his aspect legacy.
'Communication...'
He still didn't know what it actually meant, what the conditions to unlock the second wall would be.
Nor did he have the time to figure it out at the moment. He needs to focus on the battle of the spire right now.
After that, Caster got up from his bed.
'Enough rest, I need to start hunting now. That will be a lot of essence.'
***
Effie was in her room, resting.
Just like Caster up until earlier.
But she was upset.
She had been with Caster the longest on this shore, yet Caster didn't tell her about the divine nature of his aspect.
She only found out because Caster told everyone.
An action she found stupid.
'Piece of shit. Am I that untrustworthy?'
She thought that she was special to him. Even if not in a lovers kind of way.
So this hurt her, despite of it being so out of character for her.