Chapter 47: Escalating Problems

Weeks turned into months. My routine became a frantic cycle of processing normal souls and running damage control on my two problem children.

On the Astoria screen, Leo and Yui had become a reluctant, but surprisingly effective, team. Leo had eventually given up trying to remove his new dragon companion and had incorporated her into his adventuring style. Her small size and ability to fly allowed him to reach difficult places, and her protective instincts, while overbearing, had saved his life more than once. They were famous in the local town as "Leo and the Limpet," the weirdest adventurer duo on the books. Yui was growing, too. She was now the size of a large dog, and her fire was less 'burnt toast' and more 'actual, functioning flamethrower.'

I had to intervene subtly when she almost incinerated a tavern because the barmaid gave Leo the wrong change. A quick, divine manipulation of the local wind currents turned the blaze into a harmless puff of smoke. The paperwork for that alone took me a day.

Meanwhile, on the Goblin-Cam, King Kengen's empire was expanding at an alarming rate. He had conquered all the local goblin tribes and was now making alliances with kobolds and even a few disgruntled orc clans. He had established a fortified city in the mountains, complete with forges, aqueducts, and what looked disturbingly like a research and development department for advanced siege weaponry.

His 'System Appraisal' skill made him a master strategist. He could see the weaknesses in the local lord's defenses, the corruption in the supply lines, the low morale of the soldiers. He wasn't just conquering; he was exploiting the very system of the world to his advantage.

I was running out of subtle options. I had already caused a strategically convenient landslide to block his army's main path of advance and given the local Duke a sudden bout of 'strategic brilliance' in a dream. But these were temporary fixes. Kenji was too smart, too driven. He was adapting faster than I could interfere.

The Defragmentation Protocol, which had been quiet for a while, began to send alerts about Behelgard. The world's 'Chaos Index' was rising rapidly. The system itself was beginning to notice that something was very, very wrong with its goblin population.

I was fighting a war on two fronts, and I was losing.