Riches and Bitches: I have a gate to an isekai and leveling-up system!

Compared to Sylfan, Arty was merely a commoner, nothing more than a tool in the duke\'s eyes. And no sane commissioner would care about what some commoner was rambling about.

But if this kind of words denouncing the duke\'s infinite wisdom were to come out from Sylfan\'s noble mouth…

"Trust me, I wish I knew Duke\'s magnificent plan," Sylfan replied, making sure to color his words with enough flair to make them passable for the commissioner\'s ears. "But as mere pawns on the board of his grandiose plans, we can merely lower our heads and toil away in hopes our efforts will bring fruition to the duke\'s genius."

Sylfan lowered his head whenever mentioning Duke or his plans, just to showcase how much respect he had for the hated despot who just happened to come out from between the legs of the right woman and at the right time.

"It\'s hard to compile a general report, but things…" Arty ignored Sylfan\'s poems praising the duke completely as if it was nothing more but a noise that he long since grown used to. So used to, in fact, he could no longer ever perceive it. "If my extrapolation is correct, then we are in deep shit."

Arty raised his eyes and looked at his commanding officer.

As a man losing in rank only to the field commander, general, and the duke himself, Sylfan really needed to get a good picture of what was going on. Fated to suffer under Duke\'s idiotic orders, he needed all the information he could get to salvage as many lives out of their army as he could.

\'If only this fucker wasn\'t here…\' Arty thought, turning his eyes over and giving the nearby commissioner a hateful stare.

That man was just like Sylfan. Born to a noble household, forced to look into making his own place in the world when their eldest sibling enforced their claim to their household\'s fortune. But while Sylfan refused any connection to his great house and started from the very bottom, rising through the ranks with the help of his dedication, skills, and hard work…

Askha, the duke\'s commissioner to Sylfan unit, took an easy path. A shortcut that existed only because the duke was stupid enough to become a tyrant… but not stupid enough to fail to realize the fact.

And, in the fat head of that overweight piece of shit, the easiest way to control the loyalty of his army wasn\'t to raise their morale, give them good pay, or be a generally decent person and commander.

No.

In the duke\'s mind twisted by the luxurious upbringing that equaled only his household\'s disregard for the commoners, the only way to keep the commoners in his army in line… was to place nobles in charge of them and then make them responsible for any and all mistakes, problems, rumors or slanders that would be born in their respective units.

In its stupidity, this plan turned out to be extremely efficient.

The common soldiers either loved or hated their superiors. And with all of the officers being noble, it took only a few years before the dukedom\'s army layered out.

The commoners kept to themselves, scared of doing anything that their noble commander would wrong them for. Feeling excluded, even the decent nobles in charge of the army ended up colluding with other officers, turning into a tight caste that quickly adopted the duke\'s disregard for the commoners.

And then, there were commissioners. Nobles hired directly by the duke not to command his armies, but to make sure the nobles in charge of commanding those armies never showed any sign of dissent.

\'It\'s one thing to have this idiot constantly watch what I\'m doing or speaking, but to have him interfere with how we battle this out?!\' Sylfan gritted his teeth while his fingers grabbed at the edge of the small, portable table he was using to the point his knuckles turned white.

"Is there any problem?" Askha inquired upon noticing the hateful stares from Sylfan\'s subordinate. As he approached the two, he instantly peaked over Sylfan\'s shoulder, taking a look at the papers that depicted nothing more but Duke\'s fantasy.

Duke\'s fantasy about how the troops were supposed to act while in the forest… Fantasy that assumed they would all stay in their formation, would cut any tree in their paths, conjured all their supplies from the arse of their nearest companion, and never encountered a single enemy that could throw a wrench into any of the delicate parts of the duke\'s strategy.

Looking down at the stratagem written directly into the surface of the portable table, another one of Duke\'s great ideas aimed at forcing his officer to never forget his genius plan, Sylfan had to hold himself back from heaving a long sigh.

With Askha right by his side, even an exhausted sigh could be taken as a sign of disloyalty or dissatisfaction.

"Commissioner Askha, according to the reports I\'ve gathered, our army proved too incompetent to fulfill His Majesty\'s great strategies and tactics," Sylfan reported, once again using colorful words to describe what could be explained with just three words.

"In other words, we are fucked." Arty commented under his nose, not even bothering to lower his voice. And to top it off, he raised his eyes right at the commissioner as he spoke, openly challenging him to react.

"It seems you slacked at taming your livestock," Askha coldly replied, raising his chin and looking down at the veteran soldier along the bridge of his potato-like nose.

"Forgive him, commissioner," Sylfan spoke while struggling to keep a straight face. "He\'s a mere orphan, someone not blessed with parents who could teach him the manners," he explained.

Sylfan didn\'t worry about Arty\'s reaction to his words or a potential grudge they could bring. After all, due to being born a commoner, Arty already reached the very highest rank he would ever be allowed to attain. And in spite of his much smaller and fewer achievements, Sylfan was actually the man\'s junior in terms of battle experience or time in the duke\'s army.

Or, in much simpler terms, while Sylfan had to adapt to the ridiculous rules of the duke\'s military, Arty was there when things went from the order imposed by the duke\'s grandfather, to the disregard for the military of the duke\'s father…

And then the tyrannical and borderline comical reforms implemented by the currently ruling duke.

In fact, it was no one else but Arty who taught Sylfan how to navigate the treacherous waters of the constant commissioner\'s oversight. He taught him the lines he should never cross and what were the rules that commissioners liked to come up with, having no backing in the law or Duke\'s authority behind them.

"It\'s up to the owner to maintain his livestock in good shape," Askha commented, ignoring Arty\'s comments and only ever talking to Sylfan.

For the fat, second son of a ruined noble household, Askha considered himself to be someone too important for commoners to even speak to.

What the commissioner ended up missing due to his disregard, though, was that Arty initially focused on the next batch of hastily written reports before suddenly turning his head over to the east.

"There should be an elite strike unit east of us, right?" Arty asked, right as Sylfan was about to rebuke Askha, chase him away, and go back to looking for some miraculous way out of the mess they were in that wouldn\'t end with him standing on an execution platform as a filthy deserter.

"Yeah, Ugo led them away to secure our flank and create a perimeter for this space," Sylfan commented, quickly pulling out the necessary information from the back of his head as he stared back at a simple, ugly drawing depicting what they knew about the current situation in the field… Or rather, the dense, forbidden forest.

"I guess you should cross Ugo\'s unit out, then," Arty sighed before stuffing up all the papers in his hand into a small bag by his belt and pulling out his sword instead.

"What?" Sylfan asked, raising his eyes from the table and then moving them along the direction Arty was starting. And as the first soldiers of Ugo\'s elite unit emerged from behind the trees, running as if the devil himself was chasing after them…

"I think it\'s time," Arty muttered, forcing already distracted Sylfan to look away from the running soldiers and back to his direct subordinate… Only to watch as he circled around the small table.

"Wait, what is he do…"

Swish!

With a single, leisurely even, push of his sword, Arty pierced straight through several inches of fat before the tip of his blade reached Askha\'s heart, piercing right through it only for now bloodied tip to come out from the commissioner\'s back.

"I don\'t know if it\'s true that they eat man\'s flash, but I figured it wouldn\'t hurt to try," Arty muttered, not showing even a single hint of hesitation, doubt, or fear when he pulled out his simple sword from Aksha\'s frozen body. His face didn\'t change when the commissioner gave him first a surprised, then shocked, and finally a hateful look.

"I guess that marks the end of our ruse," Sylfan whispered, more to himself than to anyone else. He then looked back to where more and more men came out of the woods, every last one of them more scared by what was chasing them than the ones that came before them.

"That\'s right," Arty muttered while shaking his head. He then raised his hand, allowing the sword in his hand to slide within his palm all the way to the point where it pointed directly at the ground. Then, after reaffirming his grasp over the weapon\'s handle, Arty struck his right, blade-bearing fist into his chest.

"Warriors of Etna!" Arty\'s voice suddenly echoed throughout the entirety of the small, open space where Sylfan decided to set up their temporary, field headquarters.

And contrary to any of the calls Sylfan could make, all of the soldiers in the area turned their eyes away from the survivors of whatever disaster happened further east, focusing on their field commander instead.

"The commissioner is dead! And so is Ugo\'s unit!" Arty shouted out loud while already making his head towards the survivors with the sword in his hand. "All in all, we are fucked. There\'s no winning this battle! So, don\'t bring shame to our dear commander…" a wave of chuckles moved past the soldiers as Arty pointed at noble superior, "and at least keep order while retreating!"

There was no need for Arty to repeat his words. His power over the other soldiers didn\'t come from his family name, status, or any of the other things depraved by the tyrannical rule of the current duke.

His authority came, just like in the old times, from his experience.

And from the fact that while he ordered everyone to pretty much run with their tail between their legs, he actively moved in the other direction, ready to put himself against whatever was chasing the leftovers of Ugo\'s unit.

Arty\'s timing turned out to be impeccable. By the time he crossed barely half the distance that kept him away from the trees, a massive and seemingly shapeless monster came out, looming well over ten meters above the open field of the clearing. Discover more stories at m,v l\'e-NovelBin.net

And before Arty could swing his sword, stand down, turn around, or do literally anything, several tens of tentacles composed of nothing but bright darkness shot out from the shapeless blob of the monster, piercing through close to half of the survivors of Ugo\'s unit that made it this far.