CHAPTER 10 —
The voice spread through Long Su's Seed World like something poured rather than spoken — cold, metallic, entirely empty of feeling.
MANDATE RECEIVED
[RESOLUTION PROTOCOL: SACRIFICE REQUIRED]
[SELECT ONE FOR DISSOLUTION:] — [Sword and Shield Infantry Camp]
—
[Royal Guard Camp].
Long Su's breath caught.
The obsidian card in his hand pulsed once, like a diseased heart finding its rhythm.
Sacrifice. Nobody had mentioned that word.
Not Principal Lin, not the manuals, not a single line of anything he had read since waking in this life.
The red and gold barracks stood ahead of him, still warm from their formation — and now something built into this world wanted to take one of them straight back out of his hands.
MANDATE RECEIVED
[RESOLUTION PROTOCOL: SACRIFICE REQUIRED]
[SELECT ONE FOR DISSOLUTION:] — [Sword and Shield Infantry Camp] —
[Royal Guard Camp]
He ran through every option before letting himself choose.
Both buildings were rare enough that finding either again on the open market, in this lifetime, would take more gold than he was likely to see for years.
He tried leaving the Seed World outright, on the thin hope that distance alone might dissolve the demand.
Nothing changed.
Which meant the real decision was not whether to sacrifice — that part had never been his to refuse. The only thing left in his hands was which building to lose.
He weighed them the way Fusu had been taught to weigh gambits at court.
Option one: keep the gold camp. Costly units, ten thousand per soldier, unreachable for months.
A banner of wealth he could not spend.
Option two: keep the red camp.
One thousand per soldier, expensive but not impossible.
A working asset that could produce fighters he could actually field.
Option three: refuse. The system had already proven it could wait. How long before it simply took both?
There was no fourth option.
Losing the gold camp would cost him a working, coin-producing asset he could feel already justifying itself.
The red barracks, by comparison, had not trained a single soldier yet.
Whatever this system wanted, it wanted momentum, not preservation — and holding onto a building purely out of pride was not strategy. It was grief wearing strategy's clothes.
He chose the red one.
[DISSOLUTION COMMENCING]
The darkness thickened at once, pooling around his ankles, black tendrils climbing with obvious intent.
It swallowed the small palace and the infantry camp together, and the sound that followed was not quite a roar — closer to a thousand voices screaming through one throat at once.
Long Su lunged forward without thinking, but the darkness moved faster, ravenous in a way that made his legs feel useless under him.
It closed over the building like a blanket thrown across a fire and did not lift again until whatever it wanted had finished taking shape.
When it finally cleared, three new structures stood where there had only been one.
[Daqin Militia Camp] (Upgradable)
Can train multiple Qin unit types. —
Level 1 Skeleton slave cost: 1 gold coin —
Level 1 Skeleton militia cost: 5 gold coins
[Qin Mo Craftsman Camp] (Upgradable)
Can train various types of craftsmen. —
Level 1 civilian craftsman cost: 50 gold coins — Level 1 military craftsman cost: 200 gold coins
[War Academy] (Closed) ????????????????
[Daqin Palace] (Upgradable)
The seat of authority in the empire. Produces +500 gold coins daily.
Daqin Banner — grants all legion units +2 Strength and +2 Defense, applied only to units at the rank of centurion or above.
Gold Coins: 510 Units: 10
Long Su stood there reading through it all, and the single word that mattered more than any other was upgradable.
It meant these buildings sat entirely outside the ranked color system — colorless, in a world where colorless assets were rare enough that most people assumed they had simply stopped existing.
Every white, black, green, or gold building he had seen had a hard ceiling built into its color. These did not.
Given the right conditions, there was no obvious limit to what they might eventually become.
Which meant Principal Lin had traded him two finished, working Demi-Worlds for a war academy that did not function yet and a palace that had only just started producing gold.
On paper, that should have felt like the worst end of the deal. It did not.
Whatever calculation the principal had run, he had been betting on the Demi-Worlds' certain value against these colorless buildings' uncertain ceiling — and uncertainty only favored the side willing to gamble on time.
Long Su intended to be that side.
Once he had gold sitting in front of him for the first time since arriving in this life, he found he had no patience left to sit on it.
He spent it all in one motion — fifty skeleton militia and two hundred and fifty skeleton slaves to stand around them as a meat shield.
The ground trembled.
From somewhere deep inside the militia camp came a rising clatter — bone striking bone, blades hissing against whetstones carved from something that was not quite stone.
The first skeleton stepped out.
Then another. Then a whole column of them, filing into formation with a discipline none of his original ten had ever shown.
The front line carried long bone swords in one hand and small bone shields in the other, a faint white soul-fire burning steady behind their eye sockets — the same light his first ten slaves carried, but deeper here, thicker, like a flame that had finally learned how to hold its shape. Behind them came a second, larger group, empty-handed and utterly silent, their quiet somehow more unsettling than any noise could have been.
[Qin Skeleton Militia]
Level:
1 Strength: 3 (normal human max: 5)
Defense: 3 (normal human max: 5)
Speed: 4 (normal human max: 5)
Spirit: 2 (normal human max: 5)
A skeleton militia cost half what a human militia cost to raise, and its stats sat close enough to human standards that the gap no longer felt embarrassing.
A human soldier at this tier carried four points in both strength and defense — enough, on its own, to tear through ten ordinary skeleton militia without much trouble, or hold off five even outnumbered.
His Qin militia closed that ratio considerably: two of his against one of theirs, and the fight tilted back in his favor
That ratio was the entire reason his army was worth building at all.
No food. No wages. No fear of dying because there was nothing left inside any of them capable of fearing anything
Or so he assumed, standing there watching them settle into rank.
The skeletons stood in perfect formation, bone swords angled at identical degrees, soul-fire burning steady behind their eye sockets. None moved.
None twitched. Whatever commanded them, it was not fear — fear required a nervous system they no longer possessed. It was something older. Something built into the bone itself.
Long Su watched them and felt something close to hope for the first time since kneeling on this ground and staring at ten measly gold coins.
Beneath his ribs, the Seed World pulsed — not with hunger, but with something more patient. Something that had fed, and was now waiting to feed again.
He did not feel it. Not then. He only felt the cold gravel beneath his boots and the distant, hollow certainty that whatever had just passed through the ranks when the darkness finished its work, it had left something behind.
A residue. A taste in the air like copper before rain.
Whatever fear an undead thing was capable of carrying, it clearly knew how to keep that fear entirely to itself.
Dew still clung to his uniform as he jogged past the school gates the next morning, the rising sun painting the brick in molten gold.
The air held that particular early cold that had not yet decided whether to burn off into warmth.
His bag thumped lighter against his hip today — no introductory Seed World textbooks weighing it down, no general coursework.
Just his Lord's manuals, and yesterday's half-eaten mantou wrapped in grease-stained paper.
The scent of jasmine tea drifted out from the cafeteria, tangling with chalk dust and the ordinary sweat of a hundred teenagers rushing to be somewhere on time.
Normalcy. For a moment, he almost believed in it.
A bell shrieked somewhere overhead.
"Move, move!" A sophomore shoved past him, her summoned ice-wolf familiar snapping playfully at his heels as she went.
Laughter rattled off the locker-lined walls behind her.
Long Su kept his face carefully blank, swallowing down the flash of envy that came with watching that wolf lope by.
He made it to his classroom just as the second bell rang, the schoolyard behind him still buzzing with everyone else arriving at the same time.
Classroom 3-B hummed like a hive somebody had just kicked. Desks rattled as Li Ming's goblin scribe scrambled across them, snatching pencil cases out from under their owners' hands.
Across the aisle, Wang Lei was bragging loudly about his new level-two human spearmen — "fifty gold coins apiece" — while the usual circle around him made all the right appreciative noises on cue.
Long Su dropped into his seat, the chair creaking under him, and let the chatter wash over him without really hearing it.
' Fools, 'he thought.
'You think a shiny new toy makes you a lord. His nails pressed briefly into his palm. Wait until you see what real numbers can do.'
A whole day into being Lords, and the excitement had not worn off any of their faces yet.
A small hand landed on his shoulder just as he had settled in.
He turned to find Chen Shuirong already seated beside him, morning light catching along her cheekbones, her brown hair pulled back into a neat ponytail, eyes bright with something that looked a lot like enthusiasm and probably was not, entirely.
Today's ribbon was peacock blue, matching an eyeliner too perfect to have been an accident. A single loose strand of hair escaped the ponytail and settled against her throat.
"Father secured a level-two ticket," she said, without any preamble at all. No fluttering, no softness — just something steel-edged sitting under the silk of her voice.
"South District Catacombs. Tomorrow, at dawn."
Long Su's pulse skipped. Level two was veteran territory — the kind of dungeon most first-day Lords had no business setting foot in.
"What's the catch?" he asked.
"I need a decoy."
There it was. On its own, that request meant almost nothing — everyone needed a decoy for something, at some point.
The real question was why she wanted this particular decoy, specifically, when half the classroom would have jumped at a level-two ticket for free.
He turned it over while she waited for his answer.
If her father's team genuinely needed a "balanced" roster, there were a dozen students better suited to soaking up whatever the catacombs threw at them — units with real offense, not a graveyard of level-one skeletons.
That meant this was not about balance at all. It meant she wanted someone specific standing in that dungeon with her, and a decoy contract was simply the cleanest way to get him there without either of them having to say so out loud.
This meant the leverage in this conversation did not actually run the direction she was pretending it did.
Her jade pendant caught the light as she shifted — real jade, carved through with anti-scrying runes, expensive enough to tell him more about her family's resources than she probably meant it to.
Whatever she wanted from him, she had clearly decided it was worth spending some of that resource to get.
"Decoy," Long Su said. "You mean bait."
Her shrug was almost artful in its casualness. "Father insists on 'balanced teams.' Don't worry, though — you'll just send one of your units in to trip the traps."
A lie, and not a particularly convincing one. Whatever she actually needed from him, she had no intention of naming it yet — which told him the price for finding out later would only go up the longer he let her set the terms now.
So he did not let her.
"Thirty percent of the loot," he said.
"Ten."
If she was willing to counter that low on the first pass, either the ticket had cost her far less than she was letting on, or she wanted him there badly enough that the split barely mattered to her at all.
Either way, the number was not really about the number.
"Twenty," he said. "Or I mention to your father that you've been smuggling red-colored eggs again."
Her nostrils flared, just slightly.
The classroom lights flickered overhead — and for one heartbeat, he caught something underneath her composed expression, a flash of teeth and narrowed eyes that looked almost feral.
Then it was gone, tucked back beneath the same polished surface as before.
Good. That answered the question he had not asked yet: the eggs mattered to her more than the gold did.
"Fifteen," she said.
"Deal."
Long Su let a smile settle onto his face, easy and unbothered, giving her nothing more to read from it than what he wanted her to see.
"I'd be delighted to join you," he said. "Though — isn't a level-two ticket supposed to be nearly impossible to get your hands on?"
Her eyes lit up at that, genuine excitement slipping past whatever calculation she had been running a moment before.
"My father runs one of the city's most respected adventurer teams, operating under the Dragon Kingdom's defense forces. Tickets like that don't come easily, but he manages."
Long Su let the conversation carry on from there without pressing further.
Whatever she actually wanted from him in that dungeon, she would tell him when it suited her — or he would find out the hard way, tomorrow, at dawn.
Teacher Li entered the room and started speaking almost before the door had finished swinging shut behind him.
"Quiet, all of you," he said. "Today's lesson is the first one on how to actually fight." He let that settle for a beat. "Everyone already understands that a Lord can summon soldiers to fight in his place. Today, we study something different — how do you guard yourself?"
"Open your texts," he rasped. "Page two hundred twelve. 'Decapitation Strikes in Modern Lord Warfare.'"
A groan rippled through the room. Wang Lei raised his hand without waiting to be called on. "Sir, isn't this basic? Everyone already knows you just spam archers and—"
"CRACK"
Li's cane struck the blackboard hard enough that dust sifted down from the ceiling.
.
"Basic?" His laugh sounded like gravel shaken in a tin can. "Tell me, young Lord Wang. An assassin phases straight through your entire army, poison dripping off her nails, and steps up directly in front of you. How, exactly, do your soldiers save you from that?"
Silence answered him.
His gaze swept the room slowly and lingered a half-second longer than it needed to when it reached Long Su.
"Power isn't measured in how many soldiers you can summon." He tapped his own temple. "It lives here." A fist landed over his heart. "And here. Neglect either one, and you're simply a corpse that hasn't happened yet."
Long Su met the teacher eyes and did not look away.
Tomorrow, at dawn, Chen Shuirong would lead him into the South District Catacombs. Tomorrow, he would learn whether three hundred skeletons and a palace that produced five hundred gold a day were enough to keep him breathing.