"Absolutely not." General Vex's voice cut through the war hall with surgical precision. "Your Majesty, a preemptive strike against the elvish fleet would be suicide. We don't have the naval assets, we don't have the mage support, and we don't have—"
"I don't care." King Ashtherion'vaur stood at the window, watching Velkyn's streets below. His voice was calm. Too calm. The kind of calm that preceded catastrophic decisions. "Send the order. Every warship we have. Strike the elvish fleet before the alignment completes."
"That's twenty-three ships against sixty-five!" another general protested. "They'll obliterate us!"
"Then we'll die fighting instead of waiting for slaughter like livestock." The king turned, and his pale grey eyes held something close to madness. "And the purge operations continue. Double down. I want every police force in every city shifted to cleansing duties. The military handles the elves. Internal security handles the mana users."
"You're dividing our forces during a war—"
"I'm finishing what I started!" The king's composure cracked. "You think stopping now saves us? You think the elves will accept surrender after we've already killed hundreds of thousands? They came for blood, General. Our blood. At least this way we take some of them with us and complete the cleansing before we fall!"
The generals exchanged horrified glances. This wasn't strategy. This was spite. Vengeance. The tantrum of a tyrant who'd finally encountered a power he couldn't intimidate or manipulate.
"Send the order," the king repeated coldly. "Attack the fleet. Intensify the purges. And someone bring me options for how we hold Velkyn when the elves inevitably break through our coastal defenses."
A scribe wrote frantically, his hands shaking. Another tyrin bird was prepared, message tied to its leg with trembling fingers. The bird launched through the window with a crack of displaced air, carrying orders that would send thousands to certain death.
In the corner, Ambassador Drek'char of Vel'koda'mir stared at nothing, his face the color of old parchment. He'd allied his nation with a madman. And now they'd all pay the price.
Three hundred kilometers north, in a forest that had become a graveyard-in-waiting, Misaki Haruto lay perfectly still behind a fallen Tra'tze'the log.
Twenty men occupied positions in a semicircle around a small clearing. Archers perched in trees, their arrows nocked and ready. Earth-chakra users crouched near strategic positions where the ground could be weaponized. Riyeak hid behind a boulder that barely concealed his massive frame, his shield left behind—too bulky for the dense forest terrain—his fists wrapped in leather strips.
They'd been waiting for twenty-six hours.
The campfire in the clearing's center still smoldered, carefully maintained to look recently abandoned. Food scraps scattered artfully. Boot prints leading north in obvious patterns. Every detail designed to suggest refugees had stopped here, rested, and departed hastily.
Misaki's heat-sense vision painted the forest in thermal signatures. Beside him, hidden in a camouflaged pit, Deylos waited with the patience of a veteran who'd learned that battles were won by those who could stay still longest.
"Movement," Deylos whispered, barely audible even at arm's length. "Southeast. Multiple thermal signatures."
Misaki focused. There—through the trees, perhaps two hundred meters out. Human-shaped heat sources moving in formation. Disciplined. Professional. But... fewer than expected.
The column emerged from the forest gradually. Not the two hundred soldiers they'd anticipated. Maybe eighty. Perhaps ninety. Their armor showed wear from days of pursuit. Their faces looked exhausted. Several limped with obvious injuries.
They approached the false campsite cautiously, weapons ready, scanning for threats.
"—fucking bear was massive," one soldier was saying. "Tore through Hendrix like he was made of paper. Took six of us to bring it down."
"Still better than those spike traps," another replied bitterly. "Lost eight men to those. Another five too wounded to continue. Captain had to send them back with escort detail."
"How many we got left?"
"Eighty-three effectives. Against gods know how many refugees."
Misaki and Deylos exchanged glances in the darkness. Eighty-three. The bear attack and their earlier traps had done more damage than they'd hoped. This wasn't an overwhelming force anymore. This was a depleted, exhausted unit operating at reduced strength.
Deylos's eyes gleamed with predatory satisfaction. He raised three fingers. Two fingers. One.
He dropped his fist.
Twenty arrows flew simultaneously.
The archers had positioned themselves in three groups of six, staggered at different heights in the trees. Each group fired from different angles, creating a three-dimensional kill zone that made dodging nearly impossible.
Seventeen arrows found targets. Soldiers went down screaming, shafts protruding from throats, eyes, the gaps in armor where veteran archers knew to aim. The formation shattered instantly, men diving for cover, shouting confused orders.
"CONTACT! NORTH SIDE! ARCHERS IN THE—"
The second volley cut off the warning. Another twelve soldiers dropped.
Misaki exploded from his hiding position, his scout's blade already moving. His Jack class precision abilities made every movement count—no wasted motion, no excess energy, everything calculated for maximum efficiency with minimum strength expenditure.
A soldier turned toward the sound. Misaki's blade found the gap under his helmet, severed the spinal cord with surgical precision. The man collapsed before his nervous system registered death.
Another soldier raised a crossbow. Misaki's heat-sense showed the trigger finger tensing. He moved left as the bolt released, felt it whisper past his shoulder, and closed the distance in three running steps. Blade through the armpit where plates gapped. Twist. Withdraw. Blood spray.
"MAGE! WE HAVE A—"
Misaki's blade took the soldier's jaw off mid-sentence. The man went down gurgling, unable to scream through the ruin of his face.
The defenders poured from concealment. Twenty men hitting eighty-three from multiple vectors, creating chaos that made the numbers meaningless. In dense forest, with surprise and prepared positions, twenty disciplined fighters could destroy a force four times their size.
Riyeak emerged like a natural disaster given human form. A soldier tried to block with his shield. Riyeak's earth-chakra-enhanced punch went straight through the ironwood and the arm holding it. Bones shattered. The soldier screamed and fell.
Another came at Riyeak from the side with a spear thrust. Riyeak caught the spear shaft mid-thrust with his bare hand, yanked the wielder forward, and headbutted him with enough force that the helmet dented inward. The soldier dropped unconscious, blood pouring from his nose.
"FORM UP! DEFENSIVE CIRCLE! FOR THE LOVE OF—"
The captain was trying to rally his men, his voice carrying command authority even through panic. He was tall, maybe six-foot-nine, built like a veteran warrior with scar tissue crossing every visible surface. He'd positioned himself at the clearing's center, sword drawn, trying to create an anchor point for his fragmenting unit.
Riyeak charged him directly.
The captain saw him coming, set his stance, brought his sword around in a devastating arc that would have cleaved a normal man in half.
Riyeak ducked under it, stepped inside the captain's guard, and drove an uppercut into his solar plexus with enough force to lift the man's feet off the ground.
The captain flew backward three feet, hit the ground gasping, rolled, came up still holding his sword. "You... fight like... a brawler..."
"Learned from the best bar fights in M'lod," Riyeak replied, circling. "Turns out drunk farmers hit harder than you'd expect."
The captain attacked again, sword work precise and deadly. But Riyeak had spent six months fighting in dungeons where mistakes meant death. He dodged, weaved, used his smaller profile against the taller man's reach disadvantage.
A slash came at his throat. Riyeak leaned back, felt steel whisper past his adam's apple, and countered with a straight punch to the captain's extended elbow. Joint hyperextended. The sword dropped.
The captain growled and came forward with just fists, trying to grapple. Riyeak met him head-on. They crashed together like mountains colliding, both men's strength enhanced by chakra, the impact creating a shockwave that scattered nearby debris.
Meanwhile, Misaki danced through the chaos like a ghost made of steel.
A soldier swung at him with an axe. Misaki sidestepped, blade flashing across the man's hamstring. Soldier went down screaming. Another tried to stab from behind. Heat-sense gave Misaki three seconds warning. He dropped flat, rolled, came up inside the attacker's guard. Blade through the throat. Arterial spray painted the trees.
Three soldiers tried to rush him simultaneously. Misaki's precision-striker instincts calculated angles, momentum, timing. He moved not where they were but where they would be. First soldier ran past where Misaki had been a half-second ago, took a blade across the back of his knee. Collapsed. Second soldier adjusted his charge angle, stepped into Misaki's waiting thrust. Blade through the eye socket, angled upward into the brain. Third soldier pulled up short, suddenly alone and terrified.
Misaki's heat-sense showed the man's core temperature spiking with adrenaline. Fear response. Fight or flight calculating.
"Run," Misaki said quietly, blood dripping from his blade. "Tell your commanders. Tell them M'lod remembers."
The soldier ran.
The archers continued their methodical execution. Vellin's group had shifted positions twice already, maintaining unpredictable angles. Deylos's arrows hit with mechanical precision—every shot either killed or incapacitated. No wasted ammunition. No missed targets.
The earth-chakra users waited for the right moment, then struck. The ground beneath six soldiers suddenly liquefied. Men sank to their knees, their waists, trying desperately to escape quicksand that shouldn't exist. Then the earth resolidified, trapping them like insects in amber. Deylos's group shot them where they stood, helpless.
The fight lasted nine minutes.
When it ended, seventy-six soldiers lay dead or dying. Five had fled into the forest—Misaki deliberately let them go, wanting messengers to spread fear. Two were too wounded to flee but still breathing.
And Captain Varn—the tall veteran who'd tried to rally his men—knelt in the clearing with Riyeak's fist pressed against the back of his skull, his hands bound with rope, blood streaming from a broken nose and split lip.
"You fight well," the captain gasped, spitting blood. "For refugees."
"We're not just refugees," Misaki said, wiping his blade clean. "We're people you shouldn't have hunted."
Around them, the forest returned to silence. Birds resumed singing, apparently unbothered by the carnage. Wind rustled leaves. The river nearby continued its eternal flow.
Twenty men stood among seventy-six corpses, breathing hard, covered in blood, alive against impossible odds.
Misaki looked at Captain Varn and saw not an enemy but a source of intelligence. A window into General Vex's thinking. A tool to understand what they faced.
"Tie him up properly," Misaki ordered. "We're taking him with us. Time to find out what the kingdom's really planning."
As they secured the captain and prepared to move, Misaki allowed himself a moment of savage satisfaction. They'd won. Against professional soldiers. Against superior numbers. Against every tactical disadvantage.
They'd won because they fought smarter. Fought dirtier. Fought with the desperation of people who had nothing left to lose except each other.
And in a war where the powerful crushed the weak, sometimes desperation was the only advantage you needed.