"My liege, half your troops are in critical condition. You must tend to their injuries and send them to the hospital immediately," Uriel urged, his molten eyes scanning the fallen ranks.
"Send the injured to the hospital right away," Eden ordered, before pausing. "Wait—how do we transport them?"
With a subtle flick of Uriel's wrist, a beam of pale, clinical light cascaded over the wounded soldiers that registered as critical damage, vanishing them in an instant.
Eden stared, narrowing her eyes. "Why didn't you tell me you could transport us?"
"I can only evacuate the wounded to the municipal hospital," Uriel clarified, holding out a parchment scroll detailing the monster's drop table. "For active deployment travel, we require designated items—such as the teleportation bottle dropped by the centaur."
Eden scanned the report, her brow furrowing. The centaur's power rating dwarfed the combined might of her entire troop. But what caught her eye was an uncategorized entry marked with a null value—Uriel.
I didn't know if my guide could be permanently destroyed, she mused quietly, but I gambled that the system requires an immortal AI tethered to me for administrative tracking. Then again, Uriel wasn't even supposed to be available as a human race option. Should I keep this quiet before the admins notice and patch the exploit? Probably.
Scrolling further, she noted twenty-five thousand experience points credited to her arsenal, alongside the boss spoils: a box of hardening stones, a massive bounty of gold coins for a first-kill bonus, and a high-grade recurve bow.
She handed the scroll back. "Uriel, destroy this."
The parchment dissolved into gray ash before it hit the dirt.
Arthur stepped forward, sheathing his bloodied sword. "My liege... how did you know the Minotaur would break?"
Eden hesitated. Was this inquiry driven by standard NPC programming, or was a live administrator testing her through Arthur's dialogue? Deciding it was too early for the system monitors to suspect a glitch, she kept her expression flat. "I didn't. I calculated the risk and took a gamble."
Drawing a long, steady breath, Eden checked her updated troop rosters and health metrics, making sure to request a diagnostic on Uriel as well. He registered zero fatigue or damage—a reassuring confirmation that her custom guide would serve as an invaluable tactical trump card in future engagements.
They continued their sweep through the perimeter, hunting localized monsters until Uriel pointed out that Eden's personal stamina reserves were running dangerously low. She marked their path on her tactical map and turned toward her mount. "How long until we can march back to the village?"
"You must rest to recover stamina," Uriel replied, displaying a real-time status overlay of her physical condition and troop health. "Transit over unmapped terrain consumes stamina rapidly."
A sharp, pragmatic smirk touched Eden's lips. She walked among the remaining infantry and pricked her own palm alongside theirs. "Send all remaining forces to the hospital."
In a flash of light, her entire active detachment vanished toward the safety of the village wards—except for Thunder.
Eden frowned as the black stallion remained planted on the trail. Before she could voice her confusion, Uriel anticipated the thought. "Thunder is tethered to the beast stables. Mounts cannot occupy hospital beds; he has automatically teleported back to his stall."
Later that evening, sitting in her dimly lit study, Eden unspooled multiple holographic display windows across her desk. Unlike the linear single-file menus encountered in the field, her private quarters allowed for multi-screen data management.
She began crunching numbers, mapping out her experience point allocation into a strategic power pyramid. In conventional warfare, foot soldiers absorb the initial shock. I need to tier them properly before our next push: cavalry, archers, vanguard infantry, and siege units.
After reviewing the ledger and the training grounds capacity, she finalized her squad distribution. She finally retired for the night, her mind racing with recruitment costs and structural fortification timelines.
Four hours later, Eden woke with a jolt, driven by the grim reality that rival players were likely already carving up the server. This is a power game. The strongest dictate the rules.
Checking the morning status reports, she realized she needed to cycle her forces through the academy to unlock baseline tactical research. But the tuition cost to enroll half her army wiped out nearly the entirety of yesterday's gold earnings.
She let out a dry, humorless laugh. "Figures. Whoever controls the capital funds the war machine."
She summoned Uriel into her study. The guide materialized silently from the shadows, bowing low. "How may I serve you, my liege?"
"Address me as Chief-Commander, or simply Commander," she corrected without looking up from her spreadsheets. "Take half the army and dispatch them to the academy. They are not to return until they surpass ten tier levels alongside Arthur and the other knight commanders. The remaining half will rotate in once their current thresholds are met."
"Yes, my liege," Uriel acknowledged.
"I also need you to commission a fresh tier of basic recruits to backfill the garrison while the veterans are studying."
"At once." Uriel turned and strode out of the room.
Eden rubbed her eyes, acutely aware of the lingering eeriness of having an artificial entity stationed in her peripheral vision. He stood behind the curtains the entire night, she thought uncomfortably. I'll have to restrict his positioning when I need uninterrupted focus. Provided the creators don't interfere while I search for a way out of this digital cage, I can tolerate the surveillance.
As night fell again, Eden pushed her forces through another grueling round of boss raids, leveraging Uriel's zero-fatigue status to accelerate their leveling curve. But the brutal pace took its toll. By midnight, her entire army was exhausted. Repeating her previous protocol, she issued the evacuation command to funnel the fatigued troops into the medical wards.
Instead of a confirmation chime, a harsh system alert flashed red.
"My liege, the hospital has reached maximum capacity. You must expand the infrastructure," Uriel reported flatly.
Eden scanned the logistics manifest. A whole squad of twenty men was missing from the roster. "Activate: expand hospital capacity. Where is that missing squad?"
"They could not be processed into the queue," Uriel answered. "They are classified as deserters."
"Can I recover them?"
"Only through a loyalty horn, a rare commodity available in the marketplace."
"And the usage limit?"
"Each horn functions strictly once per unit cluster."
Eden exhaled a sharp breath of frustration. "Uriel, commission replacements for the lost squad immediately."
"Understood."
"And have them report directly to the academy upon arrival."
Her force distribution was hopelessly fractured now—a predictable casualty of attrition, war, and administrative oversight. Needing to understand the geopolitical landscape of the server, Eden walked down to the marketplace terminal to review the alliance bulletin boards.
While the global directory was flooded with chaotic, unorganized clans, one entry caught her eye: Dark Warriors. Though not the top-ranked faction, their charter statement was disciplined and pragmatic. Eden submitted an application and was instantly accepted.
An internal alliance chat window popped up, though it was mostly filled with uncoordinated noise and the alliance leader spamming a single directive: "Everyone must grow stronger."
Muting the channel notifications with a flick of her wrist, Eden muttered, "Useless chatter. I'll stay dormant for now and evaluate better prospects later."
Returning to her private quarters, she indulged in a hot bath, letting the simulated water wash away the day's grime. She contemplated whether expanding her military footprint was merely painting a target on her back.
Just as she closed her eyes to rest, a harsh orange glare flickered against her bedroom window.
"My liege! The city is under attack!" Uriel's voice barked through the chamber door.
Eden vaulted out of the tub, throwing on her robe as she rushed into the hallway. "Where is the garrison guard?!"
"They were too fatigued to mount an effective defense," Uriel said, throwing open the door.
"What type of vanguard are they deploying?" she demanded, grabbing her dual blades.
"Cavalry, my liege," Uriel pointed toward the flashing perimeter walls where heavy hooves thundered against the earth.
Mounted units—worst possible matchup for a recovering infantry line.
With a sharp snap of her fingers, Eden triggered her quick-access inventory interface, selecting the territorial shield artifact and slamming the activation button.
A blinding shockwave of blue energy blasted outward from the citadel core, expanding in a dome that violently repelled the charging horsemen, hurling them backward beyond the city limits.
Eden then looked back at Uriel to ask, "Casualties?"
"None, my liege."
She blinked, stunned. "How is that possible?"
"Because you expanded the hospital capacity just in time," Uriel replied evenly. "The facility successfully absorbed the shock-spillover of the defense threshold."
"And battle report?"
A glowing scroll materialized in her hands. The attacker was identified as Barlas from the Alliance For The Good. His power rating registered at ten times her own. Yet, thanks to the automated barrier, his raiding party had managed to strip only thirty percent of her resource caches before being violently thrown clear.
Eden stared out the window, watching the villagers calmly stamp out the lingering embers along the perimeter wall. A dangerous, cold smile crept across her face.
Enjoy the small victory, Barlas, she thought quietly. Just wait.