"This is nothing like what we predicted..."
From a hidden vantage point on the battlefield, Phrolova watched the war unfold with growing disbelief. The scenario that a certain Fractsidus "scriptwriter" had mapped out bore almost no resemblance to reality. Jinzhou's resistance was too fierce.
Casualties on the human side were negligible.
And the war-class Threnodian, Ovathrax, had barely absorbed any Frequency from destroyed Tacet Discords or fallen soldiers. Its revival was crawling.
Under normal circumstances, the cycle should have been self-sustaining. Ovathrax would use the Retroact Rain to resurrect endless waves of Tacet Discords. Combat would produce casualties on both sides. Every death fed the Threnodian more power, which made the rain fall harder, which summoned more Tacet Discords, which created more violence, more death, more power. An infinite upward spiral.
Instead, the Threnodian wasn't even getting enough Frequency to complete its revival.
"And the reason is... her."
Phrolova's expression grew complicated as she watched Rover on the battlefield. Every scrap of Frequency that Ovathrax should have devoured was being absorbed by the Rover instead. The entity growing stronger in this war wasn't the Threnodian.
It was her.
Rover's power had multiplied several times over since the battle began. Her Echo legion now numbered past five hundred.
"Typical. She's always the variable no one accounts for, always upending everything. At this rate, I can't even tell who the real war-class Threnodian is anymore." Phrolova sighed, her voice low and troubled. "This is going to be a serious problem."
If Rover kept scaling like this, the question wouldn't be whether she could defeat Ovathrax. The real issue was that the plan to recruit her into Fractsidus while she had no memories had already fallen apart. That made them future enemies, and the two Rovers were using this never-ending war as a leveling ground, growing stronger with every passing minute. Their current power was already terrifying.
And beyond that...
Whether or not Jinzhou survived today, these two Rovers would keep traveling. Keep fighting. And the next time Fractsidus faced them, it wouldn't be Ovathrax on the other side of the line. Just watching one of them carve through Tacet Discords like a human meat grinder was enough to...
Phrolova imagined a future battle against both Rovers at once. A shudder ran through her.
She was a little scared.
"I need to disrupt her growth. And that idiot Scar, handing over his Forte to the enemy like a gift-wrapped present... how is that not sabotaging me?"
She could see exactly why Jinzhou and the Black Shores had suffered so few casualties, why Rover responded to every crisis with such surgical precision. It was because of her colleague's spatial abilities, now wielded against them.
If Scar knew what she was thinking, he'd have burst a blood vessel screaming right back at her. Sabotage? Which one of us is the real dead weight here? I only lost because you left me hanging! You didn't follow up on the engage! Went AFK at the critical moment!
By the standards of "Solaris-3's Best Synergy Duo" (the two Rovers), both Fractsidus Overseers were terrible teammates.
"Fine. Guess I'll have to fix this myself."
Phrolova raised her Spider Lily conductor's baton. Before she could bring it down, a thorned vine of black and crimson lashed at her from the side. Her eyes narrowed and she dodged.
"That move again. You?"
Irritation flickered across her face as she looked toward the source. There stood the Bloom Bearer she despised, that particular camellia, blocking her path once more.
"The moment I noticed those Tacet Discords moving with actual coordination, I knew someone was pulling strings behind the scenes. Took me a while to track you down, though." Camellya wove her vines into a blade and leveled it at Phrolova, wearing her usual bright smile, the polar opposite of the Overseer's melancholy. Crimson camellias erupted from the ground around her feet. "She's on her stage right now, giving everything she has. Look at how brilliantly she's shining. I won't let you interfere. If you want to play, you'll play with me."
"You? Your Overclocking aftereffects haven't worn off yet, and this battlefield has more Tacet Discords than I could ever need to control. This is my ideal arena. Do you honestly think you can win?"
Phrolova flicked her wrist. Tacet Discords swarmed Camellya from every direction. The Bloom Bearer didn't flinch. If anything, her smile widened, excitement burning behind it as she threw herself back into Overclocking without hesitation.
"Only one way to find out!"
"Then today, you wither here."
Spider lilies and camellias exploded across the battlefield in violent bloom, accompanied by the shrieking of Tacet Discords. It would be a fight of exquisite elegance and absolute savagery.
And Phrolova was right. The conditions overwhelmingly favored her. In her wounded state, Camellya couldn't match her alone.
Then came the thunder.
"Unleash the fangs!!"
Purple arcs of electricity shredded through the surrounding Tacet Discords in an instant, and a figure radiated an aura of raw, undeniable power as he stepped into view.
"Who?!"
"Calcharo. Commander of the Ghost Hounds mercenary company. Contracted by Jinzhou to assist in the defense against Threnodian Ovathrax, eliminate Tacet Discords, and..." His voice dropped. "Remove any unnecessary threats."
Silver hair. A fitted black-and-blue combat suit. In his hand, a broad, distinctive blade shaped almost like a lute. Beyond the sharp, predatory features that lived up to his unit's name, the most striking thing about him was the Tacet Mark scored across his forehead like a scar.
"Now that's a useful partner." Camellya's grin sharpened.
"Ghost Hounds." Phrolova's brow creased. "Troublesome."
Jinzhou's reinforcements weren't limited to the Black Shores. They'd hired the Ghost Hounds too.
She'd never cared enough to study things that didn't interest her, but even she had heard of the Ghost Hounds' reputation. She hadn't expected Jinzhou to bring them in.
"Fractsidus." Calcharo's tone was ice. "The Ghost Hounds offer a twenty percent discount on any contract involving your organization. Jinzhou is not your territory."
In the next instant he activated his Forte. Tacet Discord matter consumed most of his body as he forced himself into Overclocking, willingly and completely.
Phrolova's eye twitched. A madwoman who treated Overclocking's risks like they didn't exist, and a mercenary who used Overclocking as his finishing move. This was going to be difficult.
It was. Under Calcharo and Camellya's relentless, borderline suicidal assault, Phrolova was pushed back step by step.
But her abilities gave the mercenary pause of his own.
What a terrifying opponent. Controlling Tacet Discords... the fact that someone can do this at all. And that regeneration... Fractsidus really is full of lunatics you can't afford to underestimate.
All three of them were, in their own way, unhinged.
Calcharo kept his guard up. Phrolova's raw combat skill was mediocre at best, her fighting technique full of holes. But her Forte was nightmarish enough to close every gap. If either he or the Bloom Bearer had faced her alone, this Overseer who was poorly suited to direct combat would have been outmatched.
Together, keeping her suppressed wasn't hard.
Until it didn't matter.
"There. Mission complete."
"What?"
Phrolova's tension evaporated. She rose from the ground with an easy, mocking smile.
A colossal rumble shook the earth. In the sky, the Threnodian's moon-phase sigil snapped into focus, whole and vivid, and with a tremor that split the ground underfoot, a statue hundreds of meters tall materialized at the far edge of the battlefield.
"Fractsidus, what did you do?!"
"Nothing much. Fed a starving Threnodian a little snack. Exhausting work, honestly." She shrugged. Her goal had never been to fight these two. It was to complete Ovathrax's revival.
With Rover absorbing all the Tacet Discord Frequency on the main battlefield, Phrolova had spent the entire fight multitasking, commanding masses of Tacet Discords to slaughter each other in the background and funnel their Frequency to the Threnodian.
Ovathrax had consumed enough to enter its second phase. The colossal statue was its chrysalis.
"Well then, you two. Until never."
Objective achieved, Phrolova bolted without a shred of hesitation. The second-phase Threnodian was beyond her ability to influence. Whether Ovathrax could finish the job was up to the war-class Threnodian itself.
She made it exactly one step.
"Fractsidus, you're not going anywhere!!"
A lightning-wreathed blade and a vine-forged sword punched through the gap in her guard the instant her focus slipped, both embedding themselves in her chest with a wet, twin impact.
"Again?!"
....
On the main line, Rover's gaze locked onto the towering statue.
"The Threnodian's second phase. So it's started."
She recalled the intelligence he'd written for her. This meant Ovathrax's revival had entered its countdown. Once the process completed, that crude monolith of assembled stone, hundreds of meters tall, would become the Threnodian's true body.
At that point, the question wouldn't be whether they could fight it. A fully revived Ovathrax could flatten a city with a casual sweep of its arm, as effortlessly as a person crushing an anthill.
And then she felt them. Several presences of staggering power, descending onto the field.
"War. Sacrifice. More sacrifice. Offerings..."
"Weapons. Sacrifice. Mother demands more!"
"Annihilate. Destroy. Offer everything to it..."
The Tacet Discord detection array inside the Jinzhou perimeter screamed to life.
Multiple Overlord-Class signatures detected.
Thundering Mephis. Tempest Mephis. Impermanence Heron.
Every eye on the field went wide at the sight of them. Multiple Overlord-Class Tacet Discords, all manifesting at once.
And one more.
"Have you... seen my crown?"
It looked like a skeletal knight clad in pallid armor, wings of purple-black unfurling like a fallen angel's, a lance of pure darkness promising death.
The Crownless.
Overlord-Class Tacet Discords that the two Rovers had defeated or captured in the past, resurrected by the Retroact Rain and the Threnodian's power. Returned to the battlefield.
Rover didn't so much as blink.
"Right on schedule. He called every single one of them."