I must admit it was a surprise when, on the third day, an envoy of various races arrived — led by Eris.
"So you managed to convince them?"
Before I could greet her, Eris knelt before me.
"I beg forgiveness for having doubted what you said, my Lord. I brought some units made available by the inner belt. They place them under your command — and see hope in your presence."
Honestly, I was shocked.
Despite having talked with Eris about everything that had happened — and, mainly, about the problems I had discovered — I didn't imagine they would close any kind of deal. At least, not before I proved, in practice, that what I was saying was true.
"Okay… you can get up, it's getting awkward. Do you have a summary of the forces made available?"
Time was short. I only had two more days to prepare.
Everything was happening according to my plan — but, unfortunately, the plan took into account that I would also do my part. The staves for the mages were produced automatically in the House of Iron and Steel, but the speed was meager. And, beyond that, I still needed to manufacture some materials essential to resist a massive attack coming through the wall.
My initial idea was to arm some soldiers on top of Yokais, to invade enemy territory and open a second front.
For that, I needed to concentrate efforts on forging armor for the youngest Yokais. And the good news in everything that had happened was that the sixteen Yokais I now had in the stable were extremely strong — and all of that thanks to the Incubator. The Ammit statue managed to create more powerful Yokais in far less time. The smallest of all was already nearly four meters — much larger than the one I had taken to the fight against the Infernals — and, with a growth period of only one day, I would have a reasonable force to temporarily hold the invasion tunnels. Even so, I knew forty Yokais wouldn't be enough to contain the cave indefinitely. Sooner or later, I would need help.
Who would have guessed it would come sooner.
✦ ✦ ✦
"Of course, sorry. The belt is composed of ten key Lords, who chose to remain in this territory since the end of their own period. Among them, there are three Burmans, one Aquamarine, three Orghaal, two FairyWood, and one Lycan. Of the total, the contribution was the following:"
[ FORCES MADE AVAILABLE — INNER BELT ]
Birman Sword — 100 units
Brutal Birman Sword — 50 units
Orghaal Shield — 150 units
Fire Fairy — 100 units
Lesser Wolf — 50 units
Most of what had been made available could be considered garbage.
Of course, for an ordinary human, they were elite troops he wouldn't even be able to face for years to come. But the vast majority were units that became available at the very first level of the barracks. The Orghaal I already knew from the Colosseum — a strong race, whose power grew the more arms they possessed. So, when I saw they carried only a shield, with both arms, it became clear they were the weakest units that race could offer.
The Fire Fairies had a power that barely surpassed that of my own mages.
And the Lesser Wolves were nothing more than wolves — neither large enough to serve as mounts, nor strong enough for the front line. At most, I could use them as scouts, and even then barely. The Birman Swords were even more pathetic: as the name itself said, they were just soldiers without any armor, armed with a single longsword. Powerful as berserkers, but, against numbers, they would be just meat for the grinder.
Even so, two things surprised me.
"How did you get them to make Brutal Birman Sword available? And, mainly… are you sure you're going to give me this here?"
✦ ✦ ✦
My happiest surprise was a hundred units of heavy cavalry — level seven lancers, made available by Eris herself.
If I were to think only in terms of investment, those hundred mounted lancers cost the equivalent of my entire kingdom. But that wasn't the only surprise. The fifty Brutal Birman were the personal elite of the Burman Lords — the strongest infantry a Burman could have. My theory was that, very probably, it was something they could only get when the castle reached level ten. Maybe more. It made no sense at all for such an absurd power to be in the midst of such mediocre units.
"I apologize for the power of the troops. Not everyone agrees with what we're doing. But my lady, who protected me when I arrived here, saw in you something I can't name. Maybe respect. And, as for the cavalry… if what you said is true, you are my only hope. Honestly, looking at your power, I know you have competence to spare — something that I, however much I tried, would never have. I'm not strong. But I have money. And it's the least I can do for someone who is going to risk their life in my place."
While we talked, Eris's Centaur heroine finally arrived — but she carried a man on her back.
At first, I was startled. As far as I knew, the Equine Centaurs, even having the appearance of horses, hated with all their might being used as one. And there was an epic hero willingly accepting carrying someone on his own back. But, when I noticed who the passenger was, everything made sense.
"Is that…?"
Eris's smile grew. It was clear that, even to her, that was a surprise.
"Yes… a Void Aquamarine."
✦ ✦ ✦
That was surprising.
A Void Aquamarine wasn't the strongest unit an Aquamarine possessed — but, for combat on land, it was, without a doubt, the most capable one he could make available. The Aquamarines had an uncommon affinity with gravity, which gave them an immense advantage in battle. But a Void was different. It could interfere with gravity in a way completely distinct from the other units — in a much stronger and more localized way. And, more than that, it was capable of opening paths through the veil of reality, distorting gravity to fold space, like a wormhole, allowing units to reach places that, otherwise, would be impossible.
Now I understood how he wanted me to act.
The units made available were good, but would be of no use until the end of the protection — that should be the rule. But, with a Void Aquamarine, it would be different.
"Unfortunately, he won't participate in the battle. He comes only as a transporter."
Eris spoke with a certain regret, as though she didn't want to feed in me expectations she couldn't fulfill.
It made sense.
It was too precious a unit for an Aquamarine. It would be impossible to make it available to a human in combat, however capable he might be.
"No problem. With him, we'll manage to investigate the tunnels and assemble a countermeasure."
Before leaving, Eris approached me, holding an item I recognized as a red cord, and touched my arm. Soon, the information arrived through Zeus.
[ Cord Alliance — epic item used. Units transferred: ]
Birman Sword — 100 | Lv. 3
Brutal Birman Sword — 50 | Lv. 13
Lesser Wolf — 50 | Lv. 1
Orghaal Shield — 150 | Lv. 1
Fire Fairy — 100 | Lv. 2
Heavy Mounted Lancer — 100 | Lv. 11
Void Aquamarine — 1 | Lv. 9
"This is…?"
"It cost my father a fortune. But it was thanks to this that I managed to stay alive in this hell."
Passing units to another Lord should be impossible — the Oasis was rigorously fair about that.
But, when I saw it was an epic item and its functionality, I understood how she had managed to get such great power in such an unfavorable territory and a place among the great ones of that place. All nobles would do anything to keep their own offspring from dying — and the advantage of money and influence proved, once again, decisive.
"Very well, I'll be going. The Lords expect a daily report. Good luck. And… one more thing: I also brought what you asked me for, I got it from my protector. But, first, let me reinforce again — try not to kill the Aquamarine, if possible. Actually, try not to even use him."
Eris tossed me a ring while she spoke, containing what I had asked for. Of course nothing she gave me came for free.
They did the easy part — making available the trash they had left over — while I would have to squeeze, out of all of it, some result that wasn't my own death.
"Very well. Leave it to me. And… thank you."
Morgana and Livina, who had kept their distance, finally approached — passing through my new army, trying to understand what was happening.
"My Lord… seems it worked out."
I observed that improbable troop.
Soldiers of five different races, most of them refuse, some worth fortunes, all lent by people who seemed more concerned with obeying an order than with actually helping — or who, at the very least, didn't care whether I lived. People who, maybe, still thought all of it was madness. But it didn't matter where they came from, or why. From now on, they were mine. And I would do with that trash exactly what I always did with everything life gave me too little of: turn it into victory.
"Yeah… seems so. Now begins the hard part."
Each of the creatures handed over, despite being weak, possessed some tactical advantage I could exploit.
It took me more than a day assembling a strategy that seemed comfortable enough — something that extracted the most from each unit, within the limited quantity I had. It wasn't about having the strongest army. It was about using each piece exactly where it was worth most. And, after hours crossing numbers and functions in my head, I finally had a plan.
"My Lord called us?"
"Yes, girls. I'm going to need your help. We're going to investigate the tunnels."
My strategy was simple, but depended on many of the creatures that had been given to me — and, even they, wouldn't be enough.
Before anything, I needed to prove the tunnels existed. Hearing was different from seeing. And, beyond that, there were a series of things I needed to understand, and that would be impossible to discover without a real incursion. It was exactly for that that I needed, mainly, Livina and Morgana.
"We're going to need to identify at what depth the tunnel is. And, for that, I'm going to need your summons, Livina. But, if something goes wrong, I need you to heal her, Morgana."
The advantage I had was twofold: I had time, and I had a heroine capable of creating disposable units.
And that would be absolutely essential. Because the Void Aquamarine could create a portal — but, if it didn't see exactly where it needed to send something, it would simply spit the creature into the middle of solid earth, only to see it die buried. Fortunately, with Livina's summons, I wouldn't need to worry about losing valuable units. The Trebeard were disposable. The problem was the rebound — the pain Livina felt with each one that died. And that was where Morgana and I would come in: as her crutch, healing her. It was cruel. But it was the only way.
But Livina just nodded, without hesitating.
She understood. She had also lost family in that world, and knew, better than anyone, that sometimes the only way to protect the living was through pain. If suffering a little now meant sparing one of our real creatures later, she would suffer. Without complaining.
"Understood… when do we start?"
Before Livina finished speaking, I took from the ring the item I had built the day before.
"As soon as I use this."
✦ ✦ ✦
In my hands, a few dozen iron rods.
The expression of confusion on Morgana's and Livina's faces gave me the cue to explain the idea.
"These here, as you can see, are iron rods — thin and malleable. The idea behind them is simple, but it's going to help us enormously. First, I just need to drive one into the ground."
I advanced to a softer patch of earth in my kingdom and buried half the rod in the soil.
Then, I handed Livina and Morgana two pickaxes, and asked them to move fifty meters away.
"And now?"
"Now strike the ground. With all the strength you have."
First was Livina.
She drove the pickaxe into the earth with full force. The wave of the impact traveled through the soil and made the rod tremble — vibrating weakly up to nearly the middle of the exposed part. Next, Morgana did the same. And the rod trembled much less than half of what it had trembled with Livina.
"And now?"
The two came running, not understanding the purpose of that.
But, this time, I had marked with my finger the exact point up to where Livina's vibration had risen on the rod.
"Now, Livina, you alone. Stand ten meters from us and do the same thing. Morgana, stay here with me."
While Livina trotted to the ten-meter mark, I turned to Morgana.
"Where my finger is, is how far she managed to make the rod vibrate from fifty meters away. Now, pay attention to what changes with her doing the same thing, only closer."
Livina struck the ground again.
And, this time, the rod vibrated almost entirely. Morgana caught a glimpse of my idea — you could see the comprehension being born in her eyes. Livina, on the other hand, who came running back, even after hearing Morgana's explanation about the difference, still seemed not to understand.
"Livina, the idea is simple. We're going to take these rods to the points where we heard the sound of the subterranean strikes. And we're going to use them to calculate the depth of the tunnels."
The same thing that happened with the pickaxes would happen with the Tyrin digging.
Each time one of those creatures struck the earth down below, the vibration would rise through the nearest rod. The stronger the vibration, the closer to the surface they would be. The weaker, the deeper. It was a simple principle — the same as knocking on a wall to discover where it's hollow — only applied to the ground, and in reverse: instead of me knocking, it was the enemy who, without knowing it, gave away its own position with each dig.
"AHH, I get it! But… how are we going to know the correct depth? After all, the strength of the strike interferes, doesn't it?"
Yes. Livina was right.
Even being a good idea, it was still an idea with flaws — flaws that even Livina managed to identify in a few seconds. It was hard to know what the maximum power a Tyrin could generate when striking the earth would be. A weak and close strike could seem identical to a strong and far one. Without a reference parameter, the calculation would be just a guess.
But I had already thought about that.
"Don't worry. It's exactly for that that I asked for Eris's help."
✦ ✦ ✦
Finally, I took the ring Eris had given me and removed what I had asked for: a carcass.
Or, at least, a piece of what seemed to be an arm — with long claws and twisted muscles. The skin was black as night, covered by a shallow fuzz that gave the limb a profoundly grotesque appearance.
"This is…?"
"Yes. A Tyrin's arm. The only one Eris had. As you know, they take all the bodies before leaving — but, from what I understood, the Burman who protects Eris has a peculiar taste for collecting parts of her own enemies."
That kind of custom was common among the Burmans.
So, when I asked Eris for the favor, I was already nearly certain that her protector would have, at least, one specimen kept. And, apparently, it was my lucky day. Because, with that arm, I could do much more than imagine what the enemy was like. I could measure it.
I analyzed the spread of the claws, the angle, the thickness of the tendons, the density of the musculature.
From that, with the approximate weight and the amount of muscle, I assembled a sketch of the maximum impact force that creature would be capable of generating. It wasn't an exact number — it was an estimate. But it gave me a working range: a minimum and a maximum of power. And, with a range, I could transform the vibration of each rod into a reliable interval of depth.
"With this, we'll manage to know, with good precision, at what depth they're working."
I spent a good while manipulating that macabre arm.
I flexed the joints, measured the reach the claws would have in a complete strike, observed how the tendons attached to the bone. Each detail told me something about how that creature moved, and how much force it could discharge in a single impact against the earth. It was macabre work, I confess — dismantling a piece of a dead enemy like someone studying a tool. But war rarely had room for delicacies, and I had learned that the worst way possible.
Morgana looked at me with something resembling fascination.
Livina, on the other hand, looked at the severed arm with a mix of disgust and respect — like someone who finally understands that the most dangerous weapon in the kingdom wasn't any of the creatures, but the head of the Lord himself.
"Sometimes I forget you're human, my Lord. You all are frightening."
I almost laughed.
Because she was right, more than she imagined. We didn't have the strength of the Infernals, nor the scales of the Aquamarines, nor the fury of the Burmans. We had this: the capacity to take a piece of a corpse and tear from it the secrets of an entire enemy. Humanity never won by being the strongest. It won by being the one that best transforms information into weapons.
✦ ✦ ✦
I spent the rest of the afternoon driving rods, after finishing my analyses with the specimen.
I spread them across all the points where we had heard the muffled sounds coming from the depths. I formed a grid — a web of iron stuck into the dead earth, each rod an ear pointed downward, waiting. It was rudimentary. Ugly, even. But it was pure ingenuity, born of the only advantage a real human had in that place: that of thinking when everyone else merely reacted.
And it didn't take long.
Soon, one of the rods began to vibrate. Then another. And another. The iron trembled at different frequencies across the terrain, drawing, little by little, the invisible map of everything that moved beneath our feet. I observed that in silence, feeling the weight of what I was about to do. Each vibration was a confirmation. They were there. Real. Digging. In enough numbers to make the very ground whisper.
Morgana approached, observing the rods tremble one after another.
"So it's true. They really are down there."
"They are. And in greater numbers than I would like."
I crouched beside the rod that vibrated the strongest, feeling the slight tremor rise through the metal to my hand.
For years, that enemy had been a ghost. A theory. A sound in the dark that killed entire kingdoms without ever showing its face. But now, for the first time, I knew where it was. I knew its strategy. I knew, within a margin, how strong it was. And information, to me, had always been the first step of any victory.
I studied the pattern of the vibrations for a long time.
It wasn't random. There was a logic to the digs — an order, a coordination, the kind of thing that only exists when there's intention behind it. The rods closest to the wall vibrated most frequently, which suggested that the bulk of the activity concentrated there, near the base of the structure. But some rods, scattered across the center of my own territory, also trembled from time to time — weak, spaced, almost timid. And that worried me far more than the strong vibrations. Because it meant they weren't just attacking from the front. They were, slowly, infiltrating beneath everything.
"The pattern isn't of a blind attack. It's of a siege."
Morgana furrowed her brow, not understanding.
"What does that mean, my Lord?"
"It means they're patient. And that they think. And that, of all the things I feared finding down here, an enemy that thinks is, by far, the worst."
I stood up and looked at Livina and Morgana.
The moment had come.
"Get ready, girls."
I clenched my fist, feeling the last vibration die on the rod.
"It's time to wake the anthill."