"Strong blow to the left. Slide. Pull harder, it caught on bone. Guard yourself. Transversal cut."
After nearly two hours of fighting, my body functioned only on automatic — while my mouth dictated each movement, one by one, as though reading a manual out loud.
Maybe that meant I had passed the point of exhaustion. The blood magic had run out a long time ago, and only the exhaustion remained.
I discovered, in that fight, that there is a place on the other side of tiredness. You cross the barrier of the body begging to stop, and then you arrive at a kind of strange plain where nothing hurts enough to matter. It's frightening. Because, in there, you no longer notice when you're dying.
Or maybe my mind had simply switched off everything that wasn't related to the next enemy who appeared in front of me. No past, no future, no kingdom. Just the next neck, the next angle, the next weight against the shield.
There was something almost merciful in that. With no room to think, there was also no room to feel. No tally of how many of my enemies had already fallen. No question about how much time was left. No face returning to memory. Just the next body, and the next, and the next.
Fear also needs free time to exist.
And, in those two hours, I had no free time at all.
The Burmans were incredibly strong.
Each exchange was a negotiation with death itself. One badly parried blow meant a broken arm; two meant the end. And, even with dragon's blood running inside me, even with the mark's armor holding everything in place, each impact reminded me exactly of my size in that world.
Even with those units clearly being low-level. It was fighting against them for hours that one thing became clear: the Burmans didn't much care about their own infantry — because they compensated for everything with the battle beasts.
✦ ✦ ✦
I had already thought about that a few times. And, the more I fought, the more it made sense.
Why invest in heavy, specialized infantry if you can simply assemble a light infantry that, to most races, would already be considered elite? Instead of spending resources transforming average soldiers into good soldiers, you pour everything into the mounts.
The result was exactly what was crossing my gate.
Disposable soldiers in front, expensive monsters behind. An entire doctrine built on the idea that common Burman lives are worth less than a well-trained mount. I had read about armies like that in the books of my old life — and they always ended the same way: winning for a long time, until the day they lost everything at once.
It was clear, to me, that the Oasis always tried to balance the races — mitigate natural advantages, charge dearly for what comes for free. Allowing the Burmans to have creatures of that size as mounts was almost an affront to that principle.
But it was common knowledge that, exactly for that reason, they were expensive. Very expensive.
And, even so, the Burmans continued preferring to spend on that rather than putting better-prepared and better-equipped soldiers on the field. It was a cultural choice before being a tactical one — and I, honestly, was grateful for it. Against two hundred real Burman elite soldiers, I would already have been dead an hour ago.
And it was exactly that kind of detail I had been cataloguing since the beginning of the night: how they positioned themselves, how many came at a time, which of them hesitated before crossing the opening. Every battle is a lesson about the enemy — and, if I survived that one, I would take with me everything I learned there. If I didn't survive, none of it would matter anyway.
"MY LORD! THEY'VE SPLIT UP! ONE IS COMING TO THIS GATE AND THE OTHER IS HEADING FOR THE NORTH GATE!"
✦ ✦ ✦
Prince's shout, coming from somewhere above my head, tore me from that infinite stupor of cutting, dodging, and defending.
And made me pull back.
The separation changed everything. While the two were together, I had a single front to fear. Now there were two — and one of them was on the other side of the kingdom, too far for me to reach in time for anything.
Two Treebeards took my place at once. They clearly weren't as capable as I was — they had no technique, no reading, no precision. But, being what they were, they didn't need to be. What they needed was to crush, kick, and punch. And anything hit by those movements was practically dead before touching the ground.
I withdrew behind the lines, where things were relatively calmer.
And "calm," there, only meant that the screams came from a little farther away. The entire courtyard of my kingdom was unrecognizable: bodies piled near the gate's opening, soaked earth, smoke rising from three different points of the wall. Somewhere in all of that had been, until yesterday, the square where things were calmest and most peaceful.
Livina came to me, with another Treebeard accompanying her. She was tired too — you could see it by the way her summons moved, slower than in the first hour, as though each one cost a little more than the last.
"Did you hear, my Lord…?"
"Ahh… yes… ahh…"
That was all I managed to produce. Two syllables and a sound that didn't quite become a word.
My voice came out tired. Almost without any strength.
And, right after, I began casting healing on myself — because it was the only way to keep dealing with that flood of Burman warriors that came interminably. Their numbers didn't diminish — and that was the part that gnawed at the head. I had stopped counting how many I killed at some point in the first hour. Not out of modesty. Out of sheer incapacity.
There was blood inside the armor. Not on the outside — on the inside, running and drying and running again, in a cycle the healing interrupted without ever winning.
"I need you and Morgana to go to the north gate and help the Centaur. If that archer hits her, we're going to lose that gate — and you know what that means."
✦ ✦ ✦
Those two's strategy was still confusing to me.
Because, after so long, I believed they would already have tried to attack. And, even so, they preferred to just stay watching. Now, out of nowhere, they moved — and I still didn't understand the reason.
In truth, I believed they were measuring me. Trying to understand the real extent of my power before spending their own lives on it.
Maybe they had seen that I had nothing left to show. Maybe they had simply lost patience. Honestly, I couldn't say.
There was even a third possibility, more uncomfortable than the other two: that they had already seen everything they needed to see. That my limit was catalogued, measured, and filed away — and that their separation meant, simply, that the observation phase had ended.
But it no longer mattered.
Because, in that moment, things definitely weren't easy.
And there was one reading that bothered me more than the others: if they split up now, it was because they believed that each of them, alone, was enough to win the side he chose. It wasn't pressure. It was confidence.
"Urskra! Take Eris far from here and protect her!"
If Dioscuros was coming to my gate, she couldn't be anywhere near me. The Lord has to be the last to fall.
✦ ✦ ✦
After so many hours of battle, I was genuinely surprised.
Because, despite all that time, Eris still remained standing on the battlefield.
Protected, of course, and in a position that funneled the enemies to a few at a time. But she was still there. To me, she would have fled long ago. Maybe understanding that there was nowhere to run had done something inside her.
There was blood spread across her face — blood that wasn't hers, from what I could see. Her body was covered by an armor more than capable of withstanding the attack of a few Burmans. But what really surprised me was her capacity to protect herself alone.
From the little I knew of her, I believed she would opt for a long-range fight. Bow. Crossbow. Anything that would keep her at least fifty meters from the problem.
But she didn't even choose a spear.
She chose an enormous kite shield and a sword in the shape of a foil.
And the little I managed to observe of her style was exactly what that combination suggested: defend to the maximum, absorb everything behind the shield, and wait for the opening for a single precise thrust capable of neutralizing the enemy.
It was a monotonous fight. And clearly cowardly.
But extremely functional.
Of course, the quality of that armor, that shield, and that foil made everything much easier. Only, with the amount of money she had, the choice remained exotic, to say the least.
Any noble in her place would have bought power. She bought survival — and a singular fighting style.
In the end, I think it made sense for someone who intended to leave that place alive and never come back.
And, looking at her in that moment — dirty, trembling, still standing — I realized I had judged wrong from the beginning. I thought she was a coward. She was only honest about her own size and capacity. There is an enormous difference between the two things, and most people die without ever learning what it is.
✦ ✦ ✦
"FireWood! Do you still have any magic available?"
The owl-bear should fight the way a creature of strength and magic should.
A creature clearly heavy and, even so, with an incredible mobility thanks to nature magic — capable of climbing the wall in seconds and killing the enemies who advanced over it.
But, because of my order, he opted for a defensive and more contained fight. Fewer pirouettes. More cuts of wind and shields of air, always seeking to protect Eris — while still causing massive damage at a distance and cutting down anything that got too close using his enormous flaming claws.
And, by the diced bodies around him, he did that with mastery.
It was only afterward that I remembered where he came from: the Colosseum. I received him as a prize, but he was from there — and creatures that came out of that place carry a specific kind of experience: the experience of someone who fought many times knowing that losing meant dying.
His style was fluid. And, in a strange way, beautiful.
In part because he used air magic with an absurd precision, redirecting entire bodies mid-leap. And in part because his claws caught fire — and crossed through the enemy cutting and burning at the same time, reaping the life before the body understood it had been opened.
"Less than half."
I was surprised. And relieved in a way that probably showed on my face.
After all, the fight had already stretched on for hours — and he still had a reasonable amount of mana stored. You could probably count on your fingers the creatures of my kingdom that still had anything stored at that point of the night.
"Perfect… Let's advance and wait for the enemy."
He didn't ask which enemy. He didn't need to. There was only one who was worth the word in that moment — and, by the way his claws lit up again, he had understood that before I did.
✦ ✦ ✦
"Arachne… Daughter, try to help the perimeter. And protect your children."
Unfortunately, our fight to protect the gate was going much better than the fight for the wall itself.
The Burmans' advance climbing the stone was overloading the Yokais. And, incredible as it may seem, after a few hours they were performing worse than the Inheritance warriors.
But, looking at their bodies marked by weapons, it was easy to understand the reason.
While my warriors were strong, they also had the advantage of human awareness of how to defend themselves. The Yokais didn't. In the end, they were creatures that fought instinctively — they didn't actively seek to protect themselves, only to trade blows. With the size and strength they had, that was brutally unequal in a one-on-one fight.
But, when the fight became one against a hundred, the math collapsed too fast.
At that moment, most of the Yokais were already wounded beyond what was acceptable.
And, if they fell, the entire wall fell along with them — because there was no one left to put in their place.
Arachne was already anxious — I could feel that even without looking at her. And, besides, I needed to protect the perimeter one way or another. There was no sense at all in winning the fight for the gates if the entire wall were dominated.
The great Yokai didn't need a second order.
Twelve meters of mother shooting off in the direction of her own children, and the entire ground trembling with it.
I saw three Burmans crushed along the way without her so much as altering her route. They weren't targets. They were obstacles.
The eight legs back, healed, driving into the earth with each stride. I had spent my entire mana and Morgana's remaking those legs. Seeing her cross the courtyard like that, it was the best investment I've made since I arrived in this shithole of a place.
✦ ✦ ✦
"Pegasus! Come with me! We're going to advance to the gate again!"
Pegasus, as in every fight, seemed completely whole. And calm.
There was something profoundly unfair about that. I could barely raise my right arm, and he was there, head held high, breathing like someone who had just taken a walk. Sometimes I forgot that the creature who slept in my stable was more dangerous than almost anything in that world.
Honestly, if it weren't for the feathers dirty with blood across nearly his entire body, I would have thought he hadn't even participated in the battle.
I advanced quickly to where Livina was and touched her shoulder.
"You can go back and protect my rear. The three of us are going to hold the gate — when he shows up, help me."
"Understood, my Lord… Good luck."
I said nothing more.
I just summoned Zaetar.
The mana left me like someone handing over the last coin in their pocket. And, for a second, the world darkened at the edges — that silent warning the body gives when you take from it more than it had to give.
And, while the summon took shape at my side, my eyes still escaped in the direction of the Temple.
I still had a card up my sleeve. And I would do absolutely everything to not need to use it. Because, the instant I called Zaridan to that field, I would be trading a problem I knew for another that no one in the universe controlled.
Livina saw me looking. And preferred to say nothing while she moved away, taking the Treebeards behind her.
✦ ✦ ✦
Soon the first Burman appeared, focused directly on my body.
But, before he could do me any harm, he lost his head to Pegasus's claws — leaving behind only the body, which still wandered around like a decapitated chicken, almost as though it were confused about what had just happened.
Pegasus didn't celebrate, didn't roar, didn't look at me expecting approval. He just turned his head looking for the next one.
The owl-bear preferred to leap to the top of the wall, gripping the stone with his burning claws while he hurled an enormous ball of fire into the middle of the enemy advance — tearing out screams of pain and desperation from outside.
Zaetar advanced, grabbing two Burmans at once and hurling them against the wall.
Zaetar was never beautiful to watch fight. He had no technique, no elegance, nothing beyond mass and an absolute indifference to his own integrity.
The swords pierced him. But that thing's stubbornness made any attempt to bring him down difficult — I knew he would still take ten with him. Maybe twenty, with luck, before falling.
I preferred to stay still, in the middle of the entrance.
It was counterintuitive, I know. There were enemies entering, allies fighting, things to kill in every direction. But I wasn't there to kill infantry. I was there for one thing only — and spending breath on any other would be the dumbest way to lose that night.
Waiting.
The shield firm on my arm. The sword low, pointed at the ground. And the breathing I tried, with great effort, to keep slower than my heart was asking for.
And it didn't take long before I noticed, in the middle of that tide of bodies, one of the Burmans with at least a head more than all the others.
I needed nothing more to know who it was. Not by the height, nor by the posture — but by the way his own soldiers opened a path for his passage without so much as looking back. No unit steps aside like that for an equal.
Dioscuros.
The brother who crushed the Lycan — leader of the Belt — with his own weight alone, in the middle of a negotiation, just to make clear who really decided things on that side of the field.
We looked at each other at the same time.
He opened a smile.
Not the smile of someone who finds an adversary of equal standing. The other one. The one of someone who has finally located a thing he had been searching for since the beginning of the night — and who knows, with absolute certainty, that it isn't going to manage to walk out of there.
I raised my weapon. And, at my side, Pegasus lowered his body and the feathers on his neck rose all at once.
Two hours of battle. The body patched, held in place by the armor's compression. The mana on the verge of collapse. And an entire army still crossing my gate.
That wasn't how I wanted to receive him.
But no one chooses the hour at which the enemy decides to find you. You only choose how you receive it — and I would receive him with my head held high.
On the other side of the field, the Burman rows continued parting to the sides like water before a stone.
From afar, I could see his mouth moving while he spoke. The chaos of the battle didn't let me hear absolutely anything.
But I could read his lips.
Two words. Short enough to cross the entire field without any sound — and clear enough for me to understand that that battle, entire, had been merely the corridor to this moment.
"Found you."