He touched down near the bow. The morning watch saw him first — two soldiers who went from bored to terrified in the time it took them to register a masked figure appearing from the sky. They drew swords. Shouted.
Within thirty seconds, the deck was flooded with armed men. Swords, spears, crossbows. Dozens of them, forming a semicircle around the masked stranger who'd landed on their ship like it was a park bench.
Yuki took stock. Their weapons were well-made. Professional military grade. Their armour was uniform — standardised, mass-produced, functional. These weren't bandits or militia. This was a real army.
He also noted what was below. His mana sense pushed through the deck — hundreds more men in the hold. Equipment. Supplies. Horses. This wasn't just a fighting force. It was an occupation force. They'd brought everything they needed to stay.
The crowd parted. A man pushed through — tall, broad-shouldered, wearing officer's armour with gold trim. The captain. He carried himself with the authority of someone who'd commanded ships for years.
He looked at the masked figure. At the empty sky behind him. At the masked figure again.
"Who are you? How did you board this vessel?"
Yuki kept his voice even. The mask muffled it slightly — good. Less recognisable.
"I was sent by Veldara. To understand why you're attacking and what it would take for you to retreat."
The captain's expression hardened. "We are here under orders of the Holy Dominion. Veldara will be brought under our banner. We will not leave until this is accomplished." He paused. "How did you get on my ship?"
"I flew."
The captain stared. Then: "How did you get to our ship in the middle of the lake?"
"I flew. Through the air. From Veldara."
Silence. The soldiers exchanged glances.
Yuki pressed forward. "Why is the Dominion conquering its neighbours? Have your armies killed innocent people in the process? Women? Children?"
The captain laughed. Not nervously — confidently. The laugh of a man who believed absolutely in his mission.
"It is our divine purpose. All lands fall under God's dominion. Sacrifices are necessary. Those who resist are enemies of the faith. Those who submit are welcomed into—"
"Have you killed innocent people?"
The laughter faded. The captain's chin lifted. "All fall under our dominion. Whatever is required to achieve that is sanctioned."
Yuki absorbed this. The man wasn't lying. Wasn't hedging. He genuinely believed that conquest, killing, slavery — all of it was righteous.
Religious zealotry backing military expansion. Slavery legal. War crimes sanctioned by their church. Their pope gives the orders and the soldiers carry them out with clear consciences.
"One more question," Yuki said. "You mentioned it's impossible to fly. What made you think that?"
The captain blinked. "Flight magic requires mana output beyond any mage's capacity. It's a theoretical—"
Yuki lifted off the deck. Rose two metres. Hovered.
The captain's face went blank.
"The thing about impossible," Yuki said, "is that it only applies to people who've accepted the limit."
He sent out the daggers.
Fifty blades erupted from dimensional storage and fanned outward from the flagship in every direction. Five per ship. Each one guided by its own thread of parallel consciousness.
The daggers hit the other nine ships simultaneously. They moved through the officer quarters, the command decks, the navigation rooms — targeting captains, first mates, quartermasters, anyone wearing the gold trim of command authority. Precise. Surgical. The rank and file weren't touched.
On the flagship, Yuki's remaining daggers dealt with the captain and his officers in the time it took the surrounding soldiers to register what was happening. The captain was dead before his sword cleared its scabbard.
Leadership eliminated. All ten ships.
He hovered above the flagship's deck and watched the chaos unfold. Without officers, the chain of command collapsed. Soldiers on every ship looked to commanders who were no longer standing. Confusion spread faster than orders ever could.
Then the fear hit.
Men saw their captains dead. Saw the floating masked figure above the flagship. Saw the daggers — still airborne, still orbiting, still dripping — and made the calculation that every soldier eventually made when the situation turned impossible.
They ran.
Not on land — there was no land. They jumped. Soldiers stripped armour and went over the railings, dropping into the lake's cold water. The ships emptied from the outside in — the men on deck first, then the holds. Hundreds of bodies hitting the water, swimming for — what? There was nothing to swim to. The nearest shore was kilometres away.
Within twenty minutes, all ten ships were functionally abandoned. A few fighters remained — the brave ones, the loyal ones, the ones who'd rather die on their feet. Yuki's daggers handled them quickly.
He stood on the flagship's deck surrounded by silence. Ten warships. Empty. His.
Mine now. I could totally start a trading company with these! I wonder if Lira's dad would want to handle a merchant shipping business for me? I could name him my CEO!
After a lengthy internal monologue, he scanned the vessels. Below decks — horses, supplies, weapons. Living creatures he'd rather not condemn to floating ghost ships. The horses were panicking, hooves stamping on wooden floors.
He cast a mass teleportation. The largest spatial displacement he'd ever attempted — ten full warships, ripped from the lake's surface and deposited in Veldara's harbour in a single, massive tear.
The ships materialised in the port with a sound like thunder.
Veldara's harbour guard nearly started a second war.
Ten Dominion warships appearing from nowhere in the capital's port produced exactly the reaction you'd expect — alarm bells, mobilised soldiers, crossbows aimed at every deck. Yuki landed on the harbour wall and removed his mask before someone shot him.
"Stand down. The ships are captured. The crews abandoned them."
It took thirty minutes to sort out. Military officers arrived. Yuki explained — briefly, without detail — that the Dominion fleet's command structure had been eliminated and the ships seized. There might be soldiers still hiding below decks. There were definitely horses.
"Send men to clear and secure them," Yuki said.
A naval captain stared at him. "You captured ten warships. Alone."
"The crews mostly left on their own."
"Left to where? We're in the middle of the lake."
Yuki paused. He hadn't thought about that part. "The water."
The captain's expression was grim. "Plate armour doesn't float. The lake is cold — near freezing at depth. The far shore is a full day's sail." He shook his head. "Most of those men won't make it."
"Should I go back? Pull them out?"
"These men sacked the Veldmark. Burned villages. Enslaved survivors. Their pope preaches that every nation must submit or be destroyed." The captain met his eyes. "I won't mourn them. Neither should you."
Yuki stood on the harbour wall and watched soldiers board the captured ships. Below his feet, the dock was busy — Veldaran sailors swarming the vessels, securing hatches, calming horses.
Then the absorption hit.
It came in waves. Not a single pulse but a rolling tide — life force and mana flowing into him from across the lake. Distant. Continuous. Men drowning. Men dying of cold. Men slipping beneath the surface one by one, their life energy releasing and travelling to the man responsible.
Him.
Hundreds. Then thousands. The wave built and built and crashed through his system with a force that made the bandit absorption feel like a raindrop against a tsunami.
Eight thousand men. Maybe more. Each one releasing a human life's worth of mana and experience on death.
His reservoir expanded. Not incrementally — exponentially. The internal pressure surged past anything he'd felt since the original chain reaction. His parallel mind capacity shattered its previous ceiling — fifteen threads, twenty, thirty. The infrastructure in his brain widened like a dam opening, new channels forming in real-time.
His hands were shaking. Not from weakness. From overload.
This is what absorbing an army feels like.
The guilt was there. Distant but real. Five thousand lives, extinguished in cold water, feeding his power. He hadn't killed most of them directly — they'd jumped, they'd fled, the lake had done the rest. But he'd created the conditions. He'd removed their options.
They were invaders. Slavers. They burned villages and enslaved survivors. Their religion sanctioned it. Their leaders ordered it.
And I'm stronger now because they died. I shouldn't feel guilty, right?
With the stream of mana and life energy still pouring in, he was forced to designate several parallel minds' sole focus to be on processing the tide, sorting it, and noting any changes in h is body and mind for him.
He closed his eyes. Said the prayer. Short. Silent. The same one he'd said after the bandits.
Then he opened his eyes and turned south.
Ten thousand more on land. Marching toward Veldara.
But first — he needed new weapons. He'd just acquired ten ships' worth of Dominion steel.
He boarded the nearest captured vessel and descended into the armoury. Racks of swords. Crates of spearheads. Bundles of crossbow bolts. Good-quality military steel — standardised, well-forged, consistent.
He started pulling metal. Melting, reshaping, compressing. The Dominion's weapons becoming raw material for something else entirely.
He had plans.