Chapter 134: Swift Action

The two fleets separated at the edge of the shallows.

Billy’s half turned east toward the quiet coves, nineteen Mythic-plus units spread in a net behind him with Nyriel’s constellation sweeping ahead. Logan’s half turned north toward the nearest burning signature on the map.

Sonic came with them. So did Xairon and Vulkarn, because the Warlords were going to need siege work and salvage more than the hunt for hiding players would.

The last Chaos PsyDog came too. It stood at the bow with its nose into the wind and had not spun once since the vault.

"Billy," Logan said into the sigil, once the other fleet was a line on the horizon. "Announce. Every time."

"Loudly, Boss."

"Loudly is fine. Announce."

---

The first Warlord of the run was a big armored thing called Haskarr Gravemaw, holding a basalt island with three hundred units, and it was the first time the whole machine ran at once.

Logan had never actually watched it all fire together before. He had been inside it for most of the match, too busy cutting things to see the shape of it from the outside.

This time he held back and watched.

Sonic went up first and triggered Storm’s Herald on the way.

```

[ Storm’s Herald ]

```

Every allied unit on the field got faster at the same moment. The eighteen Mythic-plus units crossed the beach in half the time they should have needed.

Then Vulkarn opened its chest grate, and Ore Grubs went into the basalt under Haskarr Gravemaw’s feet.

The ground under three hundred units dropped two meters. The Warlord stumbled with its weight on the wrong leg.

The Elderwood Phoenix Avatar was already coming down on it.

```

[ Elderwood Phoenix Avatar manifested. ]

[ MP spent: 4,000. Avatar stats: +30%. ]

```

Twenty feet of burning bird hit the stumbling Warlord and pinned it against the collapsing wall behind it.

Solveig was on it before the fire cleared, and his command aura rolled across the whole field.

```

[ Sovereign’s Wrath ]

```

Every wound an allied unit had taken turned into attack power, and there were a lot of wounds, because three hundred defenders had been fighting back.

Logan went in with Sword Intent open.

The threads on Haskarr Gravemaw ran thick through its armored core, and he cut four of them in a single pass. Kindred Wellspring poured the damage back into every Mythic-plus unit that had taken a hit on the beach.

Alice finished it from three hundred meters with Velocity carrying the arrow through the gap Logan had made.

```

[ Warlord Haskarr Gravemaw has been slain. ]

[ Warlord Badge acquired. ]

```

It took fifty-one seconds.

Alice lowered the bow and looked at the ruin of the island.

"That was a Warlord at fifty percent above baseline," she said.

"Yes."

"We did not even have to try very hard."

"We did not have to try very hard *together*," Logan said. "Nobody in this match ever built all of that in one place. That is the only reason the wall has never broken."

---

```

[ Fifty-five Warlords eliminated. The remaining forty-five Warlords are 55% stronger, and their badges reward 110% extra Tier Points. ]

```

The next four went the same way.

Each one was a little harder than the last. Each one took a little longer. The machine absorbed the difference every time, because every part of it grew and nothing about the Warlords ever did except their numbers.

Somewhere around the fifty-seventh, Logan checked his panel out of habit and stopped walking.

```

[ Attack: -0% ]

[ Speed: -0% ]

```

"It is gone," he said.

Alice looked over. "The Attrition?"

"All of it." He flexed one hand and felt it answer at full speed for the first time since the northern island. "He has been dead since the rock and it only just finished wearing off."

"Longer than he lasted."

"Much longer." Logan closed the panel. "He said the only thing that leaves a match intact is what you were when you were in it. I think I just finished carrying him out."

---

Billy’s reports came in over the sigil in short bursts between Warlords.

"Twenty-three left, Boss. Found four in a sea cave. Announced loud. Three said it before I finished the sentence."

"And the fourth?"

"Fourth tried to fight. Fourth thought better of it right at the end."

A while later came another one.

"Eighteen. Two of them were hiding under a waterfall. Nyriel found them by the fact that the water was falling wrong."

And later still, quieter than usual.

"Fourteen. Boss, one of them asked me if it was true about the Warlords."

Logan stopped halfway up a beach.

"What did you tell them?"

"The truth. Then they asked if they could watch." Billy’s voice did something complicated. "They said the word after that. They said they wanted to be able to say they had been in the match where it happened."

---

```

[ Sixty Warlords eliminated. The remaining forty Warlords are 60% stronger, and their badges reward 120% extra Tier Points. ]

```

The sixtieth was the first one that bit back properly.

Morvaine the Unbroken held a spire of black glass with no faction and no walls, and it did not care about any of the machine at all.

Storm’s Herald sped the units up. It simply moved faster.

Vulkarn’s Ore Grubs went into the glass and the glass did not collapse, because it was not stone.

The Avatar hit it and bounced off.

```

[ HP: 58% ]

```

Logan took that one in the side before he understood what it was doing.

’It is not reading us like Ashkaran,’ he thought, rolling clear. ’It is just better. Sixty percent stronger than the start and it was already the strongest thing on its island.’

He looked at Alice across the glass.

She was already looking at him.

The Accord Sigil went warm at his collar, and for the first time since the vault, he felt her pull it rather than him.

```

[ Accord Sigil: Teleport initiated by Ruby Starviel. ]

```

She came out of the air right next to him, three meters from a Warlord that could crush both of them, and she did not flinch at all.

"Stop cutting threads," she said. "It has no threads you can reach. Look at the core."

He looked. She was right. Everything ran through one point at the center of the glass, deep inside it, too deep for Grimspire Lance to reach at full extension.

"Too deep," he said.

"For you." She drew. "I can put an arrow through eleven meters of packed soil. Glass is not packed soil."

"You need a hole."

"I need a hole," Alice agreed. "Make one."

---

Logan did not use Grimbound Threshold.

He did not need four thousand stacks for this. He needed one clean line into black glass, and he already had the thing that made clean lines out of hard problems.

```

[ Heaven-Splitting Line ]

```

Rishin’s third technique left his blade and went into the spire, and it did not shatter the glass. It split it, one perfect seam running down toward the core.

The seam was open for about half a second.

Alice fired Puncture into it with Velocity behind it, and the arrow went down the seam and into the core without touching the walls on either side.

```

[ Warlord Morvaine the Unbroken has been slain. ]

```

Logan looked at the spire coming apart and then at Alice.

"You teleported to me," he said.

"The cooldown was up." She shrugged, but she was smiling. "You were about to spend nine minutes of skill on a problem that needed one cut. Somebody had to stand next to you and say so."

---

```

[ Sixty-five Warlords eliminated. The remaining thirty-five Warlords are 65% stronger, and their badges reward 130% extra Tier Points. ]

```

```

[ Players remaining: 11 / 500 ]

[ Leon Flanke: 107 Eliminations ]

[ Ruby Starviel: 108 Eliminations ]

[ Warlord Badges held: 56 ]

```

Alice read the badge count twice.

"Fifty-six," she said. "The record is eighty-seven."

"And there are thirty-five left, every one of them stronger than the one before." Logan looked at Nyriel’s map, which Billy had forwarded, where the burning signatures had started to thin out in a way they never had before.

’Sixty-five dead,’ he thought. ’Twenty-two short of anybody who ever lived.’

"Billy has nine players left to find," Alice said. "We have thirty-five Warlords."

"Then he is going to win the race."

"He is." She slung the bow over her shoulder. "And then he is going to come and help us, and then the wall starts actually meaning something."

At the bow of the ship, the last PsyDog lifted its head and looked north toward the thinning signatures. It did not look away.