Chapter 136: The Last Crown

They left the empty patch of deck alone after that. Nobody stood on it for the rest of the crossing.

Ten signatures were burning on Nyriel’s map, spread across the far northern edge of the sweep, and every one of them was stronger than anything that had died before it.

"Ten," Billy said, landing on the rail. "I counted twice."

"Ten," Logan agreed.

"And then we go home."

"And then we go home."

The ninety-first nearly took Solveig.

It was a thing of black iron called Dorhaven Colossus, and it hit the Vorpal Lord hard enough to crack the Dawnfire gauntlets down the middle.

Solveig kept fighting with a broken hand. Sovereign’s Wrath turned every wound into more attack, and he had a great many wounds by the end.

They lost one unit putting it down.

The ninety-second cost two. The ninety-third cost none, and nobody could explain why, and nobody tried.

The ninety-fourth came apart at the end of Grimspire Lance after four minutes of the whole army pouring everything into it.

[ Ninety-five Warlords eliminated. The remaining five Warlords are 95% stronger, and their badges reward 190% extra Tier Points. ] [ Field army: 29 Mythic+ ]

Alice read the panel and did not say anything for a while.

"Five," she said finally. "Near double."

"Near double." Logan looked at the five signatures left on the map. "And the last one of those five is going to be something nobody has ever fought."

"Because nobody has ever got here."

"Because nobody has ever got here."

The ninety-sixth through the ninety-ninth were the hardest four fights of the match, and none of them were the hardest thing waiting.

Every one was near double strength. Every one took the entire machine running at full pressure to crack, and none of them died fast.

Kindred Wellspring ran constantly and still fell behind. Xairon rebuilt units from salvage until its shapes started coming out ragged at the edges, and then kept rebuilding anyway.

Three more units did not come back.

Halden held a breach alone at the ninety-eighth for six full seconds while the line reformed behind him. When it was over, he was still standing, the way he had promised.

[ Ninety-nine Warlords eliminated. ] [ Field army: 26 Mythic+ ] [ Warlord Badges held: 90 ]

Ninety-nine dead.

One left.

It was waiting for them at the very edge of the map, on an island that was mostly a mountain, and it came down the mountain to meet them.

[ Warlord: Veyrmoth, the Last Crown ] Mythic | Level 40 HP: 31,000,000 / 31,000,000 Attack: 12,800 Speed: 10,900 Constitution: 12,200 Arcane: 13,100

Alice read the numbers aloud because she could not stop herself.

"Thirty-one million."

"Yes."

"Ten thousand nine hundred Speed. Ashkaran was five thousand, and it nearly killed you at four thousand stacks."

"I remember."

Veyrmoth was tall and crowned in something that looked like a ring of broken swords, and when it walked, the ground did not crack so much as give way.

’Ninety-nine Warlords died before this one,’ Logan thought. ’And every one of them made it stronger.’

"Everybody," he said. "Everything. Now."

The machine went in all at once, and Veyrmoth broke it in about eight seconds.

Storm’s Herald sped the army up, and the Last Crown was still faster. Vulkarn’s Ore Grubs dropped to the ground, and the thing simply stepped onto the air. The Avatar hit it at +50% and went backward fifty meters.

Solveig got one strike in with his cracked gauntlet and took a return blow that put him through a cliff face.

Billy came down in Leviathan form, and Veyrmoth caught the hull and threw it.

[ Field army: 25 Mythic+ ]

"It is not reading us," Alice said into the sigil, fast and flat. "It is just better than everything we have."

"Yes."

"The machine does not work on it."

"The machine was never going to work on it." Logan drew and felt everything he owned settle into his hands. "The machine was for the other ninety-nine. This one is ours."

He triggered it.

[ Grimbound Threshold ]

He did not stop at two thousand. He had not stopped at two thousand since the crater.

He did not stop at four thousand either.

[ Reaper’s Stride: 4,300 stacks. ] [ MP: 64% ]

That was the old ceiling, the one Vaerith had watched him reach and noted.

Forty Constitution from two Grace Fruits and eleven hundred from the Skyrend set had moved that ceiling every time he fed it. Cinderveil Aegis had shaved thirty percent off everything above it.

He found out where the new ceiling was by running into it.

[ Reaper’s Stride: 5,600 stacks. Speed +39,200%. ] [ MP: 31% ]

Veyrmoth slowed down.

Not because it had changed. Because Logan finally had, and at five thousand six hundred stacks, the Last Crown became a thing walking toward him through syrup.

He cut it four times in the space of one of its steps. Sword Intent opened across his whole vision, and every thread in that enormous body lit up at once.

’Forty-four percent was not enough to see all of these,’ he thought. ’I can see all of them now.’

[ Insight gained. ] [ Sword Intent: 44% → 51% ]

He cut the ones that held the crown in place.

[ Veyrmoth, the Last Crown: 38% HP ]

"ALICE."

She had been building the entire time.

Every arrow she had fired at every one of the last ten Warlords had counted, because she had never once let ten seconds pass without landing another. She had fired on the approach to the mountain and fired at the air on the way up.

[ Starfall Cadence: 1,620 stacks. ] [ Tempest Cadence: +1,600 Attack ]

She stood on the mountainside with the Skyrend Sinew Bowstring scaling off sixteen hundred stacks and felt Arrow Intent open all the way, wider than it ever had.

Puncture. Homing. Velocity.

’I do not have to choose between them,’ she thought, and the thought arrived clean and simple and slightly furious at itself for taking this long. ’They were never three things. They are one thing about arrows.’

[ Insight gained. ] [ Arrow Intent: 34% → 41% ]

She drew, and all three came up around the shaft at once.

[ Starflow Arts: Death Star ]

The arrow did not cross the distance. It was simply there inside the gap Logan had cut, deep in the core, before the sound of the string arrived.

[ Critical strike. Fatal point struck. ] [ Damage dealt: 2,140,000. ] [ Veyrmoth, the Last Crown: 31% HP ]

It staggered.

It had not staggered once since it came down the mountain.

[ Reaper’s Stride: 5,600 stacks. ] [ MP: 12% ] [ Grimbound Threshold: 4 seconds remaining. ]

Four seconds.

Logan went through the space Alice had opened with Grimspire Lance drawn to full extension, and every scrap of MP he had left burning under it.

Kindred Wellspring poured it back into twenty-five units on the mountainside as he went.

He did not aim at the crown or the core, or even at the fatal point Alice had found.

He aimed at the thing Sword Intent showed him underneath all of it, the one thread that ran through every other thread in the Last Crown’s body. The one that had been holding a hundred Warlords’ worth of strength together since the match began.

[ Broken Chain ]

He cut it.

Veyrmoth, the Last Crown, did not fall so much as come undone.

Everything that had held it together let go at once, and it went down the mountainside in pieces that never reached the bottom.

[ Warlord Veyrmoth, the Last Crown, has been slain. ] [ Killing blow: Leon Flanke. ]

The window closed a second later. Logan went down on both knees in the rubble with his hands shaking and his MP at three percent.

He did not look at the panel. He was waiting for the other one.

It came.

[ All 100 Warlords eliminated. ] [ First recorded instance. ]

[ Warlord Badges held: 91 ]

Alice reached him at a dead run and went down on her knees in front of him, and for a moment neither of them said anything at all.

Behind them, twenty-five Mythic-plus units stood on the mountainside. Halden was among them with his halberd planted, still standing.

"Ninety-one," Alice said. Her voice was not steady.

"Ninety-one."

"Every Warlord in the world."

"Every Warlord in the world." Logan looked at his shaking hands and then up at her. "Nine short. Because of me."

Alice took both his hands in hers and held them until they stopped shaking.

"Logan," she said. "Nobody in the history of this game has ever done what we just did. Take the win."

He looked at her for a long moment.

Then, for the first time since the northern island, he laughed.