Chapter 137: Extraction Time

He laughed until it hurt, and then a little past that, and Alice held onto his hands the whole time.

When it finally ran out, the mountainside was very quiet. Twenty-five Mythic-plus units stood among the rubble of the Last Crown, and none of them moved, because none of them had been told what came next.

"Home," Logan said.

"Home," Alice agreed.

He reached into his storage ring and his fingers closed on a seed pod.

The courtyard of Aegis Isle folded up around them, and the whole island was waiting.

Terry was at the north gate where he had planted himself before they left, and he had not moved from it once. Winsmoke had the kitchen open.

Skyveil came out of the terraced gardens with Thessaris behind her, and the hum she carried rose to meet them across the plaza.

Billy’s fleet came in over the water, then the field army behind it.

For the first time since the match began, every unit Logan had ever summoned in it was standing on the same island.

Terry walked across the plaza toward them, and his new plating rang against the stone the way it had on the southern wall.

"Lord," he said. "The announcement reached us."

"All of it?"

"All one hundred." Terry looked at him for a long moment. "Nobody has ever done that."

"No," Logan said. "Nobody has."

Winsmoke did not say anything. He simply started cooking, and the smell that came off the kitchen was so good that three production units stopped working to stand near it.

The panel came while they were eating.

It did not arrive the way match panels usually did. It came slowly, the way the one after Star Hunters had, as though the system needed time to process what had happened.

[ Mayhem of Warlords: all match objectives complete. ]

[ Victors: Leon Flanke, Ruby Starviel. ]

[ You may exit the match at any time. ]

Then a second one.

[ Unit Extraction ]

[ Units brought into this match will be returned automatically. ]

[ Additional units that may be extracted: 3 ]

[ Bonus: First recorded clearance of all 100 Warlords. Extraction limit increased by 1. ]

[ Additional units that may be extracted: 4 ]

Alice read hers at the same time.

"Four," she said quietly. "Each."

"Four each." Logan looked out across the plaza at everything he had built in this match.

Three cards each. That was what the Tower let a player carry into a match, and it had been decided before either of them set foot on the sand.

Logan had brought Billy, Solveig and Sonic. He had left his production units at home on purpose, so he would have room to gamble on fresh pulls, and the gamble had turned into Xairon and an island.

Alice had brought Skyveil Cantor and the two he had run out of slots for.

"Terry and Winsmoke go with you," Logan said.

"Terry and Winsmoke have gone with me since the cafe." Alice did not look up from her panel. "You begged me for those two slots."

"I asked politely."

"You said, and I remember this exactly, that you were not walking into a Warlord game without a wall and a kitchen."

Across the plaza, Terry turned his head toward them.

"You did say that, Lord."

"Everybody on this island has excellent hearing and no discretion," Logan said.

Alice was grinning now. "I told you they answer to me in there."

"And I told you they already did." Logan looked at the north gate, where Terry had stood without moving for the entire back half of the match, because Alice had told him to hold it. "I was right, for the record."

"You were." She finally looked up. "That is the only reason I let you borrow them."

Six units, then, going home the way they had come.

Everything else was four choices each.

And the island held Xairon and Nyriel and Thessaris. It held Vulkarn and Draventh and Maren and Kroth, and the Seed Courier.

Twenty-five Mythic-plus combat units in the field army, eight more on the walls, twenty-one Mythics in the garrison. A production line that had rebuilt a fortress under fire and forged two Mythic sets from a dragon.

’Eight slots between the two of us,’ Logan thought. ’For all of this.’

"We should split it," Alice said. "Not by who is strongest. But by what we need."

"Agreed."

"Xairon first." She did not even hesitate. "It built the turrets. It built the drill. It knew what we needed before we asked. There is no argument about Xairon."

"None." Logan looked across the plaza at the Creation Sage, which was sliding between shapes at the edge of the kitchen and pretending not to listen. "Xairon."

Xairon stopped sliding.

"I did say you would want me," it said.

"You did. You have been saying it since the dock."

"I would like that recorded again."

"It is recorded."

Alice took Thessaris next, without explaining why, and Logan did not ask her to.

He remembered a walking garden kneeling beside a pile of broken plating and opening a hollow in its chest full of slow green light. He remembered it saying that when the lord returned, he would have something to work with.

Thessaris walked over to Alice and stood beside her and did not say anything at all.

Then Alice took Draventh, because every enchantment on the island had come out of its hands. After that she took Maren, because she wanted somebody at home who understood arrows as ammunition.

"Three," she said. "I am holding the last one."

Logan had three left.

He took Nyriel, because a scanner that could see ten kilometers was worth more than almost anything else in the next match.

He took Vulkarn, because the Ore Grubs had collapsed the ground under half the Warlords on this map, and because Vulkarn had walked into a dragon corpse out of pure joy and Logan wanted that at home too.

That left one.

He walked out onto the beach where the field army stood.

Twenty-five Mythic-plus units turned toward him the way they always did. Most of them he had never named. Most of them he had summoned in a single wave of eight hundred cards and sent into fights without ever asking what they were.

One of them was standing at the tideline with a halberd planted in the sand.

Logan stopped in front of him.

"Halden."

"Lord."

"You said you wanted to stay standing until the end."

"Yes."

"The end was the Last Crown." Logan looked at him. "You were still standing."

Halden did not say anything.

"Kroth could build me a fortress. Maren could fill it with ammunition. The Seed Courier could get me home from anywhere in the world." Logan held out his hand. "I am taking the one who stayed standing."

Halden looked at the hand for a long moment. Then he took it.

[ Extraction confirmed. ]

[ Leon Flanke: Xairon, Nyriel, Vulkarn, Halden. ]

[ Ruby Starviel: Thessaris, Draventh, Maren. ]

"You have one left," Logan said to Alice.

"I know." She was looking at the Seed Courier, which was standing at the edge of the plaza holding a pod it had clearly grown for no reason. "I was always going to take the one who got us home."

[ Ruby Starviel: Wanderroot Seed Courier. ]

The rest of them understood.

Logan went and told them anyway, because they deserved to hear it from him. Kroth, who had carried Terry’s plating up the cliff in both arms. The twenty-one Mythics on the walls. The twenty-four Mythic-plus units he had never named and should have.

None of them argued.

The last one he spoke to was a heavy-plated unit that had held the eastern breach during the siege. When he finished, it looked at him for a moment.

"Did we do well?" it asked.

"You did better than anybody in the history of this game."

It nodded once, as though that settled something.

[ Your journey in the Mayhem of Warlords match is complete. ]

[ Overall Score: 486,000. Player Level: 40 retained. Class Level: 40 retained. ]

[ Player’s Match Rank bracket: Sovereign. Base Reward Multiplier of 1.0x. ]

[ Bonus: Champion standing. Additional 0.5x multiplier applied. ]

[ Bonus: Permanent defender reward, Dark Fall Conquest. Additional 0.5x multiplier applied. ]

[ Bonus: All 100 Warlords eliminated. First recorded instance. Additional 1.0x multiplier applied. ]

[ Total Reward Multiplier: 3.0x. ]

[ 486,000 score = 48,600 Tier Points x 3.0 = 145,800 ]

[ Warlord Badges (91): 172,900 Tier Points x 3.0 = 518,700 ]

[ Inventory Conversion: 24,000 Tier Points x 3.0 = 72,000 ]

[ Total Tier Points earned: 736,500 ]

Logan stared at it for a long time.

Star Hunters had given him sixty-two thousand, and he had thought that was insane.

[ Remark: You did what no one before you has done. New Title Acquired: Crownbreaker. ]

Alice was reading her panel beside him. She made a small sound and then went very quiet.

"Mine is higher," she said eventually.

"Of course it is."

"Two more eliminations. They multiply." She was grinning now, helplessly. "I am going to say it forever."

"I know you are."

They exited together, because they had entered together.

The last thing Logan saw of Aegis Isle was the plaza from above. Winsmoke’s kitchen was still smoking and Terry was still at the gate.

Twenty-four Mythic-plus units stood on the beach looking up at the place where he was disappearing. None of them looked away until he was gone.

Two Epic skill books sat in his storage ring, waiting to be sold. Ninety-one badges had turned into a number that would change what he could do on the next Floor.

And somewhere in the Tower’s record, where nobody had ever written anything before, two names now sat at the top of a list that had always been empty.

Leon Flanke. Ruby Starviel.

The match let go of them, and the world went white.