"Hey. Hey, Odysseus." The voice is no more than a whisper and a warm breath on my nape, but I can't ignore the force that shakes me.
If it wasn't my shoulders but something lower—
Fuck. Where am I?
And why do I have this huge bulge in my pants?
Okay, medium-sized, or it might be below average, but only a little.
And what is this scent? The smell of sweat, perfume, and wood.
Real wood, not my morning one, and it's not yet morning anyway.
It takes a few moments to realize what's happening, and it's another point against the 'this is only a dream' theory.
"Are you with me?"
The first thing that can convince me is consistency. It doesn't exist in dreams. But even if I'm driven by stress and being horny, some things can still overwrite everything.
The biggest one is exhaustion.
While the adrenaline and the heat propelled me forward, I didn't realize how tired I was this whole time. Stirring, I look around in the dark.
"What happened?" I only realize I have fallen asleep when Aratsuki shakes me awake.
It doesn't matter if we were in the enemy city, surrounded by Trojan warriors drinking and dancing.
And boy, they were loud.
They had pipes, sang victory songs, and circled our horse with burning torches all night.
The last thing I remember is Aratsuki pointing at the flames.
"Did we win?" I blink at her, and she hesitates for a moment, is that a blush?
She was hellbent on proving me wrong, saying they would light us on fire.
Well, what do you know?
I'm not crispy yet, so her predictions were off. But the heat has been bad on the inside since noon.
It didn't matter, even if the hottest waifus squeezed me from all sides.
Once the temperature dropped, the 40 hours I spent awake in this world caught up to me.
Thinking about it, it was logical and almost inevitable. I focused more on winning than resting.
"You were out cold like a baby. We already started without you." She lets go of my shoulder to disappear through the hatch. I'm alone in the horse now, the strange artifact from her manga.
It's logical, but I didn't expect it. It isn't the first time I fell asleep in a dream, but those were part of the chaotic plot and didn't make sense. Here, it's the opposite, I almost miss the action.
Once I recognize my surroundings, the Knights take care of everything.
It must be close to dawn, the sky is the darkest, with an orange sliver above the horizon.
The celebration must have ended hours ago.
"Look who decided to grace us with his presence." The friendly rival — Achilleus's voice — is louder than I would like. She has no sense of danger, but she's almost invulnerable.
Drunken warriors and citizens lay with their wine cups and the remnants of the feast all over.
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The few still awake get knocked out and tied up before I climb the hatch.
"Why didn't you wake me up sooner?" I whisper to Aratsuki — I mean Nestor.
She shrugs, tying up another drunkard.
My plan must have worked even without me, at least for now.
"It's not like I'm worried about your safety, but if you die, we're all stuck here." She answers, planting a torch in my hand. "Go, signal the fleet, that will keep you away from trouble."
She's right, but I don't want to sit back.
I don't have the strength, or endurance like these overpowered girls do.
But my mission is even more important. They already opened the city's gates.
It's surprising how well the plan has worked so far. I'll chew Aratsuki out later.
She was the most skeptical about it, and she still treats me like I'm a joke.
Revenge will be mine when I figure out her secret.
"What about the guards on the wall?" I whisper, but the gatehouse seems deserted.
Did they party so hard that they abandoned their posts too?
Or did the girls take care of them already?
"It's not our first infiltration mission." The Captain — Agamemnon yells back, shaking me to the core.
Why can't they stay quiet? Aratsuki is the only one of them with common sense.
She's also from the manga, but the only one with the self-awareness that they're not real.
What a weird situation, how did she find out? Is she the girl from behind the counter?
This is as far as I get in my garbled morning thoughts before I reach the designated spot.
It's outside the city gate, another temple on a small hill overlooking the sea.
These Greeks love their sanctuaries and build them over places with stunning views.
It means they're visible from afar and come with a cauldron filled with oil, which I light on fire.
If the fleet sticks to the plan, it must have returned, waiting for this sign.
In a few minutes, I can see them storming the beaches using the same high tide they retreated yesterday.
No resistance. All drunk and sleeping warriors are waiting in nice rows, tied up by the manga heroes. The rest of the city still doesn't know what happened by the time the Greeks arrived.
And then all hell's let loose. Aratsuki was right about one thing, the manga's big bads from the episode also show up on the enemy side. Our saving grace is that they're evil sorcerers.
Good luck with those spells in a world without magic. As our warriors flood through the gates, a last-ditch battle begins. The rising sun sets the unfolding chaos on the streets alight.
"Stay with me around the back." The Princess Knight tackles me before I can finally join the fight.
She's the only anime girl not at the forefront of the battle. Of course, I'm the Anchor.
"You said it wouldn't work." This is all I can manage in the loud clash of weapons. "It seems we're winning this round."