Calling the current situation normal was accurate to a certain degree, though it also showed just how warped my perception of that word was.

“Normal.”

What did that even mean?

Well, I’ll tell you what: It sure as shit didn’t mean waking up in the bowels of a magically transformed mountain, that magically supplied oxygen and light as was needed without ever being wrong, magically transforming my fairly regular clothing into a sharp suit, running into King friggin Arthur on the way to grab breakfast, then walking past the founding father of my nation who should have died over a millennium ago, then magically pull my breakfast from the pocket dimension I’d transported it in to eat at the same table currently occupied by a four-hundred-year-old admiral speaking to whom I presumed to be his naval superior via a magical video conference, whose “screen” hung in the air without any means of support or even, well, a screen.

Yet that was my world.

“Morning,” I announced as I sat at the planning table with my toast and eggs, as well as a cup of tea.

“Morning,” Drake responded, briefly glancing back before returning to his conversation with … right, Admiral Chambers, First Sea Lord, commander of the Royal Navy. I’d started memorizing the faces of people like him, but the picture on the internet had been slightly out of date.

The discussion basically boiled down to various plans against the potential forms the fourth Challenge could take. Well, theoretical last-minute adjustments to the plans, at any rate. If they were still busy with actual plan creation, thirty minutes before go time, they weren’t a tenth as good as people in their respective positions should have been.

Hell, I should probably have finished eating a while ago if I’d had any real task to accomplish in the upcoming battle, but I didn’t.

There was one portal I had to open to deposit Drake on his ship, after that, I was just on standby duty as a taxi. Also, I was basically ready to go in an instant, I was already dressed, I could clean myself off with a thought if I managed to get something on my clothes, I could shove my cutlery into storage in a matter of seconds … and honestly, I was being ridiculous, justifying myself like this.

We all knew exactly when the carnage was going to start, down to the second. In fact, I had the countdown present in the corner of my vision … sort of. Instead of anchoring its location relative to where I was looking, I’d made it stationary relative to my head. It was always in the corner of my eye when looking straight, and if I wanted a clearer view, I just needed to glance up and to the right.

Time remaining: 00:00:28:01

Yeah … to be honest, I might have shown up here too early. All that was left for me to do was wait, though I was hardly the only one who was in that unenviable position.

Everyone else was also already at their post. Mia and Dietrich, Arthur and Merlin, Fionn and the Fianna, Ogier, all the people who’d come to help despite lacking the overwhelming strength of an ancient … it was the calm before the storm. A storm we all knew was coming, one that was near-guaranteed to be worse than anything we’d faced so far.

And I was busy spending my time driving myself crazy by focussing on potential bad outcomes. Blech. Not helpful.

Instead, I forced myself to pull out my phone, and start “working.” Looking over my plans. Reach out to as many nations as I could and secure, at the very least, basic right of passage and the like. Also, I needed to complete my tour of the globe, create an intricate network of portal waypoints and landmarks I could guide others to…

You know, every single time I had an idea, it was accompanied by a flood of guilt and/or recrimination, and whenever I got around to doing something I’d previously only planned, never executed.

Always. Not necessarily instantly, but eventually, it always came. The idea, the certainty, that doing something sooner would have saved lives …

With an annoyed growl, I put my phone back in my pocket, pulled my now-empty plate into my [Diplomatic Pouch], popped in my earphones, and marched off. Not far, just a walk around the outside of the throne room, through corridors that were functionally deserted, only really populated by those heading into the throne room, few as they were. The castellan, a couple of people to help with the tech … but they were gone soon, vanished into the throne room.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Just me and the music pounding in my ears. Just thinking and listening.

Of course, the playlist naturally picked up where I’d stopped listening the last time, and as awesome of a song Sabaton’s “The Last Stand” was, it wasn’t exactly appropriate for the situation … so I just clicked it over to the next one.

“Primo Victoria.”

Yeah, that felt better. Less defeatist.

I came back into the throne room with five minutes to spare, though thankfully managed to avoid falling into the trap of psyching myself out. Not again.

Also, I’d wound up focussing on [Catastrophe Sense] and the fact that it wasn’t giving off so much as a single peep. It, at least, did not see any reason for concern.

So I just sat there.

Until, eventually, a new message popped up.

The Fourth Challenge, [The Wrath of Natural World], has now begun, giving life to objects that never should have had it.

The Third Challenge, [The Waking of the Unliving], has concluded, all still animated objects will lose their unnatural life.

The Fifth Challenge, [The Darkness of History], will begin in forty days.

Time remaining: 39:23:59:58

So, salient detail there, we would not have to deal with any of the Third Challenges leftovers, because there were none. Veeeery nice.

That was when the first explosion rang out, loud enough to be audible for me to hear even all the way down here. And a second one. And another one for good measure.

Uh … how screwed were we?

“Tristan, look at the monitors,” Charlemagne ordered in his finest “obey me right now,” voice, but even his authoritative tone could not hide the mirth that was inexplicably carried along in the order.

He had self-control.

I … I mean, I also did, it just wasn’t enough. Not even close. In fact, I was so caught off guard that I failed to use [Innate Etiquette] to cover my slipup.

I started laughing.

We’d broken the effing System. They were just plain tearing each other apart out there. The monsters, that was.

I mean, stick a living wildfire right next to a walking waterfall, the water would instantly vaporize into an explosion of steam, tornados would blast apart mudslides, and so on … it was glorious. Just glorious.

The elementals outside were equally divided between the four classical elements, plus metal and wood, which covered both the Greek and Chinese ideas of what the universe was made up of, and a lot of those, quite simply, did not play nice with each other. There were just too many, crammed into too small a space.

It might have been that the System calculated minimum distances between monsters based on the smaller beasts of the previous challenges, it might be the fact that we had an extra ancient in the form of Merlin, maybe me and Mia started attracting monsters as ancients did, which was a distinct possibility considering what had happened in my first diplomatic visit to Washington DC … but that was something to unpick later. Right now … fireworks.

I couldn’t help but stare, and so did everyone else I could see.

“Well, chaps, as fascinating as that is, I do have duties elsewhere,” Drake interrupted my contemplations.

Using [Ambassador’s Instinct], I could target the Wisconsin’s flag bridge without issues such as tides, waves, or, it simply moving interfering. Simple, clean, and honestly anticlimactic, compared to the previous time I’d done this.

That had involved an hour-long helicopter flight the week before, back and forth above the area the target ship was expected to be, I could then drop him onto from as low a height as possible.

This was positively boring … much like the goings-on above had to be for the fighters. Granted, boring was good, boring was safe, but still, it. Was. Boring.

Also sort of entertaining, but compared to combat, it was not exactly exciting. But everyone would survive, so that was good.

I was in the process of pulling my phone out when Charlemagne gave the order to do what I was already in the process of doing. Offer help.

“Hi, Sarangerel, it’s Ambassador Vogt,” I called Genghis Khan’s aide. “Our monsters wound up blowing themselves up so we only really need enough people here to mop up stragglers. I know the Great Khan doesn’t need help, you’d have already called otherwise, but do you think he’d want some reinforcements? And if the answer’s yes, which of the battlegrounds is he on …”

“I’ll call you right back.” She said and hung up, so I made the same offer to the US via their Berlin embassy, only briefly pausing the call to listen to the Khan’s reply, which was a hearty “yes.”

I wound up sending the entire Fianna to Washington, while Arthur, Dietrich, Ogier, and Mia wound up fifty kilometers south of Ulaanbaatar.

In the meantime, I joined Merlin up top to throw spells at whatever remained. I didn’t contribute much compared to what he could do, but it was still fun.

And then, my phone rang. It was Mia. If she was calling already, it could only be an emergency…

“So, I have no idea how that happened, but as it turns out, Genghis Khan has this Skill called [Inevitable Conclusion], and when he used it, all the elementals wound up in one spot and they blew each other up.”

Or that could have happened.

No wonder [Catastrophe Sense] hadn’t been apprehensive. There’d been nothing to be apprehensive about.

Twelve hours later, I was out of portals, had gained a single Level, and was sincerely hoping that an easy victory in this Challenge did not signify a massive danger in the next one.

[Courtmage of Neutrality Lv. 43 -> Courtmage of Neutrality Lv. 44]

[Skill Boost gained]

Finding a good home for that boost would probably be the only productive thing I’d done all day.