Zora dropped to her knees, gasping for air. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt such crushing weight. Someone needed to be in the top ten in the ranking to release so much magical pressure.

“No, no. This won’t do.” A man walked up to her.

“Liability,” a woman agreed, both in a thick accent that was missing certain words.

“W-Wait….” Zora wheezed. The next moment, her legs were dangling off the ground as someone choked her. She opened her eyes and saw a man and woman—both with bald heads—staring at her. The man had no shirt, and the woman was only in a bra, showing off dozens of arrays tattooed to their bodies.

“Y-You’re… the Keetas…. What are you….” Eline and Grent Keeta were famous adventurers, 3rd and 4th strongest, respectively, and the strongest non-military mages.

“What do you think we’re doing?” Eline Keeta, the female, asked. “This is war. Everyone protects kings or fights. It is; how does one put it? Mandatory.”

Zora felt icy chills crawl down her back as she struggled for air. She thought she was just hired muscle. Top of the top. Soldier in the crowd for a voluntary operation. After all, three kingdoms were subjugating a minor insurrection. But now, dangling in the air, gasping for breath, she realized that she was wrong: the military may be stupid—but it wasn’t lacking muscle—and she should’ve just listened. But it was too late for that.

Suddenly, there was a loud crack, and Zora found herself looking at Lemora’s wall—which was behind her. Her body stopped responding, and she fell to the ground with a thud before darkness clouded her eyes.

2

“Fucking idiot,” Grent said. “We try to play stupid? Someone stupid proves otherwise. What is the word? Paradox? It is paradox.”

“It’s no matter,” Eline said. “The ward? They strengthen. Then crystals run low. We just wait for timing.”

Another woman walked up, this one short—but not petite—with brown hair tied into a bun. Her name was Scala Mon, a swordmaster wearing obsidian armor.

“Are you not hot in that?” Grent asked.

“Why, yes~ I am.” Scala put her hands on her hips. “That’s what happens when you wear black during the summer.”

“Then why do it?” Eline scoffed.

“Be~cause you do~not de-cide what your strong~est enemy’s hide’s gonna look like,” Scala sassed. “If I could, I’d be walking around in yellow scales. But life’s cruel, I’m hot, and I’m running late. So can we hurry this up?”

“Yes, yes,” Grent said. “Who all is here?”

“Just the commanders and some rankers.” Scala looked at Zora’s dead body. “Guess you’ve been acquainted.”

“That meteor?” Eline said. “Her.”

“Pretty good for a kid,” Scala said grimly.

“Pretty idiotic for anyone,” Grent said.

“Fair….” Scala looked between the two of them. “Okay. I’ll relay the message: the commanders will flood the area. Rankers will stress the ward; mages will hold the barrier; and you two….” She shifted her gaze to both of them. “Well, you’re gonna kill all the troops.”

“How?” Grent said.

Scala shrugged and looked between them.

“We have command?” Eline said.

“Sure.” Scala turned and walked away, leaving them with a parting, “Just make it inspired.”

Eline turned to Grent. “What is she busy with?”

“Finding ‘inspiration,’” he said.

Eline snorted, and they shared a disgusted chuckle before she turned to General Bellac and then Zora. “Have soldiers pick ‘er up.” She looked at Zora. “Make example. And for the approval of Emanasa—tell soldiers that you have plan. If they think it’s suicide charge, they’ll treat it like one.”

General Bellac swallowed and nodded. “Right away.”

3

Commander Rimn met up with Commander Grekka after finishing his rounds. Rimn rubbed the sweat out of his neck like he was wearing a dog collar, and it was contagious. Grekka and nearby soldiers immediately did the same.

“Commander,” Rimn said.

“Commander,” Grekka said.

“Now that that’s out of the way…. Fuck it’s hot,” Rimn complained. “It’s been two hours, and Delina’s already bored.” It was only 10 a.m., and the war god already put a timer on the battle. If they didn’t finish it soon, they’d die of heat stroke.

Grekka turned to him. “How long’s she gonna be bored?”

Rimn shrugged. “Thirty minutes?”

Grekka blinked a few times and looked away. “What was that?”

“We’re drownin’ ‘em out, Commander.”

“Now?”

“Now.” Rimn looked at him. “We’re flooding that wall network. Then the Keetas are gonna kill ‘em when they wash out.” The Escaran troops were holding up in a maze of walls, but if Quell flooded the area with water, it would break the walls and wash out the soldiers. With a good calamity spell, even in deeper cells with unbroken walls, the area would fill up like a water glass and spill over the top, filling other cells.

“How?” Grekka asked, referring to how the Keetas would kill the soldiers.

“Does it matter? All that matters is that they’re on it.”

“True.”

“But….” Grekka looked at the ground. “We’re downhill.”

“Second ward,” Rimn said. “Far stronger, too. General Molan’s a fuckin’ sadist. Had us sacrifice a few hundred troops to make it seem like our barriers were weak.” In the first fifteen minutes of the battle, Lemora had sent a meteor shower raining down on Quell soldiers, and it shattered the barriers and the soldiers retreated out of range to give the impression that they were weak. But they were hiding their power. Now, if they flooded the area, the water would crash downhill after it caused havoc, but the ward would protect the soldiers and route it elsewhere.

“I see….” Grekka said. “Markon’s forces?”

“Doin’ the same.”

Grekka nodded a few times. “Get it ready. Then let’s cool down.”

Rimn stuck out his lower lip and nodded a few times himself. “Okay. Let’s fucking do it.”

4

Edico watched Quell and Markon’s notorious water mages getting ready with a grimace. Suddenly, a woman appeared before him. Her name was Ren, a brunette soldier who looked motherly. “General,” she said nervously, saluting.

“At ease,” Edico said. Then he turned to her. “There’s someone named Lord Richten. Boy. About 20. You know who he is, right?”

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

Ren nodded. “I’ve heard of him.”

“Good,” Edico said. “Anyway, the guards know where he is. I need you to get him out of his room. He won’t do it, but he needs to.”

“Why him?” Ren said solemnly.

“Because there’s something we’re probably going to need, and only he can do it.” He explained what they needed, and she smiled wryly when she understood the gravity of the task and why he was needed.

“Okay.” Ren swallowed and nodded. “I’ll do my best.”

5

Tim was curled into a ball on his bed when he got a knock on his door. He ignored it. Another knock. Ignored it. Third.

“Go away….” he whispered.

“Lord Richten,” Ren said.

“No.”

“Lord Richten.”

“I said no.”

“Just hear me out.”

“I SAID NO!”

“Lord Richten! Are you a child?”

Tim seized up.

“Are. You. A child?” Her voice was stern.

“No…” he groaned.

“Then stop acting like a child.”

“Then what should I act like? A soldier?”

“Someone who wants to live.”

“Look, I didn’t join the military, kay? Keepin’ people alive is your job. I don’t see you askin’ anyone else.”

“That’s because we need your power.”

“I didn’t ask for this power! So. Fuck. Off.”

“Yeah, you didn’t.” Ren’s voice stalled, and she leaned against the door with a thud. “It wasn’t fair, okay? Trust me—there’s millions who would’ve done anything for your power, but it went to a bunch of kids who didn’t care about our problems. The whole thing was backward.”

“Not. My. Problem.”

“No, it is your problem. Just like your power led to this revolution. This war. Your power is your problem, just like it’s our problem. But the truth is, your power, your music, your… everything… don’t matter….” Ren paused while he sobbed and let her body drop to the floor. Then she took a deep breath. “If you’re dead.”

Tim choked on his tears. “I-I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.”

“N-No.” He shook his head. “No. I… I can’t. I can’t even move right. Will had to fly me home. I-I wasn’t supposed to fight, but then we got trapped, and people… people started….” He started hyperventilating.

“Breathe.”

“L-Look. I can’t. I’m afraid.”

“Listen, Lord Richten. We don’t need you to fight. We don’t even need you to look at anyone.”

Tim sobbed.

“We just need you to charge up some crystals—so they don’t break.”

Tim choked on flem and rolled over further until his arm went numb. “I-I can’t even use magic anymore. I-I don’t even think I can play. My fingers… they’re too shakey. Oh God….”

6

Rimn and Grekka looked at each other and then at the maze of walls. “Well,” Rimn said. “It ain’t gonna flood itself.”

Grekka chuckled and shook his head toward the ground. Then he eyed the opening in the walls. “What you think’s gonna happen after we do this? We just flood it, and then they start comin’ out like a slide?” He was talking about the twenty thousand Escaran soldiers hidden behind the maze of walls.

“Over the top, through the walls, fuck it. It doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah, good point.”

“Ready?” Rimn placed his hands in the air, and mages surrounded them, chanting barrier spells. Five barriers locked over them, one right after the other, creating a nested doll of protection. Grekka nodded and put his hands up, too. Together, they chanted in unison.

"Sferíki fosforésce, to spíti ton astraí, ilumináva tis enigma pleúres. Dante, péma stin ámichos órasi, éklausen stin êcho tou kósmou. Tóra, antícho tes phýsis amfiétai, kymáton tis thlípseos pou rígnoun katá ton ákra tou chronou.”

As they chanted, galeforce winds cooled the area, and the skies turned gray as clouds funneled in.

“Calamity spell!” soldiers yelled in the distance. “Stop them!”

Meteors snapped together in the sky above them, and Escaran officers told soldiers where they were. Catapults shot rocks over their barrier, slamming into trees with force hard enough to split boulders. But Rimn and Grekka were hardened veterans. They didn’t get distracted; they just kept chanting, and the sky turned ominous as rain started pouring down, lightning struck, and thunder quaked in the distance. Soldiers ran past each other, and meteors struck down on the five barriers above them, shattering two of them, but more mages created three more barriers to replace them. They never stopped chanting. And when soldiers died all around them, screaming from losing limbs—they didn’t stir. Rimn and Grekka just chanted silently as Scala and the Keetas got into position, and the rankers prepared for the barriers.

7

Edico’s heart created a warbeat, matching his footsteps as he ran across the embattlements, yelling for the soldiers within the walls to prepare their barriers. “Expect overflow!” he yelled. “Over the top! Over the top!”

The soldiers activated small wards, networks of crystals within their individual cells, and barriers pulled up.

“Let’s go, soldiers!” Edico yelled. “Now or never.”

Meanwhile, a massive sphere of water formed over the battlefield like a meteor. Only it was the size of a hilltop and twice as deadly, sucking all the rain from the sky, leaving the top of the sphere a downpour and the ground bone dry. It was a surreal sight, and it only got worse by the second.

The same was happening on the south side of the wall (albeit far smaller in scope). The difference between the two balls of water proved the vast difference between mages and living legends.

They bought ‘em all, Edico thought about Quell’s rankers—and beyond. Every last one of them.

8

Scala was kissing a soldier in her private tent when the attack began. In a fit of frustration, she pushed the man away. “Already?” she mumbled. “It’s been a fucking hour!”

“What’s going on?” he asked worriedly. “I don’t hear anything.”

Scala stopped and looked at him in contempt. “Well that’s the problem, now ain’t it?” she asked. “There’s a fucking thunderstorm out there, lightnin’ fucking up everything, and that whine of water’s there. So why ain’t it hittin’ the ground?”

“U-Uh….”

“Don’t answer that question,” she said. “I didn’t promote you for your brains. Now help me with these straps.”

“Uh, yes, Commander,” he said. Halfway through, the meteors and catapults struck down in the distance, making the man stumble backward.

“See?” Scala asked. “Now hurry the fuck up!” He did, and then she ran out of the tent. She had barely reached the front lines when the water sphere crashed down on Lemora’s maze of walls like a meteorite, causing a calamitous flood that turned the entire world blue and white for a moment—

—and that’s when the horror began.

The water shattered through the barrier before the wall as if it were made of glass, but once it hit the rock walls—nothing happened. They didn’t crumble like sandcastles or send debris flying everywhere. The water just hit them and then rebounded—and that was just the start of their problems. Upon later reflection, there were two unknown aspects of the maze. The first was that it had a drain in the center but was otherwise closed off in a simple loop. So water that entered it either went down the drain or completed the loop and rebounded back. As a result, water immediately pushed back, killing momentum and sending a raging flood crashing back down on the soldiers. Naturally, Quell’s ward shot up, and the water hit it, routing the water like a massive boulder in a river—but the real problem was that drain. There were tunnels under the ground that led to where the Quell soldiers were standing. And when the calamity spell flooded the drain, the water went into those tunnels and moved downhill until it reached the soldiers. It was extremely fucking visual because the ground started buckling from the extreme pressure, and within a minute, all of the ground became spongy, and the soldiers started to sink. Then the ground broke, and hundreds of soldiers found themselves drowning in thick mud while others ran to avoid their fate. Once the water coming backhill hit these quagmires, it tunneled under Quell’s barriers and sent a thousand soldiers rolling downhill in a flood. It was devastating.

While Scala would normally chastise herself for not realizing that Lemora had probably planned for that attack—she didn’t. There was no way she could’ve known. That’s because people can’t prepare for that type of attack—they can’t. A six-layer calamity spell’s gonna break through everything but a six-layer (or higher) ward. That’s really all there was to it—so why the hell didn’t normal rock walls break? She watched the wards break, but normal stone walls didn’t get touched? Seriously? What the fuck!

Scala had to know what they were up against before they did anything else, so she rushed across the battlefield to the far west (the wall maze extended around the entire perimeter of Lemora’s wall, so most of it was dry and undefended). Mages shot at her as she approached the undefended wall, but it didn’t help. Scala Mon was the fastest in the middle kingdom, weaving through attacks with a mixture of gravity and acceleration magic. As she got close to one of the walls, she unsheathed her sword and wrapped it with a monstrous amount of aura, turning it sharp enough to cut through a mountain of steel and releasing a 10-meter horizontal arc of death. It crashed into the wall, kicking up a dust storm of rock and dust. To any other person, they would’ve thought that it cut through a dozen walls, but Scala’s heart skipped a beat, and she jumped back with acceleration magic to avoid a strike. Then she stared in disbelief as the dust settled—exposing a wall with a shallow ten-meter-long gash in it.

“What the fuck is this?” Scala whispered in shock.

Suddenly, a barrage of spells crashed down upon her.

9

Eline and Grent Keeta looked at each other and then back at the carnage playing out. Massive torrents of water went downhill, crashing into the ward. The ward held, simply pushing the water around the area, leading to a wall of water around them. Once the water became stable, Grent looked at the rock walls, which were still standing somehow.

“We’re not breaking that,” Grent said.

“No,” Eline said.

“You think they’re in there?” He wondered if the summonees were within Lemora’s walls.

“Not the fighters. Too flashy.”

“True.”

The summonees had rushed into Quell, throwing around massive spells trying to scare them, and another set did the same but actually captured and killed troops. If there were any summonees there, they would’ve attacked right after the flood to destroy the ward. If they did, it would’ve wiped out a thousand or more.

“But they’re on the way,” Eline said.

“Yeah. Razing is the only option.”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s do it.”

“Okay.” Eline activated an amplification circle tattooed on her forearm. “Stress it,” she ordered the rankers within listening distance.

The Keetas cut the amplification circle, lifted their hands, and started chanting. Then, all the water flooding the area rose from the ground again, turning into hundreds of thousands of ice spears as the soldiers cheered on.

10

Edico watched the ice spears form while meteors and fireballs developed in the sky. Within two minutes, the sky was blotted out by a wall of impending flying attacks. “Charge the ward!” he ordered over an amplification circle. “Push as far as it can get!”

Mages managing a wall of mana crystals powering the war flooded the crystals with mana, making them shine brightly, even from a distance in the summer sun.

Then, Quell’s attacks shot toward Edico in an apocalyptic flurry.