The three-man teams ran forward at the signal to attack. In each team there was a spear holder, a person holding the rope to which the spear was attached, and a third carrying a backpack and an extra rope. Each member also carried a water canteen on their hip, within easy reach.

As each team reached the edge of their platform, the lead launched their sticky spear at the fortification.

“Aim for the golems,” Cor said, calling out a reminder. The plan was twofold: if possible, hit the golems with the spears, then yank them off of the wall into the water. If that failed, or if the spear landed further down on the wall, then use the rope like a grapple, and scale the fortress that way.

Hudson’s call had not gone unnoticed by the enemy; the three members from S.E.C.T. showed their faces on the top of the central bridge tower. Hudson was ready to provide suppressive fire and began throwing his pile of rocks at their heads, missing for the most part, but forcing them to keep their heads down.

One throw nicked the edge of the battlement, causing it to ricochet into the face of a dodging Kenji. His angry face reappeared over the edge, a bleeding cut over his eye, and he began throwing stones back at Hudson.

“Cor, you’re up!” Hudson called.

“Already on it,” Cor replied, as he spun in a precise turn and heaved one of the bags that Hudson had carried up to the bridge high into the air. As it sailed up towards the tower, two of the golems in its path activated and immediately shot at the bag.

When the concentrated streams of air hit the bag, it disintegrated into a shower of dead cockroach guts and spider web bits, spreading across the entire top of the tower that Kenji and the others were standing on.

“Bullseye,” Cor smiled in satisfaction. “And… another one…” He proceeded to wind up and chuck two more bags of the dead cockroach parts they had scavenged from the previous tunnels.

They didn’t need to do much more than distract and prevent the S.E.C.T. members from interfering with the three man teams for the moment. Hudson took a second to look around and do a quick count.

Two teams on the right side and one on the left had managed to score hits on golems and pull them off of the walls. Unfortunately, the golems had not simply fallen into the water as they had hoped; instead, they discovered that the golems could fly by blasting air out of the bottoms of their stone arms and legs.

Hudson watched as one of the teams was pulled off of their platforms, all three clinging to the vine rope as the golem flew upward into the air. Two fell off into the water, while the third continued to hold on desperately.

“Anchor the ropes! Then reel them in!” Cor’s direction barked across the chaotic battlefield. The other four teams that had successfully latched onto golems immediately followed his orders. Several tried to tie the rope to the stone platforms they were on, weaving it in between the small pillars supporting the handrails. The ropes were made out of vines, however, and weren’t the best at holding knots.

One of the teams on the right had managed to fix the end of their rope to their stone platform with more spider webbing. An enterprising woman – Hudson vaguely recognized her as the one Vince knew from before the trial, the one who had been preoccupied with maseki – had stuffed sticky spider webbing into a backpack before the assault.

She now turned that backpack inside out, and had shoved it and the rope down onto the platform, gluing it all in place. She had also glued herself to the bridge in the process, but one of her teammates helped extract her. They very carefully poured the water from their canteen over the webbing where it touched her hands, forcing it to dissolve.

Normal water wouldn’t do that – but the water from the pool in Hudson’s tunnel that they had gathered in their canteens – that water had enough qi in it to dissolve the spider’s webbing easily.

There was a gap of at least two golems on the wall now, and soon could possibly be a gap of three. Another team on the right side had not hit their assigned golem with their sticky spear, but they had hit the wall, and one of their team had climbed out on the rope while the other two held it. That grasshopper was very close to lassoing a golem off of the wall with the extra vine she had brought with him.

She must have seen the golem that was now flying around erratically over the lake with a man dangling below it, desperately holding on for dear life, and decided that she wanted that experience for herself.

Hudson looked around at the chaos and made a decision. He could wait longer and hope for more golems out of commission, but he didn’t know what, if any, hidden cards the S.E.C.T. members had up their sleeves. “I’m going for it,” he called to Cor.

“Roger that,” Cor acknowledged. “Phase 2,” his voice echoed across the lake.

“Teams 5, 6, 7,” Cor yelled, addressing the teams on the left side, “Back it out. Team 4, make a hole! Team 1 – get out of the water, help Team 3 reel that marlin in. And Doug! For crying out loud, stop playing around with the thing! Climb up the daggone rope and knock it out of the sky.”

Hudson had discovered a few things while meditating and examining the surrounding area with his qi sense. The first was that yes, there were indeed patterns of wind infused with qi blowing up and around the platforms. The second and more surprising discovery had been difficult to understand through his qi sense, but he had eventually figured it out.

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Cor had thought that some of the randomly spaced stone columns between the platforms and the castle were illusions. What Hudon figured out was that all of the columns were illusions; or more accurately, all of the stone columns could be solid, or could be an illusion.

He wasn’t sure on the how, but he was certain that all of the stone columns had qi signatures that varied in intensity. Sometimes they were very faint, and sometimes they blazed solid in his perception. That discovery had been key to their planning – rather than try to use those sometimes solid, sometimes illusory stone columns, it was better to simply ignore them entirely.

Cor had described their strategy as “a foot in the door” plan. Force the door open by creating a gap on the wall that they could then blow open. The seven teams’ jobs were to open that gap, so that Hudson could jam his foot through it.

At Cor’s direction, Team 4, the group that had speared a golem and then anchored the end of their rope to the stone with spider webbing, retreated off of the platform to give space for Hudson to land. The platforms were arranged in a loose semicircle, and that platform was right next to Hudson’s central platform, making for an easy, fifteen foot jump.

The leap to the top of the battlements on the castle was much further, and a little bit higher. It was dangerous in the middle of a battle to close his eyes – one of the S.E.C.T. members might wipe the cockroach guts out of their eyes and take aim at him while he wasn’t paying attention – but he needed to listen for the tell-tale sounds of the wind whistling through the pillars of the bridges.

He ducked under the rope pulled taut by the golem trying to break itself free from this platform, and braced himself on the edge, aiming for a gap between golems on the fortress wall. The wind whistled under his feet, and without hesitation he poured as much power into his legs as possible, jumping out over the water.

He shot towards the castle, boosted by the updraft of wind. He thought he heard a shout from one of the S.E.C.T. members, but it was hard to hear through the roaring of wind in his ears. One of the golems – the one that Team 2 was desperately trying to lasso from a perch under it on the wall – glommed onto Hudson’s speedy approach and quickly fired a blast of wind.

The air pushed on Hudson’s side, causing him to spin on a vertical axis and knocking him off course. It wasn’t enough to keep him out of the castle, though, and he crash-landed roughly on top of the wall.

He scrambled to his feet just in time to see Kenji launch himself from the tower. A flying drop-kick landed on Hudson’s forearms, the power of the blow bruising his arms, breaking his block and landing on his shoulder, bowling him over backwards.

Hudson climbed to his feet for the second time in seconds, slightly disoriented. A sharply thrown rock pinged off of Kenji's torso, distracting him for a second, as Hudson got his bearings. He nodded gratefully in Cor’s direction, thankful for the assist.

“You’re not taking the castle,” Kenji spat out between clenched teeth. As Hudson finally got a good look at him, he noticed that one of his arms had a bit of flesh missing, and bits of rock and stone stuck on with spider webbing surrounding the wound. He also smelled absolutely terrible.

“Who wants it?” Hudson retorted. “We’re just trying to get past it.” Kenji hadn’t been much of a talker in their run-ins before, and he wasn’t now. Kenji just sneered in response and snapped forward with a sharp side kick, trying to knock Hudson off of the wall and into the water.

He dodged backwards, the wind from Kenji’s kick blowing past, and countered with a low kick, trying to sweep the leg. Kenji jumped over it easily, then struck out in mid-air at the golem that team 2 had finally gotten a lasso around. Kenji launched off the golem and directly at Hudson, while the golem flew off the battlement and over the lake.

Hudson was ready for Kenji’s flying kick, ducking his head to the side and his shoulder underneath the blow. He hooked his arm around Kenji’s leg as it went past, and then spun quickly, redirecting Kenji into the stone wall of the mountain behind the battlements.

Hudson had a faint moment of deja vu; he had fought Kenji before, weeks ago. It had taken him, Cor, and Vince all working together – and getting lucky – to fend him off.

Now… He wasn’t thinking about fighting Kenji; he didn’t have the time to. His body was simply reacting. All of the practice over the past month sparring with Clara, the relentless physical exercise from mining – it was finally paying off.

Kenji staggered forward again, leading with one of his preferred kicks. Hudson easily dodged it by swaying backwards, and immediately punished Kenji’s now-open stance with a straight kick to the thigh. His cultivation-enhanced strength knocked Kenji back two staggering steps.

Kenji attacked again, a blur of motion and aggression. He was strong – peak Qi Gathering stage, and had been trained in martial arts since birth. Hudson should be worried; a faint part of the back of his mind, the part that was still surprised at how Hudson’s body was reacting so quickly and precisely – that part was also surprised he wasn’t afraid.

Kenji’s attacks blurred in Hudson’s vision as his speed increased, the punches and kicks now coming at an impossible pace. Hudson was so focused on the moment that he didn’t even stop to wonder if or how Kenji was using an internal qigong technique.

He was impossibly fast, and yet… Kenji’s movements were slow. Not slow in a literal sense. He was predictable. The noise of the golems, the shouts of Cor and the grasshoppers – none of the chaos of the battle impinged on his consciousness as Hudson reacted solely to the opponent in front of him. Punches landed on blocks, kicks compressed the air in short bursts as Hudson dodged around them.

A faint realization tingled in the back of his mind and almost disrupted his flow state, but he let it go to focus on the moment.

Kenji’s frustration at failing to land a telling blow boiled over, and he pulled back slightly too far for a punch. As smoothly as water flowing downhill, Hudson moved into the opening and punched Kenji directly in the solar plexus.

Kenji staggered backwards several steps, having lost his breathing technique, and gasping for breath. Hudson came out of the trance he had been in, and was almost as surprised himself. What was it Suzume had told him in their spar? You can lose an arm and keep fighting, but if you lose your breath… you’ve lost.

“How….? You’re weak!” he gasped, after regaining some air in his lungs.

“Weak? Look who’s talking,” Hudson replied without thinking, and immediately blushed in embarrassment. He could not think of a more cringe-inducing thing to say.

He might have progressed very far in his fighting ability, but Cor was right. He really needed to work on his trash-talking.