It looked like the end of the world, and he had to wait. It wasn’t the end. It wasn’t even the end of the beginning.

The Jeon Army never thought it could win an open field battle, so they didn’t bother trying. They dug into the mountains and built bunkers in the forests, bastions where resupply could be delivered by tunneling demons or airlifted in by spell birds and summons. From there, they deployed summoned angels and demons, sent out swarms of ghosts, sent out waves of talisman machines to create the numbers they lacked.

More quietly, on the forest floor, tiny golems scattered and buried themselves. Thousands, then tens of thousands of them, coating roads, paths… likely invasion routes. Just waiting for someone to push in. Minefields crawled into place, then vanished beneath the earth. They would wait there for however long it took. Long after the war ended, probably. Someone would come by someday.

The Onis Army knew exactly what they were doing, of course. They were doing the same damn thing on their side. But since they also had roughly twenty times the soldiers under arms, they had the luxury of offensive operations. They didn’t feel like letting Jeon dig in any more than it already had.

Flights of angels- vaguely human heads born aloft by a pair of wings, swept in front of massed conscripts. They screamed at the defending summons, and the sound of their voices shattered air and matter alike. Balefire skewers punched through eyes and mouths in reply, arcane wards reflecting the noise back and down into the trailing conscripts. The air war was only getting started.

It was all only getting started. The conscripts pushed in behind the angels, sweeping for mines the hard way. Discovering that, even if you trained for it, nobody is really ready for watching your squadmate explode, turn into a blood portal to Hell, and then having to fight the swarms of fire demons coming to harvest the rest of your squad.

Maybe the regulars were better used to it. The conscripts were barely eighteen. Some younger. All expecting to be directing traffic somewhere, or standing at a border post. Maybe filling in a pothole on a base, if they were technically inclined.

Not screaming and spraying their needler around until the magazine emptied, trying to stop the billion demonic grasshoppers from sweeping over their position. Not puking when they realized that they had hollowed out the skull of a kid that looked just like them with an accidentally well placed round. The patriotic recordings had promised they would feel pride and resolve.

The conscripts felt they had no choice. They had to obey their orders. Standing next to their officers were the political officers, watching intently for any sign of defeatism, cowardice, shirking. Eager to make the first example. And behind them were the regulars, the career soldiers. They weren’t even watching the slaughter. They were eating big meals and triple checking their equipment. Making sure they were in their best condition for the fight to come.

Whether it was putting down the nation’s enemies, or deserting conscripts, the regulars would be ready. The latter was less pleasant, but infinitely safer. They got paid the same either way. This was the job. It wasn’t a nice job, but it was a respectable one. Everyone’s got to eat.

Towering above it all was the Great White Mountain. Spells, summons, talismans, all struck at it and either bounced off the wards, or simply died. It wasn’t passively taking a beating either. The Mountain was an active volcano. There was an unlimited supply of heat and molten rock to work with.

The air war around the Mountain was one sided. In favor of the Mountain. Ten thousand summoned demons came? They were met by a hundred thousand finger long basalt spikes, each traveling faster than sound, each enchanted with runes and Names of terrible authority.

Angels fared no better. State of the art Starbrite magical technology was custom enchanting each needle before it left the spell array. Industrial production lines fed banishments etched in basalt harvested from the planet’s mantle down the throats of angels.

Truth couldn’t see what was happening on the ground. He knew the kind of beastcrafted horrors Starbrite had installed. Nothing human had reached them yet, he suspected. Nor did he think any of the summons or golems would manage much. Not the cheap, high volume ones. Later, when the big summons came out, that would change things.

So he just lay on his tree branch, watching the war he triggered. He tried to remind himself he didn’t create this situation. He didn’t put the soldiers here. He didn’t set up the contingencies. He didn’t spend years perfecting the supply trains, testing equipment, testing doctrine, perfecting indoctrination, spreading propaganda, creating the laws and taxes that supported all this. He just instigated. He was the spark that fell on all the heaped up explosives.

It wasn’t a comfort. He never was good at lying to himself. He was a rat feeding on his fellow rats, same as them. For all his introspection, for all the things he had learned, he was still in the Slum. He still hadn’t stood up. Still didn’t know how to live as a man in the “real” world.

So he lay there and watched. He didn’t stir from the branch for a full day. He saw endless tiny shifts, lives spent for “crucial” gains or protecting retreats and it all amounted to exactly nothing. The lines remained roughly where they were the day before. There were, if anything, more soldiers and materials gathered. And the Mountain was untouched. Unstained by the squabbling rabble beneath it.

A few thousand rats had died, hard to say how many exactly, but they were no one of significance. What were the slums for, if not this? An attitude and ethos firmly shared by both Jeon and Onis. “We fed you and bred you and taught you. Now go die, that your bodies may be a soft carpet for the feet of your betters.”

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Their betters in this case weren’t even that much better. The real “betters” would be in the air, so high up, you couldn’t see the rats.

Truth really didn’t have a sense of the rhythm of battles on this scale. His fights were up close and personal, involving at most twenty or so people. He had been in some bigger fights, but, again, nothing on this scale. Nothing remotely on this scale. And he could only guess based on what he was seeing from his tree branch.

Ultimately, the course of the battle, the whole war, really, didn’t matter. What mattered was getting into the mountain. And it seemed that someone in Onis firmly agreed with him on that.

As the sun set into the west, the sky dimmed around it. The sun itself seemed to brighten, but its light no longer filled the sky. It was condensed into a single searing drop. There was a moment of quiet. As though the whole world was holding its breath. Truth held his breath. The conscripts didn’t, he could see the trees shaking as they ran for their lives away from the mountain.

The sundrop fell on the mountain… and was caught in a teacup. Truth’s eyes were good enough to see the old man. Everyone’s ears were good enough to hear him.

“Couldn’t sit still any longer, eh Feng?” The old man had simply stuck out his cup and caught the drop that should have melted the side of the mountain. There were spells there, more sensed than seen. Dense networks of meaning, of implication, built into his every gesture. He was one of the true elites of the world. Yet, to Truth, there was something hollow about him.

“You never did know how to brew a decent cup. Here, try mine.” The old man flicked out the teacup, sending the searing drop of plasma back to the west. As it passed, it expanded. Trees too close to the heat were ash and vapor in less than a second. Those a little further away exploded as the water inside them flashed into steam, the flying splinters bursting into flame and setting fires as they went.

The droplet hit something solid. Networks of spells flared into light- then burst, shattering the air around them. He couldn’t hear the screams, but Truth knew they were there. Whatever had just been struck was gone.

This was one of the C-Suite. Tier Eight. Starbrite Tier Eight. Every spell, every scrap of technique or wisdom the System had, was at his disposal. Because, at this point, the difference between him and the System Astrological was strictly biological.

The very first time I see the System Astrologica make a move in person, it catches the sun in a teacup and slaughters an army of combat mages with a single blow. He was beyond horror now, just watching numbly as beings he could barely comprehend warred above him.

“Bullying juniors was all you were ever good for, Park. Come, let’s see if your chin is still made of glass.” A basso voice rumbled out from where the sundrop struck. The illusion had passed, the sun was still setting in the west. Truth had to squint to see a man in uniform standing on the back of an enormous flying serpent.

“Did you get mugged? Who shoved you in the monkey suit? Clench your teeth, Feng. I’ll fix that face of yours for free, on account of our old acquaintance.” The man on the mountain stowed his tea cup and summoned a fire bird with a casual wave. He hopped on its back and the two flew up into the atmosphere. Truth could only see the shattering bursts of color. He could feel the air shake with the thunder of their moves. This was not a fight he could be a part of.

Onis wasn’t about to let their loss go unavenged. Batteries of spells opened up, launching acid, fire, stone, the obliterating light of Heaven and the consuming darkness of Hell. Barrages of magic, smashing against the magical protection of the mountain.

It’s time to move. Truth felt the moment tug on him, and he went with it. He wasn’t close to where he originally broke in, but that was fine. He was going to be moving fast, and nobody was going to be looking at him.

He was like a drifting shadow among swaying shadows- the reddish setting sun throwing everything into deep shade. The trees writhing and flinching as their quiet home was torn apart by brutal magic. There were others moving through the woods. Truth could see them, sometimes, or feel them more often. Other hunters, other specialists looking to crack their way in. He wondered how they held up against the many-eyed monsters that guarded the gate.

It turned out… middlingly.

There were a few blazes of harsh white that dotted the mountainside. You could hear the thunderclap displacement of air even with the barrage overhead. He was close enough to one that he felt the get of superheated air rush past him. Carrying the smell of something terrible. Something so foul, so sickening, you would never be quite right again. Seemed promising. He ran towards the boom.

There weren’t many bodies. Nor many bones. The stones were still glowing red hot, some still dripping and pooling where they had been melted. Sand and stone turned to glass. Nothing human could have survived. Nothing human did. There was a spark of divine light, flickering but holding on, trying to finish off the thing guarding the gate. Whatever the thing was, it was almost dead. Only “almost.”

The spark let out a trilling noise. Calling for help, Truth knew. The Tongue responded. He had to kill this thing. So he called the blade to hand and drew upon every scrap of strength in him. Channeling all the horror of what he had seen and done into a two handed blow.

Truth cut that monstrous thing in half, and felt the alien monster scream in death. The Tongue and the divine spark were screaming too- in joy.

Truth felt the twisting bolus of energy that had driven the monstrous thing. Writhing. Clawing at him. He didn’t want to imagine what would happen if it got in. His grin was a bloody thing. Instead, he grabbed the twisting, hateful mass and looked at the spark.

“Help me burn this thing up. I have a use for it.”

The spark was only too happy to help. Truth cast Incisive. The spark turned the sickening energy into something purer. Usable. It followed his intention, using its own magic to support Truth’s will. Above the mountain an illusion rose. A green tiger rose, with its paw on the mountaintop. Its eyes burned with wisdom, its face filled with ferocity and power. From out of its fanged maw, a shout echoed across the battlefield.

“FOR JEON! JEON AND VICTORY!”

And with that, Truth vanished into the mountain. The Prince was here. Time to save the Princess. Damn fool that he was.