--- Victor Cale / Cilia Ulein ---

Victor Cale knew that the adventurers in front of him were not his real enemy.

His true opponent was Tonos. Team Nundru and team Delta were just the puppets the god chose to use for this particular plot of his.

With the exception of Rania Mortal, of course. Victor was looking forward to the recordings this facility was taking of their fight. Hopefully they would finally reveal the truth about her. Whatever was pulling her strings was important enough that his own alternate versions had asked him to investigate. It hurt his pride a little to be delegated to a task like this, but he understood well the importance of being able to coordinate with variations of yourself.

It was a concept so strange that most mortals never even considered it could be an issue, but for him it had been a fact of life for a long time, ever since the first time that he reincarnated in the body of a man whose existing soul was hostile to the tribe his previous incarnation belonged to. The idea of turning against the thing you had spent your previous life building was pure madness, but ignoring the wishes of a new host completely was anathema as well.

Cilia had worked out a system around such situations long ago, and the Ulein Houses she founded to manage international politics played a big part of it.

His lieutenant had almost reached Rania, and team Delta had predictably fallen into a defensive stance around her. Meanwhile, Victor himself had circled the room in the opposite direction, to engage the rest of team Nundru.

He allowed lightning to arc from his glove to the metal walls. The act was completely unnecessary and a pointless waste of mana, but it looked dramatic. With the attention of both Tonos and the spirits so firmly fixed on this fight, it was easily worth the small cost in mana. It was ironic, but the professionalism Atrog kept insisting on likely hampered his team's capabilities. Neither Tonos nor the spirits cared for efficiency. They cared for drama and appearances.

Victor did not consider himself the villain here, but he had long since given up on trying to convince Tonos of this fact. The gods had no true concept of good and evil, only a poor simulacrum of it. The smart course of action was simply to lean into it. If Tonos wanted him to be a villain, then a villain he would be. Just not the kind that lost his first encounter with the heroes. Nor the second, or the third.

Cilia Ulein had been a bard once, and understood stories well. This knowledge carried over to him, as the current host.

As he made his way across the room, he was careful to keep a safe distance from one particular strange device. He would have to keep an eye on it throughout the fight.

It was an old artifact, and they never found out who originally built it, only that it interacted with the divine. Transcendence Laboratories had been studying it when the Cataclysm happened. He recognized a Plot Device when he saw one, so he made sure to put it in this room. If he had not, then team Nundru would almost certainly have stumbled on it anyway before they got here. Better to dangle it in front of the heroes as a mystery to figure out later, than risk that they could somehow use it as a powerup before their fight.

He was very glad that he had had the foresight to only set it up after all other preparations to deal with team Nundru were completed. Their early arrival was unexpected, and he still didn't know how they managed to get here without his people noticing. However, it would have been narratively inappropriate for them to get here before it was set up. Had he set up the device earlier, they might have appeared earlier as well.

His lieutenant's earth elementals reached team Delta and engaged them in melee. She made sure to keep her summons between herself and her enemies, and used magic to restore any damage they suffered. Their fight was symmetrical, as Lynn likewise stood behind Pymion and Norsh, and channeled her magic to cure their wounds.

That part of the plan was working as intended. Victor was certain their fight would continue like this, with the occasional back and forth, until it became dramatically appropriate for them to break the stalemate.

"*Focus on Cilia. Let team Delta handle their own fight, we can coordinate better this way.*" Atrog said.

Victor was able to listen in on their silent telepathic communication. It was one of the few benefits he had derived from the old artifact that stood in this room. Telepathy was exceedingly rare, so this was certainly not a coincidence.

Their telepathic communication made team Nundru unnerving to watch. They did not talk to each other, they just moved as a group and coordinated silently, without ever saying a word. This was not typical heroic behavior. Neither was their professionalism, for that matter. There was no small talk, and no banter. Tonos was clearly acting out of the ordinary here, by using a group such as this as his tool.

Really, the worst offender there was Dov. She had started screeching as soon as the door opened. If they were fighting for an actual audience of mortals instead of an all-seeing god, then her constant screaming would have made his dramatic one-liners too difficult to hear. It should be clear to them that Victor was not going to be affected by her screams, so why keep it up when that risked angering the god of stories? And yet, Tonos had picked this group to fight him anyway.

The sheer novelty of this behavior was actually a small cause of concern for Victor. When you had millennia of experience to draw on and knew how to counter every move, then the things you didn't see coming were automatically much more worrying than anything else. The god of stories was not known for his creativity.

Before he clashed with Atrog and Dov in melee, Victor needed to set things up for his later victory. Balron was nigh-indestructible, with a vast reserve of mana. His attacks were predictable and easily dealt with, but a battle of attrition against him would be dangerous. Better to nip that in the bud.

Hilariously, the old dwarf was using shield technology invented by the Cale corporation, his own invention. Unfortunately, he lived up to his reputation: The backdoors Victor had built into the shield arrays were not responding. He must have disabled them.

But that was no major obstacle. Casting one of his most powerful spells would normally be narratively inappropriate this early in a fight, but a mana drain did not look flashy. Victor made the gesture, and felt his mana reserves shrink dramatically as the spell took effect on Balron. There was no outside indication that he had done anything particularly important, but Balron would be rapidly running out of mana now. Victor would simply wait for him to tire himself out and ignore and evade his telekinetic attacks until then.

Then, he engaged Atrog in melee, using only his armored fists.

He had yet to draw his weapons.

This too, was intentional. It made it very clear that he was toying with them.

He was going to deliver a curbstomp battle to the "heroes" that would act as a wakeup call for them. His plan was to leave them alive but broken. He had even arranged a convenient and plausible way for them to escape: The hole in the middle of the room, which led to the sewers.

It served no real purpose. He had it excavated specifically so that someone could dramatically fall into it.

Of course, after this fight was over he would go back to acting rationally. Just because he was dangling a plotline in front of Tonos' face right now didn't mean that he couldn't deviate from it later. In the long run, he was going to kill Tonos anyway. But there was no reason not to exploit how easily that god could be manipulated until then. Well, easily for him, at least.

The hole in the middle of the room also served as a backup escape route for himself in case he miscalculated. Tonos would keep him alive if he escaped through it. Just because Cilia Ulein could come back from the dead didn't mean that Victor, her current host, enjoyed dying. Furthermore, even without his personal interest in staying alive, the part of his personality that was Cilia also did not want him to die. Cilia borrowed both body and mind from her host, and Victor Cale was both smart and strong. It would be a waste to die.

The question of identity was quite strange for Victor Cale. It was unclear where he ended and Cilia Ulein began. What race and gender was appropriate to use for such a gestalt entity? The language Common did not allow for such subtlety. This was just one of many ways in which the language restricted expression and cultural development.

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He remembered when Cilia was a Historian of Secrets in one of her many lives, and learned the truth about why Common was designed the way it was. Her blood had run cold at the time, and she had vowed to find a better solution.

Now he and all the other versions of Cilia that they had made contact with were working towards this goal, despite its great cost. The phrase might be cliche, but sometimes the ends really did justify the means.

Atrog struck with his sword, and Victor dodged out of the way. Dov attempted a mental assault against him, but he simply shunted it off into a different part of his brain. Let another part of Cilia Ulein deal with the headache while he was busy fighting.

Then Dov joined Atrog in melee, and they attacked together.

Not only was he fighting two experienced combatants in melee, but he also had to dodge the arrows and telekinetic debris that Rania and Balron kept launching at him. Then Galanys cast a spell to cover the ground beneath his feet in grease, and he almost slipped.

Together the five of them actually managed to pose a challenge for him, in his current state.

That wouldn't do. His victory would need to appear effortless, or else the narrative would not be on his side.

And so he broke with millennia old convention, and drew on more of Cilia's skills.

His movements immediately became more efficient, and it no longer took effort for him to handle both of them, as he felt the instincts of ancient warriors guide his body.

He made sure to keep Atrog and Dov between himself and the rest of their team, as he continued to dodge Balron's telekinetic assaults, Rania's arrows, and Galanys' spells.

Galanys’ spells were weak and easy to dodge. But they were also strange and unexpected. He would have to prioritize taking her out soon. She was blessed by Unir, the god of creativity, and giving such a person too much time to work was a recipe for disaster.

After a short while, he noticed Balron's rat familiar approach him, trying to deliver some kind of magic item to him. He did not know what the purpose of this was, but that very fact made it infinitely more dangerous than the known quantities before him.

He diverted some of his attention to kill the familiar before it could deliver its payload.

Atrog and Dov capitalized on this immediately. He had a choice between blocking Atrog's divinely empowered blade, or Dov's biomantically enhanced fist. He blocked the former with his vambrace, as it looked like the paladin put quite a substantial amount of force behind that strike.

Dov hit him in the sternum. As the force of the blow rocked him in his armor, he knew that he was going to need healing for this after the fight.

Good.

Both Whiskers and Dov had now done one mildly impressive thing. His spies reported that this was a trope Rania believed in, and he was banking on getting good data about this from the measurement devices and divination spells in this facility.

It was time to deal with the wildcard before she did something dangerous.

He stopped holding back a little more, and slipped past both of his opponents.

Galanys' eyes widened in shock, but he left her no time to react. He grabbed both of her hands with his own, and squeezed. His mechanical gauntlets were immensely strong, and her hands made a disgusting squelching sound as he broke most of the bones in them.

She screamed, and looked in horror and shock at the ruins of her hands, even as he grabbed her and threw her at Dov and Atrog.

With how many healers they had, these injuries were easily survivable, but they would prevent her from casting and possibly ruining his plans. He gave it even odds that she would still manage to do something unexpected regardless, but this greatly reduced the risk she posed as an unknown. It was not like his plans were so fragile that they could be thwarted by just a single unexpected event, anyway.

Despite this, he successfully kept himself from thinking "how dangerous could she possibly be now?", because he knew quite well that Tonos would take that as a challenge.

"I am disappointed. You need to learn to protect your mages better." He chided them out loud.

It was important for narrative purposes to maintain his persona as an aloof monster who was toying with them for unknown and mysterious reasons.

With Galanys crippled, one of two unknowns were taken care of. Rania was the much greater unknown, but attacking her directly this early in the fight would be counterproductive. Even in the best case, it would ruin the sensor readings.

It was better to wait for his lieutenant to be defeated by Rania's sidekicks first, for that was the inevitable conclusion of their fight.

He had ordered his subordinate to kill Rania, knowing that she would fail. It served to attract the attention of team Delta, and to buy time to gather data.

He had originally considered killing Rania's sidekicks for narrative reasons, but decided that it was too likely to backfire. This approach solved several problems at once.

They would inevitably defeat her, since Tonos would want to establish them as competent adventurers in their own right. But once that was done, it would be trivial for him to knock out all of team Delta, since their narrative purpose at that point would be served, and their swift defeat at his hands would serve to highlight how much stronger team Nundru was, even if they were losing to him.

He heard his lieutenant cry out in alarm.

She was being attacked by her own summons!

"Sir, the earth elementals have turned against me. They have accepted the enemy's pet rock as their leader." She said.

Impressive. In all her millennia, Cilia Ulein had never heard that particular phrase before.

Fortunately his lieutenant was competent. She dismissed the traitorous summons, and started to cast another spell while running away from team Delta.

Rania took that opportunity to switch targets. Atrog and Dov still prevented her from getting a clean shot against Victor himself, but his lieutenant was now unprotected.

Rania's arrow flew unerringly towards his lieutenant, only to swerve out of the way at the last moment.

He had thought his spies were exaggerating when they talked about her Arrows of Bad Guy Slaying, but this was quite funny to watch.

It was less fun that the arrows fired in his own direction had kept true to their path. Whatever mechanism they used to determine morality apparently did not agree with him. Not that it mattered. Cilia Ulein's reasoning was far better than the inhuman viewpoints of the gods. Designating a person as objectively Good or Evil was so simplistic a worldview, it was practically a joke.

Several holes opened up in reality as a group of Bykoliths materialized between his lieutenant and team Delta. Demons the size of humans, armed with exceedingly ornate weapons and armor.

After humanoids invented capitalism, the devils and demons quickly adopted the concept, and the Bykoliths were the result. They were demons of greed. Summoning them cost little mana, but required costly material sacrifices. An excellent choice when you were rich, as he was.

"Whoever kills her gets this as payment!" Lynn shouted at the demons. She was pointing at his lieutenant, while holding a bottle of alcohol in her hands.

The demons hesitated.

He could hardly believe it. The demons stopped moving, as if it took time for them to process what was being offered to them.

Then they turned around as one and attacked his lieutenant with a ferocity he had rarely seen in their kind before.

What an odd turn of events, that they would manage to take control of her summons twice. What was in that bottle that could be worth more than the gold he sacrificed for the summoning?

This wouldn't do. The demons had been instructed to kill his lieutenant, and that wasn't supposed to happen. She was supposed to lose, but not to die.

"That's quite enough of that. You have proven your worth, but you are overstepping." He said to team Delta.

He activated a strength booster in his armor's legs, and vaulted over the hole in the middle of the room.

He did an unnecessary but visually impressive flip during his jump as he finally drew his sword from its scabbard in mid flight.

After landing, he brandished his weapon and waited for a few seconds for dramatic effect. Let everyone realize that he had drawn his weapon, and was no longer playing around.

Paradoxically, this approach was much safer than going to help his lieutenant immediately. His flair added weight to his actions in the eyes of Tonos.

He struck five times, and as many demons dropped dead where they stood.

"We will discuss your performance later." He spoke towards his lieutenant as she lay on the ground. Unmoving, battered and bleeding, but alive.

As expected.

It had been a lot of work to ensure that Tonos would prefer her to be knocked out rather than killed. There were enough dangling plotlines in place that the god would almost certainly turn her into a recurring villain.

Her summoning was easy to empower with external sources, so with only a little more effort he would be able to turn her into a threat for both team Delta and team Nundru. That would allow him to turn her into an intermediate villain with her own narrative arc, which would keep them off his back. By the time they managed to defeat her and the narrative focused on him again, his plans should have progressed far enough that it would be irrelevant.

He had even managed to keep her identity a secret. Team Nundru knew her, but her helmet muffled her voice and prevented them from recognizing her.

This meant that there could be a big dramatic moment when her identity as the tiefling Maru would finally be revealed. She and Atrog had gone on a date once. It was like catnip for Tonos.

And while all that was going on, there would be plenty of opportunity to collect data about the strange being that called itself Rania, without putting himself in danger.

"You have served your purpose testing my lieutenant, but your presence here is no longer necessary. You did well, so I will be merciful." He told team Delta.

Then he moved.

Seconds later, all of team Delta were on the ground, bleeding and unconscious, but alive.

That had been much easier than it should have been, if skill and power were all that mattered here. But Tonos no longer saw a purpose in team Delta except to use their swift defeat as a way to emphasize Cilia's own overwhelming power. Just as predicted.

"That was an excellent warmup. Well done." He told team Nundru.

Atrog and Dov stood against him, both of them injured and exhausted.

Balron's continuous telekinetic assault had grown weaker over time as Victor's mana drain did its work.

Galanys was in shock. She was conscious, and Atrog had stopped the bleeding with his healing magic while Victor was busy with team Delta, but she looked in no condition to fight.

Rania kept firing arrows at him, but he found it easy to parry them. The anomaly was an excellent archer, but Cilia was on another level.

"*You guys! This is not going as I hoped!*" He heard Rania say as he listened in on their telepathic communication.

"*I think now would be a great time to get a Second Wind, right? Can we get a Second Wind, please?*" She asked hopefully.

The others did not answer her.