The snow men began running toward us from the sides as we ran through the center of their army, but they weren't quick enough to catch up to us. Conor and Jenny were constantly picking them off as we went as well.

We had just made it out the other side of the army when Stalia sent an emergency ping that dropped the war room simulation to its fastest speed, blacking out all of the incoming data from our senses. There were three bright red trajectories lit up in the simulation, one each aimed at my head and heart, and the third aimed at Ursula's head.

"My lord, the shots are coming in from less than twenty meters away," Stalia said. "You have four one hundredths of a second to dodge."

Nearly no time at all, in other words. I could move myself out of the critical path of the shards if I used most of the energy in my muscles. I would still be hit but it wouldn't take out anything important. Ursula, on the other hand, didn't have my fast twitch muscles. The only good news was that the shots were coming from behind and to the side, so dodging wouldn't put anyone else in the line of fire.

"You can't dodge it," I said.

"No, my lord," Ursula said, looking panicked.

Interesting, I didn't think we could feel panic when we were running on just our digital side.

"Don't worry so much," I said. "You'll be fine. This is exactly why I made you all Demi-AI, I can fix you being shot in the head."

"Jenny and I can take out all three marksmen," Conor said. "They're close enough that they will be gone before they can get a second shot off."

I nodded. "Your platform is going to be falling, so account for that," I said. "Let's get to it."

I raised the speed of the simulation up slowly, forcing the muscles of my body to fire all at once to twist myself to the side. I got up to one twentieth of normal time when the two shards hit me, both going right through my armour. The first hit above my right eye, cutting along the side of my skull and taking off the top third of my right ear. The second cut through the right side of my chest and through the back of my right arm.

Ursula was shot between her eyes and her consciousness left her body as her brains left through the large hole in the back of her head.

I raised the simulation speed back up to normal and used my power to stop my bleeding as much as I could. Conor and Jenny had both pushed off of the platform, twisting to make shots back into the crowd of snow men. Two shots from each and then they unequipped their bows into their inventory and rolled backwards to come back to their feet to run with us. Stalia didn't alert us to any new shots, so they had succeeded in taking out the ambushing marksmen.

Taur let out a bellowing roar of grief, grabbing Ursula's body as he went by it and pushing it through the portal to the army room where Clay took it.

"I'm fine, Taur," Ursula said from her transparent representation in the war simulation room. "I'm still right here watching over you. Our lord will fix me."

"I will," I said. "Stalia, Taur, keep heading west. Stalia take the wisp and keep all three of you safe. Conor, Jenny, follow me back into the army room, they will make better time with just the two of them out here."

I turned and jumped into the portal that Taur was carrying and the two leprechauns followed. Clay had Ursula's body propped against a wall and was looking frustrated.

I began a scan of Ursula's body, preparing for her repair.

"What's the matter?" I asked Clay.

"I can't use my healing in this room," Clay said. "If this is going to be a place that we fall back to then I need to be able to heal. You were injured as well, and I am completely ineffective."

"I hear you," I said. "I will set it up to move half of the room to a location in the Fortress, and in the short term I will get you a portal to a safe location so you can work."

"My lord," Ursula said. "You are meaning to heal my body now?"

"I am," I said. "Though 'repair' is the more accurate term."

"Would it be possible to get some upgrades at the same time?" Ursula asked. "If I could move like you did then I would be able to avoid dying."

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"Well, you couldn't have the same upgrades as I'm using," I said. "They only work because I can manage the energy in my muscles directly with my power. If you can come up with modifications to your model that you would like then I can upgrade you to them later. It isn't limited to when you die, though it will hurt as much as when you were converted. As will your resurrection when it takes hold."

Ursula nodded and her digital representation disappeared. My scan of her finished a few seconds later, nearly her entire brain was gone. I triggered the repair program to copy from the scan I had of her from when I made her a Demi-AI and prepared to settle in to rebuild the micro-portals that went to her Mind Link. The repair program zipped past the first thousand micro-portals without pausing for me, and I checked through them to find that they'd reconnected exactly how they were supposed to.

Because it was rebuilding from a perfectly detailed model it seemed as though it didn't need my input, the portals counted as already existing. Which was great, as it left me free to focus on other things like replenishing the energy that Taur and Stalia were using in their sprint, and keeping the wisp at freezing temperatures.

It was only ten seconds later when we hit a slight snag.

"My lord," Stalia said. "We're being phased out of the winter realm again."

I had the God Banishment ward still in my hand, so I made my way to the portal back into the winter realm. The program I had repairing Ursula continued to run without issue as I moved away from her.

I stuck the God Banishment ward through the portal and Taur and Stalia immediately stopped being phased out. Stalia approached the portal while they were running and took it from me. They were dodging shots from marksmen every second coming from different directions as the Instructor teleported them, but they were coming in patterns that Stalia was easily able to predict.

Three minutes later Ursula was fully repaired and her consciousness shared itself over the Mind Link. While Ursula was being repaired I was moving a thread portal to Maaata's room on the ward room floor and the exit to the army room.

With Ursula back I stepped through to find Maaata sitting at her mana crystal table working over an arrow, five already set to the side. Clay followed me through and sent me a message to remove my armour, which I did. Maaata was completely engrossed in her work, so I cleared my throat to get her attention, which made her jump.

"My lord, you're here," Maaata said, squinting at me. "You look awful."

I invited Clay to my local surroundings simulation and requested his inputs so I could see from his perspective. I had to agree, I did look awful. Blood covered the entire right side of my head, down my chest, and my right arm. Clay could see into my lung from the hole in my chest.

I hadn't been paying much attention to it, but my right arm was completely useless and my right lung was full of blood. The patching that I was doing with my power was barely keeping me from bleeding out.

Clay put his hand on my chest and began healing me, and I began bleeding again as I switched my power over from holding my blood in to refreshing the energy that the healing was taking from my body. After a few seconds I stopped him, as the healing was just forming heavy scar tissue, the severity being too much for his healing to repair properly.

"We have time to do this the long way," I said. "So I'm going to take a minute to repair myself. I'll be with you after that."

I pulled up the model of myself that I had and triggered the repair program in serial mode, estimated seventy six seconds repair time.

I came to being held by Clay. Serial repairs were much preferred. I nodded my thanks to Clay and stood up. My hands felt... Odd. They looked the same as I examined them, the same nails. Perhaps my fingers were thicker. I flexed them and three centimeter long wickedly curved claws slid out from the tips. I had forgotten I'd added that to my model.

Maaata had gone back to working on her arrows while I repaired myself.

"Okay, I'm back," I said. "I need you to enchant our armour to withstand enchanted weapons. It's been completely useless so far at stopping anything but shrapnel."

"My lord," Maaata said. "It would take me some time to design the enchantments. Maybe a day for a basic enchantment."

"We need it done now," I said.

I held up a hand to stop her from saying it wasn't possible.

"What would your opinion be on your becoming a Demi-AI?" I asked.

"What is a Demi-AI?" Maaata asked.

"Immortality, unlimited time to work on projects, vastly improved enchanting ability, and direct access to the Fortress," I said. "At the cost of a substantial amount of pain in the conversion process. It costs fifteen Fortress Coins from the Fortress Shop."

"And you want me to become one?" Maaata asked.

"I wouldn't force you into it," I said. "But for every minute out here at normal time a Demi-AI has the option of taking a week at the fastest time."

"I would be honoured, my lord," Maaata said. "I only have three Fortress Coins, though. I've been using them to buy mana crystals to work with."

"I will make you a Demi-AI in return for enchanting thirteen sets of armour," I said. "In addition you will be paid one Fortress Coin per set of armour enchanted."

Maaata nodded and I sank my power into her building a detailed scan of her body, having already adapted her to my power what felt like weeks ago. I designed the Mind Link connection into her model and gave her my pre-healing speech and at her second nod I triggered the body modification program, slowing down my perception of time to do all of the micro-portals.

I caught her as her consciousness shared to her digital platform and invited her to the common simulation, sending her the Demi-AI primer. I left her with Chantelle in a new simulation with the models for the different sets of armour and returned to normal time. I queued up spare sets of armour for Taur and Stalia that Maaata could enchant first, as they were using theirs out in the field.

Clay and I were headed back to the army room when Stalia sent me a ping to come to the war room simulation. It wasn't urgent, but I still wasted no time moving over and matching the maxed out simulation speed there.

"My lord, we have arrived," Stalia said. "It's a killing field."