"My lord, are you able to move Taur to the war game simulation?" Ursula asked. "I am sure with a little time and some help he will recover."

Taur lashed out within the simulation, a transparent outline of himself separating from his body to drive his right horn through Ursula. The war room simulation wasn't designed to allow digital presences to interact with it, so the attack passed through Ursula without any effect.

Could I move Taur without his permission... The current simulation was hosted on my digital platform and I began digging around in the lower level implementation of how people were bringing their focus in. It was a simple, if large, data stream that was passing between my platform and the others. They were all encrypted, but I had the matching decryption key as they were connecting to me.

I connected to the common simulation, and specifically the war games simulation within it, and then forwarded the data stream that I was getting from Taur over that connection. I focused on the war room simulation again to see Taur's digital representation disappeared from it. I checked on the war games simulation and he was standing in the middle of the field looking around wildly.

"It's done," I said. "If he doesn't improve in one week, one minute of normal time, then I will isolate him from his body. If he doesn't stop his attack then I will stop him. He has about an hour."

"Yes, my lord," Ursula said. "Thank you."

Ursula left the simulation and Jeff and Clay followed her. I raised the simulation speed to a tenth of normal speed and more fully soaked my power into Taur. I could drop him immediately by modifying his body and causing him pain, but I would need to keep it up to keep him down, and it would likely hurt his recovery. Severing the connection at the top of his spine would also work, as would draining the energy from his muscles, but they had the same problem of causing more pain.

I was fixating on body modification being the answer when it obviously wasn't. My power could move things relative to others, it was much too slow to be effective at moving a body, but I didn't need to move Taur. I needed to stop him moving, and my power was great at that. I locked the joints of his armour firmly together and then fused them, freezing him in place.

Taur would still have the momentum of his attack, but Ursula was already moving to grab him by the horns. I raised the simulation back up to normal speed and stepped forward past Jeff and Jacqueline, Conor and Jenny following me. The snow men were pushing into the entrance again.

I began summoning more throwing blades from my inventory. Conor linked me in to their personal target allocation system, Conor's targets were red, Jenny's blue, and mine black. Free targets were in green. At such close range, and with nothing else occupying my attention, I was able to take out six targets for every one they could do.

The snow men began forming their wall again, but the scouts were still able to see the weak points through the wall for a good ten seconds before it got too thick. The snow from the dissolved snow men blocking the weak point detection.

Conor and Jenny simultaneously pulled out explosive arrows and loosed them as I let my arms recharge. The blast from the arrows did successfully blow the snow wall out of the tunnel, but it also burst the eardrums of everyone but me. I had specifically reinforced the design of my ears against being burst in response to it happening last time.

The snow men were already forming up at the entrance of the tunnel again when Jacqueline began casting a spell, stepping forward to stand between us. We continued firing as a horizontal whirlwind began to form in front of us, pulling air from outside as well as further down the tunnel.

The whirlwind grew over ten seconds, pulling snow into it, until it filled the entire tunnel and completely obscured our vision. It built for another second and then Jacqueline finished the final symbol and it shot out of the tunnel, pulling snow men into it as it went.

Jacqueline stepped back and passed the God Banishment ward to Tranquil before retreating back through the portal to the army room. Ursula had managed to get Taur into the army room as well at some point, but that still left almost half of my army standing in the tunnel.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

I got a ping from the System and my armour appeared in my inventory at the same time as I got a communication request from Maaata.

"Thank you," I said.

"You're welcome, my lord," Maaata said. "But I was contacting you to let you know that you need to extend the armour to protect the large mana crystal. Here is the modified model."

Maaata sent me the model and I compared it to the model that I had of the original armour. Ah. The large mana crystal was attached to the back of the armour, completely exposed. The modification that Maaata was suggesting was to simply cover it in the same material as the rest of the armour. That was simple enough to do, so I began the process.

"The enchantment will grow to cover any extension of the material," Maaata said. "Is there any other priority that you need the armour done in?"

"Stalia's armour," I said. "Which should be the second one I sent you."

Maaata sent a digital acknowledgement and dropped the communication channel.

The last of the shell covering the large mana crystal finished and I equipped the armour, stretching and testing it. Still perfectly flexible, the added weight on the back barely noticeable. I extended my claws and the suit's gloves extended to cover them. They should now be the equivalent of enchanted weapons...

"Alright, everyone back into the army room," I said.

Jenny, Conor, and Jeff all stepped through, Branch and Tranquil following after Tranquil had handed me the God Banishment ward. I shrank the portal down and placed it in the pouch of my armour that held my bag of holding.

I began running to the exit of the tunnel, not being able to sink my power into the ground to provide traction I started slow and picked up speed. Snow men were gathering to push into the tunnel again, but I ran entirely through them, picking up my sword as I passed it.

As soon as I picked up my sword the snow men moved away from me. I could see the line that Taur had taken through the killing field from the holes blown in the ground, and I matched that same line to get out. As soon as I left the last of the snow men behind the guns in the walls opened up showering me with ice shards.

A green bar hologram appeared at the top of my helmet's clear faceplate as the first ice shards hit my armour. Over the next few seconds the bar shrank slightly leaving a small gap at the right. With the large mana crystal the enchantment looked like it would last ten minutes at this rate of usage, which would be more than enough.

The holes from the explosions that Taur had triggered were a large distance apart, but I jumped to and from them as I was able to.

I was out from between the walls and halfway to the end of the flat area when I triggered an exploding trap of my own. At the speed I was going the force of it was coming from behind me by the time it finished triggering, and it was sending broken stone outwards in all directions.

I was continually pushing my power down against the enchanted stone beneath me and as the stone broke the enchantment fell off of it, letting my power in. I fused the breaking stone beneath me together and crouched against it to absorb some of the impact of the explosion before jumping hard against it.

My legs fractured slightly from the immense force I put on them, and I used most of the energy from my muscles to pull it off, but I was moving faster than I ever had. I easily broke one hundred kilometers per hour moving horizontally above the ground before having to kick downwards against the ground to keep myself up.

It took me ten seconds, and six steps, to cross the rest of the distance to the edge of the flat area and the last step was past the area of enchanted stone.

I sank my power into the stone, and the feet of my armour, and skidded to a stop, leaning backwards to resist falling over onto my face. I got my speed under control just in time to stop myself flying over the steep slope down the mountain and came to a complete stop twenty meters further down.

I had gone right by the wisp, who was still obediently waiting where I'd left it at the top of the slope. It floated over at my gesture and I picked it up, preparing to run back to the wisp hive.

"My lord," Ursula said. "Taur has nearly completely recovered, it would do him good to be useful. And it should be safe for you to lift his ban from this simulation now."

"He isn't banned," I said. "Ah, I see. I'm forwarding him from here so it's registering him as already being connected and won't allow a second connection from him."

I disconnected the hack that was redirecting Taur to the war games simulation and he reappeared in the war room simulation, matching up with his body in the army room. I pulled out the portal to there, setting it on the ground and forming it into a doorway. Taur exited and immediately bowed down in front of me.

"I apologise, my lord," Taur said. "My behaviour was inexcusable."

"I disagree," I said. "It was entirely excusable. We are all still learning what the limits are here, and the parallel repair obviously broke yours. You didn't hurt anyone, there isn't anything to forgive. If you fall we will pick you up."

Taur bowed down further. "Thank you, my lord," Taur said, sobbing partway through.

Stalia and Jeff came out through the portal and Taur stood up, picking the portal up to carry. I nodded to Jeff as he took the God Banishment ward from me as I entered the portal.

I wanted to check on the plains in the neutral realm.