I dropped into the main simulation, showing the latest data from the ward room, and matched the time perception that was there which was maxed out. Chantelle was there waiting for me when I arrived.

"That was quick," Chantelle said. "I wasn't expecting you for another few minutes."

"What's happening?" I asked.

The table in the simulation had the detection ward's hologram above it split in two displays, one was showing a group of snow men and the other was of The Instructor knocking on John's door on the third floor.

"The detection ward gave a warning as I was working on it," Chantelle said. "It wasn't a direct hit that would set it off, but I had reworked it enough to alert if anyone just appeared. The idea being if the other champion teleported in we would be notified right away. I was working out some bugs with it detecting people coming through portals when the ward gave an odd reading. Bringing up the detection showed those people, with the other champion in front of them, phasing into this realm on the Forest Keeper floor. I sent you an urgent ping just as he teleported away, and the detection ward triggered as it was supposed to."

I tried to zoom the view of the snow men out with my controls over the ward, but it was moving so slow from my perspective that nothing was happening.

"Do you know where, exactly, the snow men are?" I asked.

Chantelle nodded and made a pushing gesture at one of the walls. The wall fell down and behind it there was a snapshot simulation of the newly excavated area in the north east of the Forest Keeper. There were one hundred snow men in formation and they had just started moving towards the populated area of the floor, fifty meters away from the nearest Forest Keeper.

The bad news was that none of the nearest people were armed in any way. The good news was that almost all of them were within fifty meters of the Heart of the Forest tree and the snow men were unmistakably a hostile force. It should be possible for Mal'Thorn to bring up a barrier of roots to protect them.

I made a quest for Mal'Thorn to protect his people from the sneak attack until I could get there, making an optional component to raise the root barrier around the Heart of the Forest with an additional reward, and then sent it to the System.

Only a fraction of a second of real time had passed since I had dropped into the simulation. I didn't know if I could fabricate a new weapon in the time it would take me to get to the snow men in my fortress, but I had the time to design it. The absolute barest minimum of material. A mesh of wires. Five centimeter squares. One meter wide. Half a meter tall. On the end of a two meter pole. All made of stone. Reinforce it with power to keep it together.

"What is that?" Chantelle asked, making me jump slightly.

"Sorry," I said. "I'm not really used to sharing while I'm designing. It's a weapon specifically designed for fighting snow men. They have a core of some sort in their body that kills them when it's broken."

"So it's a giant sieve?" Chantelle asked.

"Pretty much," I said.

"Is there anything I can be doing to help?" Chantelle asked.

"If they phased in then they're using the god's power of shifting realms," I said. "If all they were doing was listening in on us then an anti-god ward was lower priority. Now that they've shown that they can use it to infiltrate the fortress we need it as quickly as you can add it."

Chantelle nodded. "Right," She said. "There are some negative side effects to the sharpness of the small symbols that make it up. But I will make a normal sized one before working out the smaller one to replace it later. Should it cover the claim area or just the fortress?"

"Both, and as separate wards, I think," I said.

Chantelle created a new ward in front of her with a gesture and began tweaking it. I stopped all of the background projects that my digital side was working on and set my full production capabilities on making my sieve weapon within reach of my pocket portals.

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My next problem was physically getting to the Forest Keeper floor. Ordinarily I had minutes to move my portals around, but I didn't have that luxury this time.

I moved my focus back to my local simulation and brought myself up to about half of normal speed. I took my larger pocket portal out and forced it open with my hands, not waiting for the time that it would take my Matter Manipulation to reshape it nicely. As soon as it was open enough to squeeze through I held it above my head then pulled it down over myself.

I heard a slow and exaggerated sound of shock from the Plains Keeper that I was leaving behind as I vanished in front of his eyes. The portal would be open in the plains, and it would lead to the heart of my Pocket Dimension, but I didn't have time to worry about that. I had to duck into a roll as I transitioned into my Pocket Dimension as gravity shifted and I went from standing to diving head first through the portal.

My spare thread portals were stored near to my pocket portal exits, as was my sword, so I scooped them both up as I ran towards the portal room for the Forest Keeper floor. My usual method of passing through the stone surrounding portal rooms, shifting stone out of my way and then behind me, would take too long. I soaked my power into the stone to weaken it, and into my body to reinforce it, and charged right through the meter thick super stone.

I bounced off of it at the same time that it shattered inwards along the faint fault lines I had placed in at such short notice. I stood up and did a quick check of my body, nothing broken.

I continued my run through the portal room and onto the Forest Keeper floor. The first thing I saw was that Mal'Thorn had raised a four meter tall fence of roots in a semicircle shielding against the snow men. There weren't enough full grown trees to make the sort of barrier that I was expecting, but I could see through it well enough that I could see the snow men had changed the direction of their march to go around it.

The snow men had covered half of the distance to the nearest non-combatant. There were a dozen unarmed Forest Keepers on the wrong side of the fence but they were quickly retreating away from the snow men. There were fifty Forest Keepers with spears that were making their way in a disorganised fashion around the fence to defend against the snow men, and Mal'Thorn was within a group of the first five. The snow men had changed their target to Mal'Thorn.

My most direct route was under the Heart of the Forest and then to jump over the four meter tall fence of sharpened roots. But even that wouldn't get me there before the two forces clashed, not if I was to have enough energy left in my muscles to fight.

I ran. I plotted out the energy usage of my legs to arrive at the fight with forty percent remaining. Ten meters away from the fence I leapt upwards in an arc, clearing the sharpened tips of the roots by centimeters. I landed in a roll to conserve as much energy as possible and the snow men and Forest Keepers slammed into each other as I came back to my feet.

The five Keepers, with Mal'Thorn backing them, ran into the snow men formation that was ten wide. A barrier flickered into view as it stopped the swipes of the snow men keeping the spear users safe, but the stabs and slices they were doing had no affect. Four snow men were making their way around the sides of the spear users.

I was three seconds away from them, and approaching from slightly to one side and behind. I reached into the thread portal I had picked up and pulled out my sieve weapon. The stone of the whole thing was only half a centimeter thick, but hopefully it would hold up. I soaked my power into it, reinforcing it as much as I could, and changed my angle of approach to take me down the snow men's line formation.

My sieve wasn't large enough to cover an entire snow man, so I lined it up to pass through them from mid-thigh to their shoulders. The first two I passed that were trying to flank Mal'Thorn's group the sieve worked perfectly on. It went right through them, met resistance, and then they collapsed into snow.

I adjusted my footing and then dashed along the snow man formation, holding my sieve out to pass through the nine that were lined up. The first one remained standing, the next six fell immediately, and the last two stayed up. The back half of the snow man formation turned to focus on me as I came to a stop five meters behind them.

I stepped towards them as they charged me. Even coordinated and with claws that could damage me they stood no chance against my new weapon. They came at me in a row of ten and I simply started from the left, moving the sieve down over the first one's entire body and then over and up the second one's body. Both dissolved.

I finished the first row that way and was moving through the second row when Mal'Thorn shouted. I dashed through the center of the snow man formation, out of the half that had come after me and into the ones attacking the Forest Keeper line. I took some minor cuts from claws, but also dissolved several snow men that passed through the sieve I was holding in front of me.

Three of the spear users were dead, and the remaining four were hurt but still attacking desperately with their spears. Mal'Thorn was on his knees, his right arm missing from above the shoulder, his left gripping it tightly to slow the bleeding.

There were snow men in amongst them, and one was swiping towards Mal'Thorn's head. I dropped my sieve weapon and grabbed that arm, pushing it above Mal'Thorn's head I then moved with the turn, picking the snow man up and throwing him into several others. I picked up another and threw him in a different direction, knocking down yet more. Three more and I had a bit of breathing room.

I picked my sieve weapon back up. The energy in my arms and legs was low, but using my sieve used hardly any energy and I systematically destroyed every snow man that came near us.