The Charisma of General Nox pounded against Dave’s soul akin to an ocean wave crashing against the shore.

Surrender. He could surrender and Nox would…

No!

The Luck skill inhabiting the massive crystalline sphere within Duke Lumir's body kicked in. Dave's body suddenly moved on its own, an invisible puppeteer taking control. Dave slipped sideways, his blubbery hand slamming hard against the gemstone-encrusted control panel of the pedestal Ward System.

The broadcast winked out.

"Frhgh," he muttered, feeling his ancient bones ache terribly from the far too rapid motion.

"Dave! Are you okay?" Lari grabbed onto Dave, keeping him steady.

"Yeah, just peachy," Dave nodded, feeling his head pulsating with vanishing remnants of absolute obedience to the Shadow General. "Lower me down. I need to think."

The Empress of Shandria gently helped Dave sit against the Ward-controlling obelisk.

Dave considered his options. He didn't have Phantomancy.

The Crown Tower Arcane was a trap, a setup by insane Empress Nox, designed so that her future iterations, or more specifically Cedez would become more like Nox - a brutal, monstrous leader who directed her Archmage armies to devastate and dominate the nine great cities under the control of her Divine Shadow.

Was this an entirely alternative world or a simulation constructed by the Ward of Shandria?

Was this game unwinnable? Was this scenario created for Nox for her reborn soul to lose her companions, to sacrifice her attachments to humanity?

Was this version of Lari even real?

What if she was just a memory of his Lari embedded in the Ward, a hollow idea, a representation of the girl he knew, a mere construct animated with magic?

Was she something like a game NPC that was manifesting intelligence and conversation capabilities, a roleplay of a person puppetered by some vast intelligence, the Ward of Shandria functioning like a Large Language Model from the open world games he used to design?

Dave looked at Empress Sariah. He did miss Lari terribly, but if he didn't figure out how to win this, then the Ward would unmake Cedez and kill him and all of his companions.

Whatever he did here, he could not win... therefore his best chance was not to play the game against Nox on her terms. He knew that the best way to win against an LLM was to step outside of its general predetermined narrative boundaries.

If he was just a small fraction of himself projected by the Ward of Shandria into the body of Duke Lumir, then how exactly did it fit there?

Unless... he was also Duke Lumir here, in this reality, somehow part of this doomed narrative in which he was supposed to die today?

Unfortunately, Dave didn’t have Phantomancy to examine Duke Lumir’s soul to fully confirm his theories.

With a sigh, he slowly stood up and reached out to the control panel once again. Here, in this Shandria, as Duke Lumir he was in control of the Ward. Not just that, but he had Luck, a precognitive ability of sorts to manipulate events to his advantage.

What was it that Duke Lumir had missed? What was it that Dave had learned as Gravity Archmage during his many decades of life with Cedez?

Magic was alive. If there was enough magic in something, that something could become intelligent, could act akin to a large language model. The biggest problem that magi of Shandria had was that they had no idea how to properly characterise magic, had no clue how to interact with it mentally. Oh, they knew how to wield it as their skill, but when faced with massive artifacts like the Ward of Shandria, most mages never bothered to understand how such things functioned.

He reached out with all of his will, all of his luck, trying to mentally understand the nature of the world he was currently inhabiting, to mentally touch every corner of Shandria to look for the edges of the simulation, to find wrongness, emptiness there.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

He asked the Ward of Shandria only one question, burning through all of the luck stored in his body to get the answer.

“Is this place real?”

The answer returned to him in a few minutes, nearly making him throw up.

Everything around him was fake, false, incomplete.

This Shandria was already doomed, was just a memory within the ward playing out like an old video tape filled with characters that acted akin to NPCs running on track. This Lari was indeed long dead, her spirit simply reanimated, a ghost written back into existence by the Ward of the city.

Dave despaired and tried to think clearly.

The real Duke would never pull luck from his own city, wouldn’t think that luck could be taken from Shandria, didn’t understand magic conceptually as well as Dave did. This place was just a poorly-programmed algorithm, a script with rules that had to be broken for the narrative to fall apart.

Duke Lumir spent centuries as a Prosperitymancer, taking luck from one human and giving it to another. Luck wasn't infinite - it had to come from somewhere and the source was right in front of Dave - the ossuary, the mountains beyond mountains of mage-cores beneath the city of Shandria.

Dave reached out with his skill and pulled luck from the bones beneath him, stole luck from every crystalline mage heart that had been ground into dust over centuries beneath his feet, stole luck from the entire City of Shandria as a living magical construct.

“I surrender,” Dave spoke into the crystalline microphone. “The city is yours to rule, General Nox. My only condition is that I can speak with you… in person. Keep me and the Empress alive for… just for today. You can execute us both tomorrow if you wish.”

The Ward of Shandria groaned, shutting down section by section as Dave pulled luck from every hex, every ward, every mage tower, every brick around him.

“Accepted!” General Nox boomed.

“No! What… What the hell are you saying?!” Empress Sariah cried out. “What are you doing, Dave?! Stop!”

Try as she might she could not stop Dave’s magic as he pulled luck away from every ghost inhabiting the catacombs.

“Ahahahaha, your pitiful ward falls! How lovely!” The dark cloud looming over the city as General Nox laughed. “Victory is mine… as expected! Execute anyone who resists… oh and keep the Duke and Empress alive for me to play with!”

The illusory hologram of the city vanished and the ossuary plunged into darkness.

“What have you done?!” Empress Sariah shrieked, her voice echoing in the cavernous space. “How could you disable our defenses? She’ll kill us both now!”

The luck of a million souls thrummed in his heart, making Dave the luckiest person on this side of Arx. Luck pulsed in his every breath, inhabited his crystalline heart like golden wings, like invisible threads that intersected reality all around him.

This wasn’t his Lari, this was just a hollow echo, a ghost in the machine.

“Lari,” he said, his voice soft, “I’m sorry. But this... this you isn’t real. You died a long time ago. Shandria fell centuries ago and you died with Duke Lumir, your skyship crashed into the mountains hundreds of years ago.”

“You… you’re lying, I’m…” Lari heaved. “I’m real!”

Dave could see tears running down her face, lit by dancing gold threads of his magic reaching out to absolutely everything around him. He felt absolutely content like a capybara, and was in control of every minute event around him. Having so much power, so much golden-luck fuel in his body felt incredible, like he was an all-capable God, not a mundane programmer.

“You’re real in a way,” Dave sighed. “You’re a tiny fraction of my Lari, a ghost in the machine of the Ward of Shandria, a fraction of you... trapped in this simulation, part of the narrative woven by the great engine lying beneath the city.”

Lari blinked at him.

“I’m going to pull you out from the Ward,” Dave said. “Out there I have a skill called Phantomancy, it allows me to wield souls to put them into new bodies. I’ll find a way to save you, Lari, I promise. Just trust me, please.”

“I… trust you,” Lari nodded, her expression hopeless. “Mostly because I have nobody else to put my trust in.”

“Come,” Dave said, grabbing the Empress of Shandria by her hand. “We must talk to Nox! Follow.”

They began to ascend up the endless stairwell, Dave led onward by golden threads of his skill.

As they emerged from the underground back into the city, the city of Shandria lay in chaos around them.

The fall of the Ward had left the populace in panic, and the invading forces were already pouring through the gates. Dave could see the dark cloud that was General Nox pouring over the walls, myriads of centipede-like legs stretching in all directions across the city, cutting down any mage or soldier that didn’t lay down their arms.

They made their way through the streets, the luck flowing through Dave ensuring that they avoided the worst of the fighting. Soldiers and mages alike seemed to overlook them as they passed, their attention always drawn elsewhere at crucial moments.

As they approached the central square, Dave saw the dark cloud descending from the sky and gradually coalescing into a humanoid form. The figure of General Nox stood before them, woven from rolling shadows.

"Well, well," she purred. "Lovely Duke Lumir and the illustrious Empress Sariah. How the mighty have fallen. How convenient of you to come greet me personally. I’d have thought that you’d be using all of that luck you pulled from the Ward to flee the city on a skyship. Guess my Seers were wrong about you, Lumir.”