Chapter 120: Annihilation

Logan did not offer him anything.

There was nothing to offer. Rakhan Vurel was at nine percent with a broken lance and no mount, and the only question left was whether he said the word before Logan stopped waiting.

"Last chance," Logan said.

Rakhan looked up at him and did not say it.

’Then that is that.’

Logan did not raise Grimlord’s Blade. There was no reason to.

```

[ Grim Harvest (Lv3) ]

> Execute any being below 13% HP.

> Track any being below 23% HP through any obstacle within three kilometers.

```

Rakhan Vurel was sitting at nine percent.

He had been sitting under an execute threshold since the moment Logan cut the lance in half, and the only thing that had kept him breathing this long was Logan choosing to offer him the word first.

"WAIT."

Idresh Kaan had dragged himself the rest of the way up the rocks.

He was holding his side together with one arm and there was a great deal of him that was not working anymore. He should not have been able to stand at all.

"Take me instead," he said. "I surrender. Right now. Let him go and you get a clean elimination with no fight."

Logan did not even look at him.

"No."

"You are at forty percent."

"I am at forty percent and your brother is at nine." Logan’s voice did not change. "Stat lines do not enter into it."

"That is the whole answer?"

"That is the whole answer."

---

Idresh had not been negotiating. He had been buying four seconds.

```

[ Weight of Ages ]

```

He did not put the weight on Logan. He did not have enough left to matter and he knew it.

He put all of it under Rakhan instead, and then he let go of it upward.

The terrace under Rakhan Vurel blew out from below and threw him off the island entirely, out over the water in a long flat arc.

Two hundred meters. Three hundred. He caught himself in open air the way a Sky Marshal does and started climbing, and Nyxara Vell’s ship began turning to come about for him.

Logan watched him go and did not move at all.

’Three kilometers,’ he thought. ’Through any obstacle.’

He thought about it, and Rakhan Vurel died.

There was nothing dramatic in it. No flash and no impact and no sound carrying back across the water. One moment a man was climbing away over the sea, and the next there was nothing in the air where he had been.

```

[ Rakhan Vurel has been killed. ]

[ Leon Flanke: +1 Elimination ]

[ Killed players drop carried Warlord Badges. ]

[ Warlord Badges recovered: 4 ]

```

Sonic pulled up about six hundred meters out, having launched for an interception that had stopped being necessary before he cleared the wall.

"Boss." He sounded slightly put out. "I was going to get him."

"I know."

"I was fast enough."

"You were." Logan was already turning around. "He was under thirteen percent. Nobody has to be fast for that."

---

The sound Idresh made was not loud.

Logan turned around and found him staring at the place on the terrace where his brother had been, and the expression on his face was the first unguarded thing he had shown all battle.

"It would not have worked," Idresh said.

It was not a question.

"No," Logan said. "Grim Harvest executes anything under thirteen percent inside three kilometers. He hit nine percent when I cut his lance."

He looked out at the empty water.

"He has been dead since then. I was just holding it, in case he decided to say the word."

"You were holding an execute."

"I was giving your brother a chance to live." Logan turned back. "He did not want one. That was his call and he made it clearly."

"I spent myself on a throw that was never going to land."

"You spent yourself on a throw that made no difference. There is a difference between those two things, and it is not one that helps you."

Idresh Kaan closed his eyes.

’He never once fought me.’ Logan watched him and felt something that was not pity and was not respect either, but sat somewhere between them.

’Not one hammer swing in the whole battle. He absorbed and loaded and counted. And the one time the count came out wrong, it cost him everything and bought nothing.’

"Say it," Logan said. "Or I do it."

Idresh Kaan said it.

There was no light and no sound and no time for anything else. The rubble where he had been kneeling was simply empty.

```

[ Idresh Kaan has surrendered. Player removed from the match. ]

[ Leon Flanke: +1 Elimination ]

```

"Two," Alice said quietly from behind him.

"Two." Logan was already turning toward the north wall. "Four more on my island."

"They are pulling back."

"Then they can pull back through us."

---

Vassk Orrun had worked out that his paymasters were finished and had started walking toward the water with three hundred units behind him.

Logan met him at the north wall.

"OI." The Ogre-kin planted his maul head-down. "The deal is void. Both brothers are off the board. I am leaving."

"No."

"I am not fighting you for a promise nobody can keep."

"I did not ask if you wanted to fight." Logan set his feet. "You brought three hundred units onto my island. Walk or do not walk, you are an elimination either way. The only choice you have is which kind."

Vassk looked at him for about two seconds.

Then he picked the maul back up, because he was not a coward, and that was the last good decision he made.

```

[ Gravebound Endurance ]

```

Logan had watched it work all battle. Every hit Vassk took made him harder to hurt, and six Mythic-plus units had spent the engagement proving that hitting him was the wrong approach.

So Logan did not hit him.

Sword Intent opened, and the thing feeding Gravebound Endurance was not subtle at all. It ran out of Vassk and down into the ground, thick as a cable, anchoring him to the island itself.

’Gravebound. It is in the name.’

```

[ Broken Chain ]

```

Every stack Vassk Orrun had built came off him at once, and what was left was a very large man holding a very heavy hammer with none of the endurance that had been carrying it.

Billy hit him from the left. Terry hit him from the right.

Vassk said the word before either blow landed, which was the second good decision he made.

```

[ Vassk Orrun has surrendered. Player removed from the match. ]

[ Ruby Starviel: +1 Elimination ]

```

---

Torme Halbrecht was four kilometers out and had been comfortable there the whole battle.

His talent was Ranging Sight and his class was artillery, and every shell he had dropped on the southern terraces had come from outside anything the island could reach.

That had been true right up until the moment a Mythic-plus unit learned how to fly.

Sonic came through the artillery deck like weather. He did not stop at the guns.

Torme said it with Sonic’s hand already closed on his collar.

```

[ Torme Halbrecht has surrendered. Player removed from the match. ]

[ Leon Flanke: +1 Elimination ]

```

---

Nyxara Vell was the hard one, and she was hard for exactly one reason.

Nobody could see her.

Silent Passage had walked her through six Mythic-plus units without one of them registering it. Her ship was sinking, so she was running the western cliffs on foot, heading for whatever was still floating.

Alice climbed the western spire and did not bother looking for her.

"I cannot see her," she said into the comm.

"Neither can anybody else."

"That is not what I meant." Alice closed her eyes and drew. "I do not need to see her."

’A thousand identical plates in a hall,’ she thought. ’None of them different. None of them brighter. And one of them was where an arrow wanted to go.’

She had not needed sight in the vault either.

Alice opened Arrow Intent and stopped trying to find a person. She looked for a path instead.

Where does the arrow want to go?

Somewhere on the western cliff, along a line of broken rock between the third terrace and the water, there was a place that felt exactly like that.

Not where Nyxara was. Where Nyxara was going to be.

```

[ Arrow Intent: Homing ]

[ Starflow Arts: Stun Star ]

```

Alice released into empty air.

The arrow crossed four hundred meters of cliff, corrected twice around rock that should have blocked it, and hit something invisible in the middle of a stride.

Nyxara Vell became visible about half a second later, because it is difficult to hold a concealment skill while stunned for four and a half seconds.

Solveig reached her before the stun wore off, and she said it with a sword already at her throat.

```

[ Nyxara Vell has surrendered. Player removed from the match. ]

[ Ruby Starviel: +1 Elimination ]

```

---

```

[ Eliminations this engagement: 5 ]

[ Leon Flanke: 67 ]

[ Ruby Starviel: 70 ]

[ Warlord Badges recovered: 4 ]

```

"Five out of six," Alice said, coming down off the spire. "And four badges we did not have this morning."

"Because one of them refused to say the word." Logan looked at the badge icons sitting in his inventory. "The rest kept theirs by surrendering. That is what the system wanted all along."

’Kill them and you get the badges. Let them surrender and you get nothing but the number.’ He closed the panel. ’Cute little incentive, Alice called it. She was right.’

That left one.

Sikra Thall’s ship had not moved since it arrived. It had not fired a shot, had not landed a unit, and had not joined the withdrawal.

```

[ Sikra Thall ]

[ Attack: 180 ]

[ Speed: 410 ]

[ Constitution: 460 ]

[ Arcane: 1,200 ]

[ Unit count: 0 ]

```

Alice ran the arithmetic out loud, because it was not difficult arithmetic.

"Two thousand two hundred and fifty total. Level forty gives six hundred and fifty, so the rest is a Legendary set." She frowned at the numbers. "That is half the gear we are wearing, and she poured most of what she had into Arcane."

"One hundred and eighty Attack." Logan read it twice. "Vassk Orrun was carrying eleven times that. My production units hit harder than she does."

"And four hundred and sixty Constitution. One turret shell ends her."

"So either she is stupid, or the numbers are not the thing."

"Sonic. What is on that deck?"

Sonic went up and came back much faster than he went. He landed properly, which Sonic never did.

"One person," he said. "And Boss, she waved at me. From two kilometers out. She was looking at where I was going to be before I got there."

Alice’s jaw tightened. "That is similar to Arrow Intent in a sense."

"She is not an archer."

"No." Alice nocked an arrow. "She is something. Maybe her class skill or her talent."

Logan looked at the one ship on the water that had not run, and made the only decision that had ever been available.

"Sonic. Nyriel. Every turret on the eastern wall."

He started walking.

"Sink it."