Chapter 121: Prep Done, Hunting On

Every turret on the eastern wall fired at once.

Sikra Thall’s ship did not try to turn. It did not raise a shield or drop a countermeasure or do any of the things a ship does when forty guns decide it should stop existing.

It just came apart.

The shells curved in around the hull the way Draventh’s enchantment made them curve, and there was no angle left for anything aboard to hide behind. The deck folded. The mast went into the water. Fire took the rest.

Logan watched through it and counted.

’One person on that deck. Low stats across every line. She is not walking out of that.’

Then the panel came, and it came before the ship finished sinking.

```

[ Sikra Thall has surrendered. Player removed from the match. ]

[ Leon Flanke: +1 Elimination ]

```

"She said it early," Alice said. "She said it before the shells landed."

"She said it before I gave the order." Logan lowered his hand slowly. "Watch the timestamps."

Alice pulled the log and went quiet.

The surrender had registered a full second and a half before the first turret discharged.

---

There was one more thing, and it arrived after she was already gone.

```

[ Message left for: Leon Flanke ]

[ From: Sikra Thall ]

[ Delivery: on elimination ]

```

Logan looked at it for a while before he opened it.

’She wrote this before she got here.’ The thought was not comfortable. ’She wrote it knowing exactly how this went.’

He opened it.

```

I came to look at you, not to fight you. My stats are bad and I know it.

Preordained Sight shows me the end of things. Not everything, and never the middle. Only ends.

I have seen the end of this match. There are two people standing on the last island and I could not make out their faces, so I went to look at the ones it might be.

You are the fourth pair I have looked at. You are the only pair I did not want to be right about.

Two things, because you paid for them.

Vaerith Solmane and Ilyra Tanthess are not hunting players. They are hunting Warlords, and they have more badges than anyone else alive in this match by a distance you would not believe.

And they are coming to you. Not soon. But they are coming, and they already know your name.

```

Alice read it over his shoulder twice.

"She could have sold that to them instead," she said.

"She could have." Logan closed the message. "I think she wanted somebody to know she saw it coming."

---

The island took a while to stop smoking.

Nine ships had come apart against it and the tenth was still burning on the water, and the terraces were in a state that made Xairon visibly happy.

Twenty-eight Mythic production units went at the repairs and the walls started going back up almost as fast as they had come down.

Skyveil Cantor came out of the island’s interior partway through and started singing over the work.

Logan had almost forgotten she was down there. Alice’s third card had spent most of the match inside the terraced gardens with Thessaris, keeping things growing that had no business growing on a rock in the middle of the sea.

She was not a fighter and had never pretended to be. But the hum she carried made every unit in earshot work faster, and the repairs went quicker once she started.

"You never bring her out," Logan said.

"Because she is worth more in there than she is on a wall." Alice watched her drift between work crews. "Ask me again when we are somewhere that needs a song more than it needs an arrow."

---

The match announcement came while Kroth was still setting the north gate back on its hinges.

```

[ Twenty-five Warlords eliminated. The remaining seventy-five Warlords are 25% stronger, and their badges reward 50% extra Tier Points. ]

```

Logan stopped walking.

"Twenty-five," Alice said. "That number was five the last time either of us looked at it."

"And we have killed exactly none of them."

That was the part that stung. They had cleared a Mega Event and a Mythic dungeon and a trial vault, plus a dragon and two raids. Their Warlord count sat at zero.

The four badges in his inventory had come off a dead Oniniad, not off a Warlord he had earned.

Every Warlord that died made the rest harder. It also made the rest worth more.

’Twenty-five percent stronger and fifty percent better badges.’ Logan turned the arithmetic over. ’And the badges only drop if the carrier gets killed instead of surrendering.’

Which meant every player out there with a pocket full of badges was carrying a reason for somebody to hunt them.

And the two names at the top of the board were carrying more than anybody.

"Alice."

"I know that face."

"We have been playing defense." Logan looked out at the water. "Somebody attacks and we win and we clean up and we go through a portal. Every single thing we have done in this match has been a reaction."

"We have done very well out of reacting."

"We have. And Vaerith Solmane has been out there killing Warlords the entire time while we did it." He turned around. "Seventy-five left. I want the rest of them."

Alice grinned at him.

"All seventy-five?"

"As many as we can reach before somebody else does."

---

Getting out meant making sure the island survived without them, and Logan spent the remaining Tower Points doing exactly that.

```

[ Remaining Tower Points: 55,900 ]

```

```

[ Summon: Combat Unit x300 ] [ Cost: 30,000 Tower Points ]

```

```

[ Pull result: 108x Normal | 102x Uncommon | 87x Rare | 3x Epic ]

```

```

[ 108x Normal merged into 54x Uncommon ]

[ 156x Uncommon merged into 78x Rare ]

[ 165x Rare merged into 82x Epic, 1x Rare remaining ]

[ 85x Epic merged into 42x Legendary, 1x Epic remaining ]

[ 42x Legendary merged into 21x Mythic ]

```

Twenty-one more Mythic-rank combat units, and Logan left every one of them at Mythic rather than pushing to plus.

"Numbers," he said, when Alice raised an eyebrow. "The island needs bodies on walls, not champions. Champions are coming with me."

```

[ Remaining Tower Points: 25,900 ]

```

The garrison worked out cleanly enough.

Terry took the island. That was not a discussion. He planted himself at the north gate and made it clear that he had opinions about anyone who tried to argue.

Winsmoke stayed, because an island under siege needs a kitchen that shoots. Skyveil stayed with the gardens. Thessaris, Draventh, Maren and Kroth stayed with the production line.

Eight of the seventeen Mythic-plus units stayed, along with all twenty-one of the new Mythics.

"That is forty-one units and three Mythic-pluses of production behind a wall that just ate ten ships," Logan said. "Anybody who comes here while we are gone is going to have a very bad time."

"And if they bring twelve ships instead of ten?"

"Then Terry holds until we get back." Logan tapped the Accord Sigil at his collar. "And we will know, because Sonic keeps the comm line and Nyriel keeps the scan."

---

The field army was the other half of it.

Billy. Solveig. Sonic. Nine Mythic-plus combat units. Xairon, because Xairon refused to be left behind and had made a persuasive case involving the phrase "you will want me there."

Vulkarn came for the salvage. Nyriel came for the eyes.

And all four remaining Chaos PsyDogs, sulking in a row, because every single one of them had worked out that being left home meant their markers going unused.

"Fine," Logan told them. "You all come. But you open when I say, not when you feel like it."

Four tails went at once.

Alice checked her draw one last time and looked out at the water.

"Where first?"

Logan pulled the map Nyriel had been quietly building since the match began, every island the constellation had ever swept, every energy signature it had logged and never explained.

Three of them were burning hot enough to be Warlord territory.

The nearest sat sixty kilometers northwest, and the signature coming off it was the largest thing on the board that was not a player.

"There." He put his finger on it. "That one first."

"It is the biggest one on your map."

"Yes."

"You are aware that is the biggest one on your map."

"They are twenty-five percent stronger than they were at the start of this match, and they get worse every time somebody else kills one." Logan closed the map.

"We are not going to get an easier version by waiting. We are going to get a harder version and a smaller badge."

Alice looked at the signature for a moment longer.

Then she slung the Skyrend Sinew Bowstring over her shoulder and started walking toward the dock.

"Sixty kilometers," she said. "Try to keep up."