Chapter 126: Next

Two more Warlords went down and neither of them was interesting.

Sevrik Palecrown had four hundred units and a shield that reflected damage back at whoever dealt it, which mattered a great deal until the Elderwood Phoenix Avatar walked into the reflection and kept walking.

Ulmareth of the Drowned Steps had a talent that flooded the ground around it. Kroth was not with them, so Vulkarn put Ore Grubs under the water table and drained the whole island out from underneath it.

```

[ Warlord Badges held: 18 ]

[ Warlord kills: 8 ]

```

Kindred Wellspring meant the units stopped needing repairs between fights. That was the real change, and Logan noticed it most in the things that no longer happened.

Nobody sat out. Nobody waited for Xairon. Every cut he made anywhere on the field fed whoever needed it most within three kilometers, and by the second Warlord he had stopped thinking about it at all.

```

[ Forty Warlords eliminated. The remaining sixty Warlords are 40% stronger, and their badges reward 80% extra Tier Points. ]

```

"Forty," Alice said. "We have eight."

"Somebody else has nineteen." Logan closed the panel. "And he has been sitting on nineteen while the value went from fifty percent to eighty."

’Every one we kill makes his pile heavier.’ He had not stopped thinking about that since the crater. ’And there is no version where I stop killing them, because then mine stop growing too.’

"He built a trap out of arithmetic," Alice said, reading his face.

"He did not build it. He just noticed it before anybody else."

---

Dog eight was the one that had been quietest.

It had never sulked and never pushed forward, and when Logan finally pointed at it, it stood up slowly and looked north and did not spin at all.

"That is new," Alice said.

"That is a dog that does not like where it is about to send us."

It tore the air open anyway.

The portal put them on a shelf of white stone under a sky that had gone the wrong color, and about two hundred meters away stood a tree with two pieces of fruit hanging off it.

Logan stopped walking.

"Alice."

"I see it." She already had an arrow half drawn at nothing in particular. "Is anybody else here?"

Nyriel spread out across the whole shelf and came back with nothing.

They crossed the distance at a dead run anyway.

---

The fruits came off the branch easily, which was somehow the most suspicious part of the entire encounter.

```

[ Player Grace Fruit ]

> Rank: Special

> Effect: grants unassigned stat points. Amount scales with the Floor. Floor 4: 20 points.

```

"Two," Alice said. "Not one. Two."

"They come in pairs." Logan turned his over. "It is a duo match. Everything in it comes in pairs."

They ate them standing under the tree, because neither of them wanted to hold a Grace Fruit for one second longer than necessary.

```

[ You have gained 20 unassigned stat points. ]

[ You have eaten two Player Grace Fruits this match. You can only eat one more if you find it. ]

```

```

[ Match Announcement: All 6 Player Grace Fruits have been found and eaten. None remain. ]

```

Alice read that last panel twice.

"Six," she said. "Three pairs. Not three fruits."

"We have two pairs."

"We have two pairs and somebody out there has the third."

Logan did not have to guess for very long.

---

They were still standing under the tree when Vaerith Solmane came over the ridge.

He took in the bare branch and the two of them and the announcement panel still hanging in the air. His expression did not change at all.

"Well," he said. "That is annoying."

Alice put an arrow on the string.

"You are late."

"I am about four minutes late, which is the same thing." Vaerith stopped at a comfortable distance and looked up at the empty tree with something close to fondness. "She said you would beat us here. I said we had time."

Ilyra Tanthess came up behind him and sat down on a rock without being invited.

"I said it was sixty-forty," she said. "Not certain. Sixty-forty."

"You took the second pair," Logan said.

"We did." Vaerith shrugged. "Twenty points each. You have forty now. You are ahead of us and you will stay ahead, because there is nothing left to find."

Alice lowered the bow about two inches, which was not agreement so much as confusion.

"You do not sound upset."

"Because I did not want to beat you with fruit."

---

He said it without any particular weight, and it was the single most unsettling thing anybody had said to Logan in the entire match.

’He is not annoyed about the fruit.’ The realization was cold and complete. ’He is annoyed the way you are annoyed when the weather turns. It does not change anything he planned.’

"So this is where you kill us," Alice said.

"No." Vaerith stood easy. "But I would like about ninety seconds of your time, because I have a professional curiosity and you are the only people left who can satisfy it."

He drew.

It was not a lunge and it was not a threat. He simply drew a sword and walked forward, and Logan had about a second to decide what to do about it.

He decided to find out.

---

```

[ Reaper’s Stride: 400 stacks. ]

```

Logan went in fast and did not push the stacks, because ninety seconds was not enough time to matter and he had no intention of showing the man his ceiling.

The first exchange was even. The second was even. Vaerith Solmane was good, not extraordinary, and his blade work was about what Logan would expect from someone who had spent the match killing Warlords instead of duelists.

On the third exchange Logan noticed his arms were heavier.

```

[ Attack: -4% ]

[ Speed: -4% ]

```

He blinked clear and read the panel and did not like it at all.

```

[ Attrition Sovereign ]

> While engaged in combat, the target’s maximum stats are reduced. Reduction increases the longer engagement continues. No upper limit.

```

’He does not get stronger.’ The understanding arrived in one piece. ’He makes me smaller. And there is no cap on it, same as everything else at this level.’

"There it is," Vaerith said, pleasantly. "Everyone gets that face."

```

[ Attack: -9% ]

[ Speed: -9% ]

```

Nine percent in eleven seconds. In a fight that ran ten minutes he would be fighting a version of himself that had never left Floor One.

---

Alice tried to end it from range and found the other half of the problem.

She drew, and Homing locked, and the arrow went exactly where it wanted to go.

Ilyra Tanthess stepped eleven centimeters to the left without hurrying, and it missed.

```

[ Quiet Arithmetic ]

```

"You have six hundred and ten Cadence stacks," Ilyra said, still sitting. "Your Attack is four thousand one hundred and sixty with the set bonus applied. Your Astral Displacement came off cooldown nine seconds ago and you are saving it, which is correct."

Alice’s next three arrows missed by similar margins.

"She does not dodge," Logan said into the sigil. "She calculates."

"She knows my numbers." Alice’s voice had gone tight. "She knows them better than I do."

"Then stop giving her numbers to work with."

---

Logan broke the engagement instead of continuing it, which was the only correct answer to a stacking debuff with no ceiling.

The instant he was out of contact the reduction stopped climbing, and after a few seconds it started walking back down.

```

[ Attack: -6% ]

[ Speed: -6% ]

```

"It decays," he said.

"It decays," Vaerith agreed. He had not pursued. "Slowly. Which is a problem for you, because in a real fight you do not get to stand still for two minutes."

He sheathed the sword.

"Thank you. That was informative."

"For which one of us?"

"Both, I hope." Vaerith glanced up at the stripped branch and then back.

"You did not push your speed skill. You have used it exactly once this match, at the crater, and you went to four thousand one hundred stacks on it. You did not go anywhere near that just now."

Logan said nothing.

"That is the correct decision and I would have made it too." Vaerith started walking back toward Ilyra. "I am telling you so that you know I saw it."

---

They went, and Nyriel did not register them going, and Logan stood on the white stone for a while afterward without saying anything.

Then he opened the panel he had been ignoring since the tree.

```

[ Unassigned Stat Points: 20 ]

```

"All of it into Constitution," he said.

Alice did not even pretend to be surprised.

"Again."

"Grimbound Threshold routes the strain into MP instead of my body, but it does not route all of it." He pushed the points across.

"Cinderveil Aegis shaves thirty percent. Constitution decides what happens to the rest. Every point in that column is another second I can stand at four thousand stacks."

```

[ Constitution +20. ]

```

Alice spent hers differently, and took her time about it.

"He is going to shrink me the same way he shrinks you," she said. "Attack, Speed, all of it. Attrition does not care that I shoot instead of swing."

"So?"

"So the one number he cannot touch is how many arrows I have already put in the air." She pushed her points. "Cadence stacks are not a stat. They are a count."

```

[ Attack +14. ]

[ Speed +6. ]

```

Alice waited him out after that.

"He is not stronger than me," Logan said eventually.

"No."

"He does not have to be. He just has to still be standing in ten minutes." He looked at the bare branch. "And she will tell him exactly how long my window is, and exactly when it comes back."

’Twenty seconds of Grimbound Threshold on a long cooldown, against a man who wins by making the fight long.’ The shape of it was very clear and very unpleasant. ’He is built to beat me specifically. He did not even have to plan it.’

"So we do not make it long," Alice said.

"No."

"We make it about twenty seconds."

Logan finally looked over at her.

"That is the whole answer," he said. "Everything from here is figuring out how."

```

[ Warlord Badges held: 18 ]

[ Sixty Warlords remaining. ]

```

Two dogs left, no fruit left anywhere in the match, and a man out there holding nineteen badges who had just lost a race and not cared about it.

’We are twenty points ahead of him, and he did not blink.’ Logan looked at the empty branch. ’He walked away from a fight he could have extended. He does not think any of this is what decides it.’

He put his hand flat on the bark.

"Next Warlord," he said.