Chapter 127: Progress

The problem with a twenty-second fight was that Vaerith Solmane got a say in it.

Logan spent the next three Warlords turning that over, and the more he turned it, the less he liked the shape underneath.

"Say I open at four thousand stacks," he said, somewhere in the middle of gutting a faction on a shale island. "Say I put everything into the first ten seconds."

"Then he blocks for ten seconds," Alice said, over the sigil. "He does not have to beat that. He has to survive it."

"Yes."

"And Ilyra will have told him what it looks like before you throw it, because she watched you do it at the crater."

’That is the part that does not solve.’ Logan cut a lieutenant in half without breaking stride. ’Every plan I build, she has already priced.’

```

[ Warlord Badges held: 21 ]

[ Warlord kills: 11 ]

```

Kindred Wellspring kept the units upright through all three, and by the last one Logan had stopped checking on them entirely.

---

The idea came from Xairon, which was irritating but not surprising.

"You keep saying twenty seconds," the Creation Sage said. It had been sliding between four shapes for most of the conversation and settled into none of them. "You are wrong about which twenty."

"Explain."

"Your skill runs twenty seconds. That is a fact about you." Xairon’s voice came from several directions at once. "The fight lasting twenty seconds is a fact about him. Those are different problems and you have been solving them as though they were one."

Alice got there before Logan did.

"He means we do not have to shorten the fight," she said slowly. "We have to make his talent not count."

"Attrition Sovereign reduces while engagement continues." Xairon sounded almost bored. "Then do not continue. Engage and break and engage and break. It decays between contacts."

"It decays slowly," Logan said. "He told us that himself."

"He told you that because it is true and because telling you the truth cost him nothing." Xairon finally settled into a shape, which it did about once a Chapter of anybody’s life. "He did not tell you the rate."

---

That turned into a long stretch of unpleasant testing.

Logan had Billy hold a blade on him and time the decay from a nine percent reduction, which was the only reading they had.

’Nine percent in eleven seconds of contact.’ He watched the number crawl back. ’And it takes about forty seconds of no contact to shed three.’

The math came out ugly. Roughly one point of reduction per second gained, against roughly one point per second lost with thirteen seconds of separation to buy it.

"So a hit and run costs us four times what it saves," Alice said.

"Against one target." Logan stopped watching the number. "Alice, how many things did Attrition Sovereign reduce at the crater?"

She frowned. "Just you."

"Just me. He never once touched you and your numbers never moved." He sat up. "It is single target. It has to be, or it would have shaved the nine Mythic-plus units standing ten meters away."

Alice went very still.

"He can only shrink one of us at a time."

"He can only shrink one of us at a time."

---

That was the first real crack in it, and they spent the rest of the stretch widening it.

The shape they landed on was not clever. It was arithmetic, which felt appropriate given who they were building it against.

Vaerith Solmane had to pick a target and stay engaged with that target to build reduction. If he picked Logan, Alice was untouched and free to stack Cadence without a ceiling. If he picked Alice, Logan was untouched and free to run the Threshold.

"He cannot cover both," Alice said. "Ilyra is the one who covers both, and Ilyra does not fight."

"Ilyra makes sure he never guesses wrong." Logan pulled up the map. "So she is the target. Not him."

"She has a Mythic class and Mythic talent and she has not thrown a single attack in front of us."

"Which tells me her class is not built to take a hit." Logan tapped the panel. "She sat on a rock through the entire ninety seconds. Vaerith walked. She sat. People who can fight do not sit."

’And she stepped eleven centimeters to dodge a Homing arrow,’ he thought. ’Not two meters. Eleven centimeters. That is somebody spending the absolute minimum because the minimum is all she has.’

---

Dog nine took them somewhere useful for once.

The portal opened into a shallow bowl of dead grass with a single stone arch standing in the middle of it, and the moment they stepped through, the arch lit.

```

[ Trial: The Narrow Hour ]

[ Rank: Mythic ]

[ One participant may enter. ]

[ Objective: survive sixty seconds against an opponent that copies your build exactly. ]

[ Reward scales with margin of victory. ]

```

Alice read it twice.

"It copies your build."

"Every stat, every skill, every talent." Logan was already reading the second line. "Sixty seconds."

"You are going to fight yourself."

"I am going to fight somebody who has Grimbound Threshold and knows exactly when I am going to use it." He looked up. "Which is the closest thing to practice against Ilyra Tanthess that exists in this match."

Alice did not argue, because there was nothing to argue with.

---

It went badly for forty seconds.

The copy came out of the arch wearing his face and his coat and every point of Constitution he had spent two Grace Fruits buying, and it opened at four hundred stacks exactly the way he would have.

Logan learned several things very quickly.

The first was that fighting somebody with Reaper’s Stride while having Reaper’s Stride was miserable. Neither of them could disengage, because both of them closed faster than either could retreat.

The second was that Sword Intent against Sword Intent showed him nothing. Every thread he found, the copy was already cutting.

The third came at thirty seconds, when the copy triggered Grimbound Threshold.

’It has the same window I do.’ Logan blocked and slid nine meters backward through dead grass. ’And if I answer with mine, we are two identical people burning identical clocks, and nobody wins that. We just both end up empty at the same moment.’

```

[ HP: 58% ]

```

So he did not answer it.

---

He spent the copy’s twenty seconds running.

That was all. He did not trade and he did not counter and he did not try to be clever.

He used Reaper’s Stride at four hundred stacks to stay exactly far enough away, and let the most dangerous version of himself in existence burn its window on empty air.

The copy chased him for the full duration because the copy was him, and he would have chased.

At fifty seconds the window closed, and the copy’s MP sat at nineteen percent, and its stacks fell off a cliff.

Logan turned around.

```

[ Grimbound Threshold ]

```

```

[ Reaper’s Stride: 3,800 stacks. Speed +26,600%. ]

```

The last ten seconds were not a fight.

```

[ Trial: The Narrow Hour complete. ]

[ Margin: 51 seconds. ]

[ Reward tier: high. ]

[ Insight gained. ]

[ Sword Intent: 37% → 44%. ]

```

---

Alice was waiting at the arch when he came out, and she had watched every second of it through the stone.

"You ran," she said.

"I ran."

"From yourself."

"From a twenty-second window." Logan sat down heavily in the dead grass. "That is the answer. That has been the answer the whole time, and I have been looking at it from the wrong end."

Alice sat down next to him.

"Say it properly."

"Vaerith wins by making the fight long. So he will make the fight long." Logan pulled a handful of grass up and let it go.

"Which means he has to be there for all of it. He cannot break off and he cannot stall, because stalling is the same as losing engagement, and losing engagement resets his whole talent."

"He is committed the moment he starts."

"He is committed the moment he starts." Logan looked at her. "So we let him start. We let him build. We give him ten full minutes of reduction on me and we do not fight it at all."

Alice’s eyebrows went up slowly.

"And then?"

"And then the reduction is on me," Logan said. "It was never on you."

```

[ Sword Intent: 44% ]

```

---

They walked back toward the water with one dog left and sixty Warlords still burning on Nyriel’s map.

"He said something at the tree," Alice said, halfway down the slope. "About not wanting to beat us with fruit."

"I have thought about that more than I would like to."

"It means he thinks the fight is already decided, and stats are not what decided it." She adjusted the bow on her back. "Which means he thinks he knows something we do not."

"He probably does."

"That does not worry you?"

Logan thought about a copy of himself burning a twenty-second window on empty grass because it could not imagine a version of him that would not answer.

"It worries me less than it did before I walked through that arch," he said.