[ Calculating materials... ] [ 78 Minerals. 48 Wood. ] [ Scout stationary. Awaiting orders. ]

  "Damn."

  I had made a basic mistake. I had sent the scout to map — but hadn't specified collection. He had swept the entire territory, catalogued every point of interest with millimetric precision, and then simply stopped. Waiting. With no initiative beyond what had been ordered.

  Extension of the Lord. Nothing more, nothing less.

  "Zeus, display data collected by the scout."

  The hologram expanded — a perfect circle one kilometer in diameter, with green dots blinking in dense distribution across the territory. Abundance. Edible plants in sufficient quantity to sustain prolonged operation, spread in a pattern suggesting fertile soil and good subsurface moisture.

  My stomach growled before I could process anything else.

  "Scout. Collect priority edible items."

  While he headed out, I went to the river.

  Not for comfort. Out of the necessity for cold calculation: Wendigos and the giant snake hunted by smell, and most of the Oasis's nocturnal creatures operated with scent as their primary sense. Allowing my smell to accumulate would mean creating an unnecessary detection vector. If it could be avoided, it didn't need to be managed.

  After bathing, I ate what the scout brought back.

  Something resembling mango — right texture, slightly different flavor. Dark berries similar to blackberries, smaller, denser. No protein. Protein in the Oasis generally came with teeth, claws, or both, and I wasn't in a position to negotiate with either just yet.

  Sufficient for now.

  ?

  "Zeus, do we have the materials to build the Hero's Temple?"

  [ Calculating... Negative. ] [ Hero's Temple requires 100 Wood and 100 Minerals. ] [ Estimated collection time with current workforce: 8 hours. ]

  Eight hours was time I couldn't afford to waste waiting. I needed to accelerate — and the only way to accelerate was to expand capacity before expanding production.

  "Build another house."

  The structure emerged and fused to the castle with the naturalness of something that had always been anticipated. Three more workers lined up before me. Nine now — but the bottleneck wasn't quantity, it was infrastructure. More miners without a forge was wasted potential. More woodcutters without proper tools was inefficiency multiplied.

  I needed the House of Iron and Steel.

  "Zeus, enable construction of the House of Iron and Steel."

  [ Construction enabled. Select location. ]

  Four areas lit up within the castle's perimeter. All within the walls — that was one of the oldest rules of the Oasis, so encompassing it remained inviolable even for races considered superior. Secondary constructions to the castle had to be erected within its structure; the advantage being that I could accelerate their construction using workers, as long as I had hammers.

  And I had three.

  "Workers, begin construction."

  [ Estimated time: 10 hours. ] [ Reduction applied for additional workers with tools: 5 hours. ]

  Five hours. Acceptable.

  By my calculations, the sequence would cost approximately two additional hours relative to the original Temple schedule — but it would compensate in stability. With the forge active, I could produce additional tools, increase productivity per worker, and compress subsequent timeframes in a compounding manner. The initial delay would generate accelerated gain at every subsequent stage.

  Mathematically, it was the correct decision.

  "Damn… if I weren't afraid of that woman killing me, I'd thank her."

  But I would never do that. Anyone who knew about the ring would reach the obvious conclusion — that I had killed the girl to take it. And honestly, it was a reasonable assumption. I couldn't let anyone get close to that hypothesis.

  "She probably didn't even know what was inside it."

  ?

  Still on the ground were three items I had set aside for later.

  The sword. The shield. And the book.

  I picked up the book.

  And froze.

  "Blood Magic."

  Not just any magic — Blood Magic was a rare discipline in the Oasis. The Compendium devoted fewer than two paragraphs to the subject and recorded that among humans, its active practitioners barely numbered a few tens of thousands. I opened it immediately.

  A beginner's manual. Direct, without ornament. It required only that the user be in the Oasis — no lineage prerequisites, no genetic conditions. Anyone could learn it.

  But there was a detail that made me stop.

  Two variations. One for men. One for women.

  "She picked this up thinking of her sister."

  The female version created a blood clone — a combat copy that fought, defended, and protected autonomously. Offensive and defensive power combined, with no direct cost to the user beyond the initial ritual blood. The sword and shield made sense now: probably intended for the clone.

  The male version was different.

  Increased strength. Increased speed. In exchange for progressive sanity loss during the effect.

  A double-edged blade with a disproportionate edge on one side.

  I stared at the page for a few seconds. The question wasn't whether the power was useful — it was clearly useful. The question was the variable I couldn't measure without testing: how unstable would I become? If the loss of control was total, the ability was useless. If it was manageable, it would completely change my solo combat potential.

  There was only one way to find out.

  I drew the circle on the ground of the clearing. Stepped inside. Let the blood drip into the center — the cut on my palm still served — and recited the words from the manual. A rudimentary mix of ancient Celtic with something I couldn't identify, a language that seemed to predate anything catalogued.

  The air grew heavy.

  When the last syllable left my mouth, my body ignited.

  It wasn't pain. It was intensity — the difference between the two was small but critical, and I needed a few seconds to distinguish them. My eyes burned. My vision turned reddish, as though a filter had descended over everything. A rage emerged from the depths of my chest — primitive, without object, without direction. My heart accelerated. My breathing grew heavy.

  But my mind was there.

  Lucid. Observing all of this from within.

  I picked up the sword and shield. Moved toward the thickest trunk nearby — almost a meter in diameter, wood dense enough to take minutes with a common axe. I struck.

  The impact echoed through the forest.

  The blade sank deep. The trunk gave way. I didn't split it completely in two — but nearly. With a single blow.

  I stood still, breathing, feeling the strength vibrating in my muscles like an electric current not yet fully discharged. The speed was proportionally increased — I felt it clearly, without needing to test it, that my reaction time had shifted categories.

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  "If the book spoke of sanity loss… I only felt rage."

  Clean rage. Directed at nothing specific, but completely within my control. It wasn't madness — it was fuel.

  The price came when the effect wore off.

  My entire body locked at once, as though my muscles had simultaneously decided they had already given enough. Every fiber screamed. My hands trembled at the frequency of something that had operated beyond its structural capacity for too long.

  "The rebound is too heavy."

  It wasn't a free-use ability. It was a surgical-use ability — activated at the right moment, with the exit planned before entering. If I triggered it without knowing when the combat would end, I would be left vulnerable at the worst possible moment.

  Limitation registered. Potential confirmed.

  ?

  While I processed the pros and cons of the magic, the House of Iron and Steel was completed.

  The forge was active.

  I began immediate production of additional axes and pickaxes — increasing productivity was the priority before any other expansion. I made an extra axe for myself. If I wanted to test the physical limits of my body and build real muscular endurance, felling trees alongside the workers was the most efficient training available in the territory.

  Hours later, covered in sweat and wood dust, I finally heard what I had been waiting for.

  [ Sufficient materials confirmed. ]

  "Build Hero's Temple."

  The structure that emerged was unlike anything that had been built in the territory until then.

  It wasn't compact. It wasn't functional in the utilitarian sense. It was almost solemn — white marble columns supporting an open roof, capitals being finished by the workers in real time, a wide staircase leading up to a platform elevated four meters off the ground. Beside the House of Iron and Steel, the contrast was absurd: industrial rusticity pressed against architecture that seemed to belong to another world entirely.

  At the center of the platform, a colossal throne nearly six meters tall.

  And below it, a closed door.

  With a handle covered in thorns.

  I stared at it for a few seconds. I already knew the method — the Compendium was clear. Simple and painful, like most things worth doing in the Oasis.

  I climbed the stairs.

  The air grew denser with each step. The pressure shifted perceptibly as I approached the platform. As though the space around the throne operated under slightly different rules from the rest of the territory.

  "Zeus, remind me of the probabilities."

  I already knew. But I needed to hear them aloud to anchor the reasoning.

  [ The invocation considers multiple factors: social status, genetic potential, and dimensional compatibility. Presenting statistical average: ] [ 90.00% — Common ] [ 8.00% — Rare ] [ 1.90% — Epic ] [ 0.99% — Legendary ] [ 0.01% — Unique ]

  Ninety percent chance of something that wouldn't be stronger than me with Blood Magic. Anything above rare would shift the territory's balance. Epic would already be sufficient to compensate for my lack of troops before the protection expired.

  I just needed to open the door.

  I grabbed the handle.

  The thorns pierced the skin of my palm with surgical precision — not randomly, but at specific points, as though the handle knew exactly where to hurt the most. I tried to turn it. Nothing. The door didn't yield to force — it yielded to commitment.

  "No pain… no gain."

  I gripped harder. The thorns drove in deep. Almost to the bone. Blood soaked the base of the door, running down the wood's reliefs in dark red rivulets.

  And then it turned.

  ?

  A whirlwind of colors exploded through the opening.

  Gray. Blue. Gray. Blue. Purple. Gold. Red.

  They passed too fast to be distinguished individually — a chaotic sequence without apparent pattern, as though the system was still deciding. Then they began to slow.

  Gray. Blue. Purple.

  My heart accelerated.

  Blue. Purple. Gold.

  The colors grew slower. Each transition lasting longer than the one before, as though the weight of each possibility grew as the system approached a resolution.

  Purple. Gray. Gold. Purple.

  And then it stopped.

  Gold.

  The temple vibrated. The air grew so dense that I felt it physically — a pressure in my chest, in my ears, at the base of my skull. The door opened completely.

  [ Congratulations. Legendary Invocation confirmed. Please step back. ]

  Legendary.

  My brain took a few seconds to process. I had calculated based on averages — something functional, something stable, something that wouldn't get me killed in the first few days. I hadn't included legendary in any realistic planning scenario.

  I stepped back automatically. I didn't even notice my hand was still bleeding.

  Then —

  BOOM.

  The energy explosion hurled me down the staircase. I rolled to the ground, absorbed the impact, got up with difficulty. I looked up.

  And my breath failed.

  She descended the steps slowly, as though there was no hurry — as though the entire staircase had been built specifically for that pace.

  Long violet hair caught the temple's light in a way I couldn't physically explain.

  A white chiton, with the texture of something that shouldn't exist on any loom I knew.

  Deep eyes, a color somewhere between violet and green, that observed me with an ancient calm — almost angelic.

  There were no wings.

  Only presence.

  The kind of presence that occupies space beyond the physical volume of the body — that arrives before the person and lingers after she leaves. I had read about this in the Compendium as an abstract description of high-level entities. I hadn't understood what it meant until now.

  She stopped before me. Knelt.

  "My name is Morgana Briarwyn, my Lord. Thank you for invoking me."

  "Mor… Morgana…"

  I had seen beautiful women. This wasn't beauty in the sense I knew — it was another category of thing altogether, something the brain processed as aesthetic but that carried a weight ordinary beauty didn't carry. Like looking at something that shouldn't exist on the same plane as you and realizing that it does.

  My trance ended when she took my hand.

  The cut was still open — deep, bleeding more than I had noticed. She brought my fingers to her lips. A gentle touch, almost formal.

  Then the burning came.

  Intense. A green substance escaped from between her lips and enveloped my entire hand, penetrating through the cut. The pain disappeared within seconds. The wound closed without leaving a scar — as though it had never existed.

  "A healer."

  My stomach sank with calculated precision.

  Epic healers were rare to the point that established Lords paid entire fortunes for access to one for a single battle. Any Lord with even a common-level healer hero could establish themselves in human cities with ease — protection guaranteed, allies guaranteed, trade guaranteed.

  But I didn't want a city.

  I wanted territory. And to hold territory, I needed combat power — not pure support.

  "Damn… of all things, on the very first invocation…"

  If she were purely support, I would fight alone on the front line with no offensive cover. I wouldn't be able to raise the barracks before the protection expired. The timeline collapsed.

  "My Lord…"

  She tilted her head slightly — not in submission, but in something that felt closer to deliberate patience, like someone waiting for the other to finish calculating what she already knows.

  "I am a healer, yes. But not only that."

  From behind her back, she drew something I hadn't noticed until then.

  Nearly a meter long. Dark wood, central tension mechanism, curved lateral arms.

  It took me a few seconds.

  "That looks like… a gastraphetes."

  A primitive crossbow. Heavy. Rustic. The kind of weapon that existed before any technical refinement, when the only objective was to put enough force into a projectile for it to pass through whatever needed to be passed through.

  "In my world," she said, with the same calm tone of someone describing the weather, "women fight with ranged weapons. Men fight in close combat."

  Another dimension. Another civilization, with a completely differently structured division of combat. The invocation pulled from anywhere in the universe — parallels included. I knew that in theory.

  But if she was legendary, the weapon wasn't the limit. The weapon was simply what she chose to carry.

  "How strong were you… in your world?"

  She didn't answer immediately. There was a pause between my question and the response — not of hesitation, but the kind of pause that exists when someone considers whether the truth will be correctly understood before saying it.

  "How strong?" — she repeated, as though the question needed to be internally reformulated before it could have an answer. She looked at me with those eyes that carried something too ancient to have a simple name. — "I governed a kingdom of millions of people, my Lord. I commanded an army. I negotiated with gods."

  A pause.

  "I was a Queen."

  The silence that followed wasn't mine — it belonged to the entire territory. The wind stopped. The workers continued moving in the background, but the sound of them seemed suddenly distant, as though the space around the two of us had closed in slightly.

  Queen. Legendary. Invoked by me.

  If this was the legendary level… what would Unique be?

  Inconceivable.

  "Right." — my voice came out steadier than I expected. — "Let's test it."

  I pointed to a tree more than a hundred meters away — one of the ones I had left standing during training, dense enough to absorb impact without giving way on the first attempt.

  She didn't turn her face.

  Didn't aim.

  Didn't adjust her posture, didn't calibrate the distance, didn't make any of the movements I associated with preparing for a precision shot. She simply kept her eyes on me.

  She lifted the crossbow.

  And fired.

  The shot was clean and precise, executed with the naturalness of something that had been repeated so many times it had ceased to be technique and become reflex. The tree was struck exactly at its center. The vibration ran through the entire trunk, and even from where I stood I heard the crack of compressed wood.

  I stared for a few seconds.

  "Reload time?" "Five seconds, my Lord."

  Slow for close-range combat. But the precision and force compensated in any medium or long-range scenario — and five seconds was enough time for me to hold the front line with Blood Magic active.

  Both problems resolved each other.

  "Do you have any other abilities beyond healing and ranged combat?"

  She turned red.

  Literally — a color that rose up her neck and reached her cheekbones with the speed of something unaccustomed to being contained. And then, with the absolute naturalness of someone who had never needed to learn that certain actions require context, she began undoing the knot of her chiton.

  "Hey —! You can stop!"

  She blinked. Looked at me with the expression of someone who had just discovered there was a step between question and answer that she hadn't mapped.

  "Wasn't that it?"

  "No! I mean — focus!"

  She tilted her head slightly to one side. Curious. Without embarrassment, without urgency, without any reading of the level of awkwardness the situation should produce in someone with the minimum of shared social reference.

  Queen of millions.

  With absolutely zero filter.

  I sighed.

  The universe had given me a legendary heroine, a healer, an archer of absurd precision, a former queen from a parallel dimension — and apparently zero awareness that some questions were not answered with a practical demonstration.

  I could work with that.

  "Good." — I reorganized my reasoning at the necessary speed. — "With long-range support, I can participate directly in combat without worrying about blind spots. If I operate on the front line with Blood Magic and you cover from a distance, the territory's control radius expands significantly."

  She listened with total attention. Without interruption, without offering an opinion — only processing, like someone who recognizes a battle plan and evaluates it in silence.

  "Zeus, how long until we have enough material to build the barracks after the Castle's evolution?"

  The game had changed.

  I was no longer alone.

  And the territory of Sparta had just gained its Queen.