[ Protection time remaining: 20 hours. ]

  I closed my eyes for a second. Almost three days. That was the time that had passed since I planted the flag — and the accumulation of resources continued slower than any projection I had made before arriving here. I hadn't underestimated the Oasis in almost anything, except this: the difference between theoretically knowing resources were scarce and living the real slowness of every hour of collection.

  Less than ten hours of protection remaining. Insufficient to build the barracks, let alone mobilize an operational number of soldiers before the end. I had calculated this scenario — it was what would happen when the pace of expansion outran the pace of defense. I was ahead of the plan in almost everything, except in the one variable that would matter when the dome disappeared: containment force.

  I mapped the available options.

  Protecting the territory meant covering the workers — especially those in the mines, nearly two hundred meters from the castle, exposed and without any defensive capability of their own. Accelerating the army meant abandoning peripheral positions during construction, creating windows of vulnerability that any territorial predator would exploit.

  Neither option solved the problem on its own.

  But there was a third construction I had mentally dismissed as a medium-term priority. After completing the House of Iron and Steel, it had been unlocked — and now, with so little time and a territory of one kilometer radius to defend, it was the only mathematically viable answer.

  Towers.

  "Zeus, how many towers can I build before the protection ends?"

  [ Calculating resources and construction time... ] [ Maximum viable: three towers. ]

  Three was sufficient — if I positioned them correctly.

  Towers were underestimated in the early stages by Lords who prioritized offensive power. They weren't efficient for active hunting. But for area control, early warning, and defensive pressure in fixed corridors, they were superior to any alternative I could build in the available time.

  "Zeus, distance from the mine to the castle."

  [ 158.70 meters. ]

  Effective range of each tower: one hundred meters. With three towers positioned in a triangle between the castle and the mine, I would create a protected corridor with overlapping coverage at the critical points. Anything attempting to intercept the workers along the route would encounter at least two towers with simultaneous line of sight.

  It wasn't perfect. But it was the best I could do with what I had.

  "Morgana."

  She approached without hurry — with that calm I was still learning to read, which sometimes seemed like inattentiveness, but never was.

  "When it happens, I'll be your shield. You cover me from a distance. Understood?"

  "Yes, my Lord."

  The night passed with the specific slowness of waits that have no way of being hurried. The workers continued the cycle — wood, ore, exploration — without pause, without complaint, without the anxiety I felt growing with every hour. They didn't know the protection would end. There was nothing to know.

  When the sun began to appear on the horizon, the dome simply disappeared.

  Without warning. Without sound. Without any visible transition.

  Only absence where protection had been.

  The workers continued cutting wood. The blows of axes and the creaking of falling trees echoed through the forest without any filter now — sounds that had previously been contained within the territory spread freely, traveling for kilometers in every direction.

  An invitation.

  The only question was who would respond first.

  ?

  The towers were already standing — fifteen meters tall, with a floating bow at the top rotating in slow, constant motion, sweeping the perimeter in search of heat, movement, any variation that didn't belong to the territory.

  My body was tense in a way I recognized as psychological, not physical. I had slept, eaten, recovered. I was ready to act. But the mind was generating scenarios the body couldn't ignore — some I would win, others that depended on variables outside my control. It was those last ones I was afraid of.

  "Master… I sense a presence."

  I looked at Morgana. She had already raised the crossbow — not as a reaction to my attention, but as the continuation of something she had begun before speaking. Her eyes were fixed on the north, with a concentration that wasn't tension but absolute focus.

  She fired without waiting for my response.

  The sound of the shot echoed across the clearing. For a second, nothing.

  Then came the scream.

  Guttural. Sharp. With that specific frequency I had memorized in the cave — the sound Wendigos make when something pierces muscle without finding bone first. The same sound they made when they were torn by the serpent's teeth, days ago.

  "Wendigos." — it wasn't a question.

  It made sense. They were territorial, traveled in packs, and controlled wide areas with rigid hierarchy. I had assumed the colossal serpent had displaced them permanently — but there were two equally plausible explanations: the snake had merely been passing through, or it had died after I left the cave. In either case, the result was the same.

  The territory had reverted to the pack.

  And now there was something new at its center.

  "If I'm not mistaken… there were seven in the cave. The serpent devoured at least two, and the converted girl along with them." — I calculated in a low voice, more to organize my own reasoning than to inform anyone. — "Four remain, maybe five."

  But the problem wasn't the subordinates.

  It was the Alpha.

  I had seen that creature up close enough to know it was old — not by the size of the body, but by the antlers. The Creature Codex was clear: branches of that caliber didn't grow over years, they grew over decades. The older the Wendigo, the more its instinct refined itself into something that dangerously approached strategy.

  "Morgana, they'll come here. The shot revealed our position." — a pause. — "Can you cure their infection?"

  "Yes, my Lord. I can purify any corruption."

  Something reorganized internally.

  Wendigos were dangerous for two distinct reasons: the pack and the contagion. A single deep scratch was sufficient to initiate the transformation — I had seen the result in the cave, the girl already unrecognizable, surrendered to the pack without will of her own, without consciousness, just a grotesquely altered body following instincts that were no longer hers. A prisoner of herself. Lost forever. The infection didn't work on heroes or summoned creatures. But it worked on me.

  With Morgana at my side, that risk vector disappeared.

  For the first time since the invocation, I fully understood why a legendary healer was worth more than any attack hero I could have received on that roll. A strong hero killed fast. But didn't prevent the poisoning. And the Alpha, intelligent as it was, would know exactly which wound to target.

  I had been lucky.

  Now I couldn't afford to waste it.

  "Morgana. How many do you see?"

  "Nine. The one I wounded is mortally incapacitated."

  Nine. More than I had estimated — the pack had grown since the cave, or there were recruits I hadn't counted.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "Any with antlers?"

  "Yes, master. Far back. Beyond my range."

  Of course.

  The Alpha wouldn't advance before measuring our strength. It would send the subordinates first — to test resistance, identify weaknesses, force the use of resources it would later exploit. It was exactly what I would have done.

  "We go to the tower. We'll fight beneath it."

  I positioned myself at the front, shield on my left arm, sword in my right. The Blood Magic ritual was prepared — the gestures memorized, the sequence organized. But I didn't activate it. The effect was limited in duration and the rebound was incapacitating. I needed to choose the right moment, not the first available moment.

  Morgana stayed just behind, back protected by the tower. The crossbow was already tensioned.

  When the first creatures entered the hundred-meter radius —

  Twang.

  The tower's bolt tore through the air with the thickness of a ballista projectile, ripping clods from the damp ground before finding the first target. I couldn't see clearly in the darkness of the night, but I could hear — the dull impact of something heavy being pierced, the scream that followed, the silence after.

  [ Target neutralized. 8 remaining. ]

  Twang.

  [ 7 remaining. ]

  A shot from Morgana.

  [ 6 remaining. ]

  Another.

  [ 5 remaining. ]

  "They've arrived."

  Morgana's voice was completely flat. There was no urgency, no fear — only information delivered at the moment it was relevant, with the precision of someone who had been in battle enough times to distinguish what needed to be said from what was noise.

  The first creature emerged from the darkness.

  I recognized it before consciously processing it.

  A uniform like mine.

  Or what remained of it after the conversion. The creature appeared fully transformed, moving quickly and at sharp angles — very different from the disjointed coordination typical of the recently converted, who hadn't yet fully integrated the new musculature.

  "I think the alpha has a preference for humans…"

  I activated Blood Magic.

  The heat arrived immediately — not gradual, but total, like a switch being thrown. The reddish vision. The rage rising through my chest without a defined object, searching for direction. I directed it.

  It launched itself against the shield with force disproportionate to the size of the body.

  The impact threw me three steps back. My entire arm vibrated to the shoulder — not from pain, but from the kind of collision that informs the nervous system that the next one cannot be absorbed the same way. I recovered my balance before falling.

  I advanced.

  The flesh was dense — more than I had estimated based on the size. The sword met real resistance at the neck, not the clean cut I had planned. I needed brute force to finish it: muscle, then bone, then the abrupt movement that completed the work. The head barely held. The body convulsed — and in that last violent spasm, the claws shot outward with the blind force of something that had nothing left to lose. They tore into the Wendigo directly behind it, punching through the ribcage before either of them hit the ground.

  I hadn't planned that. But I'd take it.

  The other two flanked from the sides — simple coordination, but efficient. One came at the shield. The other low, aiming for the legs.

  I held the first with the shield and pushed it to the left, creating space for the cut. But the second had already arrived.

  The teeth sank into my thigh.

  The pain was immediate and total — not the kind the body processes as a signal, but the kind that paralyzes everything for an instant. Flesh being torn away. The warmth of blood running down my leg. The creature wouldn't let go, chewing with the mechanical persistence of something that had learned a prey that isn't released doesn't escape.

  The magic's rage found direction.

  The one gripping the shield received a cut that needed no second strike. The head rolled before the body understood what had happened. The one on my leg — I decapitated it with the same return movement of the blade, using the angle while I still had strength in my arm.

  The last one advanced toward my throat.

  Morgana pierced it before it reached half a meter.

  Silence.

  I stood still for a few seconds, breathing with the irregularity of someone whose nervous system hadn't yet decided that the danger had passed. Then my knees gave way. I descended slowly — not from fainting, but from the accumulated weight of every second of the last half hour arriving all at once.

  "Damn… that hurts…"

  The magic's rebound began before I finished the sentence. As though my body had waited for the moment I stopped moving to collect everything at once — every muscle screaming simultaneously, my hands trembling at the frequency of something operated beyond its structural capacity.

  "Morgana… the Alpha?"

  "It's waiting, Lord."

  Of course.

  Too intelligent to advance without subordinates against two opponents of unknown capability. It had sent the pack to take measure — strength, endurance, available resources. Now it was processing the result.

  "Morgana. Heal."

  She knelt beside me without hesitation. Her hands enveloped my thigh — the familiar green light appeared, penetrated through the wound, and the burning that followed was the kind that signals regeneration, not damage. The infection was eliminated before it could establish itself. The flesh began to close.

  In the distance, a sound.

  It wasn't an attack cry. It was another kind of cry — longer, higher, with a frequency I hadn't heard from the Alpha before. Frustration. The hatred of something that had calculated an outcome and received another.

  It had expected me to die from the infection.

  "Where is it?"

  "…Gone, Lord."

  Without enough subordinates, it wouldn't face two opponents — especially one that healed. Without the infection vector, the advantage that made Wendigos disproportionately dangerous to humans disappeared. It had lost the territory for today.

  But not permanently.

  ?

  I breathed deeply. The body still ached, but not enough to incapacitate — just enough for every muscle to announce the effort beyond its limit.

  And I had an account to settle with myself.

  The bite on my thigh hadn't been inevitable. I had seen the two Wendigos flanking from the sides — had processed the information, had identified the pattern. And yet I had prioritized the cut on the first rather than covering the low angle. I had chosen attack over defense at the wrong moment, with enough information to have chosen differently.

  That wasn't bad luck. It was an error in judgment.

  The arrogance had been subtler than I expected — not the obvious arrogance of underestimating the enemy, but of trusting too much in my own capacity to absorb consequences. I had entered the battle thinking I could take damage and compensate afterward. Morgana had compensated. But if she weren't a healer — if the invocation had resulted in any other type of hero — I would be dead or infected.

  I had survived by merit and by luck, in that order, with a margin smaller than was acceptable.

  The Alpha had identified that before I did. It had sent the pack not to win the battle, but to kill me specifically — because it knew that if I fell, the entire territory collapsed. No hero, no castle, no system functions without me.

  I needed to stop fighting as though my life were the most expendable in the territory.

  I was the only irreplaceable one.

  I looked at Morgana. She had remained standing throughout the entire analysis, waiting — not with impatience, but with the silent attention of someone who had learned that the moments after battle were just as important as the moments during.

  A queen knew that.

  "Morgana… how did you die?"

  The question came out before I decided to ask it. I knew the theory — heroes were powerful beings who had succumbed in the Oasis in some way. But she was a healer, attacked from a distance, had governed an entire world. It was hard not to notice the irony: she had failed being all of that, and I was still alive making mistakes she probably never would have made.

  She didn't look away.

  "I was betrayed."

  Simple. Without visible emotion, without the weight of something still unresolved. Just fact — delivered with the same neutrality with which she reported enemy counts.

  Greed. Fear. Ambition. In different worlds, under completely distinct systems of power and survival, some motivations remained constant.

  "I understand." — and I did, in a way that went beyond abstract empathy. In the Oasis, betrayal was as common as death.

  ?

  "Lord, will you collect the resources from the creatures?"

  Morgana's question brought me back.

  Right. The world didn't pause for post-battle analysis. I had won — and victory in the Oasis had material weight beyond the symbolic.

  "Zeus, how many Nectars exist in my territory?"

  [ Identifying… Six low-grade Nectar Stones. ]

  Six points lit up on the map — exactly where the Wendigos had fallen. I walked to the first body and dug. The earth was still warm from the spilled blood. After a few seconds, my fingers touched something hard.

  A small stone. No larger than a marble. Translucent, with a faint and irregular internal glow, as though the light inside it wasn't entirely stable.

  It looked ordinary.

  But it was one of the main reasons humans accepted entering that hell.

  Mortality rate above ninety percent. Interdimensional creatures. Hostile territory without any of the protections civilization had built over millennia. None of that would make sense without proportional reward — and there it was, condensed into something that would fit in a pocket without effort.

  "Zeus. If I consume this, what do I gain?"

  [ These units are low-grade. Attribute increases confirmed. Rounding to zero. ] [ Effect per unit: extension of life expectancy by approximately one year. ]

  I sighed.

  After almost dying, after bleeding in quantities I preferred not to quantify — one year.

  But I knew the real value. In the outside world, those six stones would be worth fortunes. The low-grade ones were already rare enough that the wealthy paid more than most people saw in a lifetime. The high-grade ones permanently altered attributes. The rare ones changed what a person was, not merely what they could do.

  I had no intention of selling any of them.

  "Zeus. How do I consume it?"

  [ Place it in your mouth. The structure will dissolve automatically. ]

  I cleaned the stone as best I could and placed it on my tongue.

  It didn't dissolve gradually.

  It exploded.

  Not like a stone — like a liquid released from contained pressure. Warm, dense honey, with a sweetness that wasn't cloying but balanced, with layers I kept discovering after I thought it had ended. Warm in the throat. Warm in the chest. Like something that had been made specifically for that system, for that body, with information about what needed to be filled.

  "That's delicious…"

  I placed the second before I finished processing the first. Then the third. Fourth. Fifth.

  When I held the last one, I noticed.

  Morgana was watching.

  Not discreetly — with her eyes fixed on the stone between my fingers, her breathing slightly faster than normal. A subtle tension in her neck, in her shoulder. It wasn't the gaze of someone processing information.

  It was desire.

  The kind the body expresses before the mind decides whether it will.

  I hesitated. Then extended my hand.

  "Do you want it?"

  She raised her eyes to mine. And there was something different there — not the careful submission of the newly invoked hero, not the professional neutrality of the warrior in battle. It was something else. Closer to something she hadn't shown before.

  "Lord… for heroes, Nectar does not prolong life."

  A pause. She took a step forward — small, deliberate.

  "But it strengthens the bond."

  The air shifted with those words. Not dramatically — subtly, the way some changes happen before they are named. She was close enough that I could feel the warmth of her body, the presence that always occupied more space than its physical volume would justify.

  "If you offer it to me… I will accept."

  The stone was between my fingers. Small. With that irregular internal glow that seemed more stable now than when I had pulled it from the ground.

  In the Oasis, nothing was simple.

  Not even sharing something small with someone who had saved your life.

  "Take it."