Hour thirty-four.

Isole said “two minutes” at the end of wave eight’s cleanup and then didn’t move from her position near the vault stairs. She stood with her staff in both hands and her eyes closed, which was her normal posture for the early warning intervals. Then she said, without opening her eyes: “There are people in the tree line. Not constructs. People.”

Vane was at the east window. He turned.

“How many.”

“Many. More than one group. They are waiting.” She paused. “They have been there for approximately twenty minutes.”

Wave nine was twelve minutes out.

He took the north battlement and looked at the tree line.

The afternoon light was flat and even, no shadows to read at this hour. The tree line was dense enough that he wouldn’t see them unless they moved, and they were clearly not moving. Which meant they knew the sensor range of the stronghold and were staying outside it deliberately. Which meant at least one of the groups out there had someone worth listening to.

He activated the Usurper on a slow sweep of the tree line’s edge.

The returns came back fragmented at this distance. Six, maybe seven distinct mana signatures. More than one squad, less than three. Two squads, then, and the signatures were familiar in the way that anyone who’d been in the same academic cohort for a year became familiar — not known precisely, but recognizable by their general quality.

Bluewater. And something sharper, more aggressive. Red Tower affiliate, one of the warlord-faction groups that had been climbing the practical rankings on the back of a frontline fighter.

He came off the battlement.

The vault access on the fourth side of the stronghold had a secondary exit forty meters north of the main doors, a narrow crawl passage that opened onto a collapsed section of the outer wall. He had found it on the first day and said nothing about it to the group.

He took it now.

The crawl passage was tight and cold and smelled of mineral water and old stone. He came out behind the rubble of the outer wall on the blind side of the stronghold, away from the tree line, and moved through the collapsed section using the wall’s own bulk as cover until he was at the north edge of the approach.

He circled wide through the long grass and came at the tree line from the west, which put him at the flank of where the mana signatures were clustered.

Celisse was standing at the edge of the trees. She was in full tactical gear, lighter than most Bluewater students wore, which told him something about how she’d prepared for this. Behind her were three squad members. One was running a low-level sensor sweep. Another had a hand on her weapon grip. The third was watching the stronghold.

They all turned when he stepped into the tree line.

He kept his hands on the spear casually, not aggressively, the way he’d learned to hold things when he needed a conversation to happen before anything else did.

Celisse recovered first. Her eyes were sharp. The Usurper gave him the read: Rank 3 Elite, the gravity manipulation he’d noted at the announcement, a measured danger classification that indicated someone who thought before she moved.

“You came out to talk,” she said. Not a question.

“You’ve been standing in the trees for twenty minutes,” he said. “If you wanted to just hit the stronghold you’d have done it when the wave cycle was still fresh. You’re waiting for wave nine to open the challenge window. Which means you’re here with someone else and you’re not sure of them.”

She looked at him steadily.

“Red Tower group,” he said. “East side of the tree line, about thirty meters from your position. They have a Sentinel-rank fighter. You don’t.”

A short silence.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I want you to stand down. Not retreat. Stand down. Stay in the trees through wave nine, don’t enter the challenge window, and I will not touch Stronghold 4 for the rest of the evaluation.”

She looked at him for a moment. He could see her running the numbers.

Stronghold 4 was the Bluewater position. They had been holding it for thirty-four hours at a mid-tier accumulation rate, comfortable, no major challenges. A fraction of his group’s point total but a legitimate finish.

“If we join the challenge and win,” she said.

“You split with the Red Tower group,” Vane said. “Whatever they let you have after their Sentinel-rank fighter carried the engagement. And you lose your Stronghold 4 accumulation in the process because I’ll take it inside the hour.”

The numbers were very simple and they both knew it.

“If we stand down,” she said, “you guarantee Stronghold 4 stays intact.”

“Yes.”

“That’s a better deal than we deserve.”

“Yes.”

She looked at the stronghold. She looked at him.

“Done,” she said.

He turned and walked back through the long grass toward the secondary exit.

Wave nine came four minutes later.

The constructs were Sentinel-tier, heavier than anything the evaluation had produced yet — eight of them, broad-framed and dense, moving with the grinding momentum of things that had been calibrated specifically for the power profile of this squad. They came from the north and the east simultaneously, which was new. The evaluation had been running single-approach waves until now.

The Red Tower squad hit the challenge window at the same moment.

They came through the east tree line while the constructs were still thirty meters out, four students with a Sentinel-rank fighter at the front — big, fast, the aggressive kinetic signature of an eastern martial school. They had timed it correctly. Two threats from two directions and the wave to manage on top of it.

Vanerang the bell.

Valerica took the east chokepoint. She sealed the corridor with a gravity field that compressed the approach to three meters of effective width, and the Red Tower squad hit the field like water hitting a narrowing pipe. Their Sentinel-rank fighter pushed through it, which she had anticipated. She let him reach the chokepoint and met him there with the full weight of the Celestial Heart applied at close range.

He didn’t go forward.

Ashe had the north approach. The eight Sentinel-tier constructs came down the killing field and she hit the leading edge of them at full output, which was the correct decision at this tier because half-measures against Sentinel-tier density produced half-damage and momentum losses. No Phantom Step. She used the slope, used their forward weight against their own construction, and tore through the formation from inside it.

He took the overflow from both. Three constructs that had flanked around Ashe’s engagement. Two Red Tower students who had gotten past Valerica’s field and into the outer courtyard. He ran the north side clean and pushed the courtyard clear and was back at the perimeter in seven minutes.

When the wave timer reset, the Red Tower squad was on the ground in the outer courtyard. Functional. No permanent damage. They had made the correct tactical call and been on the wrong side of the quality gap and those were two separate facts that existed simultaneously.

Their Sentinel-rank fighter sat up first. He looked at Valerica, who was standing at the chokepoint with no visible fatigue, and he said nothing. He stood, picked up his weapon, and led his squad out through the east approach.

Vane was on the outer wall when Ashe came up to relieve him.

The sun had dropped to the tree line level and the killing field was gold and still. Bluewater’s mana signatures were still in the trees, where he’d told them to stay. They would move back to Stronghold 4 when the wave timer reset and spend the next thirty-eight hours holding it quietly and finishing with a legitimate result.

Ashe came through the battlement stairs and stood beside him.

She looked at the tree line for a moment.

“Bluewater,” she said.

“Yes.”

“They didn’t come through.”

“No.”

She was quiet for a moment. “You gave them a better deal than they deserved.”

“Yes.”

She looked at the sector. The low sun caught the flat planes of her face, the line of her jaw, the dark curve of her horns. Her arms rested on the parapet stone.

“Smart,” she said.

She turned to face the killing field, taking the perimeter position.

He went down the battlement stairs and found a dry section of stone floor in the central chamber and was asleep in under a minute.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep