Chapter 91: Her Growing Legion

The Church outpost at Kethyr Pass had been standing for forty years.

Forty years of consecrated stone, paladin seals engraved on every ledge, and a wall twenty feet thick that had withstood two civil wars and an attempted invasion from the north.

Zion looked at it for three seconds.

Then she raised her right hand.

ZMMM!

The air in front of her split, an invisible cut that made no sound until it made all the sound.

[SKILL ACTIVATED: VOID SLASH]

CRAAAACK!

The wall split from the center outward and blocks of consecrated stone shot out in all directions.

The dust took four seconds to settle.

Where a wall used to be, there was now a corridor open to the morning sky.

Behind her, the Unchained kept silent for a moment, and then someone screamed.

“LIBERATOR!”

And then everyone screamed the same thing.

Zion didn’t turn around, she just looked at her interface.

[WEAKNESS ANALYSIS — ACTIVE]

[TARGET: KETHYR OUTPOST]

[CRITICAL POINT 1: East Tower — Commander inside, no escort]

[CRITICAL POINT 2: South Warehouse — Ritual mana reserves, explosive if damaged]

[CRITICAL POINT 3: Central Courtyard — 47 soldiers grouped, maximum density]

[RECOMMENDATION: START WITH POINT 3. EFFICIENCY: 89%]

Forty-seven soldiers in a closed space.

A single lateral [Void Slash] and ninety percent would fall in less than ten seconds.

Zion took the first step over the rubble of the wall.

Her interface scanned the courtyard automatically and numbers appeared over the soldiers’ heads, just like always.

[NPC: Soldier — Level 18]

[NPC: Soldier — Level 21]

[NPC: Soldier — Level 15]

Zion raised her left hand and started charging the next slash.

Then the interface did something it had never done.

[DISPLAY ERROR]

[RECALIBRATING…]

The numbers flickered.

And when they came back, they weren’t just levels anymore.

[Corporal Eldan — Level 19 — Father of twins, 8 months]

Zion lowered her hand.

The soldier in question was in the center of the group, holding a spear that was shaking because he was shaking, he was nineteen years old and had a face that hadn’t finished forming yet.

The interface had never shown names.

Never in any previous run.

NPCs were numbers, they had always been numbers.

’Recalibration,’ Zion told herself. ’The system is processing too much information.’

Corporal Eldan shouted something to his comrades, a formation order, and his voice came out higher pitched than he wanted.

He was afraid.

Zion knew that fear because she had seen it on thousands of faces in thousands of runs, it was the fear of someone who knows they are going to lose but doesn’t know when.

She raised her hand again.

She charged the [Void Slash].

And she didn’t fire.

She changed the angle at the last second, aimed at the dirt in front of the group, and released the slash downward.

BOOM!

The courtyard floor exploded upwards.

Stone, dirt, and dust formed a wall between Zion and the soldiers.

The men were thrown back by the shockwave, falling in piles over the rubble.

All unconscious, but alive.

Zion blinked.

’I maximize incapacitation time without lethal cost,’ she justified internally. ’It is strategically more efficient to capture than to kill.’

The interface responded immediately.

[NOTE: THIS DECISION DOES NOT MATCH PREVIOUS RUNS]

[UPDATE BEHAVIOR PATTERN?]

Zion closed the window with a swipe of her hand.

The Unchained entered the outpost behind her back.

She heard the metal, the screams, Varek’s orders, and in four minutes the courtyard was taken.

After the battle, the Unchained celebrated.

Zion sat on the tower steps, alone, looking at her interface.

[QUEST COMPLETE: TAKING OF KETHYR PASS]

[EXP GAINED: +800]

[LEVEL UP AVAILABLE]

[FACTION LOYALTY: 78%]

[NOTE: FACTION IS DEVELOPING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AROUND THE PLAYER]

[EXPLOIT? SUPPRESS?]

Zion looked at the LEVEL UP button floating there, but didn’t touch it.

She heard a sound to her left and turned.

An old woman was kneeling in front of her, with a bowl of water and a rag.

She had cracked hands and the eyes of someone who has cried so much they have no tears left.

Before Zion could say anything, the old woman took her right foot, removed the boot, and started washing the dried blood.

Zion froze, no one had ever washed her feet.

“No need,” Zion said.

“It is needed,” the old woman replied. “Goddess, my grandson was your age when the Church took him to the front and they returned him in a box, you killed the men who signed that order today.”

“I am not a goddess.”

The old woman smiled, her eyes fixed on the bowl of water that was already red.

“That is also what a goddess would say.”

Zion opened her mouth to answer and closed it.

She had no argument for that.

She pulled away carefully, put on her boot, and stood up.

She looked at her interface.

[LEVEL UP AVAILABLE]

The button was still there.

She didn’t touch it.

She needed to think.

These NPCs, the old woman, Corporal Eldan with his eight-month-old twins, the girl in the camp who looked like Maya.

Why was the interface giving them names now?

Why did she care?

Varek arrived running when the sun was halfway up the sky.

“Liberator,” he said, and his voice sounded different. “The spy in the capital sent an emergency signal.”

“Speak.”

“The Church isn’t sending an army against us.”

Zion frowned. “Then they are sending…”

“Something worse,” Varek said. “The spy saw the cargo at King’s Port, an object sealed in seven layers of ecclesiastical magic. The Exarchs escorted it in person.”

Varek swallowed.

“And there is something else, something the spy copied from the transfer document, he said you would recognize the name.”

He handed her a folded paper.

Zion opened it.

[DESPAWN SEAL]

Zion knew that name because she had used it herself.

The first time this world died and started over, it was because of that item, the tool that deletes a whole run and forces a reset from zero, the reset button, the weapon that shouldn’t exist in anyone’s hands except the game architect.

And someone in the Church had it.

Zion’s interface exploded in red.

[CRITICAL ALERT: EXTERNAL ITEM DETECTED IN GAME ZONE]

[CLASSIFICATION: ANTI-PLAYER WEAPON — LEVEL: CATASTROPHIC]

[NOTE: THIS ITEM WAS USED BY ACTIVE PLAYER IN ITERATION #1]

[CURRENT ORIGIN OF ITEM: UNKNOWN]

Zion looked at the paper for five seconds.

Then she folded it carefully and put it in her armor.

“Varek,” she said, her voice completely flat. “How many days until that cargo arrives in Phaedra?”

“Twelve days, maybe ten if they speed up by land.”

Ten days.

Zion looked at the LEVEL UP button on her interface.

This time she did touch it.

[LEVEL UP: LEVEL 38 → 39]

[NEW SKILL AVAILABLE: SELECTION PENDING]

But she didn’t open the skill menu, because someone else knew the rules of this game.

Someone else had touched the code.

“Prepare the men,” Zion said. “We are going to the capital.”

Varek went pale. “Straight to the heart of the Church?”

“I need to intercept that cargo before it reaches the Exarchs’ hands,” Zion said, and started walking. “And I need to find the Player who put it in this world.”

She took three steps and stopped. “Varek.”

“Yes, Liberator?”

“Corporal Eldan. The one I left alive in the courtyard.”

“Yes, my lady, he is unconscious but breathing.”

“When he wakes up,” Zion said, “have someone give him food and show him the way home.”

“And let no one tell him I ordered it.”

Varek looked at her without understanding but Zion was no longer there to explain it.

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