The air was a wet, cloying thing, thick with the stench of stagnant water, blood, and the ozone-sharp tang of my own spent mana. Battle wasn't a symphony; it was a cacophony, a discordant shriek of tearing metal, splintering bone, and raw, guttural screams. I stood on a slight rise of marshy ground, the eye of a hurricane of my own design, and watched the beautiful, ugly chaos unfold.
My mind was a loom, and I was weaving a tapestry of lies. A dozen threads of will, thin and taut, stretched out from my consciousness into the swirling miasma of the battlefield. Each thread terminated in a phantom, a shimmering, translucent warrior of pure illusion. I had given them the shape of Ufgak's tribe—the rivals, the boogeymen, the manifestation of Grob's deepest paranoia. Maintaining them was not like casting a single spell; it was like conducting an orchestra of ghosts. One thread twitched, and a phantom warrior on the flank raised its spear in a silent, menacing war cry. Another shuddered, and a squad of shimmering goblins charged a section of the palisade where loyalists were trying to rally, drawing their fire, wasting their arrows, and sowing yet more discord.
The mental strain was immense. A low, persistent thrumming echoed in my skull, a counter-rhythm to the frantic drumming of my heart. My mana, once a deep, cool well, now felt like a rapidly draining reservoir, each illusionary soldier a crack in its foundation. But it was worth it. Oh, it was more than worth it.
The plan—the real plan, the one whispered into the soul of a terrified Pit Boss named Zog—had shattered Grob's tribe from the inside out. They were no longer an army. They were a self-devouring serpent. I watched a loyalist archer on the wall draw a bead on Gnar, only to have his throat opened from behind by a comrade who had bought my lie wholesale. I saw two goblins, likely brothers in arms an hour ago, hacking at each other with crude cleavers in the mud, screaming of betrayal. Surrender was a plague, spreading through their ranks. Dozens were already on their knees, hands in the air, while others simply threw down their weapons and fled into the swamp, hoping the Gutter-Guard would be too busy to give chase.
They were wrong.
This was not a battle for territory. It was an extermination. The first pillar of our new world would be built on a foundation of absolute, terrifying security. There could be no survivors to carry tales, to regroup, to seek revenge.
My gaze swept the field, my mind processing the swirling chaos not as a warrior, but as a mathematician solving for a final, stubborn variable. The bulk of the resistance had collapsed into a panicked mob. My forces—Gnar's disciplined Gutter-Guard forming the iron spine of the assault, and Rakka's rabid, newly-empowered warriors acting as the vicious, flanking teeth—were chewing through them with terrifying efficiency.
My bond with Elara was a faint, thrumming cord in the back of my mind, a background hum of focused, predatory silence. She was in. She was moving toward the heart of the snake. My job was to keep the body thrashing so violently it wouldn't notice the blade at its throat.
Then I saw him.
[Analysis]
A flicker of blue light, invisible to all but me, framed the figure.
[Target: Zog, Goblin Pit Boss (Level 9)]
[Vocation: Warrior (Slaver)]
[Status: Enraged, Paranoid, Adrenaline Surge]
My psychic gambit had worked too well. Zog hadn't just fled or surrendered. His terror had curdled into a rabid, cornered-animal fury. He hadn't broken the tribe's morale; he had become a new center of gravity for it. He had rallied a small, desperate cadre of about eight goblins, the ones most loyal to him personally, and they had formed a knot of savage resistance near the shattered gate. They were fighting with the berserker strength of doomed men, a festering pocket of infection in my otherwise clean surgical strike.
He was no longer a pawn to be manipulated. He was a strategic objective that had to be eliminated.
"Gnar," I said, my voice cutting through the din.
The hulking Hobgoblin War-Chief was beside me in an instant, his shield a wall of scarred wood and iron, his sword dripping with gore. "Speaker."
"The Pit Boss. He's rallying them. He dies, the rest will shatter for good. With me."
Gnar didn't waste words. He simply nodded, his one good eye fixing on the target. He bellowed a command to his squad, assigning two of his Hobgoblins to flank us, and we moved. We didn't charge. We flowed into the battle, a wedge of precise, disciplined violence. The chaotic scrum of the melee parted before Gnar's shield like water before the prow of a ship. A goblin lunged at me, his face a mask of hate, and Gnar's arm shot out, a piston of green muscle, his sword shearing through the goblin's neck with economical brutality. The body fell, and we kept moving.
As we closed the distance, Zog saw us. His eyes, wide with rage and terror, locked onto me. He knew. He knew I was the source, the 'Speaker' who had turned his world into a waking nightmare. He pointed a clawed finger, his voice a raw shriek. "THE SNAKE-TONGUE! KILL THE BIGSKIN WIZARD!"
His eight remaining warriors turned as one, their desperation giving them a suicidal focus. This was it. The final variable.
"Engage," I commanded, my voice flat.
Gnar and his two Hobgoblins became a threshing machine. They met the charge of the eight goblins with their shields interlocked, a miniature, unstoppable phalanx. The crash of their meeting was a percussive blast of splintering wood and screaming metal. Gnar was the anchor, his shield absorbing the blows of three goblins at once, his sword a blur of decapitating strikes and gutting thrusts. His two soldiers fought with a chilling synchronicity, their spears darting out from behind the shield wall, punching through leather armor and goblin flesh with disciplined, piston-like jabs.
The fight was a whirlwind of motion, but my focus was absolute. I targeted the goblin on the far right, a brute swinging a heavy, two-handed club. I didn't have the mana for another grand illusion, but the small tricks, the intimate lies, were still mine to command.
[Subtle Influence]
I didn't push a command. I pushed a sensation. A flicker of vertigo. The feeling of the muddy ground suddenly shifting beneath his right foot. It was a lie told directly to his inner ear, a psychic nudge costing a mere sip of my dwindling power. The goblin stumbled, his balance compromised for a single, fatal heartbeat.
"Gnar! Right flank, low!" I snapped.
Gnar didn't need to see the opening; he trusted my direction implicitly. His spear, held in his off-hand, shot out low, a vicious underhand thrust. The iron tip punched through the goblin's knee, shattering the joint. The creature screamed and went down, and Gnar's other Hobgoblin immediately pivoted, driving his own spear through the fallen goblin's exposed throat.
One down.
But Zog was no fool. He was a slaver, a warrior who understood that to break a beast, you go for the handler. While his warriors engaged my Hobgoblins, he broke from the pack, his movements low and fast, circling the melee to get to me. He held a cruel, serrated cleaver in one hand and a long, barbed whip in the other. He was coming for the wizard.
I drew my own dagger, a simple tool of steel and utility. It felt laughably small. I was out of my element, a scholar caught in a butcher's shop. But the fear was a distant thing, a cold, smooth stone in my gut. My mind was clear, the world slowing to a crawl of tactical possibilities.
The whip cracked first, a sound like lightning striking a tree. It wasn't aimed at my body, but at my feet, a slaver's trick to tangle and trip. I leaped back, the barbed tip gouging a furrow in the mud where I'd been standing. He was already following it up, charging in, his cleaver held high for a downward chop. He was fast, his Level 9 stats making him a blur of vengeful motion.
But I was a student of systems. His included.
[Cognitive Haste]
The world snapped into a new frame of reference. The charging Zog seemed to slow, his movements losing their terrifying speed and becoming a series of telegraphed, predictable actions. The mana drain was a sharp spike of pain in my temples, but the clarity it gave me was worth a king's ransom. I saw the angle of his cleaver, the tensing of his shoulder muscles, the path his blade would take.
I didn't try to meet his strength. I sidestepped, letting the cleaver hiss through the air, close enough to feel the wind of its passage. As his momentum carried him past, I dropped into a low crouch and drove my dagger forward, not at his torso, but at the thick, exposed muscle of his thigh.
My blade bit deep. Zog roared, a sound of pain and outrage, and spun, the whip a blur in his other hand. It coiled around my left forearm, the barbs digging into my leather vambrace. A jolt of agony shot up my arm, but the vambrace, a gift from Leo's forge, held.
He yanked, pulling me off balance, dragging me toward him. His cleaver was already rising again, his face a mask of triumphant fury. He had me.
I didn't fight the pull. I went with it, using his own strength to launch myself forward. I slammed my shoulder into his chest, not to injure him, but to disrupt his footing on the slick, bloody mud. He stumbled back a step, his cleaver swing going wide. It was the only opening I would get.
My left arm, still entangled in his whip, was a liability. But my right hand was free. It shot forward, my fingers splayed, and I pressed my palm flat against the crude iron breastplate he wore. I had no time to inscribe a detailed rune of Power. But I was sure the system would agree that this was a simple one.Especially for me/
Because I wasn't a warrior. I wasn't a wizard. I was a scholar of things.
I focused my will, not into a complex spell, but into a single, brutal concept. A wordless, violent, and deeply personal command.
Shatter.