Forty-eight hours was less time than it took the Archduke's kitchen staff to properly prep a banquet, yet Kaelen Vayne had committed the Lionhart Legion to deploying a surgical strike team halfway across the continent to the Frozen Wastes. The Black Tower, usually a place of grim, ordered silence, was now a nexus of frantic, controlled chaos. Messengers, their mounts panting steam, clattered in and out of the courtyard. Logistics officers—a mix of hurried Dwarves, stoic Demi-humans, and highly stressed Humans—shouted coordinates and inventory checks.
Kaelen ignored the noise. In his command center, the windows were fully shuttered, trapping the light and focusing all attention on a massive tactical holo-map shimmering over the obsidian table. Two figures stood opposite him: Grandmaster Lira, a taciturn warrior Elf who had been with him since the earliest, roughest days, and Grandmaster Belos, the Legion's chief Siege Engineer, a Human pushing his three hundredth year, his lifespan visibly extended by his peak cultivation.
"The transports are ready, Lord Vayne," Lira reported, her voice quiet but carrying the force of command. "We are deploying five thousand Adepts and Experts as the primary perimeter screen to deter local monsters and secure the Syndicate's extraction route. They will travel via modified dimensional gate hops, minimizing transit time to five days."
Five days. Five days of paying, feeding, and concealing five thousand people in hostile territory. The scale was obscene. Kaelen nodded, his gaze already moving past Lira to Belos.
"The Vault's defense is not a siege wall, Belos. It's a perpetual, self-regulating energy field," Kaelen stated, tapping the pulsing red glyph representing the Shattered Vault on the map. "I need you to stop thinking like a master of applied kinetics and start thinking like a power grid technician. This Mythic-era residual will is an algorithm left behind—a set of instructions that repeats endlessly, consuming anything under Legend-tier that touches it."
Belos scratched his graying beard. "A constant application of force, then, my Lord. Even the Ancient Dwarven forges eventually required maintenance."
"Exactly. It's too stable. It's running on a power source we can't see, which means it has a loophole," Kaelen said, the analytical part of his brain—the part that remembered the abstract problem-solving of a life spent in tech and finance—starting to whir. He saw the Mythic defense not as impenetrable magic, but as a complex system of code. If the code was perfect, it would be god-tier. Since it was merely Legend-tier in effect, it had finite throughput and predictable response patterns.
"The residual will is designed to intercept a single, powerful intrusion," Kaelen continued. "If one Legend hits it, it consumes their mana until they break. But what if we hit it with a billion tiny intrusions? Or perhaps a constant low-frequency pulse designed to create a resonance failure in the system's foundation?"
Lira shifted uncomfortably. "Lord Vayne, we have no artifact capable of generating a 'low-frequency pulse.' Our inventory is focused on direct damage and shielding, nothing so esoteric."
Kaelen knew this was true. Their lack of deep, historical knowledge meant they were always behind on artifact technology. But they were flexible. "Then we make one. Belos, I want you to assign ten of your best Master-rank engineers to modify the Grandmaster-grade Resonating Focus Lens we recovered last year. Ditch the kinetic charge. I need it to emit a continuous, low-power vibration pulse—something that mirrors the natural vibration rate of the ambient mana in the Frozen Wastes. It won't destroy the Will, but it might distract the 'system' long enough for me to pass through the initial energy layer."
Belos looked doubtful, but his professional pride took over. "Modifying a Grandmaster-grade focus lens to change its fundamental output is a six-month job, my Lord. You gave me forty-eight hours."
"You have forty-six now," Kaelen corrected, a cold glint in his eyes. The pressure was the point. Only by pushing past impossible limits had he reached Legend in this life, and only by pushing his Legion could he save it.
He then turned to Lira. "The strike team will be small. Belos, you, and four other trusted Grandmasters. We are the muscle, but more importantly, we are the witnesses. The Syndicate will try to cheat us on the secondary contract. Your job is to secure the Adept-to-Master scrolls they promised us and log every single high-grade artifact recovered, even the ones they claim as 'primary.' If they take 80%, we will audit the 20% we get back down to the last copper piece."
Kaelen picked up his sword, a simple, unadorned length of dull grey metal—the only sword his Legend-tier modified cultivation technique would allow him to wield without shattering it. He looked at his two most trusted people, both powerful Grandmasters who still viewed the world through the lens of brute force and magic rules. They didn't understand the system he was trying to break, but they understood loyalty and the desperate need to survive.
"We go dark in twelve hours," Kaelen concluded. "I will be the battering ram. You two are the financial auditors and the salvage team. The Legion's survival is not measured in battle victories, but in the knowledge we bring back from that Mythic tomb."