The heavy wooden door clicked shut, leaving Reynold in a silence so profound it felt like pressure against his eardrums. He did not move for a long time. He simply stared at the empty chairs where his parents used to sit.
The "Twin War Gods." They were invincible. They were legends. And they had died because they believed the script of this world—that strength was absolute, and kings were honorable.
Reynold slowly unbuckled the leather strap of his chest plate. He flinched as it came loose; his ribs were bruised purple from his relentless training the night before. This was his reality. He had no mana shield to protect him. Every hit he took, he felt. Every victory he earned cost him blood.
He closed his eyes and initiated the Core Ignition.
Inhale... Hold... Compress... Exhale.
It wasn't just breathing. It was a violent physiological override. He visualized the oxygen entering his lungs not as air, but as fuel. He forced his heart rate to drop to forty beats per minute, cooling his blood, sharpening his senses until he could hear the scuttling of a spider in the corner of the ceiling.
"Pain is data," he whispered to himself. "Fear is noise."
He stood up and walked to the window overlooking the barracks. Below, thousands of soldiers were preparing for the purge. They looked organized, but Reynold saw the truth. Their armor was mismatched. Their spears were dull. They were a militia pretending to be an army.
He needed iron. He needed gold. But most of all, he needed them to believe that a magicless boy could kill a King.
[INTERLUDE: THE OBSERVERS]
High above the digital stratosphere, in a dimension layered over Valencia, Vanz and Eru floated invisibly. To the people of Phoenix, they were just air. But in reality, they were avatars of the Architects, watching the data streams flow like rivers of light.
"Look at his stress levels," Eru pointed at a floating red graph hovering over Reynold's head. "Cortisol is spiking, but his heart rate is flatlining. He's forcing his biology to submit."
"It's that breathing technique," Vanz muttered, adjusting his invisible spectacles. "It's not in the standard skill tree. He coded it himself... metaphorically speaking. It's creating a strain on the physics engine. If he pushes it too far, his lungs will simply burst."
"Mr. X wants us to monitor the colony growth," Eru reminded him. "Phoenix is currently rated as a 'Tier 1 Settlement.' If Reynold successfully purges the Eastern Forest, it jumps to Tier 2. That unlocks the 'Demon Invasion' event early."
Vanz smirked. "He thinks he's fighting for freedom. He doesn't know he's just unlocking the next difficulty level."
[BACK TO REALITY]
Reynold turned from the window. He summoned a servant.
"Bring me the master smith," Reynold ordered. "And tell him to bring the blueprints for the ' Repeating Crossbow' I sketched last week. If we don't have magic, we will fill the sky with enough steel to block out the sun."
The war for Valencia had begun, but the war for logistics was already being fought in Reynold's mind.