The Tyrannomorphs were desperately trying to break the metal of the Living Armor that covered my daughter's legs.
They came in waves — four, five, eight at a time — bodies flush to the ground, the shoulder blades opened in an arc that should cut anything they touched. But for those creatures with no power granted by the Oasis, no magic, no system, nothing beyond what biology gave them — and coupled with the enormous Living Armor Arachne wore — they were nothing more than insects crashing against walls whose only active result was being crushed one by one beneath my daughter's legs, which didn't even need to make an effort to kill them.
Arachne stepped on them the way one steps on dry leaves.
Her adrenaline seemed to pulse with joy while she played with her new armor. I could feel it — through the connection we shared, through the way her body moved with more confidence than normal — that she was testing. Each Tyrannomorph that advanced was an opportunity to verify how far the protection went. The shoulder blades struck the metallic armor and ricocheted as though they had hit stone. The jaws closed around a leg and slid without leaving a mark. The acid saliva — the same kind Eleonora said melted steel in three seconds — dripped down the armor's surface and evaporated on contact, converted into energy that fed the very system repelling it.
It was almost unfair.
With that, we managed to advance to the vicinity of the enemy base. The swampy terrain made everything difficult — each of Arachne's steps sank into the black mud, in some spots nearly up to the first joints, and the sucking sound the mud made when releasing the legs was so constant it became background noise. But her speed, even in the swamp, was greater than anything those Tyrannomorphs could offer.
"I'm reaching the objective. How's the perimeter security?"
On the other side of the communication, you could hear what I wasn't experiencing — the soldiers' screams mixed with the creatures' screams, the sound of metal against something alive, distant explosions that shook frequencies the device could barely transmit. A female voice filled the chaos.
"We're holding. Try to be fast — we won't manage to stay here forever."
Eleonora's voice carried something I hadn't heard before: strain. Not fear — strain. The kind that comes when someone who is strong is being forced to be stronger, and each additional second costs something that doesn't come back.
It was ironic to think that what for me was like a stroll, for others like me was the fight between life and death. Of course, with Arachne and the Living Armor, the path there had been simple. But I felt — with the honesty of someone who has already been on the other side — that even without her, with the mark's armor and the glaives, I would still manage to kill all the Tyrannomorphs attacking my daughter without being wounded in the process. That was the advantage of having an impenetrable defense coupled with weapons forged to cut what shouldn't be cuttable.
But advantages have an expiration date.
✦ ✦ ✦
"Father. Someone strong is coming."
Arachne's voice didn't come through her mouth — it came through the connection. The vibration I felt when she communicated something that words couldn't carry fast enough. And along with the message came the posture: her entire body lowered. The legs adjusted. The head descended and the mandibles opened — the pounce position. The position that meant something in front of her had just changed categories.
Just like Viego in the arena, Arachne seemed to sense danger like a sixth sense. Honestly, I still didn't understand how it worked — whether it was instinct, whether it was magic, whether it was something Yokai Queens possessed and that I would never know how to name. I only know she seemed to know, before seeing, when something was stronger than her or dangerous enough for the play to end.
The place she observed was the base's entrance.
From what I had been told, the vast majority of Infernals should be facing Izabel's main attack — far from there, occupied with something large enough to justify the absence. But "the vast majority" didn't mean all.
"Good. I didn't think it would be as easy as it seemed."
Deep down, I still had hope that Izabel's words were true — that the outpost would be relatively empty, that the Tyrannomorphs would be the worst thing I would face, that the mission would be difficult because of quantity rather than quality. Facing the Tyrannomorphs was easy. For me, for Arachne, it was trivial.
But while my daughter's posture said something different was approaching, my mind flew to something that had been bothering me since I accepted the mission: why did Izabel choose me?
There were two possibilities.
The first — the one I most bet on — was that the mission, though complex, was manageable. To complete it, however, she needed someone strong, at Viego's level, and it wasn't worth risking such a precious asset from her family core. Using me was pure pragmatism: someone disposable, strong enough for the job, and whose failure wouldn't cost her anything she couldn't absorb.
The second was worse.
The second was that the mission was too difficult for any family member. Risky enough that no elder would approve. Dangerous to the point where the probability of survival was low enough that sending someone from the core would be the same as sending them to their death. In that case, Izabel chose me not out of pragmatism, but out of belief: she believed I could surprise even the other elders, or worse, herself.
One option was low to medium level.
The other was high to impossible.
I didn't know which of the two was correct. And Arachne's posture — tense, locked, with her legs driven into the mud like anchors — told me I was about to find out.
"What are you seeing, daughter?"
Before Arachne could answer me, something emerged.
From one of the smaller organic constructions that surrounded the base's main structures — houses, if they could be called that, with walls that pulsed and roofs that breathed — a figure emerged. I recognized it by the tail and the horn before recognizing anything else.
Infernal.
But different from all I had seen until then.
This one wore armor.
Full armor — not the organic kind stuck to the skin that the young ones in the crater wore, but real metal, forged, with plates that clicked onto the body with the precision of something made to measure. It was Oasis armor. I could tell by the energy it emanated — the nearly imperceptible glow that system items carry even outside of it, as though the Oasis marks everything that passes through it and never lets the mark fully vanish.
In the right hand, a hammer.
Not a sword. Not a spear. A hammer — enormous, heavy, with a head that seemed designed for a single thing: impact. The kind of weapon that doesn't cut, doesn't pierce, doesn't need precision. The kind of weapon that crushes. That transforms what it touches into something that no longer has the shape it had.
My stomach clenched.
Because I immediately understood why that weapon was a problem. The Living Armor absorbed energy — lasers, cuts, punctures. It converted into fuel what tried to penetrate. But impact was different. Impact didn't try to enter — it tried to crush. The energy didn't penetrate the armor; it crossed through it and reached what was underneath. A hammer of that size, with that Oasis energy pulsing through the shaft, made the Living Armor useless.
In the left hand, a shield.
A kite shield — pointed at the bottom, wide at the top, nearly his height. The surface shone with the same dark red that dominated everything in that world, and I could see, at the edges, wear marks that told a history of combats I didn't know but respected.
And the movements.
Slow. Calculated. Each step measured with the economy of someone who doesn't waste energy on unnecessary gestures. Different from Viego — who advanced with emotion, who attacked with rage, who let his body telegraph each decision before making it — this Infernal moved like someone who had done this too many times to be in a hurry. The experience wasn't in the muscles. It was in the absence of waste.
"So you are the human who caused so much trouble for our queen?"
The voice came out muffled by the armor — deep, controlled, with a curiosity that didn't seem feigned. He was evaluating me. I felt the gaze running across my body, the mark's armor, the glaives on my arms, Arachne beneath me. Measuring. Calculating. Deciding.
"Daughter. Leave me here and clear the perimeter of the remaining enemies."
Arachne hesitated. The connection vibrated with resistance — she didn't want to leave me alone against something she herself considered dangerous.
"Father, he's stronger th—"
"Don't worry, daughter." I cut her off before she finished. Not out of arrogance — out of necessity. If his hammer hit her armor, the damage would go straight to the chitin. The Living Armor wouldn't protect her. "What I need is to know you're safe."
The connection vibrated one last time — reluctance — and Arachne accepted. The enormous legs sank into the mud as she lowered herself to let me dismount, the black eyes still turned toward the enemy, the entire body saying she would attack the instant I called.
Our conversation didn't pass unnoticed.
The great Infernal let out a laugh that echoed inside the armor like thunder trapped in a barrel.
"HAHAHA! Daughter? How sweet." The sarcasm was heavy, but not cruel — the kind that comes from someone who recognizes affection even when they shouldn't. "But don't worry. I have something for your pet."
He grabbed the end of the shaft holding the hammer and struck the ground. Three times. The sound was deep and rhythmic — like a drum summoning something that already knew it would be called.
From the organic constructions, creatures began to emerge.
I expected Tyrannomorphs. That wasn't what came.
The creatures that emerged resembled Tyrannomorphs — four legs, shoulder blades, disproportionate jaws. But the more I looked at them, the more wrong everything became. The bodies looked like chimeras — grotesque assemblages of parts that didn't belong to the same animal. Some had fingers. Human fingers, growing in the wrong places, between the chitin plates, curved at angles hands don't make. Others had fragments of face — an eye, a piece of jaw, teeth that were too human to belong to that mandible. And the more I looked, the more I saw: arms where there should be legs. Hair growing between scales. Pieces of uniform — violet fabric, red, yellow — stuck to the new flesh like memories the body refused to fully digest.
I understood.
And the understanding froze me.
"So this is how you create these creatures."
The words died on the wind — carried by the same warm and humid breeze that brought the smell of rust and rotting flesh. There existed many creatures in the universe — and some were submissive to others from their own planet. The Tyrannomorphs were a clear example. But there also existed creatures that were as adaptable as the enemy they faced. All it took was to drink the blood. Eat the flesh. And the creature changed — redesigned itself from the inside, rewrote its own biology, becoming the perfect predator for what it consumed.
I had suspected since Eleonora described how they came back to eat everything — including their own companions. It wasn't sadism. It was method. Each human body devoured on the beach wasn't waste. It was raw material. Each soldier slaughtered and swallowed was processed and returned as something worse — a creature that carried within itself the reflexes, the instincts, the physical pieces of what it consumed. A Tyrannomorph that ate humans became better at killing humans.
The tragic fate of those creatures wasn't death. It was servitude — having become vassals of the Infernals not by choice, but by biology. Too strong for weak races. Too submissive for dominant races. Trapped in a hierarchy they had no way to escape.
"Don't despair." The Infernal said, and the voice carried something I didn't expect: pity. Not for me — for the creatures. "When this is over, you too will become part of these beautiful creatures that know their place in the food chain."
I jumped from Arachne.
My feet sank into the swamp up to the shin. The black mud sucked at my armor with the wet sound of something that didn't want to let me go. The weight of my body, of the armor, of the glaives — everything pulled downward by mud that seemed to have an opinion about who should step on it.
"Don't worry. I don't fall as easily as it seems, and I don't like obeying red horn-heads."
The Infernal's smile seemed to break the tension that existed between us — a brief instant of recognition, of two warriors who knew what was about to happen and who, for a fraction of a second, shared something that resembled respect.
And then it stopped.
The smile vanished. The body adjusted. The hammer spun in the right hand and the shield rose in the left — the offensive posture of someone who wasn't bluffing.
"Enough jokes. Show me the power that frightened my queen."
There was no turning back.
But I also didn't intend to fight the way he expected.
"Very well. But first — let's level this fight."
Before the Infernal understood what was happening, I brought the Vivarium to my lips and called. Not one creature. Ten.
Ten Yokais materialized around me in a semicircle that made the swamp tremble beneath the weight of eighty more legs that hadn't been there a second before. Each smaller than Arachne — much smaller — but each was a Yokai born and raised inside the Vivarium, fed, trained, with the same ferocity as the mother. The bodies positioned themselves with the hive's synchrony — not because I commanded it, but because Arachne commanded them as extensions of herself.
The Infernal stopped.
The offensive posture wavered — not from fear, from recalculation. The eyes inside the armor scanned each Yokai, measuring, counting, processing information he didn't expect. He knew the reproductive capacity of a Yokai Queen — any Infernal warrior would. But he probably didn't know there existed an item capable of storing so many creatures in one place. Ten simultaneous summons of a species that shouldn't be summonable in that fashion was something that wasn't in any race's manual.
"Well, well." The smile returned — not the sarcastic one, another. The smile of someone who finds something they didn't expect and that, instead of frightening, excites. The hammer spun again, faster this time. The shield rose higher. "This is going to be an interesting fight."
The ground trembled when he drove his foot into the mud.
"Surprise me."