With the last bit of forces retreating to our designated plan, Luna was the last to park her units. As we held our breaths and eyes not leaving the board, Green suddenly took the bait exactly the way Riven predicted.
The moment we pulled a few armies away from the river crossing, just enough to look frightened but not enough to actually crumble, their forces surged across the border like a tidal wave. A dense, eager formation poured southward, snapping up the weak province we had left exposed.
"Here they come," Tobias said, a little too excited, like he forgot we could still lose horribly.
Kyla leaned so close to the map that her glasses nearly brushed the glowing surface. "Wait… wait… wait—"
The moment Green committed half their forces, Riven struck his hand down on the board.
"Now."
Blue units swarmed from the west and east simultaneously, collapsing the choke point in a perfect pincer. The map responded instantly, glowing bright blue where green's earlier advance began to turn into their downfall. Their army shrank—first a sliver, then a chunk, then it practically imploded.
Luna squealed in triumph. "We did it! We bowled them!"
"We did not bowl them," Kyla groaned. "We counter-flanked them in a structured—"
"Oh, hush. The bowling worked," Luna beamed.
In the corner of my eye, the teacher paused mid-stride, briefly observing the map. She pressed a finger to her chin, looking—annoyingly—almost impressed.
We were actually doing it. The reckless, half-joked plan was working.
We reallocated the rest of our forces, preparing to sweep through the rest of Green's territory and then pivot north to flank Purple before they reacted. Tobias positioned the final unit cluster.
"One more push and green is done for," he said. "Then we swing around and tap purple on the shoulder with extreme and violent prejudice."
"Don't phrase it like that," I muttered.
But… he was right. We were about to break Green's front line. And with purple still fortifying their east flank—meaning they hadn't noticed our sudden momentum—we actually had a clean path to—!
A sudden thought popped into my head as the blue units that were ours rushed through Green's territory. Up to now, the second turn had only consisted of four groups, as many of the other teams were eliminated in the beginning...
But who was it that crushed them?
Red group.
It had to be; they were the first to attack us, and following their pattern, if they were the ones who mostly took out the others, then what were they doing now?
Wait.
Why… wasn't the red team moving?
My eyes drifted toward the northern corner of the map, just out of idle curiosity. The Red team had been quiet across our border for almost the entire round.
Too quiet.
Where were their units?
I leaned forward. Then froze.
"Tobias," I said quietly. "Where's Red?"
He blinked. "What do you mean? They're… uh… wherever they were last turn. I think."
"No," I whispered. "Look."
Everyone in the group shifted forward, hearing our conversation.
And there it was.
Red wasn't just present. They were piling. A dense knot of crimson units had gathered far north of the right, thicker than any formation on the entire board. Entire armies compressed so tightly that their markers overlapped. And as we stared, a dark red pulse flashed across the map—deep, ominous, unnatural.
"That is impossible..." Kyla muttered, her glasses almost falling down. "That was where the orange team was supposed to be..."
Luna's cheer vanished in an instant. "Um… is it supposed to do that?"
The map shimmered again.
A warning—no longer light red.
The warning was instead bright. Violent. Red.
Kyla's voice went thin. "That's not a normal signal."
Riven's expression tightened for the first time all game.
The teacher, from across the room, finally spoke again, thought with amusement lacing her voice.
"Blue team," she said calmly, "you may want to brace yourselves."
The map dimmed for half a second, then flared back to life with sharpened clarity.
Green's territory crumpled under our advance, their remaining units scattering like panicked insects. Purple had begun to divide their own forces, trying to form a defensive line, though that was too late for them either way.
Victory—an actual, honest possibility—was right there.
But none of us were looking at that anymore.
We were staring at Red.
Their armies condensed into an impossible cluster. Not strategic. Not practical. A horde, waiting. A mountain of units where two or three provinces should have been. That dark red pulse blinked again, slow and heavy, like a heartbeat.
A bad one.
"What are they doing?" Tobias whispered. And it was a whisper—he didn't mean to whisper, but the table seemed to demand it.
"Charging," Riven said.
"Charging what?" Luna squeaked.
He didn't answer.
Because the map did.
A thin red line extended outward from the heart of their army pile, like a probe. Then another. Then five. Then ten. They weren't moving armies normally—they were amassing energy. The borders around their territory started to distort, stretching inward and outward like the map was breathing around it.
Kyla swallowed hard. "Th-That shouldn't be possible. The mechanics don't allow—there's no scenario where—Red doesn't have the resources to—"
The red pulse flashed again.
Harder.
The thin lines became thick cables on the map surface, almost glowing, like veins pumping toward a single direction. I shuddered hard, as my eyes continued to peer down at the board. Any more deployments of troops, and the map will probably malfunction.
But the flow of troops stopped, and the triangle icon of the red armies had turned.
Pointing in our direction.
The teacher watched from across the classroom, arms folded, with no intention of stopping this.
"This isn't part of the standard rule set, is it?" Tobias hissed.
She smirked but didn't reply.
Luna clutched my sleeve. "Elisha… why does it look like that thing is charging like a canon?"
The map vibrated softly beneath our hands. A sound—a low, bass-like hum—rose from somewhere under the table. Red's territory brightened, then narrowed to a single, focused, blinding point.
Riven leaned in. "It's a super-attack."
"That doesn't exist!" Kyla snapped.
"It does now," he said.
The red light grew, swelling outward like a balloon about to burst. Every other team's borders flickered. Purple froze. Green's crumbling line stopped mid-animation. Blue—our blue—glowed as if trapped in headlights.
The teacher finally stepped forward, her boots clicking sharply on stone.
She stopped right beside our table.
"That," she said lightly, "is what happens when a team gathers every eliminated player's reserve units and doesn't spend a single one for an entire round."
Luna blinked. "They can do that?!"
"If no one interrupts them," the teacher answered.
Tobias inhaled sharply. "We're about to get obliterated, aren't we?"
As if in anticipation of every team still remaining, a surge of Red's entire amassed army blitzed through our territory—along with the weak reinforcements we'd intentionally left behind. The crushing wave of red units tore straight through our region and spilled directly into Green's lands. And, in a cruel twist of irony, it was the perfect counter-move to our perfect plan and a replication of it at the same time.
Red had maneuvered through us completely, wiping out our forces from behind, then made a sharp right turn straight into Purple and—
That was it. Only a few moments later, a golden hue flashed across every board in the classroom.
The board projected a holographic text that hovered in the air:
"Congratulations to Red Team. The Red Team consisted of Bertel, Enaldo, Narie, and…"
…
"I can't believe we lost that badly," Luna groaned as we walked out to the yard. "That final move was a serious killer. Anyway—pretty sure our last class today is dueling." She tilted her head and nudged my shoulder."Hello? Anybody home?"
"Oh—sorry. I zoned out for a bit."
Luna frowned, unimpressed. "You're still thinking about Red Team, aren't you? Well… yeah, they're great and all, but they didn't have to be that arrogant about it. Especially that girl."
Yes, because when class ended—right before we walked out—the last girl in their group, Rozaline, had given me a smug little sneer as she chuckled to herself.
The kind of look that said: "Too bad. Maybe you should've tried harder."
She was the same girl I saw at the start of class, who wore the gold necklace. Pfft, I always hated those damn materialistic people.
I'm not a sore loser, but something about that girl made my temper spark, even if just a little.
I will get my revenge on you, Rozaline.
I swear it.