Dusk descended upon Border Town like a curtain dyed in blood and soot. The sun, hidden by dense storm clouds, cast its last oblique rays over the snow-covered plain, painting the battlefield with a gloomy, orange glow.
Leaning against the cement parapet of the eastern wall, Iron Axe kept his eyes fixed on the white vastness below. The biting wind lashed his weathered face, but the experienced hunter from the Sand Nation seemed immune to the cold, his attention entirely captured by the brutal spectacle unfolding beyond the safe limits of the fortification.
Down below, isolated in the black-stained snow, was William.
The Commander had gone down again, tied by the thick naval rope that Trevor and two other recruits held at the top. The official pretext was "clearing the stragglers of the horde," but Iron Axe and all the men on the wall knew the truth: the Lord was testing his own limits once again.
In the last few hours of that excruciating day, William hadn't stood still. While the defensive line held firm, he ran back and forth, intercepting attacks and saving recruits from severe injuries that normal tactics couldn't foresee. Every life saved, every lethal blow avoided by his intervention, had been silently rewarded by the Dimensional System. Unseen by anyone else, the notifications had popped up in his vision: rewards of 20, 30, and sometimes 40 credits for preventing tragedies uncatalogued in the original plot. He had accumulated a massive 220 credits, reaching a total of 270.
And, as quickly as he earned them, he spent them. Pouring 200 straight credits into his Speed attribute, William added five whole points to his status, raising his Speed to an impressive level 16. Now, he had Strength 16, Endurance 14, and Speed 16. He was no longer just an armored tank; he was an armored tank with the acceleration of an animal. And he had 70 credits left on the interface.
Iron Axe narrowed his eyes. The ease with which the boy slaughtered the demonic beasts had a terrifying fluidity. It seemed that as the hours passed and the battle advanced, the Commander became strangely faster, more lethal, and more unbeatable. As if he were blessed by the gods.
A vivid memory crossed the hunter's mind. He remembered the first days he met William, when the young man came to recruit him. Around the same time the foundation of the wall was being excavated and the militia was beginning to take shape. When the veterans discussed the terrifying and deadly threat of the Months of Demons, William had simply shrugged, with a completely relaxed posture, and replied that the beasts and hybrids "weren't a big deal."
At the time, Iron Axe had thought William was a lunatic noble, drunk on his own arrogance or simply bluffing to keep up appearances before His Highness, the Prince. In both situations, the young lord had let out loud, mocking, and confident laughs. But now, watching the snow spray with his every move on the battlefield, the veteran finally understood the reason behind those laughs. William had never bluffed. He wasn't just everything he claimed to be. He was much more than what he claimed to be.
Around Iron Axe, the militiamen leaned over the parapet, their fear completely replaced by the cheering euphoria of an arena. Shouts echoed along the wall:
— "Gooo, Commander! Finish off that buffalo!" — bellowed Zuler, waving his spear in the air.
— "Crush that wolf without mercy, Commander!" — shouted Rick, his eyes shining with adoration.
In the snowy field, the residual pack of demonic beasts noticed the solitary man. Three corrupted beasts broke away from the tree line: a colossal buffalo with horns like iron scythes, a medium gray wolf with bristling fur, and a demonic deer whose antlers had transformed into spear-sharp branches.
The demonic buffalo attacked first. Lowering its thick head, the nearly one-ton creature charged like a derailed train, the ground shaking beneath its hooves.
Previously, William would have planted his feet and taken the impact with his shield, testing his endurance. But now, with Speed 16, his reflexes and his muscular burst were on a level far beyond any ordinary human.
When the buffalo was less than two meters away from impaling him, William didn't need to absorb the blow. With an impressive burst of speed, he evaded laterally with the perfect reaction time of a predator. He didn't disappear from anyone's sight, nor did he use his teleportation; it was pure biomechanical control pushed to the limit by his new attributes.
Sliding out of the deadly trajectory at the last second and kicking up snow beneath his boots, he dug his feet in beside the moving beast's exposed flank. With a flawless pivot, William delivered a punch with the armored knuckles of his gauntlet directly into the buffalo's ribs.
KRA-KABOOM!
The impact wasn't just a blow; it was a kinetic detonation. The buffalo's ribs imploded. The one-ton beast was thrown laterally by the sheer force of a Strength 16 punch, rolling over the snow like an empty barrel until it collapsed dead, its heart pierced by its own shattered bones.
The wolf did not retreat. Taking advantage of the distraction, it leapt at William's back, aiming for the Commander's neck with wide-open jaws dripping with saliva.
But William was no longer there. He ducked, spun on his heels, and as the wolf flew over his head, William raised his arm and grabbed the beast mid-air by its hind leg. Using the animal's own momentum, the Commander twisted his body and whipped the giant wolf against the solid wall. The crack of the animal's spine snapping echoed like a musket shot, killing the beast before it could even whimper.
Only the demonic deer remained. The creature hesitated, the instinct for death slightly overcoming the madness of the miasma. But that hesitation was its end.
William propelled himself forward, covering ten meters in the blink of an eye. The beast tried to lower its head to use its deadly antlers, but William was merciless. He opened his hands, grabbed the base of the monstrous antlers, and with a single, violent, twisting pull, tore the animal's head off its axis with a nauseating crack.
The deer fell to its knees and collapsed in the snow.
The silence of the field was filled only by the howling wind, until it was shattered by the hysterical roars of victory from the men on the wall. William took a deep breath, steam pouring from his mouth in a thick cloud. He wasn't even panting. His body was a perfect dueling machine.
Wiping his black-bloodied gauntlets in the snow, William looked up and gave two firm tugs on the rope tied to his waist.
— "You can pull the rope, Trevor!" — William's voice rose, loud and full of arrogant satisfaction. — "Another day done, soldiers!"
Trevor, with a smile tearing across his scarred face, began to hoist the Commander back to the safety of the walkway, aided by two euphoric militiamen. Border Town had survived another day of winter.
.
.
.
Hours later, the scenery had drastically changed. The excruciating cold of the wall had been replaced by the stuffy heat and the torch-lit corridors of the castle.
William marched through the stone halls with hard, determined steps. The mocking smile had vanished from his face, replaced by a bubbling annoyance. After his conversation with Nightingale in his room and the revelation about his partner Arthur's secret, he urgently needed to talk to his friend.
He found Arthur in the chambers that had been assigned to the strategist. The door was ajar. Arthur was standing near a study desk, observing a spread-out map, his dark suit impeccable, as if the battle against the beasts outside were mere background noise.
William opened the bedroom door, closing it behind him with a heavy sigh, announcing his arrival in an exhausted yet contained manner.
— "We need to talk, 'Mr. Cold and Calculating'." — William declared, leaning against the wall and crossing his arms, his expression much more confused than angry.
Arthur didn't even lift his eyes from the map. — "Good evening to you too, William. Judging by your sigh, I presume the adrenaline of slaughtering mutant animals out there has given way to some dilemma."
— "The dilemma isn't mine." — William shook his head, uncrossing his arms and walking to the edge of the table. — "Nightingale paid me a visit. And she told me something very interesting. Care to tell me why you're walking around with a God's Stone of Retaliation in your pocket? You know I trust you, and I know you always have some crazy plan running in that head of yours, but what's the play here? Our entire reputation, the trust we built with Roland and the witches, could end up leaving a bad impression because of this. What are you plotting?"
Arthur sighed internally. How tiresome, he thought. The need to justify every logical and meticulously calculated decision was the most boring part of dealing with people. Even William, who knew his pragmatic nature better than anyone and trusted him, sometimes had trouble seeing the board with the same objectivity. Arthur deduced, with a hint of boredom, that Prince Roland would most likely knock on his door the very next day to ask him the exact same question.
Slowly, Arthur lifted his head and looked at his longtime friend.
— "I carry the stone as a pure tactical precaution against invisible snoops. Do I need another reason besides that?" — Arthur replied with unshakable calmness. He then reached into his overcoat pocket and pulled out the irregular, crystalline rock, the famous Stone of Retaliation that nullified the power of any witch, except the Extraordinaries.
He raised his hand, keeping his palm open, displaying the stone to William.
— "But if the existence of this material object threatens your precious public relations, there is a very trivial solution to fix it." — Arthur said in a monotonous tone.
Arthur's eyes focused intensely on the stone in his own hand. Telekinesis level ten activated not as a push, but as a pressurized field around the object. The System's magic, stemming from a mathematical dimension that the rules of that primitive world couldn't comprehend or block, overlaid the nature of the rock.
The God's Stone of Retaliation cracked. Fissures spread across its surface and, with a dry snap that sounded like small glass breaking, it simply exploded into several fragments of fine dust and harmless pebbles that fell across the room's stone floor.
William stepped back half a pace, his eyes widening. He knew their power bypassed the stone, but seeing Arthur—who probably wasn't an Extraordinary—using magic to destroy the anti-magic object was a bizarre paradox, and one that made him invincible.
Arthur shook the dust off his hand patiently.
— "There. I no longer carry the stone. World peace is finally restored." — Arthur turned back to the map. — "And now that we've settled this futility, we have a much more urgent and important matter to discuss. I assume, between one punch and another, you saw the Dimensional System's notification?"
William sighed again, his charismatic and extroverted nature clashing with his friend's indifference and coldness.
— "I'll want to ask you a bunch of questions about your plans and how our powers work later." — William warned, waiting a few seconds before continuing. — "But, yes. I saw the notification even before I set foot in the castle. A Turning Point Quest. Save the witches of the Witch Cooperation Association who are predestined to die to the demons in the Impassable Mountain Range, and thus, Evolve our Magic."
— "Exactly." — Arthur confirmed.
— "Before you say anything, I'll let you know right now," — William continued, thumping his fist against his chest. — "With or without the Magic Evolution reward, I was going to do this even if it wasn't a quest. All the witches of the Association are out there, inside a cave, without decent shelter and food, surrounded by demonic beasts and worse, demons."
The warrior relaxed his posture a bit, the spirit of heroism taking over his features. He looked at the strategist expectantly.
— "But now that the System has finally given us a lucrative reason to help them," — William asked, sketching a smile. — "You're going to come with me to save the witches, aren't you? With my enhanced physical capacity and your Telekinesis, the two of us together will wipe those mountain demons off the map in a matter of seconds."
Arthur kept looking at the map, his hands returning to his overcoat pockets. Silence reigned for three long seconds.
— "I will not go." — Arthur's response was short, dry, and devoid of any emotion.
William's smile plummeted. He blinked, thinking he had misheard.
— "Come again?" — William asked, shaking his head, completely failing to understand. — "What do you mean 'I will not go'? It's the Evolution of our Magic, Arthur! It's the biggest reward we've ever seen! And there are lives in danger, why wouldn't you want to go??"
Arthur finally turned his face to look at him, his expression carrying the coldness of someone who had done the calculations and needed to partially omit his intentions at that moment.
— "Because going there is an obvious waste of time." — Arthur said, the words coming out like blocks of ice. — "The reward is tempting, yes, but trying to save that camp won't change absolutely anything about the root of the problem. Their leader, Cara, will remain a crazy fanatic; she is blinded by the legend of the Holy Mountain and would rather see all her sisters dead than admit she's wrong and retreat to a noble's domain. If I go there and kill the Demons, Cara will just use that as a divine sign to keep pushing those women to their deaths on the mountain. You can't save fanatics from themselves, William. I won't waste my time saving people who are going to actively march into the abyss the very next day."
William's jaw dropped, incredulity plastered across his face. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. Arthur's excuse, though laden with a brutal and undeniable tactical logic, sounded like the worst of pretexts to the ears of someone who had already assumed the role of "Guardian."
Arthur was just going to cross his arms and give up on going, give up on several women who were doomed to die, just because of a fanatical leader's stubbornness?
William's blood boiled, but he didn't explode. He looked at the man in the suit before him and realized that arguing morality with someone who didn't view the people of that world as humans, but rather as characters, was a waste of oxygen. Arthur had his cold view of the world, and William had his, forged in blood and duty.
William took a step back toward the open door, his blue eyes shining with a furious and unshakable determination.
— "You can stay here trying to look like an Ayanokoji in the comfort of your fireplace all you want." — William's voice was deep, cutting through the room like a cold blade. — "If you don't want to go because of a fanatic's ego, that's your problem. But I will not let them die brutally while I have the power to stop it."
William turned his back to the strategist.
— "I'm going to that mountain." — William declared, without looking back. — "And I'm going to save them, whatever it takes."
And with that, he disappeared into the dark corridor, leaving Arthur alone in the silence of the room, with the shards of the Stone of Retaliation glistening on the floor.