Chapter 101


    Matt wasn''t doing what he expected when he took over the Kingdom''s military affairs.


    He had expected to lead troops into battle without any other real considerations. He was wrong.


    So, so wrong.


    He was trying to figure out the logistics of moving a million people spread throughout squads of ten thousand. Without the ability to spend Kingdom level points, he could not provide for so many people, and he just didn''t have the personal points to spend. To add insult to injury, he could watch the Kingdom level points umte, but couldn''t touch them. They could solve all of his needs in seconds.


    It should have been easy. Just hand them food and water and give them their orders. That was all his team needed for extended stays in the wilderness or rifts. They had done it, and when he suggested that to the others, they looked at him like he was an idiot.


    They were right.


    Throughout all his campaigns with therger armies, Matt hadnt realized one simple fact.


    People always needed mana.


    Logically, he knew it was a concern for most people, but he hadn''t realized how much the Kingdom spent in resources to move any number of fighters.


    Every standard flying device cost a little more than 10 mana per hour to maintain the average flight speed for efficient Tier 6 devices. That number multiplied out of control if they flew at max speed for any length of time but he ignored that.


    For one or two people over an hour or two, that was nothing. But when you needed to move a million people in a group, the mana cost became enormous. For a ten-hour flight, which was conservative to get an army in position to engage with the enemy, Matt needed one hundred million mana. <em>One hundred million</em> mana just to engage.


    It was impossible.


    The cities were surrounded by nearly all of the avable Queendom troops, and each siege had at least three million soldiers participating. As the soldierspleted their healing cooldowns, they moved to reinforce the armies.


    So, Matt needed more mana in order for their troops to perform hit and run tactics. Otherwise, they would be susceptible to counterattacks and end up getting decimated.


    One hundred million mana would take Matt a little over fourteen days to produce with just his Talent, but that didn''t ount for the extra mana needed to mobilize afterwards. Even if he sat around only generating mana, they didn''t have the storage to hold that much mana.


    The thing that pissed him off the most was that even a Tier 6 melee fighter should be able to cover their mana costs with just their regeneration. But they tly refused, on the grounds that they needed it to practice and train with. He was fairly sure if The Prince had given that order they would haveplied but it was another way people resisted his orders.


    Then there was the food. Matt had learned that each side hadn''t bothered to procure rations the usual way, and were simply purchasing it in bulk from the army.


    That had baffled him. Even his backward shithole of a home world used rifts to farm. They had a team go in and clear a rift with sunlight and decent soil, and once it had no threats, they let loose farming robots to seed and water crops. Then after however long it took for the crop to grow, the robots harvested the crops and trundled out of the rift with a full load of produce.


    Other, higher Tiers just used nt mages with the Tier 8 skill [Grow]. Or, better yet, the Tier 14 skill [Farm]. With a single Tier 8 mage, they could grow acres of crops, only having to worry about soil fertility and harvesting.


    With the Tier 14 spell, they didn''t even have to worry about that. The skill rapidly nted, grew, then harvested the selected crop in seconds. It even provided the needed nutrients for the soil, leaving no impact on the ground for a mana cost.


    The army had neither skill for purchase; he''d already checked. He had been willing to buy the skill, just to get the army moving, but he didnt even have the option.


    So, he was forced to find other workarounds for each of the problems.


    Matt had mostly solved the mana problem through the expedience of lying.


    He had simply told everyone to break out their savings and buy the mana stones themselves, and the Prince would pay them back double when he was able to spend the Kingdom level points.


    It was his fault that Matt had to deal with this shit, and he could pick up some of the cost himself when the time came.


    The food was still a question, but he thought he had an answer to that as well. They could steal it from the enemy. He wanted to hit a Queendom reinforcement caravan and steal their food.


    It was their fault as well that Matt had to deal with these problems, and stealing from the enemy was never a bad thing.


    He looked over his numbers for the third time, and had his AI run the numbers for the tenth time.


    Things didn''t look great.


    If they sessfully took a resupply party, they would get mana stones and food, allowing their teams to run rampant and harass the besieging armies.


    But if he could think of that, so could the Queendom.


    That was why Matt was considering a riskier option.


    Of all the Kingdom military operations that had fallen to bits when the leadership was taken out, the scouts had remained fully operational. They were even willing to fall in line once Matt reaffirmed that he wanted to give upmand as soon as the Prince was back.


    After that, he had a half-decent idea of how to get all of his needs met. It just remained to be seen if he could pull it off.


    ***


    Annie stalked around the Queendom headquarters, just as she had been doing for the past two days.


    She was going to kill Sara. It wasn''t a question of if. It was only a matter of when and how.


    The woman was hiding somewhere. A panic room of some sort, she assumed. If she was taken out, the Queendom would have the same problems that Matt was bitching about.


    She had made her way into the headquarters by carefully following behind people, giving her free rain of the building. It was identical to the one she knew.


    The problem was, she couldnt find Sara anywhere.


    Annie had followed her right-hand woman. She had followed food carts. Shed even managed to scale the building to find the room that should have been hers. The Princess just wasn''t in there.


    The room didn''t look inhabited at all.


    Annie was running out of ideas and time.


    She wanted to take Sara out before the first army moved out, but with each passing minute, it looked like she wouldnt be able to.


    That fact had started to eat at her, and a whisper in the back of her mind, she affirmed that she would be able to find Sara with her Concept. She just needed to finalize it, and embrace that she was a monster in human skin.


    It would be so easy to fall into that rabbit hole, but she denied herself that. Her image wasn''t perfect. She could make it work, but she wasn''t a mindless monster, and trying to create an image like that was incredibly hard.


    She couldn''t deny that it would make things easier. Sara needed to die, and Annie believed that conviction would allow her Concept to assist her in finding and ending the woman.


    Still, she resisted.


    Annie was currently hiding in a garden, where she watched a young man trim the various vegetation. She was pretty sure they were various herbs as she remembered the smell from Liz on a few asions. When he finished making perfect spheres of the decorative hedges, he started checking something with the soil, and then watered a few of the nts.


    It was pretty soothing to watch the man work. He waspletely engrossed in his task, and seemed happy.


    There was something about the way he guided the nts growth. The tending and pruning she found intriguing, but as she thought on it, she wasn''t able to put her finger on why she was drawn to it.


    The sight was a nice distraction, but she moved on.


    She had the urge to kill Talous and his team if she ran into them. With the beatdown Matt put on the man, there was no way he wasn''t on a full two-week cooldown.


    Talking shit about her friend''s dead parents wasn''t something she was willing to overlook. She continued skulking around the base, careful to conserve her intangibility by dodging obstacles and people. She didn''t want to waste mana either. Eventually, she found Talous team suite and waited.


    The army watchers approved a hit on the rest of the man''s team, so she inspected the lock to n her best entry method. She wasn''t nning on killing them until after she killed Sara. No reason to give up her presence.


    She was listening to the muffled sounds inside the room when she heard footsteps.


    There was something about the pace that caught her intuition.


    It was the speed of the footfalls.


    The walker wasn''t walking briskly with an urgent task. No, that pattern of steps had speed, but surety.


    This walk was the near run of someone who wanted to move quickly, but quietly. It sounded like they were running crouched and on the balls of their feet.


    Annie trusted her intuition.


    Her still-unnamed trainer had hammered that into her.


    Anyone doing undercover work needed to trust their gut. When she asked when it was wrong, he justughed. He told her that in those rare cases, sess resulted whenbat skills and evasion skills met proper nning.


    If any of the three werent up to par, you died.


    It was as simple as that.


    She had understood that quite well, to her own surprise. There was a freedom in knowing that only death awaited in true failure. It took some of the pressure off.


    Emily didn''t understand that in the slightest, but Annie embraced it like a warm nket.


    When she turned the corner, she found a man skulking through the halls at a low crouch.


    He reached a corner and rounded it with a tray in hand.


    Annie moved forward like spilled water, and caught a brief whiff of balsamic vinegar.


    Princess Sara was said to love sds, and no sd was being served in themunal dining hall. She had already stolen a meal from there. They were eating some vegetable pie thing.


    She was sure that Matt could tell her a million uses for balsamic vinegar, but she only knew that it went on sds.


    More importantly, her gut told her that she was onto something.


    The Pather quarters were a perfect hideout for a Princess trying toy low.


    She followed the man as he made two circles around the spatially expanded quarters. Finally, he went into an unremarkable door.


    Annie was far enough back that she couldn''t follow him into the room, so she positioned to get a good view into the room as the man exited.


    He was just as furtive when he opened the door, and ran out of the room while crouching. Annie got a half-decent view inside, and that little glimpse was enough to give her pause.


    Nothing was wrong. Not overtly, at least.


    The only thing out of ce was the missing alcove that was normally at the entrance of each room she had been in. It was meant for people to drop off jackets or coats as they entered their rooms.


    It was missing here, but was standard issue for every room.


    She could think of a million reasons why it was missing, but none were good. Or at least, it triggered her paranoia regarding small details that shed earned during her training missions.


    She would assume that it was just broken or moved in a normal situation. But there was no reason for the space to be filled in like that.


    Annie hunkered down and waited. She was patient.


    Whoever needed to have food delivered would eventually have it delivered again. Then she would make her move. Until the moment came, she would watch.


    There was no need to rush.


    ***


    Matt moved his troops out en masse. They didn''t have the mana reserves to use the teleporters, so they were forced to trek the long and slow journey.


    They quickly ran into their first roadblock when their scouts discovered that they were being followed. Matt ordered them to wait and observe their watchers. The Queendom scouts had their direct route to the armies under surveince.


    That wasn''t a surprise to anyone. Their options were limited, which meant they were predictable.


    The only thing the Kingdom troops had on their side was that their enemy had no more troops to throw at them. Most troops were holding their cities as they tried to race down its walls in retaliation, or were reinforcing the notable forts.


    With the remaining troops surrounding the Kingdom cities, they had no real way to counter Matt''s army''s movements.


    Not unless they wanted to give up a siege.


    Matt could hope, but only an idiot would give up their progress on taking such an important objective, when there was only a smaller force unounted for.


    That was why he wanted to change the paradigm.


    When they were nine hours into their flight, and about to reach the continent where the Queendom was attacking the two cities, the million-strong army split apart. They formed ten units, each one hundred thousand strong, and scattered.


    Matt would have preferred that they only broke off into a few units twice that size, but he had to bow to practicality. If the Queendom gathered enough troops to wipe out one of his teams, they would have a warning at least. All of the teams had orders to retreat at the first sign of being engaged on. Their purpose wasnt to fightnd battles, but to hinder the Queendom''s ability to reinforce their troops.


    Burning mana, everyone sped up and started to hit theirrge fort targets. They were acting as supply points, and the teams were each assigned smash and grab missions.


    Matt and his team werending at the farthest section of the forts. They would be attackingst, and therefore would be in the most danger, as they were the closest to the armies engaging the cities.


    After seeing the performance while the Kingdom leadership was dead, he didn''t trust anyone else with the job. He also wasn''t entirely sure that he had weeded out all of the spies.


    His mennded like a wave of locusts. Their positions were already set, and everyone jumped into action. Matt had the remaining Pathers that weren''t acting as hit and run units with him.


    He hit the ground and started running towards the front gate; he wanted to shoulder check the door and knock it down like some great hero. Instead, he skidded to a stop as he was peppered with arrows through the slits in the gatehouse tunnel.


    Matt responded with fire.


    Lots of fire.


    [methrower] washed over the stone, ckening it during the brief exposure, and the arrows stopped for a heartbeat.


    He rushed to one of the windows and let his torrent of fire loose inside of the building. He could hear the screams, and when they stopped, he moved to the other gate and repeated his actions.


    The follow-up teams quickly advanced, and they started hacking at the gate.


    They were mostly a distraction.


    Their long-range scouts reported that the defenders were sending everyone to the gate, and the general troops rushed forward in a wave. In seconds,dders and ropes were secured, and their numbers crushed the unprepared defenders.


    Two minutester, the door opened from the inside, and Matt strode in over the blood of the fallen.


    Matt sent the next wave of orders, but the inner keep was barred up tight.


    Two mana cannons were brought out and assembled next to Matt. He sted his Concept and had the men fire them into the front door.


    It took six shots, but the doors finally exploded, and Matt repeated his [methrower] trick with the same results.


    The spell was a death sentence to anyone unlucky enough to be stuck in an enclosed space.


    They had the front room clear, and started to take the boxes of provisions that hadn''t burned. A few of the spatially expanded storage containers had been too close to the heat, and had caught fire.


    When the enchantment broke, the space returned to its normal size, and items were scattered everywhere.


    As they pulled the boxes out, Matt could see his other teams setting explosives along the inner walls of the bottom level. All of their first targets wererge forts that had been upgraded with teleportation formations.


    They intended to cut off the Queendom''s easy ess to reinforcements and goods to start. Then, when they began to attack the besieging armies, they wouldnt be able to reinforce and re-supply as easily.


    They took the fort in under ten minutes and set the explosives off. The building crumbled in on itself and down.


    Matt cheered internally as he watched their supplies numbers tick up. Their casualties were painful, but they hadnt lost enough to materially affect theirbat capabilities.


    For now, they just needed to move to the nextrge forts that they believed had teleportation formations, and batter them down.


    Everyone''s orders were to do so from range, instead of directly assaulting the forts. They only needed tost long enough for The Prince to reinforce them.


    Two weeks of supplies were more than enough.


    They just needed to slow down the Queendom. Not kill them all.


    ***


    Sara sat in her bunker of a room and cursed.


    The damn Pather connected to Liz was ruining her ns, or at least slowing them down. It was the same thing really, when things were going this poorly.


    He had taken out herrge fort''s teleportation with eerie uracy. It only built on the stress of being stuck in a tiny single room with nothing to do.


    She was losing her mind being cooped up.


    How her mother handled it, she had no idea. The stress was brutal.


    She turned tofort food when it grew too bad for her to cope with. She hadnt thought to take anything besides prepackaged meals, and if she ate another one, she would drive her head through the wall.


    As she watched another fort fall, she gave the order. She needed to force the cities to fall quickly. She only had a week and three days before Albert was able toe back andunch a point-funded counter attack.


    She figured that the inability to spend Kingdom level points would have stopped any coordinated counter-attack in its tracks. Apparently, Albert had known of a number of her spies, and set countermeasures in ce with the Pathers.


    It made her wonder if he also knew of Lizs background, but that didn''t feel right.


    She expected it was more Juni, and his previous rtionship with the group.


    The problem was, Matt was keeping his troops out of directbat. If she pulled off enough of her own troops to take him out, shed be reducing her sieging units to dangerously low numbers.


    That was if she could even get him to engage. He had already proven, from one skirmish, to be unwilling to fight head on.


    She had ordered her generals to ignore the Pather and his army, in favor of taking the cities faster. That didn''t mean she didn''t give them orders to protect their rear. Each city had a barricade around them to avoid recreating the disaster that had befallen her own city.


    With two weeks and two days remaining before the real war was supposed to be over, she needed to keep to her own deadline and end the Pather one.


    Casualties didn''t matter as long as they won, but if they lost too many troops now, they wouldn''t get them back before the end of the war. If that happened, then they would be truly dead.


    It was a delicate line to walk, and she wasn''t sure if she could manage it.


    Time.


    She needed more time.


    After deliberating, she ordered an agent toy a trap for the Pather, and activated a few spies.


    Sara checked the time. She wanted another good meal, but forced herself to open the packet of cold pasta and heated it up.


    She craved a fruit te, or anything that didn''t taste like it couldst a few dozen years and still be considered food.


    Still, she resisted the cravings and choked down the food.


    Shed get a good dinner tomorrow.


    As she controlled herself she reviewed her intelligence on Matt and his team and her spies reports.


    Her eyes lingered on the goals section.


    Her people suspected that Matt was a perfect fit for the [Cracked Breach] skill. It was such a good fit that with the knowledge of who Lizs parents were she suspected that it was ced there for him personally.


    It only reinforced her conviction that this entire war was for Liz and her partner''s benefit.


    She had the personal points to buy the skill. It would make a good bribe to remove him from the war or even to just have him lead a less effective counterattack.


    She only needed to stall him for a little while.


    Sara nodded and decided to buy the skill if her trap didn''t work. If he refused she could sell the skill to a Queendom noble for a hefty profit.


    ***


    Matt and his hundred thousand troops set up on a bluff near the encircled city and rained down fire on the Queendom attackers.


    It had been irritating to his own besieging army when it happened to them, and with the Queendom trying to take two cities, they didn''t have the numbers to properly manage their force.


    They had been chased off twice already by a unit three times their number, but they hadnt set down tents or anything else that couldn''t be rapidly packed, so they were able to retreat quickly. The hit and run tactics were making it rough for the Queendom.


    To that effect, they werent able to use their mana cannons. They took too long to set up, and using them immediately always provoked a reaction, until now.


    Their newest spot was a much better one, and the bluff was just inside the anti-flying formation, which meant that the Queendom army had to go around, or fight up a sheer, hundred-foot cliff.


    One of his Pather members, Adam, had noted that the shape of the valley indicated that the cliff was inside the formation, despite the standard sphere suggesting it wasn''t. It was like the area they had found the Queendom secret base in on their first mission. A slight variation on the standard formation.


    It was the break they needed to put some more significant hurt on the Queendom armies.


    So, they set up a more permanent camp with heavy rear defenses.


    Matt sat on one cannon and let it fire at the speed that his Concept should be able to refill his reserves. It wasn''t nearly as fast as he could have actually fired the weapon, but every minute, a st of blue licked out.


    The damage was beautiful. Spots in the enemy camp simply vanished when the shotsnded.


    But, like all good things, it ended all too soon.


    From their rear, warning rms rang out, and Matt turned to survey the situation as he gave orders for his rear guard to brace for a fight. They had a decent position, and could bleed some of the Queendom troops during a defensive engagement.


    His looking back was the only reason he saw Adam taking off on a flying sword at the edge of the formation.


    Then the explosion went off.


    The hill under Matt crumbled, and the mana cannon he was standing behind crumbled with him.


    Matt put every bit of his mana generation into [Cracked Phantom Armor]. 40 MPS went into the normalyer, and 35 MPS went into the secondaryyer. The remaining 5 MPS went to his AI to figure out how he was going to live through this and give orders before he died.


    His first order out was to hold the line, as he could see the explosion only affected the top of the cliff, and not the entire thing. The second was to reinforce the chain ofmand.


    As Matt fell into darkness, he read the report that showed hed most likely survive the fall. It was only a question of if he could dig himself out of the rubble before he suffocated.


    When the world stopped rumbling, Matt oriented himself from the AI connections with his men, and tried to feel around himself.


    He started digging as best as he could when he hit something hard. Feeling around, he found that it was a metal tube.


    He smiled as he checked its orientation, then checked his AI.


    The odds looked pretty good. His AI also noted the anomaly that let this area remain in the anti-flying formation had disappeared. It wasn''t hard to realize that it was just a part of the Queendom trap Adam had set.


    Matt filled the mana cannon with mana, then put everything he had into his armor.


    The world rumbled, and Matt felt [Cracked Phantom Armor] break under the close explosion. But despite his ringing ears, he was alive. He coughed out what he was pretty sure was blood, but ignored it.


    His flying sword that had been at the edge of the only anti-flying formation raced to him and hovered around his head. With one hand, he gripped the de and hoisted himself up out of the crater in thendslide.


    Using his flying sword and [Mages Retreat], Matt pulled the mana cannon out of the rubble as well, and started charging it as he rose into the air.


    The Queendom troops, who were flying up the side of the mountain, froze for a second after seeing the flying mana cannon fully charged and ready to fire.


    Matt let it loose.


    The world went blue for a second before he mmed into the ground from the kickback.


    While he had [Cracked Phantom Armor] to protect him, the Queendom troops did not.


    He started charging the cannon while he unstuck himself and flew to his troops, where his most recent orders to get into the air were being followed. Together, they flew out of the trap, with an enemy force keeping a <em>very</em> respectful distance behind them.


    Anytime they got too close, Matt let loose a st from his cannon. He also wondered if he could build a tform to carry their two other cannons, and just fire them from the air.


    Their squad ran until they met up with another team of equal size, and then turned to chase the Queendom soldiers.


    Or at least they tried.


    The Queendom troops didnt hesitate long enough for Matts forces to turn on them. They quickly retreated back to the safety of their greater army, instead of fighting it out with a force that they only outnumbered by fifty percent.


    Once theynded, Matt began giving orders while healers came to tend to him. He wanted to ignore them, as his wounds weren''t too bad, and some of his men had far worse. It was only after a quiet and ufortable reminder that he was the only reason they were out here that Matt let the healers do their jobs.


    The man quickly left, but not before Matt topped him off with his Concept. They needed their healers in the best condition, and he did feel better from the healing. At least one rib had shifted ufortably during the process, which only confirmed what his AI had been telling him.


    Their teams harassed the enemy armies while avoiding conflict for the next week. Seven brutal days of little sleep, and being constantly on the move.


    Still, their hard work paid off in the following days.


    Neither city had fallen, despite the Queendom bombarding them night and day. The defenders were able to repulse every attack, and rumor had it that Prince Albert was preparing for a grand campaign when he came off of his healing cooldown, in four more days.


    While they were all tired, their presence had slowed the Queendom down enough to have a fighting chance at relieving one of the cities.


    Their chances were so good that arge portion of the general troops even mored for it. They were easy points, they said.


    Matt and the othermanders all believed it to be a trap.


    The Queendom had only reinforced one of the cities the entire time. It wasn''t as if the Queendom hadnt had traps before and something so obvious made them all wary.


    In the end, Matts threats and presence had cated the dissenters. He didnt have to kill anyone, but he had to go and give some friendly chats to a few mid-levelmanders. A few questions about their loyalties were enough to stop any more of thoseints.


    After the traps and betrayals, any hint of being a traitor was enough to merit an instant killing. No one disagreed with the method after the third poisoned camp stew, and a bomb nted under themand tents.


    The bombs had been ineffective because Matt refused to hold any personal meetings, insisting on only using their AI. He purposely avoided gathering everyone together. It made things harder for him, since half of his authority came from the threat of him kicking someone''s ass if they refused his orders.


    He had to substitute in threats of giving generals andmanders personal visits to keep them in line.


    That was, until they got the news.


    Sara had been killed, along with a number of her higher officials, in the chaotic aftermath.


    Someone, presumably Annie, had finally killed the woman.


    ***


    Annie had grown tired.


    Not just physically, but mentally as well. Standing watch on a random door had been too much for even her after two days, and she looked at other methods.


    She trusted that barging into that room would mean her death, when she had an idea.


    <em>Do I really need to stab her?</em>


    A quick message to Liz had provided her with the name of a particrly subtle poison, and she had spent 200,000 points on a small vial of the stuff.


    The list of ways the little vial could kill someone was longer than her forearm.


    Even the fumes were toxic if breathed in too long. The advantage of the stuff was that it was odorless and tasteless to humans. Most beasts could smell it, but Sara wasn''t a beast, so Annie expected it to work.


    She stalked the kitchens for days, following the one man who brought down the food the first time. He was a mid-level manager, who was unremarkable besides delivering the Princess''s food.


    When he started cutting a cheese and fruit board, she knew that she had the right person. It was also not a part of the general menu.


    Annie also noted how he tasted each piece of food before he started walking down the hall.


    She shadowed him until he was about to enter the same door asst time, when she put a drop of the poison on a halved grape as he went through the door.


    One drop was all that the little vial contained.


    With things already in motion, Annie ran to one of her marked locations, and watched key members of Sara''s side.


    She was only one woman. She couldn''t operate like a dozen assassins and take out their entiremand structure, but she could take out a few key people. Or at least, people that she thought were key.


    When the panic started, she began stabbing.


    Blood ran as she worked her way through the ranks.


    When people started bunkering up, she concluded her bloody work and ran.


    She had to use a bomb to blow out a window, as they had an anti-teleportation formation active after the first murders. Also, her mana was too low after all the time she spent behind enemy lines, and without Matt to refill her.


    Her escape was messier than she would have liked, but after two and a half hours of mingling in the shopping district, she was happy with the operation.


    ***


    Victor smiled as he watched the chaos Annie had caused.


    She had a knack for assassination.


    So many young recruits got overly attached to one n, and couldn''t pivot to another when the situation demanded it. It would have been better if she had changed her ns faster, but he was still happy with the results.


    He was going to turn her into another Blink. Her Talent wasn''t as good as the elusive man''s, but Talent wasn''t everything.


    Annie enjoyed it. He could tell.


    A predator recognized a fellow predator.


    A dark-haired woman appeared out of nowhere next to him, and Victor had to repress the urge to stab the intruder.


    Luna was a menace with her void element. She was able to erase her presence better than nearly anyone, and when she appeared, it made him jumpy.


    The infamous manager shook her head without looking at him, her attention on the piece of paper she was writing on.


    You won''t get what you want.


    Why do you think that? She''s perfect. Victor was actually curious. He knew when he was outmatched, and in predicting young Pathers, Luna was one of the best. Listening to her was just good business.


    She''s going to settle on a more cause and effect Concept. She realized something with the gardening she saw earlier. the delicate nose wrinkled as she sniffed. Smells like it at least.


    Victor shrugged. If her phrase is still the same, it will fit well enough. I can work with that.


    Luna paused and met his eyes before the orbs of obsidian wandered down his body in a slow path.


    It made him shiver.


    I guess you have grown up, Vicky. Lunas attention then drifted back to the paper she was scribbling on.


    That was closer to the truth than he liked to admit, so he tried to y it off. It''s been a long time, and even immortals can grow, if given sufficient incentives.


    She just nodded along before asking, Are you about to leave?


    He nodded. I intended to. She''s a good candidate, and I need to get my affairs in order before she reaches Tier 10.


    Luna tisked, The final show is about to happen. Stick around to see it.


    Victor shook his head. I''ve already noticed and extrapted. I don''t need to see the aftermath. Weve all seen <em>her</em> tantrums. I don''t want to get caught in the crosswind.


    Luna smiled a toothy smile. But she didn''t say anything, just wiggling her fingers in a half-wave.


    Victor hadn''t been lying. <em>She</em> was going to be pissed, and he didn''t want to be in the same sector as the madwoman. It wasn''t the first time she had done something like this, and after the events that had urred on this, anyone who knew her could predict her intentions.


    It didn''t mean the Emperor wouldn''t be pissed as well, even that wouldn''t stop her.


    The time to leave was now, while the getting was good.


    Victor took onest look through realspace at the King.


    He <em>really</em> didn''t envy the man.