Edgewood crossed his arms and cursed. "Who the hell keeps getting to the enemy first!?" This was the fourth group of clustered troops that he'd encountered. He'd inspected the first three groups for their collective cause of death, but now walked off in a huff, convinced that the enemy had fallen prey to...whatever had passed through the area.

It certainly wasn't the falcons; Edgewood had seen a tank completely smashed by one after it plummeted from the sky like a torpedo. It also wasn't the raptors, since they attacked in packs, eviscerating and skinning their pray. He knew because he'd worked on teaching them a bit over the past two days. They couldn't speak, and weren't very good communicators at all, but they seemed to understand him well enough.

He started contact with the raptors by telling one of the land-shapers in Dusk faction to relay a message to one of the raptors about a potential learning opportunity. In the beginning, he worked with two raptors; the number quickly swelled to fifty. He wouldn't be surprised if he ended up teaching the whole lot of them in a few days.

When he was teaching the raptors, he really began to feel the abilities of his specialized education boon surface. As he worked with the raptors, he intuitively found ways to adapt his martial arts techniques to their bodies. When he first saw them, his initial optimism about teaching them martial arts faded; he wasn't sure how the bipedal armored lizards would implement his techniques. However, after only a few minutes, ideas rushed into his head in rapid succession. Without even thinking about it, he completely revamped his system of martial arts...for both the raptors, and himself.

He'd seen a group of soldiers that the raptors had absolutely shredded a few miles back. He'd been curious as to how they dispatched real, flesh and blood foes, and so had inspected the corpses. He'd subconsciously shuddered when he realized that the raptors, aside from completely disfiguring their human targets, also collected their incisors. For what reason, Edgewood didn't know; perhaps as trophies?

Edgewood was currently leading a group consisting of a long-range fighter and her horse, as well as an administrator. The administrator was out in the front, his heavy, spiked gavel held out in front of him like some kind of holy scepter.

"Sorry, guys," he sighed. "They were all definitely alive a minute ago."

Edgewood frowned. That's what he'd been saying for the past few minutes, and yet each time they were a bit too slow.

"No traps nearby?" the woman asked. A dragonleaf tether connected her to the horse so that they kept constant communication. "Ashmoon is getting impatient."

Edgewood rubbed the bridge of his nose in frustration. "I think everyone's impatient at this point." Before today, Edgewood had never felt like combat was a game; war was a deadly affair for all parties involved. When people won wars, they still took significant losses.

Edgewood wasn't sure that they'd lost a single person, or quasi-sapient, over the entire attack. The logical part of him figured that at least a few people from Basalith must have died...But the bats above proved an incredibly effective vanguard, while administrators detected any hidden traps left over and people lying in ambush. Long range fighters used their excellent vision to snipe the enemy from afar by using these...strange, black recurve bows and crossbows.

Like the majority of groups roaming the vast battleground, Edgewood's group had naturally formed on its own. They had all been walking in the same direction, barely a few feet away from the path paved by the bats. They'd all made eye contact, then walked over to one another and verified that they were all assuming complimentary professions. Then, they'd moved out as a unit.

Edgewood knew from experience how much training was usually required to work smoothly with a group of even two other people. He felt perhaps more unease over how simple it was to stalk enemy forces with the administrator and long range fighter than anything he'd experienced in COTD thus far. Clearly, the boons he'd received weren't as clear cut as they seemed at first glance, affecting him mentally in ways that he hadn't previously noticed.

All the same, he couldn't doubt their effectiveness. Screw military training; screw tight formations and drills. With this kind of power differential and the natural ease with which everyone could collaborate...Edgewood now had no doubts whatsoever that COTD would prevail. Not just against the U.S.; against the world. He wondered exactly what the end goal of COTD was...

"Found some; they're alive, I promise," the administrator called out. The group approached stealthily until about two thousand feet out. Then, the woman shot out a string of dragonleaf arrows with the speed of a semi-automatic rifle. The rest of the group ran forward, closing the distance in a second. Edgewood used his dragonleaf-claw-covered fingers to jab at the soldiers before him: it was a new kind of technique he'd imbued into his martial arts when teaching the raptors.

The horse violently stampeded anybody in its path to death with its heavy, ironclad hooves. The administrator stomped downward into the earth, sending out ripples of force that brought anyone in front of him to their knees while smashing their lowered heads to pulp.

"Finally," Edgewood exhaled as they began to walk off in search of another squad. "Seems like this direction's the way to go."

---

Dean could only look on in mildly horrified fascination when he first saw a blur of yellowish-white fur streak up from a newly-formed hole in the earth. The thing jumped silently behind a soldier, cupping its little hand around the man's throat before he knew what was happening. Then, it drew its claws horizontally, leaving only a red ribbon of blood behind. This entire process, from emerging to disappearing back down into its hole, happened in the span of half a second.

Dean had been watching the same lightning-fast quasi-sapient for the past thirty minutes, following it as it traveled from squad to squad. He first hadn't a clue as to what he was witnessing, though after watching the quasi-sapient repeatedly carry out assassinations, he was starting to get a better idea about what the little demon was.

It was about the size of a small dog, long-legged, with fairly long ears. At first, he'd thought it was a rabbit, but after more closely observing its physical features, discarded the idea. He actually wasn't sure what it was. Maybe it was some kind of hybrid species, like the devilbats, or a heavily mutated species, like the wasps.

Either way, it was leaping up and garroting the shit out of everyone. He couldn't believe that the ground-dwelling residents of Basalith were so bloodthirsty. It kind of freaked him out that these were living beneath where his parents lived.

'They're like little grim reapers,' he snorted to himself. If grim reapers were cute enough that his sister would want one for a pet.

This time, as the little reaper killed the last of the humans, Dean called out from afar: "Wait!"

The reaper descended back into the hole, seemingly ignorant of his cry. Dean rushed over, then stood over the tunnel, bellowing, "What's your name?"

"Virigard," was the short, relatively high-pitched response. Unexpectedly, the reaper popped back up to the surface and stared intently at Dean with its globular eyes, twitching in place. "Who are you?"

Dean fingered his mask. "I'm the Knight." He wished he sounded a bit more confident as he said it. Truth be told, he still didn't think of himself as anything more than an NBA-wannabe, much less Basalith's seldom-seen Knight, and had only ever stated his position out loud a handful of times. While he more than recognized the absurdity of thinking of himself in terms of his basketball aspirations, he hadn't had enough time to sit down and reconsider his identity. Basketball had been his life before...everything.

"Oh, I see."

"Really?" How had Virigard heard about his stint at the Virginia military base if now through social media?

"...No. Why did you stop me? There are still humans out there to train with."

Dean paused, feeling a bit awkward. "Uh, curiosity. You're very efficient, you know," Dean praised, trying to rescue the impromptu conversation.

The reaper stood up a little straighter, its ears curling backward. "Well, I am the third best in the ranking."

Dean gave Virigard a confused expression. "Ranking?"

Now Virigard gave an exasperated sigh, the air passing through its long lower jaw teeth. "Amalo--that's our patriarch--created a ranking system. It's to encourage excellence and competition." The reaper spoke this last part as though it were an oft-heard slogan, a bit of whine in its voice. "Well, it was interesting talking."

Dean smiled. "Yeah."

Virigard quickly dove back into the hole, no doubt bounding off to some other encampment to restart "training."

'Just what the hell is Bath thinking up that workshop of his, or whatever?' Dean wondered to himself, a complex expression on his face. The scrawny rabbit-mutant quasi-sapient was, in itself, a weapon with considerable destructive capabilities. Dean thought of himself, then to Basalith's people as a whole. Despite the Basalith's relatively small population, it was effectively an incubator for terrifyingly-puissant fighters.

'Just what is Bath preparing for?'

---

Bath and Lisa were inside Lisa's dorm watching a live broadcast covering the conflict in Virginia. In general, the vast majority of the U.S.'s forces had been concentrated in the 100-mile area around Basalith. This meant that while Bath could sense a fairly sizable contingent of soldiers in the nearby area--he figured they were reserve forces--he doubted that the conflict would reach as far as Alens.

"Wow, they're just killing it," Lisa remarked. "I can't believe this was the best the U.S. had to offer."

Bath snorted. "Don't underplay my own efforts." He formed a small spineroot facsimile on his palm. "This kind of army would likely win out against any other force on the planet. They even brought out plasma beams," he lamented. "Plasma beams! I didn't even consider plasma beams when I built spineroot. Also, I need to develop a better subterranean defense system...We're lucky effective tunneling technology hasn't been developed on this planet."

Lisa gave him a look. "...Okay. Anyways, when do you plan on making your big appearance?"

Bath looked at the news broadcast's displayed clock. "Oh, soon. As soon as the reserve soldiers around here start to retreat. That's when they'll have really admitted defeat."

Lisa nodded. "Do you know what you're doing yet?"

Bath smiled. "I have a general idea."