I awoke the next morning next to my gorgeous wife still getting her beauty sleep.

I got up quietly, dressed up, and headed outside. My cooking skills were rather horrible, so I went to a bakery shop nearby instead. I bought a bunch of buns that looked nutritive enough for a decent breakfast and went back home.

Afterwards, I took out a few buns and left them in a plate on the table for her. With the bag from the bakery in my hand, I left the house once more. While walking to my destination, the buns were disappearing from the bag one after the other as I devoured them whole.

I entered the castle, ran up the stairs and walked through a large corridor on the third floor. I stopped at a door written STAY OUT in elegant letters carved into the wood.

I ignored the sign and turned the doorknob. Oddly, it was unlocked, so I pushed the door and stepped inside.

The room was dark due to some extravagant curtains that were blocking the sunlight. A king size bed stood at an extremity of the spacious bedroom.

On that bed, Élise was sleeping all limbs spread out with the sheets knocked to the side, revealing an indecent amount of white skin.

I pathed carefully around the messy clothes laid down on the carpeted floor trying to reach the curtains. Distracted by her noisy snoring, I tripped on some sort of elf footwear that looked like a sandal made of wood stripes.

As soon as I grasped the curtains, I pulled them open. The sunlight brightly light up the room.

“The light, it’s burning my eyes! Have mercy on my soul!”

“Get up, Élise! We’ve got a big day ahead of us.”

“Please, five more minutes!”

She pulled the blanket over herself, covered her face and went back to sleep.

“Get your lazy ass out of bed or I’m dragging you out like this!”

No movement. She ignored me.

**I can’t actually drag her outside like this, can I? It would be considered sexual harassment…**

**What should I do?**

“Looks like I don’t have a choice. You’re forcing me to do this, you understand, Élise?”

I stripped the sheets covering her face and delicately put my palm on her forehead.

Then, a surge of mana generated throughout my body gathered in my palm and streamed into her forehead.

“AAAAaaaah! Wait, it feels pretty good!”

Her scream promptly turned into a moan as I injected pure mana into her body.

**Would that also be considered sexual harassment?**

The power of a thousand coffee cups resided in that mana surge, but without any of the inconveniences of caffeine.

As I stopped the surge, “Lynch, why are you stopping? Keep going!”

Obviously, I ignored her obscene plea and withdrew my hand.

She raised her body and sat herself on the bed, the drowsiness thoroughly eradicated.

“What was that?” she asked, blushing notably. “I feel all fuzzy all of a sudden… And aroused.”

“Okay, looks like this mana surge had some undesirable side effects.”

She stretched out her hand toward me provocatively.

“Anyway,” I continued, “Come to the meeting room when you’re ready. See you there.”

I exited the room in a flash and let out a deep breath.

**That was a close call.**

I took the stairs, reached the fourth floor and entered the said meeting room.

Inside, Lilliana and Rich were seated around a circular table drinking a cup of tea. A large map representing the entire continent was covering most of the table. It was surrounded by sea on all sides and didn’t indicate the presence of another continent beside this one.

A miniature castle stood in the middle of the map with the letters Brindle adjoined to it. This miniature represented the capital of the human’s kingdom.

Straight west, at the end of the map, the elven kingdom was depicted with illustrations of trees. Their cities were built amidst the forest in harmony with nature. They ate what the forest could provide them, which meant mostly roots and berries.

That was one of the reasons why Élise lived among the humans, despite being part of the elves’ nobility. She loved the taste of meat more than she loved her family. Well, that might be a harsh way to put it. Maybe she just loved hanging out with us, her friends.

**And elves have such long life spans. She’s already much older than the rest of us, although she doesn’t act like it at all. It’s nice that she’s spending time with us before we rot away. Well, not that I could say something so embarrassing right in her face.**

At the eastern extremity of the map, drawings of mountains represented the dwarven kingdom. They lived mostly under the mountains, near their mining sites, but they also had cities in front of these mountains, on flat lands. These cities were mostly used as a starting point for the exportation of their manufactured goods. For example, they had such a city built around the canal. They loaded kitchen appliances, vehicle parts and other merchandises produced inside the mountains into shipping boats and sent them west, where they would pass through multiple human cities before eventually reaching the elven kingdom.

As I mentioned earlier, the canal was splitting the continent in half. Initially, the canal was a simple river that took it’s source in the mountain range where the dwarves lived. That river was ending it’s course near Brindle where it would join another river flowing to the south. With sustained hard work, the canal was dug, stretching the sides and dredging the river bed to allow boats to travel.

Later, the canal was even lengthened all the way to the elven kingdom, connecting the entire continent.

On the map, the course of the canal was clearly distinguishable by a blue outline.

Additionally, two zones in particular stood out. They were partly concealed under a dark shade of red.

They were the dense mana zones, one in the north, and one in the south. The northern one started near the former city of Ozen and ran all the way to the edge of the map. Ozen was only a few days walk from Brindle, which means, considering that Brindle was at the center of the continent, the amount of emerged lands that were not within the dense mana zones was minuscule.

The high mana pressure in these areas were unbearable to most living beings, so our civilization was concentrated in the center of this continent.

Indeed, the northern and the southern edges of this grand continent was a no man’s land.

However, under this oppressive energy, life found it’s way. Thousands of years after the apparition of the dense mana zones, species evolved and developed unconventional characteristics such as mana resistant skins or biological filtration systems that could separate the mana from the normal air to limit the amount of mana that reached the lungs.

As I took my eyes off the map, the door opened. Through the gap, the king emerged, quickly followed by Albert.

The king looked around the room, noticing the people present.

“Where’s Élise?”

“She’ll be here soon,” I said, nonchalantly, “Probably.”

“I guess we can start without her, it’s not like she’ll remember anything after the meeting, anyway.”

It was business as usual. Élise was late, Albert was yawning and the rest of us, me, Lilliana and Rich, tried to look interested and attentive to what the king had to say.

The king ignored our disrespectful demeanor and spoke, “So, here’s what I had in mind for tonight’s siege.”

“Tonight?” I interrupted him. “Did the scouts come back already?”

“Yes, they also estimated the travel time of… Well, for now, let’s call them the Army of Hell. The scouts described them as such. Anyway, the enemy will be at our gate at nightfall. Back on topic-”

The door flew wide open and a disheveled Élise barged in.

“Looks like I’m right on time!”

“No, you’re definitely late,” Albert remarked.

**This poor king. Stuck with such an irresponsible bunch and he can’t even say what he has to say.**

“Hu-hum.”

He cleared his throat emphatically, trying to retake control of the meeting.

“So, tonight, we’ll be expecting around 100 000 mutants. Obviously, we won’t be meeting them head on, so we’ll take cover within the city walls. I was planning to put all five of you spread out on the wall. On the ground, behind the gate, I’ll place a group of defensive mages and the majority of our troops. They should be able to hold the gate if they breach it.”

“I think the defensive mages should go on the wall with us, my barrier spells might not be sufficient to protect everyone,” Lilliana remarked with a polite nod. “Instead, let’s post Rich behind the gate.”

“What about the offensive mages?” The king asked. “I intended to place them on the wall to offer Lynch some additional firepower… There is only so much room on these fortifications.”

“I won’t need them,” I grinned. “I’ve got enough firepower for every single one of these bastards.”

“Fair enough,” He answered. “Also, about Rich, I think you are right, Lilliana. His taunts will be useful in the bottleneck near the gate.”

“Damn right!” Rich exclaimed, laughing in his ravishing beard. “Taunting a bunch of brainless mutants in a chokepoint is easier than falling off a cask!”

“Glad to hear it, Rich,” said the king. “The offensive mages will be right behind you. You don’t mind being exposed to the crossfire between the mages and the mutants, right?”

“Eh! These measly little fireballs can’t even scorch the tip of my beard!”

“Good,” the king continued. “The plan for today goes as follow. Élise, you will go to the training grounds to train some fresh archers. They have never wielded a bow before, so they will need your innate charisma and your prodigious talent to make this miracle happen.”

**He definitely knows how to get on her good side.**

Élise leaped back on her feet and gratified him of a flawless military salute.

“Yes, your Majesty!”

“Albert and Rich, the Naval Corps will need your help at the harbor. They are trying to move the artillery from the unused battleships to the fortifications, but they need more workforce.”

The concerned individuals stood up and executed a military salute as well.

“Yes, your Majesty!”

**Sometimes, these idiots look almost disciplined.**

“As for Lynch and Lilliana,” the king started. “We need you to preserve your mana, so you have the rest of the day off.”

“That’s soooo unfair!” complained Élise.