Dave had told her to activate Mass Raise Undead at the perfect moment, when the dead began to outnumber the living. No force in existence would have an easy way to deal with an army that equaled their own coming out of nowhere, right beneath their feet.

Of course, because she was fighting ants, the undead lost some of their impact. Dave had mentioned the demoralizing effect undead had. When your best friend stood up and started trying to eat your face, most people struggled to remain calm and even-minded. Unfortunately, the ants were ants. They didn’t care all that much that their dead brethren were now biting their feet. To the ants, it was just another target to kill.

That didn’t mitigate what an absolute disaster Hecate’s one spell was for the ant army. As expected, it was devastating. Hecate was more surprised by how well they were holding up rather than how much the tables had turned. The battle had transitioned from her forces' slow but steady loss to a complete route.

It was fortunate Dave had timed things so well. Much longer, and the number of living and dead ants would have become unmanageable. As it was, Hecate was near the bottom of her Mana reserves. She had enough to keep this massive army going for maybe half an hour more; then she’d drop. The amount being drained to maintain her forces skyrocketed when she added tens of thousands of lesser undead to the fold. Each one individually cost incomparably less than her mid-rank forces, but the sheer number of them added up.

“Good job, boss. We should be able to clear the entire event field with this many undead in less than an hour. The ants are already done for in only a few minutes. I think they’ll reach the nest soon.” Dave’s voice reached her through the Death Link.

“We might need to speed things up. I’ve got half an hour of Mana left, tops,” She warned.

“Hmm,” Hecate could feel her familiar’s mind churning up the time limit, assessing the possibilities. “That’s a tough one. If we encounter another enemy force as capable as this one, I’d call it impossible. But considering all previous encounters…”

“You could do some more.” She offered.

“No, out of the question. My capabilities will be more useful as a reserved tool for the proper group combat events. Revealing them now would be counterproductive. Everyone has agreed to hold out on their strongest abilities until the battle tournaments, even if it means losing these lesser events. Obviously, winning is paramount, but not if it loses us the most crucial events. No, we’ll do this.”

Dave explained his plan. “Let me know when you’ve reached roughly fifteen minutes of Mana left. At that point, we’ll drop the lesser undead. Then, your natural regeneration should move us in a Mana-positive direction at that point. We’ll just have to hope we don’t run into another army as capable as this one.”

Hekate prayed he was right. It would be fucking embarrassing to lose this event, especially over something as stupid as running out of Mana.

{}

Dave was right. Hekate was not surprised. As far as she could tell, the ancient undead was some kind of tactical genius and super cautious to boot. He had the whole field cleared in under half an hour. The ant nest was raided and destroyed, despite a massive spike in the oncoming ants at the end.

Surprisingly, he’d found dozens of ant queens in the nest, all of them furiously pumping out eggs to try and stop the undead assault. It didn’t work, but they put up a steep resistance at the end. Ironically, the design of the ant nest ended up working against them, as the tight tunnels eliminated much of the ant’s numerical advantage. Dave simply marched down one tunnel by himself, carving a path of gore to the queens single-handedly.

It just goes to show, some people can reach such a level of personal power that no amount of numbers could hold them back. And Dave was at that level, at least against these ants.

Despite Dave’s pessimism, none of the other participants put up anywhere near the challenge that the ant user had. Hekate’s massive force of lesser undead swept over them all in a tidal wave of undead ants. They fought with the undying ferocity and willing disregard for their own existence that both the undead and ants embodied. After all, Hekate had no plans to hold onto them after this event; they’d just be dismissed as soon as she won.

Which she did. Despite the surprising amount of resistance that the ant user had put up, Hekate won the Mass Combat event with about as much ease as she was expecting. Though she was feeling a little humbled. She’d come in thinking she’d steam-roll everyone, which turned out to be more than a little arrogant of her. Which she did.

The ant user easily could have won if they’d been allowed to build up their forces a little longer, or if Dave had been less capable, or if Hekate’s Mana had been a little lower. Honestly, a hundred little things would have been enough for her to lose that fight, and it was more than enough for Hekate to recognize that she’d entered this event with a more cavalier attitude than she should have.

Back at the Hearthhome, Hekate found her teammates lounging around the living space. Caeden was napping, head on the side of a couch with his feet in Lily’s lap, who was reading a book. Erik was throwing popcorn kernels in the air and catching them with his mouth. Asherta was watching some CV show on a screen.

Actually, looking over the dragon-human hybrid’s shoulder, Hekate realized she was actually watching recordings of other events that had happened today. She wondered where Asherta had gotten them and was interested in seeing a playback of her own event.

Snowball, at about the size of a small sofa himself, was resting in a corner, curled up in a ball was the feather form of Sky perched on his back.

“Oh,” Lily looked up from her book. “You’re back! How’d it go? Did you win?”

Hekate smirked at her friend’s smiling face. “You know it! How could I possibly lose that event?”

Lily chuckled. “It was made for you. So it was a cakewalk, I assume?”

Hekate grimaced. “Sorta.”

“Oh?” Lily set her book on a side table and gestured to a seat. At the same time, she poked Caeden’s foot, getting her boyfriend to wake up and sit next to her. “That sounds like a story.”

“Yeah, a bit.” Hekate spent almost half an hour walking her friends through the particulars of what had happened, explaining about the ants and everything else. Everyone listened, completely invested in her story. Asherta pulled up footage of the event, and even Erik drifted over, still munching his popcorn and occasionally choking on it, as he did.

“Honestly, it was a shut-out, except for the ant user.” Hekate finished. “The other contestants couldn’t even do anything. And it’s not like the ants were ever really in danger of winning. Dave was holding back pretty hard the whole time so that he could show off later, like we planned.”

“Something about it is bothering you, though.” Lily looked at her knowingly.

Hekate nodded. “Are we…Are we maybe underestimating the other countries?”

“Now, why would you say that?”

“Well, this event was my event. I went in figuring no one would be able to touch me in mass combat. It's just the perfect event for me. But then the ants happened and… I don’t know. I just wasn’t expecting someone else to be that close to challenging me. Seriously, if I had to keep holding Dave back and we’d run into the ants even ten, twenty minutes later, it might have been me getting stomped.” Hectare explained, feeling uncomfortable the whole time.

“Ahh, I get it.” Lily nodded.

“You do?”

“Yes, it’s actually pretty simple. Cat, you’re exceptional. Especially in mass combat. But I think you forgot that other people can be exceptional too. You went into that event thinking no one could stand up to you in your chosen field, but I’ll bet you anything that ant user went in with the exact same thought. No doubt, they’re the exceptional one in their home country.” Lily explained.

“So…what?”

“What, what?”

“What does that mean for our plans?” Hekate asked, still feeling frustrated. “If someone super strong can just crawl out of any corner, what are we supposed to do?”

Lily laughed lightly. “I think you’re selling us a bit short there and maybe overestimating how many exceptional people there are in the world. The reason why exceptional people are exceptional is because they are exceptions.”

“You just said the word exception way too many times,” Caeden laughed. Lily smacked his arm.

“Hush. Now, do you get my point, Cat?”

“Not really,”

“Ok, let me explain this another way. How many people do you think there are in the Starry Sea that have shrouds, versus those that don’t?”

“It’s like, ten to one, isn’t it?” Hekate asked, not seeing where this was going.

“Correct. For every one shrouded, there are ten unshrouded. Now, how many shrouded ever achieve Nascent shroud, like Erik?”

Hekate shrugged. “I don’t know; I never looked into it.”

“It’s one in two. About half of every shrouded reach that level. Most strive to do it with their Embodiment, so they can become immortal. But it’s about one in two. Then, beyond that, how many Nascent Shrouds do you think reach True Shroud?”

“Maybe half again?” Hekate guessed. She figured that made sense.

Lily shook her head. “Wrong. It’s one in five. Getting that second higher form is a big step.”

“Ok, where are you going with this?”

“Hold on; I’m not done. Let's look at the odds of evolved shrouds like mine, yours, and Eriks. Or dual-shrouds, like Caeden and Erik have. Dual-shrouds are rare; one in ten thousand shrouded are dual-shrouded. Evolutions? Even rarer, closer to one in a million or one in two million. Now, I know you know this one. What’s the rarity of a magic shroud like yours?” Lily was almost smirking.

“No one knows. There’s so few that they can’t even get a real statistic.”

“Right. And let's not even discuss Caeden. What with his whole Throne situation and that mess with his incomplete soul and whatnot.” She smiled fondly at him. “He’s probably unique in the entire Starry Sea.”

“Right.” Hekate was still waiting for a point.

“My point with all this trivia,” Lily gave Hekate a pointed look, like she knew exactly what she was thinking, “Is that our team isn’t just exceptional. We’re a confluence of so many exceptions that the term hardly even applies to us anymore. You’re worried about some exceptional, powerful person showing up and ruining our plans, but Cat, we are that exceptional, powerful person. Our group is the nightmare of every other opponent we‘re going to face going forward.”

“You fought someone who was definitely exceptional in one way. One. They had a domain unusually suited to mass combat. But you, and me, and Caeden, and Erik, and Asherta, are all more than one special feature. So, I wouldn’t worry that much about the other countries. Will we face powerful people? Yes? But there’s no way they could possibly compete with the overwhelming level of ridiculously rare shrouds features we hold.”

Hekate stared at her roommate and friend for a long time, processing what she’d said. It wasn’t something she’d ever really thought about. How much their team was stuffed full of impossible odds and strange circumstances. In some ways, it was almost hard to imagine how this had all happened. It was absurd.

“...Oh.”

Lily laughed, and Caeden joined in. “Just ‘oh’?”

“I don’t know; what do you want from me?” Hekate shot back. “I’d never thought about it like that.”

Caeden nodded, responding instead of Lily. “I get it. You ran into something you weren’t expecting, and you’re worried that will happen again. And neither me nor Lily is going to tell you that it’s not a possibility because it is. We’re not saying there aren’t other exceptional people here. We’re just trying to make you aware that we’re the ones everyone else should be looking out for.”

“We’re the real exceptions.”