Eric’s stomach was crawling up his throat as Greed’s malevolent grin grew impossibly wide. Wider even than his mother devouring the heart of a single paparazzi, or the head just seconds later, images his sister had tried so hard to drown out in a poppy-induced haze.

Greed’s glinting eyes held the demonic mirth of a ringmaster who had been playing them all from the start. Every awkward moment, goofball gesture, harried concession. Even the half-naked servants he had so begrudgingly surrendered. When all along, they had all been dancing to his tune.

And somehow, Eric had just known what was coming next, when tens of thousands of children, so crushed by despair at the inevitability of their own demise caught sight of those glimmers of light. Multiple portals opening.

Salvation.

Hope now burning in their eyes, a thousand isekai adventures desperately dreamed by boys and girls who had once watched so many wonderful shows and movies in a life that seemed like a dream even to Eric, less than a year later.

The only hope these children had.

A glimmer of light.

An impossible portal.

The desperate dream of a new world, a new dawn. Life, love, adventure, after they were rescued from the depths of hell.

Eric could see it in their desperate tear-streaked eyes.

Salvation where there had been none before.

Countless thousands of screaming voices.

All their panicked gazes, somehow locking onto his own.

Salvation at the hands of monsters, madmen, and would be Contenders.

Somehow, Eric already knew the price the manically cackling Greed would demand he pay.

“I think you know what comes next, Contender.”

Greed spat the words with such contempt. Eric was surprised not to see the ground hissing and sizzling with the twisted curse of a demon.

But no. Just spit and dirt and tobacco. A foul slurry at the feet of a monster now casually twirling a slave collar around his finger.

A sight that filled Eric with a horrific jolt of dread.

He was chilled by the sheer inevitability of the scene before him, only now sensing the whirling vortex of warped fate and twisted probability where all choices and options that didn’t lead to his death would lead unerringly to this moment. A bleak corner of his mind couldn’t help but wonder just how many rituals had been embraced by shamans and seers to assure this outcome.

He was bitterly certain that, whether by his mother’s side or alone, whether wearing a conqueror's mantle or an assassin’s leathers, he had been doomed to face the collar before him, one way or another, the moment he had crossed the Snicklit Clan by seizing both bank charter and daring to claim Gilton City’s golden fortune as his own.

A brief panicked flicker of hope as his bunny desperately tapped his shoulder faded to nothing. Unified Perception made it clear that this was no typical slave collar such as those used by the UCA.

No.

This was a collar of mithril.

Mithril that was utterly free of any cultivation affinity.

And Eric could all but taste the sharp death promised by the blades within even as he forced his trembling fingers into the agreed upon sign, praying that a certain crimson crow would spot his twitching fingers, with everything else that was going on.

“This isn’t the first time you’ve worn one of these collars, is it, boy?” Greed said with a mocking sneer, voice pitched to sound just like a Southern gentleman of a hundred and fifty years ago. With all the foulness that such implied.

Eric spared his panicked Bunbun a gentle smile, patting her shivering ears and taking comfort in a creature he cherished both as familiar and friend

Before turning to lock gazes with the goblin.

Tearing his eyes off from so many desperate pleading children, the hardest thing he had ever done.

Because somehow, they knew.

They all knew that their lives were now in his hands.

“What are you offering, Greed?” Even as he said the words, Eric felt his mother tense up, face tight and pale with something that transcended mere fury as the sky took on clouds steely grey with bitter tears soon turned black with the promise of death.

A storm to wash away all storms.

And Eric knew why.

For he had seen it as well.

One child gazing out through that hellish portal with the dead eyes of a child who had already lost everything. Traumatized by grief, despair, and abuse the likes of which not even Eric could conceive.

A little girl who’s face looked exactly like Elonia’s had.

Over a decade ago.

How? Eric had no idea.

Where all the parents were?

He hadn’t a clue.

But Eric, heart pounding with the inevitability of his own doom, knew it didn’t matter.

Because at that moment there was only him, Greed, and the fate of countless children, the offspring of men, mer, and perhaps both… all of them doomed to be sacrificed in a goblin steel mill…

Unless a deal was made.

Eric’s fist crackled with a storm of fire, near equal to the storm now howling above all their heads.

Dozens of humanoids and administrators sharing twisted smiles, mocking Eric with their sneers.

“You thought you could get the best of us, you little shit? Ha, fuckhead! You’ll be wearing that collar in about ten minutes, or all those children’s deaths will be on your head!” Sneered none other than Vidrig.

“Shut up, fool. You’re wrecking my flow!” Greed hissed, his glare making the man blanch, before turning to face Eric once more, his too wide smile once more in place.

Eric took a deep breath. “Make your offer, Greed. Because if we can’t come to an agreement… we already know what happens then.”

Greed laughed. “Silly boy! You act like I’m threatening you. Like I’ve boxed you into a corner. Nothing of the sort! That couldn’t be farther from the truth. I’m just giving you are rare, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You and your mother both! Why burden yourself with nearly 30,000 troops who will be starved and worthless by winter’s end, when you could have twice that many hardworking children serving your every need?” He chuckled coldly. “And I’ve been assured that each and every one of them have extensive experience tilling our soil, tending to our livestock, and running a thousand farms on a dozen worlds! It’s only when they break, when they weaken too far, when the madness and desperation compels them to act like fools, that the time for collars has past and it’s time for us to make full use of such limited resources!”

His eyes all but twinkled with mirth. “And what better use than as carbon for our steel?” He kissed his fingers like a master chef as the goblin shamans snorted. “What can I say? Their dying screams as their souls are forever entwined in our black iron gives it a strength, a resilience, that your pathetic excuse for metallurgists couldn’t hope to emulate! The perfect fusion of Soul Magic and metal without the burden of paying for a dozen master mages. Ha! The ultimate use of all our waste. Why, your human castoffs literally pay for themselves all over again, the minute they drop from heat stroke and exhaustion!”

The goblin barked with laughter, along with half the humanoids present. Eric’s jaw throbbed with agony.

He paid no attention to the molar that cracked under pressure as his eyes carefully marked every single chortling jackal-faced monster, pig-headed orc, and bear-sized ogre. Before carefully scanning each and every administrator present. Every last one. Looking for a single tear of regret, a solitary shudder of dismay.

The only things that would possibly grant those hideous abominations in human form any shred of leniency.

But not a single redeeming trait could be found. Not a single administrator showed anything but stone-cold disdain for the doomed children below.

So be it.

Those Skin Walkers were now living on borrowed time.

Each and every one.

“But I, as leader of the Snicklit clan... did you know that, dear little bastard elfling? Not just your friendly ringleader, but the leader of the entire faction you dared to make your enemy, fool!” The goblin snarled, eyes glittering with hate, before Greed’s face instantly shifted to good-natured bemusement once more.

“But I am nothing if not generous. Downright magnanimous! For as profitable as that Soul-forged steel would be, Black Iron that’s unfortunately not resellable here on Earth, and more’s the pity, but makes an absolute fortune off-world, I wouldn’t mind doing you all the courtesy of trading these 70,000 odd brats, in return for say… 30,000 elven recruits that don’t even have to sacrifice themselves in the children’s stead. Oh no! They can go back to enjoying their wonderful academy lives in all the pretty universities Aurelia so likes to set up in the perfect postcard kingdoms she’s infested upon half a dozen unsuspecting worlds!”

Greed sneered and spat, before chuckling once more. “But all things need balance. Don’t you agree? For I found a prize unlike any other! Did you notice her, per chance, Aurelia?”

He sneered at the black sky howling and wailing with the echoes of a thousand souls in torment… or one fearsome autumn storm. Ill green light made it all too clear that a massive twister would be touching down very, very soon… unless a miracle came their way.

Greed laughed, smirking at Aurelia’s icy countenance. “But of course you did. Of course you did! A gift. An unknown grandchild, perhaps?” Greed shrugged. “In truth, I don’t know. As to where her parents might be, or how many generations removed she is from you? Why, I have no idea at all! All I can tell you for sure is that she is of your blood. The seers detected that much when we… found her in those cages, just now!” He winked at the last, his mocking smile turning to a hard-cold snarl once more.

“So here’s the deal, you Vendetta-swearing half-blood bastard! You give me all your revenants. Every last damn one! They will replace the children and saturate the our steel with the blood and spirits of all your sweet savage kills! Who knows? It might make steel so resilient we can use it on our dreadnoughts to dominate the nighttime skies. Or perhaps it will be castoff slag, and we’ll sell it to the dozen fools contractually obliged to take anything we send their way and LIKE it! So deep is their debt to us. A debt that just keeps growing. Ha ha!”

Eric only half heard his enemy’s words, his eyes locked on the spinning collar of mithril death… as a creature he had claimed of his own out of pity finally revealed so many tragic secrets. Eric turned to catch the gaze of a girl who had died by orc hands after suffering every horror imaginable. Ready to float to heaven, before hearing the sweet awkward voice of the boy she had fallen in love with, a dozen Hollywood interviews ago.

How odd life was, with its twists and turns, that the boy Lilly had once fancied smiling at her across a mall, or perhaps a school campus, was the Master Necromancer who had given her life once more.

A sweet, delicate bunny.

Somehow the bunny she had loved and nurtured and raised from an abandoned nest.

Before the world had broken, her life had become hell, and her bunny lost.

And here they were, all connected once more.

And Bunbun, or Lilly to her friends and Self-Tube fans of a lifetime ago, whispered a secret that broke Eric’s heart.

And filled him with furious, desperate hope. His eyes never leaving Greed’s own as he slashed his wrist and fed his sworn familiar her fill.

You have successfully forged a BLOOD PACT with Bunbun! (Once known as Lilly, college freshman, Exiles streamer (who’s ‘leet builds you never could pull off!) and the cutest cosplay model in the entire Northeast!)

Your familiar Bunbun accepts your BOON!

“So, that’s the deal, human!” Greed snarled, snapping Eric into the horror that was this awful moment once more. “You surrender 30,000 worth of troops, and you’d better hope you have at least that number of troops to spare! And you get the 70,000 worthless children and your own half-sister back! Let them run your farms, and good luck feeding them all, this winter! But don’t worry. Snicklit is ALWAYS willing to sell to our friends!” His smile didn’t reach his icy gaze. “But in return for our miraculous rescue of your kin, YOU, sworn enemy of my tribe, will SURRENDER!”

Greed tossed Eric the slave collar he knew he had no choice but to catch… even if his hand was covered with a slick sheen of his own essence-infused blood.

Eric made no move to fasten it, but held it in hand.

Sensing its awful construction so easily, as his crimson caress revealed all its secrets.

A Tier 1 magitech chip tied to blood arts and pain, so like the chips used in a Blue Corp wand. The fine steel springs that would unleash mithril blades that would shred Eric’s throat like a knife through warmest butter. All contained in a collar made of mithril Eric had no chance of breaking or ever unlocking… not without springing the trap that would surely kill him.

“Eric!”

It stunned him to hear the tightly controlled fury, desperation, and love in his mother’s voice. If he had ever doubted how much she cherished him, he knew it now.

“It’s okay, mom.” Eric said, flashing a bleak smile even as he kissed his Bunbun’s head and gave her the most terrible, wondrous gift he could, crying out as ten Soul Points were torn from his psyche for all time, as he stumbled to one knee.

“It’s how this game MUST be played!”

His hot gaze burned into his mother’s shocked countenance as Greed and all their foes present cackled like yipping hyenas and the abominations that they truly were.

Aurelia’s eyes alit with terrible understanding, she alone appreciating what Eric had just done as his experience for Necromancer and Adventurer crashed to the absolute floor that his level would allow.

Eric didn’t bother reading the messages screaming on his Interface.

He already knew what they would say.

All his attention was on his enemy as he forced himself to his feet once more.

“The collar scares you so badly, does it, child?” Greed cackled. “Don’t worry. If you’re a good little boy and do what you’re told, you just might find living your life as our… honored guest, pleasant.”

He had the gall to wink at Aurelia. “After the first three days of… lessons, of course. But once you’ve been properly broken in, how bitter or sweet your life will be, will be completely up to you.”

“If my son dies with that collar around his neck, I will end you all.” Aurelia said with a smile that made even Greed blanch and lurch back.

“You will do no such thing!” Greed hissed with a sneer. “We have struck a covenant! A non-aggression treaty now binds us! The Sylvan faction and Snicklit tribe are at peace. Your blood-signature is on the document, bitch! You will do nothing! For your son, in case you have forgotten, has declared himself a free agent! A free agent who dared to declare VENDETTA against ME!”

The auditorium broke in hoots and cackles.

Aurelia gazed imploringly at Eric, her hand reaching out to clasp his own. “Declare yourself a member of my faction, my beloved lastborn son. Fight by Elonia’s side, as you were always destined to.”

Eric flashed a smile equal parts fury and terror, amazed by his own shaking head.

Kissing his bunny’s ears as he gazed through the portal, helplessly lost in the horror of seventy thousand broken slaves, broken children, all screaming and sobbing for salvation. Hope, an impossible shining barrier away.

“They have declared war. A war against the tribes of Mer and Man. MY people. AND I WILL END THIS WAR!” Eric screamed with his mind, gazing at his Bunbun. “Are you ready, Lilly?”

The bunny saluted. “Ready to move the troops out, sir, AND FUCK THOSE GOBLINS UP!”

Eric smiled through his tears. “That’s what I wanted to hear.”

He stroked her soft, plush fur, locking his gaze upon her soft brown eyes. “Use whatever you need to. As much as you need to. Whenever you need to. Do you understand?”

His bunny tilted her head. “But what happens if I drain you dry?”

Eric smirked. “Crunch all the mana you want. You fucking know I’m just going to make more.”

“Enough stalling!” Greed hissed, glaring intently at the strangely silent Eric. And how it horrified him to see that the goblin already had the contract all lined up, neatly prepared.

Eric flashed the monster a pained smile. “You had this all planned out from the very beginning.”

The goblin mocked Eric with his sneer. “I’ve been five steps ahead of you since long before you put your first piece on the board, asshole. Of course I had this all gamed out!”

He glared at Caliban, whose face was so hard and cold he could have been Aurelia’s twin brother.

Eric blinked at the thought.

No.

Impossible.

Wasn’t it?

“Well, counsel? Examine your client’s soon-to be binding contract to your heart’s content!” Greed flashed a malevolent smile. “No unfair loopholes, you see, because I don’t need them! Eric Silver is already in my pocket. He just doesn’t know it yet!”

Caliban gazed at Eric for long moments. “Are you sure?”

Eric gestured at the children gazing at them all so desperately through the portal. As if knowing that their lives were being treated like chips on the board of impossibly distant titans. Titans who could give them desperately yearned-for life, or turn all their hopes and dreams to ash, with but a single contemptuous laugh, a single signature denied.

“I think you already know how this has to play out.”

“Eric… the troops you have before us. The half dozen cannon. It doesn’t equal thirty thousand men. Not quite.”

Eric nodded. “I know.”

Caliban stared at him for long moments. “I don’t have to tell you what happens when you’re in debt to goblins.”

“No, you don’t.”

Caliban sighed. “Alright, Eric. Read over the document. Make absolutely sure.”

Eric grit his teeth, welcoming the pain of his broken molar, even now healing, as he read over it in exquisite detail, glancing up to catch a smirking Greed’s gaze. “What’s the name of the planet I’m sending my troops to?”

Greed smirked. “Glibbersnitch. Best foundry planet in the sector!”

Aurelia’s predatory gaze lit up like a hawk that had finally found its prey. “I knew it! I know that planet, Greed! Your kind was forbidden from Soul Forging in this sector, and that planet was specifically named in the accords! I was there when your grandfather signed it, you little shit! Did you think I’d forget?”

Aurelia’s eyes lit with fierce triumph. “I promise you this, fool. If things are as they appear, a Bronze Tier imperial fleet will be cleansing that world of all your kind before the month is out, and I will be putting in a personal bid to secure it for myself!”

Countless administrators blanched at those words. As if finally beginning to understand that, whatever games she played at here, Aurelia Silver’s true power was beyond anything they could comprehend, both personally and politically. Yet Greed had the gall to actually cackle in her face.

“Oh, my poor dear Winter Queen! You claim you were there, yet you were clearly too stupid to recall the clause on page 324 that specifically said that all such strictures are to be considered nul and void, should Glibbersnitch agree to become a zero tier contested world, ripe for fresh ascension!”

Aurelia blinked. “Glibbersnitch was never put up for ascension.”

Greed snorted. “Of course not! Or you’d have already snuck in and found the most elf-like excuse for a slave you could find before seducing him and popping out as many of his brats as you could, eager to claim ancestral rights and sink your claws into yet another territory. We all know how you like to expand your empire, Aurelia.”

Eric felt his cheeks blazing with hot fury. Much to his surprise, it was his mother’s calm voice, utterly without heat, that soothed him.

“Then there is no possible way you could have downgraded Glibbersnitch to Tier zero status in order to slip out of the accords while downgrading absolutely none of your manufacturing base without...” Aurelia’s eyes actually twinkled, a bemused smile caressing her crimson lips. “Oh, you clever little goblin. So that’s how you slipped free of your grandfather’s accord and my fingers all at once.”

“That’s right!” Greed crowed. “Glibbersnitch is now permanently conjoined to Terra! And you won’t believe the bribes we had to pay to facilitate that little stroke of a pen. Ha! But it’s all perfectly legal now, I assure you! It’s part of Earth’s extended territories, with all its resources at the disposal of any champion who claims that ‘pocket realm!’ and since we’ve already claimed it, and sadly, those asinine adventurers who originally ‘discovered’ our permanent portal died rather tragically with plasma blasts to the back of their heads, that’s one territory that’s completely out of play for all of you fools!”

Greed’s eyes glittered with malevolent glee, dancing a little jig with his stubby feet. “As soon as the year is out, We’ll be flooding this entire continent with Tier 1 War machines made out of soul-forged iron, courtesy of all the homeless children we captured, and the countless slaves stupid enough to go into debt to us, just to buy pretty toys or feed their families. Fools!”

The goblin began chortling. “Best of all, our Dread Foundries requires no T2 Tech at all! Merely Soul-forging techniques that are now considered part of the heritage magics of Earth. Just like blood magic and necromancy! Because you see, darling Aurelia, Glibbersnitch was linked to Earth even before the Ascension event! So all our… heritage arts, ha ha, have effectively been grandfathered in! No Bronze Imperial fleet will ever bother our starship-building operations again, no matter how many slaves feed our fires! Isn’t that wonderful?”

For all that countless administrators were looking askance at the goblin, others were nodding their heads in quiet satisfaction, as if an odd puzzle had finally been solved. And Eric’s mother, by some miracle, was still managing to keep her cool.

“A clever twist of contract and codicil. No wonder your Shamans are able to hold their portals to your starship-building foundries so steadily. Glibbersnitch is, technically, a pocket realm of Earth.” Aurelia frowned thoughtfully at the massive gates. “Of course we’ll have to make sure an abomination like this one can never be used to slip out of imperial treaties in the future.”

Greed chortled coldly. “The game’s already lost, bitch. We’ve had this one in the bag long before you popped out your first Terran brat!”

Eric had frozen at the words that had changed absolutely everything. Finding that he needed to make very few adjustments indeed with his pen, before presenting it back to Greed.

Greed frowned. “No last minute pleading for different terms? You just felt the need to mark the location where your troops will die?”

Eric flashed a mirthless smile. “Nothing’s promised in war, dear Greed, and my temporary surrender will last only til the second you put on my collar. Still, I think it best we clearly state where you wish to send my soldiers, knowing that you and I are and always will be in a state of eternal Vendetta.”

Greed cackled with mirth. “You think I’m truly such a fool that I don’t know what sacrificing your soldiers will do to you, boy?” He gestured at the assembled administrators, all of them favoring Eric with their cold, malevolent grins, especially Judge Janice.

“I told you we’d cleanse the world of your filth, one way or another. And this way, you can never bring it back!” She sneered.

Eric frowned, glaring down at Greed.

Greed’s mocking smile met Eric’s own. “Your ‘troops’ will be filling those soul cages, boy, in place of those children. The souls trapped within, souls tied to your own necromantic arts, will then be fused with MY steel! Do you understand, idiot? Your maximum quota of undead will BECOME MY OWN! I’m going to cripple your class, boy, and you’re going to like it!”

Greed cackled with laughter. “Even if you hadn’t agreed to rescue the brats, which I knew you would, it doesn’t matter. Do you understand, fool? Your undead troops were ALWAYS destined for Glibbersnitch’s foundries! Their souls always destined to be fused with my iron to forge Soul-steel!”

Eric gazed at the smirking goblin for long moments, slowly easing a fist still crackling with deadly spiritual energy. “Yes, Greed, I think I understand things perfectly now. And I accept your suggested location for my troops. Glibbersnitch it is.”

Greed cackled with laughter. “As if you had any say in it at all, boy!”

He turned to flash Aurelia his most winning smile. “And now, with this final contract signed… to give you seventy thousand hungry little waifs to care for. Good luck feeding them when winter hits. But rest assured, my dear, darling Aurelia, I’m always willing to sell you wheat at utterly reasonable rates!”

And despite it all, for all that Eric wanted to scream inside as he allowed himself to be forced to his knees… to feel his doom snap in place with a howl echoing through his soul as an unbreakable Mithril collar was fastened around his neck, his dark bitter smile matched Greed’s own. A smile that grew wider when he felt the rough-edged mithril nip into his neck and draw blood.

“So, I guess it’s time for me to surrender command of my troops.”

Greed cackled as Eric and his rabbit tilted their heads together, as if for comfort.

“Damn right it is, boy!” The goblin’s lips twisted in a parody of a smile. “And guess what? I’ll even claim your beloved little rabbit. Oh… but don’t look so sad that you’ll lose your only companion, slave! Because your mother’s up another hundred elves. Isn’t that nice?”

Eric swallowed the unexpected lump in his throat, giving his trembling bunny a final kiss on the forehead. “I understand.” He pointed to the revenants standing at attention below, his bunny saluting and racing for the troops at such speed it made Eric smile even as Greed frowned and rubbed his eyes.

“Fast rabbit,” Greed acknowledged.

Eric smirked. “But not quite fast enough to evade your reach, hey, Greed?”

The goblin snorted. “Damn right, boy!” His gaze hardened. “And you’re still short of the thirty thousand troops you’re going to owe me!” His lips stretched wide. “Ready to go into blood-debt already? Ha! Delightful! You’ll be selling me the rights to your children before the year is out, slave!”

Eric’s fist clenched.

He breathed in… and out. Reaching for calm.

It was all he could do to keep from ripping the mocking goblin’s face off, right then and there.

And it was clear by the way Greed lurched back, looking at Eric’s trembling fist, crackling with spiritual flame, that Greed was all too aware of that fact, now waving his crystal joystick in Eric’s face.

“One wrong move and I’ll cut your head clean off, brat!”

Eric dipped his head. “I know. And you’ll have violated my mother’s clause. Also in your contract,” Eric said with a cold smile when the creature flinched. “In such a rush to sign it, to have me sign it, you didn’t read the last line? Tut tut.”

“No!” The goblin snarled. “You’re lying!”

“Does it even matter?” Eric winked. “Either way, you’ll be dead.” His cold smile froze the goblin where he stood. “Because we both know that there is no such thing as self-sacrifice for goblins. Once my fist strikes your skull, once my mother’s teeth tear into your throat, a blinding flash of pain and eternal blackness is all you’ll find. It doesn’t matter if I live or die. It doesn’t even matter what happens to your entire race. Or mine. Dead is dead, and you’ll have lost. Forever.”

Greed paled at the look in Eric’s face, stumbling back, his sneering countenance transformed to one of humiliated fury, and fear.

“Your words mean nothing! I now have exclusive rights to all your toys. And I will have them all! Now, you will never be able to strike at me. You will never have the power to strike at my kind again!”

His eyes lit up, a cold smile crawling across his features. “Remember the deal. No hiding any abominations or revenants of any kind! You surrender all the revenants you control!”

Eric bowed his head. “Every one I can access is yours.”

Greed furrowed his brow in sudden suspicion. Before his eyes widened. He stumbled back, furtively looking all around. As if he finally understood. “No. There’s no way you could have. No! No Terran necromancer has access to even two thousand...”

Eric’s cold laughter rang through the auditorium, echoing endlessly as if bouncing across the endless rocky cliffs of purgatory, echoing through the howling spirits of countless dead, lost between worlds.

Before saying the words that had the entire council roaring in protest.

Or trembling in fear.

“Surge, centuria! Imperator imperat tibi!”

The ground began to boil and surge. Spear heads sharper than any sliver of mundane steel sprouted from the earth, reaching for the heavens upon thick shafts of cornel wood as first dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of revenants burst from the ground, tearing themselves free of death’s clammy embrace.

The collective council’s former disdain transformed from raised eyebrows to alarm to outright terror as they gazed upon an ever-growing number of massive nine foot tall orcs covered in thick reinforced bronze armor, gazing with eldritch green eyes that blazed like malevolent stars. In perfect synchronicity, each and every one slammed fist to chest, roaring the words Eric most wanted to hear.

Needed to hear.

“Ave Imperator Abedimus!”

Before thousands off heads tilted in a new direction.

His familiar’s direction.

“Ave Praefectus Abedimus!”

Eric allowed himself only the tiniest of smiles as his heart pounded with a nauseating mixture of fierce triumph and dread.

Because even now, with Greed gazing at him with an odd mixture of terror and fury, the children were still on the other side of that barrier.

But that was fear Eric would never show his enemy.

The largest of the ogres glared at the explosion of freshly forming pikemen. “Well, what the hell. He has no troop limits! How the fuck did your Tier zero pod let Aurelia’s whelp forge himself a Master Class, Greed? No one should have access to any Master Classes at all, if they’re not from an elite clan and heir to a fortune of stat boosting potions, elite trainers, artifacts galore, with a dozen cherry-picked fortuitous encounters all lined up for them! Hell, we don’t even have any champions who’ve evolved to an Elite class yet, including our sorry selves. And we’re fucking Contenders!”

He snorted at the sight of a momentarily speechless Greed who just shook his head, furiously puffing his cigar, saying nothing at all.

The massive creature was covered in green jade lamellar armor with his hand on the haft of a fearsome guandao radiating potent spiritual energy. He gave off an aura equal parts savage brute, and ogre magi cultivator. He quickly turned his suspicions to a calmly observing Aurelia.

“What did you do, fuck the preeminent necromancer on the whole fucking planet?” He snorted at Aurelia’s cool smile. “What the hell am I talking about? Of course you did.” The ogre then turned back to peer thoughtfully down at the spectacle on the arena floor as the number of revenants continued to grow from two thousand to four, before doubling yet again. And finally, in a massive explosion of dirt and unearthly screams, Eric’s entire force of sarissophoroi revealed themselves.

The ogre was completely unfazed, unlike so many others panicking behind a grimly smiling Eric, caught the gaze of one of the few orcs present. “Those fuckers look a bit taller than most of your kind. Why the hell is that, Redeye?”

The orc champion of a faction so like the one Eric had already destroyed, who did indeed have blood red eyes, and was himself just touching nine feet, blanched, his piggish features overcome with surprise. “Fuck, you’re right, Zhanshi. Not a single eight foot runt among them. They’re all the size of our champions. All of them!”

“But wait,” Eric softly said, as the Administrators continued to shout in protest and panic, gazing down in sheer unmitigated terror at sixteen thousand undead revenants were now staring so intently, so… hungrily, back at them. “There’s more.”

“Surge, centuria! Imperator imperat tibi!”

A sudden quiet descended upon them all as an awful tension built up in the ether. One that had even the Contenders blanching in terror or outright shouting obscenities when the ground began to churn and boil as first dozens then hundreds of inky black saber toothed cats sprung from the shadows and gloom, racing like mad around the dirt outline of the arena sands, taking full advantage of a ring larger than any racetrack. And still, it couldn’t hope to fit all of Eric’s revenants.

Yet as much as Eric delighted in the sharp tang of his enemies’ fear, they only began screaming in genuine terror, several outright tripping over their own clothes as they fled back to the walls of Freetown, when massive creatures that had once been part of Earth’s ancient history sprung from the Earth with titanic roars, some looking just like they did in the documentaries, others more befitting the most chilling horror movies. And while over half were covered with proto feathers, still others were covered in shimmering black scales, happily springing many feet in the air. As if Earth’s gravity was less than nothing to their hideous strength, which was indeed the case.

Of course Eric’s favorite were the massive 60-foot long spinosauruses, snapping their crocodilian jaws and hissing at the shrieking humans above, their back spines on full display. Dinosaurs that, along with Eric’s Necromancer Class boost, were coming pretty damn close to the triple digit mark in terms of power, now far more deadly than their mortal counterparts had ever been.

“Abominations! All of them!” Vidrig roared, gazing at Eric with madness in his eyes. “Greed! Cut off his head! Do it now! We’ll owe these monstrous Roundears nothing!”

Greed glared at the man like he was insane. “And what happens if those… dinosaurs, did you call them, go mad? Have you scanned their levels? Half of them have hit level 100! You know what that means! They’ll destroy all of Freetown, fool!” He glared at Caliban. “Including the Blue Quarter!”

“Quite likely,” Caliban coolly acknowledged.

Administrator Chelton, with his salt and pepper hair and CEO air, instantly paled. “Sixteen thousand revenants. Over a thousand saber-toothed horrors and Jurassic abominations… Greed! That’s Two hundred and Sixty thousand elves Aurelia can bring through! Not the thirty thousand you were so damned sure of, you fool, but two hundred and sixty! Even the kids will only detract 30,000 from that number!”

“Wrong!” Eric said with a too bright smile, enjoying the looks of horror and dismay now being sent his way. “You’re forgetting the eighty cannon!”

Silvis the Gnoll gnashed the air. Zhanshi the jade-armored ogre snarled. “Bullshit. There’s no way you have...”

His words were cut off as Eric casually bent over the lip of the arena seating balcony their own administerial conference area was taking advantage of to listen to the glorious clank of eighty massive multi-ton cast iron and bronze tubes crashing to the ground.

And if he damaged a few? Fucking awesome.

“Seventy five… Seventy six… eighty, bitches! That’s another 120,000 elves right there.” He turned back to wink at the dismayed council, more than a few still wincing from the awful clanging racket. “So, I do believe that puts the Sylvan Faction at, oh… minus the thirty thousand to secure the 70,000 children… 350,000 Elves!” His cheerful smile turned to a hard smirk. “And don’t think we forgot the 160 Level 20 specialist and the 80 level 30 specialists also promised to my mother, in return for those very cannons.”

“Those cannon are ours! Ours!” Redeye screamed, before his eyes widened in sudden comprehension. “Wait… where’s the gunpowder? Where are the cannon balls and the grapeshot? There should be tons of ammo there. Absolute tons! 500 shots per cannon, at least! Yet I see none!”

Eric turned to the coolly smiling elf now standing by his side. “I didn’t see anything about round shot, black powder, or grapeshot anywhere in those contracts I signed off on. Did you, Caliban?”

Caliban slowly shook his head. “There was nothing of the sort. Only that all the seized cannons were surrendered.”

“Which they were!” Eric said with with a manic grin. “I can promise you all that!”

“Jeezus. That little shit played us from the start!” Chelton hissed, glaring at Eric.

Eric winked and mimed pulling a trigger at the furious looking former CEO of Corrupt Assholes Incorporated. Eric was sure.

“It doesn’t matter!” Janice screamed. “Hurry up and finish the deal we signed off on, Greed, and get those fucking things off my world!”

Greed glared at Eric with pure hate. His hand clawing at the remote… and Eric close his eyes…swallowing the panic he felt, desperately struggling to push just the tiniest droplets of blood through the micro slits that would unleash razor sharp, impossibly thin mithril blades to slice open his throat… knowing he didn’t even have the seconds needed to feel out the trap.

And now he was out of time.

Eric snapped his eyes open, determined to lock gazes with the monster he’d mark for a thousand deaths in a thousand future lifetimes, even if he fell in this one.

But nothing.

His would-be executioner was frozen to ice by the look he saw in Aurelia’s eyes.

“Open the portal, Greed. Let the children through. Then you will take responsibility for my son’s revenants. Only then will we consider this part of the negotiation complete.” She flashed a hideous smile. “I care nothing for your attempts to discipline or break my son. Such is permitted by the accords. But you already know what will happen, should my boy perish with that collar around his neck.”

She turned to sneer her contempt for the hissing shamans busy keeping the portals open to that vile world of steel and torments. The world that would swallow up Eric’s entire army, perhaps for all time.

A world that, by Greed’s own admission, was now legally considered just a pocket realm of Eric’s own.

“And you may assign whichever seer you have in your employee that has NOT worked to assassinate my daughter, to bear witness… or by all means, should such a feat prove impossible, accompany me yourself, to see for yourself that the 350,000 elves and that I will bring from the finest Sylvan academies on half a dozen worlds all meet our predetermined requirements. And that the druids, horticulturalists, farmers, instructors, and specialists I will also bring over all meet the restrictions we have agreed upon.”

Greed blanched and snarled. “Winter is in less than two months away, bitch! There’s no way you can raise sufficient crops in time to feed all those Conscripts! Not them and 70,000 children! Your Conscripts will starve and freeze!”

Aurelia’s laughter cut into the shivering spectators like a howling winter storm. All who gazed her way trembled with fear. Even Eric could sense her barely controlled fury shivering through even Eric’s soul.

“Who do you think you are speaking to, fool? I am the Winter Queen!” Her mocking sneer turned to a killing glare. “You have dared to move your piece against my son. And he has moved in turn. Forging in the blink of an eye a piece whose value utterly escapes you! Now finish your play, goblin, and reap the crop of blood and tears YOU have sown!”

Greed’s stare was one of pure, unmitigated hate.

Eric refused to flinch, no matter how much he feared the agony to come, once this monster got him out of Aurelia’s sight.

Instead, he mocked his enemy with his smile. Fearless. For all that his nemesis so tightly squeezed the joystick that could kill Eric instantly.

“You’ll note that Caliban is standing as witness to absolutely everything going down here. I have no doubt he’ll make sure that the absolute storm of Sylvan troops soon to flood Earth and have happy conversations with all your friends will be exactly according to the strictures that EVERYONE HERE HAS AGREED TO!” He shouted the last, glaring at humanoids and administrators alike with unmitigated contempt.

Before locking gazes with the snarling Greed once more. “You want my soldiers in Glibbersnitch’s Foundries? Then open the gates, and let the children through.”