Chapter 312: Chapter 312

While Warren and Imujin were blasting through the bog on a rampage, building pit after pit, Deck was trying to bribe his team into working harder. He was trying to explain the concept of credits to people who had lived on barter for most of their lives and failing miserably. He kept waving his hands, tossing numbers into the air as if the gesture alone would make them understand, but all he got were blank looks and one man asking if credits were edible. Deck nearly tore his own hair out trying to describe interest, loans, and wages while knee‑deep in sucking mud, shouting about the value of labor as one of his team walked away to go collect mushrooms instead of digging.

Lisa was doing pretty good. Her team was smashing through the bog at a relative pace. She was technically the strongest of the instructors physically. Maybe not technique wise, but this was not a contest of technique, so she was doing well. Every time she swung her improvised shovel or slammed her foot into the ground, the mud trembled. Her team followed her lead with something that almost resembled respect, mostly because anyone within five feet of her ended up splattered with mud if they did not match her pace. She barked orders, shoved logs aside like they weighed nothing, and cleared entire sections of the bog by brute‑forcing her way through it.

Gwen had almost immediately decided that she was not doing this. Elian was with her, just as perturbed. He and the twins were refusing to actually participate. Elian had a mosquito bite on him the size of a watermelon. Even though Wren was technically on Warren's team, she was a medical professional first and foremost. She was taking a look at it, saying, "Oh yeah, he definitely caught malaria," and Elian tried to reply but only made a strangled noise because the giant mosquito bite had his jaw locked in place. The twins hovered nearby, swapping complaints and swatting at smaller mosquitoes that were still bold enough to test their luck. Wren muttered to herself about the state of the bog, the lack of medical tents, and Warren’s inability to plan for biological hazards.

"There is a shot for that, but it really, really fucking hurts." She strained over the giant looking bump that kept his throat stuck in place. How he had missed it, he did not know. The mosquito, even gigantic ones, still somehow managed to avoid even his will. He had viciously tried to crush the thing, and it somehow managed to get around it. Maybe it was just a fact of life that nothing you ever did to stop a mosquito would work. Elian groaned, clutching at the swollen mass as Wren warned him that if it got any bigger, she might have to slice it open and drain it, which made him nearly faint on the spot.

Jim and his team were doing remarkably well. Jim had picked Lessa as his first pick, which was an amazing choice. Her ability would literally crush craters into the ground like they were nothing. She was jackhammering her way through the bog at remarkable speed. The holes were not as large as Warren's or Imujin's or even Lisa's, but the rest of the crew could make them larger quite quickly after she made the initial drop, and she was going probably faster than anyone else was, other than Velrock. Jim managed his team calmly, giving short, efficient orders while wiping mud off his glasses with the least dirty part of his shirt.

What had surprised Warren most about was Velrock, the pacifist instructor was willing to set up death traps. He would not be directly involved in the killing, so he did not mind setting up defenses, as he called them. What he did to actually make the twenty foot holes was rather crazy. Velrock to drop onto his hands and knees and then simply vanish into the mud.

A moment later, the bog heaved. A fifty foot long lizard rose up out of the muck where Velrock had been, plates of armored hide slick with wet earth, eyes pale and unblinking. It did not shimmer like a typical Soul Skill construct. It looked too real, too physical, too solid. The creature moved forward in a steady, relentless crawl, and with every step its massive claws punched holes into the marsh, the bog tearing open under its weight. Its tail dragged behind it, carving a trench deep enough to drown half a squad in.

Velrock had once mentioned that his Soul Skill was a lizard, that he had marked himself accordingly, and seeing this massive beast now, Warren finally understood what he meant. Velrock was the lizard. Whether he was riding inside it or had simply become it, Warren could not tell, and that uncertainty made the whole thing even more stunning.

Around them, the bog only grew louder.

The mosquitoes were winning. The mosquitoes seemed to love the people from the Green way more than they did any of the Yellow or the tribesmen. Honestly, it was kind of funny, Warren thought, as he flew by seeing almost all of the people from the Green being accosted by giant mosquitoes, while none of the residents of Mara seemed to be affected at all. Teams yelled, splashed, cursed, and argued. Someone lost a boot. Someone else lost both boots. Chime started screaming that the mud was alive before being dragged out by Jurpat.

Warren watched all of it with a grin pulling at his face. He was having fun. Real fun. He was smashing mud into the ground, carving out death traps for a future war, shaping the battlefield himself. This was his peace. The chaos, the sweat, the work, the grit, all of it flowing around him as he tore through the bog like it belonged to him.

By the time an hour had passed, the bog really was not much of a bog. At least, this section of it outside of Mara was no longer a bog at all. The siege ground they had set up was cratered like there was no tomorrow, like a massive meteor storm had smashed the earth flat and then kept going, pounding the landscape until it resembled a battlefield left behind after a divine tantrum. What had once been a stretch of shifting mud and tangled roots now looked like a scar across the earth, one carved by chaos, determination, and sheer overwhelming force.

Warren had even moved much of the water into the trenches that Velrock had rerouted, basically creating a moat where the ground beneath the bog had been pulled dry. The newly formed moat wound around the churned earth in long, uneven curves, like the remnants of an ancient fortress rediscovered beneath centuries of decay. With Rain Dancer, Warren drew every drop he could from the soil, pulling the water upward into spirals of swirling mist before sending it cascading into the trenches. The air shimmered with humidity, and every breath tasted like the sky before a storm.

What was left behind was terrain that had no business existing in this region. Dry, cracked earth pressed up against slick mud. Towering walls of displaced soil leaned at awkward angles. Pools formed in places Warren had not meant them to, creating hazards he mentally cataloged for future defense plans. He was setting up the kind of battlefield only he could understand, and the thought filled him with a quiet, humming satisfaction.

Fenn started shooting the mosquitoes, along with Gwen, who realized that was her best contribution to the task at hand. The mosquitoes had grown bold, swarming toward anyone wearing even a hint of Green Zone polish or perfume, and Fenn’s sharpshooting became a kind of macabre sport. Each shot rang like punctuation in the humid air, followed by a wet pop as yet another overgrown insect burst apart.

Warren agreed to value each mosquito as one percent of a pit. This declaration was made with complete seriousness, and no one questioned it. Fenn did not mind. She was laughing as she fired, moving with the casual ease of someone who had hunted far stranger things. Gwen did not mind either. She was a medic, but she was also thoroughly done with today’s nonsense, and shooting mosquitoes felt like justice.

Ellian, however, was living his best life. Still nursing the watermelon-sized bite on his throat, he watched each mosquito explode with a level of joy usually reserved for children seeing fireworks for the first time. Every detonation made him flinch in satisfaction. Every splatter made him hiss out a pleased, strangled sound through his half-frozen jaw. He pointed at the sky each time the next oversized demon bug dive-bombed toward someone who deserved it, silently urging Gwen and Fenn to take the shot.

By the time the hour ended, the entire section of bog looked like it had been transformed into a war map. Craters, trenches, dry patches, mud slicks, makeshift moats, fallen branches, and scattered debris made the land almost unrecognizable. Anyone who arrived now would assume a full-scale battle had taken place here.

And Warren, standing amid the destruction he had made with a grin pulling at his face, felt more at peace than he had in weeks.

Warren raced around with Tasina holding on to him the whole time. She was giggling, kicking her feet, clinging to his shoulders like she was on the best ride of her life. Every time he vaulted over a ridge of churned earth or skimmed along the surface of the mud with Rain Dancer lifting him just enough to keep him from sinking, she shrieked with laughter. The instructors were definitely winning. Warren knew it, Tasina knew it, and the whole damn field probably knew it. Still, that did not stop him from tearing across the terrain like a lunatic trying to claw back even a fraction of hope.

He had no hope of winning right now unless his two teammates actually started helping. Car was not helping whatsoever. He had turned back, gotten inside, and climbed onto the walls of Mara where he was happily shooting mosquitoes like Gwen and Fenn. To be fair, a lot of the people were shooting mosquitoes at this point. There was a swarm, a thick, buzzing cloud of demon-sized insects that seemed drawn to anyone wearing Green. Warren could hardly blame Car for retreating, but he still shouted at him every time he passed by, which Car ignored with perfect, infuriating calm.

Elian had decided that he was not going to wait any longer as the mosquito bite finally started receding. Rand had administered a topical cream that smelled like cheese, and Elian would not admit, under any circumstances, to any living soul, that it also tasted like cheese. He had licked it once. One time. That was all. He would die before he said it out loud. Still, the cream worked fast, and his jaw was finally unstuck enough for him to shout at passing mosquitoes in something that sounded almost like words.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

Wren stood at the edge of the now no longer bog, hands on her hips, watching the massive region in front of Mara with an evaluating stare. The entire field looked like a siege map drawn by someone drunk. Craters, trenches, half-covered pits, moats, fallen logs, walls of displaced mud and earth, stray stones, and unexpected puddles all layered together in a chaotic tapestry. There was not a single natural piece of terrain left.

"Is it my turn yet?" she asked.

Warren skidded to a stop, Tasina nearly flying off his back as the mud splashed around him. "What do you mean is it your turn? You should have, could you not have been helping me this whole time? We definitely lost."

She shook her head slowly. "Oh no, no, no. You lost."

"What do you mean I lost? You are on my team," Warren protested, indignant and muddy.

"I do not think I am on the team of a loser," she said, tilting her head in that exact way she knew would get under his skin.

Warren sputtered, hands in the air. Tasina slid off him, landed in the mud, and announced that she was defecting to the winning side, which only made Warren throw his hands even higher.

Wren let him flail for a moment before sighing. "Okay, you know what, I am going to take some pity on you and I am going to show you what I can do." She planted her foot with deliberate force. The ground shook.

Almost all of the pits that were being covered, that were not fully covered, and the ones that were still gaping open grew thin lattices of wood over them. Life burst through the dead bog all at once. Vines uncoiled like waking serpents, weaving themselves into woven nets. Branches sprouted from nowhere, stretching over the holes in delicate cross-hatched patterns. Even the dirt hardened beneath the sudden growth, gaining firmness and texture where moments before it had been sludge.

In less than three breaths, the entire field transformed again, now with a spiderweb of living structures covering every pit Warren and the instructors had carved.

Torman threw up his hands and yelled, "Oh come on, what the hells is this? We spent an hour building lattices by hand! This is bullshit!" Half the people who had been painstakingly weaving branches and debris together joined him in a chorus of groans and curses.

"I think I just won," she said, brushing dirt from her hands.

Warren stared, slack-jawed. "We did not establish how much percentage that would give you."

Wren looked at the sea of pits covered in perfectly stable wooden lattices and said, "Well damn."

Grix shouted from across the field, his voice echoing off the broken landscape, "That is what you get, you dirty cheater. No shiny rock for you!"

Lisa came up to Warren and said it was crazy how fun that was. She was still half covered in mud, hair streaked with dirt and shredded leaves, but the smile on her face was genuine. Even though she did not win, she looked more satisfied than anyone who had just lost a competition had any right to be. Warren nodded and said yes, and he thought it would be really effective because look at that.

They looked out at the field that had once been a bog. Hours earlier it had been a sea of sludge, the kind of wetland that sucked at boots and dragged bodies down inch by inch. Now the entire region looked nothing like what it had been. Wren had continued the growth she had started during the contest and had camouflaged the entire landscape so it looked like one homogenous field of gentle greenery. The brush had settled into place as if it had always been there, leaves rustling with the light touch of the breeze. Long grasses swayed over ground that had been torn apart earlier, and carved ridges were now softened and hidden beneath the new layer of life.

Under each pit there was a single red flower, bright enough to be noticeable only to someone who knew they should be looking for it. The petals gleamed like droplets of blood against the green backdrop, subtle but unmistakable. There were other red flowers as well, but those grew in clusters or patterns. Only the solitary ones marked a pit. If there were two singles within two feet of one another, that meant there was no pit, a small quirk Wren had built into the design. Only when there was a single red flower by itself was there a pit. It was almost elegant, a hidden map disguised as simple flora.

It might be discoverable, but it would be really hard to tell at first, especially for anyone unfamiliar with the region. The whole thing had an air of natural randomness that would fool even trained scouts for at least the first sweep. And that did not even include the other flower patterns that meant different things. There were stripes of white flowers that marked where the ground was too soft to run on. Pale orange ones indicated where the mud would swallow a person whole. Tiny blue blossoms hinted at places where Fenn’s boiling mud was waiting, lying dormant under the surface until he called upon it.

Ramis had done a lot of prep work as well. He had spent half the morning studying wind direction, terrain shifts, likely approaches, and the humidity of the air. All of that meticulous planning went into the placement of his traps. Xera had filled many of the pits with acid, the kind that clung to skin and burned long after the initial splash. She had taken great care to layer it under weighted coverings, ensuring that anyone who fell in would break through at the worst possible moment. Meanwhile, Fenn had created boiling pits of mud beneath the surface. These would erupt when he called on them, a cascade of scalding earth meant to break formations and send enemies scrambling.

It was a really cool ability he had gotten as his fourth stage. He had been proud of it for weeks, even if he had not gotten to use it yet because it was built for sieges. How often had he been in a siege. This would be his first real one. Technically his second if the Nespói sim counted, but the simulation was a pale imitation of reality. Here, with the smell of damp earth thick in the air and the new-growth field spreading out like a living mosaic, this was the first true test of his Soul Skill at this level.

Warren breathed in the humid air and let himself appreciate the moment. Then another thought crept in. He thought about the issue. He thought about how to put Broken in those pits, or spikes, or bombs, or anything unpleasant enough to make the Princedom regret being alive. The terrain was perfect, but the traps were empty. He opened his mouth to ask Wren how in the hells they were supposed to actually fill the pits without tearing up all her work.

Wren looked at him before he even said a word. "I thought about that," she said. "Do you see where the blue flowers are? The tiny ones on the edges where the red flowers are?" She pointed, and now that she said it, the pattern jumped out immediately. Each red flower marking a pit had one or two blue flowers growing at its rim, spaced deliberately.

"If you pull on those," she continued, "there is a vine under the surface that will retract a smaller area of the pit cover. Just enough to open a drop point. Then we can toss anything we want inside the pits. Broken, spikes, bombs, burning hot oil, whatever you want. And once we are done, the vines pull the lattice back into place like nothing was ever opened."

Warren blinked at her. "That is unfair. That is cheating. That is perfect." What they had built here was not perfect, not polished, not designed by engineers or reinforced by machinery. It was raw, improvised, grown by instinct and honed by necessity. It was a battlefield shaped by the hands of people who cared about surviving the next day. And for what it was, it was impressive as hells.

Warren looked at his wife and said, "Did I ever tell you how much I love that you are a dirty, filthy cheater?"

Wren beamed at him and said, "Oh really, because that master of yours..."

Warren stared at her and said, "That is too far." Read complete versıon only at novel·fıre·net

She froze, then immediately stopped and said, "Okay. I was joking. I am sorry."

He nodded, and they both started laughing as Tasina stared at them in total confusion.

"What did Wren mean?" Tasina asked, eyes wide and suspicious of the adults clearly hiding something from her.

Imujin walked over and put his hand out, stretching his fingers dramatically as if the entire competition hinged on this moment. "I believe I won that rock?" he declared, standing tall with mud still dripping from his knees.

Ramis walked over right behind him, brushing debris off himself with one irritated swipe. "No, I think I did."

Warren looked at the growing cluster of people who suddenly believed they deserved the rock. They were converging from every direction like moths drawn to a shiny prize. He lifted the stone slightly, reminding everyone exactly who actually had it. "Imujin if you won, that would mean Tasina wins," he said, raising a brow.

Imujin blinked, deflating a little. "Well… yes. But I wanted to be the one to give it to her." He paused, adjusting his posture as if preparing for a formal ceremony he clearly expected to preside over.

Warren cut in with a flat tone. "Just to be clear. If anybody won, it was Velrock. That lizard did more work than anyone here by far. Batu’s team did surprisingly well, sure. A full team of shifters plowing through the bog like a living plow line. But that giant lizard trounced all of us. They would have come in first easily if it was not for him."

Imujin placed a hand over his heart. "I still wanted to be the one to give her the rock. I think I am going to adopt this methodology of shiny rocks being prizes. I never thought something so mundane could be so valuable." He said it with the seriousness of a man discovering religion.

Deck stepped forward, flicking mud from his sleeve. "Speak for yourself. I would much rather deal with cold, hard credits. Rocks are not a currency. Credits are."

Warren turned to Deck, squinting. "Are there physical credits?"

Deck opened his mouth with confidence, then froze. He stared into the distance as if reading invisible text. He stopped. Thought. Stayed silent long enough that the group leaned in. "I actually do not know," he admitted slowly. "And the more I think about it, a lot of the lines we have about credits make it sound like they should be physical in one form or another." He turned stiffly to Isol. "Are there physical credits, old friend?"

Isol rubbed the back of his neck in mild embarrassment. "No. Not that I am aware of. I have never held a credit. I have only ever earned them. They just appear. Somewhere. In the system."

Deck stared at him. "So, we are all working for imaginary credits?"

Ramis crossed his arms. "We live in a world of giant lizards, sentient storms, and exploding mud pits. And this is where you draw the line about credits?"

Deck gestured helplessly. "I am just saying, if we are going to have a currency, we could at least make it shiny."

Imujin nodded thoughtfully. "I support this. Shiny things motivate people."

Warren sighed at all of them, wondering how his life had devolved into a philosophical debate about imaginary currency while standing in a field of death traps disguised as flowers. Tasina, watching from behind Warren, lifted her hand and said, "I want the shiny rock."

The entire group froze.

Warren held up the stone. "You will get it," he said, then looked at Velrock. "And you are the one giving it to her. You earned it. You did half the damn field by yourself."

Velrock blinked like he had not expected to be included. "Me?"

"Yes you," Warren said. "We are going to make it a formal ceremony when we get back from dinner with High Commander Ruka, because honestly, it is funnier this way."

Imujin immediately straightened like he had been appointed master of ceremonies. "Excellent. I shall prepare my opening remarks."