Daniel
Daniel continued to work through the problem. They had about fifty cultivator soldiers, some of the Li family’s personal retainers, Gavin, who could cast large-scale battle magic, Lucas’s ability to command the soldiers in real time, and Nathan Li, who was pretty much a walking disaster.
So what was his plan? Did they just fly in, land, and join the fight? Try to hit the orcs from behind? That wasn’t a bad idea, but he needed to take into consideration the non-fodder characters like Vivian and the Bowcasters—the people who could really alter the battlefield as strategic assets.
His gaze lifted, scanning beyond the breach toward the darker mass gathering at the edges of the bowl.
Red Orcs, Sword Demons, and creatures that looked dark… evil continued to throw themselves at the defenders, and it was taking its toll. People were starting to throw just about everything they could at the orcs.
He even saw something that looked like what he could only describe as a Molotov cocktail.
The pressure was building here.
Daniel felt something cold settle behind his eyes. They weren’t winning, but they weren’t breaking either—and they would, if he didn’t come up with a plan.
Then Daniel saw him.
At first, it was just a silhouette behind the orc lines, standing far enough back that even the chaos of battle seemed to bend around him. He wasn’t moving, apparently sufficiently convinced to simply observe. The first word that came to Daniel’s mind as he zoomed in for a better look was samurai—a straight-up, born-from-Japan, bushido-following fighting class from the Isle of the Sun. That alone was wild. The second thought was that this wasn’t anything history had prepared him for.
The figure wore layered armor very much in what Daniel would call the samurai tradition, but with stark and obvious differences. This armor was clearly magical in that it seemed to drink in the surrounding light, its surface etched with sigils that looked an awful lot like characters, but something closer to Chinese than Japanese. In his hand, he held a massive curved blade, a thicker-looking version of a katana, which rested point-down in the earth before him. The blade itself was far larger than any traditional sword Daniel knew from home; it looked like something out of a Final Fantasy game.
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Anime-level, Daniel thought distantly. A walking statement.
But the strangest part came when he focused on the mana sight through the goggles. The power was unmistakable—that wasn’t surprising. What was strange was that the armor wasn’t using mana. At least, not exactly. The armor seemed to call upon something else in the air, bending the surrounding flow, warping it the way heat warps air. The sword acted like an anchor, pulling at every energy field nearby without ever drawing directly from them. Mana existed alongside whatever energy was empowering the suit.
“Aether,” Ethan said.
“Another one?”
“The world is a complicated place. You know that.”
“Why haven’t you mentioned it before?”
“In all of our free time to have scholarly conversation about the spectrum of magical energy in the world.”
Those words hit Daniel like a bus—not a magic bus, a regular bus.
Daniel felt a chill run through him.
He didn’t have time to think about it.
His gaze swept farther out, widening the view.
That was when he saw the second army.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.
Green orcs—the Iron Tide—from the far ridge. There were a lot of them. Too many. Their approach vector angled toward the fortress from the opposite side of the valley, cutting off any chance of retreat.
“The Iron Tide,” Daniel said quietly.
Below, movement surged along the inner wall. A familiar pattern of cold precision cut through the chaos, carving space where there shouldn’t have been any.
Vivian.
Even from this height, he recognized it. The way the mana parted. The way enemies fell in clean, efficient arcs.
She saw it too. Daniel knew she did.
The realization settled into place with awful clarity.
As long as that figure stood behind the orcs, they would not break. They would not rout. They would keep coming until the fortress collapsed under sheer weight, and the Red Orcs were displaying a sense of urgency that made one thing clear: the Green Orcs and the Red Orcs were not allies, at least not in this moment.
Daniel tightened his grip on the carriage rail as it began its descent.
“There,” Daniel said, his voice steady now. “That’s the key.”
No one asked him what he meant.
They could all see it.
If they wanted to save the people below, if they wanted to end the siege before the second army arrived, then there was only one answer.
They had to kill the thing wearing that armor.
And Daniel had the sinking feeling that once he stepped onto that battlefield, nothing about the world was ever going to look simple again.