Minion 47 stood there on the right.
Crow recognized the proportions immediately, the slightly off-center shoulder ‘geometry’, the construction seams along the jaw, the neck-shoulder junction he'd targeted twice in the tournament ring. Repaired. Whatever had ground and cracked at Sharon’s hands had been corrected; the joints moved cleanly now, the hands hung at angles that matched the torso's depth for the first time. Someone had put real work into it.
More than the frame had changed. The pale eyes tracked him across the courtyard with something that hadn't been there before, a fractional pause in the tracking motion. Hesitation, maybe. Or something close enough to it that his instincts couldn't tell the difference.
This guy… if he doesn't deal friendly fire, I'm gonna be content, not gonna lie.
Sharon stepped beside him. "Golem 47 was repaired," she said, as if it weren't her fault. "Physically, the joint sequencing was rebuilt from the base plate up. And the higher functions." She paused. "Mentally, as well. The integration work took most of yesterday."
"How about mentally?" Crow said.
Because he was a crazy psycho…
Sharon turned to look at Minion 47 directly.
Minion 47's head rotated toward him. The pale eyes settled. Its mouth opened. "K-kill," it said quietly.
And then, nothing. It closed its mouth. The hands cycled through their old diagnostic sequence, fingers extending and curling in slow order. But it didn't move, it didn't advance. It simply stood with that arrested stillness, regarding him across the courtyard distance without the mechanical certainty it had before the ‘Sharon event’.
Maybe his head’s in bad shape.
Crow studied it for a moment.
Before Sharon made him take a nap on the ground, he was too unstable. Now, he feels like a docile dog. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, considering we’re going to fight the hero soon.
He wasn't sure which version was worse.
"Noted," he said.
Crow sensed a movement to his left and turned.
Sha-sha stood near the courtyard wall, arms loose, white hair catching the flat morning light. The marking ran the full length of her left arm—wrist to shoulder, jagged and white against her rich brown skin, vivid even in the grey. She'd traded the arena clothes for something darker and more functional, fitted across the shoulders, practical at the legs. A bow, arrows, and some short blades at her hip, long daggers perhaps, with wrapped grip. Tools Crow couldn't name hung on the opposite side.
She looked at him.
He looked at her.
She said nothing and smirked faintly.
Right… she won't give up easily, it seems. I need to keep my distance from this elf after what she whispered with that expression during that leg lock. Total red flag.
He turned and moved on.
Demitri materialized from the palace doorway behind them—not through the door Crow had used, from the adjacent arch, appearing in the unhurried way like he always did, very sus. The Doppelganger's elegant vest was still the same from every prior encounter, the noble bearing intact, the ash-grey eyes moving across the assembled group with the cool professional sweep of a man preparing to be useful, at least in appearance.
"All present," Demitri said, to no one specifically.
Sharon clasped her hands at the small of her back and faced the group. Her voice changed tone, she was no longer the background figure.
"Listen carefully." She didn't raise it, she didn't need to.
"The queen conducted a full analysis—time, distance, likely impediments on the march route, weather variance. Her projection places the Hero's arrival at our destination between tonight and tomorrow." Two beats. "Worst case, three days. That outcome is improbable."
The courtyard held its silence for a moment. Minion 47's fingers cycled “K-kill…” Golem 4 did nothing; only his chest pulsed violet light, slow and steady, so it's not going to explode at the wrong time, it seems.
"The mission is straightforward," Sharon continued. "We escort the golem to the designated position. Then we’ll withdraw immediately. Don’t engage the Hero's party unless directly forced to do so." Her eyes moved across each face without exception—Demitri, Sha-sha, Crow, and finally the two golems. "We’re not here to win a battle. We’re here to execute a delivery and return intact."
She didn’t give them much time to think about it. "Questions?"
Demitri offered none. Sha-sha's pale eyes moved briefly toward Crow and away again. Minion 47 opened its mouth.
"K-kill?" it said, with what might have been genuine inquiry.
"No," responded Sharon.
Then it closed its mouth.
Crow looked at Golem 4. The violet pulse behind its chest plate continued its patient rhythm.
I feel like this is going to go wrong. Maybe I’m just overthinking. I just have to be in the right place at the right moment to make sure everything goes perfectly, and the bomb doesn’t do more than it needs to do. That's all.
Easy. Straightforward. Totally manageable… yeah… if something goes wrong, we’re cooked.
He adjusted the Zweihänder's strap, settled it and the Claymore at his back, and fell in behind Sharon as she moved toward the courtyard's far end, in the direction of the portal arch, where a flickering splinter of light already held its shape against the grey stone.
***
They came through it, into cold, colder than the place they were before. The place carried the smell of turned earth, pine resin from somewhere uphill, and beneath both of these, faint metallic residue. The same ozone undertone Crow had learned to associate with large-scale magic recently discharged, whenever he found himself too close to the source.
His boots landed on packed grey dirt, then he looked up.
The outpost spread around them. It was built low and functional. Timber walls, reinforced at the corners with stone, wide enough at the base that they could take some impact. A watchtower rose at the north end, its upper platform occupied by two silhouettes who'd already turned toward the portal activation. Log buildings ran along the interior perimeter, doors shut against the weather, a fire pit near the center, recently banked, still breathing.
Soldiers moved between structures at ease, yet they looked prepared.
Crow turned to look at what they'd come through.
The mechanism sat against the outpost's east face—stones arranged in a deliberate arc, each one carved with runes he couldn't read. The runes still held a faint luminescence at the edges, bleeding off the last of the activation charge. A gate, purpose-built for exactly what they'd just done: move troops fast across distances that would otherwise eat days, the basics of teleportation magic, or not, since now the Queen was using it to transport bombs too.
This doesn’t look good. Using a golem to transport bombs through a portal... this place already has an offensive infrastructure. She’s been building toward something for a while, and it must be the classic ‘plan that every wannabe emperor in the history books tries to pull off the moment they think they have the power to do it.
Sharon stepped up beside him and faced north without ceremony. "Right," she said.
Around her, the group assembled—Demitri to the left, Sha-sha two paces back and to the right, Minion 47 and Golem 4 flanking the rear.
"The queen, after her analyses of time, distance, and probable complications along the route—" Sharon paused for exactly one beat "—projected the Hero's arrival at this position between tonight and tomorrow. In the worst case, three days from now. That outcome remains unlikely."
The watchtower silhouettes had stopped moving. Somewhere behind the log wall, a horse shifted in its stall.
"We will carry out the assigned mission," Sharon said.
The wind moved through the pine treeline beyond the outpost wall. Cold, and unhurried.
Crow looked north, toward where the road disappeared into the trees, and thought about a boy in a cramped room with a flat, glowing rectangle in his hands, watching a hero die again and again, too many times before the right moment finally arrived.
He’s strong, the level cap too high, and he has the perfect kit, it’s a hard game, yeah, but one thing is for sure, the player can always win, things’ll only get crazier, if I can talk to this guy, he was a good guy in the game, so maybe... but he needs to survive, no he'll survive this, I just have to make sure of it.
He didn't say any of that. He adjusted his grip on the Zweihänder's strap, exhaled once into the cold air, and watched the treeline.
The mission had started. He left that position and looked for a better vantage point. Some time later, Crow stood at the watchtower's upper platform and looked north.
The treeline swallowed the road forty four meters past the gate, pine and spruce pressing shoulder to shoulder until the light between them disappeared entirely. Whatever moved through that corridor, the outpost wouldn't see it until it was already close.
Two golems. One field commander. An archer. A Doppelganger. And me.
Plus the garrison already here—maybe forty soldiers by the count I did when we arrived, not that they can do much...
That's probably enough, I think.
Probably.
Crow put one hand on his jaw and made a thoughtful expression.
Alice had designed this operation around a single outcome: the Hero takes the detonation, survives it wounded, and retreats. Weeks lost. Momentum broken. Enough time for the Snow Raven Realm to prepare the next move.
Clean and logical, so like Alice. The kind of plan that worked when the pieces behaved like pieces. The problem is that the Hero doesn't behave like a piece; he wasn’t an NPC. The player himself controls him and issues commands to the rest of the party.
Crow exhaled through his nose, watching his breath mist and dissolve.
The Hero—he's still human. Powerful—I know exactly how powerful. To be fair, I didn’t know it was that much, but after that ‘nice’ memory-view magic, I did. I watched him die two hundred and twenty-two times, and then watched him not die on the two hundred and twenty-third when Alice was killed. Nevertheless, he is human. A mana explosion at close range doesn't negotiate with story logic. It just detonates.
He turned that over too.
If I could just... talk to him. Intercept before the trap closes. Explain—
The thought collapsed the moment he really looked at it.
Right. ‘Hello, I serve the villainess who kidnapped me and I've been assigned to help wound you, not kill you, okay? I’m under forced conscription, and it’s not easy to just get away, please understand. But I know you from the game and I'd rather not do these things. Want to discuss alternative arrangements?’ Ha… He'd run me through before I even finished the second sentence. The Saintess is the only one who knows me, and if she's not here, things are going to go very bad.
The watchtower door groaned on its hinges. Sharon stepped up beside him, her field coat buttoned to the collar against the cold, dark hair tied close against her neck. She looked north the same way he did, with the flat, professional attention of someone measuring a problem. Much like Crow, she was a little tense too.
"You've been up here for a while," she said.
"Thinking," he said
"About?"
Crow glanced at her sideways. "Either this has to go the way it's planned, or not."
A silence. Sharon's jaw tightened fractionally, not anger for sure.
"The Queen's plan is sound," she said.
"Maybe the Queen's plan’ll kill him. If he dies, every country in this world will turn against us. For several reasons, we need him alive, or things will become very difficult for us,” he said.
"The Queen's plan is to damage him." She turned to face Crow directly, ruby eyes steady. "There's a difference. One he'll recover from. One he won't."
She believes that, ha... If Alice’s plans were infallible, the game being beatable would be a collective hallucination of the players.
Crow looked back at the treeline and said nothing.
"You're thinking about the Saintess," Sharon said quietly.
He didn't confirm or deny it. He didn't have to. She'd been watching him long enough to know something.
“How do you know about her?”
She rested her arms on the watchtower railing, looking out at the parched forest, and said: “The Queen saw your memories, remember?”
Sharon studied his profile for a moment longer, then turned back to the road. "The mission stands, Crow. We execute and withdraw. That's all." She descended the ladder without waiting for a response, her boots landing soundlessly on the packed dirt below.
That's all. Yeah… nice… we’re cooked.
He stayed up there another few minutes, the cold working through his jacket, making him want to leave.
Sharon assembled the garrison in the courtyard that afternoon and briefed them about the plan. No unnecessary words and redundant points. The soldiers listened like their lives depended on it, and yes they did. Afterwards, the soldiers positioned themselves a little far from the stronger ones, probably to not hold them back in the fight, and to offer some support if necessary.
Golem 4 occupied a separate position—a stone platform near the outpost's eastern wall, formerly an inactive portal arch. The rune-work on that platform had been reconfigured. Crow had watched the technicians do it on arrival, though they hadn't explained their work to anyone.
He'd figured it out anyway, while watching Sharon explaining the plan.
Break the crystal near the target. Golem 4 teleports to the spot. Auto-destruct activates when it gets closer to the Hero, and all the mana channeled into it by the Queen explodes. And everyone gets cooked, ah no, that part she didn’t say, of course.
Simple. Elegant, and catastrophic, the best way to make a game over with style for sure.
The crystal itself—violet-black, faceted, small enough to fit in a closed fist—rested in a locked box at Sharon's belt. She touched it occasionally, as if it were not a ‘C4 detonator’.
Sha-sha received her assignment without commentary: track the Hero's advance along the northern road, report back at seven-hour intervals, do not engage under any circumstances. She acknowledged with a faint inclination of her head and vanished into the treeline after one more smirk at Crow.
For real?
Minion 47 stood at the gate.
It had been stationed there since their arrival, arms at its sides, pale eyes fixed on the road. Crow had watched it for a few minutes the previous evening, trying to read whatever had changed in the golem since the repairs. The old version had moved with sheer momentum and minimal thought, like a muscle-head; nevertheless, it was a wall that knew how to swing. After the repairs, at least it didn’t commit friendly fire anymore.
His fist ground shut slowly as he murmured, “I k-kill intruders.” While staring at the forest ahead of him.
Wait… he can say more than ‘k-kill’ I can’t believe it.
Sharon, who was near Crow at that moment, looked at him and spoke quietly, perceiving his doubtful expression. "He's incompetent at most things. But he hits hard and he endures. That's enough for a gatekeeper."
Crow hadn't argued because she wasn't wrong about it.
He'd spent the first night cleaning his blades and working through the forms Sharon had shown him—not training in any formal sense, more a way to keep his hands occupied while his head ran through scenarios he couldn't resolve. The Zweihänder moved well. The Claymore moved better. Neither of them were answers to the problem he was going to face.
Some time later…
Right… not today.
The second day passed.
This is… strange.
The third too.
The Queen was wrong about the timing.
Sha-sha's reports came back at intervals: No contact. Road empty to twenty two kilometers. Weather clear.
On the fourth morning, she didn't return at the seven-hour mark.
She returned at the ninth hour, moving faster than when she left. She crossed the courtyard, found Sharon, and delivered her message.
“He's been spotted. Northern ridge, eighteen kilometers out. He's not alone; it's a small group, a partial party. The others stayed behind for reasons I couldn't discern, probably because Demitri infiltrated the backlines. So the Hero’s only with an assassin type and a mage. Only those two.”
Sharon's expression didn't shift. "Reason for the delay?"
Sha-sha's pale eyes moved toward the treeline briefly. "He was cleaning the road." A pause. "There's nothing left between the ridge and the border. Thirty-seven confirmed kills, minimum. That's what I counted before the fog closed in. They almost spotted me, so I had to hide for a bit.”
Everyone in the courtyard absorbed that in silence.
In the forest corridors where I used to grind for XP in campaign mode, some of those sectors took the whole party for most players to clear on the first run because they were mid-level monsters. Not too strong, but... he is stronger than when I was playing the game back then. Of course I was kid and a noob at that time.
So he cleared the forest corridor alone. Or close enough to alone that it amounts to the same thing. Maybe he’s stronger than I thought... That bomb made Alice sweat, and making her feel that way at this point in time is incredibly hard. This is dangerous; he needs to survive.
Crow looked at Golem 4 on its platform. The violet pulse behind its chest plate continued its patient rhythm; it almost felt like an inoffensive little golem.
Nevertheless, you'd better miss the explosion, or we’re cooked.