The earth split open beneath the camp.
Keizeix leapt backward as an enormous beetle erupted from below, throwing dirt, stones, broken tent poles, and screaming soldiers through the air.
Its horn appeared first.
Then its head.
Then an armored body large enough that Keizeix had to crane his head upward to see the creature fully emerge.
Dark bronze plates covered almost every part of it. Old scars crossed its shell, evidence of battles that had failed to kill it.
And behind it—
More burrowers exploded from the ground.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
The assassination force had not simply tunneled beneath the Silversilk camp.
They had surrounded it from below.
"FORM UP!" Shirespoke roared.
Spiderkin soldiers scrambled into defensive groups.
Marike immediately split.
One became four.
Four became twelve.
Twelve became twenty.
Her clones spread throughout the camp, intercepting beetles as they surfaced.
Keizeix focused on the enormous Heroic creature.
The pressure coming from it was far worse than the humans from before.
It felt older and more dangerous.
This one was built like a fortress.
The beetle lowered its horn.
Shirespoke's expression changed.
"Move!"
It charged.
Keizeix vanished into shadow.
Sia jumped sideways.
Marike's clones scattered.
Shirespoke cleared the path.
The beetle smashed through three tents, two supply wagons, and a stone barricade without slowing.
Keizeix emerged behind it.
"Joint."
He stabbed at the narrow membrane beneath its rear armor.
His leg struck.
The membrane bent.
Didn't break.
Keizeix's eyes widened.
The beetle kicked backward.
He barely transformed into Shadow Mist in time.
Its leg passed through his shadow-body before Keizeix emerged several yards away.
"Even the joints are reinforced?!"
"Heroic!" Shirespoke shouted. "Stop treating it like the others!"
"I've got it!"
Black-purple lightning flashed.
Sia fired directly into the beetle's side.
**CRACK!**
Electricity crawled across its shell.
The creature shuddered.
Then turned toward her.
Sia's posture stiffened.
"That got its attention."
"Excellent observation!" Keizeix yelled.
The beetle charged her.
Keizeix fired silk across its front legs.
The strands tightened then snaped.
For half a second he thought it might work. He was sadly mistaken. Heroic beings could not be delt with my mere master levels like himself they stood no real chance.
It was not enough.
Sia launched herself upward.
Lightning gathered around her body.
She struck the membrane near its neck.
The blast exploded against the membrane but barely scorched it.
The beetle sighed with annoyance.
"Again!" Shirespoke shouted.
He charged from the opposite side.
His sword sliced beneath the lower neck plate.
Poison flooded the wound.
The Heroic beetle went berserk.
Its horn swept sideways.
Shirespoke ducked.
Keizeix wasn't fast enough.
The edge of the horn caught his abdomen.
Pain erupted through him.
He flew nearly twenty feet and crashed through the remains of a tent.
**Health decreased.**
Keizeix groaned.
"Getting really tired of Heroic things hitting me."
A beetle warrior lunged at him.
Keizeix dissolved into shadow, appeared beneath it, and stabbed through its eye.
**Kill registered.**
No time to rest.
The entire camp had become chaos.
Burrowing beetles surfaced beneath soldiers.
Iron-shell warriors pushed through defensive lines.
Smaller horned beetles rushed between them, attacking wounded spiderkin.
This wasn't a battle.
It was an assassination force trying to collapse the camp before reinforcements could respond.
Marike's clones filled the gaps.
Every time one died, another appeared.
Then another.
Then another.
Keizeix saw the real Marike briefly between them.
Sweat covered her face.
Her breathing was already heavy.
"She's burning Mana too fast."
But without the clones, the smaller beetles would overwhelm everyone.
Keizeix turned back toward the Heroic enemy.
Shirespoke's poison had slowed it.
Not enough.
The beetle slammed one leg downward.
Shirespoke blocked with his sword.
The impact drove him into the dirt.
"MENTOR!"
Keizeix jumped through shadow.
He emerged near the beetle's head and fired silk directly across its eyes.
The beast thrashed.
Keizeix wrapped more.
And more.
"Blind now, bastard!"
Its horn swung.
Keizeix ducked.
Almost.
The tip caught one of his legs and opened a deep cut.
He screamed.
Not lost.
Still attached.
Good enough.
Sia attacked the other side.
Lightning struck the wound Shirespoke had opened.
The beetle's armor blackened.
It screamed louder.
Then one of its legs slammed into Sia.
She crashed against a broken wagon.
"Sia!"
Keizeix's chest tightened unexpectedly.
Anger followed immediately.
He vanished.
Shadow.
Reappear.
Strike.
Disappear.
Reappear.
Strike.
Every attack targeted wounds.
Eyes.
Joint membranes.
Any opening Shirespoke had created.
Keizeix couldn't kill it.
But he could irritate it.
And apparently he was extremely good at that.
The Heroic beetle snapped toward him.
Its mandibles closed inches from his head.
Keizeix escaped into shadow.
Mana dropped.
**Mana: 8,113 / 28,004**
"Too much."
He forced himself to stop.
If he exhausted himself now, he would become useless.
Across the camp, Sia climbed back upright.
One front leg trembled.
Her side had been struck hard enough that part of her golden shell had cracked.
Keizeix stared.
Something unpleasant twisted inside him again.
Fear?
Anger?
He didn't have time to decide.
Sia caught him looking.
"I'm fine!"
"I didn't say anything!"
"You were staring!"
"Your armor is cracked!"
"So is yours!"
Keizeix glanced down.
"...Fair."
A second Heroic pressure suddenly erupted.
Everyone froze.
Keizeix turned.
Another massive beetle surfaced near the edge of camp.
Smaller than the first.
Faster.
Its shell was glossy black, and enormous mandibles opened as it charged directly toward Marike.
Shirespoke's face went pale.
"Two?"
Marike's clones converged.
The black beetle tore through them.
One.
Three.
Six.
Ten clones disappeared in seconds.
Marike staggered.
Keizeix felt cold.
They were barely holding one.
Two would kill them.
Shirespoke apparently reached the same conclusion.
"Prince! Princess! Retreat!"
Keizeix looked toward him.
"We can't leave everyone!"
"You can and you will!"
The bronze Heroic beetle charged again.
Shirespoke intercepted.
The collision threw him backward.
His sword spun from his hand.
Marike created another wave of clones.
The second beetle destroyed them almost as quickly as they appeared.
She dropped to both knees.
"Mana..."
Sia tried to summon lightning.
Only weak sparks appeared.
Keizeix's Mana was already low.
Their mentors were injured.
Their soldiers were collapsing.
For the first time since arriving at this front, Keizeix understood completely.
They were going to lose.
Then something descended from the sky.
Not quickly.
Not violently.
It simply came down.
A spiderkin.
Humanoid torso above an enormous dark-gray spider body.
Six swords were strapped across his back.
Silver armor covered his chest and arms.
One eye was missing, replaced by an old vertical scar.
He landed between the two Heroic beetles.
No explosion.
No dramatic shockwave.
He simply touched the ground.
And everything stopped.
Keizeix couldn't move.
His legs locked.
His core felt as though an invisible mountain had settled upon it.
Around him, burrowing beetles collapsed flat against the earth.
Some screamed.
Others couldn't even do that.
Marike's eyes widened.
"Commander Vaelcor..."
Shirespoke exhaled.
"Finally."
Keizeix's eyes shifted toward the newcomer.
**Vaelcor Silversilk.**
Commander of the northeastern warfront.
Intermediate Epic Lord.
One of the Silversilk clan's most feared battlefield commanders.
The newcomer looked around the destroyed camp.
His expression was bored.
"I leave this front for two days."
One hand moved toward the swords on his back.
"And beetles begin digging beneath my beds."
The bronze Heroic beetle roared.
It charged him.
Keizeix expected Vaelcor to dodge.
He didn't.
One sword left its sheath.
Keizeix didn't see the strike.
He heard it.
**SHHHHK.**
The beetle stopped.
For one strange second nothing happened.
Then its body separated.
Not in half.
In dozens of pieces.
Armor.
Legs.
Horn.
Thorax.
All slid apart simultaneously.
Keizeix stared.
"What..."
The black Heroic beetle turned to flee.
Vaelcor's eyes shifted toward it.
"Where are you going?"
He drew a second sword.
Then stabbed it into the ground.
Silver lines spread across the earth.
Keizeix initially thought they were cracks.
They weren't.
Silk.
Thousands of hair-thin silver threads erupted throughout the entire camp.
Every burrowing beetle froze.
The threads passed through armor as though it wasn't there.
The black Heroic beetle made it six steps.
Then its legs fell off.
Its body collapsed.
A heartbeat later its head separated.
All across camp, the assassination force came apart.
Hundreds of beetles.
Then thousands.
Bodies collapsed simultaneously.
Silence followed.
Keizeix couldn't process what he'd just witnessed.
Vaelcor pulled his sword from the ground.
The silver threads vanished.
Marike stared openly.
"What level..."
Shirespoke answered quietly.
"Intermediate Epic Lord."
Keizeix's head snapped toward him.
Epic Lord.
He looked back at Vaelcor.
The difference was obscene.
Heroic enemies had nearly killed all four of them.
This spiderkin had slaughtered two Heroic beetles and the entire assassination force almost casually.
Vaelcor began cleaning one sword.
"Shirespoke."
"Commander."
"You look terrible."
Shirespoke glanced at his injuries.
"I've looked worse."
"True."
Vaelcor's gaze shifted toward Marike.
Then Sia.
Then Keizeix.
Sia had recovered her composure quickly, standing silently beside Marike despite the cracks along her shell.
Keizeix, meanwhile, wasn't even attempting to hide his amazement.
Vaelcor looked him over.
"So that's the prince who's been turning battle reports into comedy."
Keizeix blinked.
"Comedy?"
"Thirty thousand humans one day. Fifteen hundred beetles the next."
Keizeix's pride immediately suffered.
Vaelcor smiled faintly.
"Good."
Keizeix tilted his head.
"Good?"
"You finally encountered something worth learning from."
Then he looked toward the thousands of dead beetles.
"Get the wounded treated. Harvest every core. Burn the tunnels."
He turned away.
"Anyone still alive underground dies before sunrise."
Spiderkin soldiers answered together.
"YES, COMMANDER VAELCOR!"
---
Several hours later Keizeix sat inside a healer's tent while one of his legs was wrapped.
Sia sat nearby with restorative paste covering the cracked section of her shell.
Marike rested on a low bed, eyes closed while recovering Mana.
Shirespoke stood near the entrance.
Keizeix kept replaying the battle in his head.
Finally he spoke.
"Mentor."
"Hm?"
"How long until I can do that?"
Shirespoke laughed.
"Do what?"
"What Commander Vaelcor did."
"Ah."
Shirespoke looked toward the camp outside.
"A long time."
Keizeix frowned.
"That's not an answer."
"It is the most accurate answer you are getting."
Sia quietly said, "We aren't even Heroic."
Keizeix glanced toward her.
She sounded remarkably calm.
He assumed she was simply better at accepting embarrassing power gaps than he was.
Marike opened one eye.
"Today should teach both of you something."
Keizeix waited.
"Strength is relative."
Shirespoke nodded.
"You thought you were becoming powerful because humans died easily."
He pointed outside.
"Then beetles humbled you."
His hand shifted toward where Vaelcor had disappeared.
"Then Commander Vaelcor humbled the things that humbled you."
Keizeix considered that.
There would always be someone stronger.
Heroic.
Epic Lord.
Ruler Lord.
Omni Lord.
Deity.
God.
The ladder he'd been climbing suddenly felt impossibly tall again.
Oddly, that excited him.
Keizeix smiled.
"I'll reach it."
Shirespoke stared at him.
"I'm certain you'll try."
Sia looked toward Keizeix.
Something flickered through her expression.
Annoyance perhaps.
Then something softer.
It vanished so quickly Keizeix assumed he'd imagined it.
Sia turned away.
"You'd better."
Keizeix frowned.
"What does that mean?"
"Someone needs to keep up with me."
"There she is."
Marike groaned.
"Please don't start."
Keizeix grinned.
He glanced toward his system.
His statistics had risen slightly from the desperate fight, but he ignored them.
For once, numbers weren't what occupied his thoughts.
He remembered Vaelcor's sword.
One movement.
A Heroic being became pieces.
Keizeix looked down at his own wrapped leg.
Then toward the darkness beyond the tent.
Yesterday, Heroic had looked like his next great destination.
Tonight he'd learned something far more important.
Heroic was only the beginning.