Once the cliff face had split apart, the stonehide drakes hauled the loose slabs aside like they were nothing more than pebbles. Then, before the watching examiners' eyes, the ragged troops reached into their bulging sacks and pulled out barrels of cement, piles of sharpened rebar, and sacks of fine washed sand.
Headmaster Corvin stared.
He had been running this academy for a hundred and seventy years. He had watched tens of thousands of tournaments. He had seen every trick, every strategy, every bizarre opening gambit under the sun.
Never once had he seen a tournament army show up with a full construction supply kit.
The drakes burrowed downward into the soft earth, carving out wide, arched tunnels at a frankly absurd pace. Water slimes were herded down to the nearby stream, swelling up like living canteens to haul fresh water back to the dig site. The silverback apes mixed mortar and laid stonework with the steady, practiced rhythm of dwarven masons. The frost wraiths drove deep support pilings into the bedrock, freezing the soil solid around every post to keep the tunnels from caving in.
By midday, the outline of a full underground fortress was already taking shape. Give them another week, and you could move a whole clan in tomorrow.
Corvin shook his head, still reeling, and flipped over to the other feeds. He needed to remind himself what a normal tournament looked like.
Two months of internal time passed in the blink of an eye.
The dust had settled. The weak had been culled. Three great blocs had emerged from the chaos, each swallowing up dozens of smaller contestants between them.
Soren Shaw's ocean-aligned host had forged the Tide Pact with four other water and coastal kingdoms. They controlled every major coastline and river delta on the map. Their fleets patrolled the waters unchallenged. No one moved supplies by river without paying them a cut.
Liora Voss had built the Green Accord out of two other mid-tier forest and plain kingdoms. They held the central woodlands, the richest farmland on the map, and traded dried meat and healing herbs to anyone who could pay. Steady, cautious, classic Voss strategy.
And Murong Xue's Fourth Rank holy legion had assembled the Radiant Covenant, the largest of the three. Kingdom after kingdom had flocked to her banner, drawn by her overwhelming strength and the promise of healing and protection. They marched from valley to valley, absorbing smaller teams, fortifying every hilltop, and growing larger by the week. Everyone knew they were the favorites to win.
Corvin nodded slowly as he reviewed the casualty lists. Roughly a third of the original two hundred contestants had already been wiped out. Most lone wolves and small independent teams were gone. Alliance was the only way to last.
Almost everyone, anyway.
He glanced over at feed seventy-three, and his mouth twitched.
Up on the surface, a scouting party of orcish raiders tramped through a sun-dappled oak grove, searching for the supply drop that had fallen ten minutes earlier.
Their second-in-command scratched his head, bewildered. "I'm tellin' ya, Cap. It landed right here. Big glowing crate. Straight outta the sky."
The captain turned around and smacked him upside the head. "You've said that three times now, you oaf. If there was a crate here, where is it? Did it sprout wings and fly away? If you cry wolf one more time—"
"I swear on me ma's bones!" the scout yelped. "It was right here! And… wait a second." He frowned, staring at the empty grass. "Wasn't there a whole grove of those sour red berry trees here yesterday? The ones that taste like vinegar?"
The other orc beside him snickered. "What, someone dug 'em up? Who'd bother? Those things are useless. Even starving goats won't eat 'em. Burn too smoky for firewood. Waste of space, if you ask me."
"Guess I'm misremembering," the scout mumbled, scratching his head. The two of them tramped off after the rest of the patrol, grumbling about bad maps and faulty eyesight.
Barely three feet below their boots, the ground hummed with quiet, industrious life.
Lirael leaned against a smooth earthen wall, biting into one of the sour red berries, and sighed with quiet bliss. Tart, crisp, with a faint herbal aftertaste that lingered on the tongue. Wonderful. They would make excellent preserves.
"Really," Borgul rumbled from where he sat sharpening his claws, his stone scales scraping against the tunnel wall. "Of all the things we could have stolen first. A whole orchard of garbage berries. You hauled over a thousand saplings back here. We could've grabbed twice as much grain."
"At least I didn't sneak out in the middle of the night and dig up half the southern grove for myself," Lirael shot back, cool as ice. "Don't think I didn't notice. You said drakes didn't care for 'sour little weeds.' Funny how fast you changed your tune when no one was watching."
Borgul coughed loudly and suddenly found his claws extremely interesting. Finders keepers. What went into his stores stayed in his stores. He'd die before he gave any back.
Korg sat on a stone bench nearby, sipping warm water from a clay cup, and looked down his nose at both of them. Small-minded fools. Bickering over berries. There were far greater treasures to be had. Patience was the mark of a true leader.
One of his lieutenants came skittering down the tunnel, looking nervous.
"Chief… uh… about the five berry saplings we grabbed?"
Korg set down his cup slowly.
"They're all dead, sir."
For two heartbeats, the tunnel was dead silent.
Then Korg stood up. Very slowly.
"Fetch the gardener," he said, his voice low and dangerous. "Tell him I need a new sparring partner."
Lirael and Borgul exchanged a look, and very wisely said nothing.
The tunnel network stretched for miles now, winding under forest and plain alike. Thousands of elemental slimes bounced and oozed through the side passages, breeding freely with no divine realm rules to hold their numbers back. Every night the soft splort-gloop of splitting slimes echoed through the halls. Everyone had gotten used to it.
Lirael spread a crudely drawn map out on a stone table and tapped five glowing marks scattered across the countryside.
Five supply crates. Five full drops, picked clean before anyone on the surface even knew they had landed. Grain, preserved meat, iron tools, healing herbs, even a crate of fine steel arrowheads.
They had never had this much. Never. It felt like stealing from a sleeping dragon. It felt glorious.
"Next drop falls at sundown, in the western marshes," she said, her eyes glinting. "No one's claimed that stretch yet. Tide Pact thinks it's too shallow. Green Accord thinks it's too far from their woods. We're going to be there first."
Borgul grinned, sharp and eager. Korg cracked his knuckles.
Another supply run. Another load of loot.
And no one up on the surface had the faintest idea they were even there.
Up in the observation booth, Laia licked crumbs off her fingers and reached for the third pastry of the hour.
She glanced up at the projection for half a second. Her people were digging. Looked like they'd found something good. Nice.
She took another bite and smiled.
Three years of free food, and her subjects were probably having the time of their lives down there.
This tournament really was the best thing that had ever happened to her.