Six months of internal time had slipped by—one sixth of the full tournament.
In the observation spire, Headmaster Corvin rubbed his temples and stared at feed seventy-three, equal parts bewildered and exhausted.
For six months, nearly every contestant had leaned into their divine link, barking orders, marking targets, guiding their armies from above. The god's-eye view was the single greatest advantage a contestant had. Even the most hands-off deities checked in at least once a day to adjust their strategies.
Every contestant but one.
Laia had not given a single order in six months. She had not leaned in to study the map, not marked a single supply drop, not so much as uttered a word of encouragement to her troops. For twelve straight hours of real time, her mouth had barely closed. She'd worked her way through three full snack platters, two pitchers of iced nectar, and an entire tray of glazed fruit tarts. She'd stood up exactly twice: once to stretch, once to flip a page in her textbook.
Corvin could not fathom it. If he left his own kingdom unsupervised for six months, half the holds would be in open rebellion and the other half would have burned down the forges over a trade dispute. And yet this girl's army was not just surviving—it was thriving.
They had hollowed out half the western countryside. The tunnels stretched for miles, a labyrinth of chambers and passages so tangled Corvin was certain even a Fifth Rank strike force would get lost down there. They stripped every supply drop bare before the glow had faded from the impact crater. They dug up fruit orchards by the roots. They stripped topsoil off the best farmland and carted it underground. They had even harvested every last patch of sour red berry bushes the orc patrols had mocked as useless.
Of the thousand supply crates dropped in the first three months, nearly a third had vanished into thin air. And by Corvin's count, they had hoarded over three hundred unopened crates in their underground vaults—enough to feed thirty thousand subjects for a full year.
There was a hidden rule to the tournament, one no contestant knew: in the final year, all food and supply drops would stop. Only void beast waves and point beans would fall. Hoarding was supposed to be a clever strategy, not a superpower.
Corvin had already run three checks for leaks. He'd designed the arena himself. He'd placed every drop. No one could have tipped them off.
And yet here they were. A ragtag army of common-grade subjects, digging like giant rodents, eating anything that grew, and hoarding supplies like they were preparing for the end of the world.
He'd seen eight hundred different subject races in his time. He'd never seen anything like this.
Worse, every time he pulled up their aura readings, they glowed faintly brighter than they had the month before. Stronger. Sharper. As if six months of digging and stealing and hiding had made them more powerful, not less.
Corvin sighed and flipped over to the alliance feeds. He needed a break from the tunnel rats.
Up on the surface, the three great alliances were fraying at the seams.
The scattered independent teams had all but vanished. A hundred contestants were already eliminated. Only the three blocs remained, and they were starting to turn on each other.
The Green Accord's council had broken down screaming the night before. The three allied deities had manifested their avatars for their allotted fifteen minutes, and it had devolved into accusations within two.
"You tell me where the supplies are going," rumbled the war god of the Iron Hills, his voice like grinding stone. "Six months. Not a single full crate reaches our forward camps. Someone's hoarding. Someone's cutting the rest of us out."
The cold-eyed god of the Northern Marches leaned forward, his expression sharp. "Watch your tongue. My scouts sweep every sector. If anyone was skimming, I'd know. Maybe your people are simply incompetent. Maybe you're losing them to bandits and blaming the rest of us."
Liora Voss sat silent between them, her face impassive, but her mind was racing. She knew her own people were not stealing. She knew the Northern Marches lord was too proud to cheat. Which meant someone else was taking them. A third party. One no one had seen.
The fifteen minutes ran out before she could say so. The avatars faded. The alliance held, but just barely.
Out in the Tide Pact's island stronghold, Soren Shaw paced the shoreline, scowling. His scouts reported the same thing: crates vanishing mid-air. Glowing meteors falling, then nothing but a scorch mark when his people arrived.
"Someone's playing games," he muttered to his first mate. "The Accord? The Covenant?"
"Wouldn't put it past the Voss girl," his mate said. "They've always been sneaky."
Soren shook his head. The Voss were traders. They skimmed, they negotiated, they played sides. They did not make entire supply crates vanish without a trace.
This was something else.
Deep underground, none of the tension above mattered in the slightest.
Borgul kicked a pile of glossy point beans across the stone floor with a claw, scowling.
"Another bag of these stupid things," he rumbled. "Can't eat 'em. Can't forge with 'em. Waste of space. Can't they color-code the crates so we stop grabbing the bean ones?"
Lirael glanced up from her map, her pale fingers tracing a dozen new meteor trajectories she'd calculated over the past hour.
"Complaining won't fill the granaries. The math says the next drop lands in the western marsh in eight minutes. Send the burrowers ahead. Have the slimes on standby to seal the hole after."
It was a well-oiled routine by now.
Thunder slimes could feel the static build in the upper atmosphere ten minutes before a drop fell. Wind slimes could taste the shift in the air currents. Between the two, and Lirael's parabola calculations—lessons the human scholars had drilled into them until their eyes burned—they could pin down the exact landing spot before the meteor even became visible to surface patrols.
A team of drakes would burrow straight up beneath the impact site. The second the crate hit the grass, the ground would open up beneath it. Slimes would patch the turf back over. Thirty seconds flat. Gone without a trace.
By the time the nearest surface patrol arrived, huffing and running, there was nothing but scorched dirt and a few crushed blades of grass.
Korg wandered in from the vault chamber, cracking his knuckles.
"New batch of crates stowed," he said, grunting. "We're running out of vault space. Need to dig another level."
"Already on it," Lirael said. "The moss farms are expanding too. The grass slimes are producing enough now to feed the whole burrow on top of the stores."
Borgul snorted. "Moss and berries. Real warrior's feast."
"Warriors starve too," Lirael said coolly. "You were complaining about rations two months ago. Don't complain now that we have more than we can eat."
Outside the central chamber, the soft, constant splort-splort of splitting slimes echoed down the tunnels. Their numbers had tripled since they'd arrived. Without the divine realm's natural limits holding them back, they bred as fast as there was food to feed them. They were the real workhorses of the burrow: digging, sealing, carrying, sensing. No one had expected the slimes to be the secret weapon.
Lirael looked back down at her map and tapped a new mark.
"Next drop in seven minutes. Borgul, take the first shift. And try not to eat the berries on the way back. We're saving those for preserves."
Borgul grumbled, but he headed for the tunnel anyway.
Another drop. Another haul. Another day of no one knowing they were even there.
Life was good.
Up on the surface, a Tide Pact scout kneeled beside a fresh impact crater, frowning. He ran a hand over the grass. It was still warm. The crate had landed here barely a minute ago.
And there was nothing.
He leaned closer. The grass looked… wrong. Too even. Like it had been cut and pressed back into place.
He drove his dagger into the dirt.
It sank three inches. Then hit something hard.
Not stone. Packed earth. Smooth. Artificial.
The scout froze.
There was something under the ground.
He stood up, heart racing, and turned to run for the nearest outpost.
They were not alone out here.
Something had been living right under their feet this whole time.