Chapter 127: A Most Inconvenient Law of Physics

Chapter 127: A Most Inconvenient Law of Physics The throne room was quiet. Too quiet. It was the oppressive silence that followed a catastrophic military failure, the kind of quiet that gets under your skin and starts whispering terrible, doubt-filled things. My reconnaissance force had been annihilated. Two Bloodkin, gone. A hundred of my best disposable Orcs, reduced to a fine red mist. And all it had taken was one old man with a sword. "This is a problem," I announced to the room, my voice a low, dangerous purr. Pixia, my tiny, flying encyclopedia of all things statistical and annoying, zipped anxiously around my head. "My Lord, a frontal assault is statistically inadvisable!" she squeaked. "My projections indicate a 99.3% probability of catastrophic failure and a 100% probability of you getting very, very grumpy!" "Your projections are obvious, Pixia," I retorted, slumping into my crystal throne. "We can’t break his walls. We can’t get past his one-man apocalypse of a grandfather. We are, to use a technical term from my old world, completely and utterly screwed." The silence stretched, thick and heavy. My commanders looked at me, their faces grim. Even Grak the Unbreakable seemed to have run out of things to punch. Then, a new idea, a terrible, beautiful, and profoundly stupid idea, began to bloom in the dark corners of my mind. It was a plan born from pure, desperate, gamer logic. "We can’t attack their walls," I mused aloud. "So, we will not attack at all." I stood up, my long, dark coat swishing dramatically. It was all in the hips. "I need information," I said, my voice now filled with a new, mad brilliance. "I need numbers. I need to know exactly what we are facing. Their troop deployments. Their patrol routes. Everything." I turned to my commanders, my red eyes burning with a reckless fire. "I am going there myself," I announced. "A covert, high-risk, high-reward intelligence gathering mission. I will use [Reign] not as a weapon of conquest, but as a radar. A three-kilometer-wide snapshot of their entire fortress." The plan was insane. It meant walking right up to the enemy’s front door, activating an ability that would root me to the spot for three hours, and hoping they didn’t notice the giant, invisible dome of demonic power I had just dropped on their city. "It is too dangerous, my Lord!" Chloe protested, her voice tight with a concern that was both professional and deeply, personally possessive. "The greatest rewards," I replied, my voice a low, confident purr, "are reserved for those who are willing to take the greatest risks." "And I’m bringing backup," I added, pointing a long, pale finger at Grak. "You. You’re with me. If things go south, your job is to punch a hole in reality and get us out of there." "I LIKE PUNCHING," Grak roared, a wide, happy grin on his brutal face. The journey was a masterpiece of absurdity. Grak, my ten-foot-tall behemoth of a Beast King, on a motorcycle. A ridiculously small, bright red motorcycle we had... acquired... from our last looting operation. He looked like a circus bear on a tricycle. "THIS IS FUN!" he bellowed, the wind whipping past his face as we sped through the ruined outskirts of the city. "THE METAL BEAST IS FAST!" "Just try not to break it," I grumbled from my position on the back, holding on for dear life. "It’s a vintage model." We reached the outskirts of Suzu, the distant, imposing walls of the human fortress a grim line on the horizon. We stopped near a ruined, crumbling section of an old highway overpass. "This will do," I said, dismounting. "A good, solid piece of man-made infrastructure. Perfect for a little... calibration." I needed to test a theory. A nagging little question that had been bugging me ever since my fight with Hibiki. "Before we begin the main event," I announced, "I want to see something." I raised my hand towards the thick, concrete support pillar of the overpass. I channeled my magic, the familiar, cold power of the abyss swirling in my palm. "Dark Lance," I commanded. A spear of pure, solidified shadow, crackling with chaotic energy, shot from my hand. BOOM! The wind shrieked as the lance tore through the air, a lance of pure void. It struck the pillar. And then... nothing. The lance dissipated against the concrete with a pathetic ’fizz’ sound, like a wet firecracker. It didn’t even leave a scorch mark. I stared. "What in the nine hells?" I muttered. "My turn!" Grak roared, clearly seeing this as a new, exciting game. He reared back, his massive fist glowing with the raw, destructive energy of his signature move. "DEMOLITION FIST!" he bellowed. BOOM! The ground itself seemed to shatter as he punched the pillar. The impact was an absolute detonation of force. A massive shockwave of displaced air blasted outwards, kicking up a cloud of dust and debris. But when the dust settled, the pillar was still standing. There was a small, fist-sized crater in the concrete, but it was just a chip. A scratch. "IMPOSSIBLE!" Grak roared, shaking his hand in frustration. "MY PUNCH CAN SHATTER MOUNTAINS! THIS WALL IS CHEATING!" I looked at the pillar, at the pathetic, fizzled scorch mark from my spell, at the tiny crater from Grak’s ultimate attack. The cold, brutal, and terrifyingly inconvenient truth hit me with the force of a physical blow. "It’s not cheating," I whispered, the realization sending a shiver of genuine, cold horror down my spine. "It’s a rule." Special abilities. Magic. All the flashy, cool, world-ending powers that the System had given us. They didn’t work on man-made structures. Not properly. They were designed for killing living things. For fighting other monsters, other heroes. But a simple, boring, concrete wall? It was practically immune. "So... how do we break it?" I asked, my voice a low growl of pure, unadulterated frustration. Grak, his face a mask of brutish concentration, reared back and punched the pillar again. This time, there was no glowing light. No fancy name. Just a simple, straightforward, A-Rank Body punch. BOOM! The impact was a dull, heavy thud, but a visible shockwave of force exploded from his knuckles. CRACK! A web of fissures spiderwebbed across the surface of the pillar. The force of the blow ran through the very bones of the concrete, and a large chunk of it broke away, crashing to the ground. It had worked. But it was inefficient. It was slow. It would take him hours, maybe days, to punch his way through the walls of Suzu. My grand, glorious, and beautifully brutal invasion plan had just been kneecapped by a single, infuriating law of physics. I was a Vampire Lord. A master of magic and shadow. A being of profound, A-Rank power. And I had just been defeated by basic civil engineering. This was going to be a problem. A very big, very solid, and very, very hard to punch problem. My mind raced, the implications of this discovery crashing down on me. A magical siege was impossible. My beautiful, terrifying Queen of Magic, Sarah, and her army of spell-slinging Dark Elves? Useless against a simple stone wall. My own, newly acquired and ridiculously overpowered [Dark Night Tempest]? It would probably just tickle the city gates. We couldn’t blast our way in. We couldn’t teleport our way in. We would have to break the walls down, inch by bloody, painstaking inch, with pure, raw, physical force. It was a war of attrition I could not afford to fight. I looked at Grak, who was now happily punching the pillar into a pile of gravel, a wide, simple grin on his face. I looked at the distant, imposing walls of Suzu. The game had changed. The rules were different. And I had a terrible, sinking feeling that the old man on the other side of that wall already knew. He had been waiting for me. Not just with an army. But with the most powerful weapon in the world. A really, really well-built wall. The bastard.