Livina was furious.
Not at the death — summoners lost summons. It was the cost of the craft. But at the humiliation — she had said the flask was too small, that the Treebeard was too resistant, that I would embarrass myself. She had said all of this with the specific confidence of someone who believed what they were saying.
And she had been completely wrong.
I needed that. Not the death itself — I needed to break something larger than the Treebeard. I needed to break her pride in a way that she would never again underestimate what I created before seeing it work.
"Don't approach." — I said firmly when she tried to move toward the Treebeard.
"Why?! What is happening to it?!"
To both of them, it looked like a curse. The Treebeard still produced the sound of constant burning with no visible flames in the daylight. No dense smoke. No explosion. Just constant suffering without an apparent source.
I knew exactly what was happening.
I had gone beyond traditional Greek Fire.
The original version I had managed to reproduce in less than a month. But that wasn't enough for what I was planning. I needed something that caused not just destruction — but fear. The kind of fear that comes from not being able to see what is killing you.
Methane.
The market sold manure — I had found it absurd when I discovered it, but there it was, catalogued among fertilizers and agricultural supplies, with no indication that it was fuel. Nobody had thought to use it that way because nobody had arrived with the necessary context to see what it was.
And that was what made it possible to create what, in my world, they would call invisible fire.
I picked up a dry branch from the ground.
"Watch."
I threw it against the Treebeard's body.
Before it even touched — it began to darken. Char. Shrink. As though it was being consumed by something that existed but couldn't be seen, the kind of destruction the eye registered as result but couldn't trace as cause.
Livina's eyes went wide.
"That is magic."
"No." — I answered calmly. — "It is ancient science."
She looked again at the giant Treebeard dissolving from within, with the expression of someone revising categories they had considered settled.
"Call the workers. I want earth over the body."
"Why not water?" — Morgana asked.
I smiled slightly.
"Because water makes it worse."
Both fell silent.
"Greek Fire doesn't extinguish with water. It doesn't extinguish with almost anything." — I paused. — "It keeps burning until it consumes all available energy... or until it suffocates itself. Earth cuts the oxygen. Water feeds the reaction."
Morgana swallowed hard.
"You're saying that..."
"Yes. It will burn for days."
And it did.
When night fell, the flames became visible for the first time — orange, intense, dancing over what remained of the Treebeard with the stability of something that had found enough fuel to have no reason to hurry.
On the third day.
Only ash remained.
Livina and Morgana went to the wall to observe the fire at least once a day.
I didn't believe it was curiosity. Curiosity satisfies itself — goes once, understands, moves on. They kept returning.
It was something else. They had seen battles. They had seen destruction on a scale I would probably never reach with brute force.
But that had burned for three days without asking permission.
I believed they were processing the monstrousness of what I had built — not with fear, but with the specific recognition of warriors who had just understood that the Lord they served thought in categories different from their own.
"Are you two going to stay there forever?"
Livina turned her face slowly.
"Dear Lord..." — her voice was different. There was no provocative smile. There was something closer to sobriety. — "With this we could dominate all of human territory."
I raised an eyebrow.
"Funny. Now I'm 'dear.'"
She ignored it.
"It is absolute power."
"No." — I answered. — "It is unstable power."
Morgana stared at me.
"Then why did you create it?"
"Have you ever heard of the law of supply and demand?"
Silence.
✦
Greek Fire was a game changer.
But it was also expensive to produce in volume.
Sulfur, nitrate, resin, flammable substrates — none were rare in isolation. But consumption at scale would draw attention in the market, create visible patterns, raise questions I wasn't ready to answer. In two weeks of supplies I had barely produced twenty flasks.
Unviable as a primary force.
But in the short term — perfect for what I was actually planning.
"Let's go to the market. I have something to sell."
The market was different. Fuller. More active. With the Level 2 Market, Lords from distant regions appeared — other races, humans from quadrants I had never visited, hybrid creatures with the specific look of those who had learned to evaluate opportunity before evaluating risk. The smell of negotiation was palpable — greed, fear, and ambition mixed in the proportion that every real market possessed.
"Dear Lord, how can I help?"
I placed a flask on the counter.
"I want to sell ten units. One per day. Individual auctions."
The administrator analyzed the flask with the professional expression of someone who had seen many things pass through the counter and had learned not to show surprise before understanding what they were looking at.
"And what does it do?"
"It's called Greek Fire. When the container breaks, it generates continuous fire that cannot be extinguished by conventional means." — I paused. — "Additionally, during the day, the flame can be invisible to any race that doesn't possess thermal vision."
A processing silence.
"Continuous damage. Partial invisibility. Uncontrollable by normal means..." — he raised his eyes. — "Value?"
"Start with one Nectar Stone — Exceptional."
Morgana nearly choked.
"Lord... don't you think that's too high?"
I looked at her. She wasn't wrong — not from where she stood.
In the Oasis, Nectar Stones were classified into eight categories: low, medium, high, exceptional, supreme, essence, legacy, and divine. The first five could be obtained from any creature in the Oasis — but that didn't mean they were equal. An exceptional stone drawn from a Wyvern was incomparably superior to one of the same grade from a lesser creature, because the quality and quantity of status it carried reflected the nature of whoever had originated it. Still, for most inhabitants here, even the lowest exceptional stone represented something that took entire cycles to accumulate — if they ever saw one at all.
The last three — essence, legacy, and divine — operated under a different rule entirely. Those could only be obtained from Lords or Ex-Lords, each subdivided into three grades: low, medium, and high. Not every race dropped a stone upon death, either. In fact, most didn't. Humans, given their fragile nature, were among those who left nothing behind — which, thinking about it, was a blessing. If they did drop stones, I seriously doubted the mortality rate among them would stay at a mere ninety percent.
But Morgana was thinking like someone from the Oasis.
I wasn't.
An exceptional stone was the bare minimum I would accept for something no creature here could produce. Greek Fire wasn't a drop. It had no level. It didn't scale with the nature of whoever carried it — it existed outside the rules of the Oasis, and that was precisely what made it valuable. Whoever bought it wasn't acquiring an item. They were acquiring an advantage the system hadn't accounted for.
"I think it's too low."
The administrator confirmed the listing. We left.
Livina was restless — her tail moved with the frequency of something that had processed what it had seen and hadn't yet arrived at a conclusion about how to feel.
"You are selling the advantage that could make us invincible."
"No."
"No?"
"I am selling fear."
Silence.
They looked at me waiting for an explanation. I organized the reasoning before speaking — not because it was complicated, but because there were layers and each one needed to arrive in the right order for the whole to make sense.
"If I keep the Greek Fire, I become a target. Any Lord who knows I possess something like this will want to take it before I use it. If I use it to dominate human Lords, I become a tyrant — and tyrants create coalitions against themselves with an efficiency that no other threat achieves."
"But if I sell it..."
I paused.
"Someone buys the first flask. Another Lord sees it. Asks where it came from. The market begins to price it. Supplies become scarce because others try to replicate it without having the recipe. Lords become suspicious of each other — who bought it, who is producing it, who plans to use it and against whom. And at the center of all of it, I am just the supplier."
"Not the conqueror. Not the threat. The man who sells what others fear — but who at the same time, offers the only possible way out from the fear of total destruction."
There was another layer I didn't say out loud.
I knew humans. I knew greed — the kind that doesn't calculate consequences because it is busy calculating immediate advantage. A Lord who bought Greek Fire wasn't buying a weapon. They were buying the feeling of having an advantage over their neighbor. And that feeling created dependency before the weapon was used even once.
Ten flasks. One per day. Individual auction.
Each auction would be higher than the previous — not because the product improved, but because manufactured scarcity created real urgency. And real urgency made Lords pay above rational value.
I had learned that before the Oasis. Before any battle.
It was the oldest lesson in human commerce.
"You become the remedy for the disease you yourself created." — Morgana said, with the tone of someone who had arrived at the conclusion while I was still explaining.
"Exactly."
Livina was silent for a long moment — the kind that comes from someone who had been revising a category they had created for me and realizing it wasn't broad enough for what they had just heard.
"So you want to be a merchant." — Livina said slowly.
"Before being a merchant" — I confirmed — "I will be the Leviathan that brings chaos and casts everyone into the abyss. And at the same time, the only one who offers the boat to cross it."
Livina looked at me for a long second.
"Nothing gives more power than controlling what others desire and fear." — I paused. — "Those who act out of fear will pay any price to feel safe. Those who act out of greed will pay any price not to be left behind. And whoever controls both at the same time..."
I didn't finish.
I didn't need to.