The Oasis had a very intriguing power over everything that wasn't under the influence of a kingdom.
As on the first day I had come to this world, things always seemed calm until they no longer did — with the specific transition of calm that existed before the disturbance and that was only recognized as calm afterward, in retrospect, when there was something to compare it to. Fortunately the enemies that appeared seemed uninterested in my path, perhaps understanding that there was more power than was worth fighting — that the cost-versus-benefit calculation of a confrontation with that specific group produced a result that didn't justify the investment. Or simply because, as I imagined, interest in a confrontation where the benefit didn't seem attractive enough genuinely didn't appeal to the creatures of that place, who had developed over generations the same logic I had arrived at through reasoning: energy was a finite resource and should be spent where the return was adequate.
"I still can't believe we're going to Yokai territory. Did you know they eat you alive?"
Livina, even after hours of marching, was still immersing herself in the reasons why such a confrontation was necessary. She had a point — and the point wasn't just that they ate you alive, but how they ate you, which was the part that made the destination not just dangerous but specifically disturbing. The death that came from those creatures was extremely cruel in ways I had read about with the distance of someone reading about something they didn't expect to encounter, and which I was now revisiting with the proximity of someone who was a few hours away from what they had read.
The Yokais — or Weaving Brides, as some Codices called them, with the name that had been given by the race that had first encountered them and survived to name them — were not considered strong individually, being at most D+, which placed them in a category that many races dismissed as a significant threat. The classification was technically correct and practically misleading — because individual was a concept that didn't apply to them the way it applied to other creatures.
The Yokais were one of the few creatures that managed to live in something resembling what civilization would call society — with the organization that existed before any written code, that had been developed out of necessity and that had persisted through efficiency. The few Codices that spoke about them described an immutable hierarchical structure that was nonetheless respected as a unified colony — not through imposition, but as the result of an evolutionary process that had selected cooperative behavior as more efficient than individual behavior in ways that made cooperation instinctive.
Their strength came from unity — with the multiplication that happened when the number of units was large enough for the sum to be qualitatively different from the parts, not just larger. That was why their territories were avoided even by races considered much stronger individually. Nobody would want to find themselves surrounded by countless nearly meter-tall venom-spitting spiders, each individually manageable, the whole being an entirely different category of problem.
"I understand what you mean, Livina, but I've already told you what we're going to do more than a million times. You need to trust that it'll work."
"No… Of course I don't doubt it. It's just that they give me the creeps."
It was funny to think that Livina — being half human, half scorpion, with a structure that communicated predator before anything else, with claws that had destroyed things I preferred not to name — would be disgusted by some giant spiders. There was something revealing in the specificity of the disgust, in the way the revulsion ignored the logic of size and capability comparison and existed for a reason that was older than any rational analysis.
The truth was I didn't blame her. The stories involving those creatures almost always ended in tragedy — not from the confrontation itself, which was expected when races that hunted encountered what could be hunted, but from the form the tragedy took. There was something about being wrapped in web by smaller creatures that struck something deeper than the threat of a larger predator facing you directly.
"Alright everyone. We'll camp here and proceed to the dense forest tomorrow morning."
It was funny commanding the warriors as I commanded them — with the specific quality of relationship that had developed with them over the course of the march, which was different from the relationship with Livina or with the stable creatures because it was a relationship with something that had been built to receive command and not to have anything beyond command. Despite appearing to have life in the way they moved, they didn't talk, didn't eat, and didn't tire — only marching inertly to what happened around them, with the consistency of a mechanism that had been designed for a function and that fulfilled that function without the noise that creatures with consciousness introduced into the process.
Even at the moment I thought about resting, I had to think more about my own state than theirs — they didn't need rest, I did, and the asymmetry was data I had accepted but that still caused the specific discomfort of realizing that what applied to you didn't apply to what was around you.
What I felt was that not perceiving life in them made their deaths dispensable in a way that was pragmatically useful but also unsettling when I stopped to think — because they were a product of what I had built, and the product of what one builds carries something of the builder even when the product doesn't have what the builder has. For me they were more than just responsive puppets. They were an investment — and each of them carried the best I had built, the pinnacle of what the iron and steel house produced with the resources I had put into it.
The first night outside the territory would be the proof of their capabilities — not against a specific enemy, but as structure, as defense that worked without me needing to be active for it to work.
"Let's form a circle while the shields are active."
The most expensive item in the armor I had made for the warriors was the shield — not for the material, which was the same as the other components used, but for the function, which went beyond what a shield normally meant. When planted in the ground, it unfolded doubling in size, forming what I could call a mini-fort nearly two meters and twenty centimeters high — not the safest thing in the world, not the protection that would withstand a serious attack from a powerful creature, but a barrier that allowed giving peace of mind to those inside while communicating to what was outside that there was something that would need to be overcome before reaching what was inside.
Communicating cost was often as efficient as having the defense — because most creatures calculated before attacking, and additional cost was a factor that moved the calculation toward not attacking.
"Are you hungry?"
The Cockatrice was the first to understand my word — jumping with joy with the specific energy of a creature that had identified that the moment it had been waiting for had finally arrived, with the enthusiasm of something that hadn't learned to calibrate the expression of joy to the context. The Father Urskra, for his part, seemed more interested in sleeping than eating — with the priority of every bear-like relative that had marched all day and had arrived at the conclusion that what the body asked for first wasn't food.
Livina seemed more contained — with the restraint that appeared when she understood the situation required a different state from what was natural for her, that the territory we were in no longer had the security of my kingdom's wall to absorb the mistakes that excessive energy created.
"Don't worry so much, Livina. The shields can hold the advance of many creatures — and it's not as though we don't have fifty guards ready to respond to any infiltration. They don't sleep, they don't get distracted, they don't have moments where attention drops."
"I know… I just…"
"You're nervous, aren't you?" — I said, with the tone of someone who had noticed before it was said. — "Me too. But if you don't eat, you won't be much help tomorrow. And I need you for where we're going."
I pointed to the part of the map indicating the forest — not very far, but far enough for the distance to be good news, for there to be space between where we were and what was there. The map indicated that place as extremely dangerous — with the specific markings the system used to communicate the type of danger it was, not just the intensity. Extremely dense closed forest, which meant limited visibility and compromised mobility for any creature larger than what had evolved for that type of environment. And home to a Yokai colony — which was data the map communicated as the second characteristic after the forest, as though the forest came first and the Yokais were a consequence of it.
"Yes, I understand… I think we could recap the plan for tomorrow, couldn't we?"
The nervousness in Livina's voice was clear — with the specific quality of nervousness of someone who knew they knew the plan but wanted to hear the plan again not because they had forgotten but because hearing it again was a way of verifying that it still made sense, that nothing had changed between the last time it had been said and now. At the end of the day, even being a warrior with the blood she had and the capability she had demonstrated repeatedly, she still carried the subconscious traits of someone who had always been support and not front line — who had developed the skills of someone who was protected without completely developing the mental state of someone who advanced.
"Of course. Sit here."
Pegasus and I sat side by side while leaning against the large Urskra — with the specific comfort of a large warm creature that transformed the immediate surroundings into a microclimate different from the night air. The fur and fat brought warmth against the cold that had arrived after the sun, with the efficiency of natural covering that no fabric could completely replicate because it had been developed over generations for exactly that function.
The fire we had lit was only for cooking — not for warmth, which would be a waste of fuel and a communication of presence to what was beyond the shields. Sleeping embraced by that creature was the only way to resist the cold without a cost I didn't want to pay. Livina opted to sit in front — with the logic of a poikilothermic creature.
"Very well. The access to the forest is narrow — according to the map, this is the last clearing we'll see. That means the probability of encountering the enemy is enormous from the first step inside. Our objective is simple: find the Yokai nest and use this."
What I pulled from the ring was an item Livina knew — she had spent days training with it, with the patience of something that had accepted the training as necessary even without fully understanding why it was necessary in that specific context.
"With your throwing training, I believe we can gain a lot with little effort. Either way, the only thing we need to do is set fire to the nest and get out — to come back afterward just to collect what's left."
The idea had come to me when I had noticed a very peculiar characteristic of the Yokais that had stayed in a corner of my memory since the first readings without my having connected it to what could be useful. As their name said, they were known for weaving — which defined not only what they did but who they were, with the characteristic being so central to their identity that it had entered their name. Of course the threads weren't like those of the spiders I knew from my world, which were fragile and thin materials that human biology had learned to classify as insignificant. The Yokais' threads were stronger, thicker, and existed in far greater quantity — with the production that came from an entire colony working in a coordinated way rather than an isolated individual.
Entering a Yokai area was easy to identify because they created webs that covered everything — with a beautiful and deadly white that transformed any space they occupied into something visually distinct from everything around it. You only had to touch one thread and the entire colony would know there was an intruder — with the communication speed the web allowed, each vibration being information that traveled through the system until it reached whoever was monitoring.
Of course the advantage I was seeking wasn't in the fact that there were many webs — it was in one of their most sinister characteristics: the adhesive. All the webs had adhesive capacity that defied any comparison — capable of holding creatures up to a hundred times the weight of the thread, with the binding force that had evolved to capture what the colony needed to capture regardless of size. It was said that even a dragon would be held by the sticky capacity of the webs — data I took with the appropriate grain of salt for any claim involving dragons, but which communicated the scale of what was possible.
What interested me was that this adhesive compound was — among many things, with properties that existed regardless of whether I needed them — flammable.
"The fire will probably last at least a few hours. Unfortunately we'll lose any meat that could be collected — fire doesn't distinguish between what we want and what we don't. But the stones will serve the purpose, because stones survive the fire that consumes the rest."
A Yokai nest could house hundreds — sometimes thousands — of individuals that would fight with everything for the survival of their territory, with the defensive intensity that colonies developed when the territory was also the home of every member. The stones from these creatures weren't good — low and perhaps medium category, with the individual value that wouldn't justify the extraction effort individually. But in quantity, the math changed. Even two hundred low stones were better than none — and in my head there was no easier, more practical and faster way nearby to get so many stones. With the carbonized creatures I wouldn't even have the extraction work — the fire would do the preparation that would normally require separate physical effort.
"But what if there's a Yokai Queen? You know they're rare, but if you destroy the nest we'd be in deep trouble."
Of course my idea wasn't perfect — after all anyone could enter that place and set fire to everything, and if the plan were as simple as it seemed everyone who needed stones would already have done it. Nobody did it because a Yokai Queen might exist — the variable that transformed a simple plan into a catastrophe.
Queens were rare creatures with the rarity that made even the Codex barely specific about them — saying as little as about dragons, with the absence of information being data about frequency of encounter as much as about deliberate omission. Extremely rare and strong, who rarely entered battle unless specific triggers were activated — and destroying the nest was one of those triggers. Accounts of their attacks almost always involved someone's choice to destroy the territory in search of profit and finding only death — with the regularity of a pattern that had been documented repeatedly in different contexts with results similar enough to communicate it wasn't coincidence.
They were known for enormous size, strength and resistance that made direct confrontation a proposition that didn't end well for whoever had initiated it.
Of course unlike those madmen I had a variable.
"Well. Assuming she survives the fire — she's doomed. The fire won't go out while there's web to feed it, and in a Yokai nest there's web in sufficient quantity for hours. The only thing we need to do is hold out until she dies burning. The nest is the fuel. We just need to ensure it keeps burning."
Fights against Yokais were extremely laborious for a specific reason — because if you didn't disturb the nest, even the Queen allowed some of her children to die in confrontation without direct involvement. There were races that used them as mounts, however the secret of how they did so was exclusive to that race and wasn't available in any market I had managed to access. And honestly common Yokais didn't seem rational enough to understand what I would say if I tried negotiation.
"Ok. But what about us — I mean, what if the fire catches us? I don't think she'd die without fighting first."
Livina sometimes proved more intelligent than she appeared — with the specific intelligence of someone who didn't present abstract reasoning in an elaborate way but who arrived at practical conclusions with an efficiency that elaborate reasoning sometimes took longer to reach. She had followed the chain of events with the naturalness of someone who had learned that chains of events were what mattered — not the first event, but what came after the first, and after that, and so on until the final result.
I had already made that journey before she did, so it was easier to answer.
"Simple. We use this."
From the ring I pulled two large bags full of what appeared to be white powder — with the specific appearance of something that didn't communicate through appearance what it was capable of doing.
"Ok. Should I know what this is?"
"Of course not." — I said, with the lightness of someone about to reveal something that had been kept as an uncommunicated variable for a reason. — "The name of this is sodium hydrogen carbonate — or more commonly known as baking soda. It's an item extracted from some specific minerals. From what I know, most kingdoms use it for everyday things like cleaning or personal hygiene — which is a legitimate use but one that underutilizes what the compound can do. What matters to us is that this powder has the capacity to cut off oxygen and in that way extinguish any fire — even Greek fire, which was specifically designed to resist conventional extinguishing methods."
I finally saw Livina look interested — with the genuine interest that manifested when information had arrived that altered the assessment of the situation, that turned something that had seemed like a problem into something that had a solution.
"So with this we can fight."
"Exactly. With this, our victory is certain — at least in theory."
Because theory was what existed before the field — and the field rarely corresponded completely to theory, with the difference being what made the field necessary rather than replaceable by sufficiently good theory. Of course not everything was perfect. The easy part was burning the nest — the hard part was finding it, because dense closed forest didn't offer the line of sight that made anything easy to find. And above all getting past the soldiers that protected it before reaching throwing distance.
These spiders were robust — with the defense that a colony had developed for its protective line, which was different from the defense an individual developed for themselves, with the collective investment making each soldier more efficient than they would be if they depended only on their own development. Beyond excellent defense they were extremely agile. The forest would give them the advantage in attack while we would remain mainly on the defensive — fighting against an enemy in the enemy's environment, which was the disadvantageous position that any strategy manual identified as the one to be avoided and which I was deliberately choosing because the benefit justified the disadvantage.
"What we need is to fight and kill the soldiers as quickly as possible before the entire colony becomes aware of our presence. If we manage to do that, we win. The window between detection and the colony's full response is where our advantage exists."
The night unfolded without problems — with the tranquility of a night that had been prepared to be tranquil, where the countermeasures had worked as countermeasures. The improvised wall served to drive away any small but opportunistic enemy that the night attracted, that wasn't seeking confrontation but was seeking what was vulnerable and had found that what was there wasn't vulnerable in the way it had expected.
I woke before dawn with the specific habit of someone who had learned that the moment before action was a moment of verification, not additional rest. The preparation still took a few hours — after all both the Urskra and Pegasus seemed to have an exceptionally heavy sleep, making me wonder how they survived in the wild.
"Alright everyone. Let's form standard formation and enter the forest."
This time I chose not to enter with the Urskra — with the logic of a specific problem that forest created for creatures of larger size than what had evolved for that environment. His size was too large to pass between the trees without destroying several in the process — which eliminated any possibility of going unnoticed, which was the first phase of the plan and the one that determined whether the following phases would be possible.
My idea was to go unnoticed for as long as possible before any conflict — not out of cowardice, but out of mathematics. Conflict before reaching the nest was conflict that alerted the colony before I was in position to execute what needed to be executed. And conflict that alerted the colony before the position was the scenario the plan had been built to avoid.
The soldiers formed a rectangular position while covering the front, sides, behind and above — with the coverage that made the formation efficient for the specific type of threat I had identified as most likely. This position was called the tortoise formation — developed for advance in hostile territory where attack could come from a previously unidentifiable angle, with the large shields closing the whole in a way that minimized the exposed surface.
The particular advantage I had was that, because my warriors resembled mechanisms more than living beings, they could maintain the formation for many hours without the wear that made formations maintained by creatures with consciousness progressively less efficient as time passed — the effort accumulating, the attention dispersing, the body asking for what willpower couldn't deny indefinitely.
"Do you think this will work?"
"Of course it will. However, due to your height, you'll have to stay further back in the formation. Don't worry — if anything happens, you know what the signal is."
"Understood."
Livina couldn't be completely protected by the tortoise formation — her height made integration impossible without compromising the coverage the formation offered for the rest of the group. I opted to leave her further back, covered by those at the front.
My idea was to make five rectangles in a diamond formation — three at the front while two stayed at the back, with the spacing that allowed area coverage without compromising cohesion between the groups when joint movement was necessary. The idea of this formation was that it would allow, at the signal of any attack, forming a coalition by joining the five groups simultaneously.
It was a specific formation that had been developed in a different world, by a different race, for a similar problem — movement in unknown territory against an enemy that used the territory as an advantage. The Romans against the Celts, with the logic that had been developed out of necessity and that had proven to work well enough to be remembered millennia later.
"Advance."
We entered the forest while the Urskra stayed behind with the patience of someone who had accepted the role and was at ease with it. Unfortunately I couldn't get the Cockatrice to stay with them — but it was fine. It was a creature that would hardly die against Yokais for the set of reasons that made the equation unfavorable for the Yokais, and that would probably cause more confusion than danger if it encountered any.
It didn't take long to finally start perceiving that I was entering enemy terrain.
The first indication wasn't visual — it was the silence. The kind of silence that existed when the animals that normally produced sound had stopped producing sound because there was something that justified stopping, that had altered the balance of the environment in a way that everything living in it had recalibrated its behavior in response. The silence of a forest that knows something has arrived.
The second indication was the white.
It started at the edges — thin threads that captured light in ways that dense forest normally didn't capture, that existed at angles that branches and leaves didn't naturally assume. Then more threads, thicker, connecting points that the forest hadn't connected. And then, as we advanced, the white filled the field of vision with the gradualness of something that had always been there but only became completely visible when you had gotten close enough for the whole to be perceptible before each individual thread was.
Beautiful and deadly — with the exactness of that description I had read in the Codex and that had seemed exaggerated until I was inside what it had described.
The tortoise formation continued advancing, with the care I had communicated before entering: no contact with any thread, no deviation that meant choosing which thread to touch instead of touching none.
The question was how much time remained before that choice became impossible.