Ammit.
It was one of the very few S+ level creatures in the Oasis.
And its level didn't come from size or fury. It came from a singular characteristic — Ammit was the only known creature capable of attacking the opponent's soul directly. That inherent power rendered any armor, any shield, any physical or even magical defense completely useless. It didn't matter how much you protected yourself on the outside. It struck what was inside — the place that no forge, no enchantment, no technique had learned to shield.
I, of all people, understood what that meant better than I would have liked.
I had felt something similar. The roar of the red box, the echo of a dragon, had left me with a pain that Morgana's healing couldn't reach — because the damage wasn't in the body. It was in a deeper place. And if a distant echo of a dragon did that to me, I couldn't even imagine what it was to be struck directly by a creature whose only function was to wound the soul.
In the times it had been sighted, its form was depicted as an enormous boar of a few good meters. Nothing colossal by Oasis standards — at nearly three meters tall, it didn't come close to Arachne's size, much less a Drake's. But it commanded respect wherever it passed, the way certain creatures command respect not for their size, but for the certainty of what they are capable of doing.
To many, Ammit was peaceful. It rarely fought. It rarely took interest in conflict.
But peaceful wasn't the same as weak.
Its strength had already been tested by several races throughout the Oasis's history — all arriving at the same conclusion after paying the price of curiosity: fighting Ammit was unviable. Unviable in an absolute way. It wasn't a question of strategy or numbers. It was a question of mathematical impossibility. Beyond attacking the soul, it possessed a resistance that the codices described with a single word.
Impenetrable.
Not "very resistant." Not "almost impenetrable." The Oasis's codices were precise with language, and when they recorded an absolute word, it was because reality had refused to offer exceptions.
And I needed its blood.
✦ ✦ ✦
"How is it possible to get blood from a creature like that?"
Morgana's disbelief came from the same place that tormented me. It was exactly the right question — because, in practice, it was impossible.
Almost.
And it was on that "almost" that all my hope balanced.
What kept me from giving up completely was a detail. There was a moment — a single one — in which it was possible to draw blood from Ammit. And that moment happened once every few decades, when the creatures gathered in a place known only as the nest, to give birth.
Like every mammal, Ammit gave birth to unique individuals, in labors that stretched over weeks and shed much blood. And it was precisely its docile nature that opened the window — during the labor, vulnerable and occupied with its own survival and that of the offspring, it allowed others to approach around the young without reacting with hostility. It was a truce imposed by biology, not by will. Knowing the exact moment of that permission was the difference between leaving there alive or dead — because the window opened and closed, and whoever got the timing wrong would discover, too quickly, that peaceful wasn't the same as defenseless.
But, within those brief instants of tolerance, it was possible to collect what no one else could: blood and placenta.
Unfortunately, that made the nest one of the most competitive events in the universe.
Ammit's placenta and blood had the capacity to enormously increase the vitality of whoever consumed them — and power like that, however strange it seemed to come from such a peaceful creature, attracted every kind of race willing to kill for the harvest. Over time the nest stopped being merely a collection event. It was a battlefield disguised as a birth, where most of the blood spilled wasn't Ammit's.
"Unfortunately, we can't participate in the nest. The last one happened almost six years ago. The next could take decades."
A pause.
"But we can see what we find at the market."
My hope rested on a simple logic: the fact that it was nearly impossible to get the item didn't mean no one had gotten it. Somewhere in that vast universe, someone had been at the last nest. Someone had survived the harvest. And if that person, or that race, was sitting on what they had gathered, waiting for the right price, perhaps I could at least discover what that price was.
The hope was that it had fallen into the hands of a weak race — or of someone who had no interest in what the item offered in itself, only in what it could be traded for.
Because with an item like that, a weak race would charge anything — and they would be right. There were countless races that took no interest; the strongest already had enough vitality to not need an increase. But, even without the majority, there were still at least two hundred intermediate races that would pay any fortune for a single drop of it.
Everything had a price.
I just needed to discover what mine was.
"Zeus, compile the items necessary to build the Incubator blueprint."
"Compiling."
[ Requirements: Legendary Incubator ]
1 — 2 Level 5 Workers
2 — Ammit Blood
3 — 2 Unfertilized Eggs
4 — 2 Unfertilized Fetuses
5 — 10 Exceptional Quality Stones
When I analyzed the list, it became obvious where the problem was.
Setting aside Ammit's blood, everything else was trivial — for the right price. Level 5 Workers were expensive, but I had them. Unfertilized eggs weren't uncommon, all the more so without species restriction. Fetuses were easier still — the Oasis was full of desperate Lords trying to create mounts and discovering, too late, that they had no way to sustain the cost of the recently acquired creatures. Each bankrupt kingdom dumped onto the market the remains of its own ambitions. Other people's suffering had always been a market, and it was a market that never lacked stock.
Five requirements. Four within my reach.
And one that seemed to have been placed there specifically to make all the rest unreachable.
It was the Oasis's signature. To give with one hand and charge with the other, always in a proportion exact enough for the reward to remain visible but out of reach, like water before someone who is thirsty and chained a handspan away from it.
✦ ✦ ✦
"What can I do for you today?"
I was so immersed in solving the Incubator problem that I didn't even notice when I was already in front of the market counter. My body had carried me there on autopilot, crossing the usual path while my mind spun around a single impossible piece.
"I'd like to know if anyone is selling Ammit blood. And what the cost would be."
"Of course. One moment."
I didn't have much to offer, and I knew it.
Most of my resources had been invested in the kingdom — in the constructions, in the bombards, in the army that was now reduced to debris buried in a distant plain. But I could still talk with Arachne and obtain some eggs. I could still manufacture Greek fire. I could still build another bombard to sell, now that I had mastered the process. I had something. Not much, but something. Unless, of course, they asked for payment in nectar stones — then I wouldn't be able to do anything, and the conversation would end before it began.
"Unfortunately, we don't have available any item related to the creature Ammit."
My heart sank.
Not having the item meant waiting. Years. Maybe decades, until the next breeding period. It meant possessing a legendary blueprint — the Incubator, capable of transforming my entire army into a dynamic and fast machine, capable of raising creatures in months instead of years — and watching it rot uselessly at the bottom of my inventory because it lacked a single piece that the universe guarded as treasure.
It was a specific torture. To have the solution and the problem at the same time, separated by a single drop of blood that I had no way of getting.
I was already turning my back when something crossed my mind.
Something I knew deep down, but had never truly thought about — because it was madness. Or at least it should be.
But maybe.
"Let me ask a question. About the battles between races. What are the prizes?"
How could I have forgotten?
There was an event humans participated in — but in which they never got far enough to be relevant. Perhaps that was exactly why I had never bothered to remember the prizes. Why memorize the reward of something no one of your race had ever reached? It was like memorizing the value of a treasure guarded at the bottom of an ocean you had no way to cross. Useless. Almost cruel.
But I knew, in some corner of my memory, that there were prizes. And that they were significant.
"The prizes for the battles between races are the following."
A screen materialized before me, listing the rewards up to the hundredth place.
And even the hundredth position already carried prizes good enough to attract all the races in the universe — including the strongest. That was why the event was so contested, so sacred, so impossible for any lesser race. The races at the top of the chain didn't compete for survival. They competed for that. My eyes ran down the list, ignoring the lower positions, rising toward the top, until among the first ten I found exactly what I was looking for.
[ 10th place — Prize: Legendary S+ Creature Blood (Ammit) ]
I didn't bother to read the rest.
I didn't need to. Reaching the top ten would give me exactly what I needed — the impossible piece, delivered as a prize, wrapped as a trophy. The answer was right there, listed on a screen, within reach of anyone who managed the small detail of reaching the top of the most lethal event in existence.
Of course there was a small catch. Minimal, really.
It was an event of death.
An event in which no human had ever reached the top hundred. Let alone the top ten. And I had no idea how the battles worked, what the rules were, against what exactly I would be throwing myself. It was leaping off a cliff in the dark, knowing only that there was something down there I needed to reach and that most of those who had leaped before me hadn't come back.
But ignorance had a cure.
"Can you locate someone who sells a summarized account of the event? How it works, the rules, everything."
"Understood. Searching for a summary."
A pause.
"Located: summary compiled by the Traveller race. Do you wish to obtain it?"
Of course information like that would be in the hands of the Travellers.
They were the merchants and archivists of the universe — the race that collected, catalogued, and sold knowledge about everything that existed. Where there was something to be known, there was a Traveller willing to sell it for the right price. And, fortunately, the price wasn't high. A few nectar stones for something that could define the entire future of my kingdom. It was almost offensive how little I would pay for something so valuable — but to the Travellers, repeated information was worth less with each sale, and the secret of the event had already been sold too many times to be expensive.
"I want to buy the content. And the video too, if there is one."
The seller — some Traveller on the other side of the system — had had the commercial good sense to include even a premium section with footage explaining how the event worked in practice. I didn't mind the extra cost. I needed every fragment of information I could get my hands on, and paying more to see with my own eyes was worth more than a thousand descriptions.
As soon as the purchase was concluded, I left the market at a quickened pace, going straight to my room.
I was going to study everything. Every rule. Every battle. Every race that had ever reached the top. Every creature that had been defeated and every strategy that had worked. Until I understood, with the precision that had always been my only real advantage, what would be necessary to do the impossible.
To place a human among the ten best warriors in the universe.