Humans hated participating in the battles between races.
It was true that I had no way to confirm that — it wasn't documented information, and nobody conducted surveys about the will of an entire race. But I had always suspected there was a deep distaste for participating. Because nobody wanted to die for an abstraction. Fighting and dying for the sake of the race was the kind of sacrifice that demanded a devotion humans simply didn't have. We were too selfish for that. What moved us was something more immediate, more personal, more our own.
A battle between members of the same species made much more sense to us than dying for a concept.
"So this is how it works."
I had already pored over the content for nearly two days, watching that robotic being talk endlessly about what the event was and how it worked.
The Travellers were robotic beings whose appearance nobody knew.
And however strange that was, it didn't take from them the fact of being powerful. There was even a theory that they could be stronger than the fifth-ranked race in the Oasis — a position they had always maintained consistently, almost artificially, as though they chose it on purpose. But I had the sense that, for those creatures, ranking position didn't seem to be something important enough for them to bother with. What moved them was something else: money, knowledge, commerce. And in that they were impeccable. Everything they produced carried a quality that justified the price, and the videos I had bought were no different.
There were moments when I felt the video was live.
That the creature could read my mind.
Because whenever a doubt formed in my head, the answer came right after — as though the content had been built specifically to scratch the itch that settled in my mind before I even verbalized it. It was, without a doubt, one of the best nectar-stone expenditures I had ever made.
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"Now — which of the two types of event should I participate in?"
One thing that caught me completely off guard was discovering that there were two forms of event happening simultaneously.
One was called individual battles. The other, battle between kingdoms.
And that second one was almost entirely unknown to me — because I had never seen a single human participate in it. It made sense, when I stopped to think. No human who entered that event had any interest in going deeper. The participation was symbolic, a formality, a mandatory appearance one fulfilled and forgot. But, upon seeing the list of winners of that event, one thing became clear: they were always the same.
"They've never lost? How?"
As though expecting my question, the robotic being answered without hesitation.
"The Battle of Kingdoms event is won by the Burmans. Always. For the simple reason that they possess the most consistent, strong, and fast mounts in the known universe. The kingdom events almost always divide between defending and attacking — and the Burmans have always been exceptional at both functions."
As the explanation arrived, my memory went back to something I had read.
The newcomer. The one who had been thrown into a territory in the middle of a war between Burmans and Infernals — the same one whose account I had used to explain the ritual to the Lords on the battlefield. The Infernals had won that war, yes. But with immense difficulty. They had to give up their sanity, resort to the ritual, pay a price they only paid because there was no alternative.
If that had been a battle of attacking and defending, and the Burmans had resisted the Infernals — the third strongest race in the universe — so well, then their defense must be something truly terrifying.
As though reading the thought, a new screen materialized.
On it, a wall of living flesh — interwoven with what appeared to be enormous veins of blood pulsing beneath the surface.
"Living Wall. The Burmans use a kind of sacrifice magic that feeds a living wall. Beyond possessing spectacular protection, it also has the capacity to attack."
Sacrifice magic.
The pieces fell into place with a cold click in my head — the Infernals' ritual, the sacrifice of an ally to empower the army, and now the Burmans' wall fed by the same principle. Sacrifice as fuel seemed to be a language several ancient races spoke, each with its own accent. And while I processed that, a new image appeared — what looked like the final of one of the combat events between kingdoms. A race trying to attack the wall.
"Are those Kazzirs?"
I knew the race that appeared in the image.
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The Kazzirs were a race that rose and fell in the ranking, but always stayed among the top twenty.
And the reason for that consistency was fascinating.
Within their own planet there existed four other races — four species that distinguished themselves clearly from one another and that, even so, had managed to build a single society. Four in one. The symbiotic union was so deep, so complete, that the Oasis itself had preferred to classify them as a single race instead of four separate ones.
Humans preferred to call them Lizzards.
Because, despite the four species being different from one another, they all shared a reptilian characteristic that, to us, defined the whole. There was a large quadrupedal lizard, used as a mount and tank. There was a small one, of a few centimeters and bipedal, with extremely high magical capacity. There was a third of nearly human physiognomy, but with a lizard's face. And there was a fourth, very rare to see, that resembled a giant frog.
In their biome, each fulfilled its function — and the result was one of the most successful planets in the universe in terms of life expectancy in the Oasis.
Because that capacity to have four races in one made their military power incredible from the start. The moment they raised a simple barracks, they already had mounts, mages, and agile warriors available — things other races needed construction after construction to achieve. That made the Lizzards one of the races with the lowest recorded mortality rate in all the Oasis.
It was something studied by countless races. And nearly impossible to replicate.
Because nobody had the capacity to live in total harmony with other species. Not even humans — who on their own Earth had never managed to share the planet with another race without it ending in blood. The Lizzards' harmony was a biological miracle that the rest of the universe observed with envy and incomprehension.
"This is a massacre… How do you even win against that?"
While I watched the fight, the reason the Burmans were eternal champions of the battles between kingdoms became crystal clear.
The Lizzards — one of the most versatile and successful races in the universe — were being dismantled. The living wall absorbed each attack and struck back, fed by constant sacrifices, offering a relevant offensive force behind a defense that simply didn't yield.
"As you must have seen in the fight, this is the reason the Burmans always win the battles between kingdoms. And always are champions."
But while the robot spoke, my mind flew to a simple question.
And when they fought among themselves?
Fortunately, the question was answered almost the instant it formed.
"For many years we tried to discover the secret of the wall. The best way we found was to follow the battles between the Burmans themselves. However, there seems to exist an agreement among them — that one of the two, we believe the elder, emerges victorious without real confrontation. Unfortunately, the Oasis doesn't prohibit agreements before the battles. For that reason, we have nothing compiled about how to defeat the Living Wall."
A pause.
"What we know with some certainty is that, if there isn't enough sacrifice to feed it, the wall stops functioning. But even that remains in the realm of ideas. Nobody has ever managed to wear down the power of the Burmans' numbers long enough to confirm the theory."
I absorbed the information and stored it.
In truth, the Burmans weren't a problem of mine.
For the simple reason that I had no interest whatsoever in being among the top five — positions always dominated by them. My objective was precise and modest, within the absurdity that it was: to reach tenth place. Just that. I could encounter them along the way, of course, but that would be rare. I didn't need to defeat the eternal champions. I just needed to be better than the vast majority who tried — and lose fewer units than they did.
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Another thing I learned completely changed my calculations.
Humans had an enormous advantage in the battles between kingdoms.
Because the weaker your race, the greater the amount of military power you could bring relative to the enemy. The Oasis compensated weakness with quantity — an attempt to level the field between the strong and the weak. But, as always, there was a hidden clause. One that harmed humans in a specific way.
I could only have cheap military power if it came directly from my constructions.
That meant I could only summon cheap soldiers and archers if I had the barracks. Mounts, if I had the stable. Mages, now that I would have the Magic Tower. Each unit I brought needed to originate from a structure in my kingdom for the cost to be low — with the exception of heroes, who, even summoned from the constructions, were extremely expensive to bring, to the point of becoming nearly prohibitive. Apart from that, loose creatures, or anything that wasn't the direct product of what I had built, generated a cost so high that it also made bringing them unviable.
For any ordinary human, choosing the battle of kingdoms was a terrible decision.
For me, it was perfect.
Because I had spent months building exactly the kind of kingdom that rule rewarded.
"Zeus, break down for me the military difference between a human and a Burman."
One of the advantages of buying the Travellers' content was that it could be refined and applied directly to Zeus. That way, he compiled everything and delivered it to me complete — including even a power calculator that allowed me to understand whether I would be at an advantage or disadvantage in a specific fight.
The calculator used the same calculation applied by the Oasis during the event.
Each creature was worth one point — a number that changed according to the type of summon and its power relative to the initial summon. Each race had a pre-defined quantity of points, which increased or decreased relative to the enemy faced. The limit was ten thousand. And humans were so weak that they always stayed at the maximum limit, while the other races received less — the Burmans, relative to humans, having the lowest value of all: just one thousand.
Ten to one.
And even so it was impossible to win.
Because ten human warriors would never defeat a single prepared and armed Burman. The math seemed generous, but the reality of the field undid the generosity. Ten to one against creatures of that caliber was still defeat.
But I had something that might change the count.
"Zeus — if I had a flying creature, like a Griffin, how many points would that summon cost me?"
The calculator took longer this time.
Trying to analyze something that, probably, nobody should have. After a while, it resorted to a different creature as reference — a Harpy.
Harpies were rare creatures in the Oasis, but known because some races had managed to get their blueprints. From what I remembered, everyone who reached the top three places of the event won the Harpy blueprint as a prize. They were epic creatures, capable of attacking using their own feathers as darts — not very strong, with no resistance at all, but they flew. And flying, in the Oasis, was an advantage that was worth almost everything.
"Each Harpy consumes 5 points. Griffins are legendary creatures that can only be summoned by external means, so I estimate they consume between 50 and 100 points each."
It made sense.
The advantage a Harpy had over a Griffin was minuscule — and, honestly, any creature of that type would be dismantled by a Griffin instantly. At the end of the day, I compared Harpies to humans with wings, while Griffins were giant winged lions. That was the power difference between the two.
Of course I also needed to take into account that the calculator was being expensive with the Griffin's cost only because it had no adequate reference. Probably not even the Travellers knew of the possibility of a Griffin blueprint existing — which meant that, in all probability, the real cost of the summon would be equal to that of a Harpy, or at most slightly higher.
There was a lot of interesting material about the battle of kingdoms.
And a lot of content to study — because that was one of the very few formats in which a weak challenger could, in fact, defeat a strong one. Something that would never happen in an individual battle, where brute force was absolute king.
"Zeus, show me the winners of the event since the beginning."
"Compiling."
A table appeared.
Among the top ten, always the same names: Burmans, Infernals, and Stone Giants, with the Lizzards appearing frequently right behind. Curiously, the Aquamarines didn't appear. It took me a while to understand the reason, until I remembered that their bases were underwater — a characteristic the Oasis probably didn't allow recreating in the event's format, since no other race had that need so pronounced. Out of the water, the Aquamarines would still be extremely strong. My suspicion was that, away from their own element, their armies would be too limited to compete — or that they simply weren't interested in that kind of battle, preferring individual combat.
"Compile the average military power."
"Compiling."
"So that's where the disadvantage lies."
The summoning powers of the constructions were counted as one point each even for races that were clearly stronger than others.
Which meant, in practice, that even though an Infernal soldier was exponentially stronger than a human soldier, he would still have the fixed cost of one — and that was a disadvantage that would make me lose. But it also meant something more — that the Griffin, being a construction of mine, would probably have its cost reduced to the same as the Harpy with all certainty, and not just it but my mages too.
Of course it was hard to be sure without testing. But the possibility existed. And possibility was all I needed to begin.
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"Zeus, how do I participate in the event?"
"Participation in the event is computed on the competitor's own birth planet."
And there, after so long, it finally clicked.
My time to go home had come.
The kingdom was protected. The Magic Tower would be ready in a few days. With that, I could leave Morgana, Livina, and the Prince taking care of everything while I made the trip I had been postponing without even realizing I was postponing it. The territory would withstand my absence. I had built something solid enough to survive without me for a while.
"It's time to go back. And to see how my sister is."
The longing tightened my chest again.
Just saying that out loud, everything came at once — everything I had been through to get there. The matriarch in the ice. The birth of Arachne. The war. The deaths. The red box. The blood that wouldn't leave my memory. And, beneath it all, constant as an underground current, my sister's face — the person for whom, deep down, I had begun all of it.
I was confident my territory would hold.
What left me less confident was something else.
"Will someone recognize me?"
That was the real concern.
Because I was the executioner of everything that had happened. The human who humiliated the Infernals. The face the Vorthari had seen when I removed the mask — and that, with my identity revealed, could now be circulating through who knows how many worlds. I had no idea whether someone would recognize me upon stepping back onto the human planet. And, above all, I had no idea what they would do to me if they did.
I took in my hands the item that had been given to me by the epic box.
The small object, with its four biomes, weighed on my palm with something beyond physical weight.
And I thought that, whatever happened there, I wouldn't be alone — because with that item I could take some creatures with me to protect me. Arachne. The Urskra. Even Pegasus.
"Whatever happens…"
I closed my hand over the Vivarium.
"It's time."