(IC) Chapter 323 - This is War

“So it’s a bottleneck?” Alonso asked as he stared at the holographic diagram of his nervous and musculoskeletal system.

Several nodes along the virtual body pulsed rhythmically, with faint filaments of energy webbing out from each. They flickered in soft hues of blue and violet, indicating stress points where the neural energy flow choked and stuttered.

“I’ve run a ton of simulations,” Houston replied. “Fifty by fifty grid around each equilibrium point. I tried gradient descent, Monte Carlo, even some of the Aether heuristic systems. This configuration is the best I could find. All the other stable points collapse under pressure. The few higher peaks exist—sure—but they’re inherently unstable. They’d break you within microseconds.”

He adjusted the sleeve of his lab coat, the hem trailing close to the polished mahogany floor of the chamber. The curved windows behind him let in golden light from the setting sun, painting the lab in a warm, fading amber.

“Hmm… I figured cross-referencing with the Ajnal patterns would give us more than just a 5.36% drop in energy consumption,” Alonso murmured, rubbing his chin. His stubble rasped beneath his fingers. He made a note to either shave or just let the beard grow.

He sighed and turned toward the broad window. Beyond the glass, the ocean stretched into the horizon. Waves moved with a silent, hypnotic rhythm.

“Alright, so in essence, either we need more SP, higher Body and Pillar State, or… a new methodology to push past the current barrier. Which would mean—”

“Redefining the algorithm completely. Yes.”

“Got it. I’ll think of a way. Let’s move to the next point.” Alonso turned, and in the next instant both he and Houston warped smoothly, appearing seated at a broad wooden table. Across from them sat Darius.

Alonso leaned forward. “So this is what we have.”

As his words fell, a 3D holographic map of the northern expanse pulsed into being above the table. Markers—red, blue, green, and grey—glimmered across its surface.

“On the bad side: last 24 hours, 12 Sun Bearers dead, 208 Lords of Sparks lost. One advanced outpost fell. Eastern Front—Noh had to pull back again. They’ve got only one bastion left at the Fallen Tail.” He exhaled. “On the good side—we destroyed one nest, put down two Wardens. And eight Lords ascended to Sun Bearers.”

Houston’s voice carried on. “Casualty rate rising to 14.7% per day cycle. At current trajectory, Eastern Front collapses in less than 36 hours. Probability of six-tail appearance in that corridor: 19.2%, plus or minus 3.4. Average nest regeneration in destroyed sectors: six days, range four to nine.”

Alonso exhaled, hands on the table. “Essentialy, we’re buying ground with lives and barely slowing them.”

Darius leaned back, lips curling faintly. “Then stop pushing straight. They expect weight where the walls are thickest. Thin your presence there. Let them press forward—just enough. Pull them into choke-points, then collapse tunnels behind them. Turn their advance into a coffin.”

Houston flicked his hand, data shifting on the map. “Loss projections under feint-retreat strategy: reduction of 22.1% in short-term casualties. Risk—enemy adapts within four cycles, probability 82%.”

Alonso drummed his fingers on the table. “So we’d buy time. At least a week.”

“Better than bleeding out in place,” Darius said coolly. “And while they think they’re winning, you can prepare a strike elsewhere. Their nests feed their strength. Take the hidden ones while they’re distracted.”

Houston added, “If we redistribute Sun Bearers westward during the feint, likelihood of neutralizing two secondary nests rises to 61.8%.”

Alonso’s eyes narrowed. “Risky, but workable. Draw them east, choke them there, then strike west while their heads are turned.”

Darius smiled thinly. “Exactly.”

“Sounds good.” Alonso turned to Houston. “Can you organize that?”

“Sure.”

Alonso refocused on the map. Numbers flared in his head as he ran outcomes against the proposed strategy.

Fighting the Xok’al for more than a week had been anything but easy—especially with him branded as their public enemy number one. Dozens of assassination attempts came each day, and their creativity only grew sharper. Yet he had learned as well: their patterns, their adaptations, the way their collective mind processed war.

In that time, he had gone from a novice in warfare to someone who understood the larger picture. His perfect memory let him recall the smallest mention from History classes, documentaries, or even the few cavalry novels he read in high school—glimpses of Earth’s military strategies and battles. And with that, he could do more than replicate them. He—and, well, Houston and Darius—refined them, pushed them further: one step forward, or several.

After a while, Alonso shifted his gaze to Darius. “Wanna go for—”

Suddenly an alarm blared.

The atmosphere in the room snapped taut. Alonso’s eyes locked with Houston’s, and without a word he cut the link, vanishing from the virtual space.

Darkness swallowed him. Cold. Bitter cold.

His body, dormant in suspended metabolic state, surged awake as every microcapacitor flared alive.

And then he moved.

He tore through rock and snow, bursting from underground into the surface world. Energy roared through his frame in an explosive surge.

Blades flashed into his hands as snow and stone erupted around him, steam rising where the heat ripped moisture from the air.

One step carried him a dozen meters. Sparks crackled in his wake.

Ahead, the Warden turned, four bladed limbs snapping into motion. Its gaze locked with his—and Alonso felt it. Killing intent. He didn’t need to look to know. Snipers had him in their sights.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The mountains answered. Hidden EM cannons thundered, detonations ripping the snowpack into a swirling blizzard. A smokescreen.

Alonso’s EM pulses surged, threading through every muscle, every nerve, every twitch. Blades ready as he blurred forward, zigzagging through the debris.

SWOOSH! SWOOSH!

The snipers fired, rounds slicing past at impossible speeds. But snow masked his path, each step a gamble. Less than two-tenths of a second to live or die.

He pressed harder. The Warden advanced, sparks crackling in the air from his active skill, but Alonso didn’t falter. His boots cracked stone, snow vaporizing in his face, steam hissing off his skin. Heart hammering, pulse spiking, senses narrowed to a razor edge.

Blades flashed.

The Warden struck.

But no clashing sound came.

Alonso’s form flickered, a storm of afterimages. The Warden’s guard faltered—then dark blood sprayed across white snow.

The dirt from the explosions was still hanging in the air when Alonso’s second strike split its severed head in two.

He brushed his arm against the orb.

Stage 1 – 21.893%

No-Strike – 13.983%

Then he vanished backward, boots skidding, sending an EM signal.

The ground erupted beneath him as his cannons opened again, detonations covering his retreat.

Alonso crouched low, energy coiling through his frame, blades alive with current. In a blur of motion he slipped into the waiting tunnel, the world above swallowed by smoke, blood, and snow.

“General,” A Sun Bearer appeared before him, bowing as they ran in stride.

Alonso didn’t slow. “Seal that entrance. Regroup with G3. Deploy decoys on Five. Plan-shift to T-pattern.”

The man dashed away at once.

The map of the underground spread in his mind—arteries of earth and stone carved for war. He accelerated, body ghosting through the black tunnels at over 200 kilometres an hour.

Pulses rippled upward from him, encrypted bursts shifting every two minutes on a rolling cycle, each key nested within a secondary code that rotated daily. His Sun Bearers all knew it by heart. The Xok’al had cracked their language long ago, but they would never hold his ciphers.

Commands lanced out from him, hundreds in seconds—orders for reroutes, detonations, replacements. Visuals and brief text-reports came back, superimposed over his vision.

—Eastern underground passages collapsing inward. Xok’al sweeping tunnels in force.

—Four EM cannons silenced by Warden snipers.

—One more Sun Bearer fallen.

—Tunnel A6 compromised. Choke-points Three and Six detonated, sealed.

Without asking, Houston sent directly into his mind all the processed data at once. Casualty curves. Possible relocations. Enemy convergence rates. Every pulse of information folded into his mind, reorganised, cross-referenced, archived. Dozens of men dying by the seconds, numbers ticking down like the slow bleed of a clock.

He kept running, boots hammering, blades sparking against stone. The cruelty of it was something he no longer had to imagine. He knew. He had ordered deaths in the dozens, the hundreds. A single Warden, dragged down, cost them rivers of blood.

And still—his mind refused to stop. With Houston’s help, they calculated fresh choke-points, counter-sniper strategies, possible feints. Each solution stacked over another, simulations running in parallel until only the most efficient path survived.

The weight of it all pressed in. Yet his pulse remained steady. He had no choice. This was the cost of war, of survival.

And Alonso paid it without hesitation.

He—

CRACK!!

The ground ahead split wide open.

Alonso’s boots screeched against the stone as he skidded back, pulse spiking. That breach wasn’t ordered by him.

Which meant—

They had found him.

How? He’d triple-checked the masking fields, shifted codes, sealed the trails—

No. Think later.

Figures dropped through the gap, large humanoid bodies tearing through the snow and dirt. Wardens.

His jaw clenched. Turn or push?

He sent dozens of signals outward in an instant… and surged forward.

Angles, vectors, and timings aligned in his mind as he micromanaged every movement of his body through his deep Understanding of Self.

He predicted the Wardens’ arcs before they struck, mapping gaps that didn’t yet exist, and found the path through it all.

He didn't hesitate. His burst technique ignited, EM pulses resonating violently through his internal capacitors. The second activation in such a short span would tear him apart—but there was no better alternative.

His blood thundered as Dual Overdrive slammed into full force, fusing with the EM boost. His body became a hyper-accelerated machine, every nerve screaming, every contraction way beyond human tolerance.

The world slowed. Dirt and debris hung weightless, frozen in mid-air. Shafts of light pierced through gaps in the smoke and snow, beams shimmering like glass in the void.

And Alonso’s blades flashed.

A faint slash—barely perceptible. He crouched, rotated quickly, and thrust the second blade backwards, piercing clean through the first Warden’s heart.

Muscles tore as filaments snapped under the strain, pain detonating through him, but he locked it down, controlling the damage with raw will.

A shard cut through the dark, spinning, sparking. He sidestepped by a hair’s breadth. It brushed his shoulder, slicing leather and fur, the wind of it carving his skin and drawing blood. He gritted his teeth, twisted into the gap, and pressed forward.

The tunnel ahead erupted. More Wardens crashed through the smoke and snow, sparks spilling like stars.

His men were moving EM cannons into place, but it would take time and… the coverage wouldn’t be enough.

Alonso leapt, boots skimming fractured stone as he darted between their offensive arcs. Every movement shaved fractions from the impossible.

All of them triggered their active skills at once. Rotating shards exploded from their backs in a blizzard of metal. The entire tunnel filled with a storm of death and explosions.

They weren’t holding back.

The Xok’al had come full force to kill him outright—paying the cost with no hesitation.

Alonso’s jaw clenched as the truth sank in. As much as he’d planned, as many contingencies as he’d designed, as deeply as he’d studied their rhythm…

He had failed to stay ahead.

The Xok’al had outsmarted him.

Cold sweat cut across his brow despite the frozen air.

Dozens of limbs gleamed in the dark—axe-like, sword-edged, spear-tipped. More than thirty tails locked onto him, each projectile primed for a synchronized kill shot.

The tunnel shrieked with their advance, metal grinding against stone, sparks cascading down the black walls.

Alonso stood against the storm of chitin and steel, the endless cold eyes of the Xok’al fixed on him from every angle of the tunnel. The air itself felt heavy, alive with static, as bladed shards spun in place like a hundred serrated stars waiting to fall.

He took a single breath. Cold air cut his lungs. Heat burned in his veins.

His hands tightened around the hilts of his swords.

And then—under the full extension of everything he was—he pressed forward.