He almost said it, but that voice saved him from the fate of surrendering himself for yet another time.
For a brief instant, a passing thought warned him that this could be yet another attempt to 'help' him with strings attached.
The voice even demanded that he follow its commands with an almost haughty candor.
But every doubt was wiped away the next instant when he realized it was Alice speaking. And one thing he had always been sure of… his soulmate will never demand payment or harbor unknown motives.
She had always helped him for the sole reason that he was him.
And because he was Ashen Hart, he could accept her help without hesitation.
He looked at the three Great Demons closing the distance again got back to his feet, spear raised
The long-limbed one came in, faster than ever, sensing the opening his trance had cost him.
He barely caught the strike on the shaft. The force of it drove him back six feet through the dirt.
'Do you trust me?'
The voice arrived inside him yet again.
Now he was sure it was not through the earpiece clipped to his collar, but from somewhere closer; from invisible shackles that had lived dormant in his chest since the night Alice had bound him with Carnal Directive Protocol,
It was a tether he'd forgotten was even active because she'd never once used it to compel him.
'Alice…?'
She was using it now.
'Is that even a question? I trust you completely.'
'Then shut up and do as I say.'
He didn't have the luxury of confusion. The long-limbed creature was already committing to its next strike, and a command landed inside him with authority.
Left. Now.
His body moved before his conscious mind finished processing the order, dropping low and rolling left, and the claws that would have opened his throat instead found empty air.
Up. Spear, throat, now.
He rose into the gap her command had identified and drove the spear upward.
To his utter astonishment, he found his spear traveling directly on an open path.
An opening!
"Ahhhh—!!!" he added all of his weight behind the thrust and then layered as much mana as he could in that split second, trying to emulate that unfothamble strike from earlier.
"DIE!!!"
The spear did not emulate the imperial strike, but its brutal violence was fully preserved, and it was enough.
The tip found exactly the angle she'd called, punching through the underside of the creature's jaw and out through the top of its skull.
two
He didn't have time to process the kill before the next command arrived.
Right shoulder, brace.
He twisted his shoulder into the incoming blow a half-second before he consciously understood why, and the strike that would have caved in his sternum instead glanced off bone reinforced by Riven Convergence, painful but survivable.
This was new.
Ashen did not understand how she was doing it. The commands did not exceed his limit, but what was truly unfathomable was how close to that limit they were.
What he did not know was that, as she'd spent every moment he was on the battlefield since the start of this war watching him fight from the command tent, she was recording every motion through the Echo Surveillance link, building a model of his body's capabilities and limitations down to the millisecond inside her Mind Repository.
And it was all thanks to the Fixation Mark living inside his soul.
Now, she knew his reach; she knew his recovery time on every stance. She knew, better than he did in the heat of the moment, exactly what his body could do if it stopped hesitating and simply obeyed.
The commands kept coming.
Forward. Pivot. Strike low.
Drop. Roll. Up again.
Block here. Now thrust.
At first, the gap between her voice arriving and his body executing the order cost him; a fraction of a second of lag, enough for the clicking Narkal's remaining ally to land a glancing hit across his ribs that would have been a clean kill if he were alone.
But the gap shrank.
Command after command, his body adjusted, learning the rhythm of her voice faster than his conscious mind could track the adjustment happening.
By the twentieth exchange, the words she used had already started shortening, full sentences collapsing into phrases, phrases collapsing into single syllables that carried entire intentions behind them.
"Left."
He understood it meant step left, drop your guard arm, prepare a low thrust along this exact trajectory, and his body simply did it, because somewhere in the last several minutes, he had stopped needing the full sentence to understand the full command.
"Now."
He drove the spear forward, and the brute folded around the strike with a sound like wet canvas tearing.
Three.
Only two remained.
The commander, and the last one standing beside it.
The simplest one—the one that had looked almost plain compared to the others—was gone.
Ashen had no idea when it had disappeared.
One moment, the pressure of its presence had still been there, faint but noticeable. The next, it had vanished entirely, as though it had been swallowed by the battlefield itself.
That absence was far more unsettling than its presence would have been.
The commander stopped issuing its low, guttural sounds.
It watched him with whatever passed for attention in a creature without visible eyes, and for the first time since the engagement began, it retreated half a step.
Ashen could feel it radiating from just the physical tells. caution.
It had seen enough to understand that the man in front of it was no longer the same man they had been toying with minutes ago.
"Forward."
He went forward.
"Faster."
His battered body found speed he did not know it still had.
The commander moved at the same instant, and the final Narkal followed like a shadow half a heartbeat behind. The two of them were no longer simply beasts closing in.
They were a pair making a coordinated edge.
Ashen felt the trap the moment it began to form. The commander angled him toward the right. The simpler one cut off on the left.
'A pincer.'
Their movement was beautiful, in the way only death could afford to be.
"Left," Alice said inside him.
His body obeyed, and the commander's strike passed through empty air.
"Down."
He dropped.
The simpler one's claws shredded the space above his head, gouging a trench through the dirt where his spine had been a moment earlier.
Ashen rose into the opening, spear already moving.
The commander shifted first, trying to absorb the angle, but Alice's voice came again, colder than the wind.
"Now."
He did not think. He simply obeyed.
The spear snapped forward in a line so precise it seemed less like his weapon and more like an extension of her will.
Mana gathered behind the thrust.
Ashen could feel it… her timing, her calculation, the invisible hand guiding the exact moment his body should strike.
The commander tried to retreat.
The simpler one lunged to save it.
"Throw."
He threw.
The spear left his hand without hesitation, spinning through the air in a silver-black arc.
It took the simpler Narkal through the center of the throat.
The impact twisted its head sideways with a sound like snapped cloth and shattered bone.
But Ashen was already moving.
He stepped through the opening the throw had created, caught the spear again through the mana still clinging to its shaft, and used the return to draw a second line of death across the commander's body.
Alice had seen it before he had. She had given him the angle.
He only had to become it.
"Up."
Ashen lifted.
The commander's counter came a breath too late.
The spear-point drove upward beneath its jaw, tearing through skull and ruin alike.
The creature convulsed once, then froze.
At the same time, the simpler one collapsed behind it, its throat split open from the earlier throw, blood spilling into the dirt in a dark, widening bloom.
Five.
Ashen stood among the corpses, breathing hard.
Blood ran freely down his arm, across his ribs, and from a dozen shallow wounds he could no longer be bothered to count.
'We did it...'
We did.
As the fever of battle began to recede, Ashen finally found enough clarity to understand what had happened.
Why did Alice seem to perceive so much more than he did? Why could she see what he could not, then guide him to react accordingly?
It all came down to a pair of traits within her Echo Surveillance Protocol.
Sensory Feed and Amplified Perception. The first allowed her to share his senses. The second amplified them.
In a sense, no matter how sharp his own perception became, when Alice used those traits on him, hers would always eclipse his.
sssttt…
He didn't get the breath to analyze things further.
A terrible pressure hit suddenly, making his instincts go haywire. There was no buildup or warning. The pressure turned into a physical weight that threatened to stomp over the entire field. It dropped every soldier within a hundred meters into an instinctive crouch, weapons forgotten.
Even the surrounding Narkals were no exception. The monsters that had moments ago been tearing through flesh now stood perfectly still, as if they had suddenly encountered a predator far higher on the food chain.
Ashen felt it too, but where the soldiers felt a diffuse, general terror, his felt aimed, like he was under a spotlight that had found exactly what it was looking for and had no further interest in anything else on the field.
He slowly turned toward the source.
There… A Narkal stood in the distance. It was tall, though not in the brute way of the dead Great Demons behind him. It stood roughly his own height plus a third again, its body lean and segmented like overlapping plates of dark, polished bone.
No fur or flesh appeared visible anywhere; just that armored, articulated shell, and as it moved, every motion carried a terrifying fluidity bringing a precision so flawless that even through Ashen's sharpened perception, he couldn't find a single wasted movement.
'I can't see a single flaw… It has no openings.'
Its head carried no eyes Ashen could see, only a smooth, faceless plate, and yet he had no doubt at all that it was looking directly at him.
Around its forearms, the bone plating extended into long, curved blades.
Unlike its lesser kin, it didn't bother to growl or posture. That was merely for the weak to threaten the strong. This creature clearly did not need to resort to such cheap tactics.
It simply tilted its head a few degrees, and then it was gone from where it stood.
"DOWN."
He dropped before his conscious mind understood why, and the curved blade passed through the space his throat had occupied a heartbeat earlier.
This was different from anything before it. He could feel that immediately, in the wrongness of the speed alone.
Besides… the pressure was eerily reminiscent of the time he faced Cassius.
'A Catastrophe.'
There was no doubt.
'That's the only possible answer.'
☽⟲✧⸸✧⟲☾
…
…
…
Reminder of Alice's path skills:
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Fixation Mark
Permanently designate one target that the host must feel lust towards.
Observing the target repeatedly builds a behavioral model: movement, speech, habitual timing, and tactical responses. Once sufficiently profiled, the model can be enacted by the host or uploaded into automatons to make them behave like the target.
Effectiveness scales with observation depth. Choice is irreversible; the Mark binds permanently
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Path Skill: Carnal Directive Protocol
A lust-fueled programming ritual that turns the target into an obedient flesh automaton whose body becomes an extension of the wielder's will.
Traits:
Enslavement Installation – Any target who engages in sexual intercourse with the wielder is automatically implanted with a permanent "Lust Protocol." This process occurs passively, without the need for conscious activation, binding the target's body as her personal automaton.
Command Override – The wielder can issue verbal or mental orders that completely override the target's bodily control. The target's body executes the commands with mechanical precision while their mind remains fully aware and helpless, experiencing the sensation of watching their own limbs move against their will.
If the target willingly aligns with the command, it acts as support rather than force, easing all actions and making each movement significantly more efficient.
Lust Overclock – Every order automatically amplifies the relevant physical, magical, or mental attribute based on the command's intent: the stronger and more specific the order, the greater the enhancement.
Circumstance Awareness – Upon issuing any order, the wielder instinctively receives clear knowledge of the target's immediate surroundings, allowing her to tailor commands perfectly to the environment and situation.
Reward Compulsion – After the automaton successfully completes an order or a set of orders, an intense lustful craving activates in the slave toward the mistress. She is forced to fulfill the slave's specific lustful desires according to his own tastes. If she resists, the skill overrides her body, compelling her to comply without exception.
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Path Skill: Echo Surveillance Protocol
A remote sensory link that turns an already-bound Lust Automaton into a living surveillance drone, feeding the wielder perfect environmental awareness through the target's own senses.
Traits:
Link Restriction – This skill can only activate on a target who has already been bound through Carnal Directive Protocol or an automation created by the skill wielder. It creates a permanent one-way sensory connection with that specific automation.
Sensory Feed – The wielder can tune into the target's own senses (sight, hearing, and spatial awareness) at any time and from any distance, perceiving the world exactly as the automaton experiences it.
Amplified Perception – The clarity, range, and detail of the surveillance increase directly with the wielder's concentration on the target. The higher the focus, the finer the details she can detect.
Passive Monitoring – The link can run passively in the background, alerting the wielder to significant changes in the target's surroundings, or she may actively "zoom in" for deeper reconnaissance.
Automata Interface – While monitoring, the wielder can seamlessly combine the live sensory feed with Carnal Directive Protocol to issue perfectly informed, circumstance-aware commands without needing any report from the target.
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