Josh had expected Phong to move.
So he moved first.
The raid came at night, earlier than the date he had fed to the media, because Josh was not stupid enough to believe Phong would sit still and wait for a public countdown to reach zero. He pushed his army of divers across Floor 1 under darkness, using the meadow route toward Death Peak and trusting the night to hide numbers that would have looked far less heroic in daylight.
They had prepared for the approach.
Each diver had sprayed on a special deodorant made through one of the Harlan companies. The scent mimicked goblins well enough to foul up ordinary monster tracking, or so Josh had been told. To him, that meant the trolls and the Greencaps' mounts would not know what was coming until human steel was already at their throats.
It was the kind of trick Josh loved.
Clever on paper, cruel in practice. It was built on the assumption that everyone else was as shallow in their bonds as he was.
Because Josh thought he understood Phong.
He thought Phong had carved out Camp Stymphalian the way Josh himself would have done it if he had access to a garden full of mutated plants. With force, intimidation, and enough strength to make monsters tolerate his presence while secretly hating him.
Josh was a colonialist through and through. That was in his blood, in his family history, in the generational wealth that had raised him. Land existed to be taken, natives existed to serve their superior race, and alliances were just domination with nicer branding.
So he expected weak ties built on fear alone.
He expected a camp held together by coercion. He expected that, even if the "stain" was smart enough to see through his motive, the trolls would ignore the warning of a farmer they "hated".
What he did not know was that Phong was allied with almost every strong faction on Floor 1 except the Black Ants. Except for the Greencap Bunnies, his relationship with the trolls and the lizardmen indeed started out pretty tense, and they did not show him respect until he earned it with their blood. But that was just monsters logic. Phong had always chosen to deescalate, find the middle ground, and co-exist peacefully with the monsters whenever he could.
Phong might not know the exact hour Josh would strike, but he knew the route. He knew human logic. And by extension, he knew where an army that wanted Death Peak while avoiding the Black Ant Colony and the Greencap cavalry lanes would have to pass.
So when Josh's force reached the meadow that night, they did not find an open path.
They found thousands Mushroompires.
The fungal humanoids were still furious, still agitated from the cold ambush near Lake Baratok and the forced transport that had dumped them right where human ambition would trip over fungal rage.
The first contact was chaos.
Diver lights flashed in the dark. Mushroompires surged out of the meadow in waves of hostile motion, caps flaring, bodies twisting, making strange sound like a plastic tube being spun. Thousand of voices echoed off each other, harmonized in a hymn of fungal warfare, making the whole field alive with the kind of mushroom aggression Josh had not planned for.
His front line hit the first cluster and stalled immediately. Men shouted. Weapons came out. Skills lit the dungeon night.
Then the trolls were made aware.
On Death Peak, deep voices rose in warning. Fires flared up in front of every caves, every caverns. Horns of stone and bone sounded through the mountain paths. The tribe had not been surprised after all, thanks to being informed by their farmer.
And at the gate, Rico was already ready.
The raccoon, nocturnal by nature and vibrating with battle energy, had barely been containing himself since sundown. The moment the distant noise rolled in, he was there, eyes bright, tail twitching profusely, the small treant already hung on his back.
Phong stood at the gate waiting.
He heard the first clash, heard the war cry of the Mushroompires, tilted his head once, and only shrugged.
"Should have known that bastard would pull a trick like this."
Rico bounced on the his feet. "I'm going."
Phong held out several packs of instant coffee.
Rico took them with reverence.
No buffs plants, because Phong knew exactly how bad it would be getting the garlics, the gingers, the limes on cam. The 1% didn't push toward Death Peak themselves when Josh tried exposing camp because the defensive variants weren't interesting for them. Sweet potatoes that acted like clubs, Enoki Mushrooms that shot like Gatling were novel, but they already had a trillion dollar industry in weapons manufacturing.
Weaker artilleries that could not be moved once planted, while cheap, quickly lost their values.
And so, the risks of pushing for Death Peak through treacherous terrains to expose camp Stymphalian far outweighed its rewards.
But the equation changed once the consumables variants were caught in cam, and everything Emma had warned Phong that day would become a reality he would hate to exist in.
He would be used by people like the Harlans and the Ellisons again.
His finding would usher in a new worldwide conflict over the dungeon. And worst case: world war 3.
So, Phong didn't give Rico any consumables, not because the raccoon was any less treasured to him than team Nemean, but because of the risks.
"Come back alive," Phong said.
That cut through the mania more cleanly than any order could have.
Rico looked at him once, serious for a heartbeat.
Then nodded.
And vanished into the dark.
He moved fast up the mountain routes, faster than most humans would have guessed possible, especially for something his size. By the time he reached a good vantage point, the battlefield had already shifted.
Josh's army had regained its footing.
For all his flaws, Josh was not incompetent in live combat, and his divers had enough numbers and levels to stop the first Mushroompire surge from swallowing them outright. The front had stabilized, skills flashed across the meadow. Fungal bodies burst under coordinated strikes. Human formation lines were beginning to form under shouted orders.
They actually had the advantage against the Mushroompires now.
Rico clicked his tongue.
That would not do.
Rico had watched a lot of human television. From them, he had learnt that the best outcome of a fight between your enemies was for both sides to suffer heavy losses. Running through the raccoon head right now was but one thought: he needed to fan the flame.
He darted higher, up toward the troll positions, and found the king among the gathered warriors. Goat-headed, red moss hanging from his back, broad shoulders hunched with the heavy stillness of a someone who decide how much blood was going to shed tonight.
Rico did not waste time.
"Join fight," he said at once, jabbing a paw down toward the meadow. "Join Mushroompires. Crush human."
Some of the trolls grumbled at that. Mushroompires were not kin, not allies, not even allies of the farmer, they were just another weird thing in Phong's plan.
The king looked down at him, silently observe the raccoon.
Rico pointed again. "Human wants mountain. Mushroompires angry but losing. Human win, trolls face them. Heavy loss. Trolls hit. Human can't win. Tribe remain many."
That was enough to convince the troll king, as he heard reason in Rico's voice - an honorary member of the tribe.
He lifted one huge arm and roared an order.
And so, the mountain moved.
Trolls poured down in the dark like a landslide with legs.
When the trolls moved, so did the allied force, as per their agreement with Phong.
And suddenly the fight turned from human versus mushroom into human versus everything.
The Tortura had already taken positions from cover farther back, where dark stone and broken rises gave them clean lines without exposing their aging bodies. Their arrows started falling into the diver ranks with terrifying calm. They were experienced, that much was certain. Maybe not against human, but the strategies were similar enough. They sniped the healers first, then aimed for the casters. The Tortura upheld their agreement with Phong and refrained from taking life outright. But a hand with a hole punched clean through by an arrow was enough to make most modern men fainted from pain alone. Then, their arrows found the officers who answered directly to Josh.
At the same time, the Kamohai hit from the side.
The sharkfolk came in low and hard, using the flank where human attention was already fraying under too many threats. Fast in bursts, brutal up close, they tore into the edges of the diver formation with the raw confidence of mercenaries who had been paid in food and expected to earn every bite. Thei wield weapons made from their own teeth in deadly precision, leaving gashed wounds that kept on bleeding even when healing skills were used.
Then came the Wolven.
All three juveniles wolf centaur saw Josh, and immediately agreed, with the total instinct of a warrior species, that he was the biggest fish on the field. they did not even need to discuss it. They had seen Josh as the target that would help them complete their rite.
A long howl sent shiver down Josh's spine as he instinctively felt 3 pairs of hungry, bloodshot, battle crazed eyes locked on to him. He turned to look just in time to see three Wolven launched toward him together.
For the first time that night, Joshua Harlan looked genuinely rattled.
Because a battlefield could be spun, a camera angle could be managed.
But three war-hungry Wolven deciding you looked fun to kill was harder to edit.
Rico watched from a rise above the fight and felt wild delight rising in his chest.
It was going well.
Too well, maybe.
The Mushroompires, trolls, Kamohai, Tortura, and Wolven were folding the field in ways Josh's army had not expected. Human lines bent, then broke, then reformed uglier each time. The meadow was turning into exactly the kind of nightmare Phong had wanted it to be.
Rico began to think he might not need one of his new forms after all.
That was before Josh's reinforcements came.
At first, Rico only heard the noise. The movement was fast, heavy, but uniformed. It was organized to be panicked retreat, yet too disciplined to be wandering monsters. Most importantly, around the meadows, there were only two species of monsters with that kind of orderliness. The first was obviously the Black Ant, but the sounds Rico heard wasn't the skittering of ants. The second was the lizardmen, but the lizardmen was not that heavy to made this thumping noise just by running.
Then the shapes emerged.
Olen.
And behind him, an army of tamed trolls.
Rico's grin faltered.
Below, the battlefield reacted instantly.
Some of Death Peak's trolls hesitated, confused about the present of these new creatures. The newcomers smelled like kins, but with a wrong sense of human. They looked familiar enough, but they seemed to be not part of the king influence.
And Olen's trolls were confused too.
The moment they came within range of the true king's presence, something in them seemed to catch. Their line wavered, their heads turned toward Death Peak. Some of them slowed down. Some let out uncertain sounds deep in their throats. Yet, in the end, they refused to be integrated into the troll king tribe. Olen felt this shift in his trolls and let out a sigh of relief. His fingers around the hilt of the Vorpal Sword loosen.
Olen then looked toward the Death Peak, toward the troll king, and wondered what would happen if he were to eat the king flesh raw. Would he be able to control the entire Death Peak by assume the king's form?
His thought was cut by the arrow of the Tortura, forcing him to retreat back behind his trolls.
In the middle of the human push, with Mushroompires shrieking, Kamohai circling, Tortura sniping like deadly phantom, trolls charging and Wolven trying to tear Josh apart, the field suddenly gained a new axis of uncertainty. And the small raccoon who had stayed an observer until now was about to add so many different levels of chaos to the meadow down below.
Rico squinted his eyes and observe the battle one last time.
The battlefield was already chaos. Josh's force was wavering, Olen had arrived and made everything worse. Trolls were confused, mushroompires were still tearing at anything that moved, and the coalition had momentum but not enough to end it cleanly before rich idiots found another way to survive.
So the raccoon took matters into his own paws.
He planted himself on the slope of the mountain and yelled at the top of his lungs, "Chou Henshin! Fortress Form!"
The baby treant on his back, already pushed hard tonight, answered anyway.
Wood, vines, and other plant matters wrapped around Rico in mere seconds.
This form was different from the Judgement Form he had used against the Wolven. The silhouette rounded out, becoming broader and heavier in the torso. Roots shot down from the boots and drilled into the mountainside, locking Rico in place. The backplate split open in layered sections like the shell of some mechanical seed pod. His gauntlets unfolded too, opening hidden seams at strategic locations.
Now, Rico started looking like an artillery battery.
The first volley came all at once.
Chilies pods blasted out in streaks of red-green fire, Enoki caps snapped loose and spat rapid bursts, Carrockets launched with shrill force trails, Ice Lime projectiles arced out in pale blue flashes and burst on impact into freezing mist and slippery death.
Rico cackled like the hyperactive raccoon he was as the rain of 4 different kind of vegetable projectiles rained down upon the divers.
Josh saw the barrage and felt his soul leave his body for one long second.
He knew those plants.
Knew them too well.
For a brief, cursed moment, his face went blank with the exact same haunted disbelief soldiers got when an old nightmare came back louder than before. It was the kind of look people joked about in "Vietnam flashback" memes, except there was nothing funny about it on Josh's face now.
He opened his mouth, probably to scream about mutated plants, or camp Stymphalian.
But another A-class diver beat him to it first.
"There!" the diver shouted, pointing toward the mountain slope. "That weird treant on the mountain slope!"
Rico's position stood out now, Fortress Form was subtle in exactly zero ways. It was big, round, and menacing. The roots, the armor, the little treant-grown siege silhouette bolted to the side of the mountain, all of it was too strange to miss once someone saw it.
Rico saw Olen at the same time.
And his tiny raccoon heart immediately decided that lv21 farmer was now target practice.
"Oho," he said. "Rich weed found."
Three Carrockets fired in rapid sequence.
They screamed across the battlefield toward Olen.
The heir barely had time to register the incoming before the missiles hit his position and exploded hard enough to tear up the mud around him in a violent bloom of dirt, stone, and fire. Olen was thrown sideways and rolled across the ground in a thoroughly undignified mess, losing all the sleek, calm and collected optics he had been trying to build the moment his body started tumbling through mud like expensive trash.
The Vorpal Sword flew from his hand.
One of the Wolven saw it instantly, and pounced.
The juvenile hit the weapon before anyone else could react, snatched it cleanly from the mud, and skipped away with the delighted look of a youth who had just stolen a legendary knife from a rich idiot in the middle of war.
Olen scrambled up, saw the empty hand, saw the Wolven running with his deadliest weapon, and something in him broke.
"My sword!"
Then he looked at the battlefield again, at the trolls, the mushroompires, the Kamohai, the Tortura, that weird living artillery line, and whatever composure he had left finally gave way.
He screamed toward Josh, voice raw with panic, "Retreat!"
That was when the final nail to their coffin started approaching.
The Greencap army was coming.
Not fully committed just yet, but visible enough now in the distance that everyone on the field could see the shape of it. The cavalry line had arrived near the edge of the meadow. Flame-horn wildebeests stamped and snorted under their riders, but they had not charged.
The Greencap knight captain watched from afar, war banners flapped vigorously behind him, making him looked like a winged hussar. He was calm as ever, not moving his force in because the wildebeests' poor eyesight made a night charge through this kind of mess too risky. Even then, his presence alone changed the feeling of the field. Everyone knew that if the knights committed, the retreat routes would turn into a slaughter.
Before the coalition could fully capitalize on that pressure, another problem burst in.
Professional, heavily armed private body guards burst into the meadow.
They came from Josh's side in disciplined lines, laying down enough concentrated firepower and skill pressure to push the advancing coalition back by sheer force. Guns weren't enough to turn the tide of the battle, but pure fire power from semi automatic riffles was enough to stop the collapse from becoming a massacre.
Dominic would have cursed the timing.
Phong, somewhere far off, would have expected it. The sun would have to rise from the west before an heir of the elite showed up in a battle field his father created. At least not without a freaking private army disguised as "security".
Josh saw the bodyguards, saw the Greencap cavalry in the distance, saw his line fraying, saw Olen weaponless and panicking, and finally bit down on his ego hard enough to make the smart call.
"Fall back!" he roared. "Now!"
It clearly cost him something to say it.
The divers began pulling out in rushed, ugly order, dragging wounded, covering each other, retreating before the Greencap knights could decide the distance was good enough after all.
The coalition pressed as hard as they safely could. Kamohai harried the flanks, Tortura arrows kept punishing the slowest bodies, The trolls roared triumph from the mountain, Mushroompires kept chasing to vent their bloodthirst. Rico, locked into the slope and laughing like a tiny war criminal, kept firing until Fortress Form sputtered and the baby treant nearly passed out from strain.
By the time the field began to truly clear, Josh's forces were gone from the meadow.
On the slope, Rico let the last artillery ports close and wheezed proudly. "Rico remains strategic genius."
Then the roots released, the armor sagged, and he tipped sideways into the dirt like an exhausted cannoneer who had fired himself empty.
The war, and Josh's ambition, might not be over.
But tonight, it had gone badly for the bastard.
Very badly.