Nearly a week of investment and evolution.
Externally, the Hero's Temple had changed little — same structure, same stone, same position in the territory. Internally, everything. I had learned not to trust the appearance of things in the Oasis.
[ Evolution complete. Summoning permitted. ]
I stepped forward without hesitating.
"Please… Epic. Or legendary."
I knew it was madness — the probability of a unique summoning was low enough that praying for it was more gesture than calculation. But faced with a Zhur'kai Lord-King marching toward human territory, I needed something absurd. I needed someone who would change the equation in ways I couldn't predict.
I tore my hand on the handle.
The pain was still as intense as the first time — the flesh tore with the same precision, without adaptation, without accumulated tolerance. The system didn't allow the body to learn to ignore it.
But the anxiety was greater. The desire was greater. And together they were enough that I didn't hesitate.
The colors spun. Purple. Gold. Red. They oscillated with the instability of something that hadn't yet decided where to stop — and for a second that felt longer than it was, I didn't know what was coming.
They stopped between orange and red.
[ Legendary-Unique Summoning granted. ]
I held my breath.
Legendary-Unique.
Heroes on the threshold between two rarities were souls that had died too early to reach their peak — too strong for the level where they existed, too immature for the next. Terrifying and incomplete potential at the same time. The kind of summoning that could have been everything, but had been interrupted.
The light condensed.
A silhouette emerged.
Tall. Elegant. Skin pale as marble under the golden light — not the paleness of weakness, but of something that had existed far enough from the sun for paleness to become a characteristic, not an absence. Long dark hair fell like silk down her back. Her eyes were intense, calculating, with the quality of a gaze that assesses before deciding whether to show that it assessed.
She wore light armor adorned with symbols I didn't recognize — ritualistic, with the density of writing that carried meaning beyond decoration. Her presence was overwhelming in a way I hadn't anticipated. Not strength — presence. The difference between something that occupies space and something that reorganizes the space around it.
I was so focused on analyzing her status that I only realized too late that I had been staring for too long.
She stepped forward. Confident. Controlled. And knelt.
"My Lord… my name is Livina."
✦
She was beautiful in a way that belonged to another category of problem.
The upper half was human with the precision of something designed to be remembered — proud posture, steady gaze, presence that didn't need volume to occupy space. The lower half was something else entirely. The body of a colossal scorpion, black as polished obsidian, with natural plates that reflected light like living armor. The tail arched behind her with the specific elegance of something that had evolved to be lethal and had found grace in the process.
My heart skipped a beat.
"Aqrabuamelu…" — I murmured. — "I thought you were extinct for centuries."
She blinked. And for the first time since she had appeared, the composure faltered — not fear, not surprise, but something deeper than both.
"So… we perished?"
Summonings didn't know the fate of their races until they were called. She had existed at some point where the future was still open — and woken here to discover it had closed.
"I'm sorry."
She held my gaze for a moment. Then responded with the steadiness of someone who had processed the news faster than I expected.
"Don't be. If we were exterminated, it was because we chose to believe in something. And paid the price for it."
Aqrabuamelu. One of the oldest recorded races — intelligent, advanced, with the specific pacifism of something that had looked at its own power and decided that using it wasn't worth what it would cost to become. It was said that, if they had wanted to, they could have dominated. But they never wanted to. And out of fear of what they might become, they were hunted by the Aquamarines to extinction.
I was still processing when I realized something was wrong with the logic of the summoning.
The second summoning was supposed to follow proximity to the first — same race or genetically close. But Morgana and Livina seemed completely different in everything I could observe.
"Morgana… do you recognize Livina?"
Before Morgana could respond, Livina turned sharply. And knelt — not with the formality of a heroine acknowledging a Lord, but with the weight of something older.
"Princess… so you too…"
I froze.
Princess.
Morgana looked uncomfortable — not embarrassed, but with the specific discomfort of someone who had left something behind and hadn't expected it to find her here.
"Rise. I don't deserve that treatment… especially not now."
I looked from one to the other.
"Morgana."
She breathed deeply.
"Lord… the Aqrabuamelu and my race shared the same solar system. We are… distant cousins."
That explained the genetic proximity that had guided the summoning. But it opened a much larger question — about who Morgana had been before arriving here, about what "Princess" meant in the context of a race she had described as not known for power.
I filed it away for later. There were questions that needed the right moment to be asked.
"Livina. What is your power?"
My greatest concern was having summoned another healer — two supports and zero additional combatants was an imbalance the Zhur'kai would resolve with ease. She only smiled softly. Pointed toward the distant forest. Recited some words in a language that sounded like wind brushing leaves — not a human sound, but the sound of something that had learned to speak at the same time it had learned to exist.
The ground trembled.
Six trees nearly thirty meters tall began to move. Roots detached from the soil with the sound of something that had been there for decades and had decided it was time to go somewhere else. Trunks bent. Wooden arms emerged. They walked toward me — and knelt.
"They are Treebeard." — Livina said. — "Guardians of life. Strong. Faithful. They know no fear."
Summoners were exceedingly rare — as rare as healers, but fundamentally different. Summons didn't hesitate. Didn't retreat. Didn't weigh risk against outcome. They executed with the completeness of something that didn't have enough ego to be afraid.
"This… changes everything."
With Morgana and Livina, my defense stopped being static. It became organic — capable of regenerating, expanding, responding to threats in ways that walls and towers simply couldn't.
However, when she finally rose and approached, one of her attributes brushed my face.
It wasn't subtle.
"Miss Livina… could you cover yourself?"
She tilted her face slightly. The smile that appeared was provocative — not innocent, not accidental. The kind of smile that communicates that the person knows exactly the effect they're causing and is evaluating whether to press it.
"Are you uncomfortable, my Lord?"
"I'm focused."
She laughed softly. Didn't press. But the smile remained — held in reserve, as though to be resumed at a more convenient moment for her.
✦
I led Livina to the river after resolving the clothing matter — with the efficiency of someone who had decided that was a logistical problem, not another kind of problem.
The river ran too far from the wall. It had always been my most obvious weak point — the vulnerability that any sufficiently patient enemy would identify and use, as the Chimera had done. My idea of diverting its course inside the walls had existed from the beginning, blocked by the fundamental limitation of workers: they mined, cut wood, built, dug simple holes on the territory's periphery. Nothing beyond that.
Barbavores, on the other hand, had no clear territorial limitations.
"Livina. Can your summons dig a trench from the wall to the river?"
She analyzed the terrain with the eyes of someone calculating variables I couldn't fully see. Her eyes lit up with genuine interest — not performance, but the real recognition of a well-formulated problem.
"Yes. They can. Four days."
Four days. If the river were inside the walls: infinite water, sustainable production, end of market dependency for a basic resource, resistance to the kind of siege that had almost destroyed me two weeks earlier. It was the piece that had been missing from the beginning — I had built a territory capable of surviving attacks and incapable of surviving waiting.
"I'll position the Urskra to protect your summons. Do you need to be outside the territory to command them?"
"Yes. My bond requires proximity."
"Morgana will be on the wall. Any threat, she'll give you support until I arrive."
Livina moved slightly closer.
"Are you worried about me, Lord?"
I ignored it. She sighed theatrically — but her eyes showed something different from the smile. Respect, perhaps. Or the evaluation still in progress.
"Begin the work."
I went back inside the walls. Breathed deeply.
"Damn… I really am surrounded by dangerous women."
✦
[ Construction initiated: 5 warriors. Estimated time: 5 hours. ]
I looked at the territory.
I had arrived at the Oasis with a staff, a cube, and zero experience with anything the Oasis had decided was relevant. I had lost every battle in some way — against the Wendigos, against the vampire, against the Chimera — and found a way out of each of them by a margin I preferred not to calculate precisely.
Now.
Urskra at 99 percent bond. Pegasus. A legendary healer. A legendary-unique summoner with Treebeard capable of solving the water problem that had almost destroyed me. Capital enough to turn all of this into permanent structure.
And the Zhur'kai marching.
I had learned to calculate survival probability since the first day — it was the exercise the Oasis forced on any Lord who wanted to last more than a week. The answer had been low for long enough that I had learned not to trust it as a metric.
But now, for the first time since I had arrived, I calculated and the number didn't frighten me.
It wasn't certainty. The Oasis didn't offer certainty.
But I had Morgana. I had Livina. I had four tamed colossi and a fledgling that had descended from the sky in the last second of a battle I was losing and had changed the outcome alone.
I had a territory that had survived things it shouldn't have survived.
The Chimera had been the test.
The Zhur'kai would be the war.
And for the first time — not out of optimism, not out of the need to believe in something, but out of cold calculation applied to what I actually had — I felt that perhaps I was ready.
Perhaps.