Chapter 240: Humanity’s Simulation (Part 4)
The last simulation faded, and the endless blue returned around them. For a long time, nobody said anything.
Everyone was still somewhere else in their own head, thinking about the plans, the relics, the civilizations they’d just watched rise and fall in front of them.
Kai finally looked toward the Candidate. "...We’ve watched."
A pause.
"...We’ve analyzed."
"...We’ve improved."
He took a breath. "But none of us actually knows what it’s like to stand there."
Silence.
Raze crossed his arms. "I was about to ask the same thing."
Sera smiled faintly. "If we’re going to prepare for this, I want to know what we’re actually preparing for."
Lily hesitated. "...You’re seriously asking to fight Disaster?"
Kai shook his head. "Not to win." He looked around at everyone. "To understand."
The Candidate stayed silent for several seconds.
Then he smiled slowly. "...Very well."
...
He raised one hand, and the blue world rippled around them.
"This simulation will be different."
Everyone focused on him.
"I cannot recreate Tiamat herself." He paused. "But I can recreate enough. The battlefield. The pressure. The plans. The relics. An approximation of Disaster’s presence."
Kai nodded. "That’s enough."
"You will fight," the Candidate continued. "You will think. You will make decisions. You will feel pain."
Lily looked up sharply. "...Pain?"
"It will feel real." His expression didn’t change. "But should you fall, the simulation ends."
Silence held for a moment.
Nobody backed down.
...
The world changed around them, and this time it didn’t form a city.
It formed an empty wasteland. Ruined stone stretched in every direction, broken mountains jutting up along the horizon under a sky gone dark with heavy, low clouds. The crimson gate stood alone in the distance, waiting.
No armies. No civilians.
Just the six of them. Kai. Sera. Raze. Mira. Lily. Elden.
The Candidate’s voice echoed across the wasteland. "...Begin."
Nothing happened at first.
Then the gate slowly opened. No monsters poured out.
Instead, pressure hit them all at once, an invisible weight crashing down across the entire battlefield.
Lily dropped to one knee immediately. "...What..."
Raze gritted his teeth, every instinct in his body screaming at him to run. Mira struggled just to stay upright. Elden took an involuntary step backward without meaning to.
The sky darkened further. The air itself felt heavier with every breath, mana pressing down like something physical.
Kai realized, with a cold certainty settling into his chest, that this wasn’t an attack at all.
This was simply Tiamat existing.
...
Nobody moved. Not because they didn’t want to.
Because their bodies refused to cooperate.
Then Kai took one step forward, legs shaking under him, every instinct screaming at him to stop.
He took another.
Sera fell in beside him. "...You’re not doing this alone."
Raze laughed through gritted teeth, forcing his own legs to move. "If we’re walking, we’re walking together."
Mira exhaled slowly, planting one foot in front of the other by sheer will. "I refuse to lose to pressure."
Lily forced her breathing steady, one shaky breath at a time. "If I collapse right now, I’d never forgive myself."
Elden managed a thin smile despite the weight crushing down on all of them. "I’ve told my students to face their fear plenty of times." He took a step. "I suppose it’s my turn now."
One by one, all six of them moved forward. The pressure never eased, not even slightly.
But something in each of them held steady anyway.
The Candidate watched quietly. "...Interesting."
...
Tiamat’s approximation stepped forward, and even a fraction of the real thing was enough to make the ground tremble beneath everyone’s feet.
Kai’s voice cut through the pressure immediately. "Sera, front!"
She raised her shield on instinct, and the impact that followed sent cracks racing outward through the broken stone at her feet.
"Raze!"
He was already moving, cutting in from the flank, lightning crackling up his blade.
"Mira!"
She started calling positions before he’d even finished her name, directing everyone’s spacing on the fly.
"Lily!"
The World Anchor activated in her hands, chains erupting from the ground exactly the way she’d redesigned them back in the simulation.
"Elden!"
He called out timing windows pulled straight from everything they’d absorbed watching civilization after civilization fail and adjust.
Everything moved together, not because they’d rehearsed any of it.
Because they’d actually learned it.
The old plans weren’t being copied word for word. They were being reshaped in real time, adapted on the fly to fit six people instead of an entire army.
Kai noticed it happening around him. "...Good."
...
The World Anchor’s chains erupted in the improved formation Lily had sketched out earlier, force distributed evenly instead of concentrated on a single failure point.
Instead of shattering immediately the way the first simulation had, it held.
Tiamat’s approximation slowed.
One step.
Then another.
Raze laughed out loud. "...It actually worked!"
Kai didn’t let himself celebrate yet. "Keep the pressure on!"
Sera moved immediately, applying the layered defense concepts from the citywide battle network even without an actual city to work with, overlapping her shield’s coverage with Raze’s flanking attacks, rotating pressure the way the simulation had shown them.
Everything they’d absorbed over the last several days started clicking into place at once.
For the first time, the approximation of Tiamat actually slid backward.
Only a few steps.
But backward.
Silence held over the battlefield for a moment. Even the Candidate’s eyes widened, just slightly, watching from somewhere outside the fight itself.
...
Kai felt it before anyone said anything. "...She’s adapting."
The approximation shifted in response, pressure doubling all at once. The chains holding it in place began cracking, one link snapping, then another, the whole formation straining under force that kept climbing no matter what they threw at it.
The battlefield around them started tearing apart at the edges, broken stone lifting into the air, the relics scattered across the wasteland beginning to overload one by one.
They kept fighting anyway.
Longer than any of the previous simulations had managed. Farther than any single civilization they’d watched had gotten.
Then one swing came, faster than anything before it, and everything ended at once.
All six of them were thrown backward simultaneously, the impact frozen a half-second before it actually connected.
Nobody said anything for a moment. Every one of them was breathing hard, sweat soaking through clothes that had never technically been real to begin with.
It had felt real enough anyway.
...
The Candidate walked toward them slowly, looking over the frozen battlefield for a long moment before finally speaking.
"You improved three plans."
Everyone looked up at him.
"You extended the restraint duration. You increased battlefield control. You coordinated multiple relics simultaneously, something none of the civilizations I’ve watched ever managed on their first attempt."
Silence.
Kai pushed himself back to his feet slowly. "...Still not enough."
"No," the Candidate agreed. Then he looked toward the frozen image of Tiamat’s approximation, still mid-swing. "But you moved farther than the simulation predicted you would."
That single sentence pulled a small smile out of every one of them.
Not because they’d won.
Because, for the first time, they’d actually made real progress against something no civilization before them had ever managed to truly touch.
...
The blue world began dissolving around them, the battlefield fading piece by piece back into open light.
The Candidate looked at all six of them, and for the first time since Kai had met him, his expression softened noticeably.
"...Good luck."
Simple words. Everyone understood exactly what they meant anyway.
Blue light swallowed everything, and the simulation vanished entirely.
...
The six of them found themselves back in Lily’s research center all at once, scrolls still spread across every table exactly as they’d left them, the relics resting untouched in their containment fields.
Outside the window, the city carried on as normal. People laughed somewhere down the street. Hunters walked past in twos and threes.
Nothing about Mythal had changed.
Except them.
Raze stretched his arms overhead, joints popping. "...I suddenly feel like training."
Sera smiled. "I was thinking the same thing."
Lily was already scribbling revisions before she’d even fully sat back down in her chair. Mira reorganized an entire page of notes from memory alone, filling in details she’d only seen once. Elden quietly reread the very first scroll they’d opened days ago, seeing something new in it now that hadn’t been visible before any of this started.
Kai walked to the window and looked down at the city below, at the ordinary Tuesday afternoon happening completely unaware of everything they’d just lived through in a place that hadn’t technically existed.
Not with fear this time.
With purpose.
He smiled quietly to himself. "...We’ll be ready."
Behind him, the six of them stood together around the table one more time, the simulations finally over.
The real preparation had only just begun.