The office dragged on longer than any tunnel Jack had ever crawled through.

  Time here was heavier; the wall clock ticked like a broken gyroscope, turning but never moving forward.

  Jack and Leo had become outsiders to the war. Their main task was feeding sanitized numbers into a console, day after day. Most of the time, the two killed boredom in their own way—sparring in Crucible: Infinite War.

  “Tarrah River campaign!” Leo’s usually austere face flushed with excitement. “Year 2495, the Republic of Lyenn against the Scyllan client state of Naga! Textbook material! Lieutenant, care for a match?”

  Jack had never heard of it.

  Leo looked pained, like his idol had just tripped in public. “How did you even sneak into Operations Command?”

  Jack raised a fist, the universal reminder that if the nerd didn’t get to the point, pain would follow. Leo had been pinned to the floor too many times not to get the message. He hurriedly loaded the SIM.

  A massive battlefield unfolded in the projection chamber, forces clashing across the Tarrah front.

  “This,” Leo said, eyes blazing, “is a mirror of our current war. The Republic of Lyenn stands for our Alliance of Free Systems. Naga, a proxy of the Scyllan Hegemony. The cold war between Alliance and Hegemony has lasted centuries. Our bloodbath with the Dragon Empire is just another proxy war on their chessboard.”

  Jack shrugged. “So? Still about resources.”

  “No!” Leo’s voice cracked with passion. “It’s art. You don’t even know why the Empire fights us! There are deeper motives!”

  Jack just stared. The kid swallowed his theory whole, switching instead to battle replay mode.

  Inside the sim, Leo flawlessly replicated the Lyenn commander’s classic maneuvers, fortress-like and patient.

  Jack became Loki again. No doctrine, no rules. Dirty tricks, feints, harassment. For a while, he had the upper hand.

  Then Leo sprung the trap. A perfect textbook encirclement—timed at the one moment Jack hadn’t expected, executed with mathematical precision.

  The HUD flashed red across Jack’s vision:

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  [YOU LOSE]

  Jack froze. It was his first total, clean defeat in the Crucible.

  “Your tactics are brilliant, Lieutenant,” Leo said, glowing with joy, not noticing Jack’s darkening face. “But you lack a grand perspective. You focus on immediate engagements, not the logistics strain, the timing of reserves—”

  “Game’s over, Leo.” Jack’s voice was calm, but underneath was a volcano.

  He cut the projection. The office went silent, broken only by the hum of fans and the buzz of fluorescent tubes.

  Jack rose, smiling that harmless bear smile, and laid a calloused, solvent-scented hand on Leo’s thin shoulder.

  “You did well, kid,” he said, voice thick with paternal warmth. “But remember one thing.”

  The grip tightened. Iron crushing bone. Leo’s face went white.

  “In the real world,” Jack whispered, gentle and merciless, “I don’t miss. Not once. Not where men bleed.”

  He released him, patted his shoulder like nothing happened. “No third party hears of this. Understood?”

  “Y-yes, sir!” Leo stammered, shaking.

  “Good.” Jack pointed to Leo’s terminal. “Now, enough games. Show me our real opponent.”

  Relieved, Leo pulled up a sealed file. The face of a gaunt Imperial general appeared—plain features, calm eyes.

  Cyril Vane. Dragon Empire.

  Jack scanned his record: deception ops, false retreats, asymmetric strikes. His gut twisted.

  This bastard fights like me. Only I have a squad. He commands an empire.

  This one… this one is my real enemy.

  But Leo wasn’t done. His excitement flared again as he flicked open another archive, like a magician pulling cards from a deck.

  “Look at this!” He conjured a volume venerated at the Academy: The Pantheon of Modern Strategists.

  He tapped the first page: a man in the marshal’s uniform of the Republic of Fenix.

  “Marshal Lysander! The only living marshal of the Alliance. The God of War of the Republic. My idol!”

  The photo showed a handsome, professor-like man in his fifties. Jack knew better. The elegant ones were always the most dangerous.

  Leo rattled on. “His doctrine is ruthless—he uses tactical bloodletting, sacrificing parts to dominate the whole. Cold, but brilliant.”

  Next page: another photo. The only peer Lysander had was the Binar Imperium’s Grand Admiral Theron .

  Kaelen was barely forty, equally handsome, but his eyes held a snake’s chill.

  “The most cunning strategist alive,” Leo said with awe. “We study them endlessly. Sometimes we wonder if they’re even human. Too calm. Too calculating.”

  “I wish they’d face each other someday,” Leo sighed.

  Jack flipped through page after page. Faces old and young, rulers of millions, executioners of nations. It felt like thumbing a bloodstained history book.

  Chaos breeds giants, he thought. And the absolute chaos is coming.

  Leo shoved more tomes into his hands—Ace Mech Pilots, Fleet Commanders, Top Fighter Aces.

  Jack barely heard him. He felt a chill seep into his back.

  Compared to these giants, he was nothing. An ant under their boots. A finger twitch from them could crush him flat.

  His beast instinct—the one honed by thirteen escapes—whispered truth. These men would turn the world into hell. And soon.

  One general’s triumph is built on ten thousand bones.

  And in that endless graveyard, he knew, he and everyone he cared for might soon be buried.

  Jack’s back was cold as ice.

  (HUD: CAST LOT // LONG THROW // SEED A9C // RESULT: PROCEED)