Across the field, the other alliances fought for their lives. Thalmyr-Ronethis had finally driven their convergence through the seam they had opened and split their Titan from sternum to spine, the giant folding around the wound. Virexion-Kezryx had pinned theirs under a mountain of lightning and were grinding it down strike by strike, Jaskrit’s own attacks carving glowing trenches in its armor. Celestara-Dravokh had wounded one but lacked the power to finish it, Joaka’s radiant strikes scoring its hide without breaking through.

Six Titans remained. Three were dead. Suryax-Regalon had killed all three, and the Doom Monarch’s giants had noticed.

Three of the remaining Titans broke from their advance and turned, all at once, toward the southeastern arc. Toward the presence that had been killing them. They came together now, shoulder to shoulder, covering each other, refusing to be picked apart the way the first three had been.

Three Titans, twenty-four hundred million combat power, converging on Almond’s position at once.

The Doom tide surged with them. As the three giants turned toward the arc, the seven hundred thousand Doom units behind them pressed forward in the same motion, throwing everything at the southeastern line to break it open before the X-rank holders could deal with the Titans.

The army answered.

Natalia’s spheres redlined, firing faster than they ever had, her predictive layer working overtime to track three converging Titans and a surging tide at once. Kayla’s threads pulled the whole arc into a single reaction, the line tightening exactly where the Doom Army pushed hardest. Marcus drove his shield-wall forward into the worst of the surge and held the center while the flanks bent and recovered. Silvester, Hiroshi, and Maya carved the monsters off the edges before they could wrap around. The ten Asura Executives locked their sectors shut. Saffa balanced the failing defensive grid through the Titans’ shockwaves, Clovelle cleared the sky, Fraisea kept the reserves flowing, Big D kept Rudra’s eyes on the whole field, and Gopu held the command platform steady through it all.

The tide did not break the line. The line held the tide.

That gave Almond the seconds he needed.

He did not give ground.

Behind him, the seven Spirit Lords expanded their domains as one, and the seven fields rushed outward and overlapped into a single vast dome that swallowed all three oncoming Titans together. Inside it, gravity turned heavy and wrong, energy bent toward the Spirit Lords’ will, and the three giants slowed as if wading through deep water.

Lily’s Dreadgates, seeded into the plateau before the wave, erupted. Dreadlings poured out of the ground in an endless black flood and surged up all three Titans at once. Ainen’s flame world spread to meet them from the right, cold and corrosion and denial washing across their legs. And above it all, Almond began to stack his blades again, more than before, the convergence growing into something that blotted out the dark sky as he fed blade after blade into it.

The lead Titan tore through the Dreadlings and reached him first, one vast arm sweeping down to crush him from the air.

Almond brought the convergence down to meet it.

The two forces met in the air above the arc, the Titan’s descending arm against Almond’s descending mountain of blades, and for an instant nothing moved. Then the convergence won. It split the Titan’s arm, then its shoulder, then its chest, then carried all the way down through the giant from shoulder to hip, Grim Severam denying it every chance to hold itself together. The Titan came apart down the centerline of the cut, its two halves falling away from each other, crimson light pouring from the wound as they crashed to the plateau on either side.

Four down.

The fifth and sixth Titans of the convergence were harder. The Doom Monarch had committed his giants with intent now, and these two fought together, covering each other, refusing to be isolated the way the first four had been. Rudra threw himself at one, his strikes carving revoked-structure wounds across its torso, but the second Titan covered its partner, swatting at him every time he closed in. Ainen’s flame world wrapped the second giant and slowed it, but slowing was not killing, and these two would not give him the opening the first had.

It became a grind.

And the grind was where the army earned its place. While the X-rank holders pinned the two surviving giants, the 100,000 troops poured everything they had into the gaps the giants’ coordination left open. Natalia’s spheres found the seams in the Titan armor that Rudra’s strikes had started. The Asura Executives broke from their sectors, now that the Doom tide had thinned, and added their own power to the assault, Vael’s constructs and Tharion’s weapons and the rest hammering the wounds the X-rank holders opened. It was not one strike from one hero. It was the whole alliance, fighting as the machine Rudra had built, grinding two impossible giants down together.

The battle dragged on. The plateau cracked and burned. The sky stayed dark with Titan shadow. Across the rest of the field, the other alliances bled to bring down their own giants.

By the time the wave finally broke, seven of the ten Titans were dead.

Suryax-Regalon had killed four of them, and helped grind down the rest of their share with the whole army behind the blades.

Thalmyr-Ronethis had killed one. Virexion-Kezryx had killed one. Celestara-Dravokh had finished the wounded one in the chaos at the end. The remaining three Titans, seeing their numbers broken and their advance stalled, withdrew back over the inland ridge, retreating into the Doom Monarch’s territory.

The Mountain went quiet.

The leaderboard updated.

[Star Mayhem Mountain Defense]

[Rank 1: Suryax Kingdom | Ananta Regalon: 1,847,900]

[Rank 2: Thalmyr Ascendancy | Ronethis Apex Sovereignty: 1,621,440]

[Rank 3: Virexion Dominion | Kezryx Void Imperium: 1,498,210]

[Rank 4: Celestara Sanctum | Dravokh Tyrant Conclave: 947,650]

For the first time since the event began, Suryax-Regalon stood at the top.

Almond stood at the center of the ruined southeastern arc, his Grimblades settling slowly back into their orbit, the Spirit Lord domains contracting, the field of dead Titans steaming around him. He looked up at the leaderboard, at the first-place ranking, and said nothing for a long moment.

Lily came to stand beside him, Dreadlings still settling across the field behind her.

"First place," she said.

"First place," he agreed. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

Across the Mountain, on the eastern arc, Jaskrit Kezinos stared at the same leaderboard. He had watched the entire battle. He had watched four Doom Titans, each carrying eight hundred million combat power, fall to the alliance that had spent days pretending to be the weakest force on the field. He had watched the decks he could not read tear apart enemies that his own full strength could only grind down by inches.

He had wanted to know what Suryax-Regalon had been building.

Now he knew.

"Milord?" the Kezryx commander asked quietly.

Jaskrit did not look away from the leaderboard.

"We are not the strongest power in this event anymore."

The other Allied Forces also felt a bone in their throats upon seeing the leaderboard.

"What’s with this Ananta Regalon Kingdom? Their powerhouses are developing a tad bit faster."

"It was bound to happen. They had one deck less than ours. They must have completed their fourth decks."

"That’s the problem. They haven’t done that yet."

On the southeastern arc, the Suryax-Regalon line stood over a field of dead Titans, in first place at last, and the Doom Monarch’s three surviving giants retreated into the dark, carrying the news back to their master that something on the Mountain had grown teeth.