Extra's Sign In System: The Hero's an Idiot!

Chapter 264: Chapter 264: Two Days (1)

Chapter 264: Two Days (1)

The eastern quarter of Bastion Nine smelled of river silt, rotting timber, and impending disaster.

It was a district built strictly for utility. It lacked the polished marble facades and pristine sweeping avenues that defined the affluent core of the city. Here, the architecture was brutally practical. Towering windowless brick warehouses loomed over narrow winding alleys. A deep sluggish canal cut through the cobblestone streets, filled with the dark runoff of industry.

And there were no soldiers.

Lord Commander Vell had spoken truthfully when he dismissed their warnings. There was no Vanguard detachment garrisoning the intersections. There were no snipers taking up positions on the warehouse roofs. There were no defensive magical arrays humming beneath the cobblestones.

The city was actively ignoring the threat marching up the southern trade road. Bastion Nine continued to breathe, trade, and sleep, heavily insulated by a century of unbroken peace and the staggering arrogance of its leadership.

Draven Mordis stood at the edge of the canal. He looked down into the dark, freezing water. The morning fog was thick, clinging to the damp brickwork of the bridges.

He had five people and forty-eight hours.

That was the sum of his resources. Strike Team Zero was operating in a vacuum, devoid of official support or military backing.

But Draven did not require an army to hold a position, and he did not need the Lord Commander’s permission to prepare for a siege. He just needed geometry, physics, and a team of monsters who followed his orders without hesitation.

’Five assets against an incoming mechanized column,’ Draven calculated, his gray eyes scanning the narrow bridges. ’The geometry here does not favor a traditional perimeter defense. We cannot hold a static line. We must shrink the board and dictate the flow of their advance to neutralize their numbers. If we deny them width, their overwhelming numbers become a logistical bottleneck.’

He turned his back to the water. His voice was calm, cutting cleanly through the damp chill of the morning.

"We start at the bridges," Draven said. "Forty-eight hours. We do not stop until the stone breaks."

He did exactly what he had done at the Miasma Tower site in the Wildlands, and exactly what Aegon had tried to replicate at Bastion Six. He ignored the concept of defending a perimeter and instead built a slaughterhouse.

He unrolled a map of the eastern quarter across a wooden shipping crate. Aegon, Reina, Lucien, and Nyx gathered around it.

"We are not defending Bastion Nine," Draven stated flatly, tapping the center of the map. "Bastion Nine is already lost. Lord Commander Vell has left the outer walls unprepared against a mechanized siege force. When General Marek breaches the main gates, the city’s defense grid will shatter. The local Vanguard will rout."

Aegon gripped the edge of the crate. His jaw was tight, but he did not argue. He was a straightforward, honorable powerhouse with his spear, but he had learned the hard way that his Captain’s brutal pragmatism was always accurate.

"We are building a lifeboat," Draven continued, tracing his finger along the blue line of the canal. "A fortified fallback position for the civilians and the surviving Vanguard to retreat to when the streets fall."

He assigned the sectors with flawless efficiency. He understood the fundamental difference between fighting the Cult’s feral beasts and fighting General Marek’s forces. Capital soldiers were disciplined human combatants. They would advance in tight phalanx formations, utilizing overlapping shield walls and coordinated artillery fire.

The alleys were too narrow for large formations, making them perfect funnels. Lucien Vaelmont went to work immediately, walking the chokepoints and threading fine wires of solid blue lightning across the alley mouths at ankle height, hidden against the dark brick.

Reina stood on the stone embankments, preparing to freeze the canal into jagged lethal ridges over the water. The massive brick warehouses became their redoubts, impenetrable fallback positions where Aegon could anchor his heavy shield and hold the line.

They were turning a civilian shipping district into a grinding, inescapable kill zone.

---

At noon, the low crackle of Lucien’s threading was interrupted by a furious, high-pitched shout.

A heavy-set man in a velvet coat marched down the alley. A nervous clerk and a man who was very obviously a municipal lawyer flanked him.

"Stop this immediately!" the merchant bellowed, his face red with outrage. He waved a rolled-up parchment like a weapon. "By the authority of the Bastion Nine Commerce Guild, I demand you cease this vandalism! You are destroying my cobblestones! You are obstructing the loading bay to my primary warehouse!"

Lucien paused. He let the wire between his fingers die out. He looked at Draven.

"Who is in charge of this unsanctioned demolition?" the merchant demanded, stepping up to Aegon.

Aegon’s crimson eyes flared. His temper was already stretched thin by the looming threat of an army two days out and the city’s sheer ignorance.

"We are trying to save your life," Aegon snarled, taking a heavy step forward. "There is an army marching on this city!"

"I do not care about your apocalyptic delusions!" the merchant spat, shoving his property deed toward Aegon’s chest. "I want compensation! If you are going to ruin my loading dock, I want a signed damages estimate right now, or I am calling the City Watch to have you arrested for trespassing!"

Aegon’s hand twitched toward his spear.

"Aegon," Draven said smoothly, stepping between them.

Draven looked at the merchant. It was comic, yet intensely infuriating. The man was worried about his cobblestones while an executioner was walking up his driveway. But Draven did not argue. He did not intimidate.

He simply reached into his dark jacket and pulled out the heavy black card, running on the last of Sirius Statanham’s syndicate money.

"How much for the street?" Draven asked flatly.

The merchant blinked. "What?"

"Name the price for the damages. Now."

The lawyer hurriedly whispered a grossly inflated number. Draven did not blink. He swiped the card on the clerk’s portable terminal, authorizing the massive transfer instantly.

It cost him a massive chunk of liquid capital he desperately needed to purchase heavy structural steel later that night, but time was a resource he could not buy back. Draven took the damages estimate form, clicked a pen, and signed it.

He handed the paper back to the merchant. "Your street is bought. Now leave."

They did not build the fortress alone.

While the Vanguard garrison remained in their barracks, the people who actually lived and bled in the eastern quarter began to gather.

They were the dockworkers. They were men and women with calloused hands, soot-stained clothes, and quiet, hardened eyes. They lived in the slums bordering the canal.

For the past three weeks, they had been the ones unloading the desperate terrified refugees fleeing up the southern trade road from the direction of the Capital.

They had seen the hollow looks in the refugees’ eyes. They knew exactly what was coming. Their Lord Commander did not.