Chapter 839: Detention
[Deploy your Champions.]
’Deploy my champions?’ Kaiden thought inwardly. Before he could even begin pondering properly, more messages came.
[Strategy Cards]
[Both Masters draw two cards from a shared deck at the start of each turn.]
[Cards may be played immediately or banked. Up to two cards may be played per turn. Maximum five banked cards per Master.]
[Card categories: Buff, Debuff, Tactical, Wild.]
[Defender starting hand: 5 cards. Claimant starting hand: 3 cards.]
Five translucent cards materialized beside Kaiden’s right hand, floating in a slow orbit with their faces shimmering. Icons and shorthand he could parse at a glance.
He couldn’t see what the Kaiju drew.
Then figures materialized on the far half of his board.
Eight shapes flickered into existence on the Claimant’s rows, translucent projections mirrored from the Kaiju’s own table.
He reached over, hands above them.
"Go, Darling, smash the ants!" Calypso cheered, already knowing what he was about to do.
His fist came down and passed clean through the nearest monster, scattering light but meeting nothing, the translucent shape flickering once before reforming exactly as it had been.
Luna’s giggle carried up from his side of the board. "Worth a try."
He couldn’t touch them, couldn’t interact with them, but he could see every detail, and soon, every woman on his side of the board went quiet, even Luna and Calypso, as they began taking in the sight of the enemies properly.
They were dungeon bosses. He could tell at a glance, because each one carried the kind of presence that filled a room even at four inches tall, the coiled menace of creatures that had once sat at the bottom of dungeons and waited for challengers.
A hulking armored thing with too many limbs and a carapace like volcanic glass. A serpentine creature that coiled around itself twice with length to spare, its scales throwing fractured light across the stone.
Something that might have been humanoid if humanoids came with a blade fused to each arm and joints that bent the wrong way. A massive quadruped built like a siege engine, all plating and tusks and slow, patient malice.
Eight of them. All different. All broken and remade by something that consumed dungeons for fuel.
Nyx counted them from the stone surface, pink eyes sharp. "Eight, right, Kai? You have topdown view, there’s no one hiding behind their backs or something along those lines, correct?"
"Yep," Kaiden confirmed. "Looks like an eight versus eight."
"I see... Now then." Nyx looked back at Kai. "Where’s Blondie? I can’t believe she got left out-"
A familiar presence appeared behind Kaiden’s chair.
Alexandra stood at his side, normal-sized, still in her maid uniform with the fading golden glow of the Hearth Valkyrie bond tracing her silhouette. She blinked at the table, at the tiny women standing on the stone surface, and both hands flew to her mouth.
"Nyx?" she whispered through her fingers. "Luna? You’re so small..."
"Or maybe you became a giantess?" Luna called up.
Alexandra’s gaze traveled to her own body, evaluating the prospect. "Hmm... No, I don’t think so..."
Her eyes then went from one miniature figure to the next, and the shock gave way to quiet understanding as it settled over her face.
"I’m not on the board," she said.
Not a question. The words were small and steady. She had known before she arrived that a level one Valkyrie with five minutes of preparation was not going to stand on a battlefield.
Kaiden looked at her, and the relief in his chest was immediate. She wasn’t on the board. She wasn’t going to fight those things. ’She’s safe.’
"Probably because they’re my eight champions. You became a Valkyrie, but the dungeon only had eight champion spots. Maybe when I rank it up, more will open up."
Alexandra ’really’ didn’t like what she was hearing.
She was painfully aware of how lacking her powers were, but still...
The blonde maid-turned-Valkyrie couldn’t help herself. After making the decision and taking the plunge, she no longer wanted to only watch from a safe distance.
Seeing that, Kaiden spoke. "When they come back hurt, you heal them."
Alexandra’s blue eyes widened. She looked at the board, at the girls standing on it, at the monstrous shapes on the far side, and the sadness on her face didn’t vanish but resolve settled in beside it.
She could help. Her title had told her how.
"I understand," the Hearth Valkyrie said, and folded her hands at her waist, and stood behind Kaiden’s chair like she’d been stationed there her entire life.
Then the weight of what he was looking at hit him.
His gaze dropped to the board.
His lovers, his Valkyries, his Monster Girls, his sister and mother who’d been pulled inside a sealed dimension to fight as his chess pieces.
They were game tokens now, standing on lit squares, and in a few minutes they would fight creatures that could break them, alone in isolated arenas, beyond his reach.
He couldn’t protect them, couldn’t step in when it went wrong. The only thing left was to sit in this chair, move them, and hope his strategy was good enough to bring all of them back in one piece.
[Champions eliminated during The Gambit are removed from the phase, not permanently harmed.]
"..."
The breath he’d been holding left him in one long exhale, and the vice around his chest loosened enough to let him think again.
But the relief only went so far, because "removed from the phase" still meant watching them lose, watching them get hurt, and not being able to do a damn thing about it from this chair.
Aria’s silver eyes found him from the board, and the look on her face said she’d read every thought that had just crossed his.
"Kai." Her voice was quiet but it carried. "We’re fighters, not damsels. You know that, right?"
It landed harder because it came from her.
Aria, who melted when he stood in front of her, who curled into his chest after every fight and let him hold her like the world couldn’t touch her there.
She loved being protected by her love, and she’d never once pretended otherwise.
But now, she was standing on a game board telling him to let go of his reservations because she knew the difference between wanting shelter and needing it.
He looked at her, four inches tall with moonlight pooling at her fingertips, and remembered every time she’d moved through combat like violence was a language she’d been born speaking.
"Yeah," he said. "You are my amazing warrioresses."
Aria smiled softly at that, cheeks going pink.
"Blergh." Mini Scarlet seemed to get whinier by the second, at least until Aria’s ice-cold eyes found the sitting woman.
