I Copy the Authorities of the Four Calamities

Chapter 414: Variance

The entire morning passed without a single hostile contact.

In a volatile coastal zone that had already thrown them two massive positioning errors and a premature ambush, a quiet morning was a very loud warning. It meant the monsters were currently elsewhere, organizing something much worse.

Fen ran complex field variance readings every twenty minutes as they hiked. By her third reading, she finally found the invisible deviation she had been hunting for. Vane watched her work in silence. He did not ask her what she was seeing. He trusted that she would tell him the second she had enough hard data to be tactically useful.

She finally approached him at eleven forty-seven.

She handed him a single page ripped from her notebook. It displayed a flawlessly drawn approach vector, an entry point circled in thick charcoal, a density estimate tucked into the upper right corner, and a strict time projection at the very bottom.

"The ambient variance in the eastern quadrant has been running exactly three percent off our baseline since zero six hundred," Fen reported quietly. "At that level of sustained deviation over six hours, a major behavioral anomaly is actively developing. A pack in the eastern sector is moving steadily west. They are following the natural mana currents rather than adhering to the standard threat population movement." She pointed a dirt-smudged finger at the circled entry point. "They will enter the draw’s western channel at approximately thirteen forty. Possibly thirteen forty-one."

Vane studied the dense page. He checked the line of the approach, the harsh geometric angles, and the precise timing. He looked out at the jagged eastern ridge. The magical deviation she had been tracking for six hours was completely invisible to him from this distance. The raw field simply did not carry that information clearly. Fen was actively reading the environment at a resolution his combat-focused senses simply did not operate at.

"How confident are you?" Vane asked.

"Extremely high," Fen stated without hesitation.

Vane tapped his wristband, updating the official tactical log. He marked the western entry point, locked in the projected timing, and forwarded the alert to the unit’s shared channel.

Aldric read the glowing update on his wrist. He looked at the precise time projection. He looked at the western entry point. Then he looked at Fen. He stared at her with the intense, focused respect he had been offering her reads since their chaotic wake-up call at three in the morning. He did not say a single word.

At exactly thirteen forty-one, the hostile threat poured into the draw’s western channel.

It did not happen at approximately thirteen forty-one. The beast breached the perimeter the exact second Fen’s math said it would.

The monsters flooded in from the east-west current rather than the standard south-north flow the official briefing had modeled. Under normal circumstances, Aldric’s ingrained defensive positioning for a southern attack would have left him completely exposed and caught at the wrong angle. However, Vane had firmly redirected his physical position at thirteen thirty-nine based entirely on Fen’s projection.

Without that crucial adjustment, the first wave of contact would have been a bloody disaster.

With it, the engagement opened flawlessly.

Vane triggered the Silver Fang at a strictly managed mid-output. It was only the second day of a five-day deployment. The brutal principle of rationing his reserves remained exactly the same as day one.

"Taking the northern flank," Aldric announced loudly over the snarls.

He reported his exact angle to Vane before he shifted his weight. He did it instinctively, without needing to be reminded. The harsh correction from the middle of the night had permanently landed. Kael held the heavy anchor position at the throat of the draw. The first-year student kept his posture low and grounded, his defensive geometry angled perfectly for the newly revised threat vector.

This cluster was entirely mid-tier. The entities possessed a much sharper behavioral logic than the beasts from their primary engagement on day one. They had survived in this hostile zone long enough to learn how human units actually moved through it. One of the larger creatures attempted the exact same blind-side flank as the previous pack.

It leaped into the rocks, only to find Aldric’s blade already waiting for it.

The brutal engagement lasted exactly three minutes. The squad took zero damage.

Standing amidst the cleared bodies in the draw, Aldric slowly turned around. He looked down at the crumpled page from Fen’s notebook still clutched tightly in his left hand. He looked at the charcoal circle marking the entry point. He looked over at the bloody rocks of the western channel, the exact spot where the threat had breached.

He looked at Fen.

"Can you teach me to read the field variance like that?" Aldric asked.

Fen stared at him. He was a second-year student ranked twenty-eighth in the Academy, respectfully asking a second-year student ranked sixty-seventh to tutor him. Their massive disparity in social and martial rankings did not matter out here. Aldric was completely ignoring his aristocratic pride. He had watched her invisible math save their lives twice in twelve hours, and he was making a highly practical request for survival.

"It takes significantly longer than five days to learn," Fen warned him gently.

"I know."

Fen considered his request for a moment. "I can show you exactly what to look for. The underlying magical pattern takes years to truly read. But the early indicators that tell you a pattern is actively developing. Those I can show you right now."

"Show me," Aldric urged.

She walked over to a flat rock, opened her notebook to the morning’s raw data, and began explaining everything she had been tracking since dawn. She showed him exactly where the tiny deviation had first appeared in the variance numbers. She walked him through what the anomaly looked like at each successive reading as it built toward a violent projection. It was not a condescending lecture. She simply laid out the raw data with enough tactical context to make the invisible world readable.

Aldric leaned over her shoulder, following every single drawn line. He did not interrupt her with useless questions.

Kael sat nearby on a flat piece of slate at the edge of the draw. The rookie was quietly eating from his compressed ration pack, watching the intense conversation between the two older students. He brought his absolute, unwavering focus to the lesson. He wrote absolutely nothing down, but his dark eyes tracked every point Fen made. He filed the survival tactics deep into his memory.

The late afternoon eventually brought them to a harsh terrain boundary.

The natural contraction of the zone’s cleared sectors created a massive overlap point between Vane’s northern draw and Ashe’s adjacent patrol sector. It was a jagged ridge feature that both Zenith units needed to physically work their way around from opposite sides. No cross-squad coordination was required or planned. The raw geometry of the terrain simply forced them together.

Vane was moving steadily along the ridge’s northern face when he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks.

He had not received a radio pulse. His assessment band showed absolutely no incoming movement on their approach. The rocky terrain ahead was completely clear of hostile threats.

Vane stopped anyway. He abruptly shifted his direction hard to the left, taking a significantly wider path than his original approach vector required.

Aldric was walking three meters behind him. He tracked his commander’s sudden movement, his brow furrowing in deep confusion.

Exactly sixty seconds later, Ashe’s squad materialized from the left side of the ridge. Ashe was leading her team, clearing the southern rock face from the complete opposite direction. She had taken the exact same tactical line Vane had been walking on just a minute prior. If Vane had not shifted his squad’s path when he did, the two units would have collided awkwardly on the narrow approach.

Vane had moved out of her way before a single signal or warning had ever passed between them.

Aldric stared at the empty space Vane had just vacated. He watched Ashe’s unit confidently march through it without breaking their stride. Then Aldric looked at the back of Vane’s head.

He did not say a word. He was running a completely different kind of calculation now. It was no longer the strict assessment of a commander’s baseline competence he had been running since they boarded the ship. It was something much deeper and far more terrifying. Whatever Vane and Ashe actually were to each other, their bond operated at a level of lethal coordination that entirely pre-empted the need for verbal communication. Aldric filed that realization in a completely separate category from everything else.

The live-conditions update chimed at the end of the day, signaling the arrival of dusk.

The eastern signature had been bumped upward once again. It was the third massive classification increase in two days. The feral growth rate of the monster cluster had not slowed down a single fraction.

Fen ran the grim mathematical projection without needing to be asked. She handed the fresh paper directly to Vane.

Vane read the terrifying numbers. He forwarded the urgent update to the unit band and looked out at the jagged eastern ridge silhouetted against the fading light.

Day three was going to require an army.