"Are the mines secure?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Good work, Captain. Distribute your men along the flanks and remain concealed until the enemy has entered the kill zone."

"Yes, ma'am."

The captain rushed off, barking orders as soldiers leapt to their feet.

The defense of Malé City had been left to a young woman who had only recently graduated university, yet who carried herself with the dignity, professionalism, and maturity of a seasoned military commander. While she wasn't herself enlisted, she was a Master-level magician with plenty of governmental connections; but, more importantly, she was competent. Some might have argued that her appointment was a display of nepotism, but her performance this day would quell any complaints.

The blonde had predicted correctly that the invaders would place high strategic value on Malé City's international airport and seaport, since they were the only viable methods of delivering additional defense forces to the Maldives. Cutting the islands off from the Kingdom of Britannia would ensure their downfall.

But we knew they were coming.

Her contacts at MI7, the military intelligence agency dealing with magical threats and solutions, had briefed her on the situation and requested her aid.

Meeting with the top military officials stationed in the Maldives, they had designed a counteroffensive to repel the invaders with minimal casualties.

Now, as the landing craft deposited their troops on the airport's low-lying runway field, the blonde emerged from hiding and began her offensive. She bolted towards the enemy troops while using magic to send massive waves through the ground, throwing her targets off-balance and making them susceptible to attack—or, at least, that was the ideal scenario.

In reality, she had been prepared for the enemy to utilize advanced magical defense talismans, so she was not shocked when her fireballs and icebolts were dissolved before they could do any damage.

On the contrary: she smiled.

Just as expected.

Regaining their footing, the soldiers trained their weapons on the young woman and opened fire, only to be stunned that their bullets evaporated in a flash of light as soon as they drew near their target.

The soldiers were hastily calling out to each other in Mandarin, most likely confirming that the woman hadn't used chants, talismans, or any other sort of magical device in her assault. She was able to make out one word—zhǎngwò, 'master'—they had identified her, or at least her rank. One soldier motioned to the others, directing them to concentrate their assault on the master magician.

A single Master-level magician might be able to turn the tide of the battle, after all.

The soldiers laughed as the girl realized what was going on, and began to run towards the airport terminal, no doubt looking for a place to take cover and possibly regain her advantage over the enemy force.

But she didn't enter the terminal.

Rather, she ran parallel alongside the massive building with nearly the entire enemy force in tow.

When the invaders had almost caught up to her, she turned around and planted her feet with an overenthusiastic grin and cried out:

"Excutere, terra! Nemo stans!"

The enemy soldiers were caught off-guard by the sudden violent quaking of the earth and stumbled, trying to find their footing while keeping their weapons aimed at the blonde.

Then, before they had time to recover, the solders heard another magic chant:

"Omnia, quae sub sole sunt, regnum meum sunt; Omnia magica discutiantur!"

They looked back at the young woman, who was now walking away calmly, and realized something was wrong. Their talismans were broken and cracked, no longer shielding them from enemy fire, as the counter-magic took effect. In horror, many of the soldiers turned to look at the airport terminal just as the glass was shattered by the combined firepower of an entire platoon of defending infantry.

The soldiers furthest away from the terminal began running in the opposite direction across a large, grassy field separating runways, only to find out through trial and error that the field had been laid with mines.

With one side trapped in this manner, the battle was soon over.

The blonde smiled.

I'd like to see MI5 do better than that, she thought.

***

Caspian strode calmly through the hail of bullets. He did not hesitate; he did not worry; he did not stumble in the slightest. Despite the enemy infantry's continued barrage, Caspian suffered neither wound nor setback. To be missing every shot at this range... it was unheard of, to say the least.

Even more confusing was that the person—thing?—standing before them didn't seem to be using shield magic.

However, they were having difficulties seeing their opponent at all, so any guess was simply conjecture.

As he walked slowly towards the enemy, Caspian observed their minds using his 'third eye': a mutation which allowed him to see the invisible shadowlands where the human spirit resides, and which in this case he used to attack the very core of their being. All he need do was reach out and crush his enemy's spirit, which would give them true death. There were many psychics in the world who could perceive the spirit realm with a third eye, but among them only Caspian had the ability to change what he saw.

I have a vision for this world.

I will succeed.

Caspian's shade reached out with superhuman speed to grab the shadow-brains of his enemies, the unknown organ which provided them with consciousness. His shade caressed their minds, savoring their fear, their dread, their terror—he drank them up, relishing the intensity of the emotions and the strength of their wills, only to promptly crush their shadow-brains with the long, firm grasp of his own spiritual body.

Even though the organ was but a shadow of their physical brain, its destruction would cause people to enter a vegetative state from which there was no recovery. Without external life support, their bodies would shut down within minutes.

This was the fate which was in store for all who opposed Caspian.

No one will stand in my way.

***

It began in the morning.

Arthur Trevena was a university underclassman on a holiday jaunt to the Maldives Protectorate, the easternmost territory of the Kingdom of Britannia, who now found himself just a few hundred meters removed from the front lines.

Walking with his friends along a beach in Addu, they noticed that the horizon was darkened by a vast amount of blackish-grey spots, which one of them identified as ships.

"What's that?" asked one of his friends, pointing at what appeared to be an expanding shadow on the water.

The realization hit Arthur suddenly and brought with it the understanding that this vacation was not going to end well.

Landing craft. Dinghies with soldiers…enough for every archipelago here, he thought. If they follow the same tactics as the Philippine invasion…

His eyes widened.

"Everybody, defensive magic!"

But the enemy artillery did not wait for his friends to heed his warning. He witnessed the flash and heard the boom of heavy guns in the distance, and hurriedly began chanting the arcane sounds of a protection spell: "Onixdar arvin pax gigpah gemeganza! Onixdar arvin pax gigpah gemeganza! Onix—!!"

A shell disintegrated in a flash of green light above his head. It was a low-level spell, one designed to be used by anyone, but it was certainly effective: any fast-moving object which came within a certain radius of the caster would find itself the catalyst of its own undoing.

And now, as the bombardment continued and the once-blissful beach was rocked by a neverending stream of explosions, Arthur hoped with all his might that his friends had been able to chant defensive spells.

He ignored the voice in his head telling him to look around for as long as he could, but eventually he could resist no longer.

The remains of his friends, limp and lifeless, were scattered around the beach like fallen leaves, soon to crumble and become wormfood. The ground was stained red, the craters charred, the grass still burning. But the explosions themselves had stopped; looking up, he saw the familiar flashes of green light, along with an otherworldly glow emanating from the Kingdom's nearby military base.

Looks like they've activated the shields.

Arthur fell to his knees.

I am weak.

They were weak.

Everyone is weak.

He looked up and saw the landing craft, now clearly visible, only a couple minutes out from the beach.

He felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Can you stand, son?"

Arthur turned. A soldier, probably twice as old as him, was standing beside him. He had a weapon, an outdated magical assault rifle model, resting against his shoulder. Arthur could tell that, despite the relaxed posture, that weapon was ready to fire at a moment's notice.

There were more soldiers that Arthur could see taking up defensive positions behind this man. He looked towards the sea: Of course. An invasion force…artillery…landing craft. They'll be here any second now.

How did our soldiers get here so fast?

Oh.

They were expecting this attack.

They must've been trying to catch the enemy off-guard, otherwise they would've blocked civilian travel to the islands…

Shaking, he stood and cleared his throat.

"I want to fight."

The aged soldier didn't say anything for a moment, but looked the young man up and down.

"You have training?"

"University Officers' Training Course, specialty in magic-accelerated combat."

The soldier nodded.

"Grab a rifle from our transport before it returns to base. Fall in with the defensive line. Check your shots, but do not hesitate. We have to hold out long enough for the cavalry to arrive."

"Yes, sir," Arthur replied. "…the cavalry?"

The older man cracked a grin, a small movement which gave Arthur unexpected confidence.

"If you survive, you'll be in for quite the treat."

Arthur did as the soldier instructed; he grabbed a rifle, an older M4-MA, and took cover behind a nearby rock formation just as the landing craft approached the beach.

The rest of the deployment began firing as soon as possible. Their goal was to sink the landing craft and pick off the soldiers that survived, which, in many cases, would have been an excellent strategy.

Despite being over twenty years old, the M4-MAs with which they were equipped were easily able to put holes in most light watercraft; they used runes which harnessed the energy from the ignition of the gunpowder to superheat the bullets and accelerate them up to ten times the speed of bullets from conventional weaponry.

To a human, any sort of body or head shot was fatal unless heavily armored. A limb hit by a round from an M4-MA would be obliterated, but the victim might survive. The best feature of this weapon, however, was the fact that the runes were inscribed into the shell casings themselves, instead of the chamber. This allowed modern magical ammunition to be used with any sort of firearm, which made magic-accelerated weapons mass-produceable and highly marketable.

The hull of a lightly-armored dinghy and the soldiers they carried should have been easy targets for such a weapon, if physical armor was all that they had to deal with.

Arthur was initially confused at the fact that only one of the landing craft went down—their fire surely covered a broader range than that. But then he saw the reason why: those all-too-familiar flashes of green light, which had previously been a safe and comforting force, were protecting the invaders.

"They've got talismans on the craft and on their armor. It'll be tough to hit them without disabling the talismans first."

The older soldier, who had been laying down cover fire for his comrades, knelt beside Arthur.

"Do we have any of those talismans?" Arthur asked desperately.

The soldier chuckled.

"I wish, kid. They've got to be pretty complex runes if they can distinguish between friend and foe like that. Nothing like the simple defense chants we're trained to use. We don't have the budget."

"What about counter-magic?"

"Not our specialty. Can you use it?"

Arthur looked behind him and saw a raven perched nonchalantly on a piece of driftwood, watching the pair intently. He made his decision.

"I can try."

The soldier didn't take his eyes off the enemy, yet Arthur still felt the soldier's gaze examining him.

"Do it."

"Cover me."

***

An explosion nearby; the impact of an ultra-velocity round against the rock where they were taking cover.

Arthur checked on his comrade. The soldier was laying on the ground, half of his body missing, little more than a bloody mass of flesh at this point.

Arthur could not resist tears, but tried casting a spell anyway:

"ARSL…GAIOL…NAPTA—"

"He's gone, kid."

Arthur looked up. Before him stood a small squad of unusually-dressed soldiers; at least, he assumed they were soldiers from the rifles they carried, but the cloaks which surrounded their bodies and concealed their faces made them look more like assassins from some video game.

He didn't even have to think before speaking.

"Help us!"

One of them, a young woman, stepped forward and knelt to clasp his hands in her own.

"Do not worry, Mr. Trevena," she said. "We'll take it from here."

Arthur saw small green flashes of light sparkling across their cloaks—were they inscribed with protection runes, like the talismans on the enemy soldiers? They were not taking cover, and they didn't seem to care about the bullets flying around them.

"You know who I am?"

But the woman did not answer. Instead, she motioned to someone behind her. Arthur braced instinctively; a very powerful aura was unleashed on the battlefield, overwhelming him to the point of hysteria. It felt as if the very air itself became oppressive to life; as if gravity had increased, as if Arthur's bones had given up the will to stay strong.

That's when Arthur saw him.

It would be impossible for Arthur to describe him: for even though Arthur knew he was looking at a man, something was preventing him from actually seeing the being before him. It was as if the visual signal was being distorted before it even reached his brain.

Maybe that's really what is happening, he thought. This must be the source of that terrifying aura.

It's believed that a magician's aura is contingent upon their ability to affect the physical world; that is, upon the scale of magic they can cast. It helps magicians identify each other, and in some cases, they can even transmit emotions via their aura.

But even then, this man must have a terrifying capacity for magic—Is he an Ultimate?

The enemies had been overwhelmed by the aura of this mysterious man as well, though some managed to keep their wits and opened fire on the suspected Ultimate.

Arthur looked for the telltale green flash of protection magic: there was none.

Arthur waited for the sound of the man's tattered corpse hitting the soft sand: it never came.

He studied the picture before him: the white-hot slag, travelling at speeds incomprehensible to a regular human, were disintegrating before they even reached their target.

Is this…the Perfect Parry spell? The one even Master magicians have trouble casting?

No, this is more powerful.

The man walked towards the enemy forces, which must've numbered in the hundreds at this point, yet he seemed unphased. And there was a good reason for that: to his horror, Arthur saw a man drop to the ground, dead, when subjected to the man's gaze.

Then another…

…and within a minute, the entire enemy force was gone.

Arthur was unsettled by the quiet. Only the gentle lapping of waves and rustling of ocean winds played at his ears. It was too sudden; up until a few seconds ago, this morning had been nothing but a whirlwind of explosions and gunshots.

The commanders aboard the invasion fleet must've received word of their troops' defeat, for the artillery started up again, entirely focused on the man who stood at the edge of the water.

That heavy aura hadn't diminished. If anything, it had grown greater. But now, Arthur could detect something within the raw energy: an emotion, communicated straight from the heart of this Ultimate magician.

Raw, unadulterated excitement.

When it was all over, Arthur felt that massive presence looking at him, but he couldn't bear himself to look up and meet the Ultimate's gaze. The woman who had spoken earlier looked down upon him once again, sympathy evident in her tone.

"He's a monster, isn't he? But he's our monster, for now. God help us..."

The thought didn't need to be completed for Arthur to understand, and he nodded in agreement.

God help us if he ever turns against Britannia.