Mukali looked with impatience into the empty cave.

  It’s been almost two hours, he thought. If the Gamers don’t reappear soon, I’ll have to report to the Khan and accept whatever punishment he sees fit.

  “Are you sure they will reappear?” he asked one of his soldiers for the tenth time.

  The soldier had seemed very sure when the Gamers had just been absorbed by the blue cube. But they had spent the last two hours staring into an empty cave, and he seemed to wish he had said nothing at all.

  “I saw it happen, sir. When I was scouting a few hours ago, two small armies started fighting, and the blue cube absorbed them all. And only one of the armies reappeared.”

  “But it only took about five minutes?”

  “Yes, sir. It only took about five minutes.”

  Mukali spat on the ground.

  “Okay, soldier. You can go back to your comrades. I want to add more depth to the barricade.”

  When the Gamers returned, they would find themselves facing the sharp spikes of a wooden barricade set in an overlapping pattern, completely closing the cave. And behind the barricade, Mukali had positioned his many archers strategically…

  There wasn’t any way to escape, he repeated to himself. Absolutely no way to escape.

  The Gamers and the Vikings didn’t seem to have archers or any ranged weaponry. So Mukali and his men would be able to shoot them down from the safety behind their barricade.

  A lot was riding on killing those Gamers—and, hopefully, capturing the girl as a gift for the Khan.

  Because this strange new world hadn’t been generous to Mukali. He had resurrected with the rest of Genghis Khan’s soldiers, and he had received the honor of becoming the captain of one hundred of the Khan’s soldiers.

  Genghis Khan had chosen him from all the soldiers he ever had to be one of his captains. The Khan had given him a twentieth of the soldiers of his army!

  It was the greatest honor of Mukali’s existence. And the mere thought made tears come to his eyes.

  A few minutes after resurrecting, the Khan had ordered him to destroy some of the armies that surrounded them.

  Trampling and destroying the other armies had been easy. Enjoyable. Most of them had been too disorganized to offer any real resistance.

  For a moment, he had dreamed that his new life would be like that: the easy slaughtering of the Khan’s enemies.

  Sadly, this new world had proven more dangerous than he had expected.

  And if nothing changed, Mukali knew he would be executed as soon as he arrived at the Mongol camp and reported everything that had happened.

  Too many failures.

  Too many lost soldiers.

  Genghis Khan was a fair, honorable leader. He was known for being merciful to those commanders who admitted failure and showed insight into their mistakes. Especially for commanders who had proven themselves in the past, like Mukali had done for many years back on Earth.

  But what insight could Mukali offer? He had been bested four times by a group of fools who called themselves “the Gamers”.

  The first time, back in the battlefield, when two fools had broken formation, riding towards the two Gamers who had been observing the battlefield, fighting them in single combat. And then they had shamed their ancestors by losing that fight.

  And again when Mukali had sent one of his lieutenants to charge at the Gamers, to capture them. And the Romans had stopped their charge with javelins.

  Another time, a couple of hours back, when the two Gamers had attracted the undead to ambush the Mongols, making him lose almost ten soldiers.

  And now the forsaken Gamers seemed to have escaped from him when he had trapped them in a cave.

  Mukali noticed one of the archers yawning, and he glared at him with fury.

  The soldier made a gesture of apology. Mukali accepted the apology with a nod and continued his stern watch over the empty cave.

  At least Genghis Khan had chosen good, competent men.

  Any failure on our part can only be attributed to my incompetence, he recognized to himself. Any anger he had should be directed toward himself.

  He had failed to recognize the threat posed by the soldiers of ILoveFurries the Seventh.

  His leader, Genghis Khan had made it their biggest priority to capture some of them and eradicate the rest—especially their leader, who apparently also went with the name of Johan “SpellDaddy Extraordinaire”.

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  He shouldn’t have underestimated somebody who had so enraged the Khan…

  He checked the barricade again. It was solid—he knew there was no point in adding more wood. But he needed something to pass the time, so he ordered a few of his men to go recover more wood for the barricade.

  Another one of his archers started to yawn and was stopped by an elbow jab from one of his comrades. Mukali acted as if he hadn’t noticed.

  He understood their exhaustion. Since they had resurrected, they had been immersed in non-stop warfare. Genghis Khan hadn’t explained why, simply insisting on the need to push through the exhaustion of the first day—claiming that it would be worth it in the end.

  Time passed. Mukali idly thought about his own death. He didn’t remember having been killed, but apparently he had been hit by an arrow in the head during an ambush.

  What a pathetic way to die… he thought.

  “It’s happening!” said one of his soldiers.

  Mukali could feel it too. There was a certain buzzing in the air. He ordered everybody to be ready. One of his soldiers went outside and shouted for everybody to come back to the cave.

  “Don’t shoot until I give the order!” Mukali shouted.

  He hoped they would be able to kill everyone while leaving the girl intact.

  The blue cube reappeared and started expanding until it seemed to be bigger than the cave. It rippled with energy. And suddenly, it collapsed.

  And the Gamers were there, facing the Mongols. The blonde, strange soldiers named Vikings were with them.

  Mukali took a couple of seconds to process the image. In front of the Gamers and the Vikings was the guy who had killed many of Mukali’s soldiers. He was carrying a big wooden shield, already raised to protect himself. One of the archers shot before receiving the order, and the guy moved the wooden shield to stop the arrow.

  Behind the first man, four Vikings were putting down on the ground what seemed like…

  Are those cannons? Mukali thought, alarmed.

  A fat man was in the middle of the cannons. And thank the spirits, he wasn’t yet carrying any flame. Mukali started to give the order to attack…

  And the fat man shouted:

  “[Fireball]!”

  And fire sprouted from his hands, toward the cannons below.

  Who the fuck are these people? was Mukali’s last thought before the massive explosions blew everything up.

  BOOM!

  Mukali woke up after having lost his consciousness for a couple of seconds. When he opened his eyes, the cave seemed to be about to collapse on itself. Chunks of rock were falling from the ceiling. The cave was filled with the acrid smell of gunpowder and blood. His ears were ringing.

  Around him, within the smoke, he could see the corpses of many of his men. The soldier who had told him about the blue cube had been hit by a jagged wooden stick through the neck. He was convulsing on the ground. One of the cannonballs had destroyed most of the barricade Mukali had been hidden behind.

  Mukali wanted to order everybody to stay put. The gamers were probably waiting for them to evacuate to escape in the chaos. Even after having lost a few men, the Mongols retained the numerical superiority.

  But he didn’t dare to say anything, being too close to the enemy and without the protection of the barricade. A couple of the Vikings approached him, and Mukali stayed put and kept his eyes half-closed, acting as if still unconscious. He saw a third Viking approaching the convulsing Mongol…

  Mukali noticed with relief that his men had already started to reorganize by themselves—they were protecting the remaining barricade. His archers had started to shoot into the smoke, which was getting thicker than it should have been, and made it impossible to see deeper into the cave.

  Then he saw Erik Bloodaxe walking away from the moribund Mongol. The Viking king had a small injury on his arm. And he was grinning.

  Oh no…

  The cave started to fill with even more smoke. It was too much. He could barely see anything.

  He tried to shout for his men to leave, to escape from the cave. But his voice was broken—and it was already too late.

  The blue cube appeared.

  He felt a strange sensation of motion, and suddenly Mukali found himself on his feet, in the middle of his men. They were on the deck of a ship. In broad daylight. In the middle of the ocean.

  And in front of them, there was a young man with a small shield. He was covering the retreat into the lower deck of the rest of the Gamers and Vikings, who all disappeared in a few seconds through a door in the middle of the ship. One of them had to be dragged by the others, leaving a trail of blood.

  Mukali didn’t care. He would kill them soon enough. All his attention was focused on the little piece of shit standing in front of him.

  He was the one who had killed the two Mongol riders in the morning.

  He was the one who had run through the battlefield and attracted the zombies against the Mongols.

  He was the one that would cost Mukali his life when he confessed all his failures to the Khan.

  Mukali looked at the arrogant Gamer, standing in front of fifty elite Mongol warriors.

  And the Gamer was… average.

  Painfully average.

  Average height.

  Average frame.

  The only thing that wasn’t average was his eyes.

  The cold eyes of a murderer.

  And the fucking little smirk that Mukali so wanted to erase from existence…

  “KILL HIM! KILL HIM NOW!” he shouted with broken voice. And his scorched throat felt as if it were being ripped apart.

  Two of his archers shot at the Gamer at point-blank range.

  The young man reacted with inhuman speed and stopped one of the arrows with the shield and the other with a swift sidestep.

  Then he started charging towards the Mongols, alone against fifty elite Mongol warriors.

  Still with that goddamn smirk.

  “KILL HIM!” repeated Mukali, trying to advance through the crowd of Mongols to finish the job himself.

  At the last moment, just a few feet away from the crowd of Mongols, the Gamer started running to the left, towards the railing of the ship. He still had to avoid the attacks of many Mongols. And Mukali witnessed without fully believing it, the inhuman speed and reflexes of the Gamer, who stopped a thrust with his wooden shield, sidestepped away from another, and cut through the thigh of a Mongol who tried to hit him in the back.

  The Gamer approached two barrels next to the ship’s railing. He grabbed one of them and tipped it towards the Mongols.

  For a moment, Mukali feared another dirty trick —and so did the other Mongols, who took a step back from the Gamer. But the barrel held only water, and the confused Mongols watched the liquid rolling towards them and making the wooden planks wet.

  The Gamer reached for the second barrel, but one of the archers regained his focus and loosed an arrow. For the first time, the Gamer was too slow. The arrow struck him.

  Or so it seemed.

  Mukali would have sworn that the arrow went through the neck of the Gamer—not causing any damage.

  The Gamer seemed to think it through and stopped trying to tip the second barrel of water. He tried to escape by jumping over the ship’s railing into the ocean below.

  “DON’T LET HIM ESCAPE!” Mukali shouted. He grabbed the bow from one of his men and pursued the Gamer. He looked overboard and realized the Gamer hadn’t fallen into the ocean—he was lying on a long, narrow wooden plank extending from one of the ship’s portholes.

  They looked at each other. The Gamer made a strange gesture with his hand, showing him his middle finger.

  “This is our ship, motherfucker,” the Gamer said.

  Mukali had a shot. He drew his bow to take it…

  And, finally, the smirk of that little piece of shit faltered…