“Luke! Luke!” she cried, throwing her arms around him. The shell’s impact had clearly terrified her.

  Ilse turned in alarm, pulling the blanket tighter in a reflexive gesture, then her face lit up when she saw the girl.

  “Well, what do we have here?” she said with a chuckle.

  Luke crouched and lifted the girl into his arms.

  “Annie, didn’t I tell you to stay inside?” he said with a tired sigh, patting her head all the same.

  “But… but… Luke,” she mumbled, tugging at his shirt and burying her face in his chest.

  I chuckled and discreetly slipped another green olive into my mouth, still marveling at my newfound love for them. The taste was oddly satisfying. Unfortunately, my movement hadn’t been subtle enough.

  “Luke, she’s eating your olives!” Annie exclaimed, pointing an accusatory little index finger at me, her blue eyes wide with indignation.

  “You want one?” I asked with a chuckle, fishing another olive from the glass and holding it out to her.

  She turned her head sharply toward Luke, clearly awaiting judgment.

  Luke shot me a weary, disapproving look.

  “You could have at least asked,” he muttered between pursed lips.

  I rolled my eyes.

  Well, he wasn’t entirely wrong. Still, I had the strong urge to point out that there were several racks of olive jars neatly lined up in the next room. I pursed my lips. Unfortunately, I couldn’t mention that—seeing through walls wasn’t something I could casually explain.

  The problems of having supernatural senses while trying very hard not to reveal them.

  In the end, they were his olives. I settled the matter with a shrug.

  Luke shook his head, mumbling something under his breath, then turned his attention to Sean’s radio and pressed the search button.

  Taking advantage of the brief respite, I closed my eyes and shifted my focus, tuning in more closely to what Lili was seeing. The entire zone felt wrapped in some kind of mana bubble, and I found myself wondering how such a thing was being maintained.

  Country music suddenly crackled from the small speaker. The sound quality was poor, but it was enough to make Luke’s face light up.

  “Aaah, music!” he exclaimed, closing his eyes for a moment. “I haven’t heard any music in weeks. This is pure balm for my ears.”

  I raised a brow. I wasn’t much of a country music fan, though there were a few songs I didn’t mind. This one was… acceptable. The chords were simple, calming. Still, I preferred electric guitars.

  Ilse nodded along, her head moving with the rhythm. At least on this, the two of them agreed.

  Another loud boom rattled the windows. It wasn’t so much an explosion as a heavy impact—something massive slamming into the ground, like a giant stamping its foot.

  Annie flinched and buried her face in Luke’s chest again. Ilse sprang up from her chair, still clutching the blanket, which now hung from her shoulders like a cape. She looked at Luke, eyes wide, clearly waiting for him to decide whether they should run.

  Lili caught a glimpse of the projectile as it fell. It had wings—and had buried itself deep into the ground not far from us, part of it still jutting out of the soil.

  “Ah! Guided bombs,” I mumbled, then tilted my head. “It didn’t even explode, it was just the impact…”

  The area was littered with craters from artillery shells and bombs. Why keep firing them if they didn’t detonate? Couldn’t they see it? Or did they simply not know?

  Three pairs of blinking eyes stared at me.

  I froze, realizing that I’d said too much.

  “We seem to be close to the front line,” I added quickly, pointing east. “Have you seen people fleeing in that direction?”

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Luke shook his head.

  “Yes,” he said—then hesitated. “But there’s a minefield over there. Anyone who tried to cross it was blown to bits. I saw it… I saw it happen. More than once.”

  He sank back onto a chair. After a moment, Annie wriggled free of his arms, looking a little braver now, and wandered over to me.

  “I’m Annie,” she said, holding out her hand.

  I blinked surprised at the sudden change of topics, but recovered fast.

  “Lores,” I replied, taking her small hand and giving it a gentle squeeze, briefly wondering why she’d chosen me over Ilse.

  Her gaze dropped to my fingers. She sniffed, then pulled her hand back and scrunched up her nose.

  “Your hand was in the olive jar!” she accused, darting back to Luke for comfort. “I don’t like olives!”

  “Oh…” I said with a chuckle, though my attention had already shifted elsewhere.

  Lili’s investigation was bearing fruit, and not the kind I liked.

  At first, I’d assumed the minefield was human-made. It wasn’t.

  They weren’t mines.

  They were fungi!

  Explosive mushrooms.

  Through Lili’s senses, a macabre canopy unfolded: bodies scattered across the field in various stages of decay. Many were partially devoured. Dogs. Deer. Humans.

  And, strangely—goblins? Orcs? Even beasts from the other world!

  Where had they come from? And how?

  Then it clicked.

  These weren’t alien constructs at all. They were simple things—low-level forest organisms from the warmer areas of Aldea. The kind Spartacius had fought countless times. Harmless on their own.

  But here, arranged together, they formed something ingenious.

  Through Lili’s perception, the structure became clear. The shimmering barrier in the air was sustained by a living lattice: floating sponges anchored to the ground below, their swollen sacs lifting them upward like algae drifting in the sea. Except these weren’t filled with air. They were buoyed by hydrogen, produced slowly and continuously through reactions that split water and shed the lighter element upward.

  Over time, the canopy rose.

  And once it did, the giant wasps and bees moved in, nesting among the sacs, maintaining the structure—guardians and caretakers bound into the same system.

  I tilted my head, eyes unfocused, following the invisible architecture above us, and whispered the name of the floating sponges without thinking:

  “Antagerone.”

  Only a heartbeat later did I realize that Luke and Ilse had gone quiet, and were staring at me.

  “You said something?” Luke asked.

  I blinked innocently and reached for another olive.

  “These olives are good! Thanks. It’s been a while since I had any.”

  He shook his head and muttered, “You’re welcome.”

  Annie lifted her head, glancing at him.

  “At least she thanked you for—” she began, but trailed off as his attention snapped to Ilse.

  “Don’t raise the curtain!” Luke barked, jumping up from his chair. He set Annie down and hurried to the window, trying to see what had caught Ilse’s eye.

  I turned my focus back to Lili’s vision.

  The anchored Antagerones swayed high above, tethered to the ground like a vast field of kites or drifting balloons. Together they formed a living net, and upon it rested the mana shield itself. The giant wasps nested among the sacs, maintaining the structure and warding it—guardians woven into the lattice.

  Whatever the shield sensed as a flying threat, it reacted to. Human drones never stood a chance.

  Electronics never stood a chance.

  But how had they stopped the bombs from exploding?

  I had felt something when the guided bomb passed — a brief distortion in the mana, gone almost as soon as I noticed it. Too short to grasp how it worked.

  The shield was damned ingenious and almost self-sustaining. I found myself staring in awe at the elegance of it. All it truly required was fuel.

  And that, grimly, explained the bodies beneath the canopy.

  The carnivorous wasps had to be fed. Mana-rich prey. That also explained the corpses of creatures from the other world scattered among the dead—beasts dragged here deliberately, harvested to keep the system alive.

  I was still turning that thought over when Luke’s shout tore me out of it.

  “No! Don’t come here!”

  I spun toward the window.

  Sean and Nora were running toward the house. And three orcs were right behind them.

  “Oh, shit,” Ilse said.