CHAPTER 86: A MOST BRILLIANT AND STUPID DISGUISE

The retreat was tactical, necessary, and deeply, profoundly irritating.

We stood just outside the entrance to Yori’s sun-drenched wasteland, the memory of that searing, hateful light still prickling at my new, exquisitely sensitive vampiric skin.

It was like being personally bullied by a star.

"Well, that was a bust," I announced, dusting off a non-existent speck from the shoulder of my very dramatic, very black coat.

"He knew we were coming."

Isabelle stood beside me, her expression a mask of cool professionalism, but I could see the frustration simmering in her eyes.

"He knew you were coming, my Lord," she corrected, her voice tight.

"The silver arrows, the fire magic, and now this."

She gestured towards the shimmering heat haze rising from the entrance to the next sector.

"An entire sector designed to exploit your greatest weakness."

"The old man is a menace," I grumbled.

"A brilliant, well-prepared, and deeply annoying menace."

I turned to my assembled commanders.

The Wrecking Crew. My elite squad of walking, talking natural disasters.

"We can’t push through that," I said, stating the obvious.

"A direct assault into a sun-filled kill box is suicide. Even for me. And I’m already dead, which makes it even more impressive."

Pixia, my tiny, flying encyclopedia of doom, zipped anxiously around my head.

"My Lord, my simulations concur!" she squeaked, her voice a high-pitched buzz of panic.

"The probability of mission success via a frontal assault is 2.3%! The probability of you getting a very nasty, a-rank sunburn is 100%!"

I waved a dismissive hand, a gesture I had perfected for moments of high-stakes strategic planning.

"So, a direct assault is out."

I began to pace, the gears in my mind, once dedicated to optimizing video game character builds, now spinning with military deception.

"He is anticipating my every move," I mused aloud.

"He knows my strengths. He knows my weaknesses. He’s reacting to me."

I stopped and looked at my team.

At Isabelle, the stoic warrior.

At Chloe, the silent, fanatical shadow.

At Reina, the quiet engine of destruction.

"He thinks he’s fighting a predictable opponent," I said, a slow, wicked, and utterly insane idea beginning to bloom in the dark corners of my mind.

"He thinks he’s fighting Ragnar Vhagar, the Vampire Lord."

I smiled.

It was a smile full of fangs and terrible, brilliant ideas.

"So, we’re not going to give him Ragnar Vhagar."

"My Lord?" Chloe’s voice was a soft whisper from the shadows, laced with confusion.

"We are going to perform a bit of theater," I explained, my voice dropping to a conspiratorial purr.

"A grand, glorious, and profoundly stupid piece of military deception."

I pointed a long, pale finger at Reina, my stoic Dhampir assassin.

"You," I said, "are going to be my body double."

Reina blinked, the first sign of genuine surprise I had ever seen from her.

I then turned to Lillith, my sultry Lilim, who was currently examining her nails with an air of bored detachment.

"Lillith, my dear, I have a special project for you. I need your finest illusion. I want you to make our quiet, stoic Reina here look exactly like me."

Lillith’s crimson eyes lit up with a manic, artistic glee.

"Oh, Master!" she purred, clapping her hands together. "A makeover! How delicious! I shall make her so broodingly handsome, she’ll exude enough tortured angst to power a small city’s goth club scene for a week! It will be my masterpiece!"

"Just get the coat right," I said dryly.

"The illusion will be the centerpiece of our new plan," I continued, my voice echoing with newfound confidence.

"We will unify our forces. Isabelle, Chloe, your teams are now one. A single, massive, overwhelming invasion force."

I then drew myself up to my full, imposing height.

"This new army will be led by ’me’," I said, gesturing to Reina.

"The decoy will be loud, arrogant, and will make a series of tactically questionable but very flashy decisions. It will be the perfect bait."

"And you, my Lord?" Isabelle asked, her mind already grasping the shape of the plan. "Where will you be?"

I grinned.

"Isn’t it obvious?"

"I’m going to be the secret weapon."

A few minutes later, I stood before them, a monument to the death of dignity.

I was inside a suit of Living Mail armor.

It was hot. It was clunky. It smelled faintly of old metal and bound spirits.

"I hate this," my voice echoed, tinny and muffled from behind the metal helmet. "I feel like a demonic Hot Pocket. A very powerful, very angry, and very, very sweaty Hot Pocket."

Pixia floated in front of my visor.

"The disguise is statistically perfect, my Lord! No one will suspect your presence. You appear to be a common, disposable, C-Rank tank unit."

"Wonderful," I grumbled. "From Vampire Lord to a walking tin can. This is a new low."

Reina, now shrouded in Lillith’s illusion, looked magnificent.

She looked exactly like me, right down to the faint, condescending curl of my lip.

"Alright, ’Lord Ragnar’," I said to her through our mental link.

"Remember the script. Be arrogant. Be dramatic. And if you get a chance, complain about the decor. It’s what I would do."

Reina gave a stiff, almost imperceptible nod.

I looked at my assembled army.

My Bloodkin. My Orcs. My Goblins. All of them now united under a single banner, ready to follow a perfect illusion into the jaws of a trap.

Our own trap.

"Let’s go," I commanded, my voice a muffled clang from inside my metal prison.

"It’s time to give the old man a show he’ll never forget."

We marched back into the sun-drenched wasteland, a unified force of monsters and deception.

The curtain was about to rise on the dumbest, most brilliant piece of military theater in history.

And I had the worst seat in the house.

---------------------------------------

The march was agony.

Every step was a slow, clanking, metallic misery.

The sun, a relentless, hateful eye in the sky, beat down on my new metal shell.

Inside the suit of Living Mail armor, I was cooking.

I was a premium-grade, A-Rank Vampire Lord, slow-roasting in my own armored juices.

"This is the most undignified experience of my entire afterlife," I muttered to myself, my voice echoing tinnily inside the helmet.

"I’m going to have rust in places I didn’t even know I had."

For six long, silent hours, we marched.

The wasteland sector was a barren, sun-bleached expanse of cracked earth and dead, skeletal trees.

There were no patrols.

No traps.

No ambushes.

Just silence, and the oppressive, burning heat of the sun.

My decoy, Reina, was playing her part to perfection.

Shrouded in Lillith’s flawless illusion, she strode at the head of the army, my long, dark coat swishing dramatically.

She would occasionally stop, strike a pose that was a perfect imitation of my own arrogant brooding, and shout something vaguely threatening at the empty horizon.

It was a beautiful performance.

But the silence was starting to get on my nerves.

It was too perfect. Too clean.

"Pixia," I whispered into my internal comms. "Scan the area. Anything? A hidden sensor? A magical tripwire? A goblin hiding in a bush with a particularly sharp rock?"

"Negative, my Lord," her tiny voice buzzed back. "The sector appears completely devoid of any hostile presence. It is... statistically anomalous."

That’s when it hit me.

The cold, brutal, and terrifyingly clever logic of my opponent.

I stopped, the clanking of my metal feet echoing in the sudden quiet.

"Halt the column," I commanded, my voice booming from the armor, sounding less like a king and more like a very angry ghost trapped in a boiler.

Isabelle and Chloe immediately moved to my side.

"My Lord?" Isabelle questioned, her eyes scanning the empty landscape.

"What is it?"

I looked at them, my own face hidden behind the impassive steel of my helmet.

"He’s not trying to stop us," I said, the pieces of the puzzle snapping into place in my mind.

"He’s letting us walk right through."

I put myself in Yori’s shoes.

I was an old man, a cunning strategist, facing an overwhelmingly powerful invader.

What would I do?

I wouldn’t fight a battle I couldn’t win.

I wouldn’t throw my limited forces away in a series of pointless skirmishes.

I would wait.

I would concentrate all my forces, every last goblin, every last imp, every last scrap of power I possessed, for one single, decisive, all-or-nothing blow.

And I would wait for the perfect moment to strike.

The moment when my enemy was at his absolute weakest.

"The sun," I whispered, the realization sending a shiver of genuine, cold fear down my spine.

"He’s not using the sun as a trap. He’s using it as a clock."

I looked up at the hateful, burning orb in the sky.

It was late afternoon.

In a few hours, it would set. My vampiric powers would return to their full, glorious strength.

But in the hours just before, at the first light of dawn...

"He’s planning a dawn raid," I said, my voice a low growl of grudging admiration.

"He’s going to let us march all day, exhausting ourselves under the sun. He’s going to let us think we’ve won. And then, at sunrise, when I am at my most vulnerable, he is going to throw his entire army at us in one single, catastrophic ambush."

The sheer, devious brilliance of it was breathtaking.

He had seen through my brute force. He had seen through my tactics.

And he had devised a plan that turned my own nature against me.

"Isabelle, Chloe," I commanded, my voice now sharp, focused, stripped of all its earlier grumbling.

"Find us a defensible position. Now. A ruin, a cave, a cluster of rocks. Anything that can provide cover. We are digging in. We are preparing for a siege."

They didn’t question the order. They moved.

My army, which had been a slow, marching column, transformed into a whirlwind of disciplined activity.

Orcs and Ogres formed a perimeter, their massive bodies creating a living wall.

Chloe’s Goblin Snipers scrambled up the sides of a cluster of crumbling, ancient ruins we had found, their dark-wood bows becoming part of the shadows.