Humanity's Hero Of Despair

Soft.

That is the first thing that comes to my mind when I wake up. My pillow and sheets are so incredibly soft and luxurious I practically melt into it. The room itself is at least five times the size of my former dorm room. It's incredible to be honest.

I get up from my king sized bed and throw on some clean clothes. I walk into the bathroom, which is literally also the size of my bedroom, and brush my teeth. Sunshine pours through the window through the drapes.

It's going to be a beautiful day today it looks like.

I wonder what the Grand Duke has planned for us.

A knock at the door startles me. I open it and an attendant is standing there smiling at me with a glass of water on the tray he is holding. He offers the glass to me and I take it.

"Good morning Viscount Lotus! Breakfast is going to be ready in ten minutes down the stairs near the grand hall. Please be present as soon as you can."

I thanked the attendant and closed the door. I fixed my hair in the mirror, splashed some water on my face, put my wand in my pocket, and headed out to face the world. I skip down the stairs two at a time and when I landed at the bottom, Ivy was there waiting for me.

"Hey beautiful!" I say to her and give her a quick kiss.

We head to the dining hall together.

"Good morning Viscount! Please take a seat."

The Grand Duke Lancaster tells me as he gestures for me to take a seat next to him. I sit down with him and take a moment to look at the sheer length of the table. It was two times as big as the table in King Grey's dining hall for no reason at all except to be a huge show-off.

Though, I will admit, the food looks incredibly tasty. There are so many baskets of different pastries, sweets, etc. As well as different platters of all the breakfast food items you can think of in this world.

"Good morning Nico!"

Matteo waves to Ivy and me as he walks into the room. He gawks at the amount of food at the table. He sits down and starts eating like crazy. Soon after, the rest of our friends and the party make it to breakfast. It is sunny outside; the food is great, and I got a goodnight's sleep.

Sounds great, right? Leave it to Grand Duke Lancaster to ruin it all.

"Now that we all have had a hearty breakfast. Here is the surprise I didn't mention yesterday. We are going to be playing a great game!"

The Grand Duke pulls out a magic crystal from his pocket, which glows various colors.

"This crystal I keep hidden and protected in the safe, which is in the basement of this fortress. I am going to send your entire party outside the castle. If you can penetrate my castle's defenses, guards, etc. and retrieve this crystal before sundown and hand it to me, I will talk politics with you. I just like playing my games first."

He says as he takes a sip from his wine. He gets up from the table.

"The guards will escort you in about an hour outside. You may have that hour to investigate and plan. Good luck to all of you."

He walks away and leaves all of us stunned. He probably went out to drink with his rich friends, that weird bastard.

Zephyr immediately stood up and took the lead in planning.

"Okay. We know that the castle's primary defenses include the magic wards which create the shield dome from ninth level affinity attacks or below. We can have those taken out by primarily Nico, but also me as I recently reached tenth affinity level technique after a lot of training."

"Ayyy, nice job, Zephy!" Matteo claps Zephyr on the back. Zephyr rolls his eyes, but grins slightly.

"Anyway, I would like the foot soldiers of the Veltharian forces to join Estes in the main attacking force to distract the guards. Archers go with Matteo to attack them from the flank. Cavalry force can accompany Nico since you guys have the most mobility.

"Neve, make sure to follow behind us closely, with a few people to act as our rear guard. If anyone catches up to us from the inside, please freeze them in their tracks."

We all nod and agree. We then discuss for the rest of the hour until we are escorted outside the castle walls. Now the real game begins.

"Attack!"

I heard Estes scream in the distance as the foot soldiers charge the gates of the castle headfirst. The barrier holds up against their attacks and the archer guards start drawing back their arrows.

Estes and his team seem to be holding up fine from all the noise I hear in the background as Zephyr and our squad press up against part of the wall nobody can see. Matteo's surprise attacks from the flank and our archers take out quite a few of Lancaster's archers.

We have the initial attack of surprise, but we would be overwhelmed if we don't get this over fairly quickly. All the cannons and archers are distracted by Estes and Matteo's squad. Zephyr and I locate the magical wards pretty quickly, and we both launch our advanced spells at each of them.

"Tenth affinity magic, Life Eater!"

"Tenth affinity magic, Tripe Cyclones!"

The magical wards are damaged enough. The shield flickers enough times to allow us inside the castle property once Zephyr punched the wall with his strongest wind magic. Dude is actually pretty scary tbh.

We breached the property, and many soldiers of Lancaster came running toward us. Zephyr and I sprinted toward where the basement was. That's the place we scouted in the hour of prep time we had. Neve did her job and alongside a few other of our soldiers, blocked off their attacks from us.

Neve whipped out her light blue wand and shouted,

"Tenth affinity level magic, Frozen Garden!"

Ice magic sprouted from the ground everywhere, trapping many soldiers in flowers and vines of ice. Thank you Neve, I say as Zephyr and I make it to the basement with little effort. We carefully navigate the dark basement and disable the traps set with different chants. Since our fighting days during the Eradicator Era, we improved a lot.

Before we knew it, I had the crystal in my hands. The sun was setting, but it wasn't sundown yet.

Take that, ya dumb Grand Duke!