LunaWolve

[Wolf Lord+ | Draft] Volume 2 - Chapter 59 - Trust

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------------------- Start of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) -------------------
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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Welcome to the draft release of Volume 2 - Chapter 59 - Trust for y'all.

As always, a quick reminder that this chapter is still in the process of being workshopped by me and that this is simply the first-draft.

And also: Please do not read the chapters here on Patreon, but go for the googledoc, .pdf or .epub instead. Patreon butchers all forms of formatting and you're missing out on easier and more enjoyable reading experiences.

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Heading back into a lecture on the next chapter, but gonna try to see if I can use some of that "Telling, not Showing" people seem to love so much to make it quicker than usual.

We shall see how it works out!

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I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the link to the chapter:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/18gKBheL3RTG9yiggZONeCsEtbjuaOXBYMYXrz_sT7J4/edit?usp=sharing

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Volume 2 - Chapter 59 - Trust

Interview conducted by Senior Correspondent Milene Hart, UHF Internal Broadcast Network (IBN-UHF).

Hart: “Major Varrin, there’s a lot of confusion among new Recruits about how the economy aboard a UHF Recruitment Ship actually works. Could you break it down for us in simple terms?”

Major Varrin, nodding: “Of course. The short version is this: The Digital Mission System is designed to pay for your day-to-day life. 

“One standard Digital Mission a week—our mandated minimum—nets roughly a hundred Credits, even at the lowest successful completion payout. And with the cheapest meals going for about two Credits each, you can live a full week on less than forty to fifty Credits if you’re frugal. Naturally, that includes the one free daily meal every Marine gets from the Faction as well.”

Hart, noting down information on her datapad: “So the DMs cover basic living. What about the big-ticket items—licenses, Skill Classes or private DDS alterations by the ship’s AI?”

Major Varrin smiles: “Now, that’s where Assessments, Special Digital Missions, and your own initiative come in, of course. 

“Standard DMs aren’t designed to make you rich. 

“They give you steady trickle-income—Credits, some Merit, and, most importantly, a ton of first-hand experience in combat, which you will be very thankful for once real deployments start after your Recruit year. 

“But the heavier payouts come from the bigger-ticket events.

“Partial and full equipment licenses can run from a few dozen to a few thousand Credits. A Skill Class can cost even more, depending on what you’re applying for. Anything that alters your living space inside the DDS—new furniture, expanded space, even specialized training environments—can run from a few dozen Credits and quickly climb into the tens of thousands, depending on what you’re asking for.

Hart, puzzled: “Where does all that money go? Recruits ask this constantly, especially when they see just how expensive some of these purchases truly are.”

Major Varrin breaks into a lop-sided smile: “That’s by design, actually. The Allbright System itself is the one that requires a certain baseline of resource expenditure to allow the DDS connection with itself, and in-turn, to issue Credits, Merit, and Contribution Points based on activity inside it. 

“So every Credit spent feeds back into the miniature economy that keeps the DDS running.

“Part of it goes back to the Faction, of course. Another chunk goes to the corporations that provided the infrastructure and built the equipment you’re licensing. And a small piece—usually overlooked—also goes to the very designers of those pieces themselves. 

“If they’re not Integrated, which is more often the case than not, the UHF converts their System Credits into Imperial Credits at the going exchange rate. Usually around one-to-five, give or take, depending on the current course.”

Hart, circling information on her pad: “So the economy essentially revolves entirely around the Marines here?”

Major Varrin, nodding vigorously with a broad smile: ”Exactly! Every bit of it. 

“A Recruitment Ship isn’t just a military installation—it’s an economic ecosystem built around the people training inside it.

“Nothing is wasted. Nothing exists as busy-work. 

“Every DM, every Credit, every purchase feeds into a cycle that sustains the ship, the Faction, and the Allbright System’s requirements. 

“Recruits don’t always see it, but the whole structure is built to keep them fed, housed, trained, challenged, and—most importantly—improving.”

Hart, leaning slightly closer: “There’s also a rumor that Marines who keep failing DMs get flagged. Is that true?”

Major Varrin, now serious: “Yes. The ships track performance trends. 

“A Marine who fails occasionally? Normal. Downright expected, really.

“But a Marine who fails DMs every time? That’s a red flag, no two ways about it.

“We’d have to investigate how a single person could possibly crash that many simulations. Either they’re doing something incredibly wrong, or something deeper is at play. In either case, it wouldn’t be ignored.”

Hart, nodding to herself and leaning back: “Last question, then. What would you say to a nervous new Recruit worried about money, licenses, and getting the things they need?”

Major Varrin putting on a gentle, warm smile: “Simple: Don’t panic.

“Run your weekly DMs. Learn from them. Earn your Credits, use them wisely, but don’t fret about running out. As long as you consistently take part in the DMs, as you’re mandated to, you won’t ever run out.

“And always remember that the ship’s economy isn’t built to crush you—it’s built to support you while you grow.

“Now… If you want more than the basics? Work for it. 

“The UHF is a meritocracy, so show us your merit and we will reward this initiative in kind. 

“Always have, always will.”

End of transcript.

[Excerpt from Frontline Economics: Life Inside a Recruitment Ship, PFC896]

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Thea could hear her own heartbeat roaring in her ears, each thud pounding like a bell inside her skull as she waited for Major Quinn’s answer—an answer to what was undoubtedly the most dangerous question she’d ever asked in her entire life.

‘Questioning a superior like this is not a great move… but it’s the best one I’ve got,’ she reminded herself over and over again, just like she had on the walk here with Kara.

Æht’s appearance and words during the Digital Mission had forced her hand.

Not because Thea believed everything that strange… thing had said, but because, when she had actually taken some time to think about it and picked apart its ramblings, too much of it made uncomfortable sense.

She had been far too open and trusting with the Runepriest.

She had no real proof he was someone she could trust on a personal level—only that he would do what was necessary for the UHF. 

And that, decidedly, wasn’t the same thing at all.

And with Æht’s warning that just being near the Runepriest put them at risk, something Thea couldn’t fully confirm nor fully deny, falling back on James’ Golden Rules was the only sensible path left.

And those rules required trusting an individual.

Out of everyone she had met inside the UHF, Major Quinn was the only one who fit all of her requirements.

She held enough rank that she might be able to act, if acting became necessary—even if she was “just” a Major, she still ran the entire Recruitment Drive, which had to count for something. And she was also the only officer who had taken responsibility for the UHF’s screw-ups so far. 

She had apologized to her. Twice, even. 

Once in-person and once through Selene, who unfortunately didn’t hold enough influence nor knew enough about the Runepriest on a personal level to truly fit for her requirements, otherwise she would definitely have been her first choice.

It really wasn’t much that Thea could bring to the fore in favour of trusting Major Quinn, but it was something. And that was about as good as she could hope for her, given her current situation.

‘If I want answers about what’s happening with me, I have to trust someone eventually. I just really hope I picked the right person… Everything’s riding on how Major Quinn reads this—how she answers, and whether she actually knows the Runepriest well enough to judge him right,’ she thought, the stress clawing at the inside of her skull like a daemon trying to break free. 

‘Please don’t lie to me. Please don’t treat this like insubordination. Please understand that I’m barely holding it together and this is me reaching out as far as I can… Please, please, please…’

Finally, after what felt like an eternity of meeting Major Quinn’s searching gaze with every fiber of her willpower and being, the legendary Marine moved ever so slightly, leaning back in her cushy armchair and letting out a heavy sigh that seemed to stem from the deepest corners of her being.

“You are, without a doubt, the most troublesome Marine I have ever dealt with, Thea,” she started, Thea’s breath stocking entirely. “The question you just asked, if you had posed it to quite literally anyone but me, would have you written up for insubordination at best. It could even be considered treason by overeager officers, Recruit… But I take it you know this already.”

Thea nodded slowly, smothering the burgeoning flame of hope within her heart—hope was a poison that smothered reason, she had learned early in her life. 

There was no place for it in a situation like this, when she needed to be attentive and listen to the exact words spoken and how they were spoken, to make future decisions that could quite literally end her life, if she chose wrong.

“Well… you’re in luck, then. Or maybe you’ve thought this through more than I expected—maybe I misjudged you a bit… But either way, I’m not going to do any of the things you’re afraid I might,” the Major said. “Instead, I’ll answer your question honestly, in the same spirit you asked it. I’m assuming you’re dealing with something you’re worried could be misunderstood as dangerous to the UHF, even though you’re certain it isn’t.”

Thea considered her answer for a moment, then nodded.

Æht was something she more or less had under control—for now, at least. 

Nothing she had experienced so far, pointed to the strange entity being able to interact with the real world unless Thea let her. 

So, as far as she could tell, it wasn’t an actual threat to the UHF.

Major Quinn tilted her head, sighed, and continued, “I’m truly, deeply sorry that things ended up like this, Thea… The fact that you even have to ask a question like this means something went very wrong along the way already. And I get why you’d feel the need to. I really do… In a perfect world, I’d now tell you that there’s no difference between what’s best for the UHF and what’s best for you, as an individual Marine. But I don’t believe that—and based on what you’ve been through, I doubt you would believe those platitudes either.”

Thea’s eyes widened a bit at the blunt honesty. 

She hadn’t expected the Major to be this straightforward about the problems in the institution she served. But, then again, this was a problem that any sufficiently large institution faced, so it wasn’t like this was a particularly large revelation to admit.

“So,” the Major said quietly, “I will give you my honest answer to your question. But you are not to repeat this to anyone unless I tell you exactly who you can share it with. Most people wouldn’t believe you anyway if you tried to accuse me of something—but even rumors would be a nightmare to clean up. This stays between you, me, and whoever I authorize. Are we understand?”

“Yes, Major. I understand,” Thea replied immediately and earnestly.

And she truly did.

Even if she was just some random Recruit, Major Quinn’s position meant any bad rumors would explode into a huge mess. And Thea had already spent more private time with her than the average Recruit would likely do in their entire career, as a result of her strange Psychic nature and the fact that she had come out ahead on the first Assessment. 

Enough time that, if someone really wanted to connect invisible dots, they might be able to give just enough weight to any rumors Thea might spread that they would become the level of headache that the Major was concerned about.

Major Quinn nodded, fingers tapping once against the desk before she folded her hands neatly on top of it. “Then here is your answer: Anrake is, potentially, one of the very few people in the UHF who would give you a chance to explain yourself, if things ever reached that point, just for the sake of curiosity alone. While he’s part of the Faction’s core—same as I am—his personal power places him far outside the reach of most of the usual hierarchy. Plenty of people try to order him around, but he rarely bothers acknowledging them.”

She shifted slightly in her chair, posture straightening as if settling deeper into the role of teacher rather than officer. “He is, for all intents and purposes, unbound by almost every regulation in the Faction, barring only the most ironclad ones that no one can defy without major trouble. That freedom means he can act on his own judgement more than almost anyone else alive.” 

She paused, her gaze flicking briefly to Thea’s focused expression. “But the question is less about whether he can, and more about whether he would.”

Her fingertips drummed once more on the desk. “Anrake is… old. And not in the way I usually tease him about. I mean that he is truly ancient—among some of the UHF’s oldest monsters. He has lived through more versions of this Galactic War than you or I can even imagine. And because of that, he has lost more than either of us could ever hope to wrap our heads around. Comrades. Friends. Lovers. Family… Entire planets and even systems, sometimes. He’s jaded—deeply so. Not out of cruelty, or apathy, but simple exhaustion.”

She exhaled lightly, almost in a sigh, though her attention never left Thea’s face. “So getting him to take personal interest in someone is… rare. Very rare. Most of the time, he simply defaults to following regulations because they’re easy. Predictable. No thought or emotional investment required. And no one can fault him for obeying the letter of UHF protocol.”

Thea paid very close attention to the Major’s unexpectedly long answer.

‘She’s taking this very seriously… good,’ she thought, a small thread of relief pulling through her chest. ‘The Old Man always said the Proprietor was someone his own pupil had been close friends with… Somebody potentially worthy of trust… Thankfully, it looks like he was right on this.’

Major Quinn’s gaze met hers again, and Thea didn’t miss the faint spark in the woman’s eyes as she held eye contact without even a hint of a flinch. The Major’s stern expression eased—just a touch—shifting into something almost fond before she kept going.

“Now, I think you’ve already given him enough reason to put in that level of effort. He agreed to take you on as his mentee right after your first meeting, after all—not something I ever expected, or even dared to hope for, to be perfectly honest. I was fully preparing myself to just keep throwing you at him until he eventually warmed up to your blunt, earnest nature, but whatever you two talked about during that first lesson clearly impressed him enough—or interested him enough—that he’s willing to spend the considerable effort it takes for him to actually care about anything or anyone.

“So… I’d say there is a very good chance Anrake wouldn’t react too immediately if you ever showed thoughts, concerns, or behavior that someone else might label as ‘anti-UHF.’”

She raised a singular finger, “Make no mistake, though: He will question you. Thoroughly. And you had better have a clear reason and a solid argument ready if it ever comes to that, because there is nobody—and I mean that literally nobody within several weeks’ travel, even through the Void—who could keep you safe from him if you disappoint him in that answer.”

She raised both hands disarmingly as if to calm Thea before the panic she could feel rose up inside of her, could even begin to set in.

“I’m not telling you this to terrify you. I’m telling you because you asked for the truth, and you deserve the full picture before making any decision on this important topic. You need to fully understand the other side of the coin you’re planning to toss: Anrake has no leash anyone can pull fast enough to save you if he decides you’re a problem.”

Major Quinn’s gaze was ironclad, holding Thea’s own eyes in a spell that did not allow for her to miss the importance of her words, even if she had tried.

“The chance of him ever coming to that conclusion is equally as low, because you would first have to be capable of causing real damage to the UHF for him to even consider you a threat in the first place. And with him literally here, on the same ship as you, nothing on that scale could even realistically happen before he stepped in and erased you from existence.

“His idea of what counts as a major danger to the UHF is already skewed beyond what either of us could truly imagine, so I doubt anything you might say—as a Recruit, especially—would even register as dangerous in his eyes. But again… if you do happen to cross that line? Then it will be the very last thing you ever do.”

Major Quinn let the last sentence hang in the air. 

She didn’t soften the last sentence, didn’t walk it back, didn’t try to dress it up in any way. 

She simply folded her hands again, leaned back into her chair, and gave Thea the space to think.

Thea stood rooted to the spot, staring at the Major but not really seeing her for a few long seconds as her mind struggled to catch up. 

The answer… the sheer depth of it—it was so far beyond anything she had expected that her throat tightened around a breath she didn’t remember taking.

‘She… actually told me everything I could ever need,’ Thea thought, utterly stunned. ‘She didn’t dodge parts, didn’t sugarcoat it all, didn’t try to redirect me, downright threaten me as a result of the question or hold back parts of the answer I might not want to hear. She actually told me everything. All of it.’

For a moment, the tension she had been holding in her shoulders since before she’d even walked into the office loosened. 

It wasn’t gone—nothing about what Major Quinn had said was in any way comforting enough for that—but the painful strain eased just enough to let her breathe without feeling like her ribs were lined with knives.

It was more than she’d dared hope for. Much more. 

She wasn’t sure she even deserved an in-depth and seemingly honest answer like that.

The mention of Anrake’s age, his losses, his strictness, the weight of responsibility he carried and the personal power he could bring to bear, both being a freeing aspect, but also a shackle around his feet—it painted a picture she’d never truly considered before in this context or to such a complete degree. 

Not of the enigmatic, impossible powerhouse and potentially life-threatening danger she had built up in her head, but of something almost… human. 

Human in the oldest, rawest sense possible.

It didn’t make him less scary; not by a long shot. If anything—if she was really, truly honest with herself—it made him even scarier in her mind than anything Æht had ever said to her about him. 

But it also made the idea of approaching him—of trusting him with something she couldn’t tell anyone else—feel… maybe not safe, but not guaranteed to be suicidal either.

‘So he might very well listen,’ she thought slowly. ‘Not guaranteed. But… highly likely, at the very least.’

She wasn’t ready to take that leap yet. Not without thinking about it for hours—maybe days. 

But she finally had something solid to think about. 

A reference point, of sorts.

And Major Quinn had given it to her without much, if any, hesitation.

Thea swallowed hard, trying to tamp down the swirl of relief, fear, gratitude, and sheer emotional exhaustion starting to churn inside her chest. She didn’t know how to voice any of it—not in a way that wouldn’t sound childish or ungrateful or stupid.

But she didn’t need to, she realized as her eyes went searching for the Major’s. 

Major Quinn seemed to understand anyway. 

The woman’s expression hadn’t softened exactly, but there was something gentler in the way she met Thea’s gaze—an acknowledgement, maybe. 

A quiet reassurance.

Thea let out a slow breath she hoped didn’t sound too shaky.

‘Even if I don’t flip the coin yet… at least I have a better understanding of the odds,’ she thought, grounding herself on the fact. ‘And that’s more than I could have possibly hoped for, coming in here.’

Thea drew in a long, steadying breath and finally spoke, keeping her voice as even as she could manage, “I… Thank you, Major Quinn. I really appreciate your help with this. Thank you.”

A faint smile—somewhere between pained and gentle—pulled at the Major’s lips before she waved it off, almost dismissively. “It’s fine, Recruit. That’s what superior officers are meant to be for, yes? Clearing up confusions, solving problems, answering the questions that would otherwise stop our Marines from performing at their best.”

Her expression sharpened again. “That said, I trust you remember the conditions attached to this answer. You are cleared to share our conversation with Anrake, of course…” She paused, then added, “and also with Recruit Karania Faulkner.”

Thea blinked at that—Kara hadn’t been a part of this at all—but Major Quinn continued before she could ask.

“I’m well aware that you consider her trustworthy, despite the short amount of time you’ve known each other. You also have a tendency to trust her judgement—even over your own in many cases. That is dangerous, I have to warn you,” she said plainly, though not unkindly. 

“But it’s not something I can fairly admonish you for. I have… similar bonds with a few people myself. It can be freeing to trust someone’s ethics and intellect that deeply.”

She leaned forward slightly, folding her hands atop the desk. “So Faulkner is also cleared for the full contents of my answer, for you to mull over together with her. I doubt you will want to try to dissect everything spoken here by yourself, after all. However, do make sure she understands the conditions you were given, yes? She’s more than smart enough to grasp the implications, and I fully trust she won’t cause problems as a result.”

“Yes, Major,” Thea replied at once, nodding earnestly.

“Then, if there is nothing else…” Major Quinn let the pause stretch, giving Thea every chance to add something. 

She didn’t. 

She’d already gotten far more than she ever expected, and her mind was too busy trying to keep her thoughts from spiraling to even consider asking another life-altering question. 

“You are dismissed. Have a good rest of your day, Recruit—and make sure to think things through thoroughly from here on out.”

Thea gave a quick, proper salute, then turned and left the office—careful to keep her pace steady so she didn’t look like she was running away, even though it absolutely felt like she was.

The door slid shut behind her, and she let out a heavy sigh that almost buckled her knees. 

A steady hand landed on her shoulder, keeping her upright, and she looked up into Kara’s eyes.

“Thanks, Kara… That was… more than I bargained for,” she managed with a weak smile. 

Before her friend could even open her mouth, Thea added, “I’ll give you the rundown in a few days. I… I have a lot to think about first. But I promise I’ll talk to you about everything once I figure things out for myself.”

Karania didn’t answer right away. 

She just met Thea’s eyes, holding the look with that calm, unreadable focus of hers. 

For a moment, Thea couldn’t tell if Kara was worried, annoyed, or trying to piece something together behind those bright, sharp eyes—not that she ever reliably could, really.

But then a small, warm smile tugged at Kara’s lips. 

She nodded once and gently steered Thea away from the office door, one hand still lightly on her shoulder as if making sure she stayed upright.

“It’s alright,” Kara said quietly. “If you want to keep some things to yourself for now, that’s fine. I’m not going to get mad or anything, we all have our own thoughts and problems to deal with. But if you need help sorting through any of it… I’ll be right here.”

“I definitely will,” Thea muttered before she could stop herself, rubbing the back of her neck. 

“I just… need to figure out how to even bring it all up properly.”

Kara’s eyebrows twitched upward in open curiosity at Thea’s caginess, but—thankfully—she didn’t push. She just gave her another small nod, accepting the answer without turning it into an interrogation.

Thea felt a weight fall off of her shoulders at that. 

For the second time today, she felt something like real relief settle in her chest. 

Both people she’d chosen to trust—Major Quinn and Kara—had actually respected that trust. 

In Quinn’s case, it had been quite literally a lifesaver. 

If the Major had pushed even a little—had asked why Thea needed to know, or what had brought it on—she would’ve been trapped. 

A direct question from a superior officer wasn’t something she could simply refuse to answer, nor something she could realistically dodge appropriately.

And Kara… well, if Kara had pressed right now, Thea doubted she’d be able to explain without oversharing something she wasn’t ready to voice yet. 

She trusted Kara entirely, of course—that wasn’t the issue. 

But she still needed to be careful in what she said, and how she said it.

They walked in silence for a bit through the Sovereign’s hallways, Thea drifting into her own head until she realized she needed a break from her thoughts before they ate her alive.

“So uh… what else do we do today?” she asked, glancing over. “It feels like there should be something, but my brain’s completely fried.”

“It’s already late afternoon, thanks to the DMs,” Kara replied, shrugging lightly. “Probably nothing unless you had something specific planned.”

“I didn’t,” Thea admitted. “Honestly… I wouldn’t mind some time to think. Maybe watch the DM recording a few times—figure out what I can improve on or something...”

Kara nodded immediately, a smile spreading on her face. “Same, actually! I was going to do exactly that and note down things as I do. I already have half a dozen ideas on how to change my triage priorities in future, similar situations… I’m honestly more excited about this than I thought I would be.”

Thea couldn’t help but break out in her own smile at that.

Seeing Karania excited about something as oddly “her” as triage priority alterations just felt right. After the full day of absolute chaos and mayhem from start to finish, it was good to see that some things just simply made sense.

They turned toward the direction of Alpha Squad’s dorms, walking together but already mentally separating their plans. They ultimately agreed it’d make more sense to take a little personal time first before going over each other’s recordings and notes in the next few days.

“Oh—actually,” Thea said as they reached the corridor where their dorms were located, pulling out her datapad. “I wanted to message Peria. I tried out the different Gram variants during the mission, and I kinda want her thoughts on some things.”

“That’s probably a good idea. Get those questions out while they’re fresh,” Kara said, nodding. “And tomorrow’s mostly free after the System 102 lecture.”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” Thea replied, grinning, already typing out the message to her newest acquaintance.

She let Karania look it over first, earning a raised eyebrow and a reluctant nod—which Thea counted as a win, since she didn’t have to change anything this time—then sent the message off just as they stepped into Alpha Squad’s dorms.

The dorm was quiet, empty of the rest of Alpha Squad, leaving nothing but the soft hum of the ship around them and the welcome promise of a few hours to breathe.

They exchanged quick goodnights, both clearly ready to collapse into their own thoughts for a while, and peeled off toward their separate rooms to go over the day and their Digital Mission recordings on their own time…

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[ND] Chapter 155 - Unexpected Outcomes

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------------------- Start of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) -------------------
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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Chapter 150 - Long-Awaited Talks III has just released on RR with no major changes.

For the Fixers, this chapter is new.

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Final chapter of the lengthy "Consequences" Arc wrap-up.

We're back to regularly scheduled Sera-adventures on the next one.

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I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the link to the chapter:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SI8gxxw-vF9TUM3LqHqucdGKTaRWM9g9A0jW3-Su0g8/edit?usp=sharing

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Chapter 155 - Unexpected Outcomes

I was half-tempted to just shut my eyes again and pretend I hadn’t seen her, but considering I’d been staring directly into her gaze like a startled deer, even I knew that particular ruse wasn’t going to get me anywhere.

So instead, I leaned into the one thing I didn’t have to fake: the pain.

A low, guttural groan escaped me as I shifted on the mattress. Everything hurt. 

Not “I worked out too hard” hurt—more like I had been disassembled, dropped down a flight of stairs, reassembled by someone drunk, and then forced to sleep on it.

Even turning my head the couple of degrees needed to stop straining my eyes felt like trying to peel my own spine apart. 

It took every ounce of willpower I had not to hiss or swear out loud.

“W… what’s going on?” I asked, my voice cracking in a way that almost sold the act too well. Even my throat felt sore—whether from screaming earlier or because the Upgrade had reworked things there, too, I couldn’t tell. 

Either way, it was perfect cover.

[Deception] didn’t have much to work with given the circumstances, but it leaned hard into the “confused victim of mysterious Anima nonsense” angle. And honestly? It wasn’t even the worst story. 

It was closer to the truth than anything else I could’ve said.

If I’d known Rank 6 upgrades hurt that much, I would’ve staggered them; pushed Body to another day and not tried to cram everything into a single twenty-four-hour death march. 

But I hadn’t, and now Valeria was witnessing the aftermath of my stupidity firsthand.

‘Just play dumb, Sera. You are dumb for doing this. Lean into it. You’re a natural, after all.’

Valeria didn’t answer me. 

Didn’t even acknowledge my words. 

Her attention was fixed on me—specifically on my neck, my face, my arms. The rest of me was under the blanket, but the intensity of her stare made me feel like even that wouldn’t have stopped her if she wanted to see more.

Her expression wasn’t anger, however. Or suspicion. Or any of the “this-is-definitely-bad” emotions that I had half-expected to show up.

Instead, it was fascination.

A hungry, analytical sort of awe—like she was watching a rare chemical reaction bloom in a petri dish.

She kept flicking her gaze between my eyes and different parts of my body, pupils narrowing slightly each time. 

I didn’t need to be an expert to guess what was happening. 

She probably had her Anima Sight active—and if Miss K’s descriptions were anything to go by, my entire body was currently lighting up like a damn fireworks display. 

Sprites of every color—maybe green, cause the System had been doing things with my body?—probably danced across my form while the System continued stitching me back together on the inside.

“W… why am I so sore…?” I pushed again, letting another small, genuine wince slip as I tried—and failed—to move my legs.

That seemed to snap her out of whatever trance she’d been in. 

Her eyes refocused for real this time, locking onto mine, searching for something. 

I froze, caught like a deer in headlights, trying to hold the perfect balance between confused and alert—enough awareness to make sense, but not enough to raise suspicion.

‘Come on, Valeria… I’m just a confused girl trying to make sense of whatever weird Anima thing I’ve got going on,’ I told myself, forcing my gaze to stay steady. ‘Nothing else. No secrets. Just pure confusion and some vague idea that it might be related to the other Anima stuff I told you about yesterday. It makes perfect sense, I promise. Please don’t connect the dots.’

Because if she did—if she even suspected something like the System sat behind all this—I’d be dealing with a whole different flavor of nightmare. One I wasn’t even remotely equipped to handle while flat on my back, sweating, shaking, and barely able to breathe without wanting to scream.

The silence stretched. 

Every breath I took sent a sharp jolt through my ribs, so I ended up doing these quick, shallow half-inhales that probably made me look like a panicked animal. 

Not ideal. 

But also… very accurate to how I felt.

Finally, Valeria’s gaze stopped dissecting my face and drifted back over my arms, my shoulders—whatever she was watching with that laser-focused intensity. 

And then she spoke.

“I had hoped you might offer clarity regarding your current state, Seraphine,” she said, tone slipping back toward that casual-corporate cadence she always used, even if a slight casualness still colored the edges. “But it appears you are not fully cognizant of it either. Miss Kanis has given you the basic framework on Sprite coloration and their functions, I presume?”

The wave of relief that crashed through me nearly made me dizzy.

“Yes—some. Nothing in-depth,” I managed, trying to push myself a little higher against the pillows. I just hated lying there like some fragile little thing while she was talking down at me. 

But the moment I lifted even a centimeter, Valeria raised a hand—her left, of course; the right still limp and useless—and motioned sharply for me to stop.

“Do not strain yourself unnecessarily, Seraphine.” Her voice softened only by a fraction. “Your body is undergoing a form of… metamorphosis, for lack of a more precise term. I have not witnessed something comparable in many years. It is… genuinely remarkable.” 

Her eyes flicked over me again, bright with a restrained, analytical fascination. 

“You mentioned discomfort. Is it acute pain, or merely strain? I have injectors at hand that would mitigate the symptoms, but I am reluctant to risk interfering with the process. From what I can discern, none of the Sprites are harming you—instead, they appear to be correcting certain, substantial underlying damage.”

I blinked at her—partly because I hadn’t expected such a straightforward info-dump, partly because I didn’t even have to fake the intrigue that crossed my face. 

She’d just casually confirmed that:

1. Sprites were, in-fact, absolutely swarming me right now.
   
   

2. They had identifiable patterns and “jobs.”
   
   

3. People like Valeria could read those patterns off the surface of someone’s body like it was a diagnostic chart, to get insight into what was going on inside their bodies.

‘I’m sure that has some kind of massive implications,’ I thought, still wincing at a lingering tremors in my body, ‘but I am nowhere near educated enough in Anima stuff to figure out what.’

Her offer of painkillers was genuinely tempting—painkillers sounded great right now—but the idea of shoving foreign chemicals into my system while the System was actively rearranging my very cells? Yeah, no. 

I’d rather not tempt fate. Well… More than I already had.

I swallowed, wincing again as my sore throat scratched.

“Not acute,” I said slowly. “Just… really bad muscle soreness. The worst I’ve ever had. By a lot.”

Valeria gave a small, considering hum before answering. “Then you will have to endure it. I do not wish to interfere when I cannot guarantee the outcome.”

‘Of course. Tough it out, no biggie... Classic Valeria.’

She moved on immediately, eyes narrowing slightly. “Are you capable of invoking Anima Sight on demand, Seraphine?”

“No,” I croaked. “I require assistance in accumulating the Sprites to turn it off.”

Valeria clicked her tongue.

Actually clicked her tongue at my answer.

A full-body instinctive flinch went off inside me, like some part of my brain had decided that was the sound royalty made right before having someone executed.

I blinked at her, wondering if she practiced that in a mirror or if it really did just come naturally at her altitude on the social food chain. But Valeria didn’t acknowledge the moment at all, simply continued on like she hadn’t just clicked her tongue at me like an offended duchess. 

“That is… something that will need to be addressed posthaste,” she said, the hint of annoyance slipping beneath her exhausted control. “Is Miss Kanis capable of teaching you the technique?”

“I—I mean, possibly?” I managed. “We haven’t really dug into the whole Anima side of things yet. She’s, uh… trying to get more info from her own teacher first.”

Valeria nodded thoughtfully, gaze drifting for a few heartbeats. Whatever she was calculating in that head of hers, I was sure it would terrify me if I saw the full flowchart.

“Then you will ask her for a timeframe at the next possible opportunity,” she said, tone that brookered no argument. “Given that she is not employed to tutor you in Anima theory, she will likely have limited room to deviate from your scheduled training. If she can introduce the technique within the next month, that is acceptable.”

I already heard the but coming.

“If she cannot,” Valeria continued, confirming my suspicions, “you will inform me immediately. I will instruct you personally, should that be the case.”

My thoughts made a small, strangled noise, somewhere between confusion, excitement and fear. 

“Y…You?” I managed to squeak out.

“Yes, Seraphine. I will not have my daughter blind to the forces around her,” she said, tone cooling into something firm and resolute. “This World is intent on involving you, Seraphine, whether you wish to be a participant or not. Anima Sight is a foundational necessity for survival for you, from here on out. Your inability to call upon it is likely to prove fatal, if not addressed in a timely manner.”

The capital-W World, was something I could hear in her voice. The way she said it was like she was referencing something far bigger than the megacities, corporations, or the average threats that lurked within them.

Something ancient, downright ritualistic.

Something that made even her wary of the consequences of ignoring its attention.

I swallowed dryly, feeling another shiver trace down my spine.

Whatever she meant… I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out. Not anytime soon.

Valeria’s terms were… Well, they were Valeria’s terms. 

I didn’t exactly have a better plan, nor did I want to try to convince her of one, should I have it, so I simply agreed with a quiet “Alright,” but she barely acknowledged it—if she even heard me at all. 

Her attention stayed locked on the Sprites flickering over my skin, tracking their patterns with this sharp, clinical interest that made me feel like a walking anomaly more than anything else.

Before I could even think about asking what came next now that she’d returned, she spoke up again.

“I have brought all of your belongings from the old apartment,” she said, tilting her head slightly toward the door.

I followed her gaze and, sure enough, I could see the outline of my DuraPack and a small stack of folded clothes just behind the bed. 

For a brief, cold moment, panic nipped at my spine—’The knives!’ 

She must have definitely seen all of Misha’s knives. The very knives I kept buying like a crow hoarding shiny objects, or a gremlin preparing for the apocalypse.

But if Valeria had noticed them, she treated it all with the same interest she might give a smudge on the wall. 

Not worth her time. Not worth commenting on.

“That should allow you to rest a little easier,” she continued, as if dropping off an arsenal of weaponry was completely normal behavior. “For now, you shall remain in bed until the Sprites finish what they are doing, while I make sure that they do not deviate.”

I blinked at her. “Wait… deviate? They could… change their minds or something?”

Her lips twitched. “Unlikely. Without outside interference, Sprites behave as they are programmed. They take the instruction they are given, and they execute it. Nothing more, nothing less.”

She paused then, tapping a finger lightly against her knee, eyes narrowing in thought.

“But the World—” there it was again, capital W and all, “—can intervene. Rarely, but it happens. Direct interference can overwrite commands or shift them mid-task, especially in long-duration operations. Some of EtherLabs’ more… experimental projects require extended Sprite work, which means we must construct Anima-inert rooms to prevent the World from ‘guiding’ the process elsewhere.”

I stared at her, eyebrows creeping up. “The World guides things?”

“In its own way, yes. The World dislikes Sprites being locked into rigid, singular-purpose routines for too long. It pushes back. Redirects them. Sometimes subtly… oftentimes not.” 

She gave a faint shrug, utterly unfazed by the idea of fucking reality itself micromanaging Anima-related stuff. “It is one of the primary risks for Master Practitioners, or so I am told—I am merely advanced, so I cannot confirm myself. But you need not worry yet. What is happening to you is decidedly in the span of short-term work. Relatively simple in complexity, if impressive in scale.”

‘Simple. Right…’ I couldn’t help but think.

Because having my very cells, tendons and muscles rebuilt and set on fire from the inside out definitely counted as simple on the Valeria Vildea scale of normal. 

Naturally.

She shifted in her chair, settling in with quiet authority, like she fully intended to remain until every Sprite had finished its job. “Rest, Seraphine. I will remain here to ensure they do not deviate. It is unlikely, but not impossible, and I have no intention of risking your safety when the World has already shown such an interest in you.”

The capital W thudded around in my head like someone had dropped a dictionary on my skull. I wanted to ask—God, did I want to ask—but the second I tried to form an actual sentence, it all sounded idiotic.

‘What do you mean “the World with a capital W,” mother?’ Yeah. Fantastic idea. Peak fucking question right there, Sera. That’ll definitely get you a coherent answer that won’t confuse you more than it’ll help, I’m sure.’

What I needed was a damn primer. A textbook. A freaking cheat sheet for all this nonsense. 

But the System sure as hell wasn’t handing out a guided tour so far, and Miss K’s lessons were stuck behind whatever mysterious teacher of hers she was waiting for approval on. 

Maybe when I ranked up Anima again the System would deign to actually explain something. 

Or maybe Miss K would finally get the greenlight and drop a textbook on me; that would be perfect.

What I absolutely couldn’t afford, however, was spending more time discussing Anima with Valeria than strictly necessary. 

That much was obvious to me. 

I was already skating on thin ice there with all this Upgrade nonsense going on right now. 

One wrong question—one poorly phrased “why does my body glow like a rave factory during Upgrades”—and she’d be prying the System’s existence out of me thread by thread.

That was not happening, if I could, in any way, prevent it.

So, after running through every possible question I could come up with and discarding all of them for being too dangerous, too obvious, or too likely to send Valeria into a lengthy conversation I wouldn’t survive the inevitable questions of, I just… sank back against the pillow. 

It hurt—my muscles screamed like I’d insulted their mothers—but weirdly, the pain grounded me. 

And Valeria was still right there.

Watching. Guarding. Analyzing. Plotting. 

Or doing whatever it truly was that Valeria did when the World stopped behaving to her liking.

Somehow, that thought was… reassuring? 

Terrifying, obviously. But also strangely reassuring.

‘Never thought I’d think that having Valeria watch me like a hawk while the System was doing its thing would feel reassuring… yet here we are,’ I thought, almost laughing at myself if my ribs didn’t threaten to scream for trying.

Eventually, I managed to land on a question that wouldn’t drag us into any System-shaped minefields.

“What is the plan going forward, exactly?” I asked, testing my voice again. It wasn’t as scratchy now; the words actually came out in one piece. “Can I… return to working at Mr. Shori’s? Go to the Arkion Dojo? Leave the apartment? Or am I stuck here for however long it takes EtherLabs to figure things out?”

Valeria didn’t answer right away. 

She kept watching the Sprites skating under my skin like I was a live feed she couldn’t afford to look away from. 

Only when they shifted in some way I couldn’t see did she finally speak up again.

“You may leave once they’re finished,” she said, shifting her weight slightly as he ran her fingers through her hair. “I will confirm their work is complete before you step outside. If even one of them retains a task-thread, I want it resolved here and now.”

She said it like she was talking about loose wires in a reactor core.

“As for your safety…” Her eyes narrowed, that razor-sharp calculation creeping in. “You will not be targeted again anytime soon. Nyxstalker is… indisposed. Severely so. Losing his partial Black Carapace, and failing to bring back anything substantial… It will come with a mountain of personal and corporate-level fallout. His value to ApexWave is currently under review, I guarantee it. He will not be moving against you—or anyone—for quite some time.

“And should that situation change,” she added, tone dropping another few degrees, “I will inform you. And I will handle him personally.”

Yeah… Angry Valeria was a thing I never wanted to be within the same zip code of, that much was certain. The image alone made me want to burrow under the blanket and pretend to be asleep until the heat death of the universe.

“Barring that, there is nothing else you are required to do. I will arrange the firearms training we discussed earlier today. Expect the first session within a few days.”

That part came out matter-of-fact, like firearm training was on par with setting up a dentist appointment for her—which, considering this was Neo Avalis, might actually be easier, all things considered. 

“Until then, your schedule is your own. Continue working at Mr. Shori’s if you wish. It is a valuable experience. And the Arkion Dojo—” she paused, just long enough for it to be noticeable as she thought about her word choices, “—I would recommend cultivating relationships there. If those young men and women are worth your time, the connections will serve you well as you grow. And you may find… friends.”

I blinked at that.

Friends.

Valeria Vildea—Queen of Corporate Apocalypse, High Priestess of Efficiency, She Who Weaponizes Language Against Family—thought I should get friends.

The irony almost made me laugh, but my diaphragm wasn’t quite ready for that level of ambition yet.

Still… hearing her say it threw me more than anything else she had said today. 

Maybe she did have friends, against all odds. Or thought she did. Or wished she had. 

Or maybe she was giving advice she’d never taken herself.

Hard to say, really. 

I didn’t know her that well, after all.

‘Something that I might have to rectify at some point… Just not now, while I feel like liquid death and haven’t had time to really think through anything in regards to her.’

Valeria, meanwhile, simply returned her gaze to the Sprites.

With the conversation seemingly done and no other pressing matters to attend to from my end, I simply decided to close my eyes and try to take a nap—a normal one, without the Reset Function.

The last thing I needed was to give Valeria even more reasons to suspect that Anima was going haywire around me at all times.

The muscle soreness radiating through my entire body was bad enough that trying to nap was a true battle, but at some point, I finally felt myself drift off, vaguely dreaming of a less painful tomorrow…

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[Wolf Lord+ | Draft] Volume 2 - Interlude: A Proprietor’s Lot

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------------------- Start of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) -------------------
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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Welcome to the draft release of Volume 2 - Interlude: A Proprietor’s Lot for y'all.

As always, a quick reminder that this chapter is still in the process of being workshopped by me and that this is simply the first-draft.

And also: Please do not read the chapters here on Patreon, but go for the googledoc, .pdf or .epub instead. Patreon butchers all forms of formatting and you're missing out on easier and more enjoyable reading experiences.

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HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL CHAPTER!

Tried a bit of a different approach to interludes in this one.

Focusing on a single PoV that is mostly about things outside the main POV's sight and current concerns, while also weaving in part of the main character's storyline towards the end to still move the story forward, if slowly.

Let me know how it feels!

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I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the link to the chapter:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/12g1V39ynSzn-AonOwZnSUZ227q_TlNKD0OkIJXUdWYk/edit?usp=sharing

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Volume 2 - Interlude: A Proprietor’s Lot

“The O-13 governs the United Human Federation. 

“But anyone who has served long enough in the Corps knows that the UHF Marine Corps operates under an entirely different sort of governance: The Marines govern themselves.

“When you build an army out of people who can level city blocks before breakfast, personal politics stops being a side problem and starts being the very water you have to swim in.

“The Allbright System, in its infinite cruelty, doesn't care for unity, politics, or chain of command. It cares only for advancement. 

“For the pursuit of perfection through conflict in its search for the Ultimate Warrior.

“And so, the Corps breeds monsters: Deliberately, with no remorse and no end in sight for how far they will go to create the most monstrous person they can.

“Generally, they are beautiful, loyal and efficient, those monsters of ours. Monsters who bend entire campaigns through the sheer weight of their personal strength. And while the Council loves their victories, it has to fear the independence that this very power brings.

“See… when one sufficiently high-Tier Marine can level a city by themselves, and another twenty can bend the laws of physics at their whim, you stop commanding an army and start managing egos, first and foremost. 

“The Allbright System rewards selfishness disguised as ambition—because ambition, to the System, is progress towards its prime directive.

“This has always been the UHF’s greatest curse, but also its greatest victory. 

“The Council cannot stifle the System’s hunger without starving its own armies from the very powers they need to contend in the Galactic War. To deny the Allbright System’s directive would be to cut the very muscle that keeps the Republic and Dominion to our sides trembling at our borders. 

“And so, the Corps plays its own game beneath the Galactic War—one of politics, influence, and personal supremacy. To temper this chaos, the Council created the Proprietor system. 

“Each Proprietor is the highest agent of the Council inside the Corps in all but name—a sovereign ruler of their assigned Star Sectors, chosen for loyalty to the cause, temperament and wisdom, as much as personal strength. 

“To punch above their weight-class is all but a single requirement for a Proprietor, and one that they do not even sweat about. Aces among Battlefield Aces, were they ever needed to be deployed—the ultimate surgical weapons of the Council.

“Their very word is law within their domain, superseded only by the Council itself; nullifying the Corps own ranking structure and chain of command, when necessary.

“They mediate the conflicts that the Allbright System inevitably breeds inside the Corps, pulling their lesser peers back from the brink of mutiny and madness, back into the fold of the unity that is required for our Faction to exist.

“Some call them kings and queens, but I call them a necessary evil.

“Without them, the Corps would eat itself alive—its brightest stars burning each other out in a desperate bid to consume the rest, long before any enemy could.

“They aren’t chosen because they’re incorruptible—none of us are—but because their corruption is predictable, manageable, and, most importantly, aligned with the Council’s will.

“They are our guardrails, our arbitrators, our leash on the monsters of war we’ve built with our own hands.

“But make no mistake: The Proprietors are, by and large, the greatest monsters of them all.

“For ask yourself this—what kind of being does it take to not just leash, but command, the most dangerous monsters the Corps has managed to deliberately breed in seven centuries?

“What kind of being is required to make those who can level cities with a thought tremble at the sound of their name? To make the monsters yelp and lower their heads in shame, when their voices are raised?

“No—the true monsters aren’t the Ace Marines the propaganda reels glorify. 

“They’re the very Daemons holding their leashes tight; the ones who make even demi-gods-in-the-making remember what it means to fear.”

—

[Excerpt from “The UHF Marine Corps’ Greatest Problem: The Monsters Of Our Own Making,” by Professor Emeritus Halden Virex – Former Advisor to the O-13 Council – PFC911]

======

======

PoV: Major Zephyr Quinn

“How many of these damned reports are left…?” Zephyr groaned, stretching and arching her back over the chair she sat on.

“There are seventy-three reports remaining, Major,” the Sovereign’s calm, ever-unhelpful voice replied, as if she had actually wanted an answer.

Zephyr shot a glare at the ceiling—there wasn’t really anywhere else to direct it to—thinking darkly, ‘I swear that damn AI is doing this on purpose just to piss me off.’

It had been a brutally long day of paperwork. 

A dozen datapads sat scattered across the wide, solid-wooden table in front of her, each loaded with a different list of reports to help “keep things organized,” though the current state of the desk suggested otherwise.

Two of them had even fallen to the floor when she’d tossed one down out of sheer frustration, sending a small pile tumbling over with it. She hadn’t bothered to pick them up.

‘I could just ask the Sovereign to put them back,’ she mused, ‘but I’d rather not rely on that thing more than I already have to.’

She’d never been fond of the UHF’s obsession with the shipboard AIs. 

The Sovereign, especially, had always rubbed her the wrong way.

Likely because of its closeness to Horatio, somebody Zephyr herself considered a close friend—almost like a father-figure of sorts. While she trusted him, she definitely did not trust the damn AI further than she could throw it—which wasn’t particularly far, as she couldn’t even get to it. 

The mere thought of the Sanctums buried deep within the cores of the UHF fleet’s ships—a place no one but the Captain could access—made her skin crawl.

‘An entire part of the ship off-limits to everyone else…? I trust the Council knows what they’re doing,’ she thought, ‘but without knowing what’s inside that Sanctum—or how these things truly function—I don’t think I’ll ever be comfortable around them. Just hope Terra never ends up feeling threatened by it all...’

There was, of course, one way for her to find out exactly how it all worked—if she truly cared enough to.

She was, after all, a Proprietor by order of the O-13 Council.

If she truly wanted to, she could simply override every restriction and classification in place to dig into what made the Sovereign tick. But that, in essence, was the whole point of being trusted with such power—to not use it for something as petty as idle curiosity.

Her eyes drifted back down to the datapad in her hands, to the report she’d been staring at before her thoughts had wandered.

It was one she’d been brooding over for days now, and she still didn’t know what to make of it.

‘Concerning, obviously… but what am I supposed to do with this, exactly?’

It was the first comprehensive report from the investigation into the disappearance of the Monarch—one of the Sovereign’s sister-ships, lost during the first quarterly Assessment of the newest Recruitment Drive.

The report had been… beyond unsettling. 

Not only because of what it said, but especially because of everything it didn’t.

For one, the Monarch had been found—or what was left of it.

A wreck, torn apart into several large chunks that had been found drifting in real-space. 

But the implications buried in that report were the kind no high-ranking UHF officer ever wanted to read.

No chain of catastrophic system failures. No signs of enemy fleet attacks. If anything, the ship’s hull had been downright pristine—except where the ship had simply been torn apart.

That much the investigation team had confirmed early on. 

‘No survivors. Complete loss of personnel, including the Captain and the AI. The Sanctum was breached, and whatever was inside it is missing entirely,’ Zephyr recalled from the informal section of the report.

All of it led to the chilling conclusion now glowing on her datapad—the one visibly marked “for Kuigon Proprietor Eyes Only”.

It was one of those rare moments when her clearance as a Proprietor had naturally come into play, surpassing even that of the ship’s own Captain. 

Normally, she had far less authority and clearance than someone like Horatio. But this time around, her title had placed her first in line to know about the initial results, despite only  officially holding the rank of Major.

She held the datapad in front of her face, too weary to sit up straight, her head leaning back against the top of the chair as she read the final lines of the report for the hundredth time.

“Damage patterns, incident speed, and aftermath point towards high likelihood of a Major Void Incursion. No distress beacons located—missing entirely from the ship and surrounding area—indicating intelligent enemy action in suppressing information. 

“Initial investigation concludes with the following warning:

“High likelihood of Titanicus-level Void Entity present within the Voidzone of the following Sectors: Virellian, Driftspire, Halcyon, Threnic Spiral, Krynnal, Pidine, Kuigon.

“Potential presence of Primordial-level Void Entity within the Voidzone of the following Sectors: Virellian, Driftspire, Halcyon, Threnic Spiral, Krynnal, Pidine, Kuigon.”

The words Titanicus and Primordial had been echoing in her head ever since the report first landed on her desk. 

They were the kind of words no one ever wanted to see in a report about their own Star Sector—especially not when they were currently sailing straight through the very Voidzones mentioned.

‘We’re about a week out from Kovalsk Station,’ she thought grimly. ‘Once there, we’ll link up with the ships Horatio requested as escorts back when we first learned about the Harbinger’s connection to that Recruit… Maybe he was onto something back then. If we’d waited until now to call for them, they’d still be a month out… and if we ran into the Titanicus before then—’

She didn’t finish the thought. She didn’t need to.

A Recruitment Ship wasn’t built to fight Void Entities—not on that scale.

Zephyr shook her head, a dry laugh escaping her lips. 

After hearing the legends of the Harbinger’s uncanny talent for attracting trouble for decades, she had thought Horatio overly paranoid for ordering permanent escorts just because of Thea McKay’s presence aboard the Sovereign. 

The girl’s connection to the retired General had seemed like flimsy reasoning at the time.

Now, though, she found herself quietly thankful for this “foresight.”

‘And having Anrake on the ship will help until then… If push comes to shove, I trust he’ll at least get us out of trouble, if nothing else.’

“Major Quinn,” the Sovereign’s voice cut cleanly through her thoughts, smooth and polite as ever. “Recruits Thea McKay and Karania Faulkner have requested your location. As per your standing orders, I have granted the request immediately and informed Recruit McKay of your position. They are currently en route to your office.”

Zephyr’s eye twitched. 

She tilted her head back and glared at the ceiling again, her lips pressing into a thin line.

‘Of course it would say that now,’ she thought bitterly. ‘Can’t just let me have five minutes of thinking through stuff before dropping something like that on me again. I swear, this AI gets its kicks from watching me suffer.’

She had no proof, of course. Just a very strong suspicion.

Letting out a long, resigned sigh, Zephyr pushed herself up from her chair and began cleaning the disaster that was her desk. She stacked the datapads into somewhat neat piles, retrieved the two that had fallen to the floor earlier, and gave the surface a quick once-over.

Once satisfied, she caught her reflection in one of the datapad screens, straightened her uniform jacket, and brushed a few stubborn strands of hair back into place. 

Her face looked tired—but at least it looked composed.

She couldn’t afford to appear anything less. 

She was the Major Quinn, after all, and appearances mattered—especially when dealing with someone like the Harbinger’s daughter.

It was, frankly, ridiculous just how much trouble that girl truly was.

In all her years as a Proprietor, or even just as an officer in the UHF Marine Corps, Zephyr had never seen a single Recruit stir up so many emergency meetings, complications, and full-blown headaches—not to mention the mountain of paperwork that seemed to follow in her every step.

But, then again…

‘It’s not really her fault, is it? None of this mess is something she had any real say in. It’s not her fault she’s… well, whatever she is—whatever the System sees in her. It’s on us to figure out how to make the best use of the opportunity she’s offering the UHF, not her. So it’s only natural we have to carry the weight of all the fallout that comes with all of it.’

That was why Zephyr had given the Sovereign standing orders to always allow the Recruit to find or reach her, no matter what.

She’d rather walk through a fortified trench full of Freaks alone than risk another disaster like the one that had unfolded after the Assessment.

If all it cost her was a little extra stress and a stack of endless reports, then so be it.

Better that than losing what little trust the girl still had in the UHF—because that was something they simply could not afford to have happen.

“Sovereign,” Zephyr said, glancing up as she started sorting through the clutter of datapads on her desk. “Anything I should know ahead of time about this visit from the Recruits?”

“There should be nothing unexpected, Major,” the ship’s voice replied promptly. “Both Recruits appear to be on course to request Skill Class Passes, as expected. They intend to apply for authorization to take more than the standard monthly limit, due to an excessive number of Skills on their shortlists and the necessary Credits or Skill Vouchers to take them.”

Zephyr hummed quietly in response, not surprised in the least. “Figures.”

Her fingers paused as she spotted the datapad she was looking for—the one she had set up to be dedicated entirely to Thea McKay-related reports. It wasn’t particularly hard to find; the datapad was being updated so often it practically lived on the top of her desk by default anyway, so she knew its exterior by heart already.

Pulling it up, she skimmed the newest report on the girl’s recently completed Digital Mission.

“That’s good though,” she muttered, eyes flicking over the summaries and performance metrics. “If that’s all they’re after, this should be quick.”

She already had everything prepared for Alpha Squad to receive those passes anyway. The only thing left was her signature—and, of course, the Recruits’ personal requests to make it official.

It was one of those small, bureaucratic hoops the UHF insisted every Marine jump through—meant to make sure career choices stayed in the Marine’s own hands, even if those choices weren’t always the most optimal ones.

Still, she respected the policy deeply. 

It was one of the big things that truly set the UHF apart from most other Factions out there: Their attempt at keeping a certain level of Humanity, despite the Emperor’s madness—and the very reason Zephyr had devoted her life to ensuring they’d win the Galactic War.

There was little she valued more than the idea that a person’s path should stay theirs to choose, on principle.

Even now, almost a full month later, she still didn’t sleep properly because of what she’d done—pushing the Harbinger’s girl toward the Psyker path during that damned Emergency Meeting. 

It was a black mark on her conscience, one she doubted would ever fade.

‘But it was necessary,’ she reminded herself, as she always had to do whenever the memory clawed its way back to the surface. ‘We need that chance to turn things around. If we can just figure out what kind of Classes exist, how to obtain them, and—most importantly—how to counter them… Then maybe, when we face the Assembly in the decades ahead… That knowledge will be what decides whether we stand or fall before the deadline is up.’

A soft chime from the door pulled Zephyr out of her thoughts. 

The Sovereign’s voice followed almost immediately, smooth and polite as ever. “Recruits Thea McKay and Karania Faulkner have arrived, Major. Shall I let them in?”

“Yeah, go ahead,” Zephyr said, setting down the datapad and straightening her posture.

The door slid open with a quiet hiss, and the two young women stepped in. 

Zephyr gave them a brief once-over—habit more than anything—but her eyes lingered on Thea for a moment longer.

She’d been worried. 

The news she’d had to break to the girl that morning had been… less than pleasant.

But much to Zephyr’s relief, Thea looked steady. No signs of lingering grief, no slumped shoulders or restless tension. 

The girl stood about as tall as one could expect from somebody with her level of social anxiety—half-hidden behind her shield, Karania, but still fighting to look like she wasn’t simply being dragged here against her wishes.

‘Guess cutting your way through a Hold-The-Line against the Freaks helps get some frustrations out of your system,’ Zephyr thought dryly, a faint smirk tugging at her lips.

Turning her attention fully to the pair, she asked, “So, what brings the two of you here?”

Karania spoke up first, as Zephyr had expected. The Harbingers daughter, for all her prowess in being a killing machine without equal in the Recruit-core, was not one to lead a discussion like this.

“Major, we’d like to request authorization to take additional Skill Classes, beyond the general Recruit-level limit,” she said clearly, her tone inherently confident. “We’ve been refining our shortlists, and given the minimum time constraints between Classes, it would be far more efficient if we could take more than the standard monthly limit. We’ve already calculated the long-term efficiency gains that could be expected in light of our available Credits, Skill Vouchers, and the corresponding Point Value returns, and—”

Zephyr stopped listening somewhere around “efficiency gains.” 

She’d already made up her mind to approve the request, but she let the Medic talk—it was good practice for her, if nothing else.

Instead, Zephyr found herself studying Karania more in-depth. 

The girl really was something else.

Everyone’s eyes were on the Harbinger’s daughter, and fair enough—the girl had raw potential the likes of which the Corps hadn’t seen in generations; if ever. 

But it wasn’t just McKay who was an utter anomaly in this Drive. Karania Faulkner was just as terrifying in her own way—maybe even more so. 

Unlike McKay, she didn’t have the luxury of being a Wielder.

No special powers, no Universe-granted advantage.

And while no one could deny the Harbinger’s daughter her achievements, the situation was more nuanced than it appeared. 

Her head start didn’t even really qualify as a large one in the grand scheme of things—there were thousands of Wielders in every UHF Recruitment Drive, and most never gained any sort of advantage from the Psychic Powers they were blessed and cursed with, before they were way into Tier 1. Stretching the advantage as far as she had, this early on, was undeniably impressive on its own right. 

But it was something else entirely again when a Marine managed to somehow stand nearly on equal footing with her, despite her impressive efforts to push the advantage she was given, without any such advantages.

Everything the Faulkner girl had achieved within the UHF so far had come from nothing but sharp intellect, instinct, and sheer, unrelenting determination, as far as Zephyr had been able to determine.

She had reviewed Alpha Squad’s Assessment footage more than once, and every time she’d found herself double- or triple-checking what she’d just seen, Karania Faulkner had been involved.

The girl’s reactions were too quick. Her plans too layered. Every choice she made, even under fire and in the most desperate of situations, looked like something that had been thought through for hours ahead of time.

The way the Medic had reacted to the IgT bombardment on the eastern front still unsettled her.

She hadn’t just accepted it immediately—as if she’d somehow known it was coming, which should’ve been impossible for a new Recruit, given the nature of the compounds raining down on them—but had also managed to immediately intuit the perfect course of action to save as many lives as possible, and even the exact workings of the compound from a singular instance of seeing it touch anything.

It was unnatural—the kind of unnatural that made even Zephyr’s skin crawl.

‘If she keeps this up… she’s going to be a monster without equal one day,’ Zephyr thought, watching the Medic’s calm posture and unwavering focus as she laid out her arguments.

‘A brilliant, methodical monster—but that might make it all the more terrifying. It’s one thing to be a Marine who can single-handedly turn the tides of battle… it’s another when there’s a mind like hers behind it all.’

The worst part was that Zephyr couldn’t read the Medic at all.

Karania Faulkner had a truly uncanny level of control over her body—so much so that even micro-expressions were often missing. And when they did appear, they felt downright rehearsed, deliberate. 

No one her age should’ve even been aware of that kind of control being possible, let alone capable of it.

But Zephyr had learned to trust her instincts over the years, and they told her one thing clearly: If mishandled, Karania Faulkner could someday become a problem of unprecedented scale.

She couldn’t help but chuckle inwardly at the thought, glancing between the two girls in front of her.

‘Two calamities-in-the-making. Both on my ship, both in Alpha Squad, and both tied together by something that goes beyond simple comradery… If that isn’t a recipe for total disaster, I don’t know what is. Still—this might also be the biggest opportunity the UHF’s had in centuries… Just wish it didn’t have to land on my shoulders to manage all of it,’ she sighed inwardly, nodding along with the Medic’s continued ramblings and appearing very interested.

‘Then again, I suppose that’s how it’s always been for people standing at the turning points across history—you either die trying to make it work, or you pull it off and become a legend.’

Finally, the Faulkner girl wrapped up her explanation and stepped back slightly, motioning for McKay to take over.

“I agree with Karania’s assessments and fully support the request being put forward as-is for both of us,” she said, her tone a little too even—like she’d been coached to say those words exactly that way—before retreating once more behind the safety of her squadmate’s presence.

Zephyr let a small smile tug at the corner of her lips as she met both girls’ eyes—doing her best to suppress the instinctive flinch that came when she met the Cyan’s. 

She let the silence in the office stretch, letting it do its work.

Temperament mattered. 

Recruits needed to learn that not every request would be met instantly, even when approval was a foregone conclusion. A little resistance now would do them good later; not every officer they encountered in their careers would be as invested in their success as she was.

Eventually, though, she had to break the quiet. 

She gave a small nod and said, “Your arguments are sound, Recruits. I’ll see to it that you both get your Skill Class limits increased. Just don’t make me regret it by overdoing the trainings. Time dilation isn’t something either of you has experience with yet, so take it slow. Don’t rush things just because you can. Understood?”

“Yes, Ma’am!” they replied in perfect sync. Zephyr could see that they meant it—or at least, McKay did. With Faulkner, she wasn’t entirely sure she could trust what she saw, but she had no reason to doubt that the Medic would want to destroy herself for no reason either.

She nodded again, halfway through the motion stopping to turn her attention on the Medic. 

“You’ll be responsible for her on this. Her tendency to overdo things—to push herself until she’s bleeding out of the ears, all for the sake of progress—isn’t exactly a point in favor of giving her more freedom. I assume that’s part of the reason you brought her along today?”

Faulkner’s eyes widened a fraction too perfectly.

‘That’s fake,’ Zephyr thought immediately. ‘You sly snake. Your actions were transparent on purpose, to make yourself seem less of a threat than you really are, weren’t they?’

“Yes, Ma’am! I’ll make sure she behaves, I guarantee it!” the Medic replied with practiced enthusiasm, punctuating it with a double fist-to-heart salute.

‘You really did your homework,’ Zephyr thought, half impressed, half uneasy. ‘That trick would charm half the officers on this ship; and around ninety-percent outside it.’

She gave one last, full nod of approval before shifting her attention to McKay.

“You listen to your Medic, Recruit. If I hear you’ve been abusing those Skill Classes and managed to wreck your already fragile social net or mental state, I’ll personally tear you apart. Are we clear?”

“Y–Yes, Ma’am! Totally clear! I’ll only do what Kara—uh, Medic Faulkner—signs off on!”

The girl copied the salute, though a half-step off, having no clue why Faulkner had done it in the first place—but doing it anyway because she thought she should.

Zephyr nearly laughed. 

‘That’s… actually really cute,’ she thought, forcing back the warmth creeping into her eyes.

Zephyr straightened slightly, smoothing the front of her uniform as she glanced between the two Recruits. “If that’s all, you’re both dismissed,” she said, gesturing toward the door. 

“Enjoy your free time while it lasts—because I assure you, it won’t.”

Karania gave a sharp nod, already half turned to leave, when McKay suddenly spoke up.

“Actually… could you go on ahead, Kara? There’s something I’d like to ask Major Quinn. In private.”

Zephyr froze for a heartbeat. 

Of all the things she’d expected, that hadn’t been on the list. 

Thea McKay didn’t do unprompted private conversations. 

The girl was blunt, direct, and—judging from every report Zephyr had read—painfully allergic to unnecessary social interaction. 

Even the Medic seemed genuinely caught off guard, blinking once before quickly schooling her expression. 

“Oh. Uh… sure. I’ll wait outside then, Thea,” she said softly, giving her friend a brief look that hovered between concern and curiosity before stepping out through the door. 

It hissed shut behind her, leaving a heavy stillness in its wake.

Zephyr leaned back in her chair, her focus narrowing entirely on the Harbinger’s daughter. 

The girl’s posture was unusually tense, her usual confidence mixed with an unhealthy dose of anxiety replaced by a quiet sort of… restraint. She was clearly weighing her words, running through thoughts in silence, maybe even battling herself on whether to speak at all.

So Zephyr waited. 

No interruptions, no leading questions—just calm, watchful patience. 

Whatever the girl had to say, it was important enough to make her step completely outside her comfort zone… and that alone was reason enough to make Zephyr’s spine tingle in concern.

After nearly a full minute of thick, uncomfortable silence, the girl finally drew in a slow, steady breath and spoke.

“How… How trustworthy is the Runepriest, Major Quinn? I don’t mean in terms of loyalty to the UHF—I’m asking about him as a person. If protocol demanded it, would he kill me on the spot… or would he be willing to consider alternatives, as long as they didn’t go against the UHF’s goals, now that I’m his official student?”

Zephyr froze. 

For a moment, she forgot how to breathe.

Her pulse stumbled, then steadied into a slow, tense rhythm as every instinct in her body screamed at once.

The question wasn’t just strange—it was dangerous. 

The phrasing alone was deliberate, careful, and far too specific for a simple curiosity. There were layers to it—possibilities that her mind began breaking apart and analyzing all at once, running through every potential meaning, every political and personal implication behind those words.

And none of the conclusions she was drawing made her feel any better.

The first thing that hit her was that she, of all people, had been chosen for a question like this.

A question that could change the course of a life—or end it outright.

The more Zephyr thought about it, the more she suspected the Harbinger’s hand in it—indirectly, at least. 

Someone as respected, connected and deliberate as the General had been according to the stories, wouldn’t have missed her long-standing friendship with Atlas, one of his most promising pupils. 

He’d probably instilled a sense of personal loyalty toward her in the girl—some quiet contingency, a thread of trust meant to give the Harbinger’s daughter someone to turn to outside the usual chain of command. 

Someone “likely trustworthy,” simply by direct association with Atlas.

And in this moment, Zephyr was intensely grateful for that.

Because if McKay had gone to anyone else on the ship with that kind of question, the results could’ve been disastrous.

What the girl had just asked would have been considered borderline treason by the overeager—and outright insubordination by everyone else.

But that wasn’t her intent.

Zephyr could see that clearly enough in her tone, in the careful way she’d chosen her words.

The second realization, though—the one that made Zephyr silently curse Atlas’s name—was harder to swallow.

The very fact that Thea McKay had asked the question at all meant the damage between her and the UHF ran much deeper than Zephyr had hoped.

‘She doesn’t trust us. Not at all…’ Zephyr thought grimly. ‘And who could blame her, really? Emperor damn it, Atlas—why did you have to black-lock her profile like that? If you hadn’t, one of the dozen other officers aboard could’ve seen the signs sooner—got her the Overdraw primer, the Psyker basics—before everything went to shit and—’

She forced the thought to stop there. 

No point spiraling over what couldn’t be changed.

Atlas wasn’t here, the damage was done, and now it fell on her to clean up the mess he’d left behind. Still, she promised herself that the next time he set foot on the Sovereign, she’d beat the ever-living shit out of him—they were long overdue for a lengthy sparring match anyway, and she had more than enough reason to pursue it, the next time she could.

For now, though, she had to focus on the girl in front of her. 

At the very least, she could try to answer the question in a way that might bridge the growing gulf between Thea McKay and the UHF. 

Even if she had no real idea what could’ve driven the girl to risk everything—her standing, her career, even her damn life—to ask something as dangerous as this in the first place…

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[TAS] Volume 2 - Chapter 57 - Debrief

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------------------- Start of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) -------------------
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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Volume 2 - Chapter 52 - Unleash has just released on RR with no changes.

For the Wolf Lords, this chapter is unchanged.

And also: Please do not read the chapters here on Patreon, but go for the googledoc, .pdf or .epub instead. Patreon butchers all forms of formatting and you're missing out on easier and more enjoyable reading experiences.

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Decided to make this a full-chapter instead of skipping over most of it, as it felt odd without an emotional payout regarding the characters we've met.

Hope you don't mind that I took my time for this one!

PS: Highly recommend you check the Googledoc or .pdf/.epub versions for the excerpt, as there's colours/formatting that won't work here on Patreon.

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I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the link to the chapter:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/10Qjj-iBOTETCXs3lOnVfgd3rzcZih84g9g6cymAtpqk/edit?usp=sharing

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Volume 2 - Chapter 57 - Debrief

Corporal Michael Wellis (Squad Leader of “Wellis’ Squad”):

++ Effective use of an Oversized Squad, splitting the forces evenly across the lines with planned merging once casualties started.

+ Proper delegation of Squad Leadership for temporarily created purpose-squad.

--- Lack of leadership when faced with overwhelming odds: Demerits applied for communicative breakdown between main-squad and purpose-squad.

--- Outward dislike for Squad Member: Demerits applied for not outwardly suppressing this preference. (Severe, additional Demerits applied by Reviewing AI. For information on this decision, contact Review Code “Lumis”.)

-- Improper usage of command channel’s report functionality: Demerits applied due to reported misinformation that caused Command to waste resources on unverified assets.

—

Corporal Jaxon Mir Sartin (Squad Leader of “Infall Squad”):

++++ Proper assessment of battlefield asset and taking of immediate action to bring said asset to Command’s attention: Merits applied for personally seeing to the transfer of information without compromising operational security via unsecured comms.

++ Effective Squad Leading in the heat of combat: Merits applied for resource conversation attempts when facing massed Stellar Republic wave tactics.

+ Correctly delegated Squad Leadership for the short duration of absence.

- Lack of information provided to Command prior to arrival at the HQ: Demerits applied for not forewarning Command of the incoming battlefield asset via the proper procedures (Private Command Channel).

—

Corporal Malicia Cintera Plasst (Squad Leader of “Menis Squad”):

+++ Effective use of Offensively-focused Squad, despite the mission parameters: Merits applied for correct orders being issued a vast majority of the time.

++ Proper response to Battlefield Ace Deployment and full adherence to UHF Doctrine: Merits applied for following Doctrine despite personal doubts and inexperience.

++ Sweeper Duties fulfilled to exemplary degree by commanded Squad.

- Problematic Squad makeup for Upscaled ‘Hold-The-Line’ Missions: Demerits applied for not adjusting the personnel once the full mission parameters were revealed.

-- Unnecessary loss of priority personnel due to improper spread of Marines: Demerits applied for not collaborating with other Squads to spread high-value Roles and lessen the impact of suppressive fire by the enemy.

—

Sergeant Ryker Invictus Kalt (Squad Leader of “Command Squad” | Platoon Leader):

+++++ Mission-critical deployment and support of unexpected Battlefield Ace asset, despite collapse of the frontline: Merits applied for keeping the trenchlines in-tact while orchestrating the collection and creation of Squad designated “Alpha”. Merits applied for continuous assistance and coordination of “Alpha”s movements and tactical arrangements after initial deployment. (Additional Merit applied by Reviewing AI. For information on this decision, contact Review Code “Lumis”.)

++++ Immediate and proper pivot of a losing strategy when presented with a high-value battlefield asset: Merits applied for adequately identifying, analysing and judging unexpected Battlefield Ace asset with subsequent high-level support. (Additional Merit applied by Reviewing AI. For information on this decision, contact Review Code “Lumis”.)

+++ Leading the counter-charge to keep key position from being overrun, leading to an immediate Mission failure: Merits applied for leaving “Command” Role behind, when “Ace” Role was required.

+ Use of Platoon-wide Ability to bolster specific sectors and critical moments in the Mission.

-- Wasted Command resources chasing misinformation provided by Squad Leaders on the ground without verifying information: Demerits applied for not confirming provided information before acting upon it.

—

Private Chester O’Neil (Squad Medic of “Wellis Squad” | Squad Leader of “Wellis Two”):

++++ Exemplary support of fledgeling Psyker and implementation of “Last-Breath” protocols: Merits applied for standing by to prevent the fledgling Psyker from Overdrawing their Focus before their death. (Additional Merit applied by Reviewing AI. For information on this decision, contact Review Code “Lumis”.)

++ Temporary Squad Leadership used to teach fellow Marines: Merits applied for spreading knowledge to both Recruits and Privates alike.

++ Excellent Role fulfillment: Merits applied for fulfilling Role “Squad Medic” to a more than satisfactory degree.

-- Lack of knowledge about potential dangers from Squad Members: Demerits applied for not perusing Squad Medic Database on squad-bound Marines for hazardous entities such as Fledgeling Psykers.

- Obvious attempt at gaming the system to obtain additional System Credits, Merit and CP: Demerits applied for not outwardly suppressing this intent. (Demerits applied by Reviewing AI. For information on this decision, contact Review Code “Fall”.)

—

[Tauron 6 ‘Hold-The-Line’ Upscaled Digital Mission: Personnel Review – Governing AIs, PFC943]

======

======

The first thing that registered when Thea came to was the System Interface, hanging in front of her vision like a translucent screen. 

Its familiar blue tint washed over everything, blocking out most of the room around her. 

What little she could see past it looked strangely plain—flat gray walls, smooth floor, no distinct features. The sort of bare waiting-room space the DDS always seemed to default to when pulling someone out of a mission.

[System]: You have successfully completed Faction Mission “Tauron 6: Hold-The-Line - Upscaled”.

[System]: Notice: Contribution Point rewards omitted, as the Participant is already at the Threshold. Contribution Point rewards will continue once Tier-Up is completed.

[System]: You have received 75 System Merit and 445 System Credits. (Mission - Upscaled)
[System]: You have received 378 System Merit and 1134 System Credits. (Combat - Upscaled)
[System]: You have received 45 System Merit and 150 System Credits. (Objectives - Upscaled)

It took her a moment to understand what the System was telling her. 

The jump from fighting in the Digital Mission to suddenly standing in this strange room was too abrupt for her mind to catch up. 

But the notification itself was, thankfully, very clear.

“Huh… So we won? I… don’t remember how the DM ended though…? What happened? Did I get suddenly killed by something…?” she muttered, trying to rewind the memory—only to run face-first into a blank wall where the last stretch of the mission should’ve been.

A slow frown pulled at her expression.

“I didn’t fuck up and Overdraw again and someone hit me with a Mnemorix, right? Kara would absolutely kill me… Please tell me I didn’t do that again—”

“You did not,” said a voice from nowhere.

Thea yelped—an embarrassingly high-pitched noise—spinning around so fast her boots slid a little on the smooth floor. The System Interface vanished as she flicked it closed, searching for anyone, but the room was as empty and plain as it had been before.

“My apologies, Thea,” the voice came again—familiar now, steady. The Sovereign’s voice, she recognized. “I did not intend to startle you.”

Thea let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding, shoulders loosening just a little. 

The sound of the ship’s AI felt grounding, like a tether.

‘Okay. Not glitched. Not soft-locked in some DDS purgatory. Not dead. Still on the Sovereign. I can work with that,’ she reassured herself.

“It’s, uh… yeah. It’s alright, Sovereign,” she said, though the embarrassment now warmed her ears. She waved vaguely at the empty space around her. “So… what is this place? Why am I here?”

“Debriefing,” the Sovereign replied, as calmly as ever.

“Ah.”

“You have successfully completed your first Digital Mission. For that, the UHF wishes to extend its congratulations. This first mission fulfills your mandatory monthly participation requirement—per the agreement made during post-Assessment review with Councillor Lumis and Auxiliary Staff-Sergeant Selene. You are now free to pursue your own schedule for the next thirty days without concern of missing any deadlines.”

Thea nodded slowly. 

Very slowly.

She had definitely remembered that part. Totally. Absolutely. 100%.

“As for your previous question: You did not Overdraw your Focus,” the Sovereign continued. 

“Because this was not an Assessment-level simulation, a Focus Overdraw would have resulted in immediate termination of the Digital Mission so that specialized personnel could administer first-aid. This is to prevent any and all permanent loss of life. Naturally, such an event would also result in severe disciplinary consequences for the Marine responsible, as an Overdraw directly wastes all invested resources—manpower, digital operation costs, and most importantly, time.”

Thea hummed quietly, a small sound of acceptance.

‘Yeah… makes sense. They really wouldn’t want people thinking Overdraws are something you can just shrug off. And considering how much power and resources these DMs eat up… yeah. Harsh punishment tracks.’

She glanced around the empty room again, feeling oddly sore just from standing—despite logically knowing her current body should have been feeling brand-new.

Almost immediately, a soft-looking armchair appeared just a few steps away, as if the Sovereign had pulled it from thin air.

“Thanks,” she muttered, dropping into it. Her body sank into the cushions and she let out a small, unfiltered sigh. “Ahhh… that hits the spot…”

After a moment, a thought surfaced.

“Actually, Sovereign… why do I feel sore? Shouldn’t I be perfectly fine after the DM? I thought everything in there was DDS stuff, so… shouldn’t I just be in a clean body again?”

“As you correctly surmised, your body has indeed been completely reconstructed to the same state before you entered the Digital Mission,” the Sovereign replied without pause. 

“Physically, you are as unharmed as you were before entering. It is your mind and Soul that are fatigued. The strain stems from your Psychic Power usage. You drew on far more Psychic Energy than would be considered standard for a Psyker of your current development, which has likely stressed the seams of your Gate. The sensation you are experiencing is comparable to muscle soreness. It will fade naturally.”

Thea blinked.

“…My Gate can get sore?”

“Yes. The venerable Runepriest has already reviewed your results and confirmed that this is normal. Would you like to hear his attached comment?”

Her eyebrows lifted. The Runepriest had already checked in? Immediately after the DM?

“Yes, please.”

The Sovereign’s tone shifted seamlessly into the perfect cadence of Runepriest Vedun’s voice:

“Hehehe. Classic.”

Then shifted back.

“End of comment.”

Thea stared into the empty room, blank expression, dead behind the eyes.

Silence stretched.

“I fucking hate him,” she muttered eventually, dragging her hands down her face. “I hate him so much. Why is he like that…”

She imagined punching him the next time she saw him. It did not make her feel much better. 

But still, better.

‘If I didn’t trust Major Quinn’s judgement so damn much… I might’ve asked for literally anyone else to be my mentor… As knowledgeable as he is, why is he such an idiot at times?!’

She took a long breath through her nose, let it out through her mouth, and forced her shoulders to relax.

“Alright. So,” she said, lifting her head, “what do I actually need to do for this debrief? I’m assuming there’s some final step before I get out of here. Kara’s probably already pacing holes in the floor somewhere, so if we could speed this up, that’d be great. No offense meant, of course.”

“None taken,” the Sovereign replied. “For the debrief, I will present your final statistics, optionally present some select notes from the Governing and Reviewing AIs, and a walkthrough of the friendlink system. You have received multiple requests regarding the latter, which must be addressed before you are fully cleared. Future debriefings will not include this portion, as you will be familiar with the process by then.”

Thea’s eyes lit up at that. ‘Stats?! Let’s fucking go!’

“Your final statistics for the Digital Mission: ‘Tauron 6 - Hold-The-Line - Upscaled,’ are as follows: You successfully eliminated 116 T1 Duplicators, along with 30 T1 Duplicates. These totals do not include any collateral Duplicate eliminations resulting from Duplicator deaths. You died once, due to self-inflicted injuries.”

“Wait, what? Self-inflicted injuries…? What the fuck happened?!” Thea blurted out, stunned. 

Why would she kill herself in a Digital Mission? How did that even happen?

Instead of answering verbally, the Sovereign replaced the gray room with a perfect recreation of one of the trench alcoves on Tauron 6. 

She watched herself, Medic Chester, and Medic Dan in the middle of a frantic scene where she saw herself sat up against the wall of the alcove. It moved on to show the brief discussion between the Medics and herself, culminating in Medic Dan heading out of the alcove and leaving her with Chester.

Hearing herself talk through her reasoning for the self-inclicted damage to the two medics made complete sense, so there was nothing she could really say about it.

“Ah. Yeah. Okay,” she said, nodding slowly. “That does make sense. So… note to self: Don’t overuse the Psychic Power or I’ll end up cooking myself. Got it.”

“I have several comments on this aspect from the Governing and Reviewing AIs, if you would like to review them,” the Sovereign offered.

Thea made a face and waved her hand. “Ehh… I’m good. I can guess the tone, thanks.”

“Very well. Overall performance: You have been nominated and confirmed as MVP. Congratulations, Thea. You are now officially a Grade-0 One-Time MVP. This designation will be added to your UHF Profile and may be displayed to others inside Digital Missions, pending your permission.”

Thea blinked, absorbing that.

‘Not exactly fair to call me the MVP, when I basically just got pumped full of Focus by several Medics and let Sergeant Kalt handle literally all the battlefield strategy… but I guess I did kill a damn lot of them.’

She rubbed the back of her neck, unsure whether to feel proud, embarrassed, or something in between. Ultimately, her body decided on the “something in between” for her.

“Further breakdowns and detailed statistics have also been compiled for you, along with a full recording of the Digital Mission. All of it will be accessible after the debrief concludes,” the Sovereign continued.

“The Governing and Reviewing AIs have marked two points as mandatory notices for improvement. First: Your communication with your squad—specifically your assigned Squad Medic—was below acceptable standard. Your Medic must, at all times, be aware of any risks you pose to yourself and others. As a Psyker, it is your responsibility to clearly communicate your Focus usage patterns and any potential strain. Without that, a Squad Medic cannot properly keep you alive.”

Thea winced at that, the memory of Chester’s scolding ringing a little too clearly in the back of her mind.

“Yeah… That’s fair,” she admitted quietly.

“Secondly,” the Sovereign went on, tone completely neutral, as if delivering weather updates, “you failed to warn your Squad Medic of the auditory danger posed by your Nano-Bot amplified vocal projection. This resulted in the full rupture of his eardrums and temporary loss of combat capability in the midst of an active frontline engagement. In standard battlefield conditions, this would qualify as reckless endangerment at best, and traitorous behavior at worst. You are very strongly advised to ensure this does not occur again.”

Thea swallowed hard, her stomach twisting.

She sank deeper into the chair, as if she could disappear into the cushioning itself.

‘Yeah… I really, really fucked that one up,’ she thought, heat crawling up her neck. ‘Traitorous behavior? Holy shit. The Old Man would drag me through a wall if he heard that.'

She let out a quiet, shaky sigh.

‘Okay. Next time, I warn everyone—before—using anything to do with a maximum output on the auditory nanobots. Every single time.’

Thankfully, the Sovereign continued on quickly, its tone as even as ever. “The final item of this debrief is the friendlink system. You have received nineteen friendlink requests from fellow participants of the Digital Mission. I will also offer to send any friendlink requests you may wish to make in turn.”

Thea blinked. “Nineteen? But I only actually talked to like… ten people. Maybe.”

“That is not a requirement,” the Sovereign clarified. “Any Marine within the Digital Mission may request a friendlink with any other Marine, regardless of direct contact. It is common for requests to be sent to individuals who demonstrated exceptional performance, leadership, or otherwise left a strong impression.”

Thea rubbed the back of her neck. “Ah. Okay. That makes more sense, I guess.”

A short pause. “Could you… sort them? Like, by relevance? Squad members first, people I worked with directly, that kind of thing?”

“Of course.”

The air in front of her shimmered again. 

A list appeared, the names reorganizing themselves in clear, simple order.

The first request unfolded automatically, along with a short attached message.

Private Thoran Falks (“Wellis’ Squad” - Wellis Two)
“Good job out there, Ace. You paid the Freaks back for getting me—like, a lot. If you ever want to run another DM together, I’d be glad to! Promise I’ll try not to embarrass myself again like that. Also… if you’re willing, I’d love to ask a few questions about the Psychic thing you’ve got going on. Never seen anything quite like it.”

Thea felt something in her chest tighten—not painful, just enough to make her breath catch. 

‘Feels strange… getting something seemingly genuine like that. All this over doing well in a simulation? It’s not like I did anything special…’

She smiled and nodded to herself, accepting the friendlink with a quiet tap.

The next message opened automatically.

Private Marie Zinconia Levant (“Wellis’ Squad”- Wellis Two)
“By the fucking Emperor, that was INSANE!!! I was watching the entire time because I died super early (sorry about that haha) and WOW!!!!! The way you lasered through that whole fucking army?! And the mid-mission weapon augmentation, what the fuck was that all about??!! AND WHEN YOU DID THE SHOUT THING??? Anyway uh yeah if you ever want to team up again I’d totally love to? I know I’m dead weight and all but I promise I’m trying!! And I will try even more! Also you’re really cool, so please? I swear I’m going to be super good next time!”

Thea snorted—and then laughed. Actually laughed out loud.

It came sudden, bubbling out of her chest before she could stop it.

“Marie, you absolute disaster,” she muttered under her breath, wiping the corner of her eye with her thumb as the smile just wouldn’t leave her face.

She could practically see the girl bouncing around while typing that message.

Dead weight, though? Hardly.

Thea could clearly remember Marie bracing her rifle against the embrasure wall, firing again and again into that sea of advancing bodies. She remembered the way the other woman’s shots landed, having tracked the shots absent-mindedly while shooting at her own targets—they hadn’t been perfect shots, of course, but steady and undeniably consistent, even while under the kind of counter-fire that would have likely made most other Marines duck and pray. 

And Marie did not have precognition, no [Glimpse], nothing fancy to help her.

She had just… held. Through sheer power of will alone.

Even when she ducked low and complained about the incoming fire, she had never fully broken, going back to firing when the embrasure was even remotely clear.

There was nothing “dead weight” about that.

She accepted Marie’s request without hesitation.

The next few names on the list didn’t ring any bells. The Sovereign noted they were part of Wellis’ Squad—the half that stayed with Squad Leader Wellis at the start, instead of the ones in Wellis Two on the eastern front.

Squad Leader Wellis himself hadn’t sent anything.

‘Not that I would’ve accepted anyway… Asshole,’ she thought, a small, humorless snort slipping out.

She declined the rest of Wellis Squad in quick succession. 

No point connecting with people she knew nothing about, and didn’t particularly want to.

Then the next name appeared—one she barely recognized, but enough to pause:

Corporal Jaxon Mir Sartin (“Infall Squad”)
“I’m glad everything worked out the way it did. Seeing you step out of the smoke like that… I don’t think I’ll ever forget that sight. You’re something else, Ace. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise—especially yourself. I can imagine that being such a beast this early in your career can make it easy to lose perspective, but let me be clear: You are beyond exceptional, as a Marine. Keep going the way you’re going and you’ll do great things for all of us. I’d love to have you under my command someday—if only to hand you back off to Command right away again.”

Thea blinked. And then blinked again.

Her eyebrows had risen higher with every line—until she was pretty sure they were on the verge of leaving her forehead entirely.

She stared at the message a moment longer than she intended.

It felt… surreal.

She had spent the entire mission utterly convinced she was just barely holding things together. That she’d been improvising every second. 

That if Chester hadn’t kept her upright, or if Quent and Dan hadn’t given her all their Focus, or if Sergeant Kalt hadn’t cleared the battlefield for her, she would have been unable to do anything at all. 

That most of what she did was just reacting really fast and trying not to fall apart.

“Beyond exceptional, as a Marine.”

Her first instinct was to reject it. To write it off as someone just being polite. 

Or overly impressed because they hadn’t seen real Psykers before. Or maybe he was just saying that because he happened to catch the most dramatic moment of the mission—her walking out of the smoke, like some heroic propaganda poster come to life.

She almost dismissed it.

But then she remembered the look on the enemy front when she had hit them the first time. 

The way their push had simply stopped. 

The way every UHF gun on the line had surged forward as she deployed as an official Battlefield Ace, like a wave catching its momentum. 

The way the Stellar Republic had started reacting to her, specifically.

She remembered the silence on the comms when Kalt’s deployment order went out.

The way the entire battlefield had started shifting because of her; because of her presence.

Maybe—just maybe—it hadn’t been luck. Maybe she had done fairly well, overall.

Not perfect. Not without mistakes. Not without literally killing herself.

But still.

She let out a slow breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, the tension easing from her shoulders just a little.

“…I guess I did do some cool shit out there, huh?” She muttered under her breath, sounding half-surprised, half-embarrassed at hearing herself say it.

She accepted Corporal Sartin’s friendlink request.

The next request didn’t require a second of thought. 

Thea accepted it instantly, her thumb tapping the confirmation before she even bothered to read the attached message.

Sergeant Ryker Invictus Kalt (“Command Squad”)
“Thank you for being my first Battlefield Ace deployment, Recruit. It was an honour and a damn pleasure serving as your eyes, ears, and tactical brain. You’re a boon to the entire UHF, plain and simple, and I’m looking forward to seeing where you go from here. If this really was your first DM, I can’t imagine what you’ll be doing in a year. Or ten. I’ll always be available as somebody for you to link up with; as long as I get to deploy you again every once in a while. It was far too much fun to be a one-time thing. May the Emperor’s light continue to guide you, Thea.”

A wide, genuine grin spread across her face before she even realized it.

She hadn’t spoken to Kalt for more than… What, a handful of minutes? And yet the man had felt exceedingly familiar. 

Solid. Easy to trust. Firm but honest in all the ways that actually mattered.

‘He reminds me of the Old Man, in a way,’ she thought, a warm, strange ache rising in her chest.

She opened the last of the high-relevance requests to distract herself from the feeling—and actually froze at seeing who it was from.

Private Chester O’Neil (“Wellis Squad” – Wellis Two)
“Yeah, yeah, I know… It’s weird sending this after all the shit in the locker room and all. But look—Merit and Credits don’t lie, and you bring in a lot of both. Like a fuckload. You’re also a stupid fucking idiot for cooking yourself like that. Pissed me right off, not gonna lie. But by the damn Emperor, you’re worth dragging into the trenches if you provide that level of cashout every time. I have no aspirations to be your friend or whatever, but if you ever need a competent Squad Medic to keep you standing upright until the bitter end, I’ll be your guy. Just don’t let it become a habit, you’ll get your ass killed out there in the real world.”

A short huff of laughter slipped out of her, more surprised than anything. 

Of course that would be Chester’s angle. 

Not gratitude, not sentiment, not even some weird apology—just pure, calculated Merit-per-minute efficiency. He’d decided she wasn’t a burden after all, but the best damn investment he could possibly make. 

It was kind of hilarious, especially considering he’d been the one bleeding and her dragging him back from the edge the entire time.

‘The man really said: “Yeah you almost got me killed several times but damn, the profits though.”’

She couldn’t help the grin spreading on her face.

The irony wasn’t lost on her. 

She barely got hit. He was the one who tanked half the consequences of her mistakes. 

And yet somehow, in the end, he was the one sending her a link request, offering to be the guy who keeps her upright—though she recognized that it was likely in regards to the end of the DM, rather than before. 

No pretenses about friendship. No flowery compliments. 

Just raw practicality, frustration, and… weirdly enough—respect.

She accepted the request without any real hesitation; after all, she could deal with competent assholes way more than nice dead weights.

After that, she skimmed the rest—names she didn’t recognize, people she’d maybe seen for two seconds through smoke, or not at all. No point in pretending she knew any of them or owed them anything. 

She dismissed the remaining requests with a simple flick of her Interface.

“That concludes the friendlink review portion of the debrief. Are there any friendlinks you would like to send?” the Sovereign asked.

“No, I think I’m good,” Thea answered, already pushing herself up from the armchair.

“Understood. The debrief has been completed. You will be returned to the Digital Mission Deck momentarily. Please remain still.”

The room flickered—gray walls dissolving like mist, her body feeling weightless for a fraction of a heartbeat—

And the world blinked away around her…

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[ND] Chapter 154 - Rank 7

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------------------- Start of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) -------------------
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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Chapter 149 - Long-Awaited Talks II has just released on RR with no major changes.

For the Fixers, this chapter is new.

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Some of y'alls will HATE this chapter.

Deal with it, we don't get many of them anymore as levels take longer to reach.

It's an important one for character building on Sera's end, so just handle it.

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I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the link to the chapter:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JTZbR6MxmOyKObGezWMm3Ok2BDPGLtxA3XRfO6-axFA/edit?usp=sharing

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Chapter 154 - Rank 7

The first order of business was, naturally, changing my Bonus Experience allocation.

I pulled up the System Interface, flicked through the menus, and redirected everything into Body and Reflex—nothing else. It wasn’t like I expected to get random experience gains while working out, but with how stingy the System could be sometimes, it was better to be safe than sorry. 

Especially when there was a real deadline attached to that [General Attribute Point].

After that, it was all about putting in the work.

I started my usual routine, though “usual” was a bit of a stretch, given the lack of space. The apartment’s living room wasn’t exactly ideal for training—no hallways to sprint through, no way to practice vaults or proper rolls—so anything [Athletics] or [Acrobatics]-related was off the table. 

What was left were the classics: Bodyweight drills, high-intensity bursts, and enough repetition to make my joints complain.

Body was easy enough to push—it responded well to steady effort—but Reflex required something a bit trickier. That meant fast-twitch drills: Reaction snaps, balance holds, muscle discharges that made my limbs burn. 

I had to train my speed, my control, the precision of my movement, not just the strength behind it, like I did for Body.

Thankfully, the System always handed out a rough training outline whenever I ranked up an Attribute, so I wasn’t completely winging it. 

Without that, I’d have probably stalled out around Rank 3 or 4 ages ago. 

Before all this, my “workout knowledge” had pretty much begun and ended with push-ups, sit-ups, and crunches—no variations, no structure, just whatever video recommendations had popped up in my feed once upon a time.

Now, though? The System had turned exercise into something measurable. 

Numbers. Goals. Levels.

Which made it a lot easier to follow and get addicted too; after all, numbers going brrr was really fun.

I had two drops to earn per Attribute—four total—which was no small feat at Rank 5. 

But given that I was effectively trapped inside the apartment for the day, I didn’t have much else to do.

The first drop came easily enough after about twenty minutes. My muscles had warmed up, my arms burned pleasantly, and my breathing had evened into that steady rhythm that meant I was finally in the zone. 

Body ticked up first, as expected.

Reflex, though, made me work for it, as always. 

The repetitive movements weren’t impressing the System quite as much for that one. 

It took nearly an hour of high-intensity reaction drills—shadow feints, explosive lunges, quick pivots—to get that sweet, satisfying ding. By that point, sweat had soaked through my shirt, and the floor under me looked like I’d forgotten how to swallow my own spit halfway through.

I gave myself a short break to catch my breath, but it didn’t last long. 

There wasn’t much else to do here, and I wanted those numbers to move. 

So I kept at it—relentlessly, stubbornly—until my arms shook, my legs felt like lead, and my reflection in the bathroom mirror, whenever I took a short break to wash my face, looked just about ready to pass out.

After three and a half hours of sheer repetition, with only brief stops for water and air, the final chime rang out. Both Attributes had registered their second drops. 

My entire body felt like it had been run through a cement mixer, but the sight of those neat little +300xp notifications made it all worth it.

[System]: 300xp (+100xp Bonus) gained for Body Attribute. Available Bonus left: 700xp.
[System]: Body Attribute has reached 6. Upgrade delayed until User confirmation.

[System]: 300xp (+100xp Bonus) gained for Reflex Attribute. Available Bonus left: 600xp.
[System]: Reflex Attribute has reached 6. Upgrade delayed until User confirmation.

“Haaa…! Fuck yeah!” The sound that tore out of me was somewhere between a groan, a sigh of relief, and a victory yell—all tangled together into something halfway human. 

I collapsed onto the carpeted living room floor, chest heaving, every breath scraping its way out of me as I just lay there, soaking in sweat and triumph alike.

‘Training Attributes without any Skill to go alongside it is so much worse… god damn,’ I thought, staring up at the ceiling, too tired to even move.

But that was fine—the hard part of the day was over.

All that was left was to trigger the upgrades and drop the [General Attribute Point] into Reflex, then I’d be set. Ready for whatever fresh chaos life decided to throw at me the moment I stepped out of this apartment again.

With that thought in mind, I pulled up the System Interface, swiped through to the Attribute menu, and confirmed the first upgrade—Reflex, Rank 6. 

The moment I confirmed the upgrade, the familiar System chime echoed in my head.

I had thought I knew what was coming, but the very moment the upgrade actually started, I had immediately realized I had been dead-wrong.

My entire body detonated into unadulterated pain.

Every muscle in my body seized at once, locking me in place like I’d been hit with a voltage too high for human tolerance. My breath caught halfway through my throat as invisible hands abruptly dug deep under my skin, threading through tendons and fibers, pulling, twisting and tearing—reshaping me from the inside out.

‘God—shit—fuck—!’ The thoughts came in bursts, cut short by the next wave of agony.

It felt like something was literally peeling me apart, fiber by fiber. 

My muscles burned as if someone had poured concentrated acid through my bloodstream, while others cramped so violently I thought they might snap outright. 

Every nerve ending screamed. 

My spine arched off the carpet involuntarily, my body shuddering as if it were trying to reject the change.

And underneath all that pain, there was movement. A faint sensation of structure.

My body’s musculature was being rewritten, I could tell thanks to [Elemental Balance]—each microfibril of muscle was being stripped, reinforced, and rewoven.

My joints popped and shifted as if the System was calibrating them for new tolerances. 

The fine-tuned pathways that carried motion—the milliseconds between thought and action—were getting re-coded, honed for precision that no human should’ve naturally developed in just a few weeks, like I had.

I could feel the magnitude of the changes being mercilessly forced into me.

Five and a half years’ worth—two entire years on top of what was already there from Rank 5—of high-intensity training, coordination drills, and reflex conditioning compressed into mere seconds of physical changes. 

My entire nervous system became a battlefield as the System started adjusting that, as well—neurons firing in unnatural patterns, my brain desperately trying to adapt to signals it had never handled before or even knew it needed to.

At some point, I noticed myself suffocating. 

Not by choice—just because my body simply forgot how to breathe. 

Every time I tried to inhale, my chest convulsed from another surge of pain, my diaphragm locking up as the System tore into the last remnants of my old limits and rewired them.

And then, just as suddenly as it started, it abruptly stopped.

The pain receded like a tide pulling back from scorched earth, leaving only the echo of its passage—raw tremors running through my limbs, every muscle twitching in uneven, jerky aftershocks. 

My lungs finally caught up, now that the muscles around them were done being torn apart, and I sucked in air so sharply it made me dizzy.

The pain hadn’t left cleanly—it lingered like smoke after a fire, clinging to every nerve, every tiny motion. 

My limbs twitched on their own, spasming from the overload, and when I finally decided to try to sit up, my arms just gave out. I dropped back onto the carpet with a breathless grunt, my face hitting the carpet, stars bursting behind my eyes.

“Fff—fuck,” I hissed between clenched teeth, rolling halfway onto my side. 

Every movement sent dull, burning waves through the muscles that the System had just finished remaking. 

It was like my entire body was still arguing with the idea of existing in this new configuration.

I tried again to get up, planting a shaky hand on the floor, pushing with my knees—and promptly collapsed again when my left thigh seized like it had turned into a steel cable. 

The sound that left my throat was something between a growl and a whimper.

‘Okay. That’s not happening,’ I thought, panting, sweat pooling at my temples and dripping onto the carpet.

The only way I was getting anywhere like this was by force. 

So, with a mental flick, I engaged my Active Ego. 

The effect was immediate—like someone had dumped all the hot, searing pain into a bucket of icewater. The pain dulled into a distant, almost nostalgic throb, and my breathing steadied as control flooded back into my limbs.

Moving felt utterly alien, however. 

Every step was simply too sharp, too precise, like my muscles were following commands faster than I could issue them. 

Still, thanks to my Ego taking the brunt of the mental damage, I managed to drag myself into the bathroom, leaning heavily on the sink as I tried to catch my reflection. 

My face was a mess—slick with sweat, a bit of drool crusted on the corner of my mouth, eyes bloodshot from strain.

“Beautiful,” I muttered dryly.

The shower behind me was the only logical step. 

I stripped and stepped in, letting the hot water pound against my skin. 

It didn’t really help, but it did wash away the grime, the sweat, the physical reminders of what the System had just put me through. Watching it swirl down the drain made the whole thing feel slightly less unbearable.

When I stepped back out, though, it hit me all over again just how utterly wrecked I really was. Even with Ego suppressing the pain, every movement felt forced—like my body was a machine one calibration away from straight up snapping in half. 

‘That’s fucking insane… I feel like actual death, and that was just Rank 6… Do I really want Rank 7 of this…?’

I barely made it to the bed before killing the Ego again, and the moment I did, reality crashed back down.

It was like being hit with a freight train made of muscle cramps. Every inch of me screamed at once, pain blooming in places I hadn’t even realized had muscles to begin with. 

My arms twitched. My back spasmed. 

I couldn’t tell if I wanted to scream or laugh or cry or maybe all three of them at once.

So I didn’t do any of it. 

I just reached out mentally, dragging open the System Interface with trembling thoughts, and slammed the [Rest Function] confirmation as fast as I could.

—

My eyes fluttered open an instant later, and I was greeted by a familiar sight.

[System]: Rest completed. Time rested: 08:00:00
[System]: 600 rested XP added to available Bonus XP.

Carefully, I flexed my fingers. 

Each one moved with this unnerving speed and crispness, snapping into place like perfectly oiled servos—but without the faintest trace of pain. Encouraged, I rolled my wrists, then lifted my arms, stretching my shoulders before moving down to my toes, feet, and legs. 

Everything responded instantly, and, even more importantly: No pain.

“Haaa… thank fuck,” I muttered under my breath, exhaling a long sigh of relief. 

My whole body felt brand new—no soreness, no muscle pains, nothing left over from the torture the System had just put me through.

But there definitely was something different.

I felt light—far too light. 

Like I’d just taken off weighted clothes straight out of a shonen anime. 

Every motion came out faster than my brain expected, like the signal between thought and action had been trimmed down. Thirty percent faster, maybe more. 

And it wasn’t just speed, either. My precision was dialed in to an absurd level as well.

It didn’t take long before I was just staring at my own hands, flexing my fingers in intricate, fluid motions I hadn’t even thought to attempt before. 

I could trace figure-eights in the air with a single fingertip like it was nothing; and I could even tell that I was tracing the same exact path every time, which seemed practically impossible.

“Holy fuck…” I whispered. “This is no joke.”

Taking a second to breathe, I thought about what it really meant to now be Rank 6.

Rank 5 had already represented three and a half years of extensive training and conditioning.

Rank 6? That was another two years of pure refinement stacked on top. 

Two years of nothing but advanced conditioning, muscle isolation, reaction drills, and nerve control. More than half the total effort it had taken to get to Rank 5, just added on top.

And those two years weren’t beginner’s work, like a good chunk of Rank 5 had been, as it had simply built on top of Ranks 1 through 4—the two years of pure-Rank 6 were elite-level, precision tuning of muscles, reflex arcs, and control, exclusively.

The fact that the System had just crammed all of that into me in a single, horrifying burst was… in one word, impressive, but also… extremely terrifying.

That realization made me pause. 

‘Should I really be using my [General Attribute Point] on Reflex right away…?’

There was a rhythm to how the body changed when training Attributes—a sort of biological groundwork that the System built on top of. 

It wasn’t like I went from zero muscle tone at Rank 3 to a sculpted six-pack the moment Rank 4 hit. The body evolved gradually as I gained experience—like normal biology would dictate. I was still human, after all. 

The body adapted. 

And then, when the System finally pushed it to the next stage, it was essentially just filling in the gaps, tightening the structure that was already there and remodelling the parts that needed changing to fit its vision.

Just like this upgrade—from 5 to 6—had come after weeks of actual training, real sweat and effort. And very real biological changes, that I had been able to observe in the mirror already—especially in regards to my arm musculature after learning how to throw proper punches from Miss K

The System had only really finished what I’d already laid all the groundwork for, during the Upgrade.

If I jumped straight from 6 to 7, though? There’d be none of that prep work. 

No muscle conditioning, no nervous system adaptation, no biological changes to work off of, nothing for the System to refine—it’d have to create everything from scratch.

The thought alone made my skin crawl.

Just remembering the pain from earlier—the tearing, the burning, the way my lungs forgot how to breathe—made my chest tighten all over again. I’d only made it through it all so quickly because I’d forced myself with [Ego] and dumped it into the [Rest Function] before I broke down completely.

‘Yeah... That shit hurt. Like a fucking lot…’

Still, I couldn’t exactly not use the [General Attribute Point]. 

Leaving something that valuable just sitting there until the System forced the issue, or be applied to something less worthwhile, felt utterly wrong. 

So, after a few minutes of mental back-and-forth, I settled on a compromise.

‘Alright… Body first. If it kills me too much, I’ll just hit the Rest Function right away and skip the screaming part, as a test run for the Rank 7 Upgrade.’

It wasn’t exactly a well-thought-out plan, but it was a plan. 

And I really wanted to know if I could game the System just a little.

I confirmed the Upgrade for Body Rank 6.

The change hit almost instantly. 

My entire frame clenched like a single giant muscle, and the air punched out of my lungs in a choked gasp. Then came the tearing—deep, wrenching pulses rolling through me as the System went to work again. 

But this time, it wasn’t as sharp as Reflex had been. 

Less slicing, more… grinding.

The pain was still horrible—no question there—but it wasn’t the kind of total nervous system overload that Reflex had caused. 

It was slower, more measured, in a way. 

Like my muscles were being compacted, condensed into something denser and heavier, rather than rewired from the ground up. Each pulse felt like my body was trying to collapse inward before expanding again, just slightly harder, tougher and stronger than before.

Still, I wasn’t immune to the pain. 

I thrashed against the sheets, groaning through clenched teeth, jaw slackening when the pain peaked and drool started pooling under my cheek. The sound of my own ragged breathing filled the room, along with the dull thudding of my heart pounding in my ears.

‘Not as bad,’ I lied to myself through the haze. ‘Just a… different kind of hell.’

Body was very clearly about density, raw power and durability. 

It didn’t need to rewrite muscle fibers like Reflex did—it just needed to forge what was already there into something more compressed and solid. 

But that didn’t mean it was gentle by any stretch of the word. No, it was still plenty brutal. 

Just… less… all-encompassing and overwhelming about it.

By the time the burning finally eased, I was shaking so hard my teeth clacked. 

I lay there for a few seconds, eyes unfocused, chest heaving as I tried to remember how to breathe properly for the second time today. 

“Not… gonna do the aftermath again,” I muttered hoarsely.

Then, before I could talk myself out of it, I dragged open the System Interface with trembling thoughts and slammed the [Rest Function] confirmation once more.

—

My eyes fluttered open a familiar instant later, and was greeted by the System welcoming me back, as always.

[System]: Rest completed. Time rested: 08:00:00
[System]: 600 rested XP added to available Bonus XP.

A quick check of my muscles—same routine as I’d done after the Reflex upgrade—told me everything I needed to know: No pain. 

My body felt completely rebuilt, but in a slightly different way this time.

Where Reflex had left me feeling lighter, quicker, almost twitchy with newfound precision, Body felt… Denser. 

Like every cell in me had been compressed into something tougher, more solid. 

It wasn’t a change in weight so much as presence—like I took up more space without actually being any bigger.

When I closed my fists, they felt like solid iron, compact and coiled with power. Even breathing felt sturdier somehow, my lungs expanding with this new, grounded strength that seemed to permeate my every fiber.

I took a few seconds to savor it, flexing my arms, tightening my core, rolling my shoulders—all with the kind of micro-control that [Elemental Balance] made possible. 

The contrast between before and after was downright staggering. 

My movements felt more deliberate and grounded now, more real, like I’d been walking around in a body made of cheap material before and only now gotten the real thing.

I allowed myself a brief moment to simply enjoy this newfound prowess, before forcing my thoughts back on the matters at hand.

‘Alright… it’s been, what, twenty-two hours since Valeria left? She’s probably back by now.’

The idea of her barging in mid-upgrade sent an unpleasant chill down my spine. 

But I couldn’t just stop here. 

The System didn’t like being ignored; not one bit—it’d shove that [General Attribute Point] down my throat at the worst possible time if I didn’t handle it now.

I already knew I’d need the Rest Function again afterward; there was no question about that. 

Reflex had been pure hell, Body had been barely tolerable, and Rank 7 would no doubt be worse than both combined. And then my stomach growled right on cue, a harsh reminder that I hadn’t eaten since—well, since before everything went to shit.

‘Great timing, as always,’ I muttered internally. ‘Guess I better do it fast and hope Valeria just assumes I passed out from exhaustion again.’

Taking a steadying breath, I brought up the System Interface one more time and confirmed the selection for the [General Attribute Point].

[System]: Use [General Attribute Point] on Reflex? Y/N
[System]: 6,000xp gained for Reflex Attribute.
[System]: Reflex Attribute has reached 7. Upgrade delayed until User confirmation.

Anxiety crawled up my throat, mixing with the sharp ache of hunger until I thought I might actually throw up. 

Every nerve felt on edge, my pulse hammering somewhere between panic and pure dread. 

Luckily, my passive Ego and Edge worked in overdrive, smoothing out the worst of it—enough for me to take a few shaky breaths and gather my bearings.

‘Alright… just one more upgrade. That’s all you need to suffer through, Sera. How bad could it really be?’ I lied to myself, whispering the mantra over and over as if repetition might make it true. Spoiler: It didn’t.

Finally, when I ran out of excuses to stall, I opened the System Interface and confirmed the upgrade.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened. 

Then the world tilted.

My vision blurred as my entire body seized up.

I bit down on the piece of clothing I’d shoved between my teeth—thank the gods for past-me’s foresight—right as my insides exploded. 

There was no other way to describe it. 

The pain wasn’t like anything physical—it was molecular, cellular, like the System had decided to rebuild me cell by cell this time around and had simply decided by annihiliting my entire being as a gentle start.

Every muscle fiber in me screamed. 

Tendons twisted, bones pulsed like they were melting, and my skin felt like it was being peeled away and replaced one inch at a time. 

The only thing I could do was convulse and try to survive, somehow.

And then… nothing. 

Just black.

—

When I came back, I was already crying.

The pain hadn’t gone anywhere—it was just there, all-consuming and merciless. My body trembled on instinct, groans and half-formed whimpers escaping before I could stop them. 

My face was wet, sticky with new and old tears, and my throat felt raw. 

The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth and nose.

Through the haze, I fought to remember how to think, clawing my way toward one clear idea: The Rest Function.

I fumbled for it mentally, forcing the command through the static—but the System answered with an error chime.

[System]: Error. User not in restful state of mind.

I blinked, barely processing the words before a broken laugh escaped me. 

“No shit, System…” I rasped out between clenched teeth and sobs. “That’s why I need the Rest Function, you little shit.”

Gritting my teeth, biting down even harder, I forced another attempt—this time flipping my Ego active before hitting confirm.

Instantly, the edges of my mind cleared, the pain dulling from a full-body firestorm to something merely unbearable. Even then, the sharp stabs still broke through, it was worse than the damn NeuroCorpse I had been force-fed as part of a bona-fide attempt at torture just yesterday.

But at least I could somewhat think again.

So I confirmed the Rest Function one more time, praying to every deity I didn’t believe in that it would stick this time.

—

When my eyes finally fluttered open, I was completely disoriented—no sense of time, no idea how long I’d been out. For a brief second, I thought maybe I’d died mid-upgrade and the System had just dumped me somewhere else. 

But then the familiar Interface flickered into view in front of me, and I realized my gamble had actually worked.

[System]: Rest completed. Time rested: 08:00:00
[System]: 600 rested XP added to available Bonus XP.

“...Oh thank fuck,” I muttered under my breath, the relief short-lived as my brain caught up with the rest of my body.

Two problems hit me almost immediately, if not quite simultaneously.

First, I was still in pain. 

Not the mind-shattering, nerve-flaying agony from before—more like a deep, throbbing ache buried in every muscle and tendon. Manageable, sure, but it felt like I’d gone twelve rounds with a professional boxer and lost every single one of them. 

My limbs protested even the slightest movement, and my joints popped like dry twigs when I tried to move even as much as a centimetre.

When I recognized the second issue, however, I froze entirely and it made the first feel almost irrelevant.

As my vision had cleared properly, I had realized I wasn’t alone in the room any longer.

Valeria was sitting in a chair right beside the bed, her left leg crossed over her right one, her steely-gray eyes locked squarely on me. 

And the look she gave me wasn’t comforting in the least.

It was the kind of cold, assessing stare a researcher might give to a lab rat, after injecting them with an experimental substance, that had just done something very unexpected.

For a split second, I almost wished I was back in the deep-throes of the Upgrade pain instead…

[Wolf Lord+ | Draft] Volume 2 - Chapter 58 - Signs

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------------------- Start of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) -------------------
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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Welcome to the draft release of Volume 2 - Chapter 58 - Signs for y'all.

As always, a quick reminder that this chapter is still in the process of being workshopped by me and that this is simply the first-draft.

And also: Please do not read the chapters here on Patreon, but go for the googledoc, .pdf or .epub instead. Patreon butchers all forms of formatting and you're missing out on easier and more enjoyable reading experiences.

------

I was recently informed that chonker-chapters were allowed to be releases AT ANY TIME, by one of you kind Wolf Lords.

So I figured that around 2pm on a random Wednesday was a perfect time for a roughly double-chapter worth of TAS.

Please let me know if I misunderstood!

------

I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the link to the chapter:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/12g1V39ynSzn-AonOwZnSUZ227q_TlNKD0OkIJXUdWYk/edit?usp=sharing

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Volume 2 - Chapter 58 - Signs

“... Repeat that for me. Just one more time.”

A beat. Then a sigh.

“I said: It has an Ability inside it. The System recognizes it; even has an Interface and a heads-up description. If you use it, you get the Ability—then the shard dissolves, or so it says.”

Silence stretches.

“...Fuck.”

Another pause. Heavier this time.

“I don’t think we have any precedent for that. Where did you even fucking get this?”

Wild gesticulation towards the shard in question.

“A System Mission near Liurnia Septis. Dominion and Accord both on site. Big Emperor-damned mess. Pretty sure I’m the only one who made it out with one. Came straight here, Sir.”

More silence.

“I don’t… I genuinely don’t know what to do with this. That shouldn’t exist. But it’s right here. I can see it. I can scan it. I just—this is above my weight class. Like several orders above, really.”

Typing, fast and frustrated, fills the room for several minutes.

“Nope. Nothing. No precedent, no protocol, no chain-of-command routing for ‘oh hey we found Galactic War-breaking System artifacts today’.”

“So… what now, Sir? Do I just—use it? And we forget it existed?”

“If you use it, you’ll get Zero’d. Instantly. Do not even think about triggering it. I do not have the kind of clout to delete the logs of your existence in my lab, nor the recordings of what is being said right here, right now. They will find out.”

The Legate exhales, shaky.

“R… Right. Okay. So… what do we do, then?”

“I flag the ship AI and hope it knows who to wake up. That’s all we’ve got. The AI should have direct lines to people we don’t even get to know exist.”

“You’re telling me we’re just handing this off to the ship?”

“Yes, Legate. Because I don’t want to be the idiot who tries to report this manually and ends up on a damn dissection table. This is… potential Galactic War-altering—nay, winning—information. The kind of thing that’s going to wake up the entire O-13 Council and not let them rest for several weeks, if not months. If the wrong branch thinks this is too important to leak, we’re both dead by tomorrow.”

A beat of stunned quiet.

“S...Sir?!”

Another sigh. Longer. Resigned.

“If this gets classified as too dangerous or too valuable to leak, we disappear. That’s it. Simple as that. We suffer an accident; maybe a Void-leak on the ship. Maybe get sent to a death-world. Who knows. Point is, there’s no exceptions for that. I don’t think that’ll happen, since it’s System-origin and not our meddling—but get your personal affairs sorted anyway. I’ll give you twenty-four hours before I push the alert.”

“T—Thank you, Sir. I’ll… I’ll leave it with you then. I… I’ll… go, then?”

“Yes. Do that. And thank you for reporting it. If things go well, your career is about to become very interesting. If not… well. Let’s hope we don’t both get called up by the ship AI in the next coming days. If you receive a summon, ask if there’s any debriefing officers going to be present. If not; send your last words to whoever you trust most.”

The Legate freezes momentarily, then rushes out. The door hisses closed.

The research officer stands alone for a long, heavy moment.

“...The System just had to throw a curveball again, didn’t it,” he mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

“Damn Allbright’s waking up. And we’re all going to bleed for it, even more than usual...”

—

[UHF Excerpt: Initial Ability Shard Investigation, Unknown Researcher, PFC935]

======

======

The Digital Mission Deck phased in around Thea, the world snapping into place like someone had just flicked a switch. 

Dozens of Recruits moved through the space—some clustered around datascreens setting up their own DMs, others laughing and chatting in small groups, and a few standing still, staring up at the massive datascreens showing live feeds and recordings from ongoing missions.

For a moment, she just stood there, blinking. 

She hadn’t walked here—or at least, she didn’t remember walking here. 

The Sovereign hadn’t asked her to exit through a door, as she usually did, or follow any sort of alternative transition protocol. The AIs weren’t supposed to be able to move people directly… or at least, that’s what the Sovereign itself had claimed once.

Then, as her mind caught up with the sudden shift, realization dawned: She hadn’t moved at all. She was standing in front of the exact same datascreen she’d used to accept the mission in the first place, as if she’d never left the same exact spot from the very moment she had confirmed her participation.

‘Wait… I wasn’t just standing here the whole time, right?’ she thought, an uneasy twist running through her chest.

Her question answered itself when another Recruit nearby blinked out of existence right after confirming their DM, and a few seconds later, a different one appeared in that exact same spot.

‘Ah. So, phasing, not movement. That… makes more sense, I guess?’

The Sovereign must’ve been able to phase Recruits in and out of the same physical space without overlap, instead of transferring them directly. Probably some spatial compression trick—or whatever absurdly advanced tech made all this possible in the first place.

‘I should ask Kara about it later,’ she mused. ‘Though, unless it’s biological or medicine-related, she probably won’t have a clue either.’

Shaking her head to clear the thought, Thea stepped away from the datascreen to make room for the next wave of Recruits. She moved toward a quieter section of the deck but kept close enough to watch the big screens flicker through different battlefields—each one its own little war.

There was still one thing left to do before meeting up with Kara.

Calling up the System Interface again, she let the remaining, albeit very small backlog of notifications roll through, that she had curtailed from earlier, to get out of the debrief as quickly as possible.

[System]: Psychic Reversal has reached Level 1.
[System]: Quick Draw has reached Level 1.
[System]: Focus Retention has reached Level 1.
[System]: Focus Capacitor has reached Level 1.

‘Huh. Only one level each… Guess even a brutal DM like that doesn’t give much EXP unless you’re really leaning on those Abilities,’ she thought, cupping her chin. ‘Then again, I barely even touched my Allbright-related stuff this time, so yeah… I guess that tracks.’

With a small nod to herself, she swiped open her Abilities List next.

[---------------- Abilities: 5 (5) | 8 (8) ----------------]

[Active (Silver) - Sensory Overdrive | α - Level 9]

[Active (Silver) - Sky Step | β - Level 7]

[Active (Copper) - Improved Sprint | α - Level 7]

[Active (Iron) - Penetrative Shot | γ - Level 8]

[Active (Gold) - Psychic Reversal - Level 1]

[Passive (Silver) - Armour of Resolve - Level 7]

[Passive (Silver) - Meditation Focus - Level 7]

[Passive (Silver) - Silver Respiration - Level 6]

[Passive (Iron) - Agile Stealth - Level 7]

[Passive (Gold) - Detect Weak Spots - Level 7]

[Passive (Silver) – Quick Draw – Level 1]

[Passive (Silver) – Focus Retention – Level 1]

[Passive (Iron) – Focus Capacitor – Level 1]

‘Hmm, [Sensory Overdrive] is getting close to Level 10… That’s gonna be exciting. A Major Alteration, huh? I wonder what’s actually gonna be available for that. No clue what kind of options there’ll be, but if it’s called “Major” Alteration, it’s probably a lot more impactful than the ones I’ve seen so far. Hopefully something that cuts down the Focus cost—that’d help a ton.’

Satisfied that she had a good handle on her current Abilities and their progress, Thea gave a small nod to herself and closed out of the System Interface, her attention shifting back to the bustle of the Mission Deck around her.

Making her way through the crowd of Recruits was surprisingly easier than expected. 

Most people seemed to notice her immediately—and then made sure to give her plenty of space, stepping aside like she was some kind of live-wire that needed to be avoided at all cost.

“Haaa…” she sighed, the sound halfway between amusement and exhaustion. 

Part of her was honestly glad she didn’t have to deal with small talk or elbow her way through the crowd, but another part—the one that preferred not being the center of attention when she didn’t explicitly choose to be—was already growing tired of it. 

This kind of reaction was seemingly starting to become normal, and she wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about that quite yet.

As she made her way toward the lounge—and definitely not to distract herself from the hushed whispers radiating out from her position like a virus—she pulled out her datapad and typed up a quick message to Karania, letting her know she was done with the DM and on her way, just like she’d promised before they had parted into their respective missions.

Just as she slipped her datapad back into her pocket, Thea had to stop short—nearly walking straight into another Marine.

“Ah, woops, my bad,” she said quickly, shifting her weight to the side in an attempt to swerve around them. She hadn’t really been watching where she was going; up until now, everyone had just moved out of her way on their own.

But before she could step past, the Marine spoke up.

“Uh… Uhm… Actually, could I bother you for a second, please?”

Caught off guard, Thea froze mid-step and finally gave the person in front of her a proper look.

Thea blinked, taking in the person who’d stopped her—a young woman, roughly her own age, maybe two or three years older at most. 

Her dark auburn hair was cut short, just brushing her shoulders, slightly disheveled but clearly well kept. It wasn’t messy so much as unstyled—like she’d run her hands through it a few times and called it a day. 

A faint scar cut across her fair skin, just beneath her left eye—the only other detail that stood out to Thea’s high levels of Perception right away. 

It was more than just a little unusual to see a scar on a Recruit. 

Most people came out of Integration spotless; only scars they personally deemed essential to who they were got carried over into their initial Blueprint. Thea remembered Karania explaining that to her during their stay in the medical wing after the Assessment, after asking about some of Isabella’s that she had seen during their shared training sessions.

Something else about the girl tugged at her memory, however, though Thea couldn’t immediately place why. 

That strange familiarity grew stronger the longer she looked—until her eyes met the forest-green ones of the girl.

And then it clicked.

The girl didn’t flinch. Not even a miniscule twitch.

Thea’s breath caught for a second as the realization hit her. 

She remembered her now—the same Recruit who’d met her gaze earlier, just a few hours back, when Kara had been using her to clear a path through the crowd in front of the Digital Mission terminals. 

The same one who’d locked eyes with her for a brief moment before being swallowed by the sea of bodies that had surrounded the area.

It wasn’t something she would forget easily. 

People simply didn’t hold eye contact with Cyans—instinctively or otherwise. Most looked away within a heartbeat, like it was built into their wiring to avoid that telltale cyan glow.

Outside of Karania, who seemed downright fascinated by Thea’s eyes whenever they spoke, there hadn’t been anyone else who reacted like that in the Recruit-corps so far. 

And even the ones that decided to make an effort in meeting her eyes, like Corvus often did, instinctively flinched or twitched at the contact regardless.

But this girl hadn’t. 

Not then, and not now.

“I’m kind of in a rush to meet up with a friend, but… sure, I guess,” Thea said, her tone noncommittal. She wasn’t exactly sure where this was heading, but the girl looked like she might fold in on herself if Thea said no.

“I—I promise it won’t take long!” the girl blurted, nodding quickly but clearly uneasy. “I just wanted to ask if… um, if it would be okay to ask you for something?”

Thea raised an eyebrow, silently urging her to continue. 

She’d never really understood that whole “asking for permission to ask a question” thing—if you wanted something, just ask. A no was still going to be a no, no matter whether you got permission to ask beforehand or not.

“C-could you maybe sign this?” the girl stammered, fumbling with the strap of her bag before pulling out a rolled-up poster and offering it along with a marker pen.

“Ah… What?” Thea blinked, completely thrown off by the request. It felt like she’d just been blindsided by something out of a completely different universe.

She took the poster slowly, still trying to process what was happening, and began to unroll it—only to freeze the moment she saw what was printed on it.

Thea stared down at the unfurled poster, her mind tripping over itself. Freya.

Her favorite character from Ashes of Centuries—frozen mid-roar, one boot planted on the mangled remains of a Fel’Keza, battle-axe raised high, streaked in blood and triumph. The art was raw, loud, and beautifully brutal, capturing that perfect blend of savagery and victory that had always drawn Thea to Freya in the first place.

But that wasn’t what made her stomach twist; not exactly.

She knew this poster. Exactly this poster.

Her eyes narrowed as she looked up at the girl, suspicion cutting through her confusion like a knife. 

This wasn’t just some random piece of merch anyone could buy on a whim. 

This was the special edition release celebrating PFC937’s galactic championship series—the official commemorative poster of the winners’ match.

Her match.

The one she’d played. The one she’d won.

Thea remembered that tournament vividly—the chaos, the exhaustion, the fact that even the Old Man himself had shown up to the Golden Age Arcade to watch the finale…

There’d only been ten thousand of those posters ever printed, shipped out as collector’s items across half the galaxy. 

She still had hers, tucked safely in a display case back at the Old Man’s house on Lumiosia, one of the few things she’d ever managed to get sent to the backwater planet.

And now this random girl was standing in front of her, clutching the same poster—that poster—and asking her to sign it.

Her mind reeled. 

Did this girl know who she was? If so, how? And what were the odds she’d not only somehow tracked her down before Integration, but somehow also ended up on the same recruitment ship, of all places?

Thea’s grip tightened slightly on the edge of the poster as she studied the girl’s face, suspicion giving way to a creeping, uneasy curiosity.

“What is this…?” Thea asked, keeping her tone as even as she could manage, though a hint of ice still crept in despite her efforts. Something about this felt off—like she was being played, though she couldn’t quite tell how or why.

The girl’s eyes widened in panic, words tumbling out in a rush. “Ah—ahh…! It’s—it’s my favorite character from a game! I… I just thought you were really cool… and ehh… and your speech at the Awards Ceremony kinda reminded me of her! So… so I wanted to ask if—if it’d be okay…?”

Thea immediately felt bad for reacting like that. 

The girl’s wide, panicked eyes and awkward stammering made it obvious she hadn’t meant anything by it—just some nervous Recruit trying to talk to someone she thought was cool.

“Ah… sorry,” Thea said quickly, taking the marker from her before the silence could stretch too long. “What’s your name?”

“Evelyne Midra Sen,” the girl answered after a brief pause, straightening her posture like she was bracing herself. 

She even took the time to spell it out carefully, which Thea couldn’t help but appreciate.

“Good,” Thea said with a small nod.

It wasn’t her first time signing something—not by a long shot. 

Back when she’d been more active on the galaxy-wide tournament scene, plenty of the games made by Terra had featured full social hubs tied to real-world merch. 

Players could buy posters, get their digital avatars printed, or even request signatures from the top-ranked players after tournaments. 

She’d done that more times than she could count, even been asked to sign special edition runs for fans across the galaxy after a few of the bigger championships. She was supposed to get royalties for those too, though those credits had never quite found their way to her account. 

Still pissed her right off, if she was being honest, despite the whole issue being years past now.

Thea leaned over the poster, careful not to wrinkle the print, and wrote neatly along the bottom edge—out of Freya’s way, of course.

“For Evelyne Midra Sen: Don’t let others keep you down. Dare them to challenge you, it’ll shut them right up. –Thea McKay”

She signed with a small flourish and let out a quiet breath, half amused at how automatic it felt. The habit of signing things had never really left her, apparently.

Suppressing a faint smile at the familiarity of it, she handed both the poster and the pen back. “Here you go. Anything else you needed?”

Evelyne just stared at the signature, eyes wide and sparkling like she couldn’t quite believe it was real. “No, no, this is—this is perfect. Thank you! Really, thank you so much!” she said, bowing repeatedly, her voice overflowing with emotion.

Thea could feel her cheeks heating up as she noticed the cluster of curious eyes now fixed on them. A few murmurs rippled through the nearby Recruits, which only made her more eager to escape.

“Alright, well—glad you like it,” she said, rubbing the back of her neck. “My friend’s waiting for me, so I’ll, uh… see you around, Evelyne.”

And before any more attention could pile on, Thea made a swift exit, weaving through the rest of the crowd and heading straight for the lounge—where she knew Kara was waiting.

It didn’t take long for Thea to spot her—Kara was already watching, eyebrows raised, clearly having seen the whole thing from across the deck. 

Not surprising, really; the Digital Mission area was well within view of the lounge area.

“So…” Kara began, her tone carrying that infuriating mix of curiosity and amusement. “What was that all about just now?”

Thea slumped into the seat opposite her, the table between them cluttered with two open datapads full of whatever Kara was dissecting this time. She let out a long, weary sigh. “A… fan, I guess? Some Recruit named Evelyne wanted me to sign a poster for her. She saw the Awards Ceremony and thought I was cool…?”

She cringed halfway through, knowing how ridiculous that sounded—and Kara’s grin told her she knew it too.

“Let’s just… pretend that didn’t happen, okay?” Thea said quickly, waving it off. “Let’s talk about the missions instead. Please.”

Kara gave a noncommittal shrug—the kind that said Sure, but I’m definitely going to have this available as something to tease you with going forward—and leaned back in her seat. 

“The DM was interesting, no two ways about it. The Faultline modifier was wild, though. I’d been hoping to get some hands-on experience with crush and compression injuries, but the sheer amount of seismic activity? Way more than I expected.”

She launched into a vivid rundown of the chaos—the ground splitting open every few minutes, the battlefield constantly shifting, swallowing both UHF Marines and Stellar Republic Soldiers unlucky enough to be caught mid-step. 

Treating injuries under those conditions, she said, had been almost impossible.

“I’m actually kind of glad they cranked it up that high, honestly,” Kara admitted, a spark of fascination in her eyes. “We probably won’t see something that extreme too often, but if we ever do, I’d rather have trained for it first.”

Then her mouth curved into a smirk. “Also, you were right. The Digital Missions are kind of awesome. I’m definitely going to do more of them—mandatory or not.”

Karania leaned forward, her eyes locking onto Thea’s with that familiar spark she always got when their gazes met. “So… how was yours? Tell me everything.”

Feeling a bit smug now that Kara had admitted she’d been right about the Digital Missions, Thea took a second to gather her thoughts before diving in. 

She started with the Upscaling—how it worked, how it had blindsided her—only to realize halfway through that Karania already knew about it. Apparently, it had been included in the full ruleset packet the Professor had sent to all of the Recruits after the UHF 101 lecture. 

Something Thea, of course, had totally read and fully internalized before signing up for any missions, as the Professor had requested, like any good Marine would… and then just happened to forget all about it right before signing up.

‘Oddly specific, short-form amnesia is truly the bane of every good Marine’s existence…’

She went on to describe meeting Chester, overhearing his little manipulation act to win her over, and her eventual encounter with Sergeant Kalt and his Platoon-wide Ability. 

That last part caught Kara’s attention immediately—she even pulled out a datapad and started taking notes as Thea explained what she’d seen.

Karania asked a few pointed follow-up questions, clearly planning to add the details to their growing Ability database, before letting Thea continue.

Next came the weapon testing—which Kara found hilarious for some reason. Something about, “Of course you’d test guns in your very first Digital Mission, and an Upscaled one, no less,” which Thea still considered a perfectly normal and reasonable thing to do. 

Then she moved on to her discoveries about her Psychic Powers.

“So, apparently yelling the Power’s name makes it vastly stronger,” Thea said, sounding equal parts puzzled and embarrassed. “I guess it ties into that whole ‘Will and Intent’ thing the Runepriest mentioned. Still, I can’t imagine someone like Major Quinn running around screaming her Power’s names like she’s in a video game when she’s deployed on a battlefield...”

Karania hummed thoughtfully, fingers brushing her chin. 

“It’s probably more of a shortcut, in a way,” she reasoned. “For less experienced Psykers, putting commitment into yelling the name might help focus Intent and reinforce the Will of what you want the Power to achieve. It’s a bit like how martial artists shout when they strike or athletes when they lift something heavy—the vocal reinforcement helps coordinate breath, tension, and motion. It pushes the body and mind into sync. But someone with full mastery over their Power wouldn’t really need that kind of crutch to achieve the same results. Unless they were trying something entirely new, maybe…?”

Thea nodded slowly. That actually made a lot of sense—and didn’t contradict anything she’d learned so far. “Yeah, that sounds reasonable. I’ll ask the Runepriest next time and let you know what he has to say about all of that.”

Kara smiled at that, gesturing for her to continue her rundown.

Thea summarized the rest of the Digital Mission in broad strokes—meeting Sergeant Kalt, being upgraded to Battlefield Ace—which had Kara almost bouncing in her seat from excitement, which Thea found utterly adorable, although she kept that fact very close to the chest—and how the mission had wrapped up. 

But when she got to the part about her overheating, Karania froze.

“You… cooked your own brain?” Kara repeated slowly, her eyes narrowing into slits, that spark inside her eyes now burning dangerously bright.

Thea immediately raised her hands in self-defense, as if the motion could somehow calm her friend down by itself. “It was a calculated decision, Kara! Both Medic Dan and Medic Chester confirmed there’d be no long-term consequences! I had Squad Medic approval! I didn’t do anything wrong!”

Karania stared at her for a long, silent moment—long enough that Thea started to feel sweat bead on the back of her neck. Then, she pulled up her datapad and let her fingers dance over it for a few moments, before stilling again.

Then Kara finally spoke.

“You cooked your own brain, Thea.” Her voice was flat, but her eyes were already blazing. 

“Do you have any idea how insane that sounds? Every time I look away for five minutes, you find a new way to kill yourself! What’s next, you gonna set yourself on fire for an Ability bonus?!”

Thea groaned. “Oh, come on, Kara—”

“No, seriously!” Kara cut in, waving a hand in exasperation. “First it’s the near-death experience in the Assessment—several, by the way!—then it’s overusing your Gate, and now you’ve literally melted your brain! Do you have a death wish, or are you just professionally bad at staying alive?”

“I had Squad Medic approval!” Thea argued, voice pitching up defensively. “You can’t yell at me for following medical advice!”

“I absolutely can!” Kara shot back, leaning closer across the table. “You’ve got this horrible habit of collecting medical incidents like trophies, and I’m the one who has to patch you up every single time you do something stupid!”

“I didn’t even really die this time! The mission ended right away, basically!” Thea protested.

Kara’s voice dropped an octave, dangerously calm. “You did die, Thea. It’s in your damn medical records!”

She waved her datapad in front of Thea’s face.

Thea blinked. “Okay, fine, but—”

“No buts!” Kara threw her hands up, then slumped back in her chair, clearly torn between strangling her and laughing about it. “You’re impossible.”

Thea folded her arms, huffing. “I’m resourceful.”

Kara gave her a long, unimpressed look. “You’re reckless, and if you keep it up, you’re going to make me gray before I hit twenty-five.”

“Bold of you to assume you’re not already halfway there,” Thea shot back.

Kara squinted. “You’re lucky I like you or I’d use you for surgery practice.”

That finally got a small laugh out of Thea. 

The tension eased, though only barely, and for a moment the two just sat there, staring each other down like a pair of cats after a brawl.

Finally, Kara exhaled and leaned back, crossing her arms. “Fine. You win. I’ll let it go—for now. But I hope you do realize this means you’ve forfeited your right to learn about that cozy pancake place I found while you were off trying to give yourself permanent brain damage.”

Thea’s world froze. “You—you what? You wouldn’t.”

Karania gave her a flat, almost pitying look. “Oh, I absolutely would.”

Thea looked genuinely horrified, her mouth opening and closing like a fish gasping for air. “Kara. No. You can’t—pancakes, Kara! That’s evil!”

Kara pretended to think about it, tilting her head just enough to make Thea squirm. “Hmm. Maybe I’ll change my mind later… But for now, I think it’s important you learn about the give and take of winning and losing.”

Thea groaned, burying her face in her hands. “You’re unbelievable…!”

Kara’s laughter filled the space, warm and ultimately victorious.

For a moment, Thea let herself relax. But as the laughter between them died down, her thoughts drifted back—unbidden—to something she hadn’t mentioned at all. 

Æht.

The memory of that strange mirror-self stirred uneasily at the edge of her mind. 

She didn’t trust it—didn’t trust her—but she couldn’t deny that some of Æht’s words had stuck, digging under her skin like splinters. 

Especially the part about James’ advice. About not trusting the brass too quickly.

She still had no real idea whose side the UHF brass was even on. 

The Runepriest, the Sovereign—they seemed helpful enough, but Thea wasn’t as naive as to truly believe they were entirely on her side and nobody else's. 

If Æht was right, which Thea was starting to believe might at least have a speck of truth to it, speaking openly about her might not just be reckless—it could be downright fatal. Whatever Æht was, it didn’t seem like something that happened commonly, nor something that should be broadcast to the world right away.

At least not without gathering more information about what was even going on.

Still, she needed Kara to know eventually. 

Just… not in a way that would end up plastered all over some AI log. 

She needed privacy, and that meant finding a way to talk without the Sovereign’s oversight.

But there was a way to at least start building towards that—one that might even solve a few problems at once.

“Hey, Kara,” she said, leaning forward slightly, “wanna go find Major Quinn? We should probably get our Skill Class Passes sorted, since we don’t have anything else planned today.”

Kara hesitated for a second, clearly thinking something over. 

Then she nodded. “Yeah. Might as well. The sooner we deal with that, the sooner we can relax. And maybe she’s in a better mood by now.”

“Hopefully,” Thea agreed, standing. “Would be nice not to get chewed out—or worse—for asking for permission to become better Marines.”

Kara snorted. “Yeah, well. No promises, I guess.” 

She paused for a moment, then frowned. “Actually, how do we even find her?”

Thea didn’t have to think long—she just asked the Sovereign. The ship’s calm voice replied immediately, giving the Major’s exact location: Inside her office.

“See?” Thea said with a small grin toward Kara. “The Sovereign’s pretty useful for stuff like that.”

Kara rolled her eyes but grunted in reluctant agreement. “Useful or not, still not a fan.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Thea replied, stretching her arms before starting toward the corridor. “You can distrust the talking spaceship later. Let’s go before I die of terminal pancake deprivation.”

Kara muttered, “Not a real medical condition,” underneath her breath, but quickly caught up with a grinning Thea after pulling together her datapads, the two of them making their way to Major Quinn’s office…

—

—

PoV: Recruit Evelyne Midra Sen

Breathing heavily, Evelyne carefully pulled one of the secure cases from beneath her bunk and opened it, hands trembling as she retrieved two of the items she’d brought with her aboard the Sovereign.

It had cost her family a small fortune to convince the UHF to allow her to bring all her most prized possessions aboard, but that was what being a Major Legacy was for, wasn’t it? 

A few extra credits in the right hands and some name recognition could buy you a little comfort in these cramped, metal dorms—luxuries that most non-Alpha or Beta Squad Recruits could only dream of.

After double-checking that the room was empty, she gently unfolded two of her treasures: Posters.

Signed ones.

She unrolled her newest acquisition beside them, and her breath caught in her throat. 

Her eyes widened, her pulse thundering in her ears.

“He was fucking right…” she whispered, barely able to believe what she was seeing. “She is MMM. The MMM. Right here. On this ship. With me. We’re in the same fucking drive. It’s her…!”

Even without her family’s usual training in skepticism and verification, Evelyne didn’t need to be a cryptography expert to see it—the style of signature was unmistakable. 

The same sweeping loops, the same deliberate placement, set carefully away from the art so it wouldn’t cover Freya or the other characters, the word choices...

Even the little stylistic flourish in the final stroke was identical.

Her heart pounded as she compared them side by side. 

Thea McKay’s neat, confident handwriting was an exact match to the two posters she owned from the real MissyMoonlightMayhem.

Those original posters had cost her family a fortune, but they’d been worth every credit, in her eyes. She’d been an MMM fan ever since her parents had made her study the legendary Build-Creator’s strategies and breakdowns as part of her early training, and had only become more of a fan the longer she had been exposed to the Build-Creator’s works.

And now, through sheer, stupid luck, she had uncovered what must undoubtedly be one of the galaxy’s best-kept secrets: Thea McKay—the UHF’s newest rising star Recruit—was the MissyMoonlightMayhem.

And all it had taken was a little act: Pretending to be a nervous, stammering wreck in front of her—well, mostly pretending. 

The nerves had been real enough—but playing them up had ultimately sold it. 

With sympathy points earned from the other girl, her suspicions had been lowered. 

Thea hadn’t questioned why anyone would approach her with an MMM-specific commemorative poster… at least, not for long.

Still, the moment Thea’s cyan eyes had narrowed on her, Evelyne had almost died on the spot. That flash of suspicion—sharp and cold—had nearly made her blow the whole thing. 

What had started as a harmless test to see if Thea even knew MMM had nearly turned into her worst damn nightmare.

After all, Evelyne had overheard one of the other Recruits bragging that he’d gone up against the real MMM in the ship’s arcade just a few days earlier.

She hadn’t believed him at first—who would, really?—but the way he told the story, every small detail, every description of the fight… it had started to sound a little too real to be a lie.
So she’d listened in on several of his retellings, waiting for something to slip, for some obvious exaggeration or mistake to prove it false.

But nothing ever did.

Too many coincidences lined up for it to be just some random tall tale.

The descriptions were too vivid, the mannerisms too accurate—every small detail of how MMM fought, moved, and reacted sounded right.

And when Evelyne checked the Marine’s records, figuring he was just a Legacy flaunting his family-gained knowledge, she had found he wasn’t a Legacy of any kind. 

That alone had made it even stranger. 

Someone without formal exposure or the in-depth breakdowns that Legacies like her had access to shouldn’t have been able to describe MMM’s style with that much precision.

The descriptions, therefore, had been far too exact to be mere coincidence.

Still, she hadn’t actually thought it possible that a UHF Recruit could be MMM. Especially not someone as young as Thea. Or as… limited in status, to put it nicely.

Her family had always spoken about MissyMoonlightMayhem with reverence—a shining example of what a Major Legacy could achieve with talent and discipline. 

But this? A midworld cyan of all things?

It didn’t fit the story she’d been told her whole life.

Evelyne didn’t know what to make of that truth yet, but one thing was clear: It explained a lot of other things that had been strange with this drive.

It explained, for example, why that same midworld cyan—by all accounts a nobody, with no right to any skill or talent—had blown through the Assessment like it was child’s play; had utterly humiliated everyone else, including full-on Privates, Corporals and Sergeants.

It was because MMM had finally stepped out of the shadows of digital arenas and into the real stage—the Galactic War itself. 

The thought of her idol joining the Emperor’s playground, ready to rewrite the meta of warfare itself, sent a thrill through Evelyne’s veins that threatened to make her throw up from excitement.

Her heart pounded rapidly at the idea that she would get to see it happen—to watch MMM fight not as a gamer, but as a Marine. 

To follow her, learn from her, maybe even stand beside her.

A high-pitched, giddy laugh escaped her before she could stop it. 

She stared at the new signature, eyes sparkling, then gently lifted the poster and pressed her lips against the place where Thea’s name was written.

“Thea McKay… Thea…! My MMM… My Thea…!”

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[TAS] Volume 2 - Chapter 56 - Melting

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------------------- Start of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) -------------------
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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Volume 2 - Chapter 51 - Aspectus has just released on RR with no changes.

For the Wolf Lords, this chapter is unchanged.

And also: Please do not read the chapters here on Patreon, but go for the googledoc, .pdf or .epub instead. Patreon butchers all forms of formatting and you're missing out on easier and more enjoyable reading experiences.

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New Chappy time yaaay

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I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the link to the chapter:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PiPYYJA5HYBtc43CRRESx6LXj2OjxcHQoVePwSbzolE/edit?usp=sharing

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Volume 2 - Chapter 56 - Melting

“Humanity’s greatest asset is oft debated. 

“It is in our nature to consider why and how we ended up being in the position that we are in, for the debate has been raging for thousands upon thousands of years.

“A lot of philosophers across time have argued that adaptability is our greatest asset. The ability to keep rolling with the punches until we’re back on our feet or die trying.

“Some have argued that it is not adaptability, but bravery, that is our greatest asset. The ability for us to look death in the face and overcome the most basic, primal instincts of fear and terror.

“Others again claim tool usage as our greatest asset. The ability to pick up different objects, use them for entirely alien purposes when compared to other animals. A stick, no longer just a random part of the environment, but a weapon, a staff to assist in wandering, an extension of your own hands.

“Frankly, none of these are the whole truth. They are merely fanciful lies, that we tell ourselves to make us seem more than what we are. More than simply advanced animals; something more.

“But therein truly lies our greatest asset: The ability to lie.

“Not to each other, but to ourselves.

“Many animals have the capacity for deceiving each other in one form or another, but only humanity has mastered this to a degree that we are capable of lying to ourselves. To discard the very truths our eyes, ears and mind are telling us, in order to replace it with an entirely different narrative.

“The most common of all narratives we like to lie to ourselves about, is that of the “other”.

“Once upon a time, it was a truth, which makes the lie all the easier to fester in our minds. When we were nothing but tribal groups of hunters and gatherers, the “other” was an important tool in our arsenal to stave off surprise attacks, disease and similarly catastrophic outcomes. 

“But we have long left our tribal heritage behind, yet the “other” is one thing that remains, for it is so incredibly useful to lie to ourselves about.

“Despite the evidence of our eyes and ears that the person that looks like me, speaks like me and has the same fundamental buildup as me, is inherently “other”.

“It is the first thing that any military teaches, even before blind obedience: Make the enemy into the “other” so your own conscience is free of guilt.

“For we are so unbelievably capable in the deceit of our own thoughts, that we can truly make ourselves believe anything, given the right incentive. 

“The lie that the words spoken could not possibly be true.
“The lie that the very truths in front of our eyes are merely fabricated.
“The lie that there will be reinforcements on the collapsing front, despite logic dictating there can’t possibly be any.

“Many of the things often attributed to other emotions—disbelief, trust and hope—are merely consequences of this one, greatest asset in our arsenal: Self-inflicted lies.

“Knowledge of this greatest asset, in itself, does not prevent its existence either, for it is so insidious that we can even lie to ourselves about the very nature of the lies themselves. 

“That they are necessary. They have a purpose. They are not meant to harm.

“But, fundamentally, they are still simply that: Lies.

“When you call them the “other”, the Freaks, the Undead, the Cultists, the Cancer, the Fairies… You are doing nothing but lying to yourself, that they are somehow different from yourself. That they are not, inherently, the same type of human that you are.

“The knowledge of this is not meant to curb the Galactic War, but merely a reminder of the greater things at stake, that beyond everything happening across this little galaxy of ours, the universe is a large place.

“Yet despite knowing all of this, there is one fundamental truth to be found as well: The War needs to continue until the end; the machine needs to keep churning; the “other” needs to die.

“For all the truths inherent, that is and will always remain simply part of our greatest asset: The Lie.”

—

[Grayson Holund Sairfax – "Humanity’s Greatest Asset", PFC712]

=====

=====

PoV: Corporal Malicia Cintera Plasst

Eyeing the state of her squad as she slid yet another magazine into her battered rifle, Malicia felt a sharp pulse of regret.

‘If only I’d bartered for a Defensive Heavy, we wouldn’t be in this Emperor-damned mess,’ she thought, staring helplessly at the two Marines bleeding out on the trench floor. 

Pak and Rallis were only clinging to life because of the one good decision she had made during squad formation.

Indra Quelch.

A Squad Medic so competent it bordered on unnerving—steady hands, sharp eyes, and absolutely zero hesitation when it came to making decisions on how to fix her Marines up. 

Malicia had snagged Indra the moment she stepped into the locker area at the start of the Digital Mission, her gut instinct screaming that she’d found the strongest medic in the entire lineup. 

She’d been right.

Indra was the only reason the squad wasn’t already down to just a skeleton crew.

But no one—no one—could have predicted this DM would be one of the dreaded upscaled variants.

‘If it had been literally any other type of mission getting upscaled, we’d be fine, Emperor damn it…!’

Her plan had been solid. 

A heavy-hitting squad built around raw force: Multiple Offensive Heavies—one of them even a Specialized Assault type!—a high-tier Squad Medic, and herself acting as spotter and leader. 

It had worked flawlessly for dozens of past DMs, netting her multiple MVP Squad wins with lineups exactly like this.

But here and now? That same composition was the reason everything had gone straight to the Void the second the Hold-The-Line parameters appeared.

‘Upscaled Hold-The-Line against the Stellar Republic is a nightmare no matter what squad you run,’ she thought grimly, edging closer to the firing slit to gauge how heavy the incoming return fire was before daring to peek.

The Stellar Republic troops had locked onto their position long ago. 

The moment they’d counter-fired on the enemy Offensive Heavy teams—right after that unholy laser-gatling incident and Platoon Leader Kalt’s all-fire order—they’d painted a massive target on themselves.

‘And without a Defensive Heavy, we can’t hold any alcove for long. Once the plating outside the embrasure gets chewed through, we move again or we die…’

The only sliver of hope she had left was Platoon Leader Kalt’s recent transmission: A Battlefield Ace was soon being deployed.

‘Where in the Emperor’s name did he even find one? It’s definitely not the pretty boy all the Squad Leaders were swooning over—he’s Support-type, totally wrong for the role of a Battlefield Ace for this scenario… So one of the other three MVMs then... But how? Did they just walk up after realizing the front was collapsing? Why now, after we already lost the first line? Why not earlier…?’

There were too many questions, and absolutely no time to think about any of them. 

The Stellar Republic was pushing their line harder by the second.

A quick glance through the slit confirmed the worsening situation—rolling smoke screens were creeping across no-man’s-land, thicker and thicker, drowning the battlefield in black-gray to combat the red glow of the flares lighting up the night sky. 

A sure sign the UHF casualty rate had spiked high enough for the Republic to start prepping for yet another attempt at a close-quarters push.

“Sweepers, now!” Malicia snapped into squad comms. 

The last two standing Marines—Felice and Naro—instantly ducked down behind the embrasures, swapping their rifles for the Sweepers stored at their feet.

The Sweepers were UHF-issued, the same way they would be on real battlefields—not flashy or powerful weapons, but essential ones. 

Designed to blast out concentrated bursts of force and compressed air, they cleared smoke, gas, particulates, chemical aerosols—anything meant to blind or suffocate the defenders. 

Every second or third squad in a platoon got assigned Sweepers at random, and today, Malicia’s squad had been one of the “lucky” ones.

That meant it was their responsibility to keep their section of the trenchline clear. If they failed, the squads to either side of them would lose line-of-sight and the whole line would start collapsing inwards. 

They had been doing this since the opening minutes of the battle, keeping the air clear every time the Stellar Republic tried to flood the trenches with smoke.

The pattern was always the same: The Republic threw smoke only when they were probing for a close-quarters push. 

Even with their Void-rotten Duplication Trait, their soldiers still had to stop firing to pull the canisters and throw them—or shoot them from an underbarrel launcher—and wasting too many for no gain was pointless. 

But as casualties mounted and UHF sweepers went down, the enemy kept trying again and again—waiting for the moment when there simply weren’t enough Sweepers capable of being wielded to hold back the wave.

‘And that moment’s coming fast, Kalt…’ Malicia thought, jaw tight. ‘We need your Battlefield Ace to do something big—and soon. We’re drowning out here.’

She risked a glance over the embrasure and fired semi-blindly down-range in their general direction. 

The Stellar Republic forces were still two-hundred meters out—too far to see their eyes through their visors but definitely close enough to feel the mounting pressure.

Two hundred meters wasn’t safety. It was practically nothing. 

At their enhanced speeds, that was seconds at best. Practically fall-back distance already. 

Standard UHF trench setups spaced their main lines five hundred meters apart, with fallback lines only one-fifty to one-twenty-five meters out.

Malicia kept low, peering briefly through her magnified optic as her rifle barked in sharp, controlled bursts, bullets cutting into the advancing tide.

The Sweepers started firing beside her, sending concussive waves rumbling through the alcove. The blasts rattled her ribs, the shock shivering through her bones in those all-too-familiar pulses as Felice and Naro swept the smoke and canisters away from their immediate surroundings.

Almost immediately, as expected, the Stellar Republic’s return fire intensified, a brutal surge of focused shots aimed straight at the sweepers. 

They always tried to kill the Sweeper teams first and foremost. 

Malicia hated smart opponents like that. 

It was downright unfair that the enemy got to use their brains too.

After all, basic trench doctrine was simple: If the smoke held, the trench would fall.

So Malicia focused her fire on the densest clusters of enemy shots, trying to draw heat away from Felice and Nato. But alone, with only her rifle to work with and no Defensive Heavy to additionally bolster the line, her suppressive fire barely made a dent.

Her gun gave that familiar, hollow click very quickly—yet another magazine running dry. 

She ducked immediately, slamming her back against the inner wall of the alcove.

“Break!” she snapped into squad comms.

Felice and Nato dropped at once, clearing the embrasures and making their alcove appear empty from the enemy’s vantage.

This was the rhythm of Sweeper squads—the push and pull of attention, taking the enemy’s focus for a heartbeat, then vanishing before the return fire erased you. 

Over and over. 

Until you couldn’t anymore.

Malicia watched as Felice placed both armored gauntlets against the packed dirt of the embrasure wall. 

A faint ripple pulsed out from her hands, spreading through the earth like a slow breath.

One of the few pleasant surprises from squad assignment: Felice wasn’t just an Offensive Heavy. She had a Combat Engineering Specialization. 

Her build wasn’t designed just to break things—it was also designed to create and hold them together as well.

The Ability she was using now wasn’t flashy, but Malicia had rapidly learned to appreciate it. 

Some kind of analytical reinforcement reading—the kind that told you exactly how close your cover was to collapsing. Felice had done it back in the first trenchline too, saving Malicia from having to eyeball structural failure on her own.

“About thirty percent left,” Felice reported. She set the Sweeper aside and scooped her heavy machine gun back into her arms with practiced ease. “Two more, maybe three. But I’d recommend we move after the next one. If they land anything explosive, we’re done for.”

Malicia gave a wordless click of acknowledgment over comms.

‘One more round, then we shift alcoves. They’ve already shown they’ll happily throw explosives the second they think they’ve pinned down an annoying part of our trenchline, like with that laser-gatling…’

The fire from the Stellar Republic’s lines tapered off over the next minute or so, shots thinning until only scattered bursts cracked across the no-man’s-land. 

Malicia and her squad stayed low, catching their breath, swapping out magazines, and steadying their hands for whatever came next. 

The brief quiet felt thin—like stretched wire ready to snap.

She leaned back toward the firing slit after a minute, just enough to get a sense of the battlefield and decide whether they needed to sweep again—

—when the Priority Command Channel crackled to life for the third time this mission.

Her heart skipped a beat at the sound.

“This is a priority notice for all Marines,” she heard the Platoon Leader say, his deep-set voice ringing in every Marine’s ear across the entire battlefield. “Squad designation Alpha has now been deployed to the battlefield. To all of you: Kill the Freaks with everything you got. That is all.”

When the comms cut, the familiar surge hit her—Sergeant Kalt’s platoon-wide Ability flooding the alcove like a shot of ice and fire. 

The energy tightened her muscles, focus sharpening to a blade as her Attributes soared.

Her eyes snapped to Felice and Nato; both were frozen for a heartbeat just like she was, faces behind their visors hardening at the expected but somehow still unexpected words. 

Her eyes went to Indra.

Indra’s hands had paused over Pak’s wound for a moment, then she reached instead for the nearest rifle, sliding a fresh magazine home with a quiet, practiced click as she stepped up beside Malicia.

There was no uncertainty in any UHF Marine’s mind now. 

The meaning of the announcement was simple and absolute: All hands on deck. 

A Battlefield Ace would need cover to do their work, and cover was something you bought with bullets, sweat, and, if it came to it, blood and bodies.

“Let’s fucking kill them all!” Malicia barked into squad comms, the adrenaline from the Ace deployment announcement and Kalt’s buff turning the words into a physical thing in her chest.

“For the UHF!” Felice answered, bracing her heavy machine gun on the embrasure and opening up, hot bullet streaks carving into the cold night.

“For the Emperor!” Nato cried, shoulder slamming the grenade launcher as it spat a chain of explosions into the advancing mass, shredding the midline of the Republic’s front-most push.

Indra said nothing—just braced her rifle and fired, each shot precise and unhesitating, her motions calm in a way that somehow made the chaos feel even louder. 

Their combined fire tore into the advancing tide, and Malicia saw the front of the Stellar Republic’s push buckle almost instantly under the sudden, utterly vicious surge of UHF fire.

Pride swelled hot in her chest.

The entire trenchline had come alive—guns roaring, grenade launchers thudding, the last remaining fortified machine gun nests cycling back into full-auto fire, every Marine who could hold a weapon pouring everything they had into the open field. 

No one paced their shots. No one cared about saving ammunition for later. 

There was no later in moments like this.

Such was the doctrine when a Battlefield Ace entered the field.

You gave them the world on a platter of suppressive fire—forced the enemy to pick between shooting back or ducking for cover, buying the Ace seconds of freedom—and dared the Stellar Republic to turn their backs toward the one person they couldn’t afford to ignore.

And then, as if in answer to all those bullets and shouted prayers, the night ahead of them burst into neon-crimson.

A flood of laser-fire lanced out from the eastern-most section of the trenchline—not scattered, not sporadic, but a sweeping, continuous torrent, like someone had drawn a burning line across the battlefield with a ruler. 

For a breathless heartbeat, it looked like a single solid beam, carving into the enemy’s ranks. 

Then the glow vanished, plunging everything back into the familiar, flare-illuminated night that now looked downright dark by comparison.

Malicia’s eyes widened—delight and cold, unadulterated terror threading through her chest all at once—as she watched more than half a Platoon’s worth of Stellar Republic Soldiers drop where they stood. The entire eastern front of the Republic’s push simply collapsed, bodies sagging like wheat being cut down in a field.

Two heavier beams followed—a pair of sharp, cannon-like bursts—slamming directly into two Defensive Heavies who had begun to shift their shields to cover the breach. 

Their armour didn’t even have time to blacken. 

They were just gone; their upper bodies completely vaporized by the laser cannon.

‘So the laser-gatling is the Battlefield Ace and they got themselves a laser cannon Offensive Heavy to boot…’ Malicia realized, lips curling into a sharp, humorless grin. ‘No wonder they went quiet after the rocket barrage. They must’ve sprinted straight to Kalt for support so they wouldn’t almost get turned into paste again, the next time they fired.’

She slammed in a fresh magazine and rose back up to the embrasure, firing into the momentarily stalled enemy advance—the first stall she’d seen in what felt like hours.

‘We can win this…! If the Ace keeps going—’

Her thought was cut off as neon-crimson washed across the battlefield again—another harvest, another scythe stroke. Soldiers dropped in swaths once more, another section of the Stellar Republic’s push simply crumpling into nothingness.

A hungry grin tore across her face.

‘That’s fucking insane… I’ve never actually seen a Battlefield Ace before—but… I get it now. I get all of it. The doctrine now makes perfect sense. Emperor above, I will never doubt the damn Doctrine again, I swear…’

Two more, smaller sweeps followed before the Stellar Republic’s Soldiers finally managed to hunker down and throw up overlapping shields and fortified cover, reinforcing their eastern flank to stem the bleeding.

Just in time for the command channel to click back on—breaking the long, heavy silence that had followed Kalt’s earlier announcement on the priority command channel. 

A young woman’s voice came through and Malicia couldn’t stop the grin that spread across her face at the words she heard. The Stellar Republic’s frantic attempt to reinforce the eastern flank had just been rendered utterly pointless—the UHF would win this.

“Alpha, moving.”

—

The sound of her own heavy breathing was the only thing Thea could hear as she dropped another spent capacitor magazine to the floor, the almost-empty casing clattering against the growing pile at her feet.

She reached into the ammo pouch again, slotting in a fresh capacitor and coolant canister with practiced movements, then lifted the Gram back to her shoulder and aimed out toward the front.

The night had only grown darker. 

Flares were fewer now, rising slower and burning shorter, as fewer hands remained to launch them. Every passing minute meant more dead on both sides.

This was the fifth alcove Thea and what remained of Alpha had cycled through. 

They had lost almost half the squad in the last hour—their sole Offensive Heavy, one of the two Defensive ones, and one of their Medics—gone to the constant pressure of fire, rockets, and attrition.

Their path had taken them from the far eastern flank, then two alcoves toward center, then out of the trenches entirely for a single push to draw fire away from the collapsing trench line. 

It had worked—but the cost had been steep.

Hinder, the Medium-type Offensive Heavy, cut down outside the trenches. 

Quent, the Medic, taken seconds later trying to drag him back. 

And Lantr—the second Defensive Heavy—killed during their stop in W12 when the Stellar Republic finally got a clean read on their position and buried the entire alcove in rockets.

If Lantr hadn’t held the front to the very last second before the final round of blasts brought down the entire alcove on their heads, there wouldn’t have been an Alpha left to save.

Ruri—the final Defensive Heavy—was killed by a stray shot that perfectly managed to hit her in just the perfectly wrong part of the armour. 

A freak accident, one-in-a-billion shot, just minutes ago.

Now it was just Thea, Chester and Dan, the only remaining Medic besides Chester. 

Dan had told her only minutes ago that he was nearly dry on Focus.

Thea had pushed every drop as far as it could go. 

She knew she’d wasted time earlier—testing weapons, pacing herself, treating the DM like it was just another practice run. If she’d realized sooner what an upscaled Hold-the-Line against the Stellar Republic truly meant, she would’ve saved the testing for another mission.

But hindsight wasn’t worth anything right now. 

Somehow, against the impossible odds, her work as a Battlefield Ace had stopped the Stellar Republic’s advance. Not moved them back—just stopped. And the UHF’s second trench line was held together by threads thinner than the pockets of smoke cover hanging in the air.

If she stopped pushing, even for a minute, the entire line would collapse.

The only thing keeping the Stellar Republic at bay now was her beyond-hoarse voice, her sore trigger finger, and the burning strain inside her head of repeatedly tearing open the future with [Glimpse].

Her nanobots swarmed out again—far fewer now, the swarm looking thin and ragged after the catastrophe at W12—to amplify what little strength was left in her voice. She drew in a breath that felt like it scraped against the inside of her throat.

“[GLIMPSE]!”

The world washed into monochrome. 

The now-familiar pressure slammed into her mind as she forced every angle, every target, every movement into memory. 

Shot placements. Armor seams. Timing. Positions of cover. Return fire vectors. 

Everything.

Then the vision shattered, as always, and reality rushed back.

She fired exactly where she remembered—just as she had seen herself do—cutting into the Stellar Republic’s ranks once more, another jagged tear in their endless tide of bodies. A few moments of work, a dozen kills, maybe more. 

It didn’t matter. 

It never felt like enough.

Automatically, she flicked open her [Resources] Interface.

[Resources]
Focus: 95 / 225

Enough for a few more uses. Barely.

She pushed herself to the left side of the alcove as counterfire started hammering into their position again—louder this time, closer, sharper. 

Her legs wobbled as she moved. 

She hadn’t noticed when they stopped responding properly. 

It was like moving through water that thickened by the second.

‘My legs are starting to give, huh…?’ The thought came slow and syrup-thick, dragged out of a mind running on fumes, not really pulling any consequences with it.

She leaned her weight against the wall to stay upright—only to immediately feel the familiar hand plant itself firmly on her back for the [Focus Link]

Before she could even think to activate another [Glimpse], however, she was abruptly grabbed and spun—hard.

Chester’s face filled her vision, the medic looking exhausted and thoroughly concerned. 

His hands were moving, his mouth was open—he was saying something—but her ears just hummed. The world was muffled, like someone had stuffed cotton into her entire head.

‘What is he saying…?’

Her first instinct was to check her helmet. Not cracked. 

Comms were still active. No damage warnings.

And yet… there was only silence.

She tried to pull away—there were still Duplicators to kill, there were still shots to align—but Chester’s grip tightened, surprising in its strength. His eyes hardened. 

The look said enough: Stop.

Remembering Kara’s lessons—don’t fight your medic—Thea stopped resisting and let him push her down into a seated position against the left wall, just outside the firing line.

The world tilted slightly when she settled. 

Her arms felt weightless and heavy at the same time.

Her helmet came off with a sharp click just moments later—the Medic override forcing the lock open—cool air hitting her sweat-drenched skin. Chester’s hands moved from her skull to her jaw, to the back of her neck, to her temple—checking for… something. 

Something obvious. Something wrong.

His glove came off without her even noticing. Cold skin touched her forehead—

—and he jerked back instantly, eyes going wide, face draining of all color.

“Thea! What the fuck?!”

She heard him scream—but the sound felt distant, warped, like it came from behind a wall.

She blinked up at him, slow, confused.

Everything hurt. Everything was loud. And yet she couldn’t hear anything at all.

She felt something drip down her chin and tried to look down to see what it was—only to realize, after several long moments of confusion, that she couldn’t actually look at her own chin.

Eyes simply didn’t work that way.

She lifted an arm to touch her nose, but Chester immediately pushed her hands back down, firm and unyielding. Dan dropped to a knee beside them, several injectors already in hand.

‘What are those for…? Is Chester hurt…?’

Her gaze moved over him, checking for wounds.

Aside from bruises, cuts, and the layer of dust and grime covering him, he seemed fine. No bleeding. No burns.

So why—

She didn’t know when it happened, but there was suddenly an injector in her neck.

Chester and Dan were arguing—fast, clipped words—while Chester tore into his pack and Dan swapped injectors again, replacing the one he’d just emptied.

‘Wait… am I hurt?’

The realization came slowly, seeping in like cold water beneath a door.

She tried again to look down at herself, but her eyes wouldn’t leave the center of her vision.

Her own body felt… distant. Wrong. Blurred at the edges.

Then, as more injectors stabbed into her skin and the argument beside her escalated, sound finally began to sharpen again, cutting back through the fog.

“—she’s going to die if we don’t cool her down somehow!” Chester’s voice, sharp and frantic, finally cut through the haze.

“Can we crack a coolant mag and use that?” Dan asked, gesturing toward the magazine pack at her waist.

“Not unless you want to kill her,” Chester snapped. “That’ll drop the temperature too fast, if it doesn’t just blow up entirely. Emperor—dammit, I knew I should’ve brought the other kit!”

He swore again, low and vicious, then leaned close—practically nose-to-nose with her—checking her pupils.

He only flinched once. Barely.

“Thea,” he said, voice steadying into something controlled. “Can you hear me?”

She nodded. Slowly. Her head felt as heavy as her entire body combined.

He exhaled in relief—only for his expression to harden again.

“You’re killing yourself, Thea. You’re not Overdrawing—thank the Emperor for that—but you’re overheating. Your brain is literally cooking. It’s already been damaged—we managed to repair some of it with regeneration injectors—but if we don’t cool you down, you’ll do it again in mere minutes. Do you understand?”

She nodded again—slow, heavy—her mouth refusing to shape even a single word.

“We’re working on it, alright? Just stay with us,” Chester said, tone gentler now, though the strain behind it was obvious.

He didn’t wait for her response. 

He turned immediately back to Dan, their voices dropping to low, urgent murmurs as they began rifling through packs, arguing quietly over whatever few options they had left. Neither of them had brought anything against heat, as the mission hadn’t seemed like one where it would be necessary, Thea learned from overhearing their discussion.

Her thoughts dragged, thick and heavy, like someone had poured tar through the inside of her skull. She tried to think—really tried—but every time she caught a thread of an idea, it slipped, broke, or simply vanished into blank nothing.

She stared at Chester’s hands, moving fast. Dan’s mouth, moving faster. Their voices were muffled, like she was listening from underwater. 

Sometimes she forgot what she was trying to remember halfway through remembering it. 

Sometimes she forgot she was even thinking. 

Her head tipped forward, then back.

‘…why… why is this happening…’ 

The thought flickered, dim and fading.

Then Chester’s voice—echoing—replayed in her head, ‘You’re cooking yourself. Your brain is overheating.’

‘Overheating, right.’ 

She needed to cool down. Cool down.

Cool down.

Her mind stalled again. Blank and silent. 

Then, slowly—like someone restarting an ancient machine—her thoughts lurched back into place.

Cool down.

But the coolant mags were a no. Chester had said no. No coolant.

No… something.

She couldn’t remember the details—but "no" stuck.

So… something else. Something she could do.

Blankness again.

Then a voice—smug, sly, familiar—curled through the fog of her skull.

“That frost crawling beneath our skin, that chill radiating outward when you strain yourself? That isn’t mine, darling. That’s yours.”

Thea blinked. 

Slow and hard, as she tried her best to hold onto the thought that was trying to form.

‘Ice.’

Her mind latched onto the word. Held it. Didn’t let go.

She was an Ice-based Psyker.

Obviously.

There had never been a doubt. Everyone knew that. She knew that.

She was overheating—so she just needed to use her powers to cool herself down.

The solution was perfect. 

Beautiful. Obvious. Simple.

She reached inwards, searching for the cold she had always known was there.

She was Ice.
Of course she was Ice.
She had always been Ice.

How could she possibly forget? 

She had never looked for the cold before—she didn’t have to. 

She knew where it was by instinct alone.

She reached inward, toward that quiet, frost-tinged place behind her Gate, and let a sliver of it bleed through. A thin puff of condensation escaped her lips, barely visible in the dim pulsing reds of flare-light outside.

‘Just cool myself down,’ she thought, sluggish but intent, letting more of the cold seep in and pushing it toward her skull.

Dan’s and Chester’s voices started to sharpen, like someone was slowly tuning a radio into the right frequency. Her thoughts, thick and slow moments ago, began to thread together again—clearer and faster by second.

‘Wait… What am I doing?’

Sudden clarity snapped back in like a rubber band.

‘My Gate is acting… weird. What is this cold? What the fuck am I doing?!’

She shut the flow off immediately, muscles trembling as the last wave of cold crawled through her. The memory of the fog, the confusion, the blank spaces, pressed into her mind in delayed realization.

‘I overheated… so I cooled myself down? I can do that? Since fucking when?’

Confusion was definitely the dominant force in her skull—but also the understanding that sitting here like a lump in the middle of an active battlefield was a very bad idea.

“Hey. Uh—guys?” she croaked out. Her voice was rough, sandpapered raw from the screaming. But loud enough.

Both Dan and Chester jerked their heads toward her like startled animals.

“Thea?!” Chester tore toward her, pressing a bare hand to her forehead—only to recoil slightly. “What the—you’re freezing. Why the fuck are you freezing? What happened?”

He shot a questioning look at Dan, who quickly shook his head—no, he wasn’t responsible for any of this.

“I… figured it out, I think,” Thea said slowly, lifting her hand to her face. When she pulled it away, her palm was smeared with translucent, half-frozen snot. “I cooled myself down.”

She blinked at her hand. “Guess I really did cook myself, huh.”

Chester and Dan stared at her like she had just clawed her way out of her own grave.

“Thea—I— what?” Chester stammered, words failing him entirely.

Dan, somehow managing to keep it together better, swallowed hard and explained, “Thea, you were dying. Your core temp was pushing above forty-five degrees. That’s not just ‘this is gonna hurt’ territory—that’s brain-death territory. Actual neural death. We kept you alive with regen injectors, but without cooling you would’ve just… melted yourself again.”

“Oof.” Thea grimaced. “That does sound pretty bad. Any idea what caused it? Did I get hit by something? I can’t really remember the last… hour, maybe?”

“That’s because your brain cells died, Thea,” Chester answered, voice clipped and evidently controlled. “Short-term memory is nothing but tissue. Tissue you literally burned. The regenerators will repair most of it now that your temp’s back down—but that time is gone. You’re not getting it back.”

He exhaled, jaw working as he held back frustration and worry.

“As for why it happened… if I had to guess?” Dan added quietly. “You’ve been burning through Focus at a rate I’ve never even thought possible before. I doubt any normal human brain is designed to handle that. Even without Overdrawing, whatever you’re doing with your Psychic Power… it’s not exactly built for sustained use at that level.”

‘Well, well, well. If it isn’t the consequences of my own actions…’

Thea nodded slowly, her thoughts piecing themselves back together one sluggish click at a time.

She had been going way too hard.

Back-to-back, heavy [Glimpse] uses, forcing her brain to hold and process far more than any normal person ever could—over and over—no breaks, no pacing.

‘Yeah… that would probably put some strain on the brain, huh?’

She chuckled at the involuntary rhyme as she tried to push herself up, but her knees gave out instantly. Dan and Chester lunged to catch her before she hit the floor.

“You need calories,” Dan said, already digging through his pack. “Your brain burned fuel to get that hot, that fast. If we don’t get something into you, you’re going to face-plant and never wake up.”

He shoved a dense food bar into her hand. “Eat. All of this. I’ve got more.”

Thea didn’t argue. She knew better than to ignore the orders of a Medic, certain scalpel-shaped bones flashing before her inner-eye. 

She tore the wrapper open with her teeth and started chewing, the bland block of compressed nutrients suddenly tasting like the best thing she had ever eaten.

“How long was I out?” she asked between bites. “How’s it looking out there?”

Chester and Dan shared a look. Chester sighed and moved to the firing slit, taking a cautious peek.

“Stellar Republic’s still dug in,” he reported. “Waiting for us to pop out again. Our side’s nearly spent. Not much fire coming from the UHF lines. I’d call it… stalled. Stalemate, for now.”

Thea nodded, already ripping open another food bar and devouring it just as fast as the first.

‘Yeah… definitely the brain screaming for calories… These things aren’t supposed to taste like condensed, delicious pancakes, I’m fairly sure.’

“How’s your Focus?” she asked.

The two of them froze for a moment, meeting each other’s eyes, before replying.

Dan was first. “Sixty-seven.”

Chester exhaled, leaning back against the wall. “Twenty-one. I’m basically done.”

“So we’ve got a few uses left to try and hammer this home,” Thea said with a tired smile, already halfway through her second bar.

Chester’s reaction was immediate. He stared at her like she had just committed a war crime.

“You can’t be fucking serious. You just melted your own brain, Thea. And your first thought is ‘let’s do it again’? Really?”

Dan looked like he agreed, but stayed quiet.

Thea let out a slow breath and looked directly at both of them.

“What’s the alternative?” she asked. “We stop fighting and die? The overheating’s just a physical effect, right? Potentially painful, sure. Could knock me out. Could kill me for this run. But it doesn’t carry into real life. No DDS bleed-through. No long-term damage outside the DM. Correct?”

Dan and Chester hesitated—but nodded.

“Then I burn myself down to the last ember,” Thea said plainly. “I’m the designated Battlefield Ace. Kalt bet everything on me. You two did too. So did Ruri. And Lantr. And Quent. And Hinder… If I stop now, then all of that was pointless. Why would I drop the run just because it’s hard now? This—” she gestured vaguely toward the battlefield, the trench, the distinct screams and gunfire—“this is exactly the moment where you push until you have nothing left to push with. Otherwise? You stay mid-rank forever.”

She shoved another bite of food into her mouth, talking as she chewed.

“It’d be more shameful to stop now.”

She tore open another bar and devoured it as fast as her jaw would move, while Dan and Chester stayed quiet, both of them weighing her words in their own exhausted way.

Mid-chew, she reached for her Gram—the only one left. 

The Gauss and Ballistic Grams were long gone somewhere along the line, abandoned with the bodies and dust and chaos of earlier trenches.

Calling the rifle “worn” felt like understatement at this point.

The barrel was scorched nearly black, the trigger gritty with caked dust, and the whole frame was tinted a dull gray-brown from smoke, dirt, and whatever else had blown across them during the march of alcoves.

But when she checked it—she knew.

It still worked.

The barrel’s distortions hadn’t affected the focusing rails. The capacitors were still making clean contact. The cooling reservoir was still intact. The housing was ugly, but functional.

‘Truly a marvelous weapon,’ she thought, finishing the last of the bar, crumbs clinging to her gloves.

A heavy, shared sigh came from Chester and Dan.

“You’re right,” Chester admitted, rubbing a hand down his face. “As much as I hate that.”

Dan nodded once, jaw tight. “I can’t approve of it. It goes against everything I’m supposed to do as a Medic. But I will [Focus Link] and give you what I have left—as long as you swear not to Overdraw. Burn yourself down to embers if you must, but do not go empty.”

Thea nodded instantly. “Did that once. Barely lived. I’m not making that mistake twice. You have my word.”

A moment later, she felt the familiar pull—Focus threading from Dan into her. Then Chester’s Focus came—what little he had—dripping into her like the last drops from a faucet.

Dan extended a hand.

“Then… It has been an honor, Thea. With no Focus left, I can’t help you here. I’ll move to other alcoves. Maybe I can keep someone else standing a little longer.”

Thea almost denied him saying that he was of no use here—almost—but the words caught before leaving her mouth.

‘He doesn’t want to be nearby when I effectively run myself into the ground, does he?’ She thought. ‘It’s not really about helping other Marines, though I’m sure that’s part of it. He just doesn’t want to have to physically stop me, once he realises I’m in danger…’ 

A small smile tugged at her lips. 

‘That’s such a Karania-thought,’ she couldn’t help but think. Her best friend’s penchant to keep everyone alive as much as possible, to fight the literal concept of death itself, as she had so brazenly declared during the Awards Ceremony… It was a very Karania-thing to do.

“Thank you, Medic Dan,” she said, taking his hand. He helped her to her feet—steady, gentle. “Truly. And… yeah. I know someone you’d get along well with. You remind me of her.”

“If our paths cross again, I’d be happy to squad up,” he said.

“Likewise. Hopefully under better circumstances,” she replied with a smirk as he handed her two more food bars. “Each of these is about three thousand calories. You’ve already eaten four, so maybe slow down a bit? But if you’re pushing even harder… What do I know? Go and fuck them up good, yeah?”

Thea nodded and tore one open, eating it right away. She’d definitely need the calories. 

She watched Dan slip back into the tunnel toward the eastern front, where most of the UHF lines still held.

Her eyes met Chester’s; he flinched, then nodded gravely. “I’ll stay with you. Can’t have you drop dead from a stray bullet before your embers run out, right?”

She chuckled. “I appreciate it, Chester. You’re a good Marine—just a shit person, but I can deal with that.”

He blinked, taken aback as if she’d slapped him.

“I hope you’re getting your desired points from all this, otherwise that whole locker-room spiel was for nothing,” she added with a wink.

For a beat, confusion crossed his face, then understanding widened his eyes. “You… you knew?!”

“Like I said—competence covers a lot of sins. You’re competent, Chester. More decent than I thought. You could be an Ace if you put yourself into the right things—maybe not a Battlefield Ace, got the wrong mindset for that, but an Ace, all the same.”

She shouldered her Gram, stuffing the last of the bar into her mouth, and started toward the firing slit. “Let’s burn the flames, stoke the embers, and see what comes out of the ashes, shall we?”

Chester shook himself out of surprise and chuckled. “A Cyan rookie beating my ass—fair. I deserve that. Sure. Let’s fuck them up, Thea. And thanks. You kept your promise; kept me alive.”

“Likewise,” she said, laughing.

She peered through the scope, sweeping the mass of soldiers hunkered behind foam walls, shields, and smoke pockets the Sweepers couldn’t clear. 

She paused, remembered she wasn’t wearing her helmet, so she quickly went and got it, snapped it on, and cranked the sound isolation up. 

Her Nano-Bot Swarm spread out around the alcove again, humming.

“Alright. Let’s end this.”

She drew a deep breath and let the power wash over her. 

“[GLIMPSE]!”

—

PoV: Private Chester O’Neil

By the time the Recruit—Thea—burned through the last scraps of her Focus, she wasn’t really there anymore.

She had stopped responding to him long ago—no answers to his questions, no acknowledgment of his voice. 

Her mind was probably too damaged to understand words at all by that point. 

But somehow, the action of firing—feathering that trigger in that brutally precise rapid-fire rhythm—was still ingrained, deeper than speech, deeper than conscious thought. 

Even when she couldn’t stand and he had to physically hold her upright, her arms still moved, her aim still snapped perfectly from target to target.

His [Eyes of a Medic] told him the truth long before she finally collapsed:

She was done.

Her Focus was nearly zero.
Her brain was far, far past its limit.
Her body was a heartbeat away from shutting down entirely.

But she had kept her promise.

She stopped using [Glimpse] on her own. 

No intervention had been needed. No last-minute struggle to knock her out, before she messed up something that the Digital Mission couldn’t simply fix by itself.

And that was the only reason he had stayed.

Letting someone burn themselves out in a Digital Mission was one thing.

But leaving a fledgling Psyker—especially a Cyan—with something to prove, alone and half-brain-dead?

That was how you created ghosts that followed you long after the sim ended.

So he stayed.

He held her up while she killed herself—one Power at a time, one spike of heat into her melting brain at a time, one last perfect sweep of laser-fire cutting down Duplicators like wheat at a time—Until now.

She’d completely collapsed.

He removed her helmet, thinking—hoping—there might be something he could still do.

But when he saw her face, he froze.

“Stupid fucking Cyan Recruits…” he muttered, the bitterness sharp in his throat. “Always gotta prove something, huh?”

She was smiling.

She had cooked her own brain alive, forced every last ember of herself into the fight—and she was smiling when it had all come to an end.

He wiped the drool and hot snot from her face with the cleanest part of his uniform he could find, then gently placed her helmet back on and gently sat her against the trench wall.

His Interface glowed in the corner of his vision:

[Mission Complete: 4:26:16]

“It’s only been two and a half hours?” he breathed out, laughing once—sharp and tired. 

“That’s so fucked. Upscaled missions are terrifying.”

He stood, picked up his gun, and walked toward the embrasure.

‘It’s just like she said, isn’t it? There’s not anything left to do except keep firing.’

He peeked over the slit—aiming—

Then froze.

“What…?”

There were enemies out there—but they weren’t advancing.

They were pulling back.

Chester keyed into the command channel, voice steady out of habit rather than emotion.

“Alpha here at W23. Enemy forces in sight are retreating. Confirm?”

Several replies came back, though slower than they should have—most Squad Leaders and their seconds were likely already dead.

“W4 here, affirmative. Enemy is retreating.”

“E15 here, affirmative. Same visual confirmed.”

“E21 here, affirmative. The Freaks are falling back.”

Chester let out a long breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

He waited for the Platoon Leader to speak—only to remember that Sergeant Kalt had died pushing back one of the heavy assaults earlier. Around half an hour ago, by now.

He had no idea who was even in charge now.

“Command here,” a young woman’s voice finally crackled through, answering the question he hadn’t asked aloud. “I can confirm enemy retreat… I… I just got the all-clear. The mission is considered… Complete? The enemy has taken too many casualties to continue the offensive… We… We won…?”

Silence followed.

Nobody wanted to believe it. 

Nobody could.

But the sight was right there—Stellar Republic soldiers pulling back, some firing half-hearted parting shots while retreat columns formed behind them. 

Their movement was unmistakable.

“We… We won?” someone asked—someone Chester didn’t recognize.

“Command here,” the young woman again. “Yes. Mission success confirmed. I… think we just wait for the Epilogue trigger. I don’t actually know how Hold-The-Lines resolve if you don’t run out the timer. I didn’t even know this was possible.”

“I didn’t know you could win without running it down either,” another voice added—command hierarchy and command channel etiquette long since irrelevant, apparently.

“But if Command says we won… then we won, right?”

Another moment of stillness—Then the comms erupted.

“Fuck yeah we did!”

“Long live the UHF!”

“The Emperor smiled on us today!”

“UHF! UHF! UHF!”

“VICTORY!!!”

“Fuck yeah! Take that you fucking freaks!”

Chester couldn’t stop himself from smiling as he limped back to the far wall of the trench and slid down beside the dead girl.

“Looks like you actually did it… you crazy, stubborn idiot girl,” he muttered.

He let out one more tired laugh, leaned his head back against the dirt wall, and closed his eyes—waiting for the Mission to fade to black…

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[Wolf Lord+ | Draft] Volume 2 - Chapter 57 - Debrief

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------------------- Start of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) -------------------
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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Welcome to the draft release of Volume 2 - Chapter 57 - Debrief for y'all.

As always, a quick reminder that this chapter is still in the process of being workshopped by me and that this is simply the first-draft.

And also: Please do not read the chapters here on Patreon, but go for the googledoc, .pdf or .epub instead. Patreon butchers all forms of formatting and you're missing out on easier and more enjoyable reading experiences.

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Decided to make this a full-chapter instead of skipping over most of it, as it felt odd without an emotional payout regarding the characters we've met.

Hope you don't mind that I took me time for this one!

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I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the link to the chapter:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/10Qjj-iBOTETCXs3lOnVfgd3rzcZih84g9g6cymAtpqk/edit?usp=sharing

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Volume 2 - Chapter 57 - Debrief

Corporal Michael Wellis (Squad Leader of “Wellis’ Squad”):

++ Effective use of an Oversized Squad, splitting the forces evenly across the lines with planned merging once casualties started.

+ Proper delegation of Squad Leadership for temporarily created purpose-squad.

--- Lack of leadership when faced with overwhelming odds: Demerits applied for communicative breakdown between main-squad and purpose-squad.

--- Outward dislike for Squad Member: Demerits applied for not outwardly suppressing this preference. (Severe, additional Demerits applied by Reviewing AI. For information on this decision, contact Review Code “Lumis”.)

-- Improper usage of command channel’s report functionality: Demerits applied due to reported misinformation that caused Command to waste resources on unverified assets.

—

Corporal Jaxon Mir Sartin (Squad Leader of “Infall Squad”):

++++ Proper assessment of battlefield asset and taking of immediate action to bring said asset to Command’s attention: Merits applied for personally seeing to the transfer of information without compromising operational security via unsecured comms.

++ Effective Squad Leading in the heat of combat: Merits applied for resource conversation attempts when facing massed Stellar Republic wave tactics.

+ Correctly delegated Squad Leadership for the short duration of absence.

- Lack of information provided to Command prior to arrival at the HQ: Demerits applied for not forewarning Command of the incoming battlefield asset via the proper procedures (Private Command Channel).

—

Corporal Malicia Cintera Plasst (Squad Leader of “Menis Squad”):

+++ Effective use of Offensively-focused Squad, despite the mission parameters: Merits applied for correct orders being issued a vast majority of the time.

++ Proper response to Battlefield Ace Deployment and full adherence to UHF Doctrine: Merits applied for following Doctrine despite personal doubts and inexperience.

++ Sweeper Duties fulfilled to exemplary degree by commanded Squad.

- Problematic Squad makeup for Upscaled ‘Hold-The-Line’ Missions: Demerits applied for not adjusting the personnel once the full mission parameters were revealed.

-- Unnecessary loss of priority personnel due to improper spread of Marines: Demerits applied for not collaborating with other Squads to spread high-value Roles and lessen the impact of suppressive fire by the enemy.

—

Sergeant Ryker Invictus Kalt (Squad Leader of “Command Squad” | Platoon Leader):

+++++ Mission-critical deployment and support of unexpected Battlefield Ace asset, despite collapse of the frontline: Merits applied for keeping the trenchlines in-tact while orchestrating the collection and creation of Squad designated “Alpha”. Merits applied for continuous assistance and coordination of “Alpha”s movements and tactical arrangements after initial deployment. (Additional Merit applied by Reviewing AI. For information on this decision, contact Review Code “Lumis”.)

++++ Immediate and proper pivot of a losing strategy when presented with a high-value battlefield asset: Merits applied for adequately identifying, analysing and judging unexpected Battlefield Ace asset with subsequent high-level support. (Additional Merit applied by Reviewing AI. For information on this decision, contact Review Code “Lumis”.)

+++ Leading the counter-charge to keep key position from being overrun, leading to an immediate Mission failure: Merits applied for leaving “Command” Role behind, when “Ace” Role was required.

+ Use of Platoon-wide Ability to bolster specific sectors and critical moments in the Mission.

-- Wasted Command resources chasing misinformation provided by Squad Leaders on the ground without verifying information: Demerits applied for not confirming provided information before acting upon it.

—

Private Chester O’Neil (Squad Medic of “Wellis Squad” | Squad Leader of “Wellis Two”):

++++ Exemplary support of fledgeling Psyker and implementation of “Last-Breath” protocols: Merits applied for standing by to prevent the fledgling Psyker from Overdrawing their Focus before their death. (Additional Merit applied by Reviewing AI. For information on this decision, contact Review Code “Lumis”.)

++ Temporary Squad Leadership used to teach fellow Marines: Merits applied for spreading knowledge to both Recruits and Privates alike.

++ Excellent Role fulfillment: Merits applied for fulfilling Role “Squad Medic” to a more than satisfactory degree.

-- Lack of knowledge about potential dangers from Squad Members: Demerits applied for not perusing Squad Medic Database on squad-bound Marines for hazardous entities such as Fledgeling Psykers.

- Obvious attempt at gaming the system to obtain additional System Credits, Merit and CP: Demerits applied for not outwardly suppressing this intent. (Demerits applied by Reviewing AI. For information on this decision, contact Review Code “Fall”.)

—

[Tauron 6 ‘Hold-The-Line’ Upscaled Digital Mission: Personnel Review – Governing AIs, PFC943]

======

======

The first thing that registered when Thea came to was the System Interface, hanging in front of her vision like a translucent screen. 

Its familiar blue tint washed over everything, blocking out most of the room around her. 

What little she could see past it looked strangely plain—flat gray walls, smooth floor, no distinct features. The sort of bare waiting-room space the DDS always seemed to default to when pulling someone out of a mission.

[System]: You have successfully completed Faction Mission “Tauron 6: Hold-The-Line - Upscaled”.

[System]: Notice: Contribution Point rewards omitted, as the Participant is already at the Threshold. Contribution Point rewards will continue once Tier-Up is completed.

[System]: You have received 75 System Merit and 445 System Credits. (Mission - Upscaled)
[System]: You have received 378 System Merit and 1134 System Credits. (Combat - Upscaled)
[System]: You have received 45 System Merit and 150 System Credits. (Objectives - Upscaled)

It took her a moment to understand what the System was telling her. 

The jump from fighting in the Digital Mission to suddenly standing in this strange room was too abrupt for her mind to catch up. 

But the notification itself was, thankfully, very clear.

“Huh… So we won? I… don’t remember how the DM ended though…? What happened? Did I get suddenly killed by something…?” she muttered, trying to rewind the memory—only to run face-first into a blank wall where the last stretch of the mission should’ve been.

A slow frown pulled at her expression.

“I didn’t fuck up and Overdraw again and someone hit me with a Mnemorix, right? Kara would absolutely kill me… Please tell me I didn’t do that again—”

“You did not,” said a voice from nowhere.

Thea yelped—an embarrassingly high-pitched noise—spinning around so fast her boots slid a little on the smooth floor. The System Interface vanished as she flicked it closed, searching for anyone, but the room was as empty and plain as it had been before.

“My apologies, Thea,” the voice came again—familiar now, steady. The Sovereign’s voice, she recognized. “I did not intend to startle you.”

Thea let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding, shoulders loosening just a little. 

The sound of the ship’s AI felt grounding, like a tether.

‘Okay. Not glitched. Not soft-locked in some DDS purgatory. Not dead. Still on the Sovereign. I can work with that,’ she reassured herself.

“It’s, uh… yeah. It’s alright, Sovereign,” she said, though the embarrassment now warmed her ears. She waved vaguely at the empty space around her. “So… what is this place? Why am I here?”

“Debriefing,” the Sovereign replied, as calmly as ever.

“Ah.”

“You have successfully completed your first Digital Mission. For that, the UHF wishes to extend its congratulations. This first mission fulfills your mandatory monthly participation requirement—per the agreement made during post-Assessment review with Councillor Lumis and Auxiliary Staff-Sergeant Selene. You are now free to pursue your own schedule for the next thirty days without concern of missing any deadlines.”

Thea nodded slowly. 

Very slowly.

She had definitely remembered that part. Totally. Absolutely. 100%.

“As for your previous question: You did not Overdraw your Focus,” the Sovereign continued. 

“Because this was not an Assessment-level simulation, a Focus Overdraw would have resulted in immediate termination of the Digital Mission so that specialized personnel could administer first-aid. This is to prevent any and all permanent loss of life. Naturally, such an event would also result in severe disciplinary consequences for the Marine responsible, as an Overdraw directly wastes all invested resources—manpower, digital operation costs, and most importantly, time.”

Thea hummed quietly, a small sound of acceptance.

‘Yeah… makes sense. They really wouldn’t want people thinking Overdraws are something you can just shrug off. And considering how much power and resources these DMs eat up… yeah. Harsh punishment tracks.’

She glanced around the empty room again, feeling oddly sore just from standing—despite logically knowing her current body should have been feeling brand-new.

Almost immediately, a soft-looking armchair appeared just a few steps away, as if the Sovereign had pulled it from thin air.

“Thanks,” she muttered, dropping into it. Her body sank into the cushions and she let out a small, unfiltered sigh. “Ahhh… that hits the spot…”

After a moment, a thought surfaced.

“Actually, Sovereign… why do I feel sore? Shouldn’t I be perfectly fine after the DM? I thought everything in there was DDS stuff, so… shouldn’t I just be in a clean body again?”

“As you correctly surmised, your body has indeed been completely reconstructed to the same state before you entered the Digital Mission,” the Sovereign replied without pause. 

“Physically, you are as unharmed as you were before entering. It is your mind and Soul that are fatigued. The strain stems from your Psychic Power usage. You drew on far more Psychic Energy than would be considered standard for a Psyker of your current development, which has likely stressed the seams of your Gate. The sensation you are experiencing is comparable to muscle soreness. It will fade naturally.”

Thea blinked.

“…My Gate can get sore?”

“Yes. The venerable Runepriest has already reviewed your results and confirmed that this is normal. Would you like to hear his attached comment?”

Her eyebrows lifted. The Runepriest had already checked in? Immediately after the DM?

“Yes, please.”

The Sovereign’s tone shifted seamlessly into the perfect cadence of Runepriest Vedun’s voice:

“Hehehe. Classic.”

Then shifted back.

“End of comment.”

Thea stared into the empty room, blank expression, dead behind the eyes.

Silence stretched.

“I fucking hate him,” she muttered eventually, dragging her hands down her face. “I hate him so much. Why is he like that…”

She imagined punching him the next time she saw him. It did not make her feel much better. 

But still, better.

‘If I didn’t trust Major Quinn’s judgement so damn much… I might’ve asked for literally anyone else to be my mentor… As knowledgeable as he is, why is he such an idiot at times?!’

She took a long breath through her nose, let it out through her mouth, and forced her shoulders to relax.

“Alright. So,” she said, lifting her head, “what do I actually need to do for this debrief? I’m assuming there’s some final step before I get out of here. Kara’s probably already pacing holes in the floor somewhere, so if we could speed this up, that’d be great. No offense meant, of course.”

“None taken,” the Sovereign replied. “For the debrief, I will present your final statistics, optionally present some select notes from the Governing and Reviewing AIs, and a walkthrough of the friendlink system. You have received multiple requests regarding the latter, which must be addressed before you are fully cleared. Future debriefings will not include this portion, as you will be familiar with the process by then.”

Thea’s eyes lit up at that. ‘Stats?! Let’s fucking go!’

“Your final statistics for the Digital Mission: ‘Tauron 6 - Hold-The-Line - Upscaled,’ are as follows: You successfully eliminated 116 T1 Duplicators, along with 30 T1 Duplicates. These totals do not include any collateral Duplicate eliminations resulting from Duplicator deaths. You died once, due to self-inflicted injuries.”

“Wait, what? Self-inflicted injuries…? What the fuck happened?!” Thea blurted out, stunned. 

Why would she kill herself in a Digital Mission? How did that even happen?

Instead of answering verbally, the Sovereign replaced the gray room with a perfect recreation of one of the trench alcoves on Tauron 6. 

She watched herself, Medic Chester, and Medic Dan in the middle of a frantic scene where she saw herself sat up against the wall of the alcove. It moved on to show the brief discussion between the Medics and herself, culminating in Medic Dan heading out of the alcove and leaving her with Chester.

Hearing herself talk through her reasoning for the self-inclicted damage to the two medics made complete sense, so there was nothing she could really say about it.

“Ah. Yeah. Okay,” she said, nodding slowly. “That does make sense. So… note to self: Don’t overuse the Psychic Power or I’ll end up cooking myself. Got it.”

“I have several comments on this aspect from the Governing and Reviewing AIs, if you would like to review them,” the Sovereign offered.

Thea made a face and waved her hand. “Ehh… I’m good. I can guess the tone, thanks.”

“Very well. Overall performance: You have been nominated and confirmed as MVP. Congratulations, Thea. You are now officially a Grade-0 One-Time MVP. This designation will be added to your UHF Profile and may be displayed to others inside Digital Missions, pending your permission.”

Thea blinked, absorbing that.

‘Not exactly fair to call me the MVP, when I basically just got pumped full of Focus by several Medics and let Sergeant Kalt handle literally all the battlefield strategy… but I guess I did kill a damn lot of them.’

She rubbed the back of her neck, unsure whether to feel proud, embarrassed, or something in between. Ultimately, her body decided on the “something in between” for her.

“Further breakdowns and detailed statistics have also been compiled for you, along with a full recording of the Digital Mission. All of it will be accessible after the debrief concludes,” the Sovereign continued.

“The Governing and Reviewing AIs have marked two points as mandatory notices for improvement. First: Your communication with your squad—specifically your assigned Squad Medic—was below acceptable standard. Your Medic must, at all times, be aware of any risks you pose to yourself and others. As a Psyker, it is your responsibility to clearly communicate your Focus usage patterns and any potential strain. Without that, a Squad Medic cannot properly keep you alive.”

Thea winced at that, the memory of Chester’s scolding ringing a little too clearly in the back of her mind.

“Yeah… That’s fair,” she admitted quietly.

“Secondly,” the Sovereign went on, tone completely neutral, as if delivering weather updates, “you failed to warn your Squad Medic of the auditory danger posed by your Nano-Bot amplified vocal projection. This resulted in the full rupture of his eardrums and temporary loss of combat capability in the midst of an active frontline engagement. In standard battlefield conditions, this would qualify as reckless endangerment at best, and traitorous behavior at worst. You are very strongly advised to ensure this does not occur again.”

Thea swallowed hard, her stomach twisting.

She sank deeper into the chair, as if she could disappear into the cushioning itself.

‘Yeah… I really, really fucked that one up,’ she thought, heat crawling up her neck. ‘Traitorous behavior? Holy shit. The Old Man would drag me through a wall if he heard that.'

She let out a quiet, shaky sigh.

‘Okay. Next time, I warn everyone—before—using anything to do with a maximum output on the auditory nanobots. Every single time.’

Thankfully, the Sovereign continued on quickly, its tone as even as ever. “The final item of this debrief is the friendlink system. You have received nineteen friendlink requests from fellow participants of the Digital Mission. I will also offer to send any friendlink requests you may wish to make in turn.”

Thea blinked. “Nineteen? But I only actually talked to like… ten people. Maybe.”

“That is not a requirement,” the Sovereign clarified. “Any Marine within the Digital Mission may request a friendlink with any other Marine, regardless of direct contact. It is common for requests to be sent to individuals who demonstrated exceptional performance, leadership, or otherwise left a strong impression.”

Thea rubbed the back of her neck. “Ah. Okay. That makes more sense, I guess.”

A short pause. “Could you… sort them? Like, by relevance? Squad members first, people I worked with directly, that kind of thing?”

“Of course.”

The air in front of her shimmered again. 

A list appeared, the names reorganizing themselves in clear, simple order.

The first request unfolded automatically, along with a short attached message.

Private Thoran Falks (“Wellis’ Squad” - Wellis Two)
“Good job out there, Ace. You paid the Freaks back for getting me—like, a lot. If you ever want to run another DM together, I’d be glad to! Promise I’ll try not to embarrass myself again like that. Also… if you’re willing, I’d love to ask a few questions about the Psychic thing you’ve got going on. Never seen anything quite like it.”

Thea felt something in her chest tighten—not painful, just enough to make her breath catch. 

‘Feels strange… getting something seemingly genuine like that. All this over doing well in a simulation? It’s not like I did anything special…’

She smiled and nodded to herself, accepting the friendlink with a quiet tap.

The next message opened automatically.

Private Marie Zinconia Levant (“Wellis’ Squad”- Wellis Two)
“By the fucking Emperor, that was INSANE!!! I was watching the entire time because I died super early (sorry about that haha) and WOW!!!!! The way you lasered through that whole fucking army?! And the mid-mission weapon augmentation, what the fuck was that all about??!! AND WHEN YOU DID THE SHOUT THING??? Anyway uh yeah if you ever want to team up again I’d totally love to? I know I’m dead weight and all but I promise I’m trying!! And I will try even more! Also you’re really cool, so please? I swear I’m going to be super good next time!”

Thea snorted—and then laughed. Actually laughed out loud.

It came sudden, bubbling out of her chest before she could stop it.

“Marie, you absolute disaster,” she muttered under her breath, wiping the corner of her eye with her thumb as the smile just wouldn’t leave her face.

She could practically see the girl bouncing around while typing that message.

Dead weight, though? Hardly.

Thea could clearly remember Marie bracing her rifle against the embrasure wall, firing again and again into that sea of advancing bodies. She remembered the way the other woman’s shots landed, having tracked the shots absent-mindedly while shooting at her own targets—they hadn’t been perfect shots, of course, but steady and undeniably consistent, even while under the kind of counter-fire that would have likely made most other Marines duck and pray. 

And Marie did not have precognition, no [Glimpse], nothing fancy to help her.

She had just… held. Through sheer power of will alone.

Even when she ducked low and complained about the incoming fire, she had never fully broken, going back to firing when the embrasure was even remotely clear.

There was nothing “dead weight” about that.

She accepted Marie’s request without hesitation.

The next few names on the list didn’t ring any bells. The Sovereign noted they were part of Wellis’ Squad—the half that stayed with Squad Leader Wellis at the start, instead of the ones in Wellis Two on the eastern front.

Squad Leader Wellis himself hadn’t sent anything.

‘Not that I would’ve accepted anyway… Asshole,’ she thought, a small, humorless snort slipping out.

She declined the rest of Wellis Squad in quick succession. 

No point connecting with people she knew nothing about, and didn’t particularly want to.

Then the next name appeared—one she barely recognized, but enough to pause:

Corporal Jaxon Mir Sartin (“Infall Squad”)
“I’m glad everything worked out the way it did. Seeing you step out of the smoke like that… I don’t think I’ll ever forget that sight. You’re something else, Ace. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise—especially yourself. I can imagine that being such a beast this early in your career can make it easy to lose perspective, but let me be clear: You are beyond exceptional, as a Marine. Keep going the way you’re going and you’ll do great things for all of us. I’d love to have you under my command someday—if only to hand you back off to Command right away again.”

Thea blinked. And then blinked again.

Her eyebrows had risen higher with every line—until she was pretty sure they were on the verge of leaving her forehead entirely.

She stared at the message a moment longer than she intended.

It felt… surreal.

She had spent the entire mission utterly convinced she was just barely holding things together. That she’d been improvising every second. 

That if Chester hadn’t kept her upright, or if Quent and Dan hadn’t given her all their Focus, or if Sergeant Kalt hadn’t cleared the battlefield for her, she would have been unable to do anything at all. 

That most of what she did was just reacting really fast and trying not to fall apart.

“Beyond exceptional, as a Marine.”

Her first instinct was to reject it. To write it off as someone just being polite. 

Or overly impressed because they hadn’t seen real Psykers before. Or maybe he was just saying that because he happened to catch the most dramatic moment of the mission—her walking out of the smoke, like some heroic propaganda poster come to life.

She almost dismissed it.

But then she remembered the look on the enemy front when she had hit them the first time. 

The way their push had simply stopped. 

The way every UHF gun on the line had surged forward as she deployed as an official Battlefield Ace, like a wave catching its momentum. 

The way the Stellar Republic had started reacting to her, specifically.

She remembered the silence on the comms when Kalt’s deployment order went out.

The way the entire battlefield had started shifting because of her; because of her presence.

Maybe—just maybe—it hadn’t been luck. Maybe she had done fairly well, overall.

Not perfect. Not without mistakes. Not without literally killing herself.

But still.

She let out a slow breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, the tension easing from her shoulders just a little.

“…I guess I did do some cool shit out there, huh?” She muttered under her breath, sounding half-surprised, half-embarrassed at hearing herself say it.

She accepted Corporal Sartin’s friendlink request.

The next request didn’t require a second of thought. 

Thea accepted it instantly, her thumb tapping the confirmation before she even bothered to read the attached message.

Sergeant Ryker Invictus Kalt (“Command Squad”)
“Thank you for being my first Battlefield Ace deployment, Recruit. It was an honour and a damn pleasure serving as your eyes, ears, and tactical brain. You’re a boon to the entire UHF, plain and simple, and I’m looking forward to seeing where you go from here. If this really was your first DM, I can’t imagine what you’ll be doing in a year. Or ten. I’ll always be available as somebody for you to link up with; as long as I get to deploy you again every once in a while. It was far too much fun to be a one-time thing. May the Emperor’s light continue to guide you, Thea.”

A wide, genuine grin spread across her face before she even realized it.

She hadn’t spoken to Kalt for more than… What, a handful of minutes? And yet the man had felt exceedingly familiar. 

Solid. Easy to trust. Firm but honest in all the ways that actually mattered.

‘He reminds me of the Old Man, in a way,’ she thought, a warm, strange ache rising in her chest.

She opened the last of the high-relevance requests to distract herself from the feeling—and actually froze at seeing who it was from.

Private Chester O’Neil (“Wellis Squad” – Wellis Two)
“Yeah, yeah, I know… It’s weird sending this after all the shit in the locker room and all. But look—Merit and Credits don’t lie, and you bring in a lot of both. Like a fuckload. You’re also a stupid fucking idiot for cooking yourself like that. Pissed me right off, not gonna lie. But by the damn Emperor, you’re worth dragging into the trenches if you provide that level of cashout every time. I have no aspirations to be your friend or whatever, but if you ever need a competent Squad Medic to keep you standing upright until the bitter end, I’ll be your guy. Just don’t let it become a habit, you’ll get your ass killed out there in the real world.”

A short huff of laughter slipped out of her, more surprised than anything. 

Of course that would be Chester’s angle. 

Not gratitude, not sentiment, not even some weird apology—just pure, calculated Merit-per-minute efficiency. He’d decided she wasn’t a burden after all, but the best damn investment he could possibly make. 

It was kind of hilarious, especially considering he’d been the one bleeding and her dragging him back from the edge the entire time.

‘The man really said: “Yeah you almost got me killed several times but damn, the profits though.”’

She couldn’t help the grin spreading on her face.

The irony wasn’t lost on her. 

She barely got hit. He was the one who tanked half the consequences of her mistakes. 

And yet somehow, in the end, he was the one sending her a link request, offering to be the guy who keeps her upright—though she recognized that it was likely in regards to the end of the DM, rather than before. 

No pretenses about friendship. No flowery compliments. 

Just raw practicality, frustration, and… weirdly enough—respect.

She accepted the request without any real hesitation; after all, she could deal with competent assholes way more than nice dead weights.

After that, she skimmed the rest—names she didn’t recognize, people she’d maybe seen for two seconds through smoke, or not at all. No point in pretending she knew any of them or owed them anything. 

She dismissed the remaining requests with a simple flick of her Interface.

“That concludes the friendlink review portion of the debrief. Are there any friendlinks you would like to send?” the Sovereign asked.

“No, I think I’m good,” Thea answered, already pushing herself up from the armchair.

“Understood. The debrief has been completed. You will be returned to the Digital Mission Deck momentarily. Please remain still.”

The room flickered—gray walls dissolving like mist, her body feeling weightless for a fraction of a heartbeat—

And the world blinked away around her…

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[ND] Chapter 153 - Options

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------------------- Start of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) -------------------
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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Chapter 148 - Long-Awaited Talks I has just released on RR with no major changes.

For the Fixers, this chapter is new.

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We should be back properly now!

Lil' bit of a wrap-up chapter for the recent novel-decision, but also an unexpected addition!

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I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the link to the chapter:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/12IKmWwhGuzC2jti42S7sTLrn3x_7PyW0y2MZytyVoHk/edit?usp=sharing

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Chapter 153 - Options

Being left alone in the silence of the apartment felt strangely… wrong. 

Not peaceful, not restful—just empty. The quiet pressed in from all sides, thick enough that I could almost hear my own heartbeat echoing in it.

For all the buildup, all the fear and bracing I’d done before that talk with Valeria, the actual result was something I could never have predicted. 

Not even close.

‘I guess I’ll have to see how she acts around me now,’ I thought, leaning back in the chair and staring at nothing. ‘Mother and daughter? Colleagues? Co-conspirators? What the hell are we, even?’

There wasn’t a clean label for it. Maybe there never would be.

But at least I had time—an entire day, apparently—to sit with it. A forced pause. Probably the first real downtime I’d had since waking up in that hospital bed, if I really thought about it.

She hadn’t been exaggerating about the guards either. 

One glance at the door’s monitor confirmed it: Four EtherLabs Security Officers, heavy gear, patrol pattern covering both sides of the hallway. Though, to be entirely fair, I didn’t really feel like stepping outside right about now anyway, considering everything that had happened yesterday.

So… rest and recovery sounded… surprisingly nice. 

Somewhat unreal, even.

I let out a long breath and tried to drag my brain out of the spiral it wanted to lock into. 

‘Think. Prioritize. One thing at a time.’

“Alright… first order of business: wound maintenance,” I muttered aloud, mostly to make the empty space feel less predatory.

I headed toward the bathroom. 

The spray-bandage on my neck peeled away with a faint tacky sound, and I lightly touched the skin beneath. Tender, but intact. 

The Rest Function had done its job once more—borderline perfectly.

Which meant I now needed to pretend to still be injured.

Fantastic.

If Valeria was starting to piece together my connection to Anima, that was one thing. But the System? The Rest Function? Instant full recovery overnight with no lingering scarring? 

Absolutely not.

‘She almost certainly doesn’t know about the System… Not yet, at least. Best to keep it that way as long as possible.’

I stepped into the shower and let the warm water run over me. Dried blood, smoke, someone else's spit, dust, fear—all washed down the drain in slow, rust-tinged spirals.

Then, carefully, I reapplied the spray-bandage. 

It took some awkward angles, a bit of [Contortion] and [Acrobatics] to get the coverage even, but eventually it looked right—slightly healed, still tender and fully covered in the bandage in a perfect spread. 

The kind of wound that would plausibly linger for days.

Better to put in the effort now than risk Valeria deciding to personally redo the bandage later. 

Knowing her, she’d take one look at a sloppy application and interpret it as both an insult and a failure of standards on my part. And if I was supposed to be her new daughter—whatever the hell that meant—then running around with subpar first aid was definitely not on-brand.

‘Maybe an avenue to pursue to get some first aid knowledge shards or lessons…?’

I shelved the thought for now and drifted back into the living room, the apartment feeling too quiet in a way I couldn’t quite describe.

I only really had two things I could do while being “grounded” in here: Deal with the [General Attribute Point] and deal with the [General Perk Point].

And between the two, the Skill Point was definitely the one less likely to make me cry or spiral into a life crisis, so… yeah. Easy wins first. 

I needed one of those.

I pulled up my [Attributes] Interface, watching the numbers settle into place:

[<-- Attributes -->]
Body 5: 4,700 / 5,000xp
Reflex 5: 4,700 / 5,000xp
Intellect 4: 2,100 / 4,000xp
Intuition 5: 1,900 / 5,000xp
Edge 5: 1,800 / 5,000xp
Tech 3: 1,800 / 3,000xp
Ego 5: 2,400 / 5,000xp
Anima 2: 1,200 / 2,000xp

There it was. The depressing reality check.

As much as I wanted to rocket Anima upward as fast as possible, dumping a [General Attribute Point] for just 800 XP on a Rank 2 Attribute was a straight-up waste. Same for Tech—much as it hurt to admit. I really wanted to get deeper into crafting eventually, but wanting and being able were two entirely different things.

Intellect was also off the table—the XP payout would be too small.

And Ego definitely didn’t need the help. It was basically speed-running itself at this point.

Which left: Intuition, Edge, and the physicals—Body and Reflex.

‘Yep. That tracks,’ I thought, nodding to myself like I had any idea what I was doing. ‘The Perk Point is going to suck… so let’s enjoy this small moment of clarity while it lasts.’

Truthfully, I kept circling back to the physical Attributes. 

The last twenty-four hours had made it painfully clear that raw survivability and speed mattered more than anything lofty or clever. Sure, Intuition might’ve helped in the conversation with Valeria—but that opportunity had already come and gone. And Edge was great for long-term balancing, but right now? I was getting thrown into straight-up meat grinder situations regularly enough that survival stats felt like the responsible choice.

Very rarely did I have the luxury of handling problems with charm and composure.

Everything lately had been emergency after emergency.

Knife fights and torture and bleeding out on the kitchen floor weren’t exactly situations where suaveness was the deciding factor.

If I wanted to stay alive, I needed to move faster and hit harder.

Plain and simple.

That left the physical Attributes—Reflex and Body—whispering to me like smooth-tongued devils, promising that if they’d just been higher, I could’ve stopped some of what happened yesterday.

‘Nonsense,’ I reminded myself, because I knew exactly where that line of thinking led. ‘If Valeria got tossed around like a broken doll, there’s no universe where even a Body 10 and Reflex 10 version of me could’ve stopped any of it.’

Still… they looked really damn tempting.

Right now, each of them only needed about 300xp to hit the next Rank. Three hundred. 

That was nothing. 

I could grind that out in under forty-eight hours with a little bit of elbow grease. And once the Rank-Up hit, I could put the [General Attribute Point] right into the new Level of the Skill.

Which meant: I wouldn’t just be getting Level 6.

I’d be getting the full Rank 6 experience bar, all the way up to the threshold for Level 7.

Six. Thousand. Experience.

And not the early-game baby XP either—the high-tier stuff that always felt like pulling teeth to gain.

After all, the higher your Attributes got, the harder it became to make progress. 

Actions that used to grant XP just… stopped. 

Like that time early on, after waking up in the hospital and getting dumped at home by Oliver, where simply lifting my legs onto the coffee table counted as “Body Training.” Now? I could grind through an entire workout circuit and maybe get a handful of pity-drops—if I was lucky. 

Most gains came from long-term consistency now, not single bursts.

Combat helped, sure. But relying on life-or-death brawls to level up was not exactly a sustainable training plan.

So a free 6,000 XP of high-level Attribute gains? Yeah, that was extremely difficult to ignore.

And since I’d already convinced myself on that, the actual question became:

Which one? Body or Reflex?

Body meant being harder to grab, harder to pin. Two Ranks in Body meant that when those Corpo agents tried to dogpile me, it wouldn’t have been so easy to hold me down and cut into me. I still wouldn’t have been able to win outright—but fighting the grapple would’ve been… different; easier.

But Reflex… Reflex was speed.

I knew that my speed had saved Gabriel and me yesterday. 

[Lethal Flow] coming in clutch at the just the right time, but without enough Reflex to make use of the extremely small timeframe between each kill, I would have been unable to do anything.

If I’d been any slower, if I’d hesitated by even a fraction, we’d both be corpses on the floor, riddled with bullet holes.

‘I have been leaning more speed-demon so far. But is that because it’s what I prefer… or because I never had the Body to be anything else?’

In games, I always defaulted to hybrid builds, Switch Hitters—range first, knives or melee to finish. 

Never too squishy, never too slow; strike from afar, then close in when it counted.

But this wasn’t theorycrafting. 

This was real-life consequences, bones and pain and blood and terror. 

No reloading a save. 

No “try again.”

I needed the Attribute that would keep me alive the next time a door exploded inward or an agent twice my size tried to pin me to the ground and torture me for whatever purposes they intended.

‘Think long-term later. Survive now.’

And that… ultimately sealed the deal.

Body was definitely useful—and something I knew I’d have to grind harder and harder going forward—but Reflex was what had kept me alive yesterday. Reflex was the thing that had let me move first, react first, think in motion. Reflex was how I stayed one step ahead of the people trying to kill me. And in terms of growth speed, I’d get more actual usability out of faster reaction and movement than I would out of just being harder to toss around.

So Reflex it was.

The decision settled into me with a surprising sense of relief. A small win. Something that felt correct, even if everything else around me was chaos. That tiny bit of confidence even gave me a bit of a high—right up until I pulled up the [General Perk Point] menu and saw the absolute hellscape of options I had available.

‘God fucking damnit…’

Every tree I had ever unlocked was sitting there like a buffet table from the cruelest possible universe: more than seventy Perks, each of them powerful, each of them asking me to betray the others by picking just one.

‘That’s so damn rude…’

So I dug in. Properly. I went one by one. From [Meditation]—the first Skill I had ever gotten in this world—all the way down to [CQC], the most recent addition to the list. I read descriptions. I weighed benefits. I tried to imagine how they would come into play in every possible crisis scenario.

And slowly—thankfully—a lot of them fell off the list on their own.

[Immovable Defense] from [Martial Arts], for example, was the easiest skip in the universe: Yeah, it was strong. Yeah, it would give stance-work and better grounding.

But I already had [Elemental Balance]. 

That Perk had quite literally rewritten the very way I moved.

It did everything [Immovable Defense] could do, only on a whole different philosophical axis—with the creepy muscle-control thrown in as a bonus—making the Perk almost entire obsolete, unless I specifically required the defensive stances for anything.

Which I didn’t.

On the other side of the spectrum, there were Perks like [Cooling Concoction] from [Cooking]—practical, valuable, even sellable—but completely useless for the current stage of “people are kicking down my walls and trying to kill me and my brother” life.

So I kept pruning. And pruning. And swearing a little. And then swearing a lot.

After about an hour of circling through descriptions and running mental simulations, I finally narrowed it down to three Perks—each sitting in a totally different corner of what I could be.

[Debugging] from [Programming]. And from [Acrobatics], both [Cat’s Grace] and [Air Dodge]—with the added note that [Cat’s Grace] also existed under [Athletics], giving me some tree-flexibility down the line.

[Debugging] had been my knee-jerk reaction, and honestly, I couldn’t even blame myself for it. It was absurdly strong. Always-useful. 

The kind of Perk that paid off immediately and kept paying off forever.

I had nearly taken it the moment [Programming] hit Level 3, and even now, thinking it over again with a clearer head, it still felt like the logical pick. I already had [Programming Maestro], and combining that with [Debugging] would put me two-thirds of the way toward basically being a god in anything code-related.

Not to mention that having [Debugging] would fix the very issues that [Programming Maestro] introduced in the first place. If I’d had both Perks during the all-night sprint before the Operator Meeting, I probably could have shaved a quarter of the time off of building [Venom Bite]—maybe even made the damn thing run smoother while I was at it.

‘It really would have been so much cleaner…’

But the other two Perks I’d shortlisted weren’t slouches either—they just served entirely different needs.

[Air Dodge] was one of those deceptively small-seeming abilities that would probably flip the board in any real fight. Being able to reorient mid-air didn’t mean double-jumping or anything ridiculous like that, but momentum control in midair was huge. 

Every time I pictured it, I thought of Kenzie—how she moved like gravity was more of a suggestion than a rule. 

The idea of surpassing her in agility was… honestly kind of fucking hilarious.

‘She’d throw an absolute fit,’ I thought, smirking at the mental image of her staring at me like I’d grown a second head, ready to argue with Miss K that I was definitely cheating, somehow.

Then there was [Cat’s Grace], the dark horse of the trio. I hadn’t realized the value of it until I’d actually left Delta and seen the city with my own eyes—vertical highways hanging over more highways, catwalks above walkways above drop shafts above drop shafts.

Neo Avalis wasn’t just tall. It was stacked beyond belief.

And I’d never exactly been a fan of heights. Not scared, of course. 

Just respectful.

A very sensible amount of respect for the little inconvenience called terminal velocity.

And [Cat’s Grace] didn’t just lessen fall damage either—it meant I could hit the ground wrong and still recover cleanly. 

And if there was one thing I was beginning to accept about my lifestyle lately, it was that I was very likely going to get thrown. Or shoved. Or knocked off something. 

Probably multiple times. 

Banking everything on “don’t get touched ever” was a fast-track to breaking my ankle at the worst possible moment and promptly dying like an idiot.

So it came down to a simple question:

Did I need more in-combat flexibility, or did I need out-of-combat stuff?

‘One can never have enough in-combat alternatives, really…’ I chided my own thinking, but let it slide—because it was me doing the thinking. 

I couldn’t exactly get too upset at my own choice of words. 

Madness lay that way and I had decided that today wasn’t a day for madness.

Somewhere in the middle of weighing my Perk options, something else on the Interface completely derailed me.

“What the—since when is that here?!” I blurted out, staring at the System Interface like it had personally offended me; because it had.

I had wandered into the [Active Abilities] tab—one I had never bothered to look at before. I’d always figured it would just show the usual suspects: [Appraisal], [Blademaster’s Throw], [Blademaster’s Strike]. 

The stuff I knew I had.

But there it was: A fourth entry. 

Just sitting there. Mocking me.

And the worst part? It wasn’t new. It had been there for a good while.

I actually remembered getting excited about [Martial Arts] being Rare-tagged, which meant it came with an Active Ability at some point, which for [Martial Arts], I had known that it was at Level 3. And I was Level 4 now. 

So I’d apparently had this thing sitting in my back pocket while I was busy… I don’t know, bleeding, improvising, and not dying?

‘How the fuck did I miss this…?’ I asked myself, equal parts annoyed and embarrassed. 

The System should have notified me, right? Or maybe it had, and I was just a bit overwhelmed at the time with—oh, right—offloading an illegal firearm, dodging being found out by Mr. Stirling (rest in peace), and dealing with the aftermath of the Damien situation.

So, sure. Maybe I was allowed a little oversight, here and there.

‘Madness, Sera. Remember: Not today,’ I reminded myself, pinching the bridge of my nose.

Either way—there it was:

[Flow] (Martial Arts)
Enter a state of Flow, targeted towards a single opponent you can perceive, greatly increasing your physical and mental capabilities in direct combat, but narrowing your focus to anything besides.

A double-edged sword, plain as day, but also absurdly useful for one-on-one engagements.

The description, of course, was vague in that very System way.

‘Would it kill you to give numbers?’ I thought, reading it again. ‘Or, I don’t know, an example? A hint? A friendly post-it note? Fucking something more to work with than the most vague shit of all time?’

Silence. As usual.

But that one discovery shifted the entire landscape of my Perk dilemma. 

With a strong in-combat option already sitting in my lap, it suddenly didn’t make nearly as much sense to stack even more combat-only tools on top of it. Especially not when [Debugging] was right there—shiny, perfect, and practically begging to be taken.

The thought of pairing it with [Programming Maestro] before I even hit Level 6 was… honestly kind of thrilling.

‘Not like I’m planning to throw myself into another life-or-death brawl anytime soon… I think I’ve hit my quota for near-death experiences for at least the next couple of weeks—months, if the universe feels generous for once.’

With that thought, I realized I had already made my choice the moment I saw [Flow]. The entire internal debate had just been me politely pretending I was considering my options. 

I was already rationalizing [Debugging], stacking argument after argument to justify it. 

There was no point dragging it out.

So I did what any seasoned overthinker does when they catch themselves spiraling—I cut the rope. 

I pulled up the [General Perk Point] selection and locked in the choice before I could talk myself into another hour of mental gymnastics.

[System]: Use [General Perk Point] on [Debugging] (Programming)? Y/N
[System]: You have gained the Perk [Debugging] (Programming).

“Haaa…” The sigh came from somewhere deep in my ribs, tension bleeding out of me. “That’s way better.”

With the Perk handled, the only thing left was the easy part: Prepping for the Attribute bump. 

That meant burning enough Bonus Experience to push Reflex and Body up to their thresholds and then working myself into the ground until the System chimed and handed over the Level-up rewards.

Which, realistically, meant that my “mandatory rest day” was about to turn into what could only be politely described as a personal training montage.

Alone.

In an apartment that still smelled faintly of industrial disinfectant and yesterday’s remaining… everything.

I rolled my shoulders once—neck stinging a bit where the spray-bandage sat—and looked toward the living room floor.

“Alright,” I muttered to myself. 

“Time to get to work…”

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[Wolf Lord+ | Draft] Volume 2 - Chapter 56 - Melting

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------------------- Start of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) -------------------
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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Welcome to the draft release of Volume 2 - Chapter 56 - Melting for y'all.

As always, a quick reminder that this chapter is still in the process of being workshopped by me and that this is simply the first-draft.

And also: Please do not read the chapters here on Patreon, but go for the googledoc, .pdf or .epub instead. Patreon butchers all forms of formatting and you're missing out on easier and more enjoyable reading experiences.

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Did anybody request a 5am Friday morning mega-chapter?

No...? Just me?

:(

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I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the link to the chapter:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PiPYYJA5HYBtc43CRRESx6LXj2OjxcHQoVePwSbzolE/edit?usp=sharing

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Volume 2 - Chapter 56 - Melting

“Humanity’s greatest asset is oft debated. 

“It is in our nature to consider why and how we ended up being in the position that we are in, for the debate has been raging for thousands upon thousands of years.

“A lot of philosophers across time have argued that adaptability is our greatest asset. The ability to keep rolling with the punches until we’re back on our feet or die trying.

“Some have argued that it is not adaptability, but bravery, that is our greatest asset. The ability for us to look death in the face and overcome the most basic, primal instincts of fear and terror.

“Others again claim tool usage as our greatest asset. The ability to pick up different objects, use them for entirely alien purposes when compared to other animals. A stick, no longer just a random part of the environment, but a weapon, a staff to assist in wandering, an extension of your own hands.

“Frankly, none of these are the whole truth. They are merely fanciful lies, that we tell ourselves to make us seem more than what we are. More than simply advanced animals; something more.

“But therein truly lies our greatest asset: The ability to lie.

“Not to each other, but to ourselves.

“Many animals have the capacity for deceiving each other in one form or another, but only humanity has mastered this to a degree that we are capable of lying to ourselves. To discard the very truths our eyes, ears and mind are telling us, in order to replace it with an entirely different narrative.

“The most common of all narratives we like to lie to ourselves about, is that of the “other”.

“Once upon a time, it was a truth, which makes the lie all the easier to fester in our minds. When we were nothing but tribal groups of hunters and gatherers, the “other” was an important tool in our arsenal to stave off surprise attacks, disease and similarly catastrophic outcomes. 

“But we have long left our tribal heritage behind, yet the “other” is one thing that remains, for it is so incredibly useful to lie to ourselves about.

“Despite the evidence of our eyes and ears that the person that looks like me, speaks like me and has the same fundamental buildup as me, is inherently “other”.

“It is the first thing that any military teaches, even before blind obedience: Make the enemy into the “other” so your own conscience is free of guilt.

“For we are so unbelievably capable in the deceit of our own thoughts, that we can truly make ourselves believe anything, given the right incentive. 

“The lie that the words spoken could not possibly be true.
“The lie that the very truths in front of our eyes are merely fabricated.
“The lie that there will be reinforcements on the collapsing front, despite logic dictating there can’t possibly be any.

“Many of the things often attributed to other emotions—disbelief, trust and hope—are merely consequences of this one, greatest asset in our arsenal: Self-inflicted lies.

“Knowledge of this greatest asset, in itself, does not prevent its existence either, for it is so insidious that we can even lie to ourselves about the very nature of the lies themselves. 

“That they are necessary. They have a purpose. They are not meant to harm.

“But, fundamentally, they are still simply that: Lies.

“When you call them the “other”, the Freaks, the Undead, the Cultists, the Cancer, the Fairies… You are doing nothing but lying to yourself, that they are somehow different from yourself. That they are not, inherently, the same type of human that you are.

“The knowledge of this is not meant to curb the Galactic War, but merely a reminder of the greater things at stake, that beyond everything happening across this little galaxy of ours, the universe is a large place.

“Yet despite knowing all of this, there is one fundamental truth to be found as well: The War needs to continue until the end; the machine needs to keep churning; the “other” needs to die.

“For all the truths inherent, that is and will always remain simply part of our greatest asset: The Lie.”

—

[Grayson Holund Sairfax – "Humanity’s Greatest Asset", PFC712]

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=====

PoV: Corporal Malicia Cintera Plasst

Eyeing the state of her squad as she slid yet another magazine into her battered rifle, Malicia felt a sharp pulse of regret.

‘If only I’d bartered for a Defensive Heavy, we wouldn’t be in this Emperor-damned mess,’ she thought, staring helplessly at the two Marines bleeding out on the trench floor. 

Pak and Rallis were only clinging to life because of the one good decision she had made during squad formation.

Indra Quelch.

A Squad Medic so competent it bordered on unnerving—steady hands, sharp eyes, and absolutely zero hesitation when it came to making decisions on how to fix her Marines up. 

Malicia had snagged Indra the moment she stepped into the locker area at the start of the Digital Mission, her gut instinct screaming that she’d found the strongest medic in the entire lineup. 

She’d been right.

Indra was the only reason the squad wasn’t already down to just a skeleton crew.

But no one—no one—could have predicted this DM would be one of the dreaded upscaled variants.

‘If it had been literally any other type of mission getting upscaled, we’d be fine, Emperor damn it…!’

Her plan had been solid. 

A heavy-hitting squad built around raw force: Multiple Offensive Heavies—one of them even a Specialized Assault type!—a high-tier Squad Medic, and herself acting as spotter and leader. 

It had worked flawlessly for dozens of past DMs, netting her multiple MVP Squad wins with lineups exactly like this.

But here and now? That same composition was the reason everything had gone straight to the Void the second the Hold-The-Line parameters appeared.

‘Upscaled Hold-The-Line against the Stellar Republic is a nightmare no matter what squad you run,’ she thought grimly, edging closer to the firing slit to gauge how heavy the incoming return fire was before daring to peek.

The Stellar Republic troops had locked onto their position long ago. 

The moment they’d counter-fired on the enemy Offensive Heavy teams—right after that unholy laser-gatling incident and Platoon Leader Kalt’s all-fire order—they’d painted a massive target on themselves.

‘And without a Defensive Heavy, we can’t hold any alcove for long. Once the plating outside the embrasure gets chewed through, we move again or we die…’

The only sliver of hope she had left was Platoon Leader Kalt’s recent transmission: A Battlefield Ace was soon being deployed.

‘Where in the Emperor’s name did he even find one? It’s definitely not the pretty boy all the Squad Leaders were swooning over—he’s Support-type, totally wrong for the role of a Battlefield Ace for this scenario… So one of the other three MVMs then... But how? Did they just walk up after realizing the front was collapsing? Why now, after we already lost the first line? Why not earlier…?’

There were too many questions, and absolutely no time to think about any of them. 

The Stellar Republic was pushing their line harder by the second.

A quick glance through the slit confirmed the worsening situation—rolling smoke screens were creeping across no-man’s-land, thicker and thicker, drowning the battlefield in black-gray to combat the red glow of the flares lighting up the night sky. 

A sure sign the UHF casualty rate had spiked high enough for the Republic to start prepping for yet another attempt at a close-quarters push.

“Sweepers, now!” Malicia snapped into squad comms. 

The last two standing Marines—Felice and Naro—instantly ducked down behind the embrasures, swapping their rifles for the Sweepers stored at their feet.

The Sweepers were UHF-issued, the same way they would be on real battlefields—not flashy or powerful weapons, but essential ones. 

Designed to blast out concentrated bursts of force and compressed air, they cleared smoke, gas, particulates, chemical aerosols—anything meant to blind or suffocate the defenders. 

Every second or third squad in a platoon got assigned Sweepers at random, and today, Malicia’s squad had been one of the “lucky” ones.

That meant it was their responsibility to keep their section of the trenchline clear. If they failed, the squads to either side of them would lose line-of-sight and the whole line would start collapsing inwards. 

They had been doing this since the opening minutes of the battle, keeping the air clear every time the Stellar Republic tried to flood the trenches with smoke.

The pattern was always the same: The Republic threw smoke only when they were probing for a close-quarters push. 

Even with their Void-rotten Duplication Trait, their soldiers still had to stop firing to pull the canisters and throw them—or shoot them from an underbarrel launcher—and wasting too many for no gain was pointless. 

But as casualties mounted and UHF sweepers went down, the enemy kept trying again and again—waiting for the moment when there simply weren’t enough Sweepers capable of being wielded to hold back the wave.

‘And that moment’s coming fast, Kalt…’ Malicia thought, jaw tight. ‘We need your Battlefield Ace to do something big—and soon. We’re drowning out here.’

She risked a glance over the embrasure and fired semi-blindly down-range in their general direction. 

The Stellar Republic forces were still two-hundred meters out—too far to see their eyes through their visors but definitely close enough to feel the mounting pressure.

Two hundred meters wasn’t safety. It was practically nothing. 

At their enhanced speeds, that was seconds at best. Practically fall-back distance already. 

Standard UHF trench setups spaced their main lines five hundred meters apart, with fallback lines only one-fifty to one-twenty-five meters out.

Malicia kept low, peering briefly through her magnified optic as her rifle barked in sharp, controlled bursts, bullets cutting into the advancing tide.

The Sweepers started firing beside her, sending concussive waves rumbling through the alcove. The blasts rattled her ribs, the shock shivering through her bones in those all-too-familiar pulses as Felice and Naro swept the smoke and canisters away from their immediate surroundings.

Almost immediately, as expected, the Stellar Republic’s return fire intensified, a brutal surge of focused shots aimed straight at the sweepers. 

They always tried to kill the Sweeper teams first and foremost. 

Malicia hated smart opponents like that. 

It was downright unfair that the enemy got to use their brains too.

After all, basic trench doctrine was simple: If the smoke held, the trench would fall.

So Malicia focused her fire on the densest clusters of enemy shots, trying to draw heat away from Felice and Nato. But alone, with only her rifle to work with and no Defensive Heavy to additionally bolster the line, her suppressive fire barely made a dent.

Her gun gave that familiar, hollow click very quickly—yet another magazine running dry. 

She ducked immediately, slamming her back against the inner wall of the alcove.

“Break!” she snapped into squad comms.

Felice and Nato dropped at once, clearing the embrasures and making their alcove appear empty from the enemy’s vantage.

This was the rhythm of Sweeper squads—the push and pull of attention, taking the enemy’s focus for a heartbeat, then vanishing before the return fire erased you. 

Over and over. 

Until you couldn’t anymore.

Malicia watched as Felice placed both armored gauntlets against the packed dirt of the embrasure wall. 

A faint ripple pulsed out from her hands, spreading through the earth like a slow breath.

One of the few pleasant surprises from squad assignment: Felice wasn’t just an Offensive Heavy. She had a Combat Engineering Specialization. 

Her build wasn’t designed just to break things—it was also designed to create and hold them together as well.

The Ability she was using now wasn’t flashy, but Malicia had rapidly learned to appreciate it. 

Some kind of analytical reinforcement reading—the kind that told you exactly how close your cover was to collapsing. Felice had done it back in the first trenchline too, saving Malicia from having to eyeball structural failure on her own.

“About thirty percent left,” Felice reported. She set the Sweeper aside and scooped her heavy machine gun back into her arms with practiced ease. “Two more, maybe three. But I’d recommend we move after the next one. If they land anything explosive, we’re done for.”

Malicia gave a wordless click of acknowledgment over comms.

‘One more round, then we shift alcoves. They’ve already shown they’ll happily throw explosives the second they think they’ve pinned down an annoying part of our trenchline, like with that laser-gatling…’

The fire from the Stellar Republic’s lines tapered off over the next minute or so, shots thinning until only scattered bursts cracked across the no-man’s-land. 

Malicia and her squad stayed low, catching their breath, swapping out magazines, and steadying their hands for whatever came next. 

The brief quiet felt thin—like stretched wire ready to snap.

She leaned back toward the firing slit after a minute, just enough to get a sense of the battlefield and decide whether they needed to sweep again—

—when the Priority Command Channel crackled to life for the third time this mission.

Her heart skipped a beat at the sound.

“This is a priority notice for all Marines,” she heard the Platoon Leader say, his deep-set voice ringing in every Marine’s ear across the entire battlefield. “Squad designation Alpha has now been deployed to the battlefield. To all of you: Kill the Freaks with everything you got. That is all.”

When the comms cut, the familiar surge hit her—Sergeant Kalt’s platoon-wide Ability flooding the alcove like a shot of ice and fire. 

The energy tightened her muscles, focus sharpening to a blade as her Attributes soared.

Her eyes snapped to Felice and Nato; both were frozen for a heartbeat just like she was, faces behind their visors hardening at the expected but somehow still unexpected words. 

Her eyes went to Indra.

Indra’s hands had paused over Pak’s wound for a moment, then she reached instead for the nearest rifle, sliding a fresh magazine home with a quiet, practiced click as she stepped up beside Malicia.

There was no uncertainty in any UHF Marine’s mind now. 

The meaning of the announcement was simple and absolute: All hands on deck. 

A Battlefield Ace would need cover to do their work, and cover was something you bought with bullets, sweat, and, if it came to it, blood and bodies.

“Let’s fucking kill them all!” Malicia barked into squad comms, the adrenaline from the Ace deployment announcement and Kalt’s buff turning the words into a physical thing in her chest.

“For the UHF!” Felice answered, bracing her heavy machine gun on the embrasure and opening up, hot bullet streaks carving into the cold night.

“For the Emperor!” Nato cried, shoulder slamming the grenade launcher as it spat a chain of explosions into the advancing mass, shredding the midline of the Republic’s front-most push.

Indra said nothing—just braced her rifle and fired, each shot precise and unhesitating, her motions calm in a way that somehow made the chaos feel even louder. 

Their combined fire tore into the advancing tide, and Malicia saw the front of the Stellar Republic’s push buckle almost instantly under the sudden, utterly vicious surge of UHF fire.

Pride swelled hot in her chest.

The entire trenchline had come alive—guns roaring, grenade launchers thudding, the last remaining fortified machine gun nests cycling back into full-auto fire, every Marine who could hold a weapon pouring everything they had into the open field. 

No one paced their shots. No one cared about saving ammunition for later. 

There was no later in moments like this.

Such was the doctrine when a Battlefield Ace entered the field.

You gave them the world on a platter of suppressive fire—forced the enemy to pick between shooting back or ducking for cover, buying the Ace seconds of freedom—and dared the Stellar Republic to turn their backs toward the one person they couldn’t afford to ignore.

And then, as if in answer to all those bullets and shouted prayers, the night ahead of them burst into neon-crimson.

A flood of laser-fire lanced out from the eastern-most section of the trenchline—not scattered, not sporadic, but a sweeping, continuous torrent, like someone had drawn a burning line across the battlefield with a ruler. 

For a breathless heartbeat, it looked like a single solid beam, carving into the enemy’s ranks. 

Then the glow vanished, plunging everything back into the familiar, flare-illuminated night that now looked downright dark by comparison.

Malicia’s eyes widened—delight and cold, unadulterated terror threading through her chest all at once—as she watched more than half a Platoon’s worth of Stellar Republic Soldiers drop where they stood. The entire eastern front of the Republic’s push simply collapsed, bodies sagging like wheat being cut down in a field.

Two heavier beams followed—a pair of sharp, cannon-like bursts—slamming directly into two Defensive Heavies who had begun to shift their shields to cover the breach. 

Their armour didn’t even have time to blacken. 

They were just gone; their upper bodies completely vaporized by the laser cannon.

‘So the laser-gatling is the Battlefield Ace and they got themselves a laser cannon Offensive Heavy to boot…’ Malicia realized, lips curling into a sharp, humorless grin. ‘No wonder they went quiet after the rocket barrage. They must’ve sprinted straight to Kalt for support so they wouldn’t almost get turned into paste again, the next time they fired.’

She slammed in a fresh magazine and rose back up to the embrasure, firing into the momentarily stalled enemy advance—the first stall she’d seen in what felt like hours.

‘We can win this…! If the Ace keeps going—’

Her thought was cut off as neon-crimson washed across the battlefield again—another harvest, another scythe stroke. Soldiers dropped in swaths once more, another section of the Stellar Republic’s push simply crumpling into nothingness.

A hungry grin tore across her face.

‘That’s fucking insane… I’ve never actually seen a Battlefield Ace before—but… I get it now. I get all of it. The doctrine now makes perfect sense. Emperor above, I will never doubt the damn Doctrine again, I swear…’

Two more, smaller sweeps followed before the Stellar Republic’s Soldiers finally managed to hunker down and throw up overlapping shields and fortified cover, reinforcing their eastern flank to stem the bleeding.

Just in time for the command channel to click back on—breaking the long, heavy silence that had followed Kalt’s earlier announcement on the priority command channel. 

A young woman’s voice came through and Malicia couldn’t stop the grin that spread across her face at the words she heard. The Stellar Republic’s frantic attempt to reinforce the eastern flank had just been rendered utterly pointless—the UHF would win this.

“Alpha, moving.”

—

The sound of her own heavy breathing was the only thing Thea could hear as she dropped another spent capacitor magazine to the floor, the almost-empty casing clattering against the growing pile at her feet.

She reached into the ammo pouch again, slotting in a fresh capacitor and coolant canister with practiced movements, then lifted the Gram back to her shoulder and aimed out toward the front.

The night had only grown darker. 

Flares were fewer now, rising slower and burning shorter, as fewer hands remained to launch them. Every passing minute meant more dead on both sides.

This was the fifth alcove Thea and what remained of Alpha had cycled through. 

They had lost almost half the squad in the last hour—their sole Offensive Heavy, one of the two Defensive ones, and one of their Medics—gone to the constant pressure of fire, rockets, and attrition.

Their path had taken them from the far eastern flank, then two alcoves toward center, then out of the trenches entirely for a single push to draw fire away from the collapsing trench line. 

It had worked—but the cost had been steep.

Hinder, the Medium-type Offensive Heavy, cut down outside the trenches. 

Quent, the Medic, taken seconds later trying to drag him back. 

And Lantr—the second Defensive Heavy—killed during their stop in W12 when the Stellar Republic finally got a clean read on their position and buried the entire alcove in rockets.

If Lantr hadn’t held the front to the very last second before the final round of blasts brought down the entire alcove on their heads, there wouldn’t have been an Alpha left to save.

Ruri—the final Defensive Heavy—was killed by a stray shot that perfectly managed to hit her in just the perfectly wrong part of the armour. 

A freak accident, one-in-a-billion shot, just minutes ago.

Now it was just Thea, Chester and Dan, the only remaining Medic besides Chester. 

Dan had told her only minutes ago that he was nearly dry on Focus.

Thea had pushed every drop as far as it could go. 

She knew she’d wasted time earlier—testing weapons, pacing herself, treating the DM like it was just another practice run. If she’d realized sooner what an upscaled Hold-the-Line against the Stellar Republic truly meant, she would’ve saved the testing for another mission.

But hindsight wasn’t worth anything right now. 

Somehow, against the impossible odds, her work as a Battlefield Ace had stopped the Stellar Republic’s advance. Not moved them back—just stopped. And the UHF’s second trench line was held together by threads thinner than the pockets of smoke cover hanging in the air.

If she stopped pushing, even for a minute, the entire line would collapse.

The only thing keeping the Stellar Republic at bay now was her beyond-hoarse voice, her sore trigger finger, and the burning strain inside her head of repeatedly tearing open the future with [Glimpse].

Her nanobots swarmed out again—far fewer now, the swarm looking thin and ragged after the catastrophe at W12—to amplify what little strength was left in her voice. She drew in a breath that felt like it scraped against the inside of her throat.

“[GLIMPSE]!”

The world washed into monochrome. 

The now-familiar pressure slammed into her mind as she forced every angle, every target, every movement into memory. 

Shot placements. Armor seams. Timing. Positions of cover. Return fire vectors. 

Everything.

Then the vision shattered, as always, and reality rushed back.

She fired exactly where she remembered—just as she had seen herself do—cutting into the Stellar Republic’s ranks once more, another jagged tear in their endless tide of bodies. A few moments of work, a dozen kills, maybe more. 

It didn’t matter. 

It never felt like enough.

Automatically, she flicked open her [Resources] Interface.

[Resources]
Focus: 95 / 225

Enough for a few more uses. Barely.

She pushed herself to the left side of the alcove as counterfire started hammering into their position again—louder this time, closer, sharper. 

Her legs wobbled as she moved. 

She hadn’t noticed when they stopped responding properly. 

It was like moving through water that thickened by the second.

‘My legs are starting to give, huh…?’ The thought came slow and syrup-thick, dragged out of a mind running on fumes, not really pulling any consequences with it.

She leaned her weight against the wall to stay upright—only to immediately feel the familiar hand plant itself firmly on her back for the [Focus Link]

Before she could even think to activate another [Glimpse], however, she was abruptly grabbed and spun—hard.

Chester’s face filled her vision, the medic looking exhausted and thoroughly concerned. 

His hands were moving, his mouth was open—he was saying something—but her ears just hummed. The world was muffled, like someone had stuffed cotton into her entire head.

‘What is he saying…?’

Her first instinct was to check her helmet. Not cracked. 

Comms were still active. No damage warnings.

And yet… there was only silence.

She tried to pull away—there were still Duplicators to kill, there were still shots to align—but Chester’s grip tightened, surprising in its strength. His eyes hardened. 

The look said enough: Stop.

Remembering Kara’s lessons—don’t fight your medic—Thea stopped resisting and let him push her down into a seated position against the left wall, just outside the firing line.

The world tilted slightly when she settled. 

Her arms felt weightless and heavy at the same time.

Her helmet came off with a sharp click just moments later—the Medic override forcing the lock open—cool air hitting her sweat-drenched skin. Chester’s hands moved from her skull to her jaw, to the back of her neck, to her temple—checking for… something. 

Something obvious. Something wrong.

His glove came off without her even noticing. Cold skin touched her forehead—

—and he jerked back instantly, eyes going wide, face draining of all color.

“Thea! What the fuck?!”

She heard him scream—but the sound felt distant, warped, like it came from behind a wall.

She blinked up at him, slow, confused.

Everything hurt. Everything was loud. And yet she couldn’t hear anything at all.

She felt something drip down her chin and tried to look down to see what it was—only to realize, after several long moments of confusion, that she couldn’t actually look at her own chin.

Eyes simply didn’t work that way.

She lifted an arm to touch her nose, but Chester immediately pushed her hands back down, firm and unyielding. Dan dropped to a knee beside them, several injectors already in hand.

‘What are those for…? Is Chester hurt…?’

Her gaze moved over him, checking for wounds.

Aside from bruises, cuts, and the layer of dust and grime covering him, he seemed fine. No bleeding. No burns.

So why—

She didn’t know when it happened, but there was suddenly an injector in her neck.

Chester and Dan were arguing—fast, clipped words—while Chester tore into his pack and Dan swapped injectors again, replacing the one he’d just emptied.

‘Wait… am I hurt?’

The realization came slowly, seeping in like cold water beneath a door.

She tried again to look down at herself, but her eyes wouldn’t leave the center of her vision.

Her own body felt… distant. Wrong. Blurred at the edges.

Then, as more injectors stabbed into her skin and the argument beside her escalated, sound finally began to sharpen again, cutting back through the fog.

“—she’s going to die if we don’t cool her down somehow!” Chester’s voice, sharp and frantic, finally cut through the haze.

“Can we crack a coolant mag and use that?” Dan asked, gesturing toward the magazine pack at her waist.

“Not unless you want to kill her,” Chester snapped. “That’ll drop the temperature too fast, if it doesn’t just blow up entirely. Emperor—dammit, I knew I should’ve brought the other kit!”

He swore again, low and vicious, then leaned close—practically nose-to-nose with her—checking her pupils.

He only flinched once. Barely.

“Thea,” he said, voice steadying into something controlled. “Can you hear me?”

She nodded. Slowly. Her head felt as heavy as her entire body combined.

He exhaled in relief—only for his expression to harden again.

“You’re killing yourself, Thea. You’re not Overdrawing—thank the Emperor for that—but you’re overheating. Your brain is literally cooking. It’s already been damaged—we managed to repair some of it with regeneration injectors—but if we don’t cool you down, you’ll do it again in mere minutes. Do you understand?”

She nodded again—slow, heavy—her mouth refusing to shape even a single word.

“We’re working on it, alright? Just stay with us,” Chester said, tone gentler now, though the strain behind it was obvious.

He didn’t wait for her response. 

He turned immediately back to Dan, their voices dropping to low, urgent murmurs as they began rifling through packs, arguing quietly over whatever few options they had left. Neither of them had brought anything against heat, as the mission hadn’t seemed like one where it would be necessary, Thea learned from overhearing their discussion.

Her thoughts dragged, thick and heavy, like someone had poured tar through the inside of her skull. She tried to think—really tried—but every time she caught a thread of an idea, it slipped, broke, or simply vanished into blank nothing.

She stared at Chester’s hands, moving fast. Dan’s mouth, moving faster. Their voices were muffled, like she was listening from underwater. 

Sometimes she forgot what she was trying to remember halfway through remembering it. 

Sometimes she forgot she was even thinking. 

Her head tipped forward, then back.

‘…why… why is this happening…’ 

The thought flickered, dim and fading.

Then Chester’s voice—echoing—replayed in her head, ‘You’re cooking yourself. Your brain is overheating.’

‘Overheating, right.’ 

She needed to cool down. Cool down.

Cool down.

Her mind stalled again. Blank and silent. 

Then, slowly—like someone restarting an ancient machine—her thoughts lurched back into place.

Cool down.

But the coolant mags were a no. Chester had said no. No coolant.

No… something.

She couldn’t remember the details—but "no" stuck.

So… something else. Something she could do.

Blankness again.

Then a voice—smug, sly, familiar—curled through the fog of her skull.

“That frost crawling beneath our skin, that chill radiating outward when you strain yourself? That isn’t mine, darling. That’s yours.”

Thea blinked. 

Slow and hard, as she tried her best to hold onto the thought that was trying to form.

‘Ice.’

Her mind latched onto the word. Held it. Didn’t let go.

She was an Ice-based Psyker.

Obviously.

There had never been a doubt. Everyone knew that. She knew that.

She was overheating—so she just needed to use her powers to cool herself down.

The solution was perfect. 

Beautiful. Obvious. Simple.

She reached inwards, searching for the cold she had always known was there.

She was Ice.
Of course she was Ice.
She had always been Ice.

How could she possibly forget? 

She had never looked for the cold before—she didn’t have to. 

She knew where it was by instinct alone.

She reached inward, toward that quiet, frost-tinged place behind her Gate, and let a sliver of it bleed through. A thin puff of condensation escaped her lips, barely visible in the dim pulsing reds of flare-light outside.

‘Just cool myself down,’ she thought, sluggish but intent, letting more of the cold seep in and pushing it toward her skull.

Dan’s and Chester’s voices started to sharpen, like someone was slowly tuning a radio into the right frequency. Her thoughts, thick and slow moments ago, began to thread together again—clearer and faster by second.

‘Wait… What am I doing?’

Sudden clarity snapped back in like a rubber band.

‘My Gate is acting… weird. What is this cold? What the fuck am I doing?!’

She shut the flow off immediately, muscles trembling as the last wave of cold crawled through her. The memory of the fog, the confusion, the blank spaces, pressed into her mind in delayed realization.

‘I overheated… so I cooled myself down? I can do that? Since fucking when?’

Confusion was definitely the dominant force in her skull—but also the understanding that sitting here like a lump in the middle of an active battlefield was a very bad idea.

“Hey. Uh—guys?” she croaked out. Her voice was rough, sandpapered raw from the screaming. But loud enough.

Both Dan and Chester jerked their heads toward her like startled animals.

“Thea?!” Chester tore toward her, pressing a bare hand to her forehead—only to recoil slightly. “What the—you’re freezing. Why the fuck are you freezing? What happened?”

He shot a questioning look at Dan, who quickly shook his head—no, he wasn’t responsible for any of this.

“I… figured it out, I think,” Thea said slowly, lifting her hand to her face. When she pulled it away, her palm was smeared with translucent, half-frozen snot. “I cooled myself down.”

She blinked at her hand. “Guess I really did cook myself, huh.”

Chester and Dan stared at her like she had just clawed her way out of her own grave.

“Thea—I— what?” Chester stammered, words failing him entirely.

Dan, somehow managing to keep it together better, swallowed hard and explained, “Thea, you were dying. Your core temp was pushing above forty-five degrees. That’s not just ‘this is gonna hurt’ territory—that’s brain-death territory. Actual neural death. We kept you alive with regen injectors, but without cooling you would’ve just… melted yourself again.”

“Oof.” Thea grimaced. “That does sound pretty bad. Any idea what caused it? Did I get hit by something? I can’t really remember the last… hour, maybe?”

“That’s because your brain cells died, Thea,” Chester answered, voice clipped and evidently controlled. “Short-term memory is nothing but tissue. Tissue you literally burned. The regenerators will repair most of it now that your temp’s back down—but that time is gone. You’re not getting it back.”

He exhaled, jaw working as he held back frustration and worry.

“As for why it happened… if I had to guess?” Dan added quietly. “You’ve been burning through Focus at a rate I’ve never even thought possible before. I doubt any normal human brain is designed to handle that. Even without Overdrawing, whatever you’re doing with your Psychic Power… it’s not exactly built for sustained use at that level.”

‘Well, well, well. If it isn’t the consequences of my own actions…’

Thea nodded slowly, her thoughts piecing themselves back together one sluggish click at a time.

She had been going way too hard.

Back-to-back, heavy [Glimpse] uses, forcing her brain to hold and process far more than any normal person ever could—over and over—no breaks, no pacing.

‘Yeah… that would probably put some strain on the brain, huh?’

She chuckled at the involuntary rhyme as she tried to push herself up, but her knees gave out instantly. Dan and Chester lunged to catch her before she hit the floor.

“You need calories,” Dan said, already digging through his pack. “Your brain burned fuel to get that hot, that fast. If we don’t get something into you, you’re going to face-plant and never wake up.”

He shoved a dense food bar into her hand. “Eat. All of this. I’ve got more.”

Thea didn’t argue. She knew better than to ignore the orders of a Medic, certain scalpel-shaped bones flashing before her inner-eye. 

She tore the wrapper open with her teeth and started chewing, the bland block of compressed nutrients suddenly tasting like the best thing she had ever eaten.

“How long was I out?” she asked between bites. “How’s it looking out there?”

Chester and Dan shared a look. Chester sighed and moved to the firing slit, taking a cautious peek.

“Stellar Republic’s still dug in,” he reported. “Waiting for us to pop out again. Our side’s nearly spent. Not much fire coming from the UHF lines. I’d call it… stalled. Stalemate, for now.”

Thea nodded, already ripping open another food bar and devouring it just as fast as the first.

‘Yeah… definitely the brain screaming for calories… These things aren’t supposed to taste like condensed, delicious pancakes, I’m fairly sure.’

“How’s your Focus?” she asked.

The two of them froze for a moment, meeting each other’s eyes, before replying.

Dan was first. “Sixty-seven.”

Chester exhaled, leaning back against the wall. “Twenty-one. I’m basically done.”

“So we’ve got a few uses left to try and hammer this home,” Thea said with a tired smile, already halfway through her second bar.

Chester’s reaction was immediate. He stared at her like she had just committed a war crime.

“You can’t be fucking serious. You just melted your own brain, Thea. And your first thought is ‘let’s do it again’? Really?”

Dan looked like he agreed, but stayed quiet.

Thea let out a slow breath and looked directly at both of them.

“What’s the alternative?” she asked. “We stop fighting and die? The overheating’s just a physical effect, right? Potentially painful, sure. Could knock me out. Could kill me for this run. But it doesn’t carry into real life. No DDS bleed-through. No long-term damage outside the DM. Correct?”

Dan and Chester hesitated—but nodded.

“Then I burn myself down to the last ember,” Thea said plainly. “I’m the designated Battlefield Ace. Kalt bet everything on me. You two did too. So did Ruri. And Lantr. And Quent. And Hinder… If I stop now, then all of that was pointless. Why would I drop the run just because it’s hard now? This—” she gestured vaguely toward the battlefield, the trench, the distinct screams and gunfire—“this is exactly the moment where you push until you have nothing left to push with. Otherwise? You stay mid-rank forever.”

She shoved another bite of food into her mouth, talking as she chewed.

“It’d be more shameful to stop now.”

She tore open another bar and devoured it as fast as her jaw would move, while Dan and Chester stayed quiet, both of them weighing her words in their own exhausted way.

Mid-chew, she reached for her Gram—the only one left. 

The Gauss and Ballistic Grams were long gone somewhere along the line, abandoned with the bodies and dust and chaos of earlier trenches.

Calling the rifle “worn” felt like understatement at this point.

The barrel was scorched nearly black, the trigger gritty with caked dust, and the whole frame was tinted a dull gray-brown from smoke, dirt, and whatever else had blown across them during the march of alcoves.

But when she checked it—she knew.

It still worked.

The barrel’s distortions hadn’t affected the focusing rails. The capacitors were still making clean contact. The cooling reservoir was still intact. The housing was ugly, but functional.

‘Truly a marvelous weapon,’ she thought, finishing the last of the bar, crumbs clinging to her gloves.

A heavy, shared sigh came from Chester and Dan.

“You’re right,” Chester admitted, rubbing a hand down his face. “As much as I hate that.”

Dan nodded once, jaw tight. “I can’t approve of it. It goes against everything I’m supposed to do as a Medic. But I will [Focus Link] and give you what I have left—as long as you swear not to Overdraw. Burn yourself down to embers if you must, but do not go empty.”

Thea nodded instantly. “Did that once. Barely lived. I’m not making that mistake twice. You have my word.”

A moment later, she felt the familiar pull—Focus threading from Dan into her. Then Chester’s Focus came—what little he had—dripping into her like the last drops from a faucet.

Dan extended a hand.

“Then… It has been an honor, Thea. With no Focus left, I can’t help you here. I’ll move to other alcoves. Maybe I can keep someone else standing a little longer.”

Thea almost denied him saying that he was of no use here—almost—but the words caught before leaving her mouth.

‘He doesn’t want to be nearby when I effectively run myself into the ground, does he?’ She thought. ‘It’s not really about helping other Marines, though I’m sure that’s part of it. He just doesn’t want to have to physically stop me, once he realises I’m in danger…’ 

A small smile tugged at her lips. 

‘That’s such a Karania-thought,’ she couldn’t help but think. Her best friend’s penchant to keep everyone alive as much as possible, to fight the literal concept of death itself, as she had so brazenly declared during the Awards Ceremony… It was a very Karania-thing to do.

“Thank you, Medic Dan,” she said, taking his hand. He helped her to her feet—steady, gentle. “Truly. And… yeah. I know someone you’d get along well with. You remind me of her.”

“If our paths cross again, I’d be happy to squad up,” he said.

“Likewise. Hopefully under better circumstances,” she replied with a smirk as he handed her two more food bars. “Each of these is about three thousand calories. You’ve already eaten four, so maybe slow down a bit? But if you’re pushing even harder… What do I know? Go and fuck them up good, yeah?”

Thea nodded and tore one open, eating it right away. She’d definitely need the calories. 

She watched Dan slip back into the tunnel toward the eastern front, where most of the UHF lines still held.

Her eyes met Chester’s; he flinched, then nodded gravely. “I’ll stay with you. Can’t have you drop dead from a stray bullet before your embers run out, right?”

She chuckled. “I appreciate it, Chester. You’re a good Marine—just a shit person, but I can deal with that.”

He blinked, taken aback as if she’d slapped him.

“I hope you’re getting your desired points from all this, otherwise that whole locker-room spiel was for nothing,” she added with a wink.

For a beat, confusion crossed his face, then understanding widened his eyes. “You… you knew?!”

“Like I said—competence covers a lot of sins. You’re competent, Chester. More decent than I thought. You could be an Ace if you put yourself into the right things—maybe not a Battlefield Ace, got the wrong mindset for that, but an Ace, all the same.”

She shouldered her Gram, stuffing the last of the bar into her mouth, and started toward the firing slit. “Let’s burn the flames, stoke the embers, and see what comes out of the ashes, shall we?”

Chester shook himself out of surprise and chuckled. “A Cyan rookie beating my ass—fair. I deserve that. Sure. Let’s fuck them up, Thea. And thanks. You kept your promise; kept me alive.”

“Likewise,” she said, laughing.

She peered through the scope, sweeping the mass of soldiers hunkered behind foam walls, shields, and smoke pockets the Sweepers couldn’t clear. 

She paused, remembered she wasn’t wearing her helmet, so she quickly went and got it, snapped it on, and cranked the sound isolation up. 

Her Nano-Bot Swarm spread out around the alcove again, humming.

“Alright. Let’s end this.”

She drew a deep breath and let the power wash over her. 

“[GLIMPSE]!”

—

PoV: Private Chester O’Neil

By the time the Recruit—Thea—burned through the last scraps of her Focus, she wasn’t really there anymore.

She had stopped responding to him long ago—no answers to his questions, no acknowledgment of his voice. 

Her mind was probably too damaged to understand words at all by that point. 

But somehow, the action of firing—feathering that trigger in that brutally precise rapid-fire rhythm—was still ingrained, deeper than speech, deeper than conscious thought. 

Even when she couldn’t stand and he had to physically hold her upright, her arms still moved, her aim still snapped perfectly from target to target.

His [Eyes of a Medic] told him the truth long before she finally collapsed:

She was done.

Her Focus was nearly zero.
Her brain was far, far past its limit.
Her body was a heartbeat away from shutting down entirely.

But she had kept her promise.

She stopped using [Glimpse] on her own. 

No intervention had been needed. No last-minute struggle to knock her out, before she messed up something that the Digital Mission couldn’t simply fix by itself.

And that was the only reason he had stayed.

Letting someone burn themselves out in a Digital Mission was one thing.

But leaving a fledgling Psyker—especially a Cyan—with something to prove, alone and half-brain-dead?

That was how you created ghosts that followed you long after the sim ended.

So he stayed.

He held her up while she killed herself—one Power at a time, one spike of heat into her melting brain at a time, one last perfect sweep of laser-fire cutting down Duplicators like wheat at a time—Until now.

She’d completely collapsed.

He removed her helmet, thinking—hoping—there might be something he could still do.

But when he saw her face, he froze.

“Stupid fucking Cyan Recruits…” he muttered, the bitterness sharp in his throat. “Always gotta prove something, huh?”

She was smiling.

She had cooked her own brain alive, forced every last ember of herself into the fight—and she was smiling when it had all come to an end.

He wiped the drool and hot snot from her face with the cleanest part of his uniform he could find, then gently placed her helmet back on and gently sat her against the trench wall.

His Interface glowed in the corner of his vision:

[Mission Complete: 4:26:16]

“It’s only been two and a half hours?” he breathed out, laughing once—sharp and tired. 

“That’s so fucked. Upscaled missions are terrifying.”

He stood, picked up his gun, and walked toward the embrasure.

‘It’s just like she said, isn’t it? There’s not anything left to do except keep firing.’

He peeked over the slit—aiming—

Then froze.

“What…?”

There were enemies out there—but they weren’t advancing.

They were pulling back.

Chester keyed into the command channel, voice steady out of habit rather than emotion.

“Alpha here at W23. Enemy forces in sight are retreating. Confirm?”

Several replies came back, though slower than they should have—most Squad Leaders and their seconds were likely already dead.

“W4 here, affirmative. Enemy is retreating.”

“E15 here, affirmative. Same visual confirmed.”

“E21 here, affirmative. The Freaks are falling back.”

Chester let out a long breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

He waited for the Platoon Leader to speak—only to remember that Sergeant Kalt had died pushing back one of the heavy assaults earlier. Around half an hour ago, by now.

He had no idea who was even in charge now.

“Command here,” a young woman’s voice finally crackled through, answering the question he hadn’t asked aloud. “I can confirm enemy retreat… I… I just got the all-clear. The mission is considered… Complete? The enemy has taken too many casualties to continue the offensive… We… We won…?”

Silence followed.

Nobody wanted to believe it. 

Nobody could.

But the sight was right there—Stellar Republic soldiers pulling back, some firing half-hearted parting shots while retreat columns formed behind them. 

Their movement was unmistakable.

“We… We won?” someone asked—someone Chester didn’t recognize.

“Command here,” the young woman again. “Yes. Mission success confirmed. I… think we just wait for the Epilogue trigger. I don’t actually know how Hold-The-Lines resolve if you don’t run out the timer. I didn’t even know this was possible.”

“I didn’t know you could win without running it down either,” another voice added—command hierarchy and command channel etiquette long since irrelevant, apparently.

“But if Command says we won… then we won, right?”

Another moment of stillness—Then the comms erupted.

“Fuck yeah we did!”

“Long live the UHF!”

“The Emperor smiled on us today!”

“UHF! UHF! UHF!”

“VICTORY!!!”

“Fuck yeah! Take that you fucking freaks!”

Chester couldn’t stop himself from smiling as he limped back to the far wall of the trench and slid down beside the dead girl.

“Looks like you actually did it… you crazy, stubborn idiot girl,” he muttered.

He let out one more tired laugh, leaned his head back against the dirt wall, and closed his eyes—waiting for the Mission to fade to black…

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[ND + TAS Announcement] Halloween Art + Admin Week

Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Happy Halloween to all you lovely folks!

Unfortunately there's no new chapter today, once again, as I'm still struggling IRL.

But I have brought you some juicy Halloween Art, to try and make up for it!

Additionally, just a heads-up that next week will be ADMIN WEEK for November, as I still need to do some admin-related things behind the scenes, even with my current lack of writing speed. Despite the writing issues, the admin tasks unfortunately do not diminish at a similar rate! :(

As such, the next ND/TAS Chapters will be releasing on November 10th/11th respectively.

Now, without further ado, here's the Halloween Art for this year!

(If you're from the UK, I'm sorry. You're kinda getting shafted. Join the discord and you can find it pinned in the novel-related Fanart channel!)

There is also a slightly more spicy version (less clothes) for the TAS pinup, down below in the downloads!

Enjoy your Halloween Time y'alls and I'll catch you on the 10th/11th!

[TAS] Volume 2 - Chapter 55 - Alpha Deployment

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------------------- Start of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) -------------------
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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Volume 2 - Chapter 50 - Ideas has just released on RR with no changes.

For the Wolf Lords, this chapter is unchanged.

And also: Please do not read the chapters here on Patreon, but go for the googledoc, .pdf or .epub instead. Patreon butchers all forms of formatting and you're missing out on easier and more enjoyable reading experiences.

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New Chapter Hype! \o/

Not sure if there'll be a chapter friday yet.

If there will be, it will be there; if not, then it won't be.

Still trying to get my shit together over here, sorry for that!

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I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the link to the chapter:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IQ992fb90K7syxs9-SAG2OWW9to9wUQ2XFVGPqQ_Vd4/edit?usp=sharing

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Volume 2 - Chapter 55 - Alpha Deployment

Private Nyla Dab:
“You can feel it. 

“I don’t care what anyone says—when command announces a Battlefield Ace being deployed, the whole trench just… changes. 

“Guys who were slumped against the wall five seconds ago are suddenly re-checking their mags. Marines that required a Medic just seconds ago, get a second wind. People stop talking and start moving. 

“It’s like someone turned the dial up on the whole platoon. 

“We know they’re going to hit the enemy harder than we ever could, so we damn well make sure they’ve got the breathing room to do it.”

—

Corporal Ilyana Serik:
"The enemy knows. You can see it when an Ace steps onto the battlefield. 

“Their fire shifts, their lines bend. They throw bodies at the Ace’s position like they think if they just bury them under enough, the fight ends. 

“That’s when the rest of us have to dig in twice as hard. 

“The Ace is strong, no doubt, but never invincible. If the Republic concentrates everything on them, even the best won’t last. 

“So we fight harder, hold tighter, because every second we keep pressure elsewhere is another second the Ace gets to tear literal holes through their lines…"

—

Sergeant Malek Ordo:
"The strangest part is watching the flow of the battlefield simply… change. 

“You think you know where the line is about to collapse, you’ve got your maps and your estimates—then the Ace appears, and everything just shifts. 

“The enemy diverts, flanks twist and turn, and suddenly that weak point you were about to reinforce doesn’t even matter to the enemy anymore. 

“The fight’s abruptly orbiting around one Marine’s position. 

“It’s dangerous as fuck, but also… undeniably freeing. 

“Because if you’re not in their sector, you know the pressure’s lighter. You know you can hit harder, move faster, because the Republic’s eyes aren’t on you; They’re staring at the Ace."

—

Corporal Jace Hunn
“You instinctively start treating the battlefield differently, y’know?

“It’s not just about stayin’ alive anymore, or even killin’ all the enemies—it’s about keepin’ them alive as well now. 

“Once an Ace is deployed, you find yourself suddenly pushin’ harder, takin’ more shots, tryin’ to keep the enemy pinned; even more so than usual. Because you just know… They are both your best shot at gettin’ out of this alive, but also the most vulnerable person on the entire Emperor-damned Battlefield.

“After all, one thing is always true: They can’t do their job if we’re not keepin’ their flanks clear. 

“You can think of them like the sharp tip of a spear—capable of inflictin’ brutal, downright lethal wounds on the enemy—but… a spear’s nothin’ without the shaft behind it, guidin’ its strike and makin’ sure there is follow-through rather than simply snappin’ upon contact.”

—

[UHF News Net – "Echoes of the Frontline: Battlefield Ace deployment", PFC866]

======

======

Once she made it back to East 14, Thea got to work immediately. 

Her first order was for the Corporal—sending him back down to E4 to inform the Medic they had claimed E14, so Chester would know where to rejoin them once he was patched up.

It felt wrong giving that order. 

A Corporal definitely outranked her—Privates being a bit more of a murky situation overall—but he was the only one who couldn’t actually shoot out of the embrasures reliably due to a lack of heavy armour, and for reasons she still didn’t fully understand, he continued to defer to her without hesitation.

‘Being a Battlefield Ace is so weird…’ she thought, lowering herself beside her pack and pulling it open. ‘Ordering around people above my rank just feels wrong. I wonder how the Old Man dealt with stuff like this… Did he ever run into a Battlefield Ace and have to follow their orders, too…?’

Her fingers dug through the contents deep inside the pack until she found what she needed. 

Setting her Gram across her lap, she slid down to sit on the dirt floor. 

The steady bursts of fire from the Heavies at the embrasure filled the alcove, a semi-rhythmic pounding that weirdly soothed her nerves while she worked.

From deep in her pack, she had drawn out her multi-tool and began stripping the weapon apart with practiced ease. Over the past week, she had spent countless late nights in her quarters practicing this exact routine, breaking the Gram—all of its versions—down and rebuilding it until she could almost do it blindfolded.

Her last shopping run had left her with far more attachments and parts than she could ever realistically test in a single Digital Mission. 

Still, she wasn’t about to let them gather dust when they might give her an edge. 

If nothing else, this was the perfect chance to try some of them out in the field, while simultaneously fixing some problems she noticed during her earlier tests.

The first piece she slotted in was a [Double-Feather Trigger].

‘Honestly thought this was a waste of Credits when I bought it,’ she admitted to herself, a small smile tugging at her lips. ‘Guess that shows how little I still know about all this.’

She’d nearly skipped it, along with a handful of other mods, dismissing them as gimmicks. 

At the time, she hadn’t seen any situation where she’d need to fire a DMR fast enough to warrant such a thing as an entirely replaced trigger-system.

But the [Double-Feather Trigger] was quite clever, in hindsight—making every pull lighter while doubling the output. An internal engagement flap tripped the firing mechanism once at three-fifths of the pull, then again at the full press, effectively giving her two shots per trigger squeeze.

‘That should make keeping the same rate of fire a lot easier on my fingers…’ she thought, sliding the piece into place with a faint click. ‘Or potentially even doubling the output, should I really need to dump a whole mag for whatever reason, I guess.’

Nodding to herself as she tightened the last screws on the trigger assembly and guard, Thea moved on to the second and third alterations: [Extra-Coolant Injector] and [Focus Refractory Lense].

The first was straightforward enough. 

It added an extra buffer for heat buildup—something she knew would become a problem again if she pushed the Gram the way she had during her earlier [Glimpse] use. 

The weapon just wasn’t meant to sustain that kind of rapid feather-fire.

The Gram itself was capacitor-based, not coolant-based like some of the other Laser rifles on the market, which usually meant heat wasn’t much of an issue. 

But “usually” didn’t exactly cover what she was planning to put it through.

For that kind of abuse, the [Extra-Coolant Injector] acted as a secondary magazine slot, letting her load the same coolant magazines that other Laser-type DMR’s would use, alongside her normal capacitor-mags.

It would make the weapon bulkier and noticeably heavier, sure, but for the short stretch of time left in this DM, she figured it was a fair trade.

‘Now I just need to get my hands on some coolant mags once Alpha’s fully assembled…’ she thought, already filing it away as a priority.

The [Focus Refractory Lense] was a different story and far less invasive, weight-wise. 

It gave a measurable boost to the Gram’s output, increasing raw firepower and penetration, but at a steep cost: Range. 

The beam lost cohesion markedly faster, bleeding off strength well before it normally would. That made it a poor choice for long-distance sniping—one of the reasons she usually kept it buried in her backpack rather than mounted in most situations.

But right now, range wasn’t the priority at all. 

They were holding a trench, the enemy pushing in close. 

She didn’t have infinite freedom to choose her engagement distances, which made the trade-off a lot less punishing. If anything, it was exactly what she needed.

While it still wouldn’t make her Gram capable of punching through Super-Heavy-type armour, it would make anything short of that a lot easier to deal with. Whether she could punch through the chestplate of Heavy-type remained to be seen, but at least she wouldn’t need to try to aim for weak spots on the Heavy-types any longer.

‘It’ll definitely punch through anything short of the chestplate for sure.’

She slotted the last piece into place and closed the rifle up again, running her hands over the frame, double-checking each connection and making sure no screws or cables had been left loose. 

With the modifications complete, the Gram felt a lot heavier, but also more ready—far better suited to handle another round of her powered-up [Glimpse] bursts without cooking itself, and her, to slag in the process.

She had just finished her checks when movement caught her eye at the tunnel entrance. 

The first two members of Alpha had arrived, their silhouettes cutting through the flare-light leaking in from the battlefield.

One of them was clearly a Defensive Heavy, his frame swallowed up in Super-Heavy-type armor, every plate thick enough to shrug off punishment that would flatten Thea many times over. In his hands he carried a massive Full-Cover Shield, its size reminding her of Lucas’ Stalwart, though it was clearly a different make as it was a square-profile rather than a rectangular one.

The other Marine, slightly less intimidating in his lighter gear, introduced himself as a Squad Medic.

Immediately, Thea noticed the difference between these two and the new Wellis Two she’d taken charge of earlier. 

Even when their eyes behind their visors flicked to her Crysium Two-Star Medal, there was no wide-eyed awe, no moment of hesitation. If anything, they regarded her with calm professionalism, like they had seen this before and knew exactly what was expected of them.

“At last count, I’ve got just under five hundred Focus left from the fighting,” the Medic reported when Thea asked, his tone direct. “Not counting boosters, Ma’am.”

Thea gave a short nod, filing that away. 

With him—and at least one, maybe two more Medics still on their way, depending on whether Kalt was giving her the bare minimum she’d requested or the full three she’d mentioned—she’d be working with roughly five times her normal Focus pool.

‘That’s… a lot,’ Thea thought, a faint tension settling into her chest. The idea of that much psychic throughput made her a little uneasy. ‘I honestly don’t even know if my brain can keep up with that many [Glimpse]s at once. Keeping track of every movement, every timing, every possible kill path so I don’t miss is way more draining than I thought it would be.’

Her brow furrowed as she considered her options. ‘Maybe instead of one massive, high-intensity [Glimpse] every minute or so, I should keep it lower-intensity and spread it out. More frequent uses, fewer all-consuming bursts…’

Her previous tests had already suggested that was the better trade-off. 

Focus-to-kill ratios had been far more efficient with lighter uses of the Power. 

Still, she couldn’t completely ignore the utility of a full-bore [Glimpse] for emergencies.

‘Alright—low-intensity for steady clearing, high-intensity when we need to burn through Duplicators fast,’ she decided. ‘I can experiment a little once we’re rolling, but I really can’t afford to screw this up. No going overboard, Thea.’

Over the next few minutes, the rest of Alpha trickled in one by one.

First came a second Squad Medic, his armor visibly scratched and scorched but his stance steady and no less for wear, visor sweeping the alcove for something—maybe injured—before he gave her a sharp nod.

Next was the second Defensive Heavy. 

She stood out immediately to Thea—wearing standard Heavy-type armor rather than the Super-Heavy sets Thea had grown used to seeing on Marines in that Role. 

Her shield was smaller too, more like a heater-shield than the massive slabs carried by most Defensive Heavies. Still, the way she moved absolutely radiated confidence. And if Sergeant Kalt had specifically assigned her for this mission, and by the fact that her armour was somehow practically pristine, Thea figured there had to be good reason. 

Even if she didn’t know how yet, the Defensive Heavy would get the job done.

Finally, the last member arrived—a Medium-type carrying what could barely be called a gun. 

The weapon system strapped to his arms and shoulders looked less like a singular design and more like someone had ripped parts off a dozen different prototypes and welded them together. Wires, canisters, tubes and cooling fins meshed into a strange, hulking amalgamation that hummed faintly with energy.

‘I guess that’s my Offensive Heavy,’ Thea thought, watching him set the thing down against the wall with surprising ease before starting to inspect it. She tried to parse what it might even do, but came up blank. 

It was just far too alien a design.

Before she could consider asking, however, Sergeant Kalt’s voice cut into her ear over a fresh comms channel specifically for Alpha and Command.

“Thea, double-check with your squad if everything’s ready to go, then report back to me. Couldn’t spare another Squad Medic—two’s all I could get you. We need to get this show on the road as soon as possible.”

She gave a sharp comms click in acknowledgment, then turned to Alpha. 

“Status?”

The replies came back instantly, all five of them—the two Medics, the two Defensive Heavies, and the odd-armed, Medium-type Offensive Heavy—reporting in ready.

“Sergeant Kalt, Alpha is ready to go,” Thea confirmed. “Where do you need us?”

A short pause followed, filled with the background noise of shouted orders, gunfire and explosions just beyond the embrasure’s walls, before Kalt answered.

“Since I don’t yet know what kind of impact to expect from you and your squad, we’ll start cautiously. Head for E36—you’ll be isolated for several alcoves, so enemy retaliation should be manageable. Operational procedure is up to you, McKay. I trust you know what to do with the resources you’ve got.”

“Copy,” Thea replied without hesitation. 

She turned back to Alpha, gesturing sharply for them to follow.

But before she stepped out, she glanced back toward what had briefly been her Wellis Two—if it could even still be called that now that she’d once again left them with their Corporal in charge.

“Stay alive. All of you. That’s an order.”

A unified chorus of “Yes, Ma’am!” rang out from the alcove, the Corporal’s voice loudest among them.

Satisfied, Thea nodded once and stepped into the tunnel. 

She nearly collided head-on with a Marine coming in from the west, boots skidding to a stop.

Her eyes widened as she recognized him.

“Medic Chester,” she said, a flicker of elated surprise in her voice. “Good to see you on your feet. I’m heading out to start pushing the enemy back… Would you care to join me? If you’ve got any Focus left, Alpha would be glad to have you.”

Before he could answer, an errant thought slipped out with a smirk tugging at her lips. “I’ll make sure you survive this one in one piece, promise.”

For a moment, his expression twisted—first taken aback, then severely irritated, his jaw tightening like he wanted to argue. 

But just as fast, the tension bled into a resigned smirk. 

He finally gave a small nod.

“I’ll manage,” he said at last. “Banged up, sure, but I’ve still got enough left in me for a few more [Focus Link]s.” His tone hardened, and his eyes locked onto hers with a seriousness that caught her off guard. “Let’s fuck them up good. For Marie and Falks.”

Thea blinked, but only for a heartbeat. She motioned for him to fall in with Alpha, her voice steady as he passed her. “For Marie and Falks.”

They set off eastward, boots drumming the packed dirt. 

By the time they reached E20, the noise of bustling Marines reached their ears—people shouting over one another, the clang of crates, and the mechanical hum of loaders at work.

A glowing holographic sign confirmed what she already suspected: AMMUNITION DEPOT.

‘Good!’ she thought.

She’d counted on being able to resupply here en-route, since the second trenchline was one of the few in this DM outfitted with depots. 

Thea slowed just enough to gesture at the two Squad Medics—not including Chester. 

“Fifteen capacitor mags and five coolant mags for my Gram. Each. Then catch up.”

Both Medics gave quick affirmatives and split off without hesitation, weaving through the flow of Marines heading into the depot.

She wondered for half a moment whether it would have been smart to give more exact details, like the actual size and specifications for the magazines she required, but she threw out the troubling thoughts immediately.

‘Competence is to be assumed at all times, until proven otherwise,’ her Old Man’s words echoed through her mind.

So Thea didn’t stop to watch them go. 

She was already moving again, her boots hitting the tunnel floor in a steady rhythm as she pressed on toward E36, Alpha falling into formation behind her.

Finally, after another minute of steady jogging through the winding tunnels, they reached E36—their first stop, and the position where Alpha would begin their push.

‘Alright,’ Thea told herself, letting the breath in her lungs settle as she stepped into the alcove. ‘Time to put on my game face.’

The trepidation twisting in her chest didn’t vanish, but it shifted, melting into something sharper, something she knew well: Performance-bound adrenaline.

She’d learned long ago how to turn that initial sensation of performance anxiety into an advantage. 

Years of high-stakes tournaments had drilled it into her—how to take the raw, nervous energy that made your hands shake and your stomach churn and turn it into focus and speed instead of hesitation.

It was all about mindset, about reframing the moment. 

And the long minutes she’d spent waiting for Alpha to assemble had given her more than enough time to do just that.

This was just another high-stakes match—only this time, the arena was a trenchline, and the stakes were far higher than any tournament she’d ever played. A lot more people were counting on her to perform.

Taking position at the rightmost part of the alcove, just as she had with Wellis Squad before, Thea slung her Ballistic and Gauss Grams off her shoulder and handed them to one of the Medics with nothing but a pointed look. 

The Medic took them silently, understanding the task without needing words.

“Ondis,” she called,turning towards the Offensive Heavy. “Take both Defensive Heavies and one of the Medics. Move up three alcoves and shadow my shots. Kill all the Super-Heavy Armours you can, I can’t deal with them efficiently. That’s your only job, so make sure to do it well.” 

She’d made sure to pay extra close attention during the introductions and memorize all their names during the march—no sense commanding people she couldn’t address properly.

Both Defensive Heavies hesitated, their helmets turning her way. She could tell what they were thinking—that leaving the so-called Battlefield Ace alone didn’t seem like the smartest move.

“You’re of no use to me here,” Thea added sharply, cutting off their hesitation. “I need Ondis alive as long as possible, and you’ll be more useful protecting him. I’ll need you once we move out of the trenches, so stay the fuck alive.”

The two Heavies gave curt, overlapping “Yes, Ma’am”s before moving to position. Ondis scanned the alcove for a Medic to accompany them, but Chester stepped forward immediately.

“I’ll go,” he said, voice steady but tired. “I’ve got the least Focus left, so I won’t be much use to her here.”

Thea met his eyes for a moment—he managed to keep the flinch to a minimum this time—and gave a small nod of approval.

“Everyone,” she said, turning her focus back to the squad, “turn your environmental mufflers to max. If you don’t have one, full-mask up and do it manually. It’s going to get loud.”

She took a second to confirm her own muffler was maxed out, unwilling to make the same mistake twice.

“She’s not kidding,” Chester added dryly, the corner of his mouth twitching in a grim smile. “Make damn sure it’s at maximum… just trust me on this.” 

His pained look earned a few concerned glances from the rest of the squad before the team split.

Moments later, the two Medics who had gone to fetch extra ammo returned, heavy packs slung over their shoulders. Thea didn’t waste time.

“Medics, listen up. When we’re stationary, I want a [Focus Link] on me at all times. I’ll be draining you fast, so keep a close eye on your Focus levels. No Overdraws—I don’t need anyone dropping dead on me, understood?”

A quick round of affirmatives followed. 

The Medics exchanged a silent look, a wordless conversation passing between them before one—the one without the ammo packs, that had her two spare weapons slung over her shoulder—stepped forward to start.

Thea barely noticed. 

Her focus was already shifting outward as she felt the faint, tingling rush of the [Focus Link] snap into place.

She crouched low, peering through the embrasure. 

The night outside was chaos incarnate—tracer fire, detonations, and the glow of energy blasts rolling across the field like waves. The Stellar Republic’s forces were pushing hard, surging forward out of the now-shattered first trenchline and continuing to barrel straight toward them.

Her fingers flexed around the grip of her modified Laser-type Gram. She took one slow, measured breath, feeling her heartbeat steady a little, despite the adrenaline, as the familiar calm before a fight settled in.

‘Alright,’ she thought, scanning the chaos through the narrow embrasure slit. ‘The stage is set. Squad’s as ready as they’ll ever be. Testing’s over—time for full performance until the end of this DM… then a long-ass nap back at the dorms.’

The thought made her lips twitch. 

She was already looking forward to it—shutting off her brain, stretching out somewhere quiet, maybe even asking Kara to act as a pillow again; that one had done wonders after the Psychic lesson with the Runepriest. 

As exciting as this mission had been so far—with her somehow ending up both commander of a freshly formed Alpha Squad of her own making and a temporary Battlefield Ace—the social part of it was already taking its toll. 

Constant interaction, constant leadership… it wore on her more than any combat ever did.

She rolled her shoulders, loosening the tension building in her neck, and switched to the private command channel Sergeant Kalt had given her.

“Alpha Squad in position and ready,” she said, her voice steady, professional. “On your mark, Sergeant.”

A confirmation click came from her comms and she started scoping out potential pockets of targets, as she waited for Sergeant Kalt’s go.

It didn’t take long.

“This is a priority notice for all Marines,” he announced over the public command channel, his deep-set voice ringing in every Marine’s ear across the entire battlefield. “Squad designation Alpha has now been deployed to the battlefield. To all of you: Kill the Freaks with everything you got. That is all.”

Thea felt the familiar wash of Sergeant Kalt’s platoon-wide buff hit her—sharp, steady, the kind of edge that tightened focus and steadied hands. She wasn’t sure when the last one had expired, only that the difference now was once again immediate and obvious: Sights felt clearer, breaths slower, the world narrowing to the slit of her embrasure.

“Show us what it means to be a Battlefield Ace, Thea,” Kalt said over the private channel, his tone almost clinical but with the smallest crack of something like excitement. “Kill them all. Don’t stop until the DM’s clear.”

She let her comms click once in affirmation, already too focused on the next steps she knew needed to be taken, as she simultaneously spread her Nano-Bot Swarm around the alcove. 

Outside, the UHF fire picked up almost immediately, like someone had flipped a switch—tracer lines doubled, explosive thumps came harder and more quickly, and sections of the battlefield she hadn’t noticed a moment before threw themselves back into the fight. 

For an instant the Stellar Republic forces wavered, as if the sudden second wind had punched a hole in their nerves. Then their response snapped into place: Bulked Defensive Heavies clawed forward from the heart of the enemy mass, shields and Super-Heavy armour locking into several moving walls to protect the lighter troops behind them against the sudden onslaught.

Thea watched it all and let a vicious little grin pull at her lips. 

Kalt’s announcement had done exactly what they wanted—forced the enemy to expose new lines and shift focus towards the western side of the trenchline. 

That meant pockets of vulnerability opened up, blind spots she could fish through, and a precious few extra seconds to move unseen once the real shooting started. With the whole UHF line pouring everything into pressuring them, it would take the Republic’s command longer to parse how dangerous her own actions actually were. 

That delay was going to be everything.

Keying into squad comms, Thea said just two words—calm, clipped, certain. “Go-time.”

She drew in a deep breath, lungs steadying, heart slowing to that razor focus she knew too well. Then she let it out—not as a shout, but as a raw, primal scream as hard as she could. 

The Nano-Bot Swarm flared to life around her, amplifying her voice into an unholy chorus. 

The air itself seemed to vibrate as the sound peaked and cracked like a million tortured speakers tearing themselves apart.

“[GLIMPSE]!”

The world bled of color in an instant, falling into that familiar monochrome haze as the Psychic Power surged through and out of her. Thea’s perception exploded outward as her awareness stretched into the Stellar Republic’s ranks. 

She felt herself move, watched herself reap through their frontlines like a phantom of precision and violence.

Her mind ran at a pace that bordered on self-destruction—Sergeant Kalt’s Buff smoothing the edges just enough to keep her from burning herself out completely. 

She tried to anchor everything she saw: Every step, every flick of her trigger finger, every ricochet and recoil, every shift in enemy posture or armor pattern. Each death seared into her consciousness as information, data, rhythm. 

She was forcing herself to remember it all—not as part of the Power, or even the System itself, but sheer power of will—so she could repeat it later, faster, cleaner.

Seconds stretched into an eternity. 

Her thoughts frayed under the strain of trying to hold onto everything, her head pounding, nerves screaming as the edges of her mind began to burn. 

Then, finally, the monochrome world stuttered—glitched—and shattered.

Thea gasped, snapping back into reality—and the no-man’s-land between the two trench lines turned red.

Her body moved before her mind fully caught up, the [Glimpse] still burning behind her eyes. 

The Gram screamed in her hands, the [Double-Feather Trigger] chattering as she feathered it faster than most Marines would even dare think to pull. Each squeeze birthed two blinding lances of light, the air shimmering with the heat of supercharged plasma.

The first Duplicator fell before he even knew he was in danger—a Heavy-type, his thick chestplate glinting under flarelight. Her shot sliced clean through the narrow seam between his neck guard and shoulder pauldron, vaporizing bone and sinew in a flash.

The second dropped a heartbeat later. Another Heavy, ducking behind a nearby Defensive Heavy’s shield, thinking he was safe. Her beam punched straight through the side of his helmet, leaving only a molten ring where the steel had been.

The third and fourth came in similarly quick succession—Medium-armored soldiers sprinting to reposition behind the Defensive Heavies’ line, trying to position themselves to be better hidden from the western-front’s onslaught. 

One full trigger tap, two beams cutting across the night. 

The first Marine’s head burst into steam and red mist mid-stride; the second’s chest cavity bloomed open as molten metal and flesh sprayed outward. 

Both crumpled mid-step, their nearby clones following suit immediately.

Her fifth shot hit a Light-armored Scout weaving between shields and white-foam barriers. The laser pierced his torso and exploded out his back, the additional power of her modified Gram’s laser allowing for a clean punch-through, spinning him violently before his body hit the mud.

Her sixth target—a sniper setting up behind a half-melted white-foam barricade—managed to align his rifle towards their side for half a moment before Thea’s shot punched straight through his eye socket, turning the upper half of his head into vapor.

The seventh was a Duplicator trying to drag a wounded comrade to cover. Thea’s beam caught him dead center in the abdomen, punching clean through both bodies in one continuous streak. 

They dropped together, smoke rising from the clean, cauterized holes left behind.

Every movement was preordained. Every kill came exactly as she’d seen it in the [Glimpse]. 

Her body danced between fire and re-aim, the barrel snapping from one target to the next with machine-like precision, as she followed the exact movements she was holding in her head. The Gram glowed hot in her hands, coolant hissing as it fought to keep up with the ferocity of her firing pace.

By the time her magazine hit half-capacity, the front line of the Stellar Republic was a chaotic mess—holes torn straight through formations that had seemed untouchable minutes ago. 

And still Thea kept firing, eyes cold, movements fluid, following the fading afterimage of her own future as she worked off of the memories she was desperately holding onto within her mind.

Then, finally—almost a full second after she’d triggered her [Glimpse]—it was over. 

Thea’s muscles trembled as she exhaled hard, the tension crashing through her all at once. 

She slumped forward slightly, chest heaving as she dragged in deep, steadying breaths.

Her Gram hissed in protest, steam curling from the barrel, the scent of scorched metal and ozone thick in the air. She ejected the capacitor with a sharp click; the spent unit tumbled to the floor, glowing faintly from residual heat.

It wasn’t completely drained, but close enough—she’d nearly cooked the whole thing dry in that single, blistering second of fire. Thea pulled a fresh capacitor magazine from her ammo pouch and slammed it into place, the weapon humming back to full charge.

She raised the Gram again, fingers finding the grip automatically as she drew in another slow, grounding breath. Her throat burned raw from the earlier screams, and her head throbbed from the mental strain of forcing so much information through her mind at once.

‘No point holding back now, huh?’ she thought, a rueful smile tugging at her lips. ‘Might as well see just how far I can really push this, when needed.’

Then she let the breath out and screamed. 

“[GLIMPSE]!”

The Nano-Bot Swarm erupted back to life, catching and amplifying her voice until it became a deafening, electric roar that rattled the air once more…

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[ND] Chapter 152 - Remuneration

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------------------- Start of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) -------------------
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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Chapter 147 - Recovery has just released on RR with no major changes.

For the Fixers, this chapter is new.

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Potentially only one chapter again this week.

There might be one Thursday; but don't be surprised if there isn't, still figuring things out on my end!

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I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the link to the chapter:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MYCsXrbRRGP-rEvIacI-4ct2h1wSeBpe-IOec10Kqs8/edit?usp=sharing

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Chapter 152 - Remuneration

Staring at the lines of text glowing across the datapad, I wasn’t really seeing any of it. 

My eyes tracked the words, sure, but my brain refused to process them. 

Everything from the last hour kept looping through my head, fragments of conversation clashing with each other until I couldn’t tell which part had hit me hardest.

I’d imagined a lot of different ways this talk could’ve gone—most of them unpleasant—but I’d clearly been wrong on every front. 

Completely wrong.

Out of everything I could’ve predicted, Valeria offering me freedom like this had never even made the list.

She’d always struck me as someone who needed to have her hands in every detail, every variable under her thumb. That was just who she was—a control freak with corporate polish… Or so I thought.

And yeah, technically, if she still owned or financed whatever apartment I picked, she’d still have influence. 

But this? This was still a choice. A deliberate step back. A lowering of her control.

A concession, ultimately. Maybe a reward for deeds done right in her eyes, but still a concession nevertheless. 

Either way, something had shifted in our relationship.

Too many things had, honestly.

The amount of information she’d dropped on me tonight was the kind of thing that would take days—weeks—to even begin to unpack. But I didn’t have that time.

Valeria wanted an answer now. 

Which, to be fair, was very on-brand for her. Manipulative, yeah, but also logical. 

She had momentum right now—leverage to extract reparations from EtherLabs for the whole disaster. Even if Nyxstalker’s attack had been partially her fault, she could still spin it into a payout, maybe even get special dispensation for “family recovery.” 

That meant she needed my answer ready before her meeting with the board or whatever inspectors came crawling through to pick apart this mess.

‘Neo Avalis proper is out,’ I decided almost immediately, cutting that option from the list in my head. ‘No safety net, no backup, no Creds, no chance. Not unless I want to end up as some Scav’s next payday.’

‘Fenwylde Academy,’ on the other hand, caught me off guard. I hadn’t even considered it.

Still… I couldn’t help but shake my head slightly. ‘Not exactly what I’m looking for.’

Sure, the education there would be top-tier. 

Access to rare Skills, training, information—the kind of education and access to connections most people would kill for. And the System-related experience and unlocks I could get my hands on there? Invaluable. 

But I wasn’t built for an Academy Arc, not with everything else I had going on already. 

It would make my whole Operator path a lot more difficult to pursue and would likely mean my trips to the Arkion Dojo and Mr. Shori’s would also be at an end. Much less meeting up with Jade on a semi-regular basis and figuring out what was going on with that side of things.

Still, I couldn’t deny what I’d undoubtedly be missing. Fenwylde was an absolute goldmine of opportunity, and there probably wouldn’t be another one like it. 

That part stung without doubt.

But that, ultimately, left the third option: An apartment on the same floor.

At first glance, it sounded perfect. Independence without isolation. A buffer, but still within reach for security purposes. But as I turned it over in my head, it started to feel hollow.

‘What’s the point of having my own place if I’ve got nothing to fill it with?’ I thought bitterly. ‘Freedom’s great and all, but it only matters if I’ve actually got something to do with it. I don’t have the resources, the Skills, or the gear to justify it yet.’

So what then? Stick around? Keep living with Valeria, Oliver, and Gabriel, just like before? 

Wait until Gabe left for Fenwylde and I was stuck here with the two of them?

It wasn’t exactly a thrilling thought. 

But by the time Gabriel recovered enough to even think about the Academy, I’d hopefully have something else lined up. Maybe more advancements on the Operator side, maybe a better grasp on my Skills—something that’d let me go at things under my own steam.

Still… declining everything just didn’t sit right.

I’d more than earned this. Bled for it. Nearly died for it. 

Letting it all pass me by felt wrong, like walking away from a prize I’d already fought for. 

Even if the current setup—living with the rest of the family—was technically the smartest move, I couldn’t just shrug and take nothing.

So I made up my mind.

Meeting Valeria’s eyes, I set the datapad down and pushed it back across the table. The faint slide of coated aluminium on wood seemed louder than it should’ve been.

She raised an eyebrow, sharp even in her fatigue.

“I’ll stay with the family,” I said, keeping my tone steady, deliberate. Not emotional but instead measured. The same kind of calm, calculated tone she herself used when making an offer sound like a done deal. “But I want a different kind of remuneration instead of an apartment. The same level of investment—just redirected toward something more immediately useful. For me and the family.”

Her expression didn’t change, but I could feel her full focus bear down on me. 

I knew this was a gamble. 

I didn’t want to expose too much about what I’d been doing with my free time or what my real intentions were, but that was unavoidable now. 

One way or another, this conversation was always going to happen.

I took a steadying breath, feeling [Negotiation] flicker to life like a spark in the back of my head—followed, unexpectedly, by [Appraise]. 

Both adjusting, calibrating, guiding my phrasing as I shaped the next words carefully.

“I want access to a firearm,” I said. “Something similar to the one you used yesterday—capable of punching through the kind of armor those corpo agents were wearing. I’ll need the corresponding carry licenses for Delta, plus regular access to a firing range. Preferably with an instructor—someone reliable. I don’t want to learn bad habits by teaching myself. You can’t always be around and even if you are, having a second person capable of defending Oliver and Gabriel will undoubtedly be worthwhile.”

My first real gambit. 

But one I needed to make.

Because the truth was obvious now: Between Valir’s crew of thugs and Nyxstalker’s strike team, knives alone weren’t enough anymore. 

They were great when I had initiative—when I could ambush, when silence mattered. 

But when the fight started on someone else’s terms?

I had nothing. No range, no power, no way to turn the tide once things went loud except for my Trait’s Ability, which was only usable once.

That needed to change. 

And I clearly didn’t have the luxury of time on my side to get this fixed; a band-aid was needed.

“Also—” I said, forcing the words out, “I want access to hard knowledge. Actual data-shards on topics I can’t just pull off a public node. Let’s say… three topics, to be chosen later.”

I had checked the value in my head with [Appraise], letting the Skill spit back a rough worth estimate. It felt like hedging my bets out loud, but I had needed to know what I was asking for before I had asked for it.

I’d already known this request would sound weird. 

Knowledge-shards weren’t the same currency as Skill Shards. 

The latter were the shiny, instantly useful things corps handed out to grunts: Slot a Skill Shard in, and you suddenly knew how to do a job—muscle memory and all—until you took it out again. Perfect for keeping people effective and dependent. 

Corporations loved them because they were knowledge control baked into training.

Knowledge-shards, though, were different. 

They were rare because deep, specific information didn’t just float around in public caches. Without an internet or public libraries; information was hoarded like bullion—private repositories, dead nets, academic vaults. 

You didn’t buy a Skill Shard to learn how a thing worked, just to be able to use it; you bought a Knowledge-shard to understand why it worked, to see the hidden edges and make real decisions through actual learned knowledge. 

They were more like condensed books than anything resembling Skill Shards. Personal aptitude in learning, time investment and dedication was required to make them work.

Less flashy, less immediately tradable or useful, but for me—way more valuable. 

They were the kind of items that would actually move the needle appreciably for some of the harder-to-train Skills in the System, of that, there was no doubt.

[Accounting] being the prime example from the partial Knowledge-shards I had obtained during my brief-stint at the hospital after that one time at the Arkion Dojo where Kenzie had gotten a good hit in—and ripped my damn eyes out.

So yeah, asking for three of those would undoubtedly make Valeria cock an eyebrow. 

She’d no doubt puzzle over why I wanted raw information instead of turnkey skills. 

But I couldn’t see another practical path: Unless she could hand me military-grade Skill Shards—very unlikely—Knowledge-shards were the clearest route to get the exact, usable competence I needed to get my hands on.

I considered pushing my luck—one more request, maybe something small to round it out. But before I could even open my mouth, [Appraise] flickered in the back of my mind like a quiet warning. 

The mental tag it dropped wasn’t about Credits—it was about weight. 

‘Social capital cost: extreme.’

And yeah, that tracked. 

Getting a firearms license for something capable of punching through corpo-grade armor in a Megabuilding, of all places, wasn’t exactly standard procedure. That kind of approval didn’t come cheap, not in a building policed by the same kind of agents I wanted the weapon against in the first place. 

Even Valeria would have to pull quite a few strings for that.

And the Knowledge Shards? Each one of those would be like being handed months of private instruction. The kind of thing that could push a Skill well into the upper tiers on its own. Just one of them was essentially impossible for me to acquire. Three? That was already brushing the limit of what I could reasonably expect, even from her.

So I held my tongue, letting the offer stand.

Valeria studied me for a long moment. Then, finally, she gave a small nod. 

“Very well. The firearm can be arranged—but only once your training meets acceptable standards. You will complete the full course under supervision, and I will personally determine when you are ready to carry it.”

I blinked, suppressing the instinct to argue. 

She raised a hand slightly, continuing before I could say anything.

“As for the Knowledge Shards, I’ll require a list of five topics. I will see to the procurement of three from that list. Some subjects are… less accessible than others, even for me.”

Her tone was back to polished efficiency now—still soft, still worn down, but unshakably corporate.

I mulled it over in silence. 

It made sense—both requests did. 

The firearm condition wasn’t a power move; it was just smart. As far as Valeria knew, I’d never handled a gun in my life, and giving me something high-caliber without oversight would be beyond reckless, even if I had proven that I could potentially hold my own yesterday. 

The Knowledge Shard stipulation was equally reasonable too, considering how difficult they were to acquire otherwise. And, not to mention, it gave her the ability to filter what she didn’t want me poking into—something I’d do, too, if I were in her position.

As always, her logic was bulletproof. Maddeningly so. 

It was like she’d been born with an internal flowchart for every argument.

[Negotiation] whispered its verdict before I even thought to counter: Deal should be accepted; optimal outcome achieved. 

In other words, I wasn’t getting a better one unless Valeria suddenly felt like being charitable—which she never did.

So I inclined my head slightly. “Agreed.”

Her smirk returned—small, genuine, the kind of smile that didn’t look quite natural on her but fit in a strange, unsettling way. “My new daughter is definitely an interesting one.”

I froze for half a second, clamping down on every muscle to stop my reaction from showing. 

The words hit harder than I’d expected. 

It was—by every measure—an acknowledgment of what I’d chastised her for earlier. 

Acceptance, even.

Before I could even start to process what her words might mean for us going forward, Valeria was already continuing on.

“With all necessary arrangements concluded,” she said, straightening her posture as much as her unresponsive right side allowed, “I am afraid I have to cut our discussion short, Seraphine. I will not allow the investigators any room to maneuver or manipulate the narrative of this… tragedy. I must return to the scene before their arrival.”

I nodded, though my mind was still half-stuck on the “my new daughter” comment from earlier. It sat uncomfortably heavy in my chest, like something too difficult to process all at once.

“We will have more opportunities for these kinds of… exchanges,” she continued, her tone softening just a touch. “I will make sure of it. We will also discuss Anima in greater detail, but that will have to wait. I cannot say when things will return to normal on my end, but I promise you will not be inconvenienced any longer than absolutely necessary.”

I was taken aback by that, not having expected her to straight up offer to talk about Anima like this, but it was definitely a welcome change.

“You will remain in the apartment for today,” she added firmly, that signature finality threading back into her tone. “I have stationed four of my most trusted officers outside. There is no reason to be afraid—nothing will happen to you under their watch. I have also contacted both Mr. Shori and Miss Kanis to inform them that you will be unable to attend your sessions today. I made it abundantly clear the matter was beyond your control, of course.”

Her composure faltered slightly as she pushed herself up from the chair, the limpness of her right side making the motion slow and unsteady. I instinctively started to move to help her before even really thinking about it, but the look she shot me froze me mid-movement.

“I will handle the rest, Seraphine,” she said, voice steady but drained. “Rest. Recover. Your injuries are not something you have the luxury to ignore.”

She paused for a heartbeat, meeting my eyes with that same intensity she always had—just… quieter this time.

“I will return once the investigators have been dealt with. Until then, think about everything that’s happened, but do not let it consume you.” A faint smile ghosted across her face, more weary than warm. “Rest—that is your number one priority.”

And just like that, she turned away and walked off, the heavy limp in her step somehow not marring the dignity of her exit. 

I stayed seated, the echoes of her words—and the sheer abruptness of how the whole conversation had ended—pinning me to the chair like plasteel bands.

My mind drifted back to the deals I’d made, trying to process everything. 

The requests I’d put forward, the terms she’d set, the way she’d said “my new daughter”. 

The words still echoed in my head, quiet but weighty. 

I couldn’t tell if there’d been more to them—if she’d meant them, or if it was just her way of mirroring what I’d said earlier, a corporate habit of language-mirroring dressed up as sentiment. 

With Valeria, it could honestly go either way.

The bigger question was whether she actually knew. 

Whether she realized I wasn’t Sera—at least, not the old one. 

Not her daughter in any sense of the word. 

She was too sharp, too observant, for me to rule it out entirely. And given her grasp of Anima—far more intricate than I’d ever suspected—it wasn’t impossible that she’d noticed something off. 

That she’d sensed something in me that didn’t quite fit.

Still, there were limits. 

The way she’d talked about my “injuries” made me think she wasn’t aware of the Rest Function, at least not yet. That was something. If she had known, she wouldn’t have told me to rest or recover like that. And the fact that she’d stationed guards and handled my schedule herself meant she clearly still thought in normal biological terms.

I tried to remember if I’d ever leveled up, accepted a Perk, or triggered any major [System] notifications in her presence, but nothing came to mind. 

That was… reassuring. 

As unlikely as it was that she had Anima Sight active all the time, I wasn’t about to rely on that assumption. If the activation of a Perk or Level-Up flooded the air with Anima Sprites—something that even a half-trained practitioner could probably sense—I didn’t want to find out the hard way.

‘So… I think I’m still in the clear with her on the whole System thing,’ I thought finally, exhaling a long, uneven breath.

Whether she knew I wasn’t Sera, though—that was another matter entirely. 

She’d just called me her new daughter. 

Maybe that was her way of saying she’d accepted the loss of her real one. 

Maybe it was resignation. 

Or maybe it was a line drawn in quiet acknowledgment—that the old Sera was gone, and I was what was left.

In the end, I wasn’t sure if it mattered.

If she had truly accepted me as Seraphine—this new, warped reflection of who her daughter used to be—then there was no sense in dwelling on what she knew or didn’t. 

Whatever relationship we had now, whatever this fragile truce between us was, it had been forged through truth, blood, and the kind of honesty that only came after both sides had been broken open.

Either way, I had time to think. 

I wasn’t allowed to leave the apartment for the day, which meant I could breathe, maybe even plan, for the first time in what might have been weeks. 

I still had a [General Perk Point] and a [General Skill Point] waiting to be used as well.

So maybe, for once, being forced to sit still wasn’t the worst thing in the world…

[Wolf Lord+ | Draft] Volume 2 - Chapter 55 - Alpha Deployment

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------------------- Start of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) -------------------
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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Welcome to the draft release of Volume 2 - Chapter 55 - Alpha Deployment for y'all.

As always, a quick reminder that this chapter is still in the process of being workshopped by me and that this is simply the first-draft.

And also: Please do not read the chapters here on Patreon, but go for the googledoc, .pdf or .epub instead. Patreon butchers all forms of formatting and you're missing out on easier and more enjoyable reading experiences.

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I struggled SO much with this one, it isn't even funny...

I ultimately had to give up and cut it, so there WILL be one more chapter of DM, even though this was originally supposed to be the last one.

My apologies for the long delay, it's been a cursed fucking chapter.

------

I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the link to the chapter:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IQ992fb90K7syxs9-SAG2OWW9to9wUQ2XFVGPqQ_Vd4/edit?usp=sharing

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Volume 2 - Chapter 55 - Alpha Deployment

Private Nyla Dab:
“You can feel it. 

“I don’t care what anyone says—when command announces a Battlefield Ace being deployed, the whole trench just… changes. 

“Guys who were slumped against the wall five seconds ago are suddenly re-checking their mags. Marines that required a Medic just seconds ago, get a second wind. People stop talking and start moving. 

“It’s like someone turned the dial up on the whole platoon. 

“We know they’re going to hit the enemy harder than we ever could, so we damn well make sure they’ve got the breathing room to do it.”

—

Corporal Ilyana Serik:
"The enemy knows. You can see it when an Ace steps onto the battlefield. 

“Their fire shifts, their lines bend. They throw bodies at the Ace’s position like they think if they just bury them under enough, the fight ends. 

“That’s when the rest of us have to dig in twice as hard. 

“The Ace is strong, no doubt, but never invincible. If the Republic concentrates everything on them, even the best won’t last. 

“So we fight harder, hold tighter, because every second we keep pressure elsewhere is another second the Ace gets to tear literal holes through their lines…"

—

Sergeant Malek Ordo:
"The strangest part is watching the flow of the battlefield simply… change. 

“You think you know where the line is about to collapse, you’ve got your maps and your estimates—then the Ace appears, and everything just shifts. 

“The enemy diverts, flanks twist and turn, and suddenly that weak point you were about to reinforce doesn’t even matter to the enemy anymore. 

“The fight’s abruptly orbiting around one Marine’s position. 

“It’s dangerous as fuck, but also… undeniably freeing. 

“Because if you’re not in their sector, you know the pressure’s lighter. You know you can hit harder, move faster, because the Republic’s eyes aren’t on you; They’re staring at the Ace."

—

Corporal Jace Hunn
“You instinctively start treating the battlefield differently, y’know?

“It’s not just about stayin’ alive anymore, or even killin’ all the enemies—it’s about keepin’ them alive as well now. 

“Once an Ace is deployed, you find yourself suddenly pushin’ harder, takin’ more shots, tryin’ to keep the enemy pinned; even more so than usual. Because you just know… They are both your best shot at gettin’ out of this alive, but also the most vulnerable person on the entire Emperor-damned Battlefield.

“After all, one thing is always true: They can’t do their job if we’re not keepin’ their flanks clear. 

“You can think of them like the sharp tip of a spear—capable of inflictin’ brutal, downright lethal wounds on the enemy—but… a spear’s nothin’ without the shaft behind it, guidin’ its strike and makin’ sure there is follow-through rather than simply snappin’ upon contact.”

—

[UHF News Net – "Echoes of the Frontline: Battlefield Ace deployment", PFC866]

======

======

Once she made it back to East 14, Thea got to work immediately. 

Her first order was for the Corporal—sending him back down to E4 to inform the Medic they had claimed E14, so Chester would know where to rejoin them once he was patched up.

It felt wrong giving that order. 

A Corporal definitely outranked her—Privates being a bit more of a murky situation overall—but he was the only one who couldn’t actually shoot out of the embrasures reliably due to a lack of heavy armour, and for reasons she still didn’t fully understand, he continued to defer to her without hesitation.

‘Being a Battlefield Ace is so weird…’ she thought, lowering herself beside her pack and pulling it open. ‘Ordering around people above my rank just feels wrong. I wonder how the Old Man dealt with stuff like this… Did he ever run into a Battlefield Ace and have to follow their orders, too…?’

Her fingers dug through the contents deep inside the pack until she found what she needed. 

Setting her Gram across her lap, she slid down to sit on the dirt floor. 

The steady bursts of fire from the Heavies at the embrasure filled the alcove, a semi-rhythmic pounding that weirdly soothed her nerves while she worked.

From deep in her pack, she had drawn out her multi-tool and began stripping the weapon apart with practiced ease. Over the past week, she had spent countless late nights in her quarters practicing this exact routine, breaking the Gram—all of its versions—down and rebuilding it until she could almost do it blindfolded.

Her last shopping run had left her with far more attachments and parts than she could ever realistically test in a single Digital Mission. 

Still, she wasn’t about to let them gather dust when they might give her an edge. 

If nothing else, this was the perfect chance to try some of them out in the field, while simultaneously fixing some problems she noticed during her earlier tests.

The first piece she slotted in was a [Double-Feather Trigger].

‘Honestly thought this was a waste of Credits when I bought it,’ she admitted to herself, a small smile tugging at her lips. ‘Guess that shows how little I still know about all this.’

She’d nearly skipped it, along with a handful of other mods, dismissing them as gimmicks. 

At the time, she hadn’t seen any situation where she’d need to fire a DMR fast enough to warrant such a thing as an entirely replaced trigger-system.

But the [Double-Feather Trigger] was quite clever, in hindsight—making every pull lighter while doubling the output. An internal engagement flap tripped the firing mechanism once at three-fifths of the pull, then again at the full press, effectively giving her two shots per trigger squeeze.

‘That should make keeping the same rate of fire a lot easier on my fingers…’ she thought, sliding the piece into place with a faint click. ‘Or potentially even doubling the output, should I really need to dump a whole mag for whatever reason, I guess.’

Nodding to herself as she tightened the last screws on the trigger assembly and guard, Thea moved on to the second and third alterations: [Extra-Coolant Injector] and [Focus Refractory Lense].

The first was straightforward enough. 

It added an extra buffer for heat buildup—something she knew would become a problem again if she pushed the Gram the way she had during her earlier [Glimpse] use. 

The weapon just wasn’t meant to sustain that kind of rapid feather-fire.

The Gram itself was capacitor-based, not coolant-based like some of the other Laser rifles on the market, which usually meant heat wasn’t much of an issue. 

But “usually” didn’t exactly cover what she was planning to put it through.

For that kind of abuse, the [Extra-Coolant Injector] acted as a secondary magazine slot, letting her load the same coolant magazines that other Laser-type DMR’s would use, alongside her normal capacitor-mags.

It would make the weapon bulkier and noticeably heavier, sure, but for the short stretch of time left in this DM, she figured it was a fair trade.

‘Now I just need to get my hands on some coolant mags once Alpha’s fully assembled…’ she thought, already filing it away as a priority.

The [Focus Refractory Lense] was a different story and far less invasive, weight-wise. 

It gave a measurable boost to the Gram’s output, increasing raw firepower and penetration, but at a steep cost: Range. 

The beam lost cohesion markedly faster, bleeding off strength well before it normally would. That made it a poor choice for long-distance sniping—one of the reasons she usually kept it buried in her backpack rather than mounted in most situations.

But right now, range wasn’t the priority at all. 

They were holding a trench, the enemy pushing in close. 

She didn’t have infinite freedom to choose her engagement distances, which made the trade-off a lot less punishing. If anything, it was exactly what she needed.

While it still wouldn’t make her Gram capable of punching through Super-Heavy-type armour, it would make anything short of that a lot easier to deal with. Whether she could punch through the chestplate of Heavy-type remained to be seen, but at least she wouldn’t need to try to aim for weak spots on the Heavy-types any longer.

‘It’ll definitely punch through anything short of the chestplate for sure.’

She slotted the last piece into place and closed the rifle up again, running her hands over the frame, double-checking each connection and making sure no screws or cables had been left loose. 

With the modifications complete, the Gram felt a lot heavier, but also more ready—far better suited to handle another round of her powered-up [Glimpse] bursts without cooking itself, and her, to slag in the process.

She had just finished her checks when movement caught her eye at the tunnel entrance. 

The first two members of Alpha had arrived, their silhouettes cutting through the flare-light leaking in from the battlefield.

One of them was clearly a Defensive Heavy, his frame swallowed up in Super-Heavy-type armor, every plate thick enough to shrug off punishment that would flatten Thea many times over. In his hands he carried a massive Full-Cover Shield, its size reminding her of Lucas’ Stalwart, though it was clearly a different make as it was a square-profile rather than a rectangular one.

The other Marine, slightly less intimidating in his lighter gear, introduced himself as a Squad Medic.

Immediately, Thea noticed the difference between these two and the new Wellis Two she’d taken charge of earlier. 

Even when their eyes behind their visors flicked to her Crysium Two-Star Medal, there was no wide-eyed awe, no moment of hesitation. If anything, they regarded her with calm professionalism, like they had seen this before and knew exactly what was expected of them.

“At last count, I’ve got just under five hundred Focus left from the fighting,” the Medic reported when Thea asked, his tone direct. “Not counting boosters, Ma’am.”

Thea gave a short nod, filing that away. 

With him—and at least one, maybe two more Medics still on their way, depending on whether Kalt was giving her the bare minimum she’d requested or the full three she’d mentioned—she’d be working with roughly five times her normal Focus pool.

‘That’s… a lot,’ Thea thought, a faint tension settling into her chest. The idea of that much psychic throughput made her a little uneasy. ‘I honestly don’t even know if my brain can keep up with that many [Glimpse]s at once. Keeping track of every movement, every timing, every possible kill path so I don’t miss is way more draining than I thought it would be.’

Her brow furrowed as she considered her options. ‘Maybe instead of one massive, high-intensity [Glimpse] every minute or so, I should keep it lower-intensity and spread it out. More frequent uses, fewer all-consuming bursts…’

Her previous tests had already suggested that was the better trade-off. 

Focus-to-kill ratios had been far more efficient with lighter uses of the Power. 

Still, she couldn’t completely ignore the utility of a full-bore [Glimpse] for emergencies.

‘Alright—low-intensity for steady clearing, high-intensity when we need to burn through Duplicators fast,’ she decided. ‘I can experiment a little once we’re rolling, but I really can’t afford to screw this up. No going overboard, Thea.’

Over the next few minutes, the rest of Alpha trickled in one by one.

First came a second Squad Medic, his armor visibly scratched and scorched but his stance steady and no less for wear, visor sweeping the alcove for something—maybe injured—before he gave her a sharp nod.

Next was the second Defensive Heavy. 

She stood out immediately to Thea—wearing standard Heavy-type armor rather than the Super-Heavy sets Thea had grown used to seeing on Marines in that Role. 

Her shield was smaller too, more like a heater-shield than the massive slabs carried by most Defensive Heavies. Still, the way she moved absolutely radiated confidence. And if Sergeant Kalt had specifically assigned her for this mission, and by the fact that her armour was somehow practically pristine, Thea figured there had to be good reason. 

Even if she didn’t know how yet, the Defensive Heavy would get the job done.

Finally, the last member arrived—a Medium-type carrying what could barely be called a gun. 

The weapon system strapped to his arms and shoulders looked less like a singular design and more like someone had ripped parts off a dozen different prototypes and welded them together. Wires, canisters, tubes and cooling fins meshed into a strange, hulking amalgamation that hummed faintly with energy.

‘I guess that’s my Offensive Heavy,’ Thea thought, watching him set the thing down against the wall with surprising ease before starting to inspect it. She tried to parse what it might even do, but came up blank. 

It was just far too alien a design.

Before she could consider asking, however, Sergeant Kalt’s voice cut into her ear over a fresh comms channel specifically for Alpha and Command.

“Thea, double-check with your squad if everything’s ready to go, then report back to me. Couldn’t spare another Squad Medic—two’s all I could get you. We need to get this show on the road as soon as possible.”

She gave a sharp comms click in acknowledgment, then turned to Alpha. 

“Status?”

The replies came back instantly, all five of them—the two Medics, the two Defensive Heavies, and the odd-armed, Medium-type Offensive Heavy—reporting in ready.

“Sergeant Kalt, Alpha is ready to go,” Thea confirmed. “Where do you need us?”

A short pause followed, filled with the background noise of shouted orders, gunfire and explosions just beyond the embrasure’s walls, before Kalt answered.

“Since I don’t yet know what kind of impact to expect from you and your squad, we’ll start cautiously. Head for E36—you’ll be isolated for several alcoves, so enemy retaliation should be manageable. Operational procedure is up to you, McKay. I trust you know what to do with the resources you’ve got.”

“Copy,” Thea replied without hesitation. 

She turned back to Alpha, gesturing sharply for them to follow.

But before she stepped out, she glanced back toward what had briefly been her Wellis Two—if it could even still be called that now that she’d once again left them with their Corporal in charge.

“Stay alive. All of you. That’s an order.”

A unified chorus of “Yes, Ma’am!” rang out from the alcove, the Corporal’s voice loudest among them.

Satisfied, Thea nodded once and stepped into the tunnel. 

She nearly collided head-on with a Marine coming in from the west, boots skidding to a stop.

Her eyes widened as she recognized him.

“Medic Chester,” she said, a flicker of elated surprise in her voice. “Good to see you on your feet. I’m heading out to start pushing the enemy back… Would you care to join me? If you’ve got any Focus left, Alpha would be glad to have you.”

Before he could answer, an errant thought slipped out with a smirk tugging at her lips. “I’ll make sure you survive this one in one piece, promise.”

For a moment, his expression twisted—first taken aback, then severely irritated, his jaw tightening like he wanted to argue. 

But just as fast, the tension bled into a resigned smirk. 

He finally gave a small nod.

“I’ll manage,” he said at last. “Banged up, sure, but I’ve still got enough left in me for a few more [Focus Link]s.” His tone hardened, and his eyes locked onto hers with a seriousness that caught her off guard. “Let’s fuck them up good. For Marie and Falks.”

Thea blinked, but only for a heartbeat. She motioned for him to fall in with Alpha, her voice steady as he passed her. “For Marie and Falks.”

They set off eastward, boots drumming the packed dirt. 

By the time they reached E20, the noise of bustling Marines reached their ears—people shouting over one another, the clang of crates, and the mechanical hum of loaders at work.

A glowing holographic sign confirmed what she already suspected: AMMUNITION DEPOT.

‘Good!’ she thought.

She’d counted on being able to resupply here en-route, since the second trenchline was one of the few in this DM outfitted with depots. 

Thea slowed just enough to gesture at the two Squad Medics—not including Chester. 

“Fifteen capacitor mags and five coolant mags for my Gram. Each. Then catch up.”

Both Medics gave quick affirmatives and split off without hesitation, weaving through the flow of Marines heading into the depot.

She wondered for half a moment whether it would have been smart to give more exact details, like the actual size and specifications for the magazines she required, but she threw out the troubling thoughts immediately.

‘Competence is to be assumed at all times, until proven otherwise,’ her Old Man’s words echoed through her mind.

So Thea didn’t stop to watch them go. 

She was already moving again, her boots hitting the tunnel floor in a steady rhythm as she pressed on toward E36, Alpha falling into formation behind her.

Finally, after another minute of steady jogging through the winding tunnels, they reached E36—their first stop, and the position where Alpha would begin their push.

‘Alright,’ Thea told herself, letting the breath in her lungs settle as she stepped into the alcove. ‘Time to put on my game face.’

The trepidation twisting in her chest didn’t vanish, but it shifted, melting into something sharper, something she knew well: Performance-bound adrenaline.

She’d learned long ago how to turn that initial sensation of performance anxiety into an advantage. 

Years of high-stakes tournaments had drilled it into her—how to take the raw, nervous energy that made your hands shake and your stomach churn and turn it into focus and speed instead of hesitation.

It was all about mindset, about reframing the moment. 

And the long minutes she’d spent waiting for Alpha to assemble had given her more than enough time to do just that.

This was just another high-stakes match—only this time, the arena was a trenchline, and the stakes were far higher than any tournament she’d ever played. A lot more people were counting on her to perform.

Taking position at the rightmost part of the alcove, just as she had with Wellis Squad before, Thea slung her Ballistic and Gauss Grams off her shoulder and handed them to one of the Medics with nothing but a pointed look. 

The Medic took them silently, understanding the task without needing words.

“Ondis,” she called,turning towards the Offensive Heavy. “Take both Defensive Heavies and one of the Medics. Move up three alcoves and shadow my shots. Kill all the Super-Heavy Armours you can, I can’t deal with them efficiently. That’s your only job, so make sure to do it well.” 

She’d made sure to pay extra close attention during the introductions and memorize all their names during the march—no sense commanding people she couldn’t address properly.

Both Defensive Heavies hesitated, their helmets turning her way. She could tell what they were thinking—that leaving the so-called Battlefield Ace alone didn’t seem like the smartest move.

“You’re of no use to me here,” Thea added sharply, cutting off their hesitation. “I need Ondis alive as long as possible, and you’ll be more useful protecting him. I’ll need you once we move out of the trenches, so stay the fuck alive.”

The two Heavies gave curt, overlapping “Yes, Ma’am”s before moving to position. Ondis scanned the alcove for a Medic to accompany them, but Chester stepped forward immediately.

“I’ll go,” he said, voice steady but tired. “I’ve got the least Focus left, so I won’t be much use to her here.”

Thea met his eyes for a moment—he managed to keep the flinch to a minimum this time—and gave a small nod of approval.

“Everyone,” she said, turning her focus back to the squad, “turn your environmental mufflers to max. If you don’t have one, full-mask up and do it manually. It’s going to get loud.”

She took a second to confirm her own muffler was maxed out, unwilling to make the same mistake twice.

“She’s not kidding,” Chester added dryly, the corner of his mouth twitching in a grim smile. “Make damn sure it’s at maximum… just trust me on this.” 

His pained look earned a few concerned glances from the rest of the squad before the team split.

Moments later, the two Medics who had gone to fetch extra ammo returned, heavy packs slung over their shoulders. Thea didn’t waste time.

“Medics, listen up. When we’re stationary, I want a [Focus Link] on me at all times. I’ll be draining you fast, so keep a close eye on your Focus levels. No Overdraws—I don’t need anyone dropping dead on me, understood?”

A quick round of affirmatives followed. 

The Medics exchanged a silent look, a wordless conversation passing between them before one—the one without the ammo packs, that had her two spare weapons slung over her shoulder—stepped forward to start.

Thea barely noticed. 

Her focus was already shifting outward as she felt the faint, tingling rush of the [Focus Link] snap into place.

She crouched low, peering through the embrasure. 

The night outside was chaos incarnate—tracer fire, detonations, and the glow of energy blasts rolling across the field like waves. The Stellar Republic’s forces were pushing hard, surging forward out of the now-shattered first trenchline and continuing to barrel straight toward them.

Her fingers flexed around the grip of her modified Laser-type Gram. She took one slow, measured breath, feeling her heartbeat steady a little, despite the adrenaline, as the familiar calm before a fight settled in.

‘Alright,’ she thought, scanning the chaos through the narrow embrasure slit. ‘The stage is set. Squad’s as ready as they’ll ever be. Testing’s over—time for full performance until the end of this DM… then a long-ass nap back at the dorms.’

The thought made her lips twitch. 

She was already looking forward to it—shutting off her brain, stretching out somewhere quiet, maybe even asking Kara to act as a pillow again; that one had done wonders after the Psychic lesson with the Runepriest. 

As exciting as this mission had been so far—with her somehow ending up both commander of a freshly formed Alpha Squad of her own making and a temporary Battlefield Ace—the social part of it was already taking its toll. 

Constant interaction, constant leadership… it wore on her more than any combat ever did.

She rolled her shoulders, loosening the tension building in her neck, and switched to the private command channel Sergeant Kalt had given her.

“Alpha Squad in position and ready,” she said, her voice steady, professional. “On your mark, Sergeant.”

A confirmation click came from her comms and she started scoping out potential pockets of targets, as she waited for Sergeant Kalt’s go.

It didn’t take long.

“This is a priority notice for all Marines,” he announced over the public command channel, his deep-set voice ringing in every Marine’s ear across the entire battlefield. “Squad designation Alpha has now been deployed to the battlefield. To all of you: Kill the Freaks with everything you got. That is all.”

Thea felt the familiar wash of Sergeant Kalt’s platoon-wide buff hit her—sharp, steady, the kind of edge that tightened focus and steadied hands. She wasn’t sure when the last one had expired, only that the difference now was once again immediate and obvious: Sights felt clearer, breaths slower, the world narrowing to the slit of her embrasure.

“Show us what it means to be a Battlefield Ace, Thea,” Kalt said over the private channel, his tone almost clinical but with the smallest crack of something like excitement. “Kill them all. Don’t stop until the DM’s clear.”

She let her comms click once in affirmation, already too focused on the next steps she knew needed to be taken, as she simultaneously spread her Nano-Bot Swarm around the alcove. 

Outside, the UHF fire picked up almost immediately, like someone had flipped a switch—tracer lines doubled, explosive thumps came harder and more quickly, and sections of the battlefield she hadn’t noticed a moment before threw themselves back into the fight. 

For an instant the Stellar Republic forces wavered, as if the sudden second wind had punched a hole in their nerves. Then their response snapped into place: Bulked Defensive Heavies clawed forward from the heart of the enemy mass, shields and Super-Heavy armour locking into several moving walls to protect the lighter troops behind them against the sudden onslaught.

Thea watched it all and let a vicious little grin pull at her lips. 

Kalt’s announcement had done exactly what they wanted—forced the enemy to expose new lines and shift focus towards the western side of the trenchline. 

That meant pockets of vulnerability opened up, blind spots she could fish through, and a precious few extra seconds to move unseen once the real shooting started. With the whole UHF line pouring everything into pressuring them, it would take the Republic’s command longer to parse how dangerous her own actions actually were. 

That delay was going to be everything.

Keying into squad comms, Thea said just two words—calm, clipped, certain. “Go-time.”

She drew in a deep breath, lungs steadying, heart slowing to that razor focus she knew too well. Then she let it out—not as a shout, but as a raw, primal scream as hard as she could. 

The Nano-Bot Swarm flared to life around her, amplifying her voice into an unholy chorus. 

The air itself seemed to vibrate as the sound peaked and cracked like a million tortured speakers tearing themselves apart.

“[GLIMPSE]!”

The world bled of color in an instant, falling into that familiar monochrome haze as the Psychic Power surged through and out of her. Thea’s perception exploded outward as her awareness stretched into the Stellar Republic’s ranks. 

She felt herself move, watched herself reap through their frontlines like a phantom of precision and violence.

Her mind ran at a pace that bordered on self-destruction—Sergeant Kalt’s Buff smoothing the edges just enough to keep her from burning herself out completely. 

She tried to anchor everything she saw: Every step, every flick of her trigger finger, every ricochet and recoil, every shift in enemy posture or armor pattern. Each death seared into her consciousness as information, data, rhythm. 

She was forcing herself to remember it all—not as part of the Power, or even the System itself, but sheer power of will—so she could repeat it later, faster, cleaner.

Seconds stretched into an eternity. 

Her thoughts frayed under the strain of trying to hold onto everything, her head pounding, nerves screaming as the edges of her mind began to burn. 

Then, finally, the monochrome world stuttered—glitched—and shattered.

Thea gasped, snapping back into reality—and the no-man’s-land between the two trench lines turned red.

Her body moved before her mind fully caught up, the [Glimpse] still burning behind her eyes. 

The Gram screamed in her hands, the [Double-Feather Trigger] chattering as she feathered it faster than most Marines would even dare think to pull. Each squeeze birthed two blinding lances of light, the air shimmering with the heat of supercharged plasma.

The first Duplicator fell before he even knew he was in danger—a Heavy-type, his thick chestplate glinting under flarelight. Her shot sliced clean through the narrow seam between his neck guard and shoulder pauldron, vaporizing bone and sinew in a flash.

The second dropped a heartbeat later. Another Heavy, ducking behind a nearby Defensive Heavy’s shield, thinking he was safe. Her beam punched straight through the side of his helmet, leaving only a molten ring where the steel had been.

The third and fourth came in similarly quick succession—Medium-armored soldiers sprinting to reposition behind the Defensive Heavies’ line, trying to position themselves to be better hidden from the western-front’s onslaught. 

One full trigger tap, two beams cutting across the night. 

The first Marine’s head burst into steam and red mist mid-stride; the second’s chest cavity bloomed open as molten metal and flesh sprayed outward. 

Both crumpled mid-step, their nearby clones following suit immediately.

Her fifth shot hit a Light-armored Scout weaving between shields and white-foam barriers. The laser pierced his torso and exploded out his back, the additional power of her modified Gram’s laser allowing for a clean punch-through, spinning him violently before his body hit the mud.

Her sixth target—a sniper setting up behind a half-melted white-foam barricade—managed to align his rifle towards their side for half a moment before Thea’s shot punched straight through his eye socket, turning the upper half of his head into vapor.

The seventh was a Duplicator trying to drag a wounded comrade to cover. Thea’s beam caught him dead center in the abdomen, punching clean through both bodies in one continuous streak. 

They dropped together, smoke rising from the clean, cauterized holes left behind.

Every movement was preordained. Every kill came exactly as she’d seen it in the [Glimpse]. 

Her body danced between fire and re-aim, the barrel snapping from one target to the next with machine-like precision, as she followed the exact movements she was holding in her head. The Gram glowed hot in her hands, coolant hissing as it fought to keep up with the ferocity of her firing pace.

By the time her magazine hit half-capacity, the front line of the Stellar Republic was a chaotic mess—holes torn straight through formations that had seemed untouchable minutes ago. 

And still Thea kept firing, eyes cold, movements fluid, following the fading afterimage of her own future as she worked off of the memories she was desperately holding onto within her mind.

Then, finally—almost a full second after she’d triggered her [Glimpse]—it was over. 

Thea’s muscles trembled as she exhaled hard, the tension crashing through her all at once. 

She slumped forward slightly, chest heaving as she dragged in deep, steadying breaths.

Her Gram hissed in protest, steam curling from the barrel, the scent of scorched metal and ozone thick in the air. She ejected the capacitor with a sharp click; the spent unit tumbled to the floor, glowing faintly from residual heat.

It wasn’t completely drained, but close enough—she’d nearly cooked the whole thing dry in that single, blistering second of fire. Thea pulled a fresh capacitor magazine from her ammo pouch and slammed it into place, the weapon humming back to full charge.

She raised the Gram again, fingers finding the grip automatically as she drew in another slow, grounding breath. Her throat burned raw from the earlier screams, and her head throbbed from the mental strain of forcing so much information through her mind at once.

‘No point holding back now, huh?’ she thought, a rueful smile tugging at her lips. ‘Might as well see just how far I can really push this, when needed.’

Then she let the breath out and screamed. 

“[GLIMPSE]!”

The Nano-Bot Swarm erupted back to life, catching and amplifying her voice until it became a deafening, electric roar that rattled the air once more…

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[TAS] Volume 2 - Chapter 54 - Becoming

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------------------- Start of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) -------------------
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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Volume 2 - Chapter 49 - Action has just released on RR with no changes.

For the Wolf Lords, this chapter is unchanged.

And also: Please do not read the chapters here on Patreon, but go for the googledoc, .pdf or .epub instead. Patreon butchers all forms of formatting and you're missing out on easier and more enjoyable reading experiences.

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New Chapter Hype! \o/

Not sure if there'll be a chapter friday yet.

If there will be, it will be there; if not, then it won't be.

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I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the link to the chapter:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jw7fQyzRKnNvXtW-O16ZH4G6Bim0d-w2LEUZ06Sj7f4/edit?usp=sharing

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Volume 2 - Chapter 54 - Becoming

“There is no such thing as fairness in this universe.” 

Those are the words of Patriarch Alaric Laniz Dravain, head of the Dravain Major Legacy, when asked about his family’s training regimen for their children. 

“The UHF is a meritocracy through and through. Our merit is measured not just in skill, but also in blood, in connections… in legacy. We would be failing our children—and our Faction—if we did not shape them into weapons worthy of the posts they will one day hold.”

It is difficult to argue with the results: The Dravains have produced sixteen consecutive generations of high-ranking officers, Battlefield Aces, and accomplished squad leaders. 

In the modern Corps, where every Marine is measured in raw Attributes, Ability efficiency, and combat readiness, the Dravains have perfected the art of raising guaranteed powerhouses.

Their children begin education practically as soon as they can walk. 

UHF-like Skill classes (minus System restrictions, of course) are woven into their daily schedules: Simulated Combat Tactics, Advanced Marksmanship, Physics, Biology, Psyker Theory, Battlefield Engineering, and many, many more. 

Each curriculum is personalized to suit the child’s predicted top-Role—Support, Heavy, Recon, Medic, Squad Leader, Assault, or any of the myriad other Roles the UHF MC observes—often selected before the child turns ten. 

Combat instructors include retired Battlefield Aces and decorated war heroes, hired for astronomical sums to pass down everything they know. 

Beyond raw combat training, the children receive instruction in galactic politics, military history, leadership doctrine, and strategic decision-making, ensuring they can thrive not just as marines but also as leaders at every level. 

Several years are devoted to Build theory as well, using Terra’s most sophisticated gaming platforms to test and refine potential Attribute spreads, Ability synergies, and equipment compositions. 

They review the current galactic gaming meta, dissecting the best Builds created by the foremost professional Build designers of their time, contrasting theory with practice until it becomes second nature to them.

To outsiders, the regimen borders on ruthless. 

But to the Dravains, it is simply the duty of a family that is considered a Major Legacy. 

They do not ask their children if they want to become Marines. 

The question is only how far they will rise once they do become one. 

Raised in an environment where every moment is directed toward becoming an apex-level marine, few ever think to resist. 

It is not indoctrination so much as inevitability—after all, when a path is laid so clearly, what reason is there to stray?

—

“We are the fire that keeps the forge burning bright and hot,” Patriarch Alaric Laniz Dravain once said. “Our sons and daughters will be the ones holding the line at the edge of the Void, while others debate whether it is fair they were born into privilege. 

The universe does not care. 

The enemy certainly does not care either. 

The UHF is a meritocracy—and our legacy is our merit.”

—

[UHF Core Network – Editorial Feature: "The Dravain Major Legacy - Forging the Next Line of Titans" – PFC931]

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Thea stood on the compacted dirt of the trench hallway, eyes sweeping over the four Marines in front of her while she waited for an answer to her request for a Medic—someone who might actually be able to help Chester recover faster.

None of them screamed “Squad Medic” at first glance, but she knew better than to trust appearances by now. Kara’s own armor was proof enough—medium-type, sure, but it looked closer to a heavy-type than anything a field medic should have been wearing in a traditional sense.

These four, though… by their gear, two were clearly Offensive Heavies—both lugging weapons that looked far too big for any sane person to carry around—and one was definitely a Defensive Heavy, his shield strapped to his forearm and the bulky plates of his super-heavy-type armor scorched and lightly dented from the recent fighting. 

The last one was a medium-type, probably their Squad Leader judging by the way the others were looking his way, waiting for him to speak first.

Thea was still catching her breath from dragging Chester out of the blasted ruin of Wellis Two’s alcove, the air back there still hot enough to taste. Chester had been half-dragged, half-carried, his legs barely cooperating as they scrambled to the far end of the trench before the next explosive salvo could hit.

‘I definitely need to apologize to him…’ The thought twisted uncomfortably in her head as she glanced back at him. ‘Didn’t think the damn Nanobot Swarm would be that loud.’

Even now her ears throbbed with a constant high-pitched ring, her noise cancellation cranked all the way up and still not enough to save her hearing from the auditory assault. 

She grimaced. ‘Should’ve warned him. Definitely should’ve warned him. That one’s on me. Stupid, Thea. Stupid.’

“N… No,” the medium-type finally answered, his voice shaky, still sounding half-buried under the shock of the barrage that had torn their alcove apart. From the way his armor was scorched and caked in half-molten debris, Thea figured they’d been caught in the same chain of blasts that had annihilated Wellis Two’s position—unlucky collateral in the Stellar Republic’s retaliation. 

“What is the plan, Ma’am?”

Thea blinked, caught completely off guard. 

The “Ma’am” landed harder than the question itself, and she felt herself pull back slightly, as if the word had been thrown at her. 

Since when was she the one Marines asked for orders?

Her eyes flicked toward the other three, expecting some sign that this was a joke, or maybe that they thought their Squad Leader had lost it. 

But there was no confusion on their faces. 

No hesitation, no glance back at him to double-check. They were all staring straight at her now, waiting, as though her answer was the only one that mattered.

‘Wait… is he not the Squad Leader after all? Maybe he’s just the one they expect to have answers, which is why they were all looking at him earlier,’ Thea thought, quickly reassessing her read of the squad dynamic. ‘Kind of like when Corvus handed command over to me during the Nova Tertius infiltration…? Wasn’t exactly a Squad Leader, except in name only back then too.’

The memory made her wince. 

She could still picture the chaos of that run—her calls that hadn’t been sharp enough, the hesitation in moments that had demanded precision, the chain of missteps piling up until their squad had gone down before ever reaching their main objective. 

Dying out there had been bad enough, but knowing they’d failed the mission entirely was the part that dug under her skin every time she remembered it.

‘They can’t keep fighting here,’ Thea realized, eyes flicking to the ruined alcove. 

The front wall was shredded, the firing slits collapsed or completely buried in debris. 

These four wouldn’t be able to do anything but get themselves killed if they stayed here.

And they’d just asked her—a random Recruit who’d run up out of nowhere—for a plan. 

That meant one thing: Whoever had been leading them was gone.

She hesitated, biting the inside of her cheek as her own situation hit her as well. Chester was the last other survivor of Wellis Two, barely managing to lean upright against the trench tunnel’s wall behind her.

Her mind jumped to the experiments she’d meant to run for this Digital Mission. 

The weapons testing—done, or at least done enough for this round. Her Psyker Powers… Well, those had left her with a headache and ringing ears, but she definitely had something to work with now; even if she wasn’t entirely sure what, quite yet.

But with the state of the battlefield, there was no more time for experiments. 

She’d heard at least half a dozen Squad Leaders call their own squad’s fallback to the second trench over the comms in the last minute. The front line was collapsing, and if she wasted any more time playing around, they’d lose the DM entirely.

Æht’s words came back, curling through her mind like smoke that lingered, no matter how much Thea tried to clear it away. “Where did your instincts go? All the teachings James drilled into you…? Unleash yourself, Thea.”

The words thrummed through her chest, almost as loud as the ringing in her ears. She let out a slow, heavy breath, forcing her shoulders not to sag, refusing to let the weight show.

“Alright then,” she said, her voice more forceful and sharper than she felt, letting herself slip into that tone the Old Man had drilled into her years ago. The one meant for moments exactly like this—when leadership had to be assumed, even if only for a few minutes. 

“You’re with me now.”

She jabbed a finger at the medium-type, who straightened immediately despite the lingering shock still written in his posture. “You—help Chester. He’s our only Medic, and we need him back on his feet. Get him moving, carry him if you have to. We’re falling back to the second trenchline.”

Her gaze swept over the other three Marines, making sure every helmet visor was pointed at her before she continued. “Once we’re situated, I’ll go and find Sergeant Kalt to coordinate anything further from there.”

It was the only plan that made sense. 

If she wanted to make a difference here—really have an effect on this fight—she needed more than just four shellshocked survivors trailing her through the tunnels. She needed direction, proper support, and someone with the authority and experience to actually coordinate everything. 

Sergeant Kalt was the fastest, most reliable way to get that.

She didn’t wait for a reply. 

Instead, she pushed past the medium-type and into the tunnels, trusting without hesitation that they would follow. 

They were Marines, after all.

“Competence is to be assumed at all times,” James’ voice echoed in her head, a lesson hammered in during countless drills. “Coddling your fellow Marines when you’ve given clear and concise orders will do nothing but slow you down.”

The original plan for Wellis Squad had been simple: Regroup in an orderly fashion at the center of the trenchline as shooting alcoves became untenable, then fall back as one unit toward the second trench once they were close enough together to call a unit-wide order. 

But that had always been the best-case scenario—an ideal, not a guarantee.

Squad Leader Wellis had made it very clear before the fighting started that the acting leader of Wellis Two would hold full operational command over their sector. If the situation turned bad enough, they had the authority to call a fallback on their own, no questions asked.

So that’s what she did.

“Wellis Two, falling back,” Thea announced into the command channel, her voice cutting through the storm of similar chatter. 

The channel was a half-disciplined wall of noise by now—squads reporting retreats in quick succession as the first trenchline steadily crumbled, mixed with Sergeant Kalt’s repeated, near-frantic demand for intel on a supposed Offensive Heavy with some kind of laser-gatling.

Thea couldn’t help with that. 

She hadn’t seen anyone like that in her sector, hadn’t heard the weapon fire, either. 

Supposedly they had been somewhere nearby—based on Kalt’s very limited intel that claimed them somewhere on the eastern flank, same as her—but that meant little when she had neither visual nor auditory confirmation on anything of the sort.

‘I should’ve paid some more attention to the battlefield in general… I’ll have to ask about the weapon later, at the very least,’ she thought grimly, boots pounding through the dirt as she pushed past alcove after alcove. 

Most were tombs now—bodies sprawled in corners, armor cracked and scorched. 

Some were little more than smoking holes, dirt, rockcrete and ferrocrete plating having collapsed inward like paper. A select few were entirely empty, and those felt eerily hollow, like they had been abandoned in a rush—which was likely to be exactly true.

‘Still,’ she told herself, forcing her pace faster as she heard the five sets of footsteps behind her, the ringing in her ears almost entirely subsided by now, ‘Isabella would want to hear about a weapon like that. If it’s got someone like Kalt this rattled, then it’s definitely something worth noting and pointing out to her, so she can take a look.’

Thea kept them moving, guiding Wellis Two down the trench tunnels. 

The din of battle raged behind them—distant roars of explosions, the hiss of laser fire, and the dull thumps of heavy ordnance—but down here it all sounded muted, muddled by layers of dirt rock- and ferro-crete. The tunnels carried the echoes like a low, endless rumble, constant but strangely dull, like thunder behind walls.

They made good time.

Chester’s injuries slowed the group down a little, but not so much that they risked getting bogged down. He seemed to be recovering bit by bit, his steps growing steadier the further they went, though he still leaned on the medium-type for support.

When they broke into the main tunnel of the second trenchline, Thea paused. Alcoves stretched in both directions, some already filling with retreating Marines, others still empty. 

She had no idea which were already claimed, and she didn’t want to drag her squad into someone else’s position by accident.

She turned to the group. “Anyone know the layout? Which alcoves are open?”

To her surprise, the medium-type spoke up without hesitation. “Second trench doesn’t have a fixed layout, Ma’am. Squads are supposed to leave at least one alcove open between them, two if possible, for repositioning later. Other than that, just fill in as you fall back.”

Thea gave a short nod, piecing things together. “And Sergeant Kalt? Where’s his command area?”

“Around thirty alcoves to the east,” he answered instantly, visor steady on hers.

That confirmed it. 

He wasn’t just another grunt—he had to be the interim squad leader. No random Marine would know both the spacing protocol for squads falling back and command’s location.

“Good,” Thea said firmly. “We’re heading that way. Keep sharp, and eyes open for a Medic.”

They pushed deeper into the second trenchline, moving alcove by alcove. 

By the fourth, Thea spotted what she’d been looking for: A Medic crouched over another Marine, patching up a nasty gash along the side of his torso. 

Without hesitation, she stepped forward.

“Medic. I’ve got another one for you,” Thea called, motioning for Chester to be brought forward. “Take him in, get him patched up. We need every Medic standing if we want to make it.”

The Medic spun around sharply, clearly ready to snap that he was already more than busy—until his visor landed on the gleaming medal embedded in her chestplate. He froze for half a second, audibly caught himself, then quickly nodded, his voice suddenly far more formal.

“Y–Yes, Ma’am. Leave him here. I’ll have him ready to go in a minute or two.” He was already laying out supplies, hands moving fast. “Where do I send him once he’s good?”

Thea hesitated, thinking it over as she glanced back at her small squad. 

“I’ll send someone to inform you once we’ve claimed an alcove,” she decided.

“Understood.”

With Chester finally in proper hands, Thea straightened, forcing some of the tension out of her shoulders. She turned back to the others, sweeping them with a quick look before nodding toward the deeper tunnel.

“Alright. Now we get Wellis Two a firing position and find Sergeant Kalt.”

Thea led the reformed Wellis Two down the tunnel at a brisk pace, finally stopping about ten alcoves away from where Chester was being treated. 

The spot was intact and offered a decent firing angle toward the first trenchline.

“Set up here,” she ordered, pointing toward the embrasures. “Get firing lanes established and keep the pressure up so the first trench can finish their fallback.”

The three Heavies moved without hesitation, taking positions and readying their weapons. 

Thea turned to the medium-type, “You know the way to the command area?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” he replied without pause.

“Good. Lead the way.”

Thea cursed under her breath and kicked off after him, boots slapping against the dirt-packed floor. He ran like it was nothing, not even pushing himself. 

Meanwhile she had to fight to keep pace.

‘Wish I could‘ve invested more into Strength; this is ridiculous,’ she cursed inwardly, teeth gritted. ‘Always struggling to keep pace like this is so fucking stupid…’

They reached the command area after a hard push—an open dug-out that stretched parallel to the alcoves, dug into the opposite side of the main tunnel. 

Marines bustled in and out, relaying orders and reports, the place buzzing with activity.

Thea strode up to the first Marine she caught standing idle near the entry after taking a deep, steadying breath to recover from the running. “I need to speak to Sergeant Kalt.”

The Marine turned, eyes flicking over her from helmet to boots.

His posture froze, then stiffened when his visor lingered on the medal set in her chestplate. 

He nearly tripped over himself in his rush to sprint deeper into the dug-out, barking for Kalt as he went, “S—Sergeant! Sergeant Kalt!”

Moments later, the ground seemed to tremble under heavy footfalls. 

Sergeant Kalt emerged from the far end of the command space, a hulking figure in super-heavy armor, the runner carefully following behind him, like he wasn’t quite sure if what he did was right or not. 

Confusion was etched across his scarred faceplate as his gaze locked onto her.

Thea stepped forward immediately, squaring her shoulders, refusing to let the sheer size of him press her back. 

“Recruit Thea McKay, current interim Squad Leader for Wellis Two, sir,” she introduced herself crisply. “Requesting permission and coordination to assist in holding back the Stellar Republic push—if you can provide me with the support I need.”

As she spoke, she angled her chest slightly, making sure the Crysium Two-Star Medal caught the light, displayed plain for all to see. 

If every other Marine she’d crossed paths with had frozen at the sight of it, then she was damn well going to use that reaction to her advantage. With any luck, it would bypass the whole tedious round of “what does a Recruit think she’s doing requesting to talk to a platoon leader?”

While it was a perfectly reasonable question under normal circumstances—especially with the UHF’s chain of command drilled into every Marine—they didn’t exactly have the luxury of blind adherence to protocol right now. 

Not with the first trenchline already collapsing less than an hour into the mission.

The proper chain of command for her in this situation would be to talk to Squad Leader Wellis first and have him push the request up the chain, which just wasn’t a great use of everybody’s time, in her eyes.

Kalt loomed over her, his massive frame casting a shadow that made Thea feel even smaller in her light armor. His head tilted just enough for her to catch a flash of surprise in his eyes—mixed with something else she couldn’t quite pin down.

“Damn… well, I stand corrected,” he rumbled at last. 

The words meant absolutely nothing to Thea, but she held his gaze anyway.

His attention shifted past her, landing on the medium-type who had led her here. “Thank you for bringing her to my attention, Corporal. You’re dismissed.”

‘Corporal…?!’ Thea’s thoughts snapped like a whip, her head twisting around to get another look at the Marine she had been casually giving orders to. For the last several minutes, she had been treating him like some random Private who’d been unlucky enough to find himself in a leadership position—but apparently he was actually a proper Squad Leader.

The newly revealed Corporal gave a casual shrug, visor reflecting the command dug-out’s lights. “Didn’t really do much besides show her the way. She was set on finding you herself. But still—my pleasure, sir.”

He offered an easy grin before heading back down the tunnel the way they’d come, boots thudding against the packed dirt floor.

Kalt’s face turned back to her, his massive frame still radiating the quiet authority of someone used to holding an entire line together by sheer force of will.

“Hmm… a Two-Star Crysium.” His voice was low, thoughtful, almost like he was speaking more to himself than to her. “Not something I’ve ever seen before… and definitely not something I’ve had the pleasure of commanding.” 

His tone shifted, sharper now as he focused fully on her. “Well then, McKay. Tell me what you do—and how I can make damn sure you do it well enough to get us all out of this nightmare.”

“I’m a recon/sniper,” Thea said without hesitation, already anticipating the question. “Though for missions like this, I’m primarily a sniper. There’s not much actual recon to do in a trench defense.”

She took a breath. “I’m also a Psyker—Awakened Wielder. I have a Power that lets me pick out Duplicators in the middle of the enemy swarm, so every shot I take is guaranteed to be on a priority target. But if we want to inflict serious casualties, I’ll need Focus—more than I can supply alone.”

Her eyes flicked toward the map table nearby, already planning out potential firing positions in her head. “I’ll need at least two, preferably three Squad Medics with [Focus Link] to funnel Focus into me and keep me firing. I also need at least two Defensive Heavies to keep me alive when the Republic inevitably targets me again. The last time I pushed them hard, they hit my entire squad with a rocket barrage and shredded our position.

“And finally, I’ll need at least one Offensive Heavy—or anyone with the firepower to reliably handle Super-Heavy types, really. My current weapons can’t burn through their armor fast enough to be viable, but they’ll still need dealing with.”

Her eyes locked with Kalt’s again, catching the faintest flicker—a tiny flinch so subtle that even with her heightened Perception she barely noticed it.

She knew exactly just how much she was asking for here.

Pulling two Defensive Heavies and up to three Squad Medics away from their squads at this stage of the mission wasn’t just a request—it was tearing chunks out of four or five separate units, leaving holes in the already crumbling defense line. 

All so she could have the scaffolding she needed to operate at her peak.

And it wasn’t even guaranteed.

Everything she’d laid out was based on her own read of what might work, her own conjecture. 

There were no promises here.

But without that kind of support, she wasn’t under any illusions: Alone, she couldn’t tilt the battlefield, couldn’t even hope to influence the fight at the scale necessary to matter. 

If she was going to try and turn the tide, this was the only way she could see.

Kalt’s eyes stayed fixed on her for a long moment before he finally spoke.

“Tell me something, McKay—are you the one who’s been using a laser gatling out there?”

Thea blinked, slightly confused by the question. 

“No, sir,” she said immediately, unclipping the sling from her shoulder and pulling the Laser-type Gram into view. “This is what I’m using. Just a standard Laser-type DMR—high accuracy, single-target, nothing fancy.” 

She gave it a quick tap to emphasize her point before slinging it back into place. “And on my way here, I didn’t see anyone who could pass for an Offensive Heavy with a gatling, either. I kept an eye out, as requested, but didn’t see anything matching the description.”

Kalt’s helmet tilted slightly, and when he spoke again his tone was perfectly flat. “That thing’s got no cycle-time, I assume?”

“Correct.”

He let out a long, heavy sigh, tilted his head back and glanced up toward the dug-out ceiling, muttering under his breath. “Mandatory reporting classes. All of them. Right after this mission…”

When his gaze returned to her, his tone had shifted again, all business. 

He gave a firm nod. 

“You’ll have what you asked for.”

Thea blinked, caught entirely off guard. 

She’d been bracing for pushback, maybe even an argument or haggling for how much he could potentially give her, but instead he was just… giving her everything she’d requested; just like that.

No questions about her plan, no demands for justification or anything.

“Now… Unless you’ve got specific ideas about where you want to set up and how you want to play this,” Kalt continued, “I’ll be orchestrating your movements from here.”

“That would be perfect,” Thea said quickly, a small breath of relief escaping before she could stop it. The truth was, she hadn’t even wanted full responsibility for coordinating everything herself—she just wanted to be pointed at the right targets and unleashed.

That was the best way for her to simply focus on what she did best: Shooting people.

Kalt nodded once more, and this time a wide, toothy grin spread across his face. 

“Beautiful. Never had the pleasure of commanding a Battlefield Ace before,” he said with a rumble of amusement. “Looking forward to seeing what that feels like, McKay.”

Thea froze for half a second, thrown by the statement. 

She wasn’t a Battlefield Ace—at least, she didn’t think she was—but with the level of resources he was now putting behind her…

‘I guess technically I am one now, huh…?’

“Umm… Just Thea is fine, by the way,” she added finally, feeling oddly awkward about how often he’d been calling her by her last name; after all, McKay was her fa—Old Man.

“Just Thea it is,” Kalt replied with a short chuckle, before turning toward the nearest comm officer to start setting her support in motion. 

She stood at ease, waiting those few extra moments for Sergeant Kalt to wrap up, knowing better than to walk off without being properly dismissed. 

In the meantime, her thoughts churned, circling around the weight of what had just been handed to her: She’d have to crank it up to eleven for this next stretch of the Digital Mission if she wanted to prove that Kalt’s trust in her hadn’t been misplaced.

‘This is going to be exhausting…’ she admitted inwardly, a small cringe tugging at her. But then, despite herself, a grin pushed through. ‘But it’s also going to be fun. Really, really fun. A full support team built just for me? That’s not something I’ll probably ever see again. I’d better make the most of it while I can.’

The thought settled like a spark in her chest, cutting through the fatigue and replacing it with a sharp, focused excitement.

Finally, Sergeant Kalt turned back to her, his presence as imposing as ever. “You got a spot with Wellis Two already?”

“East 14, sir,” Thea replied without missing a beat.

“Very well. Return there and hold until your support team assembles, Thea. Won’t be long, though a few of them are still pulling out of the first trenchline. Once they get here, they’ll report directly to you. When everyone’s in position…” his toothy grin spread again, anticipation practically written across his faceplate, “…we’ll start this whole show.”

‘I’m not the only one looking forward to this,’ Thea thought, a smile tugging at her lips as she gave a quick nod. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. I’ll be making an announcement I’ve always wanted to give, in just a moment.” His eyes locked on hers again, that near-imperceptible flinch surfacing once more. “Don’t let us down, Thea. Dismissed.”

She gave a sharp nod and broke into a sprint, boots pounding the packed dirt as she raced back toward East 14—the alcove where she’d left the rebranded Wellis Two, the squad she’d apparently stolen right out from under a Corporal.

Halfway there, the command channel went dead quiet, overridden by Kalt’s priority message.

“This is a priority notice for all Marines: We will be deploying a Battlefield Ace momentarily, with squad designation ‘Alpha’. If you are requested to provide assistance by a Thea McKay, do so immediately and without question. Take her orders as my own. You’ll know her when you see her—you can’t miss it.”

Thea’s eyes went wide. 

The order was staggering in its scope, an open endorsement that felt almost impossible to wrap her head around.

Kalt’s voice returned one last time, bone-dry and cutting. “Oh—and stop chasing reports about the supposed laser gatling. Everyone who filed them will be signed up for mandatory reporting classes after the mission. That’s all. Good hunting, Marines.”

The channel cut out, leaving the trenches in a silence that lasted only a heartbeat before chatter flooded back in, more chaotic than before.

By then, Thea had nearly reached East 14. 

Her stomach twisted with nerves and something dangerously close to exhilaration. 

She was about to be deployed as a real Battlefield Ace…

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[ND] Chapter 151 - Choice

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------------------- Start of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) -------------------
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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Chapter 146 - Conclusion has just released on RR with no major changes.

For the Fixers, this chapter is new.

-----

Potentially only one chapter again this week.

There might be one Thursday; but don't be surprised if there isn't!

-----

I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the link to the chapter:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ft7VNeGQ8JwIrVpdWTp3nGaq2dx-aR8kAtZb-h0ovXk/edit?usp=sharing

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Chapter 151 - Choice

I wasn’t sure what I was more surprised about: The fact that all those words had just tumbled out of my mouth that I hadn’t even known needed to be said, or the fact that Valeria seemed to be genuinely listening and taking in what I was saying—visibly reacting to it. 

A frown had spread on her face, not one of indignation or anger, as had been the case with Nyxstalker’s goading on her, but rather one of seemingly genuine consternation.

I, on the other hand, just felt… raw.

Like the words had ignited somewhere deep in my chest and burned their way out before I could stop them. They hadn’t come from logic or control—they’d just erupted, all at once, from a place that didn’t feel entirely physical somewhere that couldn’t properly be located.

Guilt came rushing in to fill the silence that followed.

‘It’s really not okay for me to ask her to be more motherly,’ I thought, biting the inside of my cheek. ‘She’s literally not my mother. And here I am, yelling at her for not giving me the right kind of love that was never mine to begin with.’

And the longer I thought about it, the worse it felt.

‘It’s bad enough that I’ve hijacked Sera’s life… now I’m out here demanding affection from her family like I’ve earned it? What the hell is wrong with me?’

I should’ve been furious at her.

If I looked at it logically, Valeria was the reason all of yesterday had happened. 

The fear, the pain, the blood. The invasion of our home. The renewed NeuroCorpse torture. The horror of Gabriel screaming as his arms were severed. 

All of it.

It was her failure to protect us that had caused all of it.

And even before that—she’d already crossed lines no parent should ever cross. 

She’d fed us NeuroCorpse, for fuck’s sake. Used her own children as tools. 

No apology or guilt could ever erase that.

None of that was okay. None of that should ever be forgiven.

So why… Why had I said all of that? Why was I so desperate to please and belong to her?

‘Do I really crave a family that much?’ The thought made my chest tighten. ‘Am I so desperate to feel like I belong somewhere that I’ll take it from anyone? Even from someone like her?’

My Intuition told me that, no—it wasn’t that simple. But it didn’t offer me anything better, either. Just left me drowning in the noise of conflicting thoughts and half-felt emotions that didn’t really seem to belong anywhere.

Valeria, at least, didn’t let the quiet stretch too long. 

She drew in a long breath—one of those tired, bone-deep sighs that sound like someone giving up a little part of themselves—and slumped forward, her composure momentarily cracking. Her left hand raked through her sleek black hair, mussing it slightly before she forced herself upright again.

When she spoke, her voice was softer than I’d ever heard it. Still precise, still Valeria, but stripped of its usual cold polish. 

“I see,” she said quietly.

A few seconds of stillness passed before Valeria’s lips curved into a small, almost peaceful smile—one that didn’t make sense, not here, not now. It didn’t belong on her face, but it suited her in a way that made my chest tighten all the same.

“You really have grown a lot, little Sera,” she said softly, and the way she said it made a chill crawl down my spine. “You must think me a monster, do you not? A mother too blinded by her own selfish need for redemption to properly care for her child’s pain.”

The words hung there, quiet but somehow sharp but not aimed at me, like a confession she’d rehearsed a hundred times inside her own head before finally saying out loud.

She took another deep breath, eyes growing distant. “Ever since you woke up from that coma, I knew something fundamental had changed. The first time I came home and you looked me straight in the eyes and said ‘Mother’ with that cold tone—so detached, so distant—it… broke something in me.”

She laughed weakly, but it wasn’t joy. “I had the reports from the hospital about the chances for your recovery verified three separate times by the best people EtherLabs could hire, and still… I hoped. Foolishly, selfishly, I hoped that I would get another chance.”

Her left hand went up to her hair again, fingers tangling through the ebony strands until she was gripping it tightly, like she needed the pain to keep herself grounded. 

“And you were so strong,” she murmured, almost to herself. “So very, very strong.”

When her gaze returned to me, it was clear, steady, and heartbreakingly human. 

“I leaned on you, Sera. Because you were stronger than me.” 

A bitter chuckle escaped her. 

“Still are, evidently. I cannot even protect my family, and yet I have the audacity to ask you for absolution? No wonder you would call me a monster. It is exactly what I am…”

She reached for one of the datapads spread across the table, fingers swiping and typing with mechanical precision even as her tone drifted into something strangely casual—too casual for somebody like her. 

“I really thought I knew better,” she continued, her voice growing quieter as she stared at the screen. “Thought I could manage everything without having to sacrifice anything. Thought I could outmaneuver consequences. Get away with it all… But here we are.”

She didn’t look at me as she spoke next. 

“You want to know what my worst flaw is, Sera?” she asked, shaking her head slightly, a tired, bitter smile pulling at her lips. “It’s that I still think I was right. That I am right. Even after everything. I still believe I made the best possible choices with the information I had at the time. Every single decision—I can’t see myself doing anything differently, even if I had the chance to go back. I’d do everything exactly the same, landing both of us right here, once more.”

My chest tightened, anger flaring up before I could stop it. I didn’t even have time to think. 

The words just exploded out of me.

“You’d still torture Gabriel and me for no reason, then?” My voice cracked, too loud, too raw. 

“You fed us NeuroCorpse, Valeria! You poisoned your own children—for what? Because I asked for help from a person I couldn’t possibly know anything about? Because Gabriel almost died and it made you look bad? And you’re still standing there saying you wouldn’t do anything differently, even after realising what you have done? What the fuck is wrong with you?! You’re not just a monster, you’re a fucking psychopath!”

My voice echoed through the empty apartment, bouncing off the walls and back into my ears like a gunshot I couldn’t take back.

And then the silence hit.

The anger drained out of me just as fast as it had flared up, replaced by cold, creeping dread. I realized what I’d just done—what I’d said. 

I’d cursed at her. Screamed in her face. Called her a psychopath.

Valeria didn’t move. Didn’t even blink. 

Her eyes were locked on me—steady, unflinching, unreadable. 

And yet, something primal inside me recoiled, my body instinctively wanting to shrink back, to disappear under that gaze.

Even without the usual sharpness—the clipped tone, the flawless posture, the steel in her every word—she still scared the hell out of me. Because no matter how raw or broken she looked right now, she was still Valeria Vildea.

The silence stretched between us like a blade balanced on edge. 

Every passing second dragged longer than it had any right to, until it felt like whole minutes were slipping by between heartbeats. The air itself seemed to thicken with tension, coiling in my gut until it was hard to breathe.

I almost flipped my Ego on—almost. 

It would’ve been so easy to hide behind the calm that came with it, to bury everything messy and human under layers of focus and control. 

But it didn’t feel right. Not this time. 

This wasn’t a fight I could win with logic or calculation. 

This wasn’t about efficiency—it was about emotion, pure and unfiltered.

The uncertainty of what she’d do next—the way she just looked at me without saying a word—was enough to make my stomach twist, bile creeping up my throat. 

I’d never felt fear like this. Not the kind that came from danger, but from confrontation—from not knowing whether I’d just crossed a line that couldn’t be uncrossed.

Still, I didn’t look away. Couldn’t.

‘I need to get through this,’ I told myself, gripping the edges of the chair to try and steady myself. ‘It was always going to come to this at some point. Might as well be now.’

“Yes,” Valeria said simply with no remorse evident in her voice. 

Just that one, sharp word cutting through the silence like a scalpel.

My heart sank. I thought that maybe, maybe she’d say something more—an explanation, a justification, anything to soften it. But she didn’t. 

Not right away, anyway.

Then, after what felt like a full minute, she added, “I would have done it all again. Especially the NeuroCorpse.”

The admission hit me like a slap. I actually flinched.

Before I could say anything, she lifted a finger—graceful, deliberate—signaling me to stay quiet and listen. Her tone stayed measured, the kind of calm that came from someone who had already dissected every moral angle and filed them neatly away.

“Administering Gabriel and you the NeuroCorpse was not solely an instructional exercise,” she said evenly. “It was, admittedly, used as such at the time, but that was not the initial purpose. It was something that needed to happen—inevitably. Gabriel required a reason to take life more seriously, and you…” 

Her eyes softened slightly, though the edge never left her voice. “You needed a reminder. People are not kind, Sera. You used to know this. You forgot.”

Her words hung heavy in the air, each one placed like a deliberate weight.

“The encounter with Mr. Shori, however beneficial it ended up being in the long run, had dulled your instincts. You began to believe that idealism and kindness was anything but an extreme rarity in this world, and that,” she said, leaning back slightly, “was dangerous. Unacceptable. So I acted. Whether or not either of you had done anything wrong was irrelevant—the intervention was necessary. Logical. The fact that both of you just happened to need reminders at the same time, was but a happy coincidence.”

She paused, and then, almost unbelievably, a small, proud smile flickered across her face. 

“And I was right. Even in hindsight, it was the correct decision. It prepared you, specifically, Sera. Had you not built resistance from that night, yesterday would have gone quite differently, I would imagine.”

I blinked, confused. “Resistance?”

Valeria gave a slow nod. “NeuroCorpse leaves behind a decaying tolerance within the nervous system—a form of adaptive resistance. It fades after approximately a month. By exposing you both in a controlled setting, I ensured that if either of you were ever captured, you’d survive the administration of large doses and long enough for me to find you. Most corporations still make heavy use of NeuroCorpse during interrogations that are time-sensitive, after all. It’s quick, it’s efficient, and it’s absolute. I simply ensured that, should that situation ever arise, it would not be the end.”

Her logic was airtight. Clean. Cold.

But beneath the precision, her words made my stomach twist.

She’d planned that dinner. Not as a punishment. Not as a lesson. But as a preemptive countermeasure—because she’d expected us to be tortured someday.

And the absolute worst part was that I knew she was right. Every damn word of it.

‘That explains everything…’ 

The thought hit me hard, sitting like lead in the pit of my stomach.

I’d wondered about it even as it was happening—why the NeuroCorpse they’d pumped into me had felt so much weaker than Valeria’s dose back at the dinner. Nyxstalker’s men had used a much larger dose, and yet… it hadn’t hit me the same way. Not even close. The food buff still circulating in my bloodstream wasn’t enough to make up that kind of difference.

No—this had been it. The reason. 

That earlier exposure had numbed my system, trained my nerves to endure just long enough to survive.

Even with the few points of Ego I’d gained since that dinner, there was no way I should’ve lasted a full minute under NeuroCorpse’s grip. 

Not without that resistance Valeria had forced on me. Not without her interference.

I swallowed hard, staring at the table. 

“You should’ve just told us,” I said quietly. The words came out softer than I intended, more weary than accusatory—for I knew that they didn’t hold up under scrutiny, before I even said them.

Valeria didn’t hesitate. “And make the both of you worry about something you could neither prevent nor prepare for?” Her tone carried that familiar, cool rhythm again—polished, automatic—but underneath it, there was something lighter, almost teasing. “Sera, my sweet girl… you’re smarter than that.”

I flinched at the sound of it. The gentle reprimand. The strange warmth behind it. 

Because she was right.

Even if she’d told me, what would that have changed? I would’ve spent every waking moment on edge, watching every shadow, every sound in the hall. Gabriel would’ve been worse—he had already jumped at the idea of getting snatched by Scavs every time he left the apartment. Telling him that actual corporate operatives might come for him too? That he’d be tortured just because of who he was? That would’ve utterly broken him.

No. As twisted as it was, she’d made the only logical call.

And that realization—that I understood her reasoning, that I agreed with it—made me feel sick all over again.

“But I understand where you’re coming from, Sera,” Valeria said suddenly, pulling my attention back to her face. I hadn’t expected her to keep talking after that blow-out. “I have not made my actions transparent—nor am I obligated to, mind you—but that does not change the fact that I failed in my duties yesterday.”

Before I could respond, she flipped the datapad in her hand and slid it across the table. 

The device skidded to a stop right in front of me with a soft clack.

“I will give you a choice now,” she said. “One I did not consider you ready for before. You’ve proven yourself far more capable than I anticipated—capable enough to no longer require my permanent oversight.”

I glanced down at the datapad, hesitating before picking it up. 

Three sections glowed on the screen, each framed in a soft amber outline. 

My eyes flicked between them, scanning the labels. 

Then I looked back up at Valeria, and my heart skipped at the implications.

“You may continue living with us—Gabriel, Oliver, and myself—if that is your decision,” she explained, her tone returning to that careful, almost clinical calm. “But I will not compel you to. You have earned the right to decide your next steps.”

She leaned back slightly, her left hand gesturing toward the screen. “I can arrange any of these options. The first is an apartment here in Delta, on the same floor as the rest of the family. The second, an independent unit in one of Neo Avalis’s middle districts—away from corporate interference, or about as away as you can get, at least. The final option is Fenwylde Academy, alongside Gabriel, once he has recovered. You would live there for the duration of your studies.”

Her hand rose again, raking through her dark hair until the faint sound of strands catching and tearing echoed in the silence. It wasn’t the deliberate gesture of a composed executive—it was messy. 

“If you want your own life, make your own decisions, make your own mistakes… You can have it all,” she said, and for the first time since I’d met her, her voice trembled. “But understand that I can’t protect you if you do. You’ll be on your own, Seraphine. Make your choice.”

My thoughts spiraled the moment she finished speaking.

Freedom. 

The word sounded good—tempting even—but the more I tried to picture it, the less it felt real. What did freedom even mean here? Was it something I wanted? Something I’d earned? 

Or was it just a way of running away from everything I didn’t know how to deal with?

Valeria had done terrible things. That much hadn’t changed. 

But sitting across from her now, hearing the exhaustion in her voice, watching the cracks in her perfect mask, I couldn’t deny that she had also done everything in her power to protect this family. 

Even yesterday’s disaster… it wasn’t negligence, not by a long shot. 

It had been a calculated risk gone wrong, and she’d admitted that much outright. And now that the cards were on the table, there was no universe where she’d let something like that happen again. 

No—if anything, she’d be even more dangerous now; just not to me. Nyxstalker and his people, on the other hand, were walking corpses; they just didn’t know it yet.

So what was I really running from? Her methods? Her control? 

Or the fact that staying meant accepting I was part of this strange, discordant family now—whether I deserved or wanted to be or not?

The idea of my own apartment definitely had its appeal, no doubt. 

Space to breathe, to experiment, to test out new Skills and Perks without prying eyes or awkward explanations. Maybe even try some of the crazier theories about the System that I hadn’t dared to attempt in shared quarters. 

‘It would mean independence, real independence,’ I thought wistfully.

But then the other side of it hit me just as fast. 

Without Valeria’s reach, I’d have no safety net. No backup plan. 

Yesterday had made that brutally clear—I wasn’t anywhere near untouchable, not even close. 

The thought of losing the invisible protection her name alone carried… It was suffocating.

With the issue of Valir still being out there, biding her time until she could crack me lack an egg, other potential gang-related issues arising and potentially making enemies as part of my new Operator license? Once I started working on that side of things, I was bound to make an enemy here or there.

Valeria’s existence was a safety net, as long as I was near her, even for those future problems.

And truthfully, I hadn’t exactly been stifled living with them. Far from it, honestly. 

Gabriel had been the one to get me the SPG-01 shard, to nudge me toward programming in the first place. He’d been my bridge to so many things I wouldn’t have learned on my own yet. 

Valeria herself had gotten me into the Arkion Dojo; facilitated me meeting Miss K, Kenzie, Jin and Thomas—which I haven’t even really figured out how to feel about them all yet.

Living here hadn’t limited me—it had accelerated me. I was nowhere near the point where living with them was more of a hindrance than a help.

Freedom sounded nice, sure. But after nearly dying so many times in the past few weeks, freedom also sounded like a luxury I couldn’t afford.

Not yet.

My hands tightened around the datapad as that realization sank in, the glow of its screen reflecting in my trembling fingers. 

I didn’t know if I wanted to stay—but I sure as hell wasn’t prepared or really ready to leave…

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[Announcement] Membership Billing will be Resuming, starting today. Refunds Available. More info inside.

Hello everyone, LunaWolve here.

Just a quick update, because I don't want to just spring this on you unannounced.

With the recent mini-hiatus and issues regarding my health, I had announced a month long billing break using Patreon's "Pause Billing" feature.

I figured it would be a good way to give back to y'alls for being so patient with me over the past weeks.

Unfortunately, I did not, however, consider that Patreon is an unmitigated piece of shit when it comes to usability of any kind for the creators.

The "Pause Billing" feature has already caused me more work in the few days it's been active than most of a work day at my actual damn job.

There are numerous issues with it, such as people that have previous subbed being unable to get access to the backlog, people being completely unable to sub (even new ones, despite the feature saying they should be able to), and a lot of people simply losing access to the backlog entirely.

As such, I will be re-instating the billing period as of today, to hopefully fix those issues.

But, as I still want to give back for people that feel like they haven't gotten their money's worth this past month, I will be offering unconditional refunds for anyone that wants it.

You can either request one here below in the comments or via direct messages here on Patreon or Discord, and I'll refund the payment for the past month manually via the Patreon Interface (that hopefully won't break shit).

Thank you for your patience and understanding on this matter.

[TAS] Volume 2 - Chapter 53 - Fire and Smoke

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------------------- Start of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) -------------------
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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Volume 2 - Chapter 48 - Mission-Briefing has just released on RR with no changes.

For the Wolf Lords, this chapter is unchanged.

And also: Please do not read the chapters here on Patreon, but go for the googledoc, .pdf or .epub instead. Patreon butchers all forms of formatting and you're missing out on easier and more enjoyable reading experiences.

------

EDIT (16/10/25): Next Chapter will be NEXT WEEK at the usual times! There's only this one for the week!

Not quite at 100% yet, but we at least get a new chapter today.

------

I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the link to the chapter:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/107FXS3j7KHLy0X4ZJS0j2Y_HQNYxBrxFi7Q-cjjU_DY/edit?usp=sharing

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Volume 2 - Chapter 53 - Fire and Smoke

“The difference between a One-Star MVM and a Two-Star MVM is not simply a matter of one extra star being added to the medal—it is a leap measured in several orders of magnitude.

One-Stars prove themselves the strongest of their Recruitment Drive, and that’s no small feat—outperforming thousands of similarly experienced Marines in their sector cluster. But a Two-Star? A Two-Star has bested everyone in their Assessment. 

That widens the pool exponentially. 

Instead of just outscoring a few thousand—or even ten thousand—fresh hopefuls from the same Recruitment Drive, they’ve risen above seasoned Marines—true veterans—in one of the harshest competitions the Corps can throw at them.

And there are far more veterans than there are Recruits in these Assessments.

An early-Drive Assessment usually runs a ratio of about one Recruit to thirty, sometimes even one to fifty Privates and beyond, depending on where in the galaxy you are. 

To beat that many hardened Marines and walk away with a Two-Star MVM medal? 

That isn’t something you can brush off or pretend doesn’t matter.

And the Digital Missions reflect that very truth.

The rulesets scale with it: Three One-Stars in a platoon are worth keeping an eye on, but a single Two-Star often proves more disruptive, more impactful, and more game-changing than all three combined.

The reason is relatively simple—raw strength is part of it, sure. But it’s never just that. 

It’s mentality. 

It’s the way they treat every DM like it’s life or death; or a perfect testing ground for a new way to apply themselves to the fullest. It’s their refusal to waste even a second, wringing every possible advantage from loadouts, terrain, timing, and squad coordination.

They warp Digital Missions around themselves without even trying. 

Smart leaders know this, too—they pivot the entire strategy for the DM around a Two-Star MVM, using their weight as the spearhead while the rest of the platoon becomes the haft, the counterbalance and the force that keeps the thrust steady. 

And it works. Again and again. 

The payout for an upscaled DM completed with the help of a Two-Star is more than worth the risk for everyone involved.

And that’s something you don’t teach. You don’t train that. 

The kind of understanding that comes with it, is something else entirely.

And so, being matched with a Two-Star MVM is both blessing and curse alike. 

Your personal contribution might shrink in their shadow, but the lessons learned—watching a Battlefield Ace in the making, understanding how the machine works when it’s oiled to perfection and supporting the very best of us—are worth more than any individual merit. 

Supporting them teaches you that even the smallest cog, when aligned just right and alongside all of its brothers and sisters, can move the weight of the entire galaxy.”

—Captain Lorren Vey, UHF MC Instructor, PFC839

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Staring at the embrasure and the suspended Gram, where her faux-self had just disappeared moments prior, Thea forced herself to steady her breathing, though her pulse still ran too fast.

She had never expected to see Æht again after the Assessment, not outside of that nightmare—certainly not in something as routine as a Digital Mission.

The Runepriest hadn’t been able to give her much clarity back then either. Even after she’d told him everything about her Awakening and the strange encounter, he’d kept his thoughts close, only hinting that he had ideas worth chasing.

Ideas she hadn’t heard anything about since then, nor knew where they might lead him.

But, in hindsight, Æht had a point she couldn’t shake.

‘What, exactly, would the Runepriest actually do, if he knew more about her…?’

She had been desperate for clarity—so desperate to peel back the fog around her powers and stop stumbling blind—that she’d dropped every bit of caution she’d learned from James, from the Undercity, from years of survival, and handed herself over to a man who’d admitted outright that he answered to no one.

If he decided she was a curiosity worth dissecting—whether by Psychic intrusion or a more traditional scalpel on a table—there was nothing in the galaxy that could stop him. 

The thought made her throat tighten.

One lesson in, she knew it already: Whatever was going on inside her was far from standard. 

If the Runepriest needed weeks of study just to form theories, then what did that make her? Something so rare that even he hadn’t seen it before? Or something truly new, something without precedent?

It sounded impossible. 

The galaxy was too vast, too populated, for her to be the only one. Hundreds of years of System history, recorded and combed over for every crumb of knowledge by the different Factions in this conflict.

And yet, the more she thought about it, the less she could deny the possibility.

Thea was good at logic puzzles. Always had been.

It had been one of the main reasons she had managed to become MMM—one of the big three build creators of the last decade. She thrived on patterns, on unraveling impossible-seeming problems until they yielded to her logic. 

And the puzzle laid out before her now only pointed in one direction: Something about her was off. 

Not just unusual, but stranger than almost anyone else in the galaxy.

It had all started with the (Apex)-rarity Accomplishment—one she still had no clue how she’d earned or what it even represented. 

Then came the revelation from the UHF brass: Her Attribute spread wasn’t just unusual, it was unique among the entire Faction’s history, capable of peeling back layers of the Allbright System’s Class mechanics that nobody else had been able to explore for them. 

And then, most damningly, the Runepriest himself—one of the foremost experts on Psyker phenomena in the entire Faction, if not Galaxy as a whole—had been baffled by some of the things she had described. 

Even he didn’t have all the answers for what was going on with her at hand.

Sure, she could try to pass it all off as coincidence. But logic wouldn’t let her. 

At some point, coincidences piled up into a pattern. 

And that pattern, no matter how much she tried to ignore it, was becoming impossible to deny.

Thea had recognized it a long time ago but kept pushing it aside, terrified of what it might mean if she admitted it. And yet, she had always wanted someone to explain it to her—desperately, hungrily—even though deep down she knew the pattern itself pointed to the one, logical conclusion: No one could explain it. 

Not the brass, not the Runepriest, maybe not even Æht, whatever she was.

‘Something is uniquely strange about me… and it has to do with Æht.’

She let the thought echo in her head, repeating it like a mantra until it settled deep.

But she also knew she couldn’t do everything alone. 

That had been proven during the Assessment. 

Her squad had carried her as much as she had carried them. 

Viladia teaching her about her first Psyker abilities. Arrow Squad taking the torch when Alpha and herself reached their limit. Zach… helping her face what her Psyker Powers really were. 

And there had been so many more.

Every step forward had come with someone at her side.

‘I need help.’

The thought was clean. True.

She needed help—and a lot of it. To understand her Powers. To grasp how they worked, what they could become, and what made her different. To uncover what Æht really was, and what it meant for her that this thing shared her existence.

‘But I also need to make sure I’m safe. I can’t trust blindly… Æht is right about that.’

That, too, was true—and she couldn’t deny it.

While Æht’s overall behavior was… abrasive, to put it lightly, Thea couldn’t deny that being spoken to in such sharp, unflinching terms was exactly the kind of push she sometimes needed. 

Æht had cut straight to what she saw as Thea’s failures, no sugarcoating, no soft edges. 

And as much as Thea hated to admit it, she understood the point.

But she also knew she needed the Runepriest. 

As Major Quinn had said, there was quite literally no one in the galaxy more qualified to answer her questions, to teach her about the things she was fumbling through blindly, than him. 

He was dangerous, sure—but he was also her best shot at any sort of clarity.

‘I’ll need to figure out if the Runepriest is really an ally of mine… or just playing his own game,’ she thought, a cold weight settling in her chest.

It was one of those things that sounded simple enough in her head, but in practice? Nearly impossible. She had no way to test it outright. All she could do was feel him out and trust her instincts—instincts that had dulled ever since she’d left the Undercity.

And even if she could answer that question, there was still the other one gnawing at her: Could Æht, herself, be trusted? 

Their first meetings inside the Assessment hadn’t exactly been friendly, or reassuring. 

Æht had always radiated danger more than anything else. 

Her words this time had made a certain amount of sense, but Thea couldn’t shake the unease. 

Trusting her felt like walking a knife’s edge—though she couldn’t ignore the echo of James’ old advice: “Be careful with the brass.”

Æht had said nothing different there; which gave it a certain level of credence. But there was always the possibility that the entity itself was simply trying to keep Thea from the Runepriest to be able to continuously try to manipulate her in turn…

The truth was, none of it could be solved right now. 

Not Æht. Not the Runepriest. Not the strange patterns circling her life. 

These were questions that would need to be thought over again and again, with time, until she found an actionable answer—if she ever could.

‘For now,’ she told herself, locking the thought away as she stepped up and gripped her rifle suspended in mid-air where it had been this entire time, ‘I’ll finish this Digital Mission. Then I’ll start untangling everything else after… one step at a time… Somehow.’

She had no real idea how to break out of the frozen moment Æht had conjured, but something in her chest tugged at her with quiet certainty, as if whispering the way forward. 

It wasn’t words, just an instinct, a pull toward the exact state she’d been in before Æht appeared.

Carefully, Thea shifted herself back into place, pressing against the suspended Gram the same way she had when she’d triggered her—or Æht’s—[Glimpse]. The cold hum of focus gathered just behind her heart, a familiar pressure that told her she was on the right track.

She inhaled deeply, letting the air fill her lungs, closing her eyes for a steadying heartbeat. 

The strange silence pressed down on her one last time, heavy and absolute.

Then she opened her eyes.

The battlefield lurched back into motion at once—tracers carving the night, explosions blooming across no-man’s-land, Chester still crouched behind her, frozen mid-breath only to suddenly jolt into life again, screaming in pain over the din.

The world had snapped into that strange monochrome once more. 

She could feel her body moving on its own, the familiar disembodiment of [Glimpse].

Her vision-self moved the Gram, firing once—clean through the visor of a clone crouched behind a corpse, three copies slumping down in unison. Another turn, another shot—the laser slipped perfectly into the gap of a half-broken shoulder plate, dropping the Soldier and the two doppelgangers flanking him.

On and on it went. 

A Duplicator sprinting between craters—one shot to the knees, one to the visor as they fell just far enough to reveal the helmet between another clone’s body. 

Another hidden in a knot of soldiers, revealed only when her future-self threaded a shot into the side of his skull, the rest of the cluster collapsing like puppets cut from strings. 

Each kill burned itself into her memory, angles, timings, positions, her mind scrambling to keep track of all of them.

Seconds passed. 

Too many. 

Her skull throbbed with the effort, her temples pounding as she tried to hold on to every last image. 

Five Duplicators. Then ten. 

Each one marked, each one memorized. 

Her chest felt tight, like her brain was going to melt and spill out her nose. 

Still, the [Glimpse] dragged her further.

Eighteen kills. Eighteen. Each so precise she could still feel the trigger-break in her finger.

Then her vision-self jerked suddenly, throwing herself backwards into Chester and knocking him off balance—just as a storm of rockets and explosives shrieked in from the enemy line. 

The world detonated in fire and dirt. 

The embrasure disintegrated, collapsing in on itself, burying them both in a wave of molten dirt and shattered ferrocrete.

And still, impossibly, the vision held.

Through ringing ears and blinding dust, her vision-self clawed free, dragging a half-conscious Chester by the straps of his armor, hauling him deeper into the trenches while explosions rattled the earth around them. 

Every step left Thea feeling like her own lungs were on fire.

Only then—after what felt like a lifetime—did the vision finally begin to fracture. 

The monochrome bled away, shattering into a thousand shards of glass.

Thea slammed back into the “real” world with the echo of her own scream still vibrating through her helmet, so raw and powerful it nearly ruptured her eardrums even with the noise-cancellation of her helmet maxed out. 

Color came roaring back—red tracers, orange fire, the dark blue of the Tauron night hued in red and white from the flares—all alive and blazing around her again.

Her head hammered. Her knuckles were white on the Gram. 

She had no idea how much Focus she had just burned, but she was terrified to look.

All she knew was that it had been more than a full minute of precognition—a minute she could not waste, now that she had already paid the price…

—

—

PoV: Corporal Jaxon Mir Sartin

Contending with a Stellar Republic’s initial push was always beyond cursed, Jaxon knew.

It had been years since his first encounter with the Freaks’ sheer fanatical, self-destructive tactics, yet every single time it still rattled him to the core. The way they treated their Soldiers as nothing more than disposable meat to hurl forward—it was inhuman, and far, far worse, it always worked.

But this… this was something else. 

An upscaled Digital Mission meant the Republic’s opening assault had been magnified to a degree Jaxon had never endured before. The numbers arrayed against them were simply overwhelming, a tidal wave crashing against a wall too thin, too fragile. 

Unfair didn’t even begin to cover it.

His eyes flicked left. 

Two of his squadmates lay slumped where they’d fallen, blood pooling in the dirt. The remaining three were still on their feet, pressing themselves against the firing slits and letting loose with everything they had, muzzles spitting fire and tracer.

‘And we were one of the lucky squads too…’ Jaxon thought grimly, teeth clenched. 

A Defensive Heavy, a competent Medic, even two Offensive Heavies. And the only Support Role they had ended up with hadn’t been a slouch either.

A stacked hand, compared to most. 

And yet here they were, bleeding men—both the Support and Medic—before the first hour was even out. 

He wasn’t sure there would be a second hour of this mission.

The Republic’s firepower was unreal, an endless storm pounding the first trenchline. 

Every stray shot that found its way through the narrow slits in the armor claimed lives instantly—his fallen squadmates hadn’t stood a chance. 

Just unlucky angles, no heroics, no warning. 

One heartbeat they were there, the next they were gone.

There were simply too many rounds flying, too much energy lancing across the field, for any non-Heavy to survive with their head above the line for long. 

That was why Jaxon himself didn’t even try to sight properly anymore. 

He hadn’t laid real eyes on the enemy for more than a flicker of a second at a time, and even then, it had been through the slimmest gaps in cover. 

Every time he poked up, the storm of death came answering back.

So he did the only thing left to do: Leaned half-blind into the embrasure, kept his head down, and fired upward and outward in controlled bursts, praying the rounds found their marks while he stayed tucked behind the thick reinforced plating of the trench wall.

He switched over to his squad-comms. “We’ll fall back soon. The first trench won’t last much longer. Make sure to take Lonaz’ and Irin’s backpacks as well. Don’t leave anything behind—every mag, every kit matters.”

A chorus of clipped affirmatives crackled back through his helmet, the kind of replies that said they understood exactly how tight the margin was that they were dealing with. Jaxon slammed a fresh mag into his rifle, the metallic snap oddly grounding against the chaos outside.

The command channel buzzed alive in his left ear, a steady stream of squad leaders barking updates, all trying to keep their people in line with Sergeant Kalt’s directives. Orders flowed like clockwork—disciplined, calm, precise—and Jaxon found himself clinging to that structure.

‘At least we’ve got someone like him leading this clusterfuck,’ he thought, flashes of the briefing replaying in his mind. ‘Sergeant Kalt… guy’s a real pro. Maybe we actually stand a chance.’

That pre-mission sit-down had left an impression. 

The moment the squad leaders had assembled, Kalt had owned the room without hesitation. 

He’d laid out his Digital Mission record with brutal transparency—win rates, clear times, survival ratios—and then capped it by showing everyone the description of his Platoon-wide buff Ability. 

A True-rarity ability. Palladium.

The kind of thing most Marines only ever heard about in rumors.

Jaxon had felt the sting of envy even then. ‘If only I had something like that…’ 

But now, under fire, he wasn’t complaining. 

That buff was the only reason half of them weren’t dead yet.

When it came time to vote on command, the decision had been unanimous. 

Kalt wasn’t just the best choice—he was the only choice that had made sense. 

And that had been before the upscaled protocols kicked in. Now, his calm, measured voice cutting through the storm was the only thread holding their fragile defense together.

“Squads Pelt, Delta, Arctic and Peters, fall back to the second trenchline,” Kalt’s calm voice commanded through Jaxon’s ear, unshakable as ever. 

One by one, the squad leaders responded with crisp affirmatives.

“Squads Elise, Menis and Oracle, keep the pressure on to cover their retreat. Hold steady—you’ll rotate soon. Next up, Squads—”

The voice cut off in Jaxon’s ear as an ear-splitting shriek erupted from somewhere on the right, a mechanical scream like a thousand broken speakers tearing themselves apart all at once. 

It ripped through the trench tunnel, bouncing off dirt walls and slamming against the embrasure with skull-rattling force.

Jaxon dropped low on instinct, hands clamping around his rifle as if it could shield him. 

The rest of the squad followed suit—Aimes threw himself flat against the mud, eyes wide, while Telissa cursed and covered her ears. 

Kavos, in the middle of swapping out a mag, jumped and fumbled the magazine as he threw himself onto the ground, before staring dumbly at the rattling metal of the trench walls.

It was as though a sonic grenade had just gone off inside their alcove—or rather like a thousand of them at once in an alcove next to them.

“What the fuck was that?” Jaxon muttered, throat dry, heart hammering.

He tried to scrape his memory for anything from the briefing—enemy sound weapons, notable Psykers, even experimental tech that the mission might have started with—but nothing came up. 

Nothing like that had ever been mentioned.

He forced himself to move, to do something besides sit there deafened and dumb. 

Information meant survival. And right now, they didn’t know jack. 

Gritting his teeth, he slid forward and risked a peek through the firing slit, eyes straining past the muzzle flashes and the endless chaos of flare-light. 

The enemy was still hammering away, still rabid in their fire, showing no sign of having unleashed whatever Void-forsaken-scream that had been.

He almost pulled back, survival instincts shrieking not to leave his head up a second longer—when the night turned to day.

A torrent of laser fire ripped out from an alcove somewhere down the trench line to his close-right, so fast it was less a volley and more a solid beam of destruction. 

Like some mad engineer had strapped an Emperor-damned overdrive to a starship’s point-defense array and let it off the leash. The sky itself seemed to shred under the weight of it, the ruby flares lighting up the night simply drowned in white-hot lances.

Jaxon’s jaw slackened behind his helmet as the first line of enemy soldiers just crumpled, and then the next, and the next. Dozens—no, more than a hundred—fell in the span of a single breath, cut down so fast he couldn’t even trace where the lasers landed. 

One second there had been a wall of hostile fire. 

The next, nothing but collapsing bodies, burned ozone, and chaos rippling backward through their formation, with a large chunk of those seemingly unaffected deciding to jump for cover from whatever unholy abomination of a weapon had just been unleashed upon them.

“Emperor’s fucking light…” Aimes whispered hoarsely, his voice shaking as he leaned in beside Jaxon, helmet visor glowing faint from the reflection of the laser storm.

Telissa had stuck her head up too, one super-heavy gloved hand bracing against the wall of the slit. Her voice was shaky, her usual iron composure broken for the first time Jaxon had seen since meeting her in the prep room. “That’s… that’s not ours, is it?”

Kavos finally slammed his fresh mag into place with shaky hands, helmet darting between them. “I didn’t see anything! What the fuck happened?! Describe it to me!”

Jaxon just stared, dumbfounded, as the push had come to a dead standstill for a brief moment. Whatever that weapon was, whoever was firing it, it had just shifted the entire eastern-side of the battlefield in a single moment. 

“Who just fired that? The laser-gatling thing,” Sergeant Kalt’s voice cracked through the command channel, sharp enough to jolt Jaxon out of his daze.

He apparently wasn’t the only one curious—Emperor-knowing, he was more than just a little desperate to know who had just unleashed that kind of firepower.

“Speak up, Marine. We can hel—” Kalt’s order cut short.

Jaxon’s eyes snapped wide as a storm of rockets suddenly belched out from the Stellar Republic lines. Trails of fire streaked the night, several dozen of them, arcing straight toward their trenchline with terrifying precision.

“GET DOWN!” Jaxon roared, throat raw, hurling himself backward and as far from the front wall as his legs would take him. His boots slipped in the mud, body colliding with the side of the tunnel as the incoming barrage screamed closer, the air vibrating with the promise of annihilation.

The world vanished into fire and thunder. 

Rockets slammed into the trenchline in a punishing rhythm, each impact shaking the earth beneath Jaxon’s chest, the shockwaves slamming through his ribs like hammer blows. 

Secondary blasts followed—grenades, maybe mortars, hard to tell through the deafening roar—that chewed into the reinforced walls with brutal efficiency. 

Dirt and shards of the reinforced ferrocrete that had been part of the firing slits sprayed through the alcove, clattering off his helmet, choking the air with smoke and dust.

And yet, through the chaos, he realized something with a cold twist in his gut. 

Most of the rockets hadn’t been aiming for them after all. 

Their alcove took only a handful, enough to tear apart a good chunk of the embrasures and crater the front-wall, but the bulk of the barrage screamed past and detonated slightly farther down the line a fraction of a second later—exactly where he’d seen that storm of laser fire tear the night apart.

The realization sank in like ice water: Whoever had wielded that monstrous weapon, whoever had just buckled the Stellar Republic’s momentum and bought them a precious minute for retreat, had been buried under the full fury of the Republic’s retaliation. 

A masterpiece of destruction, erased the moment it had revealed itself. 

Squinting through the smoke, ears ringing, Jaxon forced himself upright. 

The embrasures were mangled, slagged and crumbling. The trench wall still stood, but barely; firing from here was no longer an option. 

He cursed underneath his breath, switching to squad comms.

“Aimes? Telissa? Kavos? Sound off.”

Static hissed, then voices cracked through—shaken and raw, but alive. 

Shapes stumbled out of the haze, half-crouched and limping against the far tunnel wall. 

Aimes looked pale under his helmet visor, dragging himself on one arm before collapsing onto the dirt. 

Telissa limped over towards him, weapon still clutched tight even as she leaned hard on the wall for balance. Kavos staggered last, armor scorched, helmet dented, but still on his feet.

Miraculously, they had somehow survived. 

But the trench around them was completely dead; unusable to fire from any further.

Jaxon pressed his back against the wall, forcing himself to steady his breathing, heart still hammering from the rocket barrage. 

He needed a clear head. 

The Command channel buzzed sharp in his ringing ears, Sergeant Kalt barking orders with that iron steadiness only he seemed to manage under fire.

“All heavy machine gun emplacements, priority on those launchers! Offensive Heavies, you too! They’ve shown their hands, light them up. Destroy everything in their general direction; we can’t let them disappear into the crowd again!”

That had been the plan. 

They’d been waiting for those bastards to expose themselves, holding back their biggest guns until now. It had taken the roar of that laser-gatling to flush them out. 

‘A steep price,’ Jaxon thought grimly, ‘too steep, maybe…’

He shifted, scanning the trench. 

To the left, the tunnel stretched open, leading toward the battered centerline. 

Still clear, still navigable. 

To the right, nothing but ruin—smoke and shattered ferrocrete, the next alcove obliterated into an unrecognizable mess. Dust hung thick, glowing faintly with each flare burst outside, every breath tasting of copper and ash.

He exhaled slowly, forcing himself to rise, but the breath froze halfway in his chest.

Two cyan points burned in the smoke, staring straight at him. 

They moved, deliberate and unhurried, cutting through the haze like ghostly beacons.

Jaxon’s body locked, fear spiking sharp through his gut. 

He couldn’t look away, couldn’t even force his legs to move, as those lights closed the distance. 

Then the smoke finally parted, as a figure stepped through towards them.

He flinched, catching himself against the wall as his mind scrambled to process what he was seeing. 

A Marine—her immaculate cloak draped over flawless armor, not a scratch, not a scorch mark. Slung across her shoulder were not one, but two DMRs, with a third in her right hand, each of the same make. 

With her free, left hand she dragged another Marine behind her, limp.

What made his throat tighten was the impossible contrast. 

She had just walked out of the teeth of a rocket barrage, untouched, immaculate, as though the battlefield itself had parted for her passage. And then he saw it—the gleam catching in the flarelight, lasers and explosions that managed to shine through from the few slits and openings the rocket barrage had left.

Not quite the same colour as her eyes, but close. 

Embedded in her chestplate, just above her heart.

A Crysium Two-Star Medal.

Jaxon staggered, knees buckling as his hand shot out to brace against the wall, eyes wide. 

That wasn’t just any old decoration; that was an Emperor-damned myth in medal form.

Then she spoke.

Voice raw and hoarse, carrying something that clawed down his spine like a specter closing in on its prey.

“Do you guys happen to have a Medic for my Medic…?”

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[ND] Chapter 150 - Long-Awaited Talks III

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------------------- Start of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) -------------------
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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Chapter 145 - Animus has just released on RR with no major changes.

For the Fixers, this chapter is new.

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EDIT (16/10/25): Next Chapter will be NEXT WEEK at the usual times! There's only this one for the week!

Not sure if we're back on regular schedule yet, but at least we got a new chapter!

More heart-to-heart with our favourite corpo-lady!

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I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the link to the chapter:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1I_3eaDPjbmhLv71XqPO-LdNBXeNqn8FEZdniideUNZY/edit?usp=sharing

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Chapter 150 - Long-Awaited Talks III

I just sat there, unable to make sense of the dampness sliding down my cheeks.

‘Valeria is proud of me…?’

The words echoed in my head, but they didn’t land anywhere. 

There was no warmth in my chest, no sting in my eyes, no lump in my throat. Just… nothing. 

I couldn’t even tell if the tears were emotional or purely biological—if they were even mine… or Sera’s.

‘Has anyone ever even said that to me before?’

The thought drifted up like a ghost, hollow and distant. 

I dug through the haze of my old life, but there was nothing. 

No memory of a parent saying those words. Not once. 

Especially not from someone strict. Someone like Valeria.

‘Would’ve never happened,’ I thought bitterly. ‘Not with the way my mother tried to smother me in affection just to fill the void—and not with him around...’

Thankfully, Valeria didn’t call attention to my tears. 

Maybe she didn’t want to make it awkward, or maybe she just didn’t care. 

Either way, she kept talking as if nothing had happened.

“I must, furthermore, admit,” she said, her tone flat as usual, but still clearly strained with exhaustion, “that this situation could have been prevented had I upheld my own due diligence. It is not something I take pride in acknowledging, nor in having allowed to occur, but transparency is, at this stage, necessary. For you to properly understand where we now stand—as a family unit—I need to elaborate on how yesterday’s incident came to pass.”

Even through the blur of tears, I could see the shift in her posture. 

The faint tightening in her jaw. The ripple that ran through the perfect composure she always carried. 

Guilt. Frustration. Anger. 

All of it carefully contained, but visible now, like spider-web cracks beneath glass.

After a brief pause, she drew in a controlled breath and continued, her tone once again settling into that corporate cadence that I knew her for. “I am one of the three heads of Counter-Intelligence at EtherLabs. My division specializes in the protection of proprietary data—research, experimental results, internal designs. We ensure that none of it finds its way into the hands of rival corporations… or anyone else unauthorized to access it.”

My eyebrows lifted a little at that.

‘Not exactly shocking,’ I thought, leaning back slightly. ‘Nyxstalker already hinted she was involved in that line of work. Torture, information extraction—all the fun stuff… And so did Mr. Stirling, now that I think about it. His reaction to my strange, disappearing blood makes a lot more sense now, considering that he would have known that Valeria was the head responsible for keeping experimental tech under wraps.’

Still, hearing her just say it out loud felt… off. Valeria didn’t talk about her work. Ever.

‘So why now?’ I wondered. ‘Is this her being honest for once? Or just another move on the board because I happened to save us all yesterday? Does she want something specific from me…?’

“Nyxstalker—real name, Aleky Horin—is one of the foremost intelligence operatives working under ApexWave Synthetics,” Valeria simply moved on. “I assume I do not need to clarify that they stand among EtherLabs’ principal competitors?”

Her eyebrow lifted slightly, and I shook my head right away. 

That much was obvious. Even without the little history lesson she was giving, ApexWave’s rivalry with EtherLabs practically screamed itself into the air. 

And besides—I remembered that name from the game. 

ApexWave Synthetics was a subsidiary of OmniaPresentia, one of the four big players in Neo Avalis, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with the other giants of Sobirashu Corporation, QuantitativeDynamics and BlackPixel Works in terms of influence. 

Their focus had always been the bleeding edge of the medical-tech industry—synthetics, pharmaceuticals, cybernetics, bionics. The whole package. 

Basically, EtherLabs’ direct mirror image. 

No wonder things had gotten ugly between them.

“A few years ago,” Valeria went on, her voice dipping into a colder register, “Nyxstalker led a raid on one of our offsite experimental facilities. The intent was to exfiltrate several research documents and one of the prototype subjects under study.” 

Her brows furrowed, a renewed, visible crack of irritation in her mask. 

“They succeeded. Although Nyxstalker and several members of his unit were captured as a result, the damage was… not insignificant. I’ve been cleaning up the aftermath of that particular failure ever since.”

Then she shook her head, letting out a slow exhale before continuing in a quieter, almost reminiscing tone. “He spent several days with me after his capture. During that time, I ensured that every piece of intelligence buried in his mind was… extracted. Details of ApexWave operations, EtherLabs’ compromised channels, internal personnel lists—everything of value.”

A small, cold smile touched her lips as her gaze met mine again, and despite myself, a chill crept down my spine. 

“As he himself reminded us last night, I am exceptionally capable at my work. His fixation on me and mine, likely stemmed directly from that fact. Frankly, I am surprised he recovered enough of himself to come after us again, considering the extent of what he disclosed under my tender care in those weeks...”

Then, just as I opened my mouth to ask the question that immediately came to mind—how he could have possibly escaped that situation—she lifted her good hand to stop me.

“Before you ask,” she said, tone smoothing back into calm authority, “operatives of that tier—myself included—are protected under a large net of corporate security pacts. The elimination of any one of us without sanctioned cause would set off retaliatory measures that no organization wishes to seriously entertain. The political and financial consequences are far too severe. This is, regrettably, the very reason that Gabriel and you were targeted by him, instead… ”

Her eyes hardened, the exhaustion giving way to something sharper. “But yes, he was, unfortunately, ultimately released from my care. Not by choice, I assure you. If it were up to me, Aleky Horin would have been disappeared many years ago, damn the consequences...”

She paused, her lips tightening as her gaze drifted off, unfocused—like she was scrolling through archived surveillance logs only she could see. “Several months following his release, EtherLabs began registering a pattern of persistent breaches. Not full-scale infiltrations—these were surgical. Selective data retrievals, reconnaissance incursions, and targeted personnel probes. Initially, my department assessed them as standard ApexWave recovery efforts—attempts to reclaim what they had lost during the prior operation. But the signature was too consistent. The precision, too deliberate.”

Her eyes refocused, sharp again, voice steadying into that polished corporate rhythm. “In time, the pattern became clear to me. The objective was not EtherLabs as a whole—it was me. Nyxstalker had somehow reallocated his personal vendetta into a formal ApexWave directive—to this day, I still don’t know how. But his focus was obvious and singular: Dismantling my work, undermining my networks, and drawing me into the open. 

“I presented a comprehensive report to the Executive Council once I had verified the data to support my hypothesis. After internal review, the decision was made to enact a Class-Three Protection Protocol for me and my household. A controlled relocation sequence began, coupled with a full-scale obfuscation of our digital and logistical footprints.”

Her tone softened just slightly, though her diction remained razor precise. “We became a moving target by design. Untraceable. Our identifiers, scrubbed and replaced with layered falsifications across every registry that mattered. The thought was simple: ApexWave’s operatives couldn’t hit what they couldn’t locate, and we could bleed them dry of resources.”

A faint, almost rueful smile curved her lips. “Ironically, EtherLabs profited more from his fixation than he ever did. Just as planned, ApexWave diverted an extraordinary amount of capital and manpower into tracking me down—resources that our own field teams exploited to conduct high-value counter-raids. Entire data vaults were compromised under the cover of his obsession. Each operation netted EtherLabs millions in recovered assets.”

She let out a quiet breath, somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. “And through it all, Aleky never realized how thoroughly he was being used.”

Her mouth twitched, and I realized that the expression wasn’t amusement, but pain.

“He knew he would never catch me,” she murmured, echoing Nyxstalker’s words from the night before. “He said as much yesterday. And he was right. He never did catch me. And yet, he kept coming. Again and again.”

Her eyes lingered on me then—expectant, patient, but heavy with something that made the air feel like lead. 

It was clear what she was waiting for.

I hesitated, staring down at the table, trying to decide if I truly wanted to know the answer that she was clearly semi-reluctant to give. 

But how could I not, when she was laying everything else bare like this? 

After everything that had already happened, what point was there in staying in the dark?

So I asked. “How did it happen, then? How did he finally catch up?”

Valeria didn’t answer right away. 

Instead, she gave a quiet, self-deprecating laugh—soft, humorless, tired. 

Then she met my eyes, her expression caught somewhere between guilt and resignation.

“Because I tried to be a good mother.”

I just stared at her, utterly thrown off. 

‘Valeria? A good mother…?’ 

What the hell was that even supposed to mean?

Thankfully, she didn’t make me sit in confusion for long. 

After taking in my dumbfounded expression—apparently satisfied by how floored I looked—she gave a quiet, mirthless laugh and leaned back slightly in her chair. 

Her posture, always unnervingly straight and composed, slipped for the first time since I’d known her as she leaned back against the chair, letting her ram-rod straight back relax.

“It was my fault,” she said simply, the corporate precision still there, but thinner now—fraying at the edges. “Because I deviated from protocol.”

Her gaze unfocused for a moment, as though she were reviewing her own performance file. “Oliver was right. He insisted—repeatedly—that we relocate to the next safe unit. It was the correct move. Every indicator pointed to the risk increasing the longer we stayed.”

She let out another dry laugh, shaking her head. “And yet, I denied him. I convinced myself I knew better. That my judgment, my control, would be enough. That I had all the variables, all the calculations, done properly.”

Her tone softened—not into warmth exactly, but something dangerously close to regret. “But… You were the variable I did not account for properly, Seraphine. I wanted to give you stability. Familiar surroundings. At least, as familiar as possible, given our recent living situations... A sense of safety after the trauma you endured. Cases like yours—injury-induced amnesia—respond better to familiarity, to environmental triggers. I thought… perhaps if I kept you in this place long enough, something would resurface. You would remember who you were before… everything.”

The corporate sharpness in her tone finally collapsed entirely, leaving only the weary cadence of someone who’d run out of excuses. “I was blind and stupid. Blinded by… concern, I suppose. I wanted to help you, so desperately... I wanted to fix what couldn’t be fixed.”

She sighed, the air trembling faintly between us. “Oliver warned me. More than once. He said I was prioritizing comfort over caution. That I was gambling with all our lives for something that may never return. And he was right. He always is, somehow… If I’d listened—if I’d done what logic demanded—Oliver wouldn’t be in surgery right now. Gabriel wouldn’t…” 

She trailed off, pressing her lips together tightly before finishing in a near-whisper, “…he wouldn’t have lost what he did.”

Silence reigned after Valeria finished.

I didn’t know what to say. I just stared at her, words refusing to form. 

The realization sank in slowly, painfully: She had done all this—for me. For her daughter. 

For someone who wasn’t even me, technically.

And that decision had nearly killed Oliver. Left Gabriel severely maimed, not to mention the mental trauma it had no doubt caused for the poor boy. Killed Mr. Stirling.

Put all of us through hell.

It was a lot to take in. Too much, honestly.

And for the first time since I’d met her, I didn’t know whether to be angry at her… or feel sorry for her.

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Not even a sound. My throat felt tight, useless. 

I had no idea what to say—no idea what could possibly make sense in a moment like that.

The small movement, though, was apparently enough to draw Valeria’s attention back to me. 

Her eyes lifted, locking with mine, and for once, there was nothing polished or impenetrable in them. Just exhaustion—raw, bone-deep weariness. The kind that stripped away every layer of presentation and left nothing but the truth behind.

“But it was all for nothing, wasn’t it?” she said quietly. Her voice didn’t tremble, but there was a weight to it that hit harder than any outburst could’ve. “You’re gone, aren’t you, little Sera? You died in that alley… for reasons I will likely never be able to uncover.”

She exhaled, the faintest quiver threading through it. “I should have accepted it. Should have accepted you. The new you—the one sitting in front of me now—the one who is trying so hard to fit in. To make me proud. To belong. And all I could think about was getting the version of my daughter back that I knew. My rebellious, impossible, infuriating girl…”

Her gaze dropped to the table for a moment before drifting back to me, eyes glassy in the dim light. 

“I just wanted one more chance,” she whispered. “To prove that I could do better this time. To help her find her path instead of… pushing her away and making everything worse, like I always did.”

When she looked back up at me, there was no steel in her expression anymore—just raw, almost pleading confusion. Her next words came out so small I almost missed them, if the apartment hadn’t been so empty and quiet.

“Tell me, Seraphine… is that so wrong? Does that make me a bad person? A bad mother…?”

I stared at her, completely frozen.

Valeria Vildea—the ice-cold executive who could turn a boardroom to ash with a look—was sitting in front of me, stripped bare. 

Her words hung between us, fragile and human in a way I hadn’t even thought possible. 

And I realized what it was she wanted from me.

She wasn’t just talking to me. She was talking to her. 

The original Sera. To the daughter she’d lost.

She wanted absolution. Forgiveness. From the ghost wearing her child’s face.

The thought made my stomach twist.

‘How could I possibly give her that?’ 

What right did I even have? I wasn’t her daughter. I wasn’t even sure what I was anymore. 

Just a Soul that had stolen another life—a stranger playing dress-up in someone else’s skin.

Yeah, I’d done things for this family. 

I had saved Gabriel. 

I’d fought to keep everyone alive. 

I’d even managed to just barely eek out for things not to end in complete disaster yesterday. 

But that didn’t change the fact that Sera was gone. Dead. And with her, the part that intrinsically belonged to this family.

‘She misses her daughter,’ I thought numbly, my throat tightening. ‘And I’m just… the replacement. A knockoff she never asked for. A fake that’s been trying to give her what the fake thought she wanted, just rubbing in how different I truly was from the original.’

If I told her it was okay—if I gave her that forgiveness—would I be doing right by the real Sera? Or would I just be digging myself deeper into this lie, feeding the parasite that I’d already become?

Because that’s what I was, wasn’t I? 

A parasite living someone else’s life. Wearing someone else’s face.

For me, Valeria had always been nothing but a final boss. 

An obstacle to navigate, not a person to understand. 

Someone I needed to impress, manipulate, survive around—not connect with.

‘So… Was it really her fault for not accepting me, then?’ I asked myself, but the answer was obvious. ‘No… probably not. I never even gave her a reason to, did I?’

I’d treated her like an opponent in a video game, nothing more. Cold and transactional, with a sprinkle of strategy. 

I’d never even tried to learn what kind of bond Sera had with her, what their arguments had been about, or what the original Sera had thought of her mother, barring the absolute most basic question of asking Gabriel about it all, one single time.

And that realization hit like a punch to the gut.

If Valeria was a bad person for wanting her little girl back, then I was just as bad—for pretending to be that girl without caring enough to understand what I’d taken.

I realized then, that Gabriel had been right once again: Her and I were extremely similar.

We were both selfish, in our own ways.

Her for wanting for the daughter who was gone.
And me—for pretending to fill that void like I had any right to.

I took a long, shaky breath, the sound filling the quiet space between us. It was enough to make Valeria look up at me again, her tired eyes sharpening ever so slightly as our gazes met once more.

“I don’t think that makes you a bad person,” I started slowly, forcing the words past the tightness in my throat. “Or even a bad mother. But…” I hesitated, feeling the weight of what I was about to say. “What does make you a bad person is telling me all of this.”

I half-expected her to snap at me, to intimidate me the way she always did—to remind me that I was speaking out of line. 

But she didn’t. 

She just watched me, silent and still, her expression unreadable—not because of her usual mask, but because there was too much to interpret all at once.

So I pressed on.

“I can’t give you the absolution you’re looking for, mo—Valeria,” I corrected myself mid-word, the old habit slipping out before I could stop it. “I’m not her. You said it yourself. I don’t know who I—she was or what she was like before all this. I only know fragments—bits and pieces from Gabriel, from Oliver—but I don’t know what she meant to you. What our—your relationship was like. I don’t know what you lost.”

My voice cracked as the words caught up to me. “It’s not my place to forgive you for that. It’s not mine to say. I’m not her. I’m just… me.”

I swallowed hard, blinking through the blur forming in my eyes. “I’ve been trying to fit in because I don’t know what else to do. I didn’t ask for any of this. I didn’t want to wake up in this life, surrounded by people who knew a version of me I’ll never be able to live up to.”

Tears started to spill, hot against my cheeks, but I kept going. “I’ve been doing the damn best I can, every single day. Trying to do right by everyone. Trying to be something that makes sense in all this chaos. But you telling me you miss her—telling me you want her back—that’s what makes you a bad mother, Valeria.”

The words came out rougher than I intended, but I didn’t stop. “Because you’re putting me in a position I can’t win. I am still your daughter. But I can’t be her. No matter what I do, no matter how much I try, I’ll never be her… And you can’t get her back”

I drew in one more trembling breath, the final words barely above a whisper. “You’re ignoring the daughter in front of you, that needs you too…”

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[TAS/ND Announcement] Not at 100% yet, need another week. Patreon Billing Paused for 1 month, info inside.

Hello everyone, LunaWolve here once again.

To get straight to the important part, so people that don't really give a shit about the extra information/art and stuff:

The Admin Week will be extended by one more week, again. Patreon Billing has been PAUSED for 1 month, as a result.

I haven't provided anything of value in almost a month, so it makes sense to stop billing people for >nothing< as well.

That means ND/TAS >>WILL<< return on October 13th / October 14th instead of Today / Tomorrow respectively.

Now to get to the extra information, and the art release:

I'm not at 100% yet.

I'm at around 80% yet, which is honestly better than I've been for quite some time; but considering that I'm already taking a break and can justify doing so in my own head for once (I hate taking breaks; makes me feel like I'm wasting my time), I'll make sure to get as close to 100% as I possibly can.

Because I don't know when the next real break will be for me.

Thank you for your continued patience and support once again.

======

======

Finally, I have some art to release to y'all, which was originally meant to be held back until a relevant chapter (where the characters actually appear or are at least talked about), but I figured it's as good as time as any to release the Ref Sheets/Art Pieces, to tide y'all over just a little bit until the next chapter release.

Without further ado, here's the long-awaited Misha (ND) Character Ref Sheet:

Artist Links:

ig:  instagram.com/white_moon_kyo/
twt: x.com/Black_Sun_Kyo

[TAS/ND Announcement + TAS/ND Art Release!] Extension of September's Admin Week

Hello everyone, LunaWolve here.

To get straight to the important part, so people that don't really give a shit about the extra information/art and stuff:

September's Admin Week will be extended by one more week.

That means ND/TAS will return on October 6th / October 7th instead of Today / Tomorrow respectively.

Now to get to the extra information, and the art release:

I'm struggling IRL at the moment, as should not be a surprise given the recent month+ of just absolutely horrendous schedule keeping on my end.

I've missed release windows, writing windows and have just been overall terrible when it comes to keeping my implicit promise to all of you, that I'll release two chapters a week for ND and TAS outside of Admin Weeks.

I took additional time off at the beginning of the month, but it was mostly a stop-gap to try and stem the tide of bullshit being thrown at me IRL; it has not really worked well, to be entirely honest.

I have been setting myself unrealistic expectations and deadlines recently, figuring that "I'll figure something out" to make it all somehow work together without tearing myself apart at the seams, but it's now obvious to me that this isn't working; not with the current responsibilities and events in my life.

Last week was the official Admin Week for September, and I fully intended to get a bunch of editing done on TAS' first book to finally get it prepared for KU/Audiobook releases. I intended to get at least 10 chapters done, but only managed a SINGLE ONE, as the night from Tuesday -> Wednesday, I was hit with a bout of insomnia so hard that it broke the entire rest of the week.

I'm used to insomnia, always kind of had it in intervals here and there, and yes, I've tried all your recommendations of melatonin, warm tea/milk/coco, exercise, etc. Please refrain from posting them in the comments.

But the recent bouts have been really bad.

I did not sleep at all on that night.

Wednesday -> Thursday, I managed three hours. Thursday -> Friday, I managed 4.

Friday was also the funeral of my grandmother, which naturally included a half-day wake with the whole family.

While nice, it wasn't exactly something that allowed me to relax or recharge from the previous days at all.

Friday -> Saturday, another 4 hours.

Saturday -> Sunday, 3 hours again.

It's been extremely bad; there's no sugarcoating it. It's been affecting my life quite badly, as I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to doing things like writing. I have not been able to write just about anything as a result.

Mentally, I have not managed to relax for weeks now; as I keep trying to force myself to write, to try and make up for all the times I've ALREADY missed this month; while also still working my full-time job on the side.

It's a vicious cycle that I realize now, will just not be able to continue.

Hence, my extension of the Admin Week.

I just need this extra week to focus on my IRL job and just relax and catch up on some sleep in the meantime.

I will force myself to not write, maybe some editing of TAS at most, but no continued writing on TAS or ND proper in this time, just to make sure I can actually try to turn off for once.

I hope that this will be enough to fix me back up, after this last horror month, and that we will be back to regular schedule with the end of this extended admin week.

For both TAS and ND, I've already loosely prepared the next few arcs, with the next 4-5 chapters already being workshopped for the most part; so I'm hoping that once I'm back alive (and not dying from sleep deprivation) I can go back to providing the quality content that y'all have come to expect from me in recent years.

Thank you for listening to me rant on this topic and for your continued patience and kindness.

I really do appreciate it a lot.

======

======

Finally, I have some art to release to y'all, which was originally meant to be held back until a relevant chapter (where the characters actually appear or are at least talked about), but I figured it's as good as time as any to release the Ref Sheets/Art Pieces, to tide y'all over just a little bit until the next chapter release.

Without further ado, here's the Canidae (Void Daemon) Ref Sheet:

Without further ado, here's the Jade Character Ref Sheet:

Artist Links:

ig:  instagram.com/white_moon_kyo/
twt: x.com/Black_Sun_Kyo

[TAS/ND Announcement] Admin Week for September starts tomorrow, Monday 22nd.

NOTICE:

*The Admin Week for September will be starting tomorrow, Monday 22nd.*

I'm still dealing with quite a bit of stuff regarding my grandmother's death (namely fixing up her apartment and helping my brother move into it), which has been taking up quite a bit of time this past week.

Coupled with next week being the funeral, I won't really be in the right headspace to write either way.

I'll most likely be spending a good chunk of this Admin Week trying to edit the first book of TAS, as I've received the editorial comments from my editor, to see how long it'll roughly take me to edit the entirety of Volume 1 over the next few months.

There should still be 1 or maybe 2 chapters being added to the backlog in the meantime for TAS/ND, which the Wolf Lord and Fixer Patreons will, of course, get immediate access to, as always.

*ND and TAS will be back from Admin Week on Monday 29th and Tuesday 30th respectively.*

Thank you everyone for your understanding and the crazy amount of support this past month. Idk what happened but we jumped like a hundred subs on Patreon 😮

We will be back with your regularly scheduled programming, very soon! 🙏

[TAS] Volume 2 - Chapter 52 - Unleash

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------------------- Start of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) -------------------
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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Volume 2 - Chapter 47 - Locker-Room Talk has just released on RR with no changes.

For the Wolf Lords, this chapter is unchanged.

And also: Please do not read the chapters here on Patreon, but go for the googledoc, .pdf or .epub instead. Patreon butchers all forms of formatting and you're missing out on easier and more enjoyable reading experiences.

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NOTICE:

*The Admin Week for September will be starting tomorrow, Monday 22nd.*

I'm still dealing with quite a bit of stuff regarding my grandmother's death (namely fixing up her apartment and helping my brother move into it), which has been taking up quite a bit of time this past week.

Coupled with next week being the funeral, I won't really be in the right headspace to write either way.

I'll most likely be spending a good chunk of this Admin Week trying to edit the first book of TAS, as I've received the editorial comments from my editor, to see how long it'll roughly take me to edit the entirety of Volume 1 over the next few months.

There should still be 1 or maybe 2 chapters being added to the backlog in the meantime for TAS/ND, which the Wolf Lord and Fixer Patreons will, of course, get immediate access to, as always.

*ND and TAS will be back from Admin Week on Monday 29th and Tuesday 30th respectively.*

Thank you everyone for your understanding and the crazy amount of support this past month. Idk what happened but we jumped like a hundred subs on Patreon :TheaWAT:

====================================

====================================

This IS the OTHER fun chapter.

------

I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the link to the chapter:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h5XJ470W0aQhcIwbmZeeTi9iy08o1MtmgtEwHklivw0/edit?usp=sharing

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Volume 2 - Chapter 52 - Unleash

Thea jerked back from the scope so fast she completely let go of her rifle, barely managing to twist out of the sling, stumbling and scrambling like the ground had turned to ice beneath her boots. She half-crawled, half-fell over Chester’s frozen body, her breath ragged as her back slammed against the trench wall.

Her eyes were continuously locked on the impossible sight before her: Her Gram, hanging weightless in mid-air, and from it, a shape was peeling out of reality itself.

It was her.

Or close enough to twist her gut into knots. 

Every line of the figure was hers—the same armor, the same cloak, the same small details down to the way her bangs fell slightly over one side of her face. 

But the eyes gave it away. 

They glowed neon violet, cutting through the frozen, monochrome world like a pair of molten blades, and the sheer wrongness of them made her stomach churn dangerously.

Her throat felt tight, words jammed there uselessly as Faux-Thea drifted forward, smooth and unhurried, circling Chester’s crouched form as if she had all the time in the universe.

“Now, why are you running away from me like this, darling?” the double teased, her voice a distorted mirror of Thea’s, except richer, smoother and far too calm compared to her own. 

“You’re the one who called me, not the other way around. Unless my memory’s faulty—though we both know it isn’t, don’t we?”

She halted beside Chester and, without a flicker of hesitation, lowered herself into a sitting position on top of him like he was nothing more than a piece of conveniently placed furniture. 

One leg crossed over the other, her posture flawless, she rested an elbow against her knee and her chin on her fist, gazing down at Thea with a patient, thoroughly unnerving smile.

Like a queen waiting for her subject to finally speak.

Thea’s mind reeled, thoughts tripping over each other in a frantic scramble. 

Seeing her Faux-Self here, in the middle of a Digital Mission, dredged up the memory of their last meeting in the Assessment—right before the enemy Psyker had ended her run. The shock of it left her chest tight, her lungs struggling to pull in enough air to steady herself.

“Wh—Who are you?” she stammered, words clumsy, buying herself precious seconds just to breathe and grasp at the edges of what was happening.

Faux-Thea let out a long, almost theatrical sigh, her expression shifting into weary annoyance. “I was really hoping for a more engaging opening, darling. Something with a little wit, maybe even some pizzazz. You do always manage to disappoint me in new and unique ways, don’t you… Listen, it isn’t exactly easy to meet with you like this, yet every time I manage it, you insist on being utterly unreasonable.”

She shook her head slowly, violet eyes sparking faintly like lightning caught in glass, before pinning Thea with a sharp look again.

“But fine. If humouring your pitiful little stalling tactics helps your poor brain catch up, I guess l shall indulge your requests momentarily.”

With inhuman grace, she rose from her seat on Chester’s frozen back, her movements flowing like liquid shadow. 

She dipped into a courtly curtsy, posture flawless, her eyes never leaving Thea’s. 

“You may call me Æht, darling. Much less of a mouthful than ‘Faux-Thea,’ or whatever tired description you were about to slap on me. Besides… you’ll need a proper name when you go running to Kara about me after the DM is over.”

Thea’s eyes flew wide, her pulse hammering all over again. “H…How do you know about Kara?!”

Æht rolled her eyes, dropping back into her throne-like perch atop Chester’s frame with exaggerated languor. “If we’re really going to go through every single thing step by step, we’ll be here until the stars burn out, darling. Try to keep up, would you?”

She raised a finger, pointing first at herself, then lazily flicking it toward Thea. “I am you. You are me. We are one. If you talk to Kara, I’m there. Listening. Talking. Breathing the same air in your headspace, so to speak. Simple enough?”

Settling back into her previous pose, chin on her fist, she gazed down at Thea still pressed tight against the trench wall like a trapped animal.

“Now, darling, since we’ve cleared that up, can we finally get to the actual point?”

Thea forced herself to take a slow breath, dragging her spine straighter until she no longer looked quite so much like a cornered rat. 

Her thoughts still ran wild, spinning circles around themselves.

‘She is me. I am her.... What does that even mean? The Runepriest said visions were part of Precognition, but this doesn’t feel like precognition at all. Unless I’ve completely misunderstood what the word even means… What the fuck is happening here?’

Her mouth was dry when she finally asked, “Then… what do you want from me, exactly?”

Æht’s lips curved into something between amusement and mockery, one brow lifting. “What do I want from you? Darling, you’re the one that dragged me here. Shouldn’t you know the answer better than I do?”

Thea blinked, words catching. “I… I called you? When? How?! I was just experimenting with my Psychic Powers—and then you just appeared! I wasn’t even thinking about you!”

“You mean my Powers,” Æht replied, her voice velvet-smooth yet edged like a knife. She fixed Thea with a pointed look, every word dripping with quiet condescension. “You were experimenting with my Psychic Powers, darling. And with the sheer amount of energy you hurled into it—enough to rattle me from the deepest corners of ourself—I assumed you had a reason. A real purpose.” 

Her lips curled faintly, the smirk not quite reaching her piercing eyes. “But it seems I may have overestimated you. Again.”

She tilted her head with an almost birdlike sharpness, studying Thea as though peeling her apart layer by layer. After a beat, she sighed, long and theatrical. “You still don’t have the faintest idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

Thea’s pulse raced. ‘She doesn’t seem hostile… not yet. If she wanted me dead, she could’ve already done it. Better to play along—get something useful out of her. Maybe something the Runepriest can make sense of later…!’

Swallowing the lump in her throat, she gave a small, hesitant shake of her head.

Æht rose from her makeshift throne with the same liquid grace she had shown before, every movement too smooth, too perfect. 

She drifted toward Thea, the air around her carrying the faintest ripple of air.

Thea’s body immediately screamed at her to bolt—down the trench tunnel, anywhere away from this thing wearing her face. 

Her thoughts snarled in panic: ‘Run, you idiot! Fucking run!’

Yet her legs betrayed her, frozen in place as if chained by invisible hands. 

She couldn’t move, couldn’t even breathe properly.

Æht reached her, taking Thea’s hands in her own. Her touch was deceptively gentle as she pulled Thea up to her feet, then slid an arm around her waist, guiding her with unshakable certainty back toward the pillbox’s center. 

Thea stumbled, fighting the grip, but every resistance was effortlessly redirected.

And then Æht pulled her even closer. 

Their bodies locked together in a strange, involuntary rhythm. 

Thea twisted, trying to break free, but Æht flowed with the motion, effortlessly turning her flailing steps and attempts to escape into part of an intimate dance—leading, until every attempt at struggle only drew them tighter together.

“Now, now, darling,” Æht whispered, her lips brushing dangerously near Thea’s ear. Her voice was rich, smooth—downright intoxicating. “There’s no need to fear me. I told you, didn’t I? We are one. I would never wish harm upon you.” 

Her grip tightened just slightly, forcing Thea to start matching her rhythm. “In truth, I am your only true ally—whether you understand this or not. But logically, you won’t be able to deny me. After all, if we are one, then your growth is my growth. Your victories are mine. Your power…”

Her violet eyes flared as she leaned in even closer, her hot breath tickling the inside of Thea’s ear, her tone softening to a dark purr. “…is my power.”

Thea jerked instinctively at the uncomfortable intimacy, trying to rip herself free from the whisper that lingered like heat against her ear—and to her own shock, she actually managed to slip away. 

For a split second she staggered back in a half-twirl, breath sharp in her chest, until she realized Æht had let her go; released her waist.

The brief taste of freedom didn’t last. 

Æht still had her hand caught in an iron grip, deceptively delicate fingers holding her like a shackle. With a casual pull she drew Thea forward again, catching her off balance and folding her back into the tightness of the embrace. 

Thea’s resistance only spun her half a step before Æht redirected it seamlessly once again, guiding the struggle into another flowing movement of their unnatural waltz. It was like every flinch, every attempt to break away, had already been written into the steps of the dance.

“Use your brain, darling,” Æht murmured, her tone almost playful as she leaned closer, neon-violet eyes burning with calm amusement. 

She pressed her forehead against Thea’s temple, gaze boring into her eyes. “Stop panicking. Think about what I’ve just told you… and dance with me for a change.”

Her voice was honey-smooth, but beneath it was an edge of command that made Thea’s skin crawl, the kind of tone that didn’t allow disobedience. 

Her body kept moving even as her mind screamed to stop. Æht led her with practiced ease, humming a low, haunting tune that threaded through the frozen air. 

Every step seemed rehearsed, every twirl intentional—sometimes spinning Thea outward in a sweeping arc around Chester’s frozen crouched form before pulling her back in like they had all the time in the universe, as if this dance was nothing more than a leisurely pastime for her.

Thea tried to force her breathing steady, her chest rising and falling in shallow bursts before she finally managed to slow it. 

‘Calm down. Think. There’s got to be a way out of this weird fucking vision…’

Her eyes darted around the pillbox, searching for cracks in the scene, something that would give her a foothold. But everything was seamless, unnervingly real—the cold grit of stone under her boots, the faint echo of Æht’s hum vibrating in her ribs and skull, the phantom warmth of that too-familiar body pressed against her own.

Admitting defeat made bile rise in her throat, but the longer she struggled against Æht’s grasp, the more pointless it became. 

This vision wasn’t breaking anytime soon. 

‘Fine. If I can’t break it, then I should at least try to understand it…’

Her thoughts circled back to what Æht had said earlier—that these were her Powers, not Thea’s. That she had been the one called up from the depths of them, dragged into the light by Thea’s experiment with [Glimpse]. 

Thea clenched her jaw. 

‘But that doesn’t make any fucking sense. I’m a Veritas Precog. That’s what the Runepriest said. That’s what everyone’s always said since this whole weirdness started popping up...’

[Glimpse] was part of her precognition Powers; the Runepriest had been very specific about this. 

So why had Æht claimed it as her own? 

Was it just raw arrogance, or was there something else…? 

‘If I’m on that Path, then the Powers that come with it are naturally mine. Unless… I misunderstood the Runepriest about how this works…?’

She thought back to the Psychic lesson she had shared with the enigmatic man, but even at second and third recollection, she couldn’t find anything wrong with her thinking on the matter.

[Glimpse] was one of the first-tier Powers in the Short-Term Precognition Path. The Runepriest had been very clear about that when she had asked about what kind of Psychic Powers she might be able to use.

As a Wielder she only had one Power from the Path she was on; so there was no chance that it could be anything but [Glimpse], as she hadn’t Delved yet. There was no other way she could have gotten access to [Glimpse] but from the natural Wielder status.

Her steps faltered for a split second before Æht’s grip around her waist tightened again, forcing her back into rhythm, that lilting hum never once breaking pace, her eyes never once leaving Thea’s own.

Thea’s thoughts continued to churn as Æht guided her through another sweeping turn, boots scraping against the pillbox floor. 

“I am you. You are me. We are one.” 

The words gnawed at her, looping over and over until they felt less like riddles and more like a solid weight pressing down on her chest. 

She kept trying to pick them apart, but they only seemed to tangle tighter. 

If Æht was her, then why did she feel so utterly alien? 

If they were one, then why was there such a disparity in their understanding?

Her mind ran in circles, chewing on every phrase until her attention snagged on the last thing Æht had said before—about growth, victories, and power. 

Thea replayed the words in her head: “After all, if we are one, then your growth is my growth. Your victories are mine. Your power is my power.”

The thought looped, pressed deeper, until she found herself murmuring it aloud without even realizing:

“Your power is my power.”

The words slipped out, barely audible, but Æht’s eyes widened ever so slightly mid-step like she’d been waiting for them. A predatory grin broke wide across her mirrored face, effulgent eyes flaring briefly as the grip on Thea’s hand softened. 

The frantic pace of the dance slowed, melting back into something almost serene—her movements smooth, deliberate, as if rewarding Thea for finally finding the “right” line.

“There we are,” Æht purred into Thea’s ear, her hum shifting into something softer, almost coaxing. “Now you’re beginning to understand, darling.”

Thea’s brows furrowed as her voice cut through the surreal quiet of the still world around them. “But… how could that even be true? I was using [Glimpse] before I even knew what it was—before the Assessment. The Runepriest told me my whole precognition was just [Glimpse], both the active and passive parts. I even had them before Integration, but you—you didn’t show up until the Assessment. So how—”

Abruptly, Æht froze mid-step. 

The abrupt halt nearly toppled Thea, her body stumbling forward without the hands guiding and rhythm to carry her anymore. Æht had released her waist and taken a deliberate step back, eyes narrowing, and for the first time Thea caught a flicker of something she hadn’t expected. 

Genuine emotion. 

The expression didn’t fit the thing that had been toying with her—it felt raw, and entirely human.

Her neon-violet eyes flickered, narrowing as venom seeped into her tone.

“Do you truly believe that you’re some kind of universal prodigy, darling? That you just… happened to pick up Psychic Powers perfectly, from the very beginning? Without stumbling, without breaking yourself, without paying the price everyone else bleeds themselves for?!”

Thea froze, but Æht pressed on, circling her now like a predator tearing into prey.

“Has it never crossed that oh-so-brilliant mind of yours that the reason you could use [Glimpse] so well—so easily—was because I was there, guiding you?” 

Æht’s voice rose, sharp with accusation. 

“That every ‘instinct,’ every perfect timing, every moment you somehow survived by a hair’s breadth—was me? That I’ve been by your side since the very beginning, long before you even knew what survival meant? Before you could even remember things for yourself?”

She took a step forward towards Thea, voice rising even further—almost shouting now—not in rage but in something else entirely. “I’ve toiled day and night for both of us! I’ve carried us through dangers you couldn’t even begin to comprehend as a child! I’ve saved us more times than you can count, more times than you will ever know! And now, after all of that, you look me in the eyes and call it your own brilliance?! You think I just appeared one day, like some kind of unbidden parasite?! I’ve been holding it all together when you didn’t even know there was something to hold!”

Thea’s mouth went dry, her thoughts stuttering into silence. 

She had braced for taunts, for manipulation, for games. 

But nothing even close to this. 

Not the raw edge of emotion spilling out of her mirror-self. 

She didn’t know what to say, didn’t even know if she could believe it—but the weight in Æht’s voice left her utterly stunned, her lungs tight with confusion and doubt.

Æht took a deep, shuddering breath, before continuing, the same venom still present but in a sharper, quieter voice now, “[Glimpse] is my Power, darling. It always has been. You are not a Short-Term Precog; I am. But we are one, so you get to use my Powers, just as I get to use yours. You haven’t even begun to start pulling your own weight, so do not dare to claim achievements that aren’t yours to claim.”

Thea stood there, stunned, her thoughts crashing into each other like waves against steel. 

‘Not mine…?’

The claim was insane, yet instead of shattering her footing, it slotted into place far too neatly—like some buried part of her had already somehow known all of this. 

Her certainty from moments ago cracked, and instead of denial, a strange, unnerving acceptance started to bleed through her.

“…Then what are my Powers?” The words slipped from her mouth before she even realized she’d spoken. “If I’m not a Short-Term Precog—if [Glimpse] isn’t mine—then what… am I?”

Æht’s eyes lingered on her for a long moment.

She drew in a steadying breath, her shoulders straightening as the raw emotion drained away, replaced once more with that predator-like stillness, the mask of control snapping back into place.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, and though the words carried no shame, Thea felt the weight of them. “Your guard dog keeps me at bay, so I haven’t been able to look. But you should already know, darling. You’ve felt it. There’s only one other phenomenon that follows you when you burn too much Psychic Energy. And it has nothing to do with my precognition.”

Thea’s chest tightened. Her mind jumped instantly to the only thing it could be.

 “…The Ice.” Her voice was barely above a whisper, but the word hit like a gunshot in the silence between them. “That… that strange cold that leaks out of me sometimes.”

“Exactly.” Æht’s lips curved, not into a smile, but into something knowing. She tilted her head just so, eyes gleaming like cut amethyst. “You think I don’t feel it too? That frost crawling beneath our skin, that chill radiating outward when you strain yourself? That isn’t mine, darling. That’s yours.”

Thea swallowed hard. “So… I’m some kind of Ice-based Psyker, then?”

A shrug, elegant and dismissive all at once. “I don’t know. But it would be the most logical answer. Since we are one, we Inherited Veritas. And Veritas does not tolerate lies, not even in what we are. It would never allow anything but Truth to manifest. If the cold is there, then the cold is yours. Some Path of Ice, some Power bound to it—that is what you are. Whatever form it ultimately ends up being.”

Thea’s thoughts reeled, trying to stitch together all the fragments of truth Æht had just hurled at her. 

But before she could even begin to digest it, Æht pressed forward, utterly relentless.

“I’ve answered plenty of your questions now. And you’ve given me nothing in return. Not even the courtesy of telling me why you called me here. But…” 

She tilted her head, her tone softening in a mockery of grace. “…since you apparently didn’t even know how our dynamic worked, I’ll let it slide. Just this once.”

Her gaze sharpened, pinning Thea in place. “But you will answer my next question, darling. And you’ll answer it truthfully.”

Thea’s throat felt shut tight, but she managed a small, hesitant nod. “...Okay.”

Æht’s voice shifted instantly, no longer smooth or mocking, but hard as iron. “What happened to you?”

Thea blinked, caught completely off guard. “What… do you mean?”

Æht leaned forward, her words cutting into her like a knife. “Where did your instincts go? All the teachings James drilled into you? All the lessons from years scraping through the Undercity together? Where did it all go, darling? Because the moment you walked into that UHF station, you started dulling. Piece by piece. You let it all slide until nothing was left but this… hollow shell.”

Disgust colored her tone now, disappointment dripping from every word.

Thea stammered, searching for words, “I… I don’t think I’ve changed that much. I don’t feel—”

“Don’t feel?!” Æht snapped, her voice cracking like a whip, making Thea flinch. “Then tell me why you thought spilling everything to the Runepriest was such a good idea, huh? After I begged you not to so much as glance at that man. Do you have any idea what kind of danger he is? Do you understand what I had to do—how far I had to crawl down into the dark—just to keep us hidden, so he wouldn’t drag you off to some lab table the moment he sniffed out what we are?”

Thea’s stomach twisted.

Æht leaned in, her eyes glowing violet like hot coals. “James’ Golden Rule. Number eleven. ‘Fuck the brass’ orders, but always trust your SL.’ Do you remember this? ‘Always trust your SL.’ Individuals. Not the brass. Not the system governing them. Not some unfathomably powerful Psyker you don’t even know. So tell me, darling—why did you ignore it? Why did you roll over and trust the brass that already failed you, time and time again?”

Thea opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

Æht’s voice dropped lower, a hiss that carried venom. “What makes the Runepriest any different, huh? What stops him from simply killing us both the second he notices what we are? What we represent? What, darling, happened to the instincts that used to keep us alive? The ones that knew better than to trust anyone but our own? I understand wanting knowledge—but knowledge should never come at the cost of survival. You knew this—once. You lived this. So why?! Why forget, darling? Were two short years of safety all that was required to leash you that badly? Did they turn you into some kind of obedient little dog who doesn’t even realize when it’s being encircled to be shot and consumed for its meat?”

Her words landed heavy, leaving Thea’s chest tight, her mind scrambling for anything—anything—to defend herself. 

But deep down, a sliver of doubt gnawed at her: What if Æht was right with her accusations…?

There was a part of her that couldn’t deny what had been said—the instincts she once relied on, the sharp edge she used to carry with her through every breath of the Undercity. 

They had dulled. She had trusted where she shouldn’t have. 

But at the same time, another, louder part of her burned with overwhelming curiosity. 

Æht knew things—things Thea couldn’t make sense of yet, but desperately wanted to.

She forced down the lump in her throat and asked, voice tight, “What… what do we represent? What, exactly, are we, then? Do you know?”

Æht sneered, stepping back from Thea as though she’d caught a strong whiff of rot. “You cannot be trusted with the knowledge.”

The words landed like a slap, and Thea recoiled as if struck. The raw, unfiltered Truth laced into Æht’s tone felt like a knife driven straight through her chest.

“I’ll let you get back to your little experiments now, darling,” Æht continued, her voice quieter now, exhausted but edged. “Don’t get us killed. I won’t allow it.”

Thea’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. 

She wanted to argue, to shout, to demand more—but the weight of Æht’s refusal still pressed down on her, stealing the words before they could form.

Æht turned away, moving with that same eerie smoothness toward the Gram still frozen mid-air where all of this had begun. Just before reaching it, she paused, twisting back with those glowing neon-violet eyes one last time. 

Her voice dropped low, almost tender, but the command in it rang sharp as steel.

“Unleash yourself, Thea…”

And with that, she stepped backward into the waiting wall and rifle, her figure dissolving into the solid shape of the Gram and the dirt, metal and stone of the trench beyond, leaving Thea alone with her hammering heart and the echo of those words in her skull…

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[ND] Chapter 149 - Long-Awaited Talks II

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------------------- Start of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) -------------------
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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Chapter 144 - Consequentia III has just released on RR with no major changes.

For the Fixers, this chapter is new.

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NOTICE:

*The Admin Week for September will be starting tomorrow, Monday 22nd.*

I'm still dealing with quite a bit of stuff regarding my grandmother's death (namely fixing up her apartment and helping my brother move into it), which has been taking up quite a bit of time this past week.

Coupled with next week being the funeral, I won't really be in the right headspace to write either way.

I'll most likely be spending a good chunk of this Admin Week trying to edit the first book of TAS, as I've received the editorial comments from my editor, to see how long it'll roughly take me to edit the entirety of Volume 1 over the next few months.

There should still be 1 or maybe 2 chapters being added to the backlog in the meantime for TAS/ND, which the Wolf Lord and Fixer Patreons will, of course, get immediate access to, as always.

*ND and TAS will be back from Admin Week on Monday 29th and Tuesday 30th respectively.*

Thank you everyone for your understanding and the crazy amount of support this past month. Idk what happened but we jumped like a hundred subs on Patreon :TheaWAT:

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More in-depth thoughts from Sera and difficult conversations with Valeria.

Let's see how this turns out... It's an odd one!

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I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the link to the chapter:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UKnTj6NMY0nUWa-bSq-ZGeF0ReIBMWqnob7fD1VRiY4/edit?usp=sharing

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Chapter 149 - Long-Awaited Talks II

I froze for half a moment, caught off guard by the question.

That wasn’t where I’d expected her to start—at all. 

But, the longer I thought about it, the more it made sense. 

Of course she’d open with Anima. Everything she’d seen last night—everything I’d done—would likely look like some kind of Anima-fueled lunacy to anyone watching, even to someone who actually knew what they were looking at. 

Valeria would never leave a variable like that unaccounted for. 

She needed to know just how deep I was into this—and how the hell I’d managed to pull half that performance out of my ass.

And, honestly, she wasn’t wrong to ask, in hindsight. Most of what the System seemed to run on was high-level Anima constructs anyway, at least from what I’d pieced together so far.

[Negotiation] chimed in at the back of my mind, suggesting this might not even be about Anima specifically. This could just be framing—an easy opener designed to get me talking, get me comfortable, make it easier for her to slide the sharper questions in later. 

The Skill didn’t exactly give me much confidence on that front, though. 

Valeria was way too good at this game to read cleanly.

So that left me with the actual problem: How the hell was I going to answer her?

Playing dumb wasn’t an option. 

Pretending I didn’t know what Anima was would just back me into a corner where I’d either have to lie outright, which Valeria would easily be able to pick apart, considering she was clearly a master at it herself, or spill the beans on the System—both of which were losing plays. 

And while I was a lot more confident now that Valeria wasn’t going to strap me to a table and dissect me for research purposes—my opinion had… shifted on that whole deal, after last night—I still wasn’t sure what she’d do if EtherLabs came knocking. 

Or worse, what they’d do with the information if she were ever forced to report it.

So admitting to knowing about Anima was the only move. That much was obvious.

The question became who I was willing to throw under the bus.

It wasn’t like there was just one person who’d taught me everything. 

Mr. Shori had been the first, flashing the [Anima Razor] technique that unlocked the Attribute for me in the first place. 

But it hadn’t been until Kill Joy’s [Manifestation] classes that I’d started to get a real handle on what Anima actually was and how to use it. 

And then there was Miss K.

Miss K, who had not only agreed to keep my little secret but actively encouraged me to keep practicing; even provided direct examples and practice instructions. Who had gone so far as to hint that Anima was going to be integrated into the Dojo’s general curriculum anyway.

So the real question was: Who the hell did I want to “blame” for my knowledge, not even sure where Valeria stood on the whole topic of Anima in the first place?

‘There’s no way I can rat out Mr. Shori…’ was the first thing that hit me, hard and fast. 

He’d done too much for me, and out of everyone I knew, he was the most vulnerable to a corp like EtherLabs. If they got even a whiff that he was dabbling in things they might consider… valuable? They’d scoop him up in seconds and there’d be nothing he could do against that.

That was not happening on my watch.

Kill Joy, on the other hand, was easy pickings. 

I had no real tie to him—just some conversations with his digital alter-ego in the SPG-01 shard—and if anyone in this world was completely untouchable by EtherLabs, it was him. 

They could flex all they wanted, but they weren’t ever going to get their claws on the de-facto father of Cyberspace and all things Netrunning. 

He was utterly untouchable by anyone but maybe the VeilGuard or MaxTech.

Still, my [Negotiation] didn’t buy it. 

‘She’s not going to swallow a line about me just magically figuring this out from the SPG-01 shard, is she…?’

No. It didn’t sound realistic at all. 

My [Deception] chimed in too, backing that up with a ping that made my stomach twist.

If I wanted this to land, it needed more narrative weight. Something closer to home. 

And that only left Miss K.

I hated even thinking about it. 

She’d been nothing but straightforward with me, gone out of her way to help me, even committed to backing me up when I told her about my weird knowledge. 

The absolute last thing I wanted was to sour that.

But the truth was, she’d never once asked me to keep my end of things secret. 

Maybe she knew this kind of situation could come up. Maybe she was already prepared to handle it. If the Dojo really did weave Anima into the higher-level curriculum, then surely it wasn’t as strange or taboo as I was making it out to be in my head… right?

It wasn’t exactly a bulletproof argument, but it was enough of a crutch to make me feel like I wasn’t betraying her outright. A way to lie to myself about the fact that I was potentially throwing someone honest and decent under the bus.

But Valeria was waiting, and one thing was for certain: I wasn’t handing her Mr. Shori.

And both [Negotiation] and [Deception] agreed for once—if I wanted her to buy this, I’d have to mention them both. 

Not one or the other. Both.

Which was maybe the first time in history my two main social Skills had ever been in full agreement. And that, honestly, was terrifying in its own way.

I finally forced myself to speak, the words dragging out of me after what felt like an eternity of silence. I worried I’d taken too long to answer—long enough to raise suspicion—but if Valeria noticed, she wasn’t showing it. 

Her face was unreadable, as always.

“I first came across the concept through the SPG-01 shard,” I began carefully, trying to keep my tone measured. “Specifically during the manifestation module. Something about the way the shard presented it had struck me as… odd. Like there were pieces missing from the puzzle. That led me to start drawing parallels between manifestation and real-world quick-hacks. 

“Obviously, Cyberspace hacks can anchor themselves to code, but here in the physical world… there’s no such base layer. That suggested there had to be something else at play if the same principles were to function. Some kind of underlying force or energy that I was missing. That’s when it clicked for me—there had to be something more. I didn’t have a name for it at the time, but… that was Anima.”

I paused, just for a breath, then pressed on, forcing myself to keep eye contact with her, no matter how much my stomach turned. “Later, at the Arkion Dojo, Miss K noticed that I was struggling with some of the side effects of that early exposure. She recognized the signs before I even understood what they meant. She identified it for me—Anima. From there, she’s been providing guidance. Showed me how to control and mask Anima Sight, so I wouldn’t give myself away but still be able to recognize Anima when I needed to. She’s also been giving me structured lessons, slow introductions on how to manage and manipulate it without drawing too much attention.”

I let [Deception] take the wheel, sculpting my words into something smooth, palatable, even if half of it was stitched together out of convenient half-truths. “She agreed to keep it between us. At my request. I didn’t want this knowledge spreading in ways I couldn’t control. And I… trusted her to respect that. And as far as I’m aware, she has.”

I leaned back slightly, still holding her gaze. 

Every word had been deliberately wrapped in that semi-corporate veneer I’d been cultivating around her. Just enough polish to look like I was trying to meet her on her level, without overreaching and turning into a mirror or a full-on caricature of her own manner of speech.

“As for how long I have been aware of Anima… I would say around two to three weeks, but I can’t exactly be sure when I first had the thought that it might exist.”

Valeria stayed quiet for several long, measured moments after my answer, her gaze locked on me like she was running some internal calculus. 

When she finally spoke, her voice was as calm as ever.

“I must admit, Seraphine,” she said, leaning ever so slightly back in her chair, “I am surprised at how much you have evidently absorbed in the short time since you awoke from your coma.”

Her words sent a pulse of unease through me. 

‘Since I awoke…’

The implications weren’t subtle, and I could feel every muscle in my body wanting to tighten like a coiled spring. I shut that impulse down hard, locking [Elemental Balance] over myself like an iron shell. 

If my muscles couldn’t move, they couldn’t betray me either.

Valeria tilted her head ever so slightly, as though considering some thought that only she could see. “You have changed. Markedly so. The difference between you before the incident and now is…” She paused, searching for the right word, then simply shook her head. “Well, it is difficult to overstate. Perhaps it is a natural result of being confronted with mortality at such a young age. But even so, it almost seems as though that confrontation’s consequences were never meant for you in the first place...”

Her steel-gray eyes found mine again, cutting through the distance like a blade. “Tell me, Seraphine—how is it that you have learned so much about Anima in such a short window of time? Even with Miss Kanis’ undoubtedly excellent tutelage, your aptitude seems far beyond that of a typical practitioner.”

I swallowed hard, forcing my voice to stay level. 

“I… I don’t know,” I said simply, and for once it was completely true. “I don’t even know what a practitioner is even supposed to be, really. Miss K has only been teaching me the basics, showing me how to see and hide Anima Sight and little else. I believe she mentioned practitioners once, but never elaborated on it. Last night… I just acted. Instinct, I guess…? None of it was something Miss K taught me or prepared me for.”

I let my [Deception] handle the messier edges of the statement, weaving just enough stammered honesty through the words to make it sound like I was struggling to put it into terms even I understood. 

Not a polished lie, but something closer to raw truth and utter confusion.

Valeria’s eyes stayed on me, the kind of look that made me feel like she was dissecting me down to the bones.

Another long, measured moment passed before she finally spoke. 

“The torch,” she said, each word deliberate. “How were you able to have it at hand? I have been around my fair share of sleight-of-hand illusions, Seraphine, and that was not one of them.”

She didn’t blink as she went on. “I saw the Anima. It was not subtle—it was a rather large amount for somebody new to it all, drawn and focused in an instant. I watched it coalesce, take form, and simply become the tool you were holding after. That is not something one does by accident. Do you have any explanation for that, Seraphine?”

Her voice carried no accusation, but the meaning behind it was undeniable. 

She wanted an answer, not speculation—something concrete she could file away and act on.

I had already known this one was going to bite me in the ass the most. Out of everything that had gone down last night, this was the one thing I had zero hope of brushing off casually.

[Sharpen], [Lethal Flow], even the quick-hack I’d thrown at the netrunner—I could kind of make those fit into the narrative I’d been spinning for Valeria. 

High-stress instinct, brute-force application of Anima, and a lot of luck. 

But materializing a fully functional plasma torch out of thin air? 

Yeah, there was no smooth way to spin that.

My mind raced, searching for anything, anything that would sound even remotely plausible. 

Fortunately, [Deception] slid in and threw me a lifeline. I drew in a sharp breath, then met Valeria’s steel-gray gaze, keeping my tone as controlled as I could.

“I… honestly can’t explain that one,” I admitted, letting just enough frustration leak into my voice to make it sound genuine. 

“I just—” I gestured vaguely with my hands, mimicking the frantic state I’d been in. “—thought of the first thing that came to mind when I realized Gabriel’s wounds needed to be cauterized. The image that hit me was a plasma torch. I’d seen one used just the day before, on the way to Mr. Shori’s—one of the construction workers had been welding a temporary sheet-metal barrier together for a storefront. And… I just tried to make it.”

I leaned back slightly. “The same way Kill Joy taught me to manifest a chair in the SPG-01 shard’s Cyberspace, over and over again. I was desperate, in pain, and hoping that if I pushed hard enough, it would work. And somehow—I guess it did…? That’s how I ended up with the torch. I don’t really have a better explanation than that.”

Silence stretched between us, thick enough to choke on. 

My thoughts went absolutely haywire, every second feeling like it dragged out into minutes. 

‘God, that was a terrible lie…’

I prayed—no, begged—that Valeria was tired enough to not be dissecting every single word I’d just said. 

I had no idea if manifestation even worked like that in the real world. 

Sure, based on what Kill Joy had taught me and everything I knew about how quick-hacks and Cyber functioned, it should be possible. 

But should and actually does were two very different things.

If I’d just claimed something utterly impossible to someone who knew infinitely more about Anima than I did, I’d handed her a perfect proof to call me out. And then what? I had no idea what Valeria might actually do if she thought I was lying to her face about something like this.

My whole perspective on her was already a complete fucking mess. 

I had been so sure I had her pegged—a ruthless, cold-hearted corpo bitch who would poison her own kids with NeuroCorpse and call it “education.” Somebody that would do anything to get ahead in life, career-wise. A person that didn’t care about their family, minus Oliver for whatever strange reason that would sacrifice anyone and anything to the EtherLabs altar.

But then there was last night.

The dinner, where she had outright refused Gabriel’s request with such force it had almost felt personal. 

The way she’d fought like a demon, clearly ready to die if it meant keeping the family alive.

The very real concession that she couldn’t do it and was ready to reveal whatever secrets Nyxstalker had been there for, which had seemingly been a guaranteed death sentence for her; just so Gabriel and I wouldn’t die.

The strange, almost human warmth in her words afterward when she told me I’d done well.

I didn’t know where the hell she stood anymore. And that terrified me.

Deep down, I was still extremely scared of her. Intrinsically. Inherently. 

That part of me hadn’t changed. Not really. 

But the real question—the one that gnawed at the edge of my thoughts—was: ‘What happens if she catches me lying here?’

Especially now, when the lies were tied directly to Anima, to the System, to things I couldn’t really afford to reveal to anyone that I didn’t 100% trust—and even then likely couldn’t risk.

I would’ve preferred this conversation to go anywhere else. Literally anywhere else. 

But there had been no avoiding it. How could there have been? 

You don’t just watch your recently-comatose daughter kill several corpo agents with cold efficiency and then pull a plasma torch out of thin air to cauterize your son’s stumps and expect to move on without at least one “what the fuck” question.

This conversation had always been going to land here. 

There had never really been a way to dodge this talk; not from the moment everything went to hell last night. The instant the kitchen wall blew apart and the door slammed into the far-side wall of the living room, this conversation—if we even made it through alive—had been inevitable.

And yet, sitting here now, I still had no idea what exactly she was trying to pin down. Or worse—what she might do if whatever I said didn’t line up with whatever answer she was hoping to hear.

All those thoughts kept circling in my head, clawing for attention during the long silence, while Valeria just sat there, her eyes locked on me like steel pins keeping me fixed to the chair.

Finally, however, she spoke. 

“It is difficult to accept that all of these factors aligned so… conveniently,” she admitted, her voice still clipped in that corporate rhythm, though markedly slower and heavier the longer the conversation went on—exhaustion clearly taking its toll on her. “The timing, your actions, the outcomes thereof—none of it should have fallen into place as neatly as it did. And yet…” 

She let the words hang, almost tasting them, before giving the smallest shake of her head. “I have no more suitable explanation to offer at this point in time either.”

The pressure in my chest eased a little, and I breathed an inward sigh of relief. 

She wasn’t calling me out. 

The manifestation lie—or not lie—had slid by unchallenged. 

Which meant maybe it wasn’t even a lie at all. 

Maybe manifestation in the real world was possible, and whatever the System’s Inventory was, it had been using that same slice of Anima all along to conjure the random “loot” that it sometimes granted me.

Valeria’s voice cut back in, softer this time. “Regardless, I am glad events unfolded as they did.”

That threw me for a loop. 

My eyes flicked up at her just as a faint, almost alien smile spread across her lips. 

It looked wrong on her face—too warm, too… human. 

Not the mask I’d grown used to.

“I much prefer being alive to the alternative,” she said, almost dryly, but the words carried weight. “And we are alive because of you. Your actions, however unusual, directly ensured our survival. You performed well, Seraphine. I am… proud of what you accomplished yesterday.”

I had no clue how to respond, what to do with the words that had been spoken. 

I just sat there, thoughts refusing to string together.

Then I noticed it. 

My face felt damp. 

[Elemental Balance] kept me steady, flat, cold—there was no way for me to do anything else. 

And yet, when my fingers instinctively brushed just beneath my eyes, letting myself do so, they came away wet.

I stared at the drops on my hand, dumbstruck.

‘Tears…?’

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[TAS] Volume 2 - Chapter 51 - Aspectus

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------------------- Start of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) -------------------
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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Volume 2 - Chapter 45 - Honour has just released on RR with no changes.

For the Wolf Lords, this chapter is unchanged.

And also: Please do not read the chapters here on Patreon, but go for the googledoc, .pdf or .epub instead. Patreon butchers all forms of formatting and you're missing out on easier and more enjoyable reading experiences.

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This IS the fun chapter.

Also mad Cliffhanger warning.

Title Translate: Aspectus - Sight, Appearance, >Glimpse<

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I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the link to the chapter:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zU0JIliOFRl4xV-pTe7J_fLfS7Sli2oVtXFKw0i8-LQ/edit?usp=sharing

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Volume 2 - Chapter 51 - Aspectus

Ten minutes later, they were already on the move again, forced out by the increasingly sharp and punishing counterfire raining down from the Stellar Republic lines. 

The enemy had closed the gap to roughly a hundred and fifty meters now—a brutal reminder that the UHF’s first trenchline was bleeding out of time, and fast.

“Wellis Two, clear,” Chester’s voice crackled through the comms, tight with strain as he hauled Falks into place two slots down from Thea’s position.

Falks wasn’t in great shape. 

He’d taken the worst of it back at the last trench, when a sudden explosion punched through a weak spot in their reinforced embrasure. The blast had ripped a chunk of stone and metal free, collapsing it straight onto Falks and Marie. 

Marie had been lucky—her position at the far western wall spared her anything worse than a nasty set of bruises. 

Falks, though, hadn’t been so fortunate. He’d ended up half-buried under debris, his left leg mangled by the weight before Chester, Marie and Thea had dug him out.

“Thanks,” he grunted now, leaning hard against the trench wall as he brought his rifle up. His jaw was tight, his voice low and sharp with pain. 

A second later she caught the mutter under his breath, bitter and quiet. “Just my fucking luck, huh…” And then, without another word, he opened fire into the endless tide of enemy soldiers, forcing himself back into the fight.

Thea pushed her attention inward, trying to shake the image of Falks’ crushed leg out of her head. 

Her [Resources] screen flickered up.

[Resources]
Focus: 243 / 225

‘Ninety-five percent… That seems to do the trick!’ The small victory lit a spark of relief inside her chest. 

For three minutes straight, her Focus hadn’t budged from 243.

She had been methodically widening her Gate in careful increments during the previous firing position, checking her counter over and over until she finally found the balance point. 

It wasn’t perfect, but it was close enough to equilibrium for her [Glimpse] to run without draining her dry—and that was more than she’d dared hope for without going all the way to one-hundred percent.

Thea’s eyes stayed fixed on the swarm below, her finger steady on the trigger, but her mind had already started working two steps ahead. She finally had her passive [Glimpse] under control—close enough to an equilibrium that she wasn’t leaking Focus dry anymore. 

That meant she could afford to think about the next step: Using it actively.

She had avoided it so far. 

Too much fire, too many enemies pressing closer every second, and too much of a risk to overdraw. 

The thought of pulling her attention away from shooting, even for a heartbeat, felt reckless. 

But that was the thing—this was what Digital Missions were for, wasn’t it?
Trial and error, pushing limits, finding out what worked when it counted. 

If she couldn’t risk experimenting here, where else was she going to learn?

Her jaw tightened as she fired another burst into the mass of bodies clawing up the slope.

‘Focus will take a hit, no doubt. But now that I know the baseline drain, I won’t end up overdrawing by accident. It’s safe enough… and if I can figure out how to make [Glimpse] snap faster, even just a fraction, then it’s worth it.’

She had just about convinced herself when the squad comms lit up with Wellis’ voice, strained and clipped. “Chester, we need you. Mike’s hit—bad.”

“Fuck,” Chester muttered under his breath.

He spun toward them. “Marie’s in charge until I’m back. Don’t die, and fuck them up as much as you can.”

Without another word, he vaulted deeper into the trench network, sprinting off to the other half of Wellis Squad.

Thea exhaled slowly, her grip tightening around the rifle stock until her knuckles brushed white against the metal. ‘Guess it’s not really looking much better on the western front either, huh?’ 

The storm of red tracers and the muffled crack of explosions in that direction only confirmed it further.

Locking onto a Duplicator moving between two chunks of broken foam cover, she raised the barrel and let her focus narrow to a pinprick. A three-round burst snapped out, timed exactly the way her [Glimpse] had confirmed would work from her previous intentions.

The first shot struck high on the right shoulder plate—off-angle, glancing, the round sparking away uselessly as the enemy staggered from the impact. 

The second slammed into the chestplate seam exposed by that twist, the force shoving the armour slightly loose but still failing to pierce through. 

The third shot screamed straight into the sliver of opening created by the last, tearing into the soldier’s chest and rupturing his heart.

The man dropped instantly. 

At the same moment, scattered copies of him across the slope froze mid-step and collapsed like puppets cut from their strings, leaving sudden gaps in the enemy’s firing line—only to be filled instantly by even more enemy soldiers.

Thea didn’t waste time lamenting that fact; it was the exact same spiel she had seen for half an hour now. 

Her aim was already sweeping onward, skimming across helmets and chestplates, hunting for the subtle twitch in reality that marked another Duplicator. 

‘Guess now is as good as ever…’

She turned her focus inward, past the noise and chaos, to the familiar knot of psychic pressure lodged deep in her chest—dense, waiting, like a coiled spring behind her heart.

[Glimpse]

The pressure behind her heart flared, spilling outward like a surge of ice-water through her veins. Thea’s breath caught as her vision dulled—the battlefield’s chaos bleeding into muted shades, tracer fire and explosions paling until the world looked washed in ash and light.

For a heartbeat, she felt herself slip free of her own skin, her limbs moving without conscious thought. 

Her rifle rose, steadied, then swept across the enemy ranks in a smooth arc, like some unseen hand was guiding her sightline. Dozens of soldiers blurred past her focus until, suddenly, one burned sharp in her vision. 

Her finger squeezed the trigger—though she wasn’t sure it was her finger at all.

A single shot cracked and the man’s body folded like paper. 

The vision splintered immediately, shattering like the glass of the Duplicator’s visor, and Thea gasped as full colour and weight came rushing back.

She found herself right where she had started—rifle aimed at the same sector of battlefield she’d been covering before activating the Power. 

Without hesitation, she yanked the barrel toward the figure her [Glimpse] had marked. One round lanced straight through the enemy’s visor, bursting glass and bone in a sharp spray.

The soldier crumpled instantly, and with him half a dozen scattered duplicates folded into the dirt around him, collapsing like mirrored shadows finally broken.

‘Confirmed Duplicator,’ she thought, a sharp grin tugging at her mouth.

Pulling up her [Resource] interface immediately, she could barely believe her eyes.

[Resources]
Focus: 241 / 225

‘W…What?!’ Thea’s mind jolted, her finger freezing over the trigger as she stopped firing or working towards the next target for the first time since the mission began. 

Her eyes were glued to her Resource counter.

‘That just cost two Focus! How… How is that even possible…?’

Her entire understanding of how [Glimpse] should work buckled under the weight of that discovery. She had been certain—absolutely certain—that the active portion of her Power would chew through her Focus like a starving beast. 

That was how things worked in every game she had ever played. 

Passives were cheap, subtle, sometimes boring. Actives were stronger, flashier, and always came with a price tag that felt like punishment for daring to press the shiny button. 

It was common sense. Even the Allbright System’s Abilities worked that way.

And yet here she was, staring at the counter that had only ticked down by two. 

Yes, the cost had technically gone up compared to the constant drain of her passive use, but it wasn’t the bottomless sinkhole she’d been bracing for. 

It was… more than manageable.

‘Maybe this can actually work, then…’ A grin tugged across her lips despite the chaos around her, the thought sparking like fire in her chest. The active [Glimpse] hadn’t been much faster than her passive sweep, but the difference was in the time it saved. 

She didn’t have to painstakingly search for the Duplicators in real time—the Power dumped the work onto some future version of herself and fed the answer back to the present.

Her grin faltered for a half second as the thought twisted in on itself. ‘Wait… how does that even make sense? How can I precognitively figure out who the Duplicators are by precognitively watching myself… figure it out in the future… With precognition? Isn’t that some kind of recursive precognitive loop or some shit…?’

Thea shook her head, forcing her rifle back onto target, but the question lingered at the edges of her mind. ‘I’ll have to ask Kara about this later—she’s smart enough to make sense of it. And if not, maybe the Runepriest will know what kind of broken logic this Power is running on.’

She exhaled sharply, focusing again on the advancing horde, the grin creeping back despite herself. ‘Doesn’t matter. If it works, it works.’

She ran the process again. Twice. 

Each time she forced the [Glimpse] into its active state, lined up her shot, and dropped another Duplicator. Each time, she paused just long enough to glance at her Resource interface, triple-checking she wasn’t screwing up the math. 

Both times, the same result: Exactly two Focus gone for every kill.

[Resources]
Focus: 237 / 225

It confirmed her numbers, but something else was off. A strange thrum rolled through her chest, her heartbeat hammering far quicker than it had any right to. Not the steady, elevated rhythm of combat adrenaline—faster, sharper, almost like her body was trying to outrun itself.

‘I don’t remember the Runepriest ever mentioning this kind of thing…’ Thea frowned inwardly, her rifle already sweeping to the next target on the back of her passive [Glimpse]. 

A controlled squeeze, another body hit the dirt. 

Her heart didn’t calm immediately, but after a few breaths it eased back into its usual pace, the unnatural spike fading.

The lack of information gnawed at her. 

During the Assessment she hadn’t really been able to do anything about the lack of knowledge due to the fact that she’d been stuck with Recruits like herself most of the time—no one in Alpha Squad had had the training or the answers she had been looking for. 

But here? Now? She was surrounded by people who had been through different lectures, different instructors, different briefings. 

Privates who had been in the real world fires of war.

They might know something she didn’t.

She made the decision quickly. 

“Hey,” she called over the chaos, voice steady even as her rifle spat another burst into the swarm, “do any of you know if there are… physical side effects to using Psychic Powers? My heart kicked into overdrive just now when I used mine. Anything ring a bell?”

For a moment the only reply was the relentless stutter of weapons fire from her left. 

Then Falks yanked himself back behind the wall, slamming into the reinforced plating with a grunt as he swapped mags. He barked out a short laugh, though it twisted quickly into a grimace when his gaze dropped to his ruined leg.

“You really are fresh at this, huh?” he said, shaking his head. “Yeah, side effects like that are normal. That’s why unlocking the Psychic Resource needs Vitality as much as the weird shit like Resolve and Perception. You’re pushing your body in ways it isn’t designed for. Heart racing, muscle spasms, migraines—standard stuff. At the far end? I’ve seen guys stroke out or their heads pop like a melon. Not common, but it happens sometimes. Basically, it stacks the harder and faster you go. Keep your usage moderate and you’ll be fine. Push too far too quick, and you’ll end up as a red mist.”

“I heard it scales with how much of your Psychic Resource you burn at once,” Marie shouted from the western wall, voice cutting through the constant rattle of gunfire and the concussive shock of grenades going off downrange. 

She was still firing, barely pausing to breathe. 

Thea wondered briefly why Marie wasn’t just using the proximity comms, but let it slide—information was information. 

“So, yeah, if you’re not dumping yourself dry in like two bursts, you should be okay! Still depends on your Vitality though—low numbers, you’re going to fuck yourself real quick if you overdo it!”

“Thanks a lot! That helps a ton!” Thea shouted back, grinning despite the chaos around her. 

A strange kind of euphoria surged through her chest. She wasn’t used to asking people for help—least of all strangers thrown together in the middle of a warzone. 

Hell, she couldn’t remember the last time she had done anything like it. 

But the payoff made it worth it. The information was worth its weight in Two-Star Crysium Medals.

‘So the heart racing’s normal, huh? Probably one of the weakest backlash effects… Guess that means I can push it a bit further.’

Her mind flicked back to the Runepriest, to that lesson where he’d pressed her to test her limits before their next meeting. 

No hesitation, no playing it too safe—find out what she could really do.

‘Intent, Will, and Energy. That’s the stuff that shapes a Psychic Power, according to him. I’ve been coasting on baseline until now. So let’s keep it simple—augment with Energy only. No mixing in extra variables. That’ll just muddy the waters and screw with figuring things out...’

Her pulse quickened as she zeroed in on the pressure behind her heart again. 

This time, instead of just letting [Glimpse] flow out as usual, she deliberately leaned into it, pushing slightly harder, feeding more of that intangible, raw energy into the Power.

[Glimpse]

The world dimmed again, colors washing out into muted shades of grey as [Glimpse] gripped her. That faint sense of disembodiment returned—like she was watching herself move rather than actually moving. 

Her vision swept across the battlefield, locking onto one Duplicator and killing them, then another a heartbeat later. Each target took a second to register, that uncanny delay where her mind processed the knowledge of ‘who would fall if I killed this one’ before her body acted. 

Two kills lined up in front of her like they had already happened. 

Then the vision shattered.

She snapped instantly to the first Duplicator, her rifle barking once. 

The round punched clean through the enemy’s Light-armoured temple, dropping him where he stood. A ripple ran through the clones nearby as they collapsed in unison. 

Without hesitation she swung onto the second in one fluid motion. 

She squeezed the trigger—

Click.

Her rifle barked, but only after the slightest, maddening hitch in the weapon’s cycle time. The second Duplicator dropped, but Thea’s tongue clicked against her teeth in frustration. 

‘I might be able to line up multiple shots in a row—that’s huge, in itself—but the mechanics of the weapon can’t keep up like this…’

Her heart hammered harder than it had after the last two activations combined, a jittery rhythm thudding against her ribs. 

She snapped her [Resource] Interface open with a thought.

[Resources]
Focus: 231 / 225

“Hmm…” she muttered under her breath, letting her aim settle back into rhythm as she slipped into her passive [Glimpse] again, mowing down targets while her mind churned over the math.

‘So the enhanced [Glimpse] drains three times the Focus compared to baseline, but it lines up two Duplicators instantly, no delay at all. That’s… actually pretty damn strong. Like a cheaper version of [Sensory Overdrive] working in tandem with my passive [Glimpse], just without the insane drain. As long as I can work around the weapon cycle-time, it might be my best option yet...’

Her thoughts drifted immediately to the Laser-variant of the Gram—the one she was most familiar with. 

One of the main upsides of it that she had realised over the course of the Assessment, particularly in their mad dash to infiltrate Nova Tertius through the maintenance tunnels, had been the fact that none of the Laser-type weaponry she had used so far had any cycle time at all. 

They all seemed to fire as fast as you could pull the trigger, given that the capacitor didn’t run dry or your weapon overheated as a result of the rapid, high-energy fire.

“I guess it’s worth a shot,” she breathed, dumping the last rounds from her Gauss mag in a flurry of fire before popping it free and setting the weapon aside. Her hand reached for the Laser variant leaning against the trench wall where it had sat unused the entire mission.

“Welcome back,” she whispered almost affectionately as she haphazardly slung its sling over her shoulder, the familiar weight pressing comfortingly into her arms. For a month it had been her constant companion, and now, with its solid penetrative power and lack of recoil, it felt almost like relief itself. 

Her pulse eased just holding it.

She ran through a quick, practiced series of checks—safety, charge indicator, sling attachment points, sight calibration—making sure nothing had gotten knocked out of place during all the frantic movements, tosses, and pickups of the last half hour. 

Everything came back clean. 

Satisfied, she lowered herself back into her firing stance, the Laser rifle humming softly in her grip, the sound syncing with her breath and calming the thundering of her pulse. 

She fired twice, letting her passive [Glimpse] guide her aim, more to reacquaint herself with the rhythm than out of necessity—though she realized almost instantly that there was no need. The rifle felt like an extension of her body, as familiar as her own heartbeat.

“There a reason you keep swapping weapons like that?” Falks’ curious voice cut in from her left, the change in sound and the flash of her new shots clearly catching his attention.

“Yeah,” Thea answered, eyes narrowing back down her sight before she slipped into her thoughts again.

‘I could keep pouring more Energy into it, but I doubt that’ll do anything surprising… Intent or Will, maybe? But how the hell would I even go about that? The Intent is already perfect—or at least, I think it is. Unless I’m missing something…’

“Good talk,” she heard filter into her ears from the left, but ignored it for a lack of relevance to her current considerations.

She ran it through her head again, picking apart the phrasing of her Power, as far as she understood her current Intent phrasing, like it was a riddle she hadn’t solved yet. [Glimpse] already pulled exactly what she wanted—showing her the moments her other self had spotted Duplicators, narrowing her vision to only what mattered. 

How could she refine that further? “Only the stuff my other self can see” was as precise as it got without defeating the whole point of the Power. Anything beyond that felt redundant.

‘So that only leaves Will… but what does that even mean here? How do you “push” Will into something you’re already willing with everything you’ve got?’ Her brow furrowed beneath the helmet as the thought gnawed at her, even while her finger twitched on the trigger and the rifle cracked out another beam of light.

It took her almost a full minute of absent-minded shooting into the Stellar Republic lines, her rifle kicking and humming in steady rhythm, before something finally clicked in her head. 

A memory—something odd, almost silly, that she’d buried years ago.

Back in the Golden Age Arcades, those old games she now knew had been seeded by Terra as training tools for System Integration, there had always been quirks she never fully understood. 

Mechanics that seemed pointless at the time, like some dev’s strange obsession with flavor. 

One of the strangest? Certain abilities, spells, or skills—depending on the game—would hit harder, last longer, or scale better if you actually… called out the name when you used it.

‘There’s no way that’s actually real… right?’ she thought, biting back a grimace. 

She tried to push the idea away, to find a cleaner, more respectable route for her little experiment, but the more she thought about it, the less and less crazy it actually sounded.

‘I mean… saying the name out loud would force you to commit more, wouldn’t it? And what are Intent, Will, and Energy if not just layers of commitment?’

As much as she cringed at the thought of yelling out Ability names like some deranged Arcade kid, she couldn’t exactly deny it wasn’t already halfway true. 

Every time she used [Sensory Overdrive] or any other Ability or Power, the name itself flashed in her head first, like a command-word carved into her mind. She didn’t speak it aloud, but it was there—loud, dominant and utterly undeniable—for just an instant.

So maybe the games hadn’t been lying at all. 

Maybe the mechanic hadn’t been pure flavour all along.

‘If calling it out really amps up the Will part of the formula… there’s no reason not to try. Worst case, I look like an idiot for half a second...’

She bided her time, waiting until the next heavy barrage shook the trench line. 

Explosions rattled the earth, dirt rained from above, and the deafening roar masked almost everything else. Timing it with the chaos, she shifted her Intent slightly, telling her passive [Glimpse] to signal her when the UHF Offensive Heavy lines would hammer the field again.

As the next cluster of detonations rolled across the battlefield, she committed.

“[Glimpse].”

Her eyes shot wide at once, the hair on her arms prickling despite the insulated combat suit—she could immediately tell something was very different. 

Her own voice rang out clean and sharp in her ears, cutting through the cacophony like it had been threaded onto a different audio channel entirely, boosted to perfect clarity no matter how the battlefield thundered. 

It was her voice, and yet… not. 

Distorted, pulled at the edges, like something unseen was ripping through it, twisting the sound into something uncanny and raw.

Color drained from the battlefield in front of her, the constant thunder of explosions sinking into a dull, muffled hum. Her vision swept across the enemy lines in a sharp, predestined arc, movements not her own, yet they were.

Her body felt loose, almost detached, like a marionette tugged by invisible strings. 

One. 

The first Duplicator’s profile lit up in her perception. A single shot, straight through the chestplate—the Laser having enough power to punch right through the Medium-type armour at this range.

Two. 

Her aim dragged left. Another, crouched behind a heap of corpses. A single round to the visor—gone.

Three. 

Further out, half-hidden in the muzzle-flashes. She lined up, fired, dropped him cold.

Four. 

Another one buried deeper in the mob. Her other self didn’t hesitate, tracing the perfect shot angle between a pair of advancing freaks. Her aim locked slightly above his exposed jawline, wearing only a half-halmet—dead in a blink.

The vision shattered like glass, sound and color slamming back into her ears and eyes. 

She didn’t think, didn’t breathe, just moved. 

Her rifle snapped from target to target with machine precision, fingers hammering the trigger in perfect rhythm. Four streaks of incandescent plasma cut across the red-white-hued nightsky, each one followed by the collapse of not just a soldier but whole clusters of their identical duplicates tumbling in unison.

No cycle stutter this time.

Just four freaks dead in an instant—her chest heaved like she’d just run flat-out across the battlefield. 

Thea sucked in air, the rush of what she’d just done slamming into her all at once, heart pounding so hard it felt like it might punch through her ribs.

“Holy fuck,” she breathed, fighting to steady herself, sweat prickling against her brow under the helmet.

“What the fuck was that?!” Marie’s voice carried sharp from the far side of the embrasure, shock cutting through the chaos of gunfire.

“No fucking kidding, what in the Emperor’s golden toenails was that shit just now?” Falks’ voice followed from her left.

Thea tried to sound casual, though the grin on her face and the tremor in her breath betrayed her. “Just… trying things out with my Power. Sorry about that.”

Marie barked back almost immediately, “Did you at least fucking hit something?!”

“Yeah! Four of them!” Thea yelled over the din, a flash of pride in her voice she didn’t bother to hide this time.

“What the fuck?! Then keep doing that, for fuck’s sake!” Marie shot back.

Falks slammed a fresh mag into his weapon, then glanced at Thea. 

Their visors met across the chaos. He stopped mid-motion. 

The mag hung loose in his hand, his movements entirely frozen.

“Holy fuck. It’s you,” he muttered, half in awe, half in something closer to disbelief.

“It’s… me?” Thea asked, utterly thrown by his sudden tone shift.

“Your medal!” Falks jabbed his mag toward her chest like an accusing finger. “You’re a fucking Two-Star Crysium Recruit?!”

Her stomach dropped. Reflexively, she looked down at herself—and understood instantly.

When she’d slung the Laser Gram’s strap over her shoulder, she hadn’t paid any mind to keeping her Spectre’s cloak tight across her torso. 

In the shuffle, the fabric had twisted just enough to peel back at the center. 

And there it was, gleaming like a damn beacon in the chaotic battlefield light: The shimmering blue metal of her Two-Star Crysium Medal, embedded just above her heart, catching every flicker of fiery explosions, laser beams and tracer fire around them.

The shooting from the far end of the embrasure faltered, cut off mid-burst. 

Thea turned her head just in time to see Marie lean back from cover, craning around Falks for a better look. 

The Marine’s helmet tilted, visor catching the faint gleam of the medal on Thea’s chest. 

The second her eyes locked on it, Marie’s knees seemed to vanish from under her—she dropped flat onto her back in the trench dirt, arms splaying like she’d been shoved.

“Holy fuck,” she kept repeating, over and over, her voice rising in pitch with every echo as if the words alone weren’t enough to process what she was seeing.

Thea’s throat tightened. Awkward didn’t even begin to cover how she felt.

Sure, this had been the plan—well, sort of. 

From the very start, she’d wanted the recognition, the respect, the subtle nods of acknowledgment from veterans who knew what the medal meant. 

That was why she’d confirmed the display option at the start of the DM in the first place. 

Back in her head, she had pictured it working the same way as the arcade games: Let the medal gleam before the action started, draw a few stares, maybe field a question or two about her builds, and walk away looking like the badass she was supposed to be.

But none of that had happened.

Because, of course, she’d been too distracted by trying to figure out how the whole Digital Mission system worked in the first place. Too focused on watching and learning, adjusting her loadout, following Chester’s lead—completely missing the fact that her Spectre’s cloak had been wrapped tight the entire time, keeping the medal buried out of sight.

Then came the upscale. 

The mission had suddenly spiked in difficulty, tension flooding the room as people realized what it meant—and Thea, of all people, had been the trigger for it. 

The one responsible. 

She’d sat there in silence, listening to Marines groan, curse, and gripe, while knowing full well that if anyone realized it was her fault, the stares wouldn’t be admiration. 

They’d be daggers instead.

It was one thing to be admired as an Ace-in-the-making. It was another entirely to be singled out as the reason the majority of the platoon thought they were about to fucking die.

“Ehh… Hi,” she awkwardly offered, trying to smooth things over, her voice cracking just slightly in her own ears.

Falks let out a short, incredulous laugh, shaking his head as he slapped a fresh mag into his rifle. “Hi? That’s all you’ve got? You’re sitting here with a fucking Two-Star Crysium on your chest and you didn’t think to mention it before?” 

He gestured loosely with the weapon, disbelief plain in his tone. “Hell, you could’ve saved me half a dozen near-deaths already if we had known about that. We could’ve had some of the Defensive Heavys in our squad, easy!”

Marie, on the other hand, had the opposite reaction entirely. 

She scrambled back onto her feet, practically bouncing in place as her words tumbled out faster than the rifle in her hands. “Holy shit, I can’t believe this! A Two-Star Crysium! And a Recruit?! In the same squad as me?! This is insane—like, I’m literally standing next to a Battlefield Ace in the making! Oh my god, I’m gonna tell everyone—”

“Marie,” Falks cut in sharply, though even he clearly couldn’t hide a grin beneath the strain. He raised his rifle over the parapet again, snapping off a few quick shots before ducking back down. “Back to work, both of you. We’ve still got a job to do. But for the record, Thea? Whatever you need—call it. I’ve got your back, one hundred percent.”

“Yeah! Same!” Marie nodded so hard Thea half-worried her helmet would fly right off. 

“Anything at all, just say the word. Two-Star Crysium… holy shit…”

Thea blinked, caught entirely off-guard. 

She’d braced herself for anger, maybe resentment—hell, even outright accusations that she’d ruined the mission for everyone by forcing the upscale. 

But there was none of that in their voices. 

No bitterness, no blame. 

Just support.

Something warm pressed into her chest, mingling awkwardly with the gnawing guilt she’d been hit with at the sudden revelation. “Alright… thanks. Really. But, uh—don’t expect miracles. I was mostly planning on using this run for some experiments. That’s… honestly the only reason I didn’t say anything after the upscale. Didn’t even know it existed before.”

“That’s classic UHF 101,” Falks chuckled, shaking his head as he lined up another shot. “Keep the rookies blind until they’re knee-deep in shit. Builds character, or some crap like that.”

Thea almost smiled at that as they all settled back into rhythm, laying down fire against the tide of clones pushing up the hill. 

Marie, however, couldn’t hold in her excitement.

“We’ve got a Two-Star Crysium Recruit in our fucking squad!” she screamed into the chaos, her voice shrill with joy, as though she were announcing it to the entire battlefield.

Thea cringed so hard she thought her neck might snap, burying her face briefly against her scope even though she knew only Falks and she could actually hear it over comms.

“You’re all so fucked now! A future Battlefield Ace motherf—”

Marie’s jubilant cry was abruptly cut off mid-word. 

A single, sharp crack split the air inside the embrasure, and her body went rigid—then dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.

Thea’s stomach turned cold as she saw the neat, glowing hole drilled straight through Marie’s visor. 

One stray shot, and she was gone…

—

—

PoV: Private Chester O’Neil

“Alright, Mike, you should be good for about two hours. Let me know fifteen minutes before it wears off so I’ve got time for a re-up,” Chester said, patting the Defensive Heavy’s shoulder as he finished securing the last injector port.

“Thanks, Medic,” came the clipped reply. The massive Marine wasted no time sealing his Super-Heavy armour back up, plates hissing into place as he hauled his slab of a shield and heavy weapon into position before trudging back toward the front of the embrasure.

‘Man’s got more lives than a damn cat,’ Chester thought, stowing his tools back into their proper slots. ‘Anti-tank round, dead-on to the chestplate, and it still only clipped him. Half an inch left and I’d be scraping him into a bag.’

He slung his pack over one shoulder, making ready to head back toward his side of the trench, when Wellis’ gravelly voice called out from the eastern-most firing slit. “Good work, Chester. Keep it up. You got any idea what in the Emperor’s name that Laser gatling is? You see one of the other squads packing something like that?”

“Laser gatling…?” Chester echoed, stepping up beside him and squinting through the haze of smoke, fire and tracer rounds that cut the night into pieces. “I don’t see—”

“Wait for it,” Wellis cut him off.

And then it came.

Seven blazing streaks of plasma ripped across the dark sky in rapid succession, so fast they blurred together like a single incandescent whip. Downrange, whole pockets of the enemy line crumpled, ripping through Duplicators who collapsed in unison with their scattered copies.

Chester whistled low under his breath. “Only seven shots? Doesn’t really scream ‘gatling,’ but the fire rate fits. Never seen one like that before, though. Definitely not standard issue.”

“Well, whoever’s running it is cutting them down hard,” Wellis grunted. “Every time that thing flares up, it’s like watching a section of the freaks just fold in on itself. Whoever’s pulling the trigger’s got freakishly good luck hitting Duplicators, too. But that kind of lightshow draws attention fast—their side’s getting hammered in return fire. Can’t imagine it’ll hold long.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Chester chuckled, shaking his head. “Alright, I’ll—”

“Wellis Two, moving,” a crisp female voice broke in over the command channel, making Chester stop mid-sentence.

He blinked. ‘That’s not Marie. Was that the Recruit…?’

“I’m heading back to the other side,” the voice continued, calm but clipped. “I’ll ping once I’m set. Then we should seriously start thinking about pulling to the second line.”

“Just what I was about to suggest,” Wellis replied without missing a beat, turning his attention back to the slit as he loosed another volley into the night. 

He gave Chester a short nod.

“Keep up the good work, Medic.”

Chester gave Wellis a quick nod of acknowledgment before breaking into a full sprint, boots pounding against the mud-slick trench floor as he pushed himself harder.

‘Shit… did Marie and Falks both buy it?’ the thought burned through his head, sour and sharp. ‘No reason the Recruit should be calling the shots unless she’s the last one left. And with Precognition? Yeah… wouldn’t surprise me if she’s the one still standing. That’s overpowered as fuck in a meat grinder like this.’

His mind kept spiraling while he vaulted over stacked crates and ducked under a sparking cable line hanging loose from the trench wall. 

As much as he’d written her off earlier as just another shiny new Recruit to squeeze Merit and Credits out of, there was no walking away from the reality of it now—an Awakened Psyker, especially fresh, was a walking hazard if left unsupervised.

One wrong push past their limit, one accidental overdraw, and it wasn’t just the Psyker who suffered. They told them in lectures that overdrawing was a death sentence, a one-way ticket to getting Zero’d, but new Psykers never really knew what they were doing. 

They simply didn’t know their limits until they crossed them, and then it was too damn late.

The thought alone lit a fire under Chester’s legs, forcing him faster, his lungs burning. 

He shoved past a knot of western-side Marines hustling into position, their curses trailing after him as he barreled toward Wellis Two’s third fallback point.

Then, just as he rounded the corner, it hit.

“[Glimpse]!”

The word tore through the air like barbed wire dragging across his eardrums, warped and unnatural—wrong in a way that made his stomach twist. 

It wasn’t just sound. 

It was like hearing on another frequency layered over reality itself, one that had no business bleeding into the physical world.

And then the trench lit up.

From the eastern end, where the Recruit was, a storm of laser fire erupted—eight shots in a heartbeat, stitched together so fast they almost merged into a single beam. The sudden flare was so bright it threw sharp-edged shadows across the trench walls, nearly blinding him.

“Holy fuck…” Chester breathed, frozen for half a second, eyes locked on the small figure of the Marine holding that rifle like it was an extension of her soul.

Then movement snapped him back—the crumpled form of Falks, slumped forward against the mud and sandbags, his armour scorched and his rifle lying slack in one arm.

Chester dropped into a skid, sliding to Falks’ side. “Falks!” he barked, trying to get the Marine’s attention.

The man’s helmet tilted just enough for a bloodied grin to peek through. His laugh was wet and thin, flecking his chinplate. 

“Heh… hey, doc,” Falks rasped, breath hitching. “Guess they got me.”

Chester dropped to his knees, already reaching for the med-kit strapped to his thigh, hands moving on instinct—stims, clotters, auto-sutures—anything to keep Falks alive long enough to drag him back.

But Falks’ gauntlet shot up, weak but firm enough to press against Chester’s chest and stop him. 

His voice was a strained rasp, but his tone left no room for argument. “Don’t. No point, doc… can’t feel my legs. Can’t feel anything. You won’t carry me through this, not with the trench breaking like it is.”

Chester froze, staring at him, fingers twitching with the urge to ignore him and work anyway. 

But the look in Falks’ eyes piercing through the visor up-close—the raw certainty—held him there.

“Help her,” Falks whispered, head tilting slightly toward the eastern embrasure where Thea’s rifle thundered. “Thea. She’s the only chance we got of winning this thing.”

“What…?” Chester muttered, caught between confusion and disbelief.

Falks’ grin widened, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth as a wet cough tore through him. The sound was guttural, half-choked by the gurgling coming from the ragged hole in his chestplate. 

He spat crimson, then gave a weak chuckle that ended in another cough.

“She’s her,” he managed, voice thin but certain. And then, still smiling like he’d just given away the galaxy’s best-kept secret, Falks’ head slumped to the side. 

His chest rose once, shuddered, then went still.

“Fuck…” Chester swore under his breath, a bitter edge to the word as he dropped Falk’s body and forced himself back up to his feet. 

He spun, gaze snapping toward Thea—ready to scream at her, ready to demand what the fuck that cryptic-ass message could have possibly meant—

And then he saw it.

The shimmer of deep blue light caught his eyes first, peeking from beneath the folds of her Spectre’s Cloak. Embedded in the armor just above her heart was the glinting metal of a Two-Star Crysium Medal.

It all clicked at once.

The three DMRs slung across her back, something no fresh Recruit should’ve had. 

The eerie calm she’d shown when the mission had been upscaled.

The way she’d slid into combat like she’d been born in the trenches. 

The timing on every shot, the precision of every move—calculated, exact.

Not luck. Not chance. Not even just raw talent.

This was someone groomed for the battlefield. 

A future Battlefield Ace, standing right in front of him.

Chester’s throat felt dry, but he forced the words out anyway, the weight of Falks’ last request ringing in his ears. She was their only way out of this mess. 

And he damn well knew it. 

“What do you need, Thea?”

Thea’s head tilted up at him, her visor catching the light of the battlefield outside for a brief moment.

“Focus,” she said simply, voice flat as it had been the entire time since the battle started.

Chester didn’t hesitate. 

He dropped into a crouch right behind her, pulling up his [Resources] interface. 

He hadn’t burned much on Mike earlier, but if he was going to give her what she needed, he had to be certain he wouldn’t overdraw himself.

[Resources]
Focus: 414 / 455

‘Good enough.’

He gave himself a quick nod, before putting his hand on Thea’s back, not even questioning what she needed the Focus for. She was a Psyker and a future Battlefield Ace; questions weren’t part of the equation—not anymore.

[Focus Link]

The ability snapped into place, a drain surging through his arm like someone had ripped a vein open. He felt his own energy being pulled from him and into her—an endless, invisible siphon that left him feeling utterly hollow and cold in its wake.

“I’m going to try something,” she muttered over the proximity comms, the words clipped, almost nervous. “It should be fine, based on everything I’ve tested so far… but I waited for you because I don’t know how much this will cost.”

“Go for it,” Chester answered, gritting his teeth against the pull. She was already damn near topped off, and he still had half his bar left. Plenty of room to work with.

And then it started.

From beneath the plates of her armor, a shimmering haze began to bleed out—thousands of nano-bots pouring into the trench around them. The swarm glittered faintly in the muzzle flashes and flares overhead, arranging themselves into a shifting web that wrapped the alcove like some half-seen cocoon.

They didn’t create illusions. They didn’t fly out through the firing slit to trick the enemy.

They just… circled her.

Chester’s breath hitched.

‘What in the fuck is she doing…?’

“Okay,” Thea whispered, almost like she was bracing herself. “I’m doing it.”

The next instant shattered him.

Her voice tore through the world.

“[GLIMPSE!]”

But it wasn’t just her scream. 

It was her scream multiplied a thousandfold, amplifying and shrieking from the throats of every last nanobot that ringed her like a choir of broken angels. 

The sound warped, distorted, layered until it was no longer a voice at all but simply noise—raw, psychic thunder that ripped reality itself open.

Chester screamed as his ears ruptured instantly, hot blood flooding his ear canals. 

His vision whited out like a flashbang had gone off inside his skull, pain stabbing through every nerve as the psychic resonance caved his senses in.

He was blind from the pain, deaf from the screech, half-conscious, and his body trembled uncontrollably, but everything left him with a single, seared-in thought—

‘Banshee…!’

—

—

Watching the swarm of hybrid nano-bots bleed out of her armor and arrange themselves in orbit around her, Thea couldn’t help but wonder just how loud this was about to get.

Each test before had been louder than the last, the volume directly tied to the strength of her results, but she’d never committed to going all the way. Not with her Focus draining in big chunks every recent attempt, not with the uncertainty of how much the tech would even play into the equation.

But now, with Chester behind her funneling more Focus into her than she could realistically burn through, there was no reason to hold back. 

No excuses left.

“Okay,” she whispered to herself, the words barely audible over the din of the trench. “I’m doing it.”

She pulled in one long, steadying breath. 

Then she screamed.

It ripped out of her throat raw, a primal yell, her Power weaving into it and blasting outward.

The sound didn’t just leave her—it fractured, split, and poured through ten-thousand nano-bots hovering in a perfect web around her. 

Every one of them amplified it, twisting her voice into something alien and utterly wrong.

“[GLIMPSE]!”

The trench quaked with the force of it. 

The distorted chorus shredded through the battlefield like reality itself had been split open. 

For an instant, the world broke. All sound warped. 

Reality smeared like an oil painting.

And then it all just stopped.

Thea’s breath caught in her chest. This wasn’t the usual activation. 

There was no half-second of disembodiment, no slipping into the detached state she’d come to expect. She wasn’t watching her body move without her—she was her body. 

In control. Whole. Yet everything around her was frozen in place.

‘What the…’

Her eyes darted toward the firing slit. The battlefield lay out before her, locked in stillness. 

Bolts of laser fire hung in mid-air like streaks of glass suspended in oil. 

The mass of the Stellar Republic had gone silent. 

Even the smoke and fire hung unmoving, like a painting come to life and then trapped in time.

‘How is this pos—’

Her thought cut off as she instinctively glanced toward her rifle’s scope.

And there, reflected in the glass, was an eye staring back at her. 

It was hers. But not cyan…

A glowing violet, burning like neon fire, staring straight back at her with all the weight of inevitability. A voice curled up her spine, smooth and mocking, laced with an intimacy that made her skin crawl.

“You called, darling…?”

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[Wolf Lord+ | Draft] Volume 2 - Chapter 54 - Becoming

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------------------- Start of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) -------------------
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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Welcome to the draft release of Volume 2 - Chapter 54 - Becoming for y'all.

As always, a quick reminder that this chapter is still in the process of being workshopped by me and that this is simply the first-draft.

And also: Please do not read the chapters here on Patreon, but go for the googledoc, .pdf or .epub instead. Patreon butchers all forms of formatting and you're missing out on easier and more enjoyable reading experiences.

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This one took fucking forever to write; god damn.

Next chapter finishes up the DM with a bang \o/

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I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the link to the chapter:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jw7fQyzRKnNvXtW-O16ZH4G6Bim0d-w2LEUZ06Sj7f4/edit?usp=sharing

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Volume 2 - Chapter 54 - Becoming

“There is no such thing as fairness in this universe.” 

Those are the words of Patriarch Alaric Laniz Dravain, head of the Dravain Major Legacy, when asked about his family’s training regimen for their children. 

“The UHF is a meritocracy through and through. Our merit is measured not just in skill, but also in blood, in connections… in legacy. We would be failing our children—and our Faction—if we did not shape them into weapons worthy of the posts they will one day hold.”

It is difficult to argue with the results: The Dravains have produced sixteen consecutive generations of high-ranking officers, Battlefield Aces, and accomplished squad leaders. 

In the modern Corps, where every Marine is measured in raw Attributes, Ability efficiency, and combat readiness, the Dravains have perfected the art of raising guaranteed powerhouses.

Their children begin education practically as soon as they can walk. 

UHF-like Skill classes (minus System restrictions, of course) are woven into their daily schedules: Simulated Combat Tactics, Advanced Marksmanship, Physics, Biology, Psyker Theory, Battlefield Engineering, and many, many more. 

Each curriculum is personalized to suit the child’s predicted top-Role—Support, Heavy, Recon, Medic, Squad Leader, Assault, or any of the myriad other Roles the UHF MC observes—often selected before the child turns ten. 

Combat instructors include retired Battlefield Aces and decorated war heroes, hired for astronomical sums to pass down everything they know. 

Beyond raw combat training, the children receive instruction in galactic politics, military history, leadership doctrine, and strategic decision-making, ensuring they can thrive not just as marines but also as leaders at every level. 

Several years are devoted to Build theory as well, using Terra’s most sophisticated gaming platforms to test and refine potential Attribute spreads, Ability synergies, and equipment compositions. 

They review the current galactic gaming meta, dissecting the best Builds created by the foremost professional Build designers of their time, contrasting theory with practice until it becomes second nature to them.

To outsiders, the regimen borders on ruthless. 

But to the Dravains, it is simply the duty of a family that is considered a Major Legacy. 

They do not ask their children if they want to become Marines. 

The question is only how far they will rise once they do become one. 

Raised in an environment where every moment is directed toward becoming an apex-level marine, few ever think to resist. 

It is not indoctrination so much as inevitability—after all, when a path is laid so clearly, what reason is there to stray?

—

“We are the fire that keeps the forge burning bright and hot,” Patriarch Alaric Laniz Dravain once said. “Our sons and daughters will be the ones holding the line at the edge of the Void, while others debate whether it is fair they were born into privilege. 

The universe does not care. 

The enemy certainly does not care either. 

The UHF is a meritocracy—and our legacy is our merit.”

—

[UHF Core Network – Editorial Feature: "The Dravain Major Legacy - Forging the Next Line of Titans" – PFC931]

======

======

Thea stood on the compacted dirt of the trench hallway, eyes sweeping over the four Marines in front of her while she waited for an answer to her request for a Medic—someone who might actually be able to help Chester recover faster.

None of them screamed “Squad Medic” at first glance, but she knew better than to trust appearances by now. Kara’s own armor was proof enough—medium-type, sure, but it looked closer to a heavy-type than anything a field medic should have been wearing in a traditional sense.

These four, though… by their gear, two were clearly Offensive Heavies—both lugging weapons that looked far too big for any sane person to carry around—and one was definitely a Defensive Heavy, his shield strapped to his forearm and the bulky plates of his super-heavy-type armor scorched and lightly dented from the recent fighting. 

The last one was a medium-type, probably their Squad Leader judging by the way the others were looking his way, waiting for him to speak first.

Thea was still catching her breath from dragging Chester out of the blasted ruin of Wellis Two’s alcove, the air back there still hot enough to taste. Chester had been half-dragged, half-carried, his legs barely cooperating as they scrambled to the far end of the trench before the next explosive salvo could hit.

‘I definitely need to apologize to him…’ The thought twisted uncomfortably in her head as she glanced back at him. ‘Didn’t think the damn Nanobot Swarm would be that loud.’

Even now her ears throbbed with a constant high-pitched ring, her noise cancellation cranked all the way up and still not enough to save her hearing from the auditory assault. 

She grimaced. ‘Should’ve warned him. Definitely should’ve warned him. That one’s on me. Stupid, Thea. Stupid.’

“N… No,” the medium-type finally answered, his voice shaky, still sounding half-buried under the shock of the barrage that had torn their alcove apart. From the way his armor was scorched and caked in half-molten debris, Thea figured they’d been caught in the same chain of blasts that had annihilated Wellis Two’s position—unlucky collateral in the Stellar Republic’s retaliation. 

“What is the plan, Ma’am?”

Thea blinked, caught completely off guard. 

The “Ma’am” landed harder than the question itself, and she felt herself pull back slightly, as if the word had been thrown at her. 

Since when was she the one Marines asked for orders?

Her eyes flicked toward the other three, expecting some sign that this was a joke, or maybe that they thought their Squad Leader had lost it. 

But there was no confusion on their faces. 

No hesitation, no glance back at him to double-check. They were all staring straight at her now, waiting, as though her answer was the only one that mattered.

‘Wait… is he not the Squad Leader after all? Maybe he’s just the one they expect to have answers, which is why they were all looking at him earlier,’ Thea thought, quickly reassessing her read of the squad dynamic. ‘Kind of like when Corvus handed command over to me during the Nova Tertius infiltration…? Wasn’t exactly a Squad Leader, except in name only back then too.’

The memory made her wince. 

She could still picture the chaos of that run—her calls that hadn’t been sharp enough, the hesitation in moments that had demanded precision, the chain of missteps piling up until their squad had gone down before ever reaching their main objective. 

Dying out there had been bad enough, but knowing they’d failed the mission entirely was the part that dug under her skin every time she remembered it.

‘They can’t keep fighting here,’ Thea realized, eyes flicking to the ruined alcove. 

The front wall was shredded, the firing slits collapsed or completely buried in debris. 

These four wouldn’t be able to do anything but get themselves killed if they stayed here.

And they’d just asked her—a random Recruit who’d run up out of nowhere—for a plan. 

That meant one thing: Whoever had been leading them was gone.

She hesitated, biting the inside of her cheek as her own situation hit her as well. Chester was the last other survivor of Wellis Two, barely managing to lean upright against the trench tunnel’s wall behind her.

Her mind jumped to the experiments she’d meant to run for this Digital Mission. 

The weapons testing—done, or at least done enough for this round. Her Psyker Powers… Well, those had left her with a headache and ringing ears, but she definitely had something to work with now; even if she wasn’t entirely sure what, quite yet.

But with the state of the battlefield, there was no more time for experiments. 

She’d heard at least half a dozen Squad Leaders call their own squad’s fallback to the second trench over the comms in the last minute. The front line was collapsing, and if she wasted any more time playing around, they’d lose the DM entirely.

Æht’s words came back, curling through her mind like smoke that lingered, no matter how much Thea tried to clear it away. “Where did your instincts go? All the teachings James drilled into you…? Unleash yourself, Thea.”

The words thrummed through her chest, almost as loud as the ringing in her ears. She let out a slow, heavy breath, forcing her shoulders not to sag, refusing to let the weight show.

“Alright then,” she said, her voice more forceful and sharper than she felt, letting herself slip into that tone the Old Man had drilled into her years ago. The one meant for moments exactly like this—when leadership had to be assumed, even if only for a few minutes. 

“You’re with me now.”

She jabbed a finger at the medium-type, who straightened immediately despite the lingering shock still written in his posture. “You—help Chester. He’s our only Medic, and we need him back on his feet. Get him moving, carry him if you have to. We’re falling back to the second trenchline.”

Her gaze swept over the other three Marines, making sure every helmet visor was pointed at her before she continued. “Once we’re situated, I’ll go and find Sergeant Kalt to coordinate anything further from there.”

It was the only plan that made sense. 

If she wanted to make a difference here—really have an effect on this fight—she needed more than just four shellshocked survivors trailing her through the tunnels. She needed direction, proper support, and someone with the authority and experience to actually coordinate everything. 

Sergeant Kalt was the fastest, most reliable way to get that.

She didn’t wait for a reply. 

Instead, she pushed past the medium-type and into the tunnels, trusting without hesitation that they would follow. 

They were Marines, after all.

“Competence is to be assumed at all times,” James’ voice echoed in her head, a lesson hammered in during countless drills. “Coddling your fellow Marines when you’ve given clear and concise orders will do nothing but slow you down.”

The original plan for Wellis Squad had been simple: Regroup in an orderly fashion at the center of the trenchline as shooting alcoves became untenable, then fall back as one unit toward the second trench once they were close enough together to call a unit-wide order. 

But that had always been the best-case scenario—an ideal, not a guarantee.

Squad Leader Wellis had made it very clear before the fighting started that the acting leader of Wellis Two would hold full operational command over their sector. If the situation turned bad enough, they had the authority to call a fallback on their own, no questions asked.

So that’s what she did.

“Wellis Two, falling back,” Thea announced into the command channel, her voice cutting through the storm of similar chatter. 

The channel was a half-disciplined wall of noise by now—squads reporting retreats in quick succession as the first trenchline steadily crumbled, mixed with Sergeant Kalt’s repeated, near-frantic demand for intel on a supposed Offensive Heavy with some kind of laser-gatling.

Thea couldn’t help with that. 

She hadn’t seen anyone like that in her sector, hadn’t heard the weapon fire, either. 

Supposedly they had been somewhere nearby—based on Kalt’s very limited intel that claimed them somewhere on the eastern flank, same as her—but that meant little when she had neither visual nor auditory confirmation on anything of the sort.

‘I should’ve paid some more attention to the battlefield in general… I’ll have to ask about the weapon later, at the very least,’ she thought grimly, boots pounding through the dirt as she pushed past alcove after alcove. 

Most were tombs now—bodies sprawled in corners, armor cracked and scorched. 

Some were little more than smoking holes, dirt, rockcrete and ferrocrete plating having collapsed inward like paper. A select few were entirely empty, and those felt eerily hollow, like they had been abandoned in a rush—which was likely to be exactly true.

‘Still,’ she told herself, forcing her pace faster as she heard the five sets of footsteps behind her, the ringing in her ears almost entirely subsided by now, ‘Isabella would want to hear about a weapon like that. If it’s got someone like Kalt this rattled, then it’s definitely something worth noting and pointing out to her, so she can take a look.’

Thea kept them moving, guiding Wellis Two down the trench tunnels. 

The din of battle raged behind them—distant roars of explosions, the hiss of laser fire, and the dull thumps of heavy ordnance—but down here it all sounded muted, muddled by layers of dirt rock- and ferro-crete. The tunnels carried the echoes like a low, endless rumble, constant but strangely dull, like thunder behind walls.

They made good time.

Chester’s injuries slowed the group down a little, but not so much that they risked getting bogged down. He seemed to be recovering bit by bit, his steps growing steadier the further they went, though he still leaned on the medium-type for support.

When they broke into the main tunnel of the second trenchline, Thea paused. Alcoves stretched in both directions, some already filling with retreating Marines, others still empty. 

She had no idea which were already claimed, and she didn’t want to drag her squad into someone else’s position by accident.

She turned to the group. “Anyone know the layout? Which alcoves are open?”

To her surprise, the medium-type spoke up without hesitation. “Second trench doesn’t have a fixed layout, Ma’am. Squads are supposed to leave at least one alcove open between them, two if possible, for repositioning later. Other than that, just fill in as you fall back.”

Thea gave a short nod, piecing things together. “And Sergeant Kalt? Where’s his command area?”

“Around thirty alcoves to the east,” he answered instantly, visor steady on hers.

That confirmed it. 

He wasn’t just another grunt—he had to be the interim squad leader. No random Marine would know both the spacing protocol for squads falling back and command’s location.

“Good,” Thea said firmly. “We’re heading that way. Keep sharp, and eyes open for a Medic.”

They pushed deeper into the second trenchline, moving alcove by alcove. 

By the fourth, Thea spotted what she’d been looking for: A Medic crouched over another Marine, patching up a nasty gash along the side of his torso. 

Without hesitation, she stepped forward.

“Medic. I’ve got another one for you,” Thea called, motioning for Chester to be brought forward. “Take him in, get him patched up. We need every Medic standing if we want to make it.”

The Medic spun around sharply, clearly ready to snap that he was already more than busy—until his visor landed on the gleaming medal embedded in her chestplate. He froze for half a second, audibly caught himself, then quickly nodded, his voice suddenly far more formal.

“Y–Yes, Ma’am. Leave him here. I’ll have him ready to go in a minute or two.” He was already laying out supplies, hands moving fast. “Where do I send him once he’s good?”

Thea hesitated, thinking it over as she glanced back at her small squad. 

“I’ll send someone to inform you once we’ve claimed an alcove,” she decided.

“Understood.”

With Chester finally in proper hands, Thea straightened, forcing some of the tension out of her shoulders. She turned back to the others, sweeping them with a quick look before nodding toward the deeper tunnel.

“Alright. Now we get Wellis Two a firing position and find Sergeant Kalt.”

Thea led the reformed Wellis Two down the tunnel at a brisk pace, finally stopping about ten alcoves away from where Chester was being treated. 

The spot was intact and offered a decent firing angle toward the first trenchline.

“Set up here,” she ordered, pointing toward the embrasures. “Get firing lanes established and keep the pressure up so the first trench can finish their fallback.”

The three Heavies moved without hesitation, taking positions and readying their weapons. 

Thea turned to the medium-type, “You know the way to the command area?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” he replied without pause.

“Good. Lead the way.”

Thea cursed under her breath and kicked off after him, boots slapping against the dirt-packed floor. He ran like it was nothing, not even pushing himself. 

Meanwhile she had to fight to keep pace.

‘Wish I could‘ve invested more into Strength; this is ridiculous,’ she cursed inwardly, teeth gritted. ‘Always struggling to keep pace like this is so fucking stupid…’

They reached the command area after a hard push—an open dug-out that stretched parallel to the alcoves, dug into the opposite side of the main tunnel. 

Marines bustled in and out, relaying orders and reports, the place buzzing with activity.

Thea strode up to the first Marine she caught standing idle near the entry after taking a deep, steadying breath to recover from the running. “I need to speak to Sergeant Kalt.”

The Marine turned, eyes flicking over her from helmet to boots.

His posture froze, then stiffened when his visor lingered on the medal set in her chestplate. 

He nearly tripped over himself in his rush to sprint deeper into the dug-out, barking for Kalt as he went, “S—Sergeant! Sergeant Kalt!”

Moments later, the ground seemed to tremble under heavy footfalls. 

Sergeant Kalt emerged from the far end of the command space, a hulking figure in super-heavy armor, the runner carefully following behind him, like he wasn’t quite sure if what he did was right or not. 

Confusion was etched across his scarred faceplate as his gaze locked onto her.

Thea stepped forward immediately, squaring her shoulders, refusing to let the sheer size of him press her back. 

“Recruit Thea McKay, current interim Squad Leader for Wellis Two, sir,” she introduced herself crisply. “Requesting permission and coordination to assist in holding back the Stellar Republic push—if you can provide me with the support I need.”

As she spoke, she angled her chest slightly, making sure the Crysium Two-Star Medal caught the light, displayed plain for all to see. 

If every other Marine she’d crossed paths with had frozen at the sight of it, then she was damn well going to use that reaction to her advantage. With any luck, it would bypass the whole tedious round of “what does a Recruit think she’s doing requesting to talk to a platoon leader?”

While it was a perfectly reasonable question under normal circumstances—especially with the UHF’s chain of command drilled into every Marine—they didn’t exactly have the luxury of blind adherence to protocol right now. 

Not with the first trenchline already collapsing less than an hour into the mission.

The proper chain of command for her in this situation would be to talk to Squad Leader Wellis first and have him push the request up the chain, which just wasn’t a great use of everybody’s time, in her eyes.

Kalt loomed over her, his massive frame casting a shadow that made Thea feel even smaller in her light armor. His head tilted just enough for her to catch a flash of surprise in his eyes—mixed with something else she couldn’t quite pin down.

“Damn… well, I stand corrected,” he rumbled at last. 

The words meant absolutely nothing to Thea, but she held his gaze anyway.

His attention shifted past her, landing on the medium-type who had led her here. “Thank you for bringing her to my attention, Corporal. You’re dismissed.”

‘Corporal…?!’ Thea’s thoughts snapped like a whip, her head twisting around to get another look at the Marine she had been casually giving orders to. For the last several minutes, she had been treating him like some random Private who’d been unlucky enough to find himself in a leadership position—but apparently he was actually a proper Squad Leader.

The newly revealed Corporal gave a casual shrug, visor reflecting the command dug-out’s lights. “Didn’t really do much besides show her the way. She was set on finding you herself. But still—my pleasure, sir.”

He offered an easy grin before heading back down the tunnel the way they’d come, boots thudding against the packed dirt floor.

Kalt’s face turned back to her, his massive frame still radiating the quiet authority of someone used to holding an entire line together by sheer force of will.

“Hmm… a Two-Star Crysium.” His voice was low, thoughtful, almost like he was speaking more to himself than to her. “Not something I’ve ever seen before… and definitely not something I’ve had the pleasure of commanding.” 

His tone shifted, sharper now as he focused fully on her. “Well then, McKay. Tell me what you do—and how I can make damn sure you do it well enough to get us all out of this nightmare.”

“I’m a recon/sniper,” Thea said without hesitation, already anticipating the question. “Though for missions like this, I’m primarily a sniper. There’s not much actual recon to do in a trench defense.”

She took a breath. “I’m also a Psyker—Awakened Wielder. I have a Power that lets me pick out Duplicators in the middle of the enemy swarm, so every shot I take is guaranteed to be on a priority target. But if we want to inflict serious casualties, I’ll need Focus—more than I can supply alone.”

Her eyes flicked toward the map table nearby, already planning out potential firing positions in her head. “I’ll need at least two, preferably three Squad Medics with [Focus Link] to funnel Focus into me and keep me firing. I also need at least two Defensive Heavies to keep me alive when the Republic inevitably targets me again. The last time I pushed them hard, they hit my entire squad with a rocket barrage and shredded our position.

“And finally, I’ll need at least one Offensive Heavy—or anyone with the firepower to reliably handle Super-Heavy types, really. My current weapons can’t burn through their armor fast enough to be viable, but they’ll still need dealing with.”

Her eyes locked with Kalt’s again, catching the faintest flicker—a tiny flinch so subtle that even with her heightened Perception she barely noticed it.

She knew exactly just how much she was asking for here.

Pulling two Defensive Heavies and up to three Squad Medics away from their squads at this stage of the mission wasn’t just a request—it was tearing chunks out of four or five separate units, leaving holes in the already crumbling defense line. 

All so she could have the scaffolding she needed to operate at her peak.

And it wasn’t even guaranteed.

Everything she’d laid out was based on her own read of what might work, her own conjecture. 

There were no promises here.

But without that kind of support, she wasn’t under any illusions: Alone, she couldn’t tilt the battlefield, couldn’t even hope to influence the fight at the scale necessary to matter. 

If she was going to try and turn the tide, this was the only way she could see.

Kalt’s eyes stayed fixed on her for a long moment before he finally spoke.

“Tell me something, McKay—are you the one who’s been using a laser gatling out there?”

Thea blinked, slightly confused by the question. 

“No, sir,” she said immediately, unclipping the sling from her shoulder and pulling the Laser-type Gram into view. “This is what I’m using. Just a standard Laser-type DMR—high accuracy, single-target, nothing fancy.” 

She gave it a quick tap to emphasize her point before slinging it back into place. “And on my way here, I didn’t see anyone who could pass for an Offensive Heavy with a gatling, either. I kept an eye out, as requested, but didn’t see anything matching the description.”

Kalt’s helmet tilted slightly, and when he spoke again his tone was perfectly flat. “That thing’s got no cycle-time, I assume?”

“Correct.”

He let out a long, heavy sigh, tilted his head back and glanced up toward the dug-out ceiling, muttering under his breath. “Mandatory reporting classes. All of them. Right after this mission…”

When his gaze returned to her, his tone had shifted again, all business. 

He gave a firm nod. 

“You’ll have what you asked for.”

Thea blinked, caught entirely off guard. 

She’d been bracing for pushback, maybe even an argument or haggling for how much he could potentially give her, but instead he was just… giving her everything she’d requested; just like that.

No questions about her plan, no demands for justification or anything.

“Now… Unless you’ve got specific ideas about where you want to set up and how you want to play this,” Kalt continued, “I’ll be orchestrating your movements from here.”

“That would be perfect,” Thea said quickly, a small breath of relief escaping before she could stop it. The truth was, she hadn’t even wanted full responsibility for coordinating everything herself—she just wanted to be pointed at the right targets and unleashed.

That was the best way for her to simply focus on what she did best: Shooting people.

Kalt nodded once more, and this time a wide, toothy grin spread across his face. 

“Beautiful. Never had the pleasure of commanding a Battlefield Ace before,” he said with a rumble of amusement. “Looking forward to seeing what that feels like, McKay.”

Thea froze for half a second, thrown by the statement. 

She wasn’t a Battlefield Ace—at least, she didn’t think she was—but with the level of resources he was now putting behind her…

‘I guess technically I am one now, huh…?’

“Umm… Just Thea is fine, by the way,” she added finally, feeling oddly awkward about how often he’d been calling her by her last name; after all, McKay was her fa—Old Man.

“Just Thea it is,” Kalt replied with a short chuckle, before turning toward the nearest comm officer to start setting her support in motion. 

She stood at ease, waiting those few extra moments for Sergeant Kalt to wrap up, knowing better than to walk off without being properly dismissed. 

In the meantime, her thoughts churned, circling around the weight of what had just been handed to her: She’d have to crank it up to eleven for this next stretch of the Digital Mission if she wanted to prove that Kalt’s trust in her hadn’t been misplaced.

‘This is going to be exhausting…’ she admitted inwardly, a small cringe tugging at her. But then, despite herself, a grin pushed through. ‘But it’s also going to be fun. Really, really fun. A full support team built just for me? That’s not something I’ll probably ever see again. I’d better make the most of it while I can.’

The thought settled like a spark in her chest, cutting through the fatigue and replacing it with a sharp, focused excitement.

Finally, Sergeant Kalt turned back to her, his presence as imposing as ever. “You got a spot with Wellis Two already?”

“East 14, sir,” Thea replied without missing a beat.

“Very well. Return there and hold until your support team assembles, Thea. Won’t be long, though a few of them are still pulling out of the first trenchline. Once they get here, they’ll report directly to you. When everyone’s in position…” his toothy grin spread again, anticipation practically written across his faceplate, “…we’ll start this whole show.”

‘I’m not the only one looking forward to this,’ Thea thought, a smile tugging at her lips as she gave a quick nod. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. I’ll be making an announcement I’ve always wanted to give, in just a moment.” His eyes locked on hers again, that near-imperceptible flinch surfacing once more. “Don’t let us down, Thea. Dismissed.”

She gave a sharp nod and broke into a sprint, boots pounding the packed dirt as she raced back toward East 14—the alcove where she’d left the rebranded Wellis Two, the squad she’d apparently stolen right out from under a Corporal.

Halfway there, the command channel went dead quiet, overridden by Kalt’s priority message.

“This is a priority notice for all Marines: We will be deploying a Battlefield Ace momentarily, with squad designation ‘Alpha’. If you are requested to provide assistance by a Thea McKay, do so immediately and without question. Take her orders as my own. You’ll know her when you see her—you can’t miss it.”

Thea’s eyes went wide. 

The order was staggering in its scope, an open endorsement that felt almost impossible to wrap her head around.

Kalt’s voice returned one last time, bone-dry and cutting. “Oh—and stop chasing reports about the supposed laser gatling. Everyone who filed them will be signed up for mandatory reporting classes after the mission. That’s all. Good hunting, Marines.”

The channel cut out, leaving the trenches in a silence that lasted only a heartbeat before chatter flooded back in, more chaotic than before.

By then, Thea had nearly reached East 14. 

Her stomach twisted with nerves and something dangerously close to exhilaration. 

She was about to be deployed as a real Battlefield Ace…

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[ND] Chapter 148 - Long-Awaited Talks I

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------------------- Start of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) -------------------
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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Chapter 143 - Consequentia II has just released on RR with no major changes.

For the Fixers, this chapter has seen no changes.

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Mostly a maintenace chapter for the system-related stuff; but also important cause... Well you'll see.

Please head on over to the discord's #Novel-Decisions channel to vote on the relevant, vote-able things from last week's chapter!

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I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the link to the chapter:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14-xd2-TJ9gNU9Yktr2bbn5woEPKqKXth-xLl5Uz0v0Y/edit?usp=sharing

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Chapter 148 - Long-Awaited Talks I

Stepping into the main room, I almost froze mid-step. 

The apartment was nearly identical to the one I’d lived in for months—same layout, same sterile furniture—just stripped of the small, personal touches that had made ours feel like home.

But none of that was what stopped me.

Valeria sat at the dining table, though not in her usual seat. She’d taken Gabriel’s and my side, facing the kitchen wall as if keeping watch. Her posture was still perfect, back straight as a steel rod, but the faint tilt of her head gave her away—she was asleep.

The table in front of her was a mess of datapads, scattered like she’d been plowing through report after report until exhaustion had finally dragged her under. 

Her left hand still curled loosely around one of them, fingers twitching every now and then like she might wake at any moment. Near it was a familiar black hand-cannon, the weapon lying on the table within easy reach.

She was still wearing the same midnight dress I’d helped her change into last night, its once-pristine fabric wrinkled and stained with caked-on grime and blood.

A flicker of something dangerously close to sympathy passed through me before I could stamp it out. 

‘She’s been here the whole time,’ I realized, my throat tightening just a bit. ‘Working, watching the door… probably ready to put a round through anyone stupid enough to walk in. Making sure I got some uninterrupted rest.’

It was jarring—seeing her like this. 

Not the perfectly composed, ruthless corporate shark who dictated every move of our lives, but something closer to human: Evidently exhausted and utterly spent. 

And yet, still trying in her own way, to hold what little she could together.

For the first time, I didn’t just see the monster who’d held Gabriel and I under her thumb. 

I saw nothing but a mother trying to do right by the only remaining member of the family she could do right by at the time.

I drew in a steadying breath, forcing myself forward.

My steps were soft against the floor, but even that faint sound was enough—her head snapped up almost instantly, eyes sharp and awake before I’d even made it halfway into the room.

“Seraphine,” she greeted, her voice still polished despite the exhaustion bleeding through.

In one smooth motion, she straightened her posture even further, somehow finding room to sit more upright than she already had. 

For a brief moment her gaze drifted, unfocused, like she was looking through me into empty space. She was probably pulling something up on her cerebral interface, though with the stealth model she used, there was no way to tell for sure.

“How are you feeling?” she asked finally, her tone clipped but underscored with a strange level of warmth I had never really heard from her before.

I shrugged faintly, trying to keep my voice casual. “Physically? Fine. More tense than I probably should be.”

I hesitated, jaw tightening.

Silence settled between us for a beat, heavy enough that I almost wanted to retreat back into the bedroom. Then Valeria exhaled, long and tired, and lifted a hand in a small gesture toward the opposite chair.

“Sit,” she said. “There is far too much to discuss for you to be hovering in the middle of the room. This conversation is long overdue, and I believe it is beyond time we had it properly.”

Her words hung there like a sentence passed. 

And despite every part of me wanting to stall this out and postpone somehow, I knew she was right.

So I did as she said and lowered myself into the chair opposite her—her usual place, now mine, while she occupied the one I’d sat in for months. The switch felt strange, like the whole dynamic of the room had tilted a few degrees off balance.

I straightened my back, pulling my shoulders into line, careful to mirror her posture as best I could. With Valeria, proper decorum was always the safest card to play; I’d learned that quickly enough. 

Even now, after everything, that instinct stuck.

I didn’t think this conversation would be dangerous—not really, not after seeing just how far she’d go to protect the family—but sitting across from her like this still made my chest tight. 

No matter how much I told myself otherwise, unease clung to me.

Another stretch of silence lingered, heavy enough that it made my skin itch.

‘Am I supposed to start here? Is she waiting for me to say something…?’ 

The thought clawed around in my head, but it didn’t feel right. 

Valeria had never ceded the opening move to anyone. If she wanted this conversation to begin, it would begin on her terms, as it always did.

Sure enough, after what felt like an eternity, she drew in a deep breath—slow and heavy, the kind I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen her take before. She lifted the datapad still dangling from her hand, glanced at it briefly, then lowered it halfway, her gaze locking onto mine instead.

“Your father and brother remain, at this moment, alive,” she said, her tone even but laced with fatigue.

Air left my lungs in a rush I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding.

“Gabriel’s condition is… within projected tolerance,” she continued, each word sharp despite the exhaustion dragging on her voice. “He is under EtherLabs care and will remain so for several days, perhaps a week—maybe two, before returning home. His situation is not ideal, but it is acceptable, given the circumstances. I have confidence he will recover to a degree consistent with the highest of expectations.”

Her eyes flickered, just for a heartbeat, some shadow of strain slipping past her composure. 

“Oliver, however, remains unstable. PremMed continues to issue updates to his work, all routed directly to me. As of the most recent report, he is still undergoing extensive intervention. His survival is almost assured, however. His long-term health, his capacity to function beyond that baseline…” 

She let the words hang for a moment, before finishing, “Those are in severe question, as you no doubt recall from PremMed’s preliminary on-site assessment yesterday.”

The words sank in heavier than I expected, and I felt my chest tighten. 

The idea of Oliver suffering some potentially serious, long-term consequences left me uneasy—distraught, even—though, if I was being honest, I’d barely spent any time with him since ending up in this world. 

And yet, without him… Gabriel and I probably would’ve been worse than maimed. 

We might’ve been dead outright.

The thought made me swallow hard, a bitter mix of gratitude and guilt cutting through me. 

He’d helped in more ways than one—hell, even his support during my push for Rina’s contact ID had made things possible. 

Now, however, thinking back to that request and how much I had dreaded making it, felt  completely absurd. 

What good were scraps of Sera’s past life, when the present was crashing down in the form of corporate death squads and war spilling into our living room?

Valeria’s voice pulled me back. 

She shifted slightly, datapad lowering fully onto the table. 

“As for my condition,” she began, her tone still cool and professional despite the pallor clinging to her face, “I sustained multiple ballistic injuries. Several rounds struck my torso, but none penetrated deeply enough to compromise vital organs. I enacted field treatment—compression and injection stabilizers—sufficient to manage until formal care becomes available.”

She flexed her left hand once, briefly, before resting it flat on the table again. “I will seek proper medical attention after our discussion concludes. However, I prioritized ensuring you received uninterrupted recovery. I was not certain how long I would be absent should I leave immediately, and it was imperative you rest before we addressed matters further.”

Her voice was as matter-of-fact as if she were delivering quarterly reports, but the faint drag in her words betrayed just how incredibly exhausted she truly was.

“As for my right side,” she went on, her gaze flicking down toward the limp side of her body that hung dead and unresponsive, “It will be several weeks, perhaps months, before full remediation can be expected. No direct intervention is required from my end. It is simply a limitation I will need to adapt to in the interim.”

My eyes couldn’t help but drift back to the right side of her body. 

It was uncanny, almost wrong, to see Valeria like that. 

Her posture was still immaculate, every inch the corporate paragon she projected herself to be, but there was a subtle tilt to her frame, a faint imbalance betraying the truth—that half of her body simply wasn’t answering the call anymore.

Her arm drew most of my attention. 

Nightmarish to look at, yet somehow oddly tolerable at the same time. 

The skin was gone, stripped away during the madness of last night, replaced with a crust of dried blood and that thin layer of transparent bandage-spray—the same stuff she’d used on my cerebral link last night. 

The arm looked like it should still function, if very painful to move, and that contradiction made my stomach knot. 

But the way it dangled, lifeless, proved otherwise.

I thought of the serpent—how she had torn her own flesh off to conjure that impossible spectral snake—and my curiosity burned hot. 

Just what exactly had that even been? What had that done to her? Why had it left her half-paralyzed? The questions lingered on my tongue, but asking it outright felt crude, even reckless.

She caught me staring—of course she did, as I had made no attempts to hide my curiosity. 

For once, though, there was no reprimand, no raised eyebrow. 

Instead, her voice was cool but almost inviting. “I will elaborate on that matter and answer any of your questions in due course. But first—your health. It is imperative that I have an accurate overview of where this family stands physically before I begin planning.”

I took a second to think, weighing how much to give away. 

My healing speed wasn’t something I wanted on display; not yet, if ever. 

But trying to fake injuries I no longer had was a fool’s errand, especially with her eyes locked on me. She could demand proof at any moment, and I’d be instantly cornered.

So I settled on a middle ground. “My status is… about as good as it can be, considering everything. My cerebral link is back online with no malfunctions or aberrant aftershocks. Physically, I’d say that I’m operational.” 

I chose the words vague enough to hopefully give me some kind of cover.

Valeria’s gaze, however, didn’t waver in the slightest; not giving me any indication of one side or the other on if she believed anything of what I had just said.

Another bead of silence stretched between us, the kind that pressed down on my chest until I wanted to fidget or cough just to fill the air.

‘If only the System had a mind-reading Perk,’ I thought bitterly, holding her stare. ‘Would make things so much easier if I knew what the hell she was thinking right now…’

Valeria’s eyes lingered on me for a few more moments, before she gave the smallest of nods. 

“Acceptable,” she said at last. Then, almost seamlessly, she pivoted. “In light of yesterday’s… events, and your unexpected level of involvement in their resolution, it would be prudent to provide you with clarity. Consider it both acknowledgment and repayment for your efforts. That said,” her gaze narrowed slightly, “I will also expect clarity from you in turn. There are questions that must be answered. A fair exchange, in my eyes—an answer for an answer.”

I blinked, surprised at just how transactional she made it sound, though I supposed that was her version of being generous. 

Honestly, it was already more than I’d expected walking into this conversation. 

I’d assumed she’d interrogate me until there was nothing left and give me practically nothing in return, especially after she had no doubt seen me pull off several impossible feats last night. 

This was… a far better outcome than I could’ve possibly hoped for.

“Acceptable,” I copied her earlier answer, nodding. “Fair trade.”

I leaned forward slightly, figuring that if she really meant to give me answers, I might as well start with the thing that had been gnawing at my brain since last night.

“First question, then,” I said. “That thing you did—the snake—and that monster he pulled out of nowhere. What exactly were those things? Because out of everything that happened, that’s the one thing I still can’t even begin to wrap my head around.”

While I had a hunch it had to be tied to Anima somehow, I couldn’t piece together much more than that. 

The whole thing still felt like a massive blank spot in my understanding of this world. 

Anima hadn’t existed as a mechanic in Neon Dragons—or at least not as far as I knew—so I had no point of reference for what I’d seen.

“Those are known as Spirit Companions,” Valeria said, her tone as calm and businesslike as if she were running through a quarterly report; as if she hadn’t just said something utterly insane. “Or rather, the Manifestations thereof. Spirit Companions are metaphysical entities—beings that reside in a plane adjacent to our material one. On their own, they cannot touch our world. To grant them presence, to give them hold in a physical form, a proper Manifestation ritual is required. And that process, as you no doubt observed firsthand, carries weight.”

Her head inclined slightly toward her ruined right side, the limp, skinless arm serving as a very real example of what she was referring to.

“Manifestation requires sacrifice. Always. There is no other path. For most, that sacrifice is something of themselves—blood, bone, or pain. For Silizia… Venom.”

She opened her mouth then, wide enough for me to catch a glint of two sharp, unnatural fangs. They were surprisingly subtle, but unmistakable when pointed out like that.

“To call her forth, I sacrificed the skin inscribed with her form, and I subjected myself to a venom potent enough to kill lesser bodies outright. That is the condition for her arrival, the ritual cost that allows her to cross into our world—temporarily.”

She let out a slow, tired breath, one that sounded almost alien coming from her, before continuing. “Spirit Companions are… difficult to categorize. They are companions, yes. But also teachers, allies, and sometimes—burdens. Some are ancient, others freshly born. Some possess power vast enough to alter the course of entire cities; if not the very world. Others are little more than echoes, content simply to exist as they are. And yet…” 

Her voice tightened faintly, a rare edge of emotion flickering through. “Should a Spirit Companion die, part of the Soul tethered to it dies with them.”

My eyes went wide, my stomach twisting.

‘Part of your Soul goes with it?! What the actual fuck?!’

But Valeria pressed on, giving no pause for my spiraling thoughts. “Whatever part of the Soul is bound to the Companion is forfeit. For me, that was my right side. Silizia was not exceptionally strong, which is why I will recover functionality over the course of the next few weeks. Others are not so fortunate. The more powerful the Companion, the deeper the bond. In those cases, the cost of their death can be final. Oblivion, shared equally between bearer and companion. It is, by design, a pact of reciprocity. A give-and-take, with no exceptions.”

Her words hung heavy in the air as she finished, the corporate polish never once faltering, even as she admitted that part of her very Soul had literally been torn away.

I had nothing to say.

This was so far beyond anything I had expected. 

I’d thought maybe this would end up being something like Mr. Shori’s [Anima Blade] technique—a flashy, one-off trick that burned through whatever energy Anima was for a single effect and left you winded afterward.

But a Spirit Companion? A metaphysical being, tethered to your Soul? Manifestation Rituals that required blood and venom and literal pain to call them forth? A bond so deep that losing them meant potentially losing part of yourself forever?

That was on an entirely different level.

I just stared at her, not even bothering to hide my wide-eyed shock anymore. 

There was no way I could play this off as casual—not with my brain trying to rewire itself around this revelation.

‘Neon Dragons was a cyberpunk game, no?’ I thought, my mind whirring at full speed. ‘Guns, chrome, corpo intrigue, gang wars… Sure, there was some inherent esoterica with [Alchemy] and demi-human lore in the deeper questlines, but this?! Spirit Companions? Planes of existence? Soul sacrifice? That’s so far beyond the pale, I don’t even know where to start!’

I racked my memory, digging through every wiki page, forum thread, and speculation post I had ever read. 

Nothing even remotely close to this had been in there. 

And, of course, I cursed myself yet again for my stupid “no spoilers” rule that had kept me from looking deeper into anything past the progress of the playthroughs I had been watching back then.

Whatever this world I had been transported into actually was, it was starting to feel like the rules I’d thought I’d known before were being rewritten in front of my face.

I finally managed to pin one of my racing thoughts long enough to turn it into a question.

“How does one even get a Spirit Companion?” I asked, my voice quieter than I meant it to be. “I assume it’s not something you can just… buy. Oliver didn’t seem to have one. Neither did anyone else yesterday, I’d guess?”

Valeria inclined her head, slow and deliberate. “You are correct. Acquisition is… challenging,” she said, the word clipped and neat despite the wear in her tone. “The first barrier is perception. One must possess a minimum threshold of esoteric aptitude to even be aware of potential candidates. But perception alone is insufficient. Those aptitudes can be trained, learned and refined over time, after all.”

She adjusted her posture slightly, her left shoulder pulling straighter once more. “The true hurdle is the acquisition itself. To claim a Spirit Companion, one must defeat its lesser Manifestation within our plane of existence. Most aspirants overreach, and they die attempting to subdue prey beyond their ability. The process is… extremely unforgiving.”

Her gaze flicked briefly toward her own limp right arm, then back to me. 

She gave a small half-shrug—strikingly casual for her usual manner—like she’d seen enough failed attempts that the outcome no longer carried weight.

“No Companion would choose a bond with someone incapable of offering advantage in return,” she finished. “The connection must be mutually beneficial. There is no merit in accepting anything less than exceptional.”

I nodded slowly, letting that sink in. 

It made sense, in a brutal, almost corporate way, even if it was a lot more vague than I’d been hoping for. 

Still, I wasn’t sure pressing for more was possible right now.

Valeria had been clear that this talk was a stopgap—just enough to establish footing before she went to get patched up and inevitably spent the rest of the day cleaning up the absolute disaster last night had left behind. 

A full lecture on Spirit Companions clearly wasn’t happening today.

Almost as if to underline that thought, Valeria’s voice cut through the renewed quiet between us. “Now that I have provided clarity on some of your inquiries, I expect you to reciprocate in kind, Seraphine. Given our agreement, I believe I have earned a degree of candor from you.”

Her words hit like a weight. 

I stiffened in my chair, my stomach knotting instinctively as I forced myself to meet her gaze. 

There was no hostility in her eyes—just that sharp, assessing focus that seemed to peel me open and lay me bare.

I gave a slow, almost reluctant nod.

And then came her first question.

“For how long,” she asked, enunciating each word with that precise, corporate crispness of hers, “have you been aware of the existence of Anima…?”

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[TAS] Volume 2 - Chapter 50 - Ideas

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------------------- Start of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) -------------------
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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Volume 2 - Chapter 45 - Honour has just released on RR with no changes.

For the Wolf Lords, this chapter is unchanged.

And also: Please do not read the chapters here on Patreon, but go for the googledoc, .pdf or .epub instead. Patreon butchers all forms of formatting and you're missing out on easier and more enjoyable reading experiences.

------

This is NOT the fun one, sorry!

------

I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the link to the chapter:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eSe89dz2TxMbfx4F0YjRrPlGDnWu36bjbtvv1zMLNOo/edit?usp=sharing

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Volume 2 - Chapter 50 - Ideas

After-Action Report – UHF 7th Expeditionary, Quaras Sector
Filed by: Captain Rynard L. Vex, Commanding Officer
Clearance: Tactical Review – General Staff Only

—

Summary of Engagement:

Engagement with Stellar Republic assault forces at Grid Delta-47, outer rim of Quaras-9.

The objective was to maintain control of three successive trenchlines over a projected 8-hour period until reinforcement waves cycled back in.

Engagement lasted 2 hours and 34 minutes before defensive collapse.

Position lost.

—

Breakdown of Failure:

The primary issue identified was the sheer scale and tempo of the Stellar Republic’s short-term attrition strategy. 

Our doctrine thrives on stretching fights out, bleeding the enemy over extended engagements until their lines collapse under the weight of consistent losses. 

The Stellar Republic, however, plays the exact opposite game: Overwhelming force concentrated at the point of contact, applied with reckless abandon.

We faced an estimated twelve-to-one (12:1) numerical advantage in both infantry and firepower at the point of breach. Even with the prepared reinforced trenches, HMG positions, bunkers and several overlapping fields of fire, the brunt of our Marines could not effectively return fire. 

To fire at an enemy with conventional weaponry, you must inevitably expose yourself. 

Embrasures and reinforced trenches with hard-cover embrasures provide much-needed defensive options, not immunity. 

Thousands of rounds hammered every possible firing angle, so any Marine who dared to shoot was often cut down before emptying even a single magazine. They didn’t even need to be the enemy’s direct target either—the sheer volume of fire all but guaranteed that stray ricochets or wild shots would inevitably find their mark.

The Republic’s tactic is brutally simple and similarly effective: Choke us in our own defenses. 

While we grind them down, they stack bodies until sheer pressure forces us to yield positions. 

In this case, we held the first trenchline admirably, exacting a high toll on their opening wave. 

But once the line fell, the tempo shifted entirely. 

With losses mounting on our side, the second line fell even quicker than the first. 

Ultimately, all the defensive lines fell in accelerating sequence, before the first concentrated wave of respawn reinforcements could make their way towards the field of engagement.

—

Recommendations for Future Engagements:

• Increase Pre-Sighted Kill Zones: More interlocked fields of fire and automated emplacements to reduce Marine exposure. HMGs and auto-turrets, if in any way fieldable, must carry the brunt in initial engagements.
  

• Staggered Reinforcement Timing: Current respawn cycling is misaligned with Stellar Republic push patterns. Reinforcement arrivals must be advanced or reconfigured to overlap with the enemy’s tactics more thoroughly.
  

• Decentralized Reserve Squads: Keep a mobile force behind the first trenchline with orders to reinforce weak points or counter-assault breaches, while also providing a more spread-out firing line for the enemy to have to continually suppress.
  

• Supply Adjustments: Ammunition consumption in the opening hour massively exceeded projections. Resupply nodes must be more numerous to counteract this issue in the future.

—

Additional Notes:

The Republic’s doctrine is unsustainable in the long term—they burn through bodies and materiel at a rapid pace. But in the short term, their attrition style is perfectly tuned to crush our defenses before reinforcements arrive. 

This makes them one of our most dangerous Battlefield opponents. 

It is a tug-of-war where the Republic always wins the first heave. 

We can match them only through disciplined line-holding and sacrifice.

Our job is to dig in and bleed them dry until the respawn waves tip the balance back in our favor. 

The first push is always the hardest. 

Once it is weathered—once the line has truly held—the Stellar Republic’s advance collapses under its own rapid expenditure.

What wins us these battles are the Marines who refuse to break, who hold the trench in the face of impossible odds, who return fire despite the high likelihood that they’ll be cut down in a short time. 

Their last stands buy the individual seconds—the combined minutes and hours—that we need for our brothers and sisters to come back into the fight. 

Without that grit, without that sacrifice, we will lose every Battlefield we meet the Stellar Republic on.

===

[Excerpt from After-Action Report – UHF 7th Expeditionary, Quaras Sector - PFC 811]

======

======

By the time Thea slammed her third mag into the Gram, the counter-fire had become so heavy it felt like the air itself was tearing apart. Even with her precognition working on overtime, she could only manage one, maybe two shots every ten seconds before being forced back into cover.

Marie and Falks hadn’t been so lucky—both had been clipped once more by ricochets that found their way into the outcrop. The wounds were shallow, nothing Chester couldn’t patch with some basic first aid, but the message was clear enough: This position was finished.

“We should move further toward the center; this spot’s burnt,” Chester said, tightening the last bandage around Falks’ arm before giving the Marine a reassuring pat.

“Agreed,” Thea replied, already slinging her backpack into place and strapping her other two DMRs across her shoulder.

Marie and Falks didn’t need convincing—they looked more than ready to leave, their nerves frayed raw after minutes of constant suppressive fire chewing at their cover.

‘I wonder if they’d have had a better time if I hadn’t been sitting right here with them,’ Thea thought, adjusting her weapon straps as they prepared to move. ‘There’s a good chance the enemy already figured out this section of trench is better than most at killing their Duplicators. Not guaranteed, but… yeah, wouldn’t surprise me.’

“Wellis Two, moving,” Chester’s voice came across the command-comms as they started moving.

‘Ah. So that’s what that meant,’ Thea realized.

She’d heard that same kind of call—“squad-designation, moving” or “squad-designation, clear”—ringing over the comms since the fight had begun, but only now did she understand what that actually meant.

‘Makes sense. Telling the rest of the platoon you’re repositioning so they know why the fire’s dipping for a bit. Last thing you’d want is half the squads shifting embrasures at once, leaving the enemy a gap to slam through and roll over the line.’

The run through the trench tunnels didn’t take long, maybe a minute at most, but even that brief reprieve seemed to do wonders. By the time they reached the next reinforced outcrop closer to the center, Marie and Falks already looked steadier, the strain in their posture easing as they shook out their weapons and reset.

“Time for payback,” Falks muttered as he tossed his backpack against the far-side wall and slid into position.

Thea similarly dumped her pack against the nearby trench wall with a thud and leaned her Ballistic and Laser Grams into the corner, in arms-reach. 

‘Time to give the Gauss variant a real test,’ she decided, pulling the weapon up to inspect it.

She checked her weapon with quick, practiced motions: Capacitor-bank online, scope zeroing smooth, angled foregrip snug behind the bipod. 

The setup felt right, and she knew better than to trust the luxury of a single firing position—the bipod would be nice if it held, but she’d definitely need the flexibility the foregrip would offer if things became even more hectic—which she had no doubts that they would.

Incoming fire was already raking the general area, but it was scattered and light, no more than the usual blanket suppression tossed at any fortified spot. 

Nothing like the laser-focused storm they’d endured before.

Nodding once to herself after confirming that everything was in working order with her weapon, Thea eased into the furthest firing slit towards the east, snug with the trench wall.

It didn’t take her long to pick out another Duplicator in the chaos, and she squeezed the trigger.

The ferromagnetic round screamed out of the barrel in less than a heartbeat, vanishing into the blood-red haze beyond the embrasure. Half an instant, it punched clean through the Duplicator’s visor, dropping the duplicate where it stood.

The aftermath was… underwhelming. 

Unlike the Ballistic variant, the Gauss round didn’t rip the helmet apart or blast through the back of it. The body crumpled, visor shattered, but the helmet’s rear stayed intact.

‘Hmm… recoil’s way smoother than the Ballistic, no question,’ Thea noted, working the rifle back into position with ease. ‘But raw stopping power? Yeah, this thing’s running light. Doubt it’d even scratch Heavy armour.’

To prove her point, she snapped the Gauss onto the first Heavy-type she spotted lumbering through the smoke. She didn’t even hesitate—lined up, intended to fire, and felt the answer through her precognitive senses: The round would smack into the joint beneath the chestplate with a muted crack, piercing the weak point just barely. 

The duplicate would stagger, but wouldn’t go down.

She clicked her tongue, irritation creeping in. ‘That’s a big drop in power. This might not be the play for me after all…’

She shifted back to scanning for more lightly armoured Duplicators, keeping her breathing steady. ‘Even a weak spot hit on a Heavy would just cripple, not disable or kill. That’s not exactly what you want out of a DMR, is it?’

Still, she couldn’t deny the Gauss had its own upsides: The lighter ammo meant she could carry more of it, and the reduced recoil made rapid follow-up shots easy—no risk of throwing rounds wide when chaining hits. 

For cutting down Duplicators that weren’t wearing Heavy or Super Heavy armour, it was efficient; downright comfortable even.

“Wellis Two, clear,” Chester’s voice crackled over the command channel, clipped and professional. A heartbeat later another voice came through—gruffer, belonging to one of the other squad leaders—“Alcaz, moving.”

Marie and Falks were already firing from their slits, rounds from their rifles stitching across the no-man’s-land. Chester joined in seconds later, his shots adding to the steady rhythm of fire echoing across the trench.

Thea, however, paid only enough attention to mentally tag their positions and actions, her mind still buried in her weapon testing. Shot after shot, she worked the trigger of her Gram’s Gauss variant, each round finding a Duplicator. 

As she fired, she catalogued everything that stood out—subtle details, quirks of performance, strengths, flaws.

‘The silence is its own weapon,’ she thought, focusing on the faint sound it did make. 

The low whine of magnets charging and disengaging lasted barely a fraction of a second, and then—nothing. The projectile’s release was utterly silent, disappearing without a trace. 

‘That’s practically impossible to catch mid-battle unless someone’s right beside me, straining their ears. Far quieter even than the Ballistic with a suppressor...’

Her mental notes were already starting to form a clear picture of the weapon hierarchy she had suspected all along. 

The patterns were too consistent to ignore.

Laser-types: The “loudest”, fastest, and most reliable. 

They could fire endlessly so long as the cell was given time to recharge, and while the actual auditory report of the weapon wasn’t bad, the bright plasma streaks lit up the air like a flare, making stealth nearly impossible. Overcharging was an option to give them even more teeth—enough to punch through heavier armor—but it came at a substantial increase in cost both rapid-fire capabilities and ammunition preservation.

Ballistic-types: The bruisers, versatile above all else. 

A wide range of ammunition, even System Material-infused rounds, made them adaptable to quite literally any fight. Suppressors put them somewhere in the middle for stealth, but they were limited by recoil and weight. Strongest penetration and sheer damage per round, but sluggish when high rates of fire were needed due to the recoil.

And then the Gauss-types, like the one in her hands now: The ghosts. Silent, traceless, feather-light ammo that let her carry far more into the field. 

They excelled at infiltration, vanishing kills, movement without weight dragging her down. But their drawbacks were obvious. Limited power, limited penetration. 

There was no trick, no mod, that could truly change that.

‘So, mostly what I figured back at Bullseye’s Rifles,’ she admitted inwardly. ‘But now I’ve got real data, and that’s worth more than my initial short tests back then and the theories that came with it. If I mix two of these right—Laser for all-round goodness, Gauss for stealth, Ballistic for versatility and power—there’s no way I can’t build something nasty, right…?’

Her hands moved on their own, sliding a fresh mag into her Gram. 

She had been burning through ammo faster than she liked—by the time she’d swapped into her second Ballistic mag earlier, she’d already abandoned the idea of lining up perfect one-shot kills. 

There were simply too many targets flooding the field to waste time chasing that kind of needless precision. If it came down to landing two or three quick hits to drop one enemy or risking them slipping through entirely, she’d take the kill every time.

The reload barely even registered in her mind; her body was already moving, twisting low and sharp to the side as instinct took over. An instant later, another Stellar Republic round screamed past, slicing through the air where her skull had been an instant ago.

“What the—Thea!” Chester’s voice cut sharp through the chaos, snapping her out of her thoughts.

“What’s up?” she asked, not looking away from the smoke-choked battlefield.

“What the fuck was that just now?! How the fuck are you not getting hit at all! You just somehow dodged another one! That’s not fucking normal. You running an Ability this whole time?” His voice had a hard edge under the gunfire. “Check your Resources. Make sure you’re not bleeding your Focus dry. You should’ve been taught about that already, yeah?”

“I was starting to wonder about that too, actually,” Falks chimed in from the left, his voice carrying a strained chuckle even as he ducked lower behind the cover of the slit. “I’ve been getting lit up over here, but she’s still walking away spotless. What’s the Ability called? ‘Cause I could use some of that right about now, not gonna lie.”

‘Gig’s up, huh?’ Thea thought, letting the idea hang in her head for half a second. 

She squeezed the trigger twice more, the Gram kicking lightly against her shoulder as another pair of rounds cut through the storm of red-lit chaos outside, dropping yet another Duplicator where it stood.

“I’m a Psyker,” she said offhandedly, like she was commenting on the weather. “It’s precognition. Power’s called [Glimpse] on the Short-Term Precognition Path.”

Another short burst followed, her eyes never leaving the blood-red carnage beyond the trench. “Don’t know if you can get it easy though, sorry.”

“Huh?!” Marie’s voice carried from the far-left, her fire pausing as the words registered and she ducked into cover to stare in her direction. “W–what? A Psyker?!”

Falks let out a short, bitter laugh, half disbelief, half resignation. “Of fucking course… The one thing that’d actually keep me from getting lit up by these Freaks, and it’s something I can’t have. Figures…”

“Wait, wait, wait—this doesn’t make any fucking sense!” Chester’s voice cracked under the strain, every word edged with disbelief. “Isn’t… Isn’t this your first DM? I thought you were one of the new Recruits…?”

“Sure am,” Thea replied easily, ducking back into cover for the first time in what felt like ages. She looked at the rest of the mini-squad, just as a laser seared through the firing slit, turning the space where her head had been into a haze of molten air. “Doesn’t mean I can’t be a Psyker though. I’m an Awakened Wielder, to be specific. So… not a lot of juice to work with, but it’s enough for this here at least.”

‘Speaking of juice…’ she realized she hadn’t checked her Focus in a while.

[Resources]
Focus: 248 / 225

Clicking her tongue at the steady decline, she turned her attention inward and cracked her Gate open a little wider, letting more of that flow steady itself. 

‘Need to stay on top of that. Last thing I want is to run bone-dry mid-fight…’

“Why the fuck didn’t you say anything about this earlier…? Like during the damn squad rundown?!” Chester pressed, his voice strained to the edge of shouting but just holding back.

“Because there was no point,” Thea answered flatly, slamming a fresh mag into her Gram—the last one still had rounds, but if they were going to burn time talking, she might as well top off. “Like I said, I’m not a real Psyker. Any extra resources shoved my way wouldn’t make me better right now—I think. Haven’t done much experimenting yet, so it’s not like a full squad of supports around me would suddenly change anything.”

Her eyes flicked back to the red-tinged battlefield, tracking the chaos with an increasing amount of anxiety—despite her best efforts, things weren’t looking too great for the UHF defenders. “My precognition lets me pick out Duplicators cleanly. I can tell when a shot will chain into killing their copies too—so pretty much everyone I hit is a guaranteed Duplicator. Think I’m somewhere around forty, maybe fifty kills by now. But compared to an Offensive Heavy with a rotary grenade launcher or a portable machine gun chewing up the line? I don’t clear the field’s firepower the same way. So yeah, no real point in making a fuss. Resources are better spent elsewhere until I figure out how to use this stuff more… directly.”

Falks barked out a disbelieving laugh, shaking his head hard enough that his helmet rattled. “Bull-fucking-shit. Forty or fifty Duplicators already…? You’re telling me that like half the freaks dropping in our sector are thanks to you?”

Marie peeked briefly over the edge of her cover and then ducked back down, staring at Thea like she’d just sprouted horns. “N—No way. That’s… That’s not possible—is it? I… I mean, you’re probably not lying, but… I’ve maybe dropped like five confirmed, and I’ve been firing nonstop. How—?”

Thea didn’t bother replying, just shouldered her rifle again and peaked out at one of the Duplicators she had seen earlier, half-hiding behind one of the white-foam barriers at an angle from her, firing off a few rounds. 

The Duplicator crumpled in the distance, his clones dropping alongside him.

Chester exhaled through his teeth, long and loud, like he was bleeding out whatever argument he’d been holding onto. “Guess you’ve got a point. Can’t argue with results—kinda hard when you’ve got the kill-count to back it up, I guess...” 

He adjusted his grip on his weapon, still frowning. “Still. Would’ve been good to know ahead of time. Not necessarily so we could throw you resources, but so I could keep an eye on your Focus levels without calling you out in the middle of the fight. Last thing we need is you bricking yourself mid-firefight ‘cause you ran dry. There’s no reason to make a Medic’s job harder than it already is, Recruit.”

Thea blinked.

‘Shit. That actually makes a ton of sense… I fucked up.’

Then gave a quick, sharp nod. 

“Fair. That one’s on me. Should’ve said something. My bad.” 

She ducked low as another round hissed overhead, then added, “That being said—we should probably shift closer to center. Fire’s still manageable here, but the Freaks are closing fast. We’ll need to pull back to the second line soon, and if we’re too far out on the flank, we’ll be screwed getting back in with the rest of Wellis’ squad.”

Chester leaned just enough to glance down the trench, then back at her. 

“Yeah… was just about to say the same thing.” 

His gaze lingered a second longer than usual, something measuring in his eyes, like he was recalculating everything he thought he knew about her. 

Finally, he gave a curt nod. “Alright. Let’s move.”

They packed fast, scooping up ammo, supplies, and half-spent mags, then started down the trench toward their new marker. 

“Wellis Two, moving,” Chester’s voice came over the command comms.

Passing other squads on the way, Thea’s gut tightened.

Practically every squad they passed had at least one, usually two Marines down already—some slumped in the mud with a Medic at their side, others clearly dead; missing a head or a large chunk of their upper torso wasn’t difficult to diagnose even at their rapid pace of movement. 

The pit in her chest grew heavier with each step. 

The Stellar Republic’s first push was absolutely brutal.

Thea had pushed herself to kill as many as she possibly could, hardly letting her weapon rest since the mission began, yet the endless stream of enemies just kept coming. 

No matter how many she cut down, the flow never seemed to slow.

‘It takes me a few seconds to identify a Duplicator, that’s… just not good enough for this…!’

That was the biggest weakness of her current [Glimpse] use. 

In less intense situations, like the Nova Tertius infiltration, she could afford the second or two it took to mark a priority target. But here—hundreds of freaks surging toward her position in waves, spraying gunfire at her squadmates—every wasted heartbeat felt like a death sentence.

‘But how do I fix this…?’

Her passive [Glimpse] behaved the same as always. 

Even after forcing her Gate wider, nothing shifted—it stayed fixed at its current strength, unmoved by her effort. 

No matter the weapon she used—Laser, Ballistic, or Gauss—her kill rate only changed in small ways. Ballistic dragged the slowest, Laser sped things up slightly, Gauss sat in the middle. 

None of them solved the problem.

If she wanted to push [Glimpse] further, she’d need more raw Perception, somehow. 

Higher values definitely meant quicker identification, and it felt like the only lever she had left. 

Whether it all scaled directly, or it was just her own mind sharpening enough to spot Duplicators on instinct, she couldn’t tell yet.

‘I could burn [Sensory Overdrive]... but I’d bleed Focus faster than anything else. Maybe if things collapse, it’d be worth tagging a cluster in one sweep, but for long-term use? No way...’

Resources were the real choke point. 

Without access to her Psychic pool, both [Glimpse] and [Sensory Overdrive] leaned on Focus alone, and [Glimpse] bled her dry just by staying active. No matter how carefully she tuned her Gate, equilibrium was starting to seem downright impossible at her current level.

It was already at around 90% open by now, and she really didn’t want to have it go all the way; still somewhat weary of opening it fully.

Still, it was the Power she depended on most. 

[Glimpse] wasn’t an extra like the rest of her Abilities—it was the literal centerpiece of her entire combat style.

“Wellis Two, clear.” Chester’s voice broke through her comm, snapping her back to the present. They had reached their new firing position.

Thea swung her backpack down and leaned her rifles against the trench wall.

‘I need to clear out as much as I can, as fast as I can,’ she thought, her eyes narrowing as she looked out over the battlefield through the firing slit.

The hill below was pure chaos. 

Piles of Stellar Republic corpses stacked into cover for the clones and Duplicators pressing forward. Each wave crawled over the fallen, clawing and firing blindly as they pushed closer to the trenches. Explosions rocked the slope, tracer rounds painted the night in burning arcs, and the occasional flares continued to split the darkness with their harsh white and red glares.

It was carnage layered on desperation, the enemy hurling bodies into the grinder with no sign of stopping.

White foam barricades sporadically sparked into place in scattered bursts, offering fleeting cover for Stellar Republic positions. HMG nests rattled without pause, chewing through lines of freaks and carving swathes into their ranks. 

But two of those nests had already gone silent, blown apart by enemy anti-tank fire. 

Every lost emplacement pulled their chances of holding lower and lower.

Thea ran a quick check over her Gauss rifle—sights, mag, balance—making sure nothing had shifted after all the frantic moving and swapping between weapons. 

It should have been fine, but she trusted nothing to chance. 

Then she slid into her familiar firing spot against the far-eastern wall and started firing at the first Duplicators she could get her eyes on.

‘Let’s figure out if the current Gate level is enough or if I need to go even wider…’

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[ND] Chapter 147 - Recovery

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------------------- Start of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) -------------------
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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Chapter 142 - Consequentia II has just released on RR with no major changes.

For the Fixers, this chapter has seen no changes.

-----

Mostly a maintenace chapter for the system-related stuff; but also important cause... Well you'll see.

Please head on over to the discord's #Novel-Decisions channel to vote on the relevant, vote-able things from today's chapter!

-----

I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the link to the chapter:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pirm0N5d3qr8uv8ExeIUQ6U-TFNrHPtxoG-9_rTlVhY/edit?usp=sharing

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Chapter 147 - Recovery

[System]: Rest completed. Time rested: 08:00:00
[System]: 600 rested XP added to available Bonus XP.

My eyes fluttered open, the familiar post-Rest Function disorientation hitting me hard, as always.

‘Good to see some things never change, I guess…’

I blinked a few times, forcing my vision to settle, and glanced around the unfamiliar room. 

The memories from yesterday—or what barely qualified as “yesterday,” given how the Rest Function made sleep instant—flooded back in an unrelenting wave. 

Hard to forget something like that, even if I’d wanted to.

So much had happened it felt impossible to process.

‘I hope Gabriel’s okay… and Oliver too.’

Their injuries flashed through my mind. 

Oddly, I worried less about Oliver, even though he’d been fatally wounded, compared to Gabriel’s “tamer” amputations. 

But Oliver had PremMed on his side, and that changed everything.

Even with the doc’s grim estimated recovery stat, my gut refused to believe Oliver wouldn’t make it. Probably because of my time watching Neon Dragons playthroughs—PremMed had been bullshit there too, an unkillable safety net for NPCs. 

They just… didn’t die. 

It didn’t feel like it would be any different here.

Still, the question of how Oliver even had PremMed gnawed at me. 

He had looked just as blindsided as the rest of us when Nyxstalker spilled it. If I had to guess… maybe his company fronted the cost. A temporary coverage thing, since he’d been heading the liaison duties with the OriginTech mess? 

That tracked, but it was just a theory.

I let my mind wander like that for a while, twisting over small details because the big ones felt too heavy to deal with yet. 

I knew I had work ahead of me. 

Awkward talks. Dangerous ones, especially with Valeria. 

But for now, a few minutes to just… breathe.

Gabriel, though—he was the one who’d take the brunt of this. No doubt about it. 

He’d already been shaken to the core after the stabbing on the way home.
Understandably so, of course. 

But this? Getting dismembered on the damn living room floor?
You didn’t easily bounce back from that. Not really.

A sigh slipped out before I realized it, heavy and rough.

“Gabe…”

Putting the thoughts about Gabriel aside for now, as there was really nothing I could do for him at this moment in time, I focused on the first big task that I’d have to take care of: The System.

There was a veritable deluge of System Notifications that had been stored up over the course of the dinner and the subsequent mayhem that needed dealing with—better earlier rather than later, considering the kind of conversations that would no doubt follow once I left the bed.

Taking an anticipatory breath, I opened the System within my mind and allowed the notifications to filter in.

[System]: NOTICE: Experience gains have been condensed for ease of readability. This setting can be changed by the User in the “Preferences” menu.

[System]: 300xp gained for [Negotiation] Skill.
[System]: [Negotiation] Skill has reached Level 4. Knowledge and Muscle-Memory download available.

[System]: 2,100xp gained for [Deception] Skill.

[System]: 600xp gained for [Stealth] Skill.

[System]: 1,000xp gained for [Meditation] Skill.

[System]: 800xp gained for [Quick-Hacks] Skill.
[System]: Corporate-Agent Mid-Tier (Netrunner) defeated [Incapacitated].
[System]: 400xp gained for defeating [Incapacitated] Corporate-Agent Mid-Tier (Netrunner).

[System]: You have reached Level 2. You have earned 1x [General Attribute Point].
[System]: Note - 1x [General Attribute Point] will automatically be applied in 47:05:47.

[System]: 700xp gained for [Contortion] Skill.
[System]: 200xp gained for [Athletics] Skill.
[System]: 300xp gained for [Acrobatics] Skill.

[System]: 900xp gained for [{Anima Razor}] Skill.
[System]: 300xp gained for [Throwing] Skill.

[System]: 200xp gained for [Murder] Skill.
[System]: [Murder] Skill has reached Level 2. Knowledge and Muscle-Memory download available.

[System]: 600xp gained for [CQC] Skill.
[System]: 200xp gained for [Martial Arts] Skill.

[System]: Corporate-Agent (Low-Tier) defeated. [x3]
[System]: 2,250xp (+750xp) gained for defeating Corporate-Agent (Low-Tier) [x3]. [First-Kill Bonus Experience (x1)]

[System]: You have reached Level 3. You have earned 1x [General Perk Point].
[System]: Note - 1x [General Perk Point] will automatically be applied in 47:05:47.

[System]: 1,400xp gained for [First-Aid] Skill.

[System]: 300xp gained for [Jury-Rigging] Skill.

[System]: 600xp gained for Body.
[System]: 800xp gained for Reflex.
[System]: 400xp gained for Intellect.
[System]: 600xp gained for Intuition.
[System]: 1,800xp gained for Edge.
[System]: 200xp gained for Tech.
[System]: 1,200xp gained for Ego.
[System]: 1,100xp gained for Anima.

The breath I’d been holding caught hard in my throat as the torrent of experience slammed into me.

‘Holy fuck…’

It was insane. Absolutely overwhelming. But in a twisted way, it made sense. 

This had been my closest call yet—closer even than the Valir incident—and this time it hadn’t just been me at risk. No wonder the System decided to shower me with points.

What I hadn’t expected, however, was the sheer scale of it.

‘Two Character Levels at once…?’ That was… odd. 

Every other Skill or Attribute hit a wall once it capped out, forcing me to consciously upgrade before progress could continue. 

But Character Level? No cap there. 

It just jumped up, automatically. No wasted experience at all. 

Which, yeah, kind of made sense, as it didn’t actually grant any kind of download or major muscle memory or anything like that—but it was still something I hadn’t exactly been aware of until now.

But with the Character Levels came the lead weight in my gut: Decisions.

A [General Attribute Point] and a [General Perk Point].

On paper, I loved this stuff—choice was the best part of RPGs, after all. 

But in practice? When it wasn’t just a game build but my actual life on the line? No guides, no second opinions, no “reset if I fuck up”? The pressure was suffocating.

Skill Perks had already been rough choices, narrowing down one ability out of maybe four or five at most. Now I had to pick just one from all of them?

A heavy sigh clawed its way out of me, my throat finally loosening. “Haaa… This’ll be a bit of a pain…”

Still, it wasn’t something I needed to solve right this second. I could let it sit for a day or two. 

What I couldn’t put off were the Skill level-ups, not with downloads on the line. 

[Negotiation] was top priority—no doubt Valeria had some choice words waiting for me after my actions last night, and every scrap of expertise and leverage mattered.

[Murder], though… that one sat lower on the list. But it was also only Level 2 now, so the download wouldn’t burn me out too badly. 

And I couldn’t deny the truth anymore: I owed a lot to that Skill.

‘Without [Murder], I wouldn’t have pulled half of that off yesterday. It steadied me when my Ego was burnt out... Put the knife exactly where it needed to go.’

I forced myself to repeat the thought, to make it sink in. 

I needed to own it. 

Aversion to killing was one thing, but in a life-or-death fight? Somebody had to die.

‘And I’d much rather it wasn’t me or mine.’

That didn’t mean I was okay. Not even close. 

The cold grip of regret lingered, twisted by the worse truth—that part of me didn’t even feel guilty about it. The self-loathing from that realization gnawed at me, digging into my chest, impossible to shake no matter how much I told myself it had been necessary.

‘That’s not going away anytime soon…’

I gave my head a light shake, like that would somehow rattle my thoughts back into order. 

It didn’t. The haze stayed right where it was. 

So I pulled up the System Interface instead, scrolling straight to the Skills tab until [Murder] lit up in front of me. 

My mental cursor hovered over the download prompt, the weight of it sinking in.

‘Better to just rip the bandage off…’

I drew in a long, steady breath, then hit confirm.

It started like the last time around—slow, creeping, almost gentle. 

A weight pressing at the edges of my mind, seeping in like fog under a door. 

Then it dropped, heavy and undeniable, folding into my thoughts as though it had always belonged there.

My fingers twitched, curling and uncurling against the sheets, every knuckle flexing as if testing out new wiring. My shoulders rolled without me telling them to, shifting into a posture that felt alien and yet terrifyingly natural. 

A readiness I hadn’t had a second ago.

The knowledge unfurled in jagged fragments.

“Ribcage strikes—angled between ribs, slide the knife along the bone to puncture the lung without dulling the blade. 

“Grip adjustments—reverse grip for tight spaces, hammer grip for power, pinch grip for speed. Carotid slash, shallow and horizontal—drop them in five seconds, drown them in their own blood. 

“Patella tendon slice—mobility gone instantly, target crippled before the killing blow as they race towards your blade from the fall. Subclavian artery, just under the collarbone—massive bleed, shock sets in almost immediately. 

“Knife rake across tendons in the wrist or elbow—disarm and disable in one move, follow-up for the kill. Backhand thrust to the liver—slightly slower death, but keeps them in too much pain to fight back. 

“Face cuts—eyes, lips, cheeks—psychological terror to make them panic before the end. Grab the mouth, tilt the head back, drive the point straight into the roof of the mouth—brain puncture, instant silence.”

I could feel it—my hands gripping invisible throats, knives I didn’t hold sinking into flesh, blood that didn’t exist splashing over my hands, arms and face, angles playing out in a precise, perfect rhythm. 

There was no hesitation in the movements running through me, no wasted energy. Every strike was designed to end the fight before the other person even realized it had begun.

The shudder hit me again, crawling from the base of my spine up to my neck. 

These weren’t mere possibilities—they were instructions. Blueprints laid bare with not just knowledge but the exact muscle memory to repeat them in real life, at any point. 

I knew how to do these things now. 

My muscles itched to try, to follow through on the phantom motions already digging grooves into my memory.

And beneath all of that—beneath the cold, clinical facts sliding into place like puzzle pieces—something darker stirred once more. Something I had no interest in satiating, yet ended up having to in recent times, again and again.

That deep, disgusting part of me that had waited all this time. 

It drank in every detail with a kind of quiet delight, the way a starving animal savors its first bite of meat.

It whispered with wordless satisfaction as the next set of methods carved into my brain:

“Twist the blade when pulling free—rotate forty-five degrees to tear wider, force bleeding that no medic can seal quickly. 

“Hook the mouth, tear backward, disorient and silence. Pain overrides fight every time.
When the head is turned, jam the knife beneath the jaw, angle upward—sever the brainstem.

“Instantaneous death.”

I swallowed hard, bile rising in my throat even as my pulse stayed steady, eerily calm. 

My conscious self recoiled, disgusted at the sheer brutality of it, but the buried part of me reveled in it, humming with grim approval.

I hated it. 

And yet… I knew I was better off with the knowledge and muscle memory as part of me.

Knowing how to kill wasn’t just morbid detail or a potential contingency anymore—it was much-needed survival. These weren’t skills for someone else, in some game world. 

They were mine now, etched deep into my body, waiting for when they would be needed—not if.

My fingers dug into the sheets, knuckles further whitening.

The download finished. The knowledge settled deep. 

And just like the first time, there was no taking it back now.

My chest heaved, breath ragged, the sheets clenched tight between my fingers. 

The download had finished, but the aftershocks still rattled through me—each technique, each pseudo kill, replaying in vivid clarity as if I’d already carried them out a hundred times. 

My stomach twisted. My throat burned. I felt the sting of tears I refused to let fall.

Not for the agents I’d carved through yesterday, nor for the spectres that I killed as part of the download—no, that wasn’t it. 

I didn’t feel anything for them. 

The disgust clawing at me came from somewhere else, older and far, far deeper. 

From the memory that never faded, the one that pressed in closer whenever I was forced to do it again. My hands shook as I stared at them, feeling the phantom slickness of blood I couldn’t wash off, no matter how much I told myself it had been necessary.

“Breathe… just breathe,” I whispered to myself, my voice trembling. “It’s just… it’s just data. Just the System. It doesn’t mean anything…”

But it did mean something. 

Every shift in my posture, every automatic flex of my grip, every subtle adjustment my body made without my permission screamed that it was already me. 

And the worst part was knowing that if I was pushed again, I would use every single one of these techniques… And enjoy it.

I pressed my palms over my face, dragging them down slowly, forcing air into my lungs until the tremors in my chest dulled to something manageable. 

I had to hold on.

“Not now,” I muttered under my breath, voice rough. “Not now. Later. You deal with it later.”

Clinging to that thin thread of resolve, I blinked the tears away and pulled the Interface back up. If I didn’t want [Murder] to be the freshest thing echoing in my skull, then I needed to bury it under something else. 

Something cleaner. Something I could stomach more easily.

My eyes landed on [Negotiation], Level 4 glowing, waiting. 

I forced in another steadying breath, jaw tight.

“Alright,” I said quietly, more to myself than to the System. “Let’s do this one. At least this one won’t make me feel like a fucking monster…”

I hovered over the download prompt, and confirmed it right away.

The moment I confirmed, the world tilted. Not violently, not with the sharp stab of [Murder], but with the subtle weight of a library being dropped neatly into my skull.

Where Level 3 had cracked open the doors to subtlety—framing, detachment, cultural nuance—Level 4 threw me headfirst into mastery-by-internalization. 

It wasn’t about memorizing tactics or strategies like before, but rather about weaving them together until they became instinct.

It started with body language. 

Before, I’d learned how to nod, how to pace eye contact, how to draw someone out. 

Now, the System rewired those motions into seamless choreography. 

My posture shifted, not just to appear calm, but to broadcast authority or empathy depending on the tilt of my shoulders. My breath adjusted without conscious thought, slowing to anchor the rhythm of a tense exchange—or quickening just enough to build urgency in the other person without them realizing why they felt that way. 

Even silence itself became a weapon; I suddenly knew how long to let it hang before the other party broke first and when abruptly breaking it could create momentary openings in the other person.

Framing returned as well, sharper now. 

No longer just setting the stage for conversation—I learned to layer frames, stacking contexts like a house of cards. 

Start with common ground, then subtly slide the frame toward my goal, leaving the other person to feel like they’d walked themselves there. 

It wasn’t persuasion anymore. 

It had turned into social architecture by now; manipulation in its purest form.

Detachment deepened, too. 

Before, it was about not reacting emotionally. 

Now, it was about controlled vulnerability—choosing when to show a flash of anger, or when to crack with deliberate exhaustion, all of it calculated. My Ego and Edge synced perfectly with this, letting me slide into the emotional register I needed, then drop it the instant it lost value.

The flood of knowledge hit me harder as my newly acquired Perk folded in as well. 

[Cultural Savant] didn’t just highlight surface-level gestures anymore—it broke down layers. 

Subtext. Implicit hierarchy. 

A bow held half a second too long in a boardroom. 

The wrong kind of humor dropped in the middle of a negotiation. 

The little betrayals in tone that marked someone from Neo-Avalis versus Fera Barkhin. 

It wasn’t simply language but context. 

With the System pouring it into me, I felt like I could walk into almost any room, pick up the air currents, and know how to swim with them instead of against them.

But the newest revelation—what truly seemed to mark Level 4—was a strategy I’d never consciously considered before: false retreat. 

The download painted it into my mind in detail. 

By deliberately conceding at a critical moment, letting the other person think they’d “won” the entire negotiation, I could bait them into overextending—handing me more than I’d ever have gotten through direct resistance. 

It wasn’t just manipulation; it was timing, knowing exactly when and how to fall back so the forward push later would devastate. 

The System tied this into muscle memory too—tone shifts, posture slackening, the exact phrasing that sounded like surrender but planted the seeds for reversal.

I breathed hard as it all clicked in, my pulse slowing as the torrent settled into place. 

My hands flexed unconsciously, like they’d just shaken a hundred different hands in a hundred different ways. My throat felt like it had practiced dozens of tones I hadn’t spoken yet. My facial muscles burnt from holding thousands of different expressions in tens of thousands of different situations.

The knowledge settled heavy in my head, crowding up against [Murder] like oil and water. 

Survival, on both sides of the coin: Social and Physical.

I lingered on the mattress a little longer, letting my nerves settle. 

But the longer I waited, the heavier the weight in my chest got, so I forced myself to move. 

‘Better to get it over with now than let the dread fester…’

Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, I rose slowly, every muscle stiff but functional. 

My hand went to the back of my neck almost on instinct, fingertips brushing over the patch of spray-bandage Valeria had applied. No raw sting, no shooting pain—just the faint texture of the film clinging to skin that, only hours ago, had been scorched and ruined. 

A relief, yes, but also a problem.

I frowned, pressing harder. Nothing. No pain at all. 

‘Too clean, too fast…’

It wasn’t like that nightmare with Kill Joy, where the wound around my neural link had required several Rest Function uses in a row to heal over.

‘If she sees this… what the hell do I even tell her?’

A few hours to go from wrecked, burnt meat to a nearly pristine neck wasn’t exactly what I’d call “normal recovery”. If Valeria noticed—and of course she would notice, of that, I had no doubt—I didn’t have a neat little excuse waiting. 

I turned the possibilities over in my head. 

Maybe she’d chalk it up to Anima—she undoubtedly knew by now that I had some kind of connection to it, after all. 

If I leaned into that, it might be enough… Or maybe she’d decide not to push, at least not now. It was impossible to tell, and I hated the uncertainty of it all.

Either way, it didn’t matter. 

She’d ask what she wanted to ask, and I’d just have to figure it out in the moment. 

Like everything else.

I let out a steadying breath, ran both hands down my face, then crossed the small space to the door. My hand hovered over the handle for a second longer than I wanted, like even that tiny moment of delay might buy me something. 

It didn’t.

“Alright,” I muttered under my breath.

I twisted the handle, pulled the door open, and stepped out into the living room to go and meet Valeria and have a talk…

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[Wolf Lord+ | Draft] Volume 2 - Chapter 53 - Fire and Smoke

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------------------- Start of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) -------------------
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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Welcome to the draft release of Volume 2 - Chapter 53 - Retaliation for y'all.

As always, a quick reminder that this chapter is still in the process of being workshopped by me and that this is simply the first-draft.

And also: Please do not read the chapters here on Patreon, but go for the googledoc, .pdf or .epub instead. Patreon butchers all forms of formatting and you're missing out on easier and more enjoyable reading experiences.

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We do be back.

And so is Thea~!

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I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the link to the chapter:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/107FXS3j7KHLy0X4ZJS0j2Y_HQNYxBrxFi7Q-cjjU_DY/edit?usp=sharing

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Volume 2 - Chapter 53 - Fire and Smoke

“The difference between a One-Star MVM and a Two-Star MVM is not simply a matter of one extra star being added to the medal—it is a leap measured in several orders of magnitude.

One-Stars prove themselves the strongest of their Recruitment Drive, and that’s no small feat—outperforming thousands of similarly experienced Marines in their sector cluster. But a Two-Star? A Two-Star has bested everyone in their Assessment. 

That widens the pool exponentially. 

Instead of just outscoring a few thousand—or even ten thousand—fresh hopefuls from the same Recruitment Drive, they’ve risen above seasoned Marines—true veterans—in one of the harshest competitions the Corps can throw at them.

And there are far more veterans than there are Recruits in these Assessments.

An early-Drive Assessment usually runs a ratio of about one Recruit to thirty, sometimes even one to fifty Privates and beyond, depending on where in the galaxy you are. 

To beat that many hardened Marines and walk away with a Two-Star MVM medal? 

That isn’t something you can brush off or pretend doesn’t matter.

And the Digital Missions reflect that very truth.

The rulesets scale with it: Three One-Stars in a platoon are worth keeping an eye on, but a single Two-Star often proves more disruptive, more impactful, and more game-changing than all three combined.

The reason is relatively simple—raw strength is part of it, sure. But it’s never just that. 

It’s mentality. 

It’s the way they treat every DM like it’s life or death; or a perfect testing ground for a new way to apply themselves to the fullest. It’s their refusal to waste even a second, wringing every possible advantage from loadouts, terrain, timing, and squad coordination.

They warp Digital Missions around themselves without even trying. 

Smart leaders know this, too—they pivot the entire strategy for the DM around a Two-Star MVM, using their weight as the spearhead while the rest of the platoon becomes the haft, the counterbalance and the force that keeps the thrust steady. 

And it works. Again and again. 

The payout for an upscaled DM completed with the help of a Two-Star is more than worth the risk for everyone involved.

And that’s something you don’t teach. You don’t train that. 

The kind of understanding that comes with it, is something else entirely.

And so, being matched with a Two-Star MVM is both blessing and curse alike. 

Your personal contribution might shrink in their shadow, but the lessons learned—watching a Battlefield Ace in the making, understanding how the machine works when it’s oiled to perfection and supporting the very best of us—are worth more than any individual merit. 

Supporting them teaches you that even the smallest cog, when aligned just right and alongside all of its brothers and sisters, can move the weight of the entire galaxy.”

—Captain Lorren Vey, UHF MC Instructor, PFC839

======

======

Staring at the embrasure and the suspended Gram, where her faux-self had just disappeared moments prior, Thea forced herself to steady her breathing, though her pulse still ran too fast.

She had never expected to see Æht again after the Assessment, not outside of that nightmare—certainly not in something as routine as a Digital Mission.

The Runepriest hadn’t been able to give her much clarity back then either. Even after she’d told him everything about her Awakening and the strange encounter, he’d kept his thoughts close, only hinting that he had ideas worth chasing.

Ideas she hadn’t heard anything about since then, nor knew where they might lead him.

But, in hindsight, Æht had a point she couldn’t shake.

‘What, exactly, would the Runepriest actually do, if he knew more about her…?’

She had been desperate for clarity—so desperate to peel back the fog around her powers and stop stumbling blind—that she’d dropped every bit of caution she’d learned from James, from the Undercity, from years of survival, and handed herself over to a man who’d admitted outright that he answered to no one.

If he decided she was a curiosity worth dissecting—whether by Psychic intrusion or a more traditional scalpel on a table—there was nothing in the galaxy that could stop him. 

The thought made her throat tighten.

One lesson in, she knew it already: Whatever was going on inside her was far from standard. 

If the Runepriest needed weeks of study just to form theories, then what did that make her? Something so rare that even he hadn’t seen it before? Or something truly new, something without precedent?

It sounded impossible. 

The galaxy was too vast, too populated, for her to be the only one. Hundreds of years of System history, recorded and combed over for every crumb of knowledge by the different Factions in this conflict.

And yet, the more she thought about it, the less she could deny the possibility.

Thea was good at logic puzzles. Always had been.

It had been one of the main reasons she had managed to become MMM—one of the big three build creators of the last decade. She thrived on patterns, on unraveling impossible-seeming problems until they yielded to her logic. 

And the puzzle laid out before her now only pointed in one direction: Something about her was off. 

Not just unusual, but stranger than almost anyone else in the galaxy.

It had all started with the (Apex)-rarity Accomplishment—one she still had no clue how she’d earned or what it even represented. 

Then came the revelation from the UHF brass: Her Attribute spread wasn’t just unusual, it was unique among the entire Faction’s history, capable of peeling back layers of the Allbright System’s Class mechanics that nobody else had been able to explore for them. 

And then, most damningly, the Runepriest himself—one of the foremost experts on Psyker phenomena in the entire Faction, if not Galaxy as a whole—had been baffled by some of the things she had described. 

Even he didn’t have all the answers for what was going on with her at hand.

Sure, she could try to pass it all off as coincidence. But logic wouldn’t let her. 

At some point, coincidences piled up into a pattern. 

And that pattern, no matter how much she tried to ignore it, was becoming impossible to deny.

Thea had recognized it a long time ago but kept pushing it aside, terrified of what it might mean if she admitted it. And yet, she had always wanted someone to explain it to her—desperately, hungrily—even though deep down she knew the pattern itself pointed to the one, logical conclusion: No one could explain it. 

Not the brass, not the Runepriest, maybe not even Æht, whatever she was.

‘Something is uniquely strange about me… and it has to do with Æht.’

She let the thought echo in her head, repeating it like a mantra until it settled deep.

But she also knew she couldn’t do everything alone. 

That had been proven during the Assessment. 

Her squad had carried her as much as she had carried them. 

Viladia teaching her about her first Psyker abilities. Arrow Squad taking the torch when Alpha and herself reached their limit. Zach… helping her face what her Psyker Powers really were. 

And there had been so many more.

Every step forward had come with someone at her side.

‘I need help.’

The thought was clean. True.

She needed help—and a lot of it. To understand her Powers. To grasp how they worked, what they could become, and what made her different. To uncover what Æht really was, and what it meant for her that this thing shared her existence.

‘But I also need to make sure I’m safe. I can’t trust blindly… Æht is right about that.’

That, too, was true—and she couldn’t deny it.

While Æht’s overall behavior was… abrasive, to put it lightly, Thea couldn’t deny that being spoken to in such sharp, unflinching terms was exactly the kind of push she sometimes needed. 

Æht had cut straight to what she saw as Thea’s failures, no sugarcoating, no soft edges. 

And as much as Thea hated to admit it, she understood the point.

But she also knew she needed the Runepriest. 

As Major Quinn had said, there was quite literally no one in the galaxy more qualified to answer her questions, to teach her about the things she was fumbling through blindly, than him. 

He was dangerous, sure—but he was also her best shot at any sort of clarity.

‘I’ll need to figure out if the Runepriest is really an ally of mine… or just playing his own game,’ she thought, a cold weight settling in her chest.

It was one of those things that sounded simple enough in her head, but in practice? Nearly impossible. She had no way to test it outright. All she could do was feel him out and trust her instincts—instincts that had dulled ever since she’d left the Undercity.

And even if she could answer that question, there was still the other one gnawing at her: Could Æht, herself, be trusted? 

Their first meetings inside the Assessment hadn’t exactly been friendly, or reassuring. 

Æht had always radiated danger more than anything else. 

Her words this time had made a certain amount of sense, but Thea couldn’t shake the unease. 

Trusting her felt like walking a knife’s edge—though she couldn’t ignore the echo of James’ old advice: “Be careful with the brass.”

Æht had said nothing different there; which gave it a certain level of credence. But there was always the possibility that the entity itself was simply trying to keep Thea from the Runepriest to be able to continuously try to manipulate her in turn…

The truth was, none of it could be solved right now. 

Not Æht. Not the Runepriest. Not the strange patterns circling her life. 

These were questions that would need to be thought over again and again, with time, until she found an actionable answer—if she ever could.