19 Elder Witch Celine Part 2

[I must tell Roland! This information is extremely important for our survival!] Celine gritted her teeth hard while parrying the assault of a dark elves with a hilt from her broken dagger.

She couldn't feel her left leg anymore as it lay limp on the side. It has been stabbed so deep from a momentary of carelessness while she was on the run to avoid the persistent hunt by the underground dwellers. The wound was so severe as she was losing blood fast. It did not help when the wound was black, contaminated with the Dark Elves poison magic.

She didn't even have the time to staunch the injury to stop the bleeding as she was continuously being attacked on all fronts by the wretched dark elves.

As she kept on dodging the attacks, she needed to drag the limp useless leg to move about. It prevented her from performing at her best.

Looking at the debris of what had remain from the Recombinant suit series only made her smile bitterly with mixed feelings. If it was not there, she would've died there and then; the lost felt like she is losing one of her daughters.

They had used a very powerful magic bombardment attacks on her poor suit for two days and two nights while pursuing her everywhere in the underground network. Everytime a number of magic spell casters were exhausted, another team replaced them. It continued again and again without a moment's reprieve. It felt like the magic power reservoir they had was endless.The cramp space reduced her ability to maneuver greatly, making her Recombinant suit to take all the damage directly without any time to recover.

Celine regretted underestimating the dark elves. She had forgotten that although they are not strong individually, they are ruthless and would do anything to win. Furthermore, she was a bit too rusty to be sneaking around in the cramp tunnels. She had stayed her hands from doing field work for a long time, only concentrating on research with His Majesty Roland. His profound ideas always made both of them so excited that they even at one time stay in the laboratory for decades researching on new inventions.

Celine knew she was nearly out of options.

Suddenly she smiled as she channeled all her remaining magic power into her right gauntlet for the last time. She even burned half the energy of her soul to increase the lethality of her attack. She was burning with hope as she had seen a team of witches coming! She calculated that the inertia will push her away from her assailants and gave her some opportunity to rendezvous with the group of witches.

She slammed her right fist activated with wind magic on a masked two-meter tall robed humanoid figure with all she got when all of them were temporarily blinded by the white light from the Annihilator device. The humanoid figure was the only different entity as compared to the lean and tall dark elves; it was stronger and more martial savvy. She detected that he was the one whom was the strongest and dangerous among them all.

Being blinded and sucker punched, the masked humanoid was pushed back a few meters with several of the dark elves in tow. The mask covering its face cracked revealing a hideous looking feature, resembling a High Demon!

Celine surprised with the revelation. I should have known that the demon was behind this! She seethed with anger.

The demon was heavily injured but was not incapacitated. The high demon roared with anger as he rushed towards her. Her light round shield she haphazardly conjured with the final bit of her soul power broke to pieces as she defended against the high lethal strike. The strike also pushed her down to the ground, making her defenseless. As the high demon tried to give her a fatal final strike to end her, her blurry vision caught the sight of somebody intercepting the strike and simultaneously pushed the demon and elves away.

Glory to the Neverwinter…That was the last sound she heard before she finally lost consciousness due to blood lost and energy deficit.

...

Alethea and Pasha observed their comrade inside the life support vessel worriedly. The wounds on Celine's body was too severe. A lot of her internal organs were beginning to fail.

"Her body is not as bad as it looks." Roland explained out of concern to the two witches while wiping his hands with disinfectant.

He had been the one to personally attend to Celine when the Special Ops Team returned bringing her mangled body with them. The only surviving members of theteam that is. It was led by a sweet-looking ponytailed girl with red eyes; it seemed that she had been crying for a long time.

Roland had noticed she was the genius girl who tailed after Celine everywhere she went before like a duckling. The rescue mission had incurred heavy losses; only less than 10 people returned to the Sanctuary 3.

He continued, " As long as she still had a single breath left, there's nothing that can't be healed by this device except death." He patted the oblong Life Support Pod where the grievously injured Celine was situated. "Even if the body deteriorates beyond repair, we can still provide her with a new custom made vessel." Roland said matter-of-factly.

"The biggest concern was the injury towards her soul. She had overdrawn her soul's energy thus the transfer couldn't be done because she was currently too weak. " Roland went beside the life pod and tapped at the touch screen to check the vitals of Celine.

Pasha and Alethea were stricken with sadness as they already know the fact even without Roland explaining it. "What can we do to accelerate the healing of her soul?" Alethea asked.

" As all of you know, we're still baby steps in soul-technology. Injury to the soul had no remedy currently. We can only let it heal naturally with time. What we can do is to make sure her body was healthy enough so that it could support nourishing her soul." Roland was also helpless with Celine's conditions.

After making sure all the parameters shown on the touch screen were right, Roland gestured the other two Elder Witches to walk with him to a small lounge area outside the medic room. A group of witches took over and strictly monitor Celine's conditions.

....

"What do you think about the information recorded?" Roland asked Pasha and Alethea after all of them watched the recorded images made by Celine using her personal VIRCOF.

"It looked like the Demon Clan might have a lead with another Interstellar Gate travel but not necessarily the one that was mentioned by your Highness. It seems that they planned to hog the info to themselves. From the intelligence gathered by Celine, it must have something to do with the mineral found inside the Dark Elves territory." Pasha said seriously.

"Spot-on. We needed more information on this. It might be the solution that we needed all along. First, we must send more people to collect more mineral to study and second, we must establish communication with the demon race. They must have found something important related to the interstellar gates. As we are pressed for time, it would be better if we could share our research so we could complete the research in time. As for the grudges and hatred, maybe it is time to let it go. It has been too long already. Their race was nearly extinct after the Divine War and probably it is time we reconciled upon our common goal." Roland explained his stand.

Both of the Elder Witches didn't agree with Roland's idea but didn't comment on it. They had gone through too many deaths after deaths of family and friends to put aside their hatred easily. However, they know that the utmost priority is for the entire human race to survive.

Roland squeezed the unidentified thumb-sized dark mineral in his palm. Bless Celine, she even had gotten the sample of the mineral in question. He planned to send the mineral to the Negative Density Particle Research Group later.

Something Celine took in exchange for this level of injury must be an important piece of mystery he had yet to unravel.

Little that he knew that the mineral is the key to their survival.