Chapter 336 - The Emergence (1)

[IMI CONFIRMED: TARGET ELIMINATED, BIOLOGICAL SIGNATURE ERASED, FLATLINE CONFIRMED. VIRTUAL SIGNATURE ERASED, BACKUP ATTEMPT(S) BLOCKED.]

"... Fuck me."

With Dax's body screaming out in pain he simply resigned himself to floating around in the low gravity, pushing himself far beyond reasonable limits, Dax had defeated the precursor. Ever since Dax had seemingly failed the ceremony to obtain elemental mana, he had noticed something strange, although wasn't able to generate elemental mana himself, he had no issues sensing and making use of other people's elemental mana, in fact, he could do so as easy as breathing. Keeping that fact entirely to himself as a triumph card, Dax eventually found out how to combine different elements to create an extremely potent body enhancement spell which also enhanced his already absurd regeneration to a level which could be confused for actual immortality.

But of course, such absurd power had a cost.

(IMI, focus on the internal bleeding first, Mu is the only person which can handle this level of neurological damage.)

[DIRECTIVE CONFIRMED, TASKING BLACKMATTER FOR REPAIR.]

Attempting to clench his fist, Dax found himself unable to use 3 of his fingers while the other 2 were shaking uncontrollable, if he was in normal gravity, Dax would have most likely collapsed as he was no longer able to use his legs properly, let alone stand or walk.

(IMI, contact Lux. Target eliminated, requesting urgent medical evacuation, severe trauma.)

Overwhelmed by an insane amount of fatigue and pain, Dax's sight eventually went all white as everything he could hear eventually turned into nothing but ever screaming white noise.

Having noticed a significant slowdown in the bio drones, Lux suspected Dax was about to reestablish contact with her, but when she received an automated message from Dax's IMI unit she panicked, something the others hadn't seen before.

"!!! I'm breaking formation, clean up the rest!"

Jumping from the surface, Lux quickly wove together a defensive spell which covered the entirety of her body just as her reaction control thrusters and sped off towards the hollow core of Styx-1, only 3 minutes later the juggernaut followed after her. Knowing exactly what the jug being deployed signified, Phillipa's face turned grim as she started barking out orders.

"Mu, go on ahead! Dax is hurt badly!"

"What!?"

With the news of Dax's condition becoming common knowledge in the unit, Ke was the one to panic the worst. Immediately abandoning all regard for her personal safety, Ke surged ahead of Phillipa who was protecting her as her mana flared, surrounding herself in elemental flames, the laima ignored all commands to fall back and charged on ahead towards the core, melting all Emergence forces who stood in her way.

"Neural oscillations are spiking, you need to stabilize Dax now or he'll suffer permanent damage!"

"I know that! Deal with IMI unit, if it has completely fused due to overheating then disconnect from the C1 auxiliary and connect your own overflow buffer, the noise is burning out his temporal lobe!"

Having pulled Dax into the Jug and cut him out of his vacuum suit, Mu and Lux recognized the severity of his situation and immediately started surgery.

"Mu kill it, IMI is crashing hard!"

"It's not responding, what the fuċk did you do with my software Dax!?"

While Mu was focusing on actively mitigating the neurological damage Dax had somehow managed to inflict to himself, Lux had cut into his back and was actively working on shutting down his IMI interface which had partly melted while the IMI unit itself had crashed hard and was threatening to turn Dax into a vegetable from the sheer volume of corrupted noise it was transmitting directly into Dax's brain. Digging further into Dax's spine with quick and precise cuts from her scalpel, Lux finally reached the auxiliary connection sockets of Dax's malfunctioning IMI unit and established a direct connection to reduce his neural load.

"Arg!- FUCK! Hurry up!"

Although the plan had been to briefly share the load with Dax while physically disconnecting the IMI unit from Dax's cerebrum, Lux found herself unable to do pretty much anything other than just enduring the extreme amount of noise which instantly hit her.

"I only have 6 hands! Deal with it yourself!"

While Lux had hit an unexpected roadblock at the worst possible time, Mu sadly wasn't able to come to her aid, even with the additional sets of cybernetic arms she had equipped for the surgery.

"Impossible!"

"What do I need to do!?"

But right as things looked the bleakest, rescue arrived in the form of Ke who had broken her orders and reached the core on her own.

"Over here!"

Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Lux instantly took Ke op on her offer.

"Grab the 25th tool from the left, middle row! Insert it into the exposed auxiliary port and twist, don't worry about the tech!"

With her entire body shaking and blood pouring out from her nose and tear ducts, Lux nevertheless flawlessly instructed Ke on what to do. Jumping over the operating table, Ke wrapped her long tail around Lux's lower body to stabilize herself as she grabbed a particularly thin looking scalpel which she stuck into the part of Dax's IMI unit Lux had freed from its protective biosynthetic tissue. As she did, Dax's neural activity returned to normal levels and stabilized within seconds.

"... While there's a lot I want to say about your disregard for direct orders, I'll just thank you, for now, Ke. It looks like you just saved Dax's life."

Looking confused for just a split second, Ke's face eventually bloomed into a bright smile in response to Lux's words.

"Ehehe~ It was nothing, really. Everything for my darling!"

---

"Dax… Dax?... Hey dipshit, wake up already!"

"Urg!- My fuċkɨnġ head!"

Getting punched in the crotch without mercy Dax's foggy consciousness immediately turned razor sharp from the pain that was screaming out from the second most and most important body part as he flung himself out of bed.

"That's for worrying me so much!"

Caring little for the amount of pain Dax was in, Lilly hit him once more, but this time she was at least kind enough to aim for the shoulder instead of the crotch.

"And that's for keeping such important information from me, why didn't you tell us you could use elemental mana!?"

"Because Dax figured there was a precursor at play, in that case, he couldn't afford to leak such an important triumph card, isn't that right?"

Answering instead of Dax, Lux who had just entered looked significantly less pissed off than Lilly did. Needless to say, Lux was still quite angry with Dax, but she understood his reasoning.

"... That's right, I am sorry for keeping this from you all of you, but the situation demanded it."

Seeing Dax did in fact feel sorry for deceiving everyone, Lilly suddenly had a hard time staying mad at him, instead, she realized she had been overreacting, making her face bloom red as she desperately attempted to change the subject.

"O-oh, yeah. We captured that thing you wanted. Those two sisters of yours have been looking at it ever since."

"Ra and Mu isolated the cluster and moved it to a secure location for analysis, that was a week ago."

"So I slept for a week?... Can I have one more day off?"

"... Sure."

Reading the room, Lux breathed a sigh before turning to leave Dax and Lilly alone, but as she reached the door she stopped as if remembering something.

"Oh, yeah. Two quick things: One, the navy command is not happy with our independent actions, they've filed an official complaint, and-"

"Yeah I've noticed, see you tomorrow Lux."

Not needing to hide his ability to not only manipulate others' elemental mana, but also detected it at a considerable distance Dax had already noticed the people snooping at the door so he didn't need Lux to tell him about it.

"Sure, bye."

Offering a casual wave, Lux left Lilly and Dax, this was followed by a slightly awkward silence as the tiny elver still felt bad for going too far.

"... Do you want to sleep with me?"

"Did you really just straight up ask me that?"

Acting slightly offended at Dax's straight forward invitation, Lilly's cheeks nevertheless took a slight red shade as she broke eye contact with Dax and started playing with her vermillion hair.

"Get your mind out of the gutter, I meant it literally, I'm still not completely recovered. The offer also extends out to you guys too, first come first served!"

Turning to the door Lux had left from mid sentence there was a short silence before Ke abruptly slammed the door open.

"Victory favours the bold!"

Practically jumping across the room, Ke landed on Dax's bed before she quickly snuggled up to him like a kitten as her tail started wrapping around Dax's legs.

"W-wait for me too!"

Realizing what was happening, Lilly also jumped into bed with Dax and Ke, shortly followed by both Solaris and Alice who had also been eavesdropping.

Luckily Dax's bed was large enough for all of them, and with the combined body heat of 4 people, Dax was quickly lulled into a relaxing sleep before anything ŀėwd could happen.

"... He's already asleep."

"He sure is… It can't be helped can it?"

"Nope, it is also pretty relaxing lying here like this."

Spending the rest of his recovery in an impromptu slumber party, Dax eventually returned to active service.