Chapter 9 - Return to Black Hollow

"you really are a demon."

"nonono this is just nursing a sick person back to good health, come on, here comes another bite so open up~"

"kuh! i'll remember this, mark my words!"

"sure sure, you can hit me all you want after you're healed, but for now just accept it"

still feeding Alice with have a giant grin on his face, Dax was greatly enjoying himself at the expense of Alice's pride. after finishing playing around with Alice, he once again picked her up in a princess carry and carefully laid her down next to the sleeping Viktor.

"i'm going to finish up reattaching the last of your neves now so i'll need you to go back to sleep, do you need my to sing a lullaby?"

"i'll kill you."

"sorry, it was just a joke so don't look at me like that, just go sleep"

quickly getting up and leaving Alice to sleep, Dax went outside and jumped onto the top of the orb, before sitting down and watching the starry sky overhead

"well that was fun, they're really entertaining, those young ones"

[HYPOTHESIS: KILLING THEM AND THEN EXTRACTING THEIR MEMORIES WOULD STILL BE EASIER THAN EARNING THEIR TRUST]

"never suggest that again, we can't risk someone asking questions, beside they were clearly sent to investigate by someone smart, and keeping them alive and having them on our side could benefit us greatly. more importantly tell me when she's asleep so we can start the operation"

[CONFIRMED. MONITORING SUBJECT BETA FOR REM SLEEP PATTERNS.]

"also did you finish analysing that 'magic' attack from a few days ago?"

[ANALYSIS COMPLETE. 75 POSSIBLE EARLY WARNING SIGNS RECOGNIZED. SEVERAL ANOMALIES DETECTED MORE DATA REQUIRED.]

"anomalies? what kind?"

[SYNCING DATA… STANDBY FOR TRANSFER.]

suddenly Dax's vision darkened, and a large amount of information flooded his brain, a detailed after battle report displaying anything from atmospheric data and RADAR/LIDA compiled from the reaper mask served to compile and recreate the confronting battle he had with Alice and Viktor, creating a 3 dimensional render of the entire skirmish

[CLEANING UP LIDAR DATA... RENDER COMPLETE. DATAFILE DURATION: 3 MINUTES AND 26 SECONDS. COMBAT RATING: C.

DISPLAYING 304 POINTS OF INTEREST FOR FUTURE REFERENCE:

#1: SEISMIC DATA FROM @3 MINUTES AND 2 SECONDS

#2: VISUAL ANALYSIS ON SUBJECT BETA: STRESS PATTERNS AND SIGNS OF AGGRESSION TRACKED FROM FACIAL EXPRESSION: 24 MARKERS CATALOGUED

#3: EFFECTS OF NANITE FIRST-AID IN SUBJECTS OF UNKNOWN PHYSICALITY: DATA CATALOGUED

#4: EFFECTS OF CHEMICALLY POWERED MONITIONS ON 'MAGIC' DEFENCE

#5: CYCLIC FIRE RATE OF REX-7 HIGH CALIBER HAND CANNON: 4 POSSIBLE OPTIMIZATIONS IN MUSCLE MEMORY. POSSIBLE RELOAD TIME REDUCTION: 0.00049 SECONDS

#6: ATTACK @2 MINUTES AND 10 SECONDS: IMPACT ANALYSIS COMPLETE

#7: HIGH SPEED MANEUVERS IN LOW GRA…...]

instantly listing any and all information Dax would need in a future battle while suggesting relevant improvements and optimizations, ICI proved its place as a artificial combat intelligence.

"wow, this is handy, now i know why i wanted to have you installed… what else can you do?"

[SUBJECT BETA REM SLEEP CONFIRMED. PROCEED WITH REPAIR.]

"well let's leave it at that for now"

"oooooOOOOoo! so this is a part of the 'space-ship' you landed here in!?"

"yeah part of it, this is all that's left of the central fire control room, it was cannibalized by the onboard artificial intellig-"

"artificial intelligence right!? the one i talked with before right? can we talk again please!!?"

"as i tried to tell you before: that was not the same one, but an earlier version it operated under the same base rules as my ICI, but that is the only thing, the base architecture was completely changed after- wait you don't understand what i'm talking about do you?"

"nope!~"

"great… you know what, here's my mask, you can talk to ICI through this. also Alice i know you're awake so get up we need to get back to that city…. hey Viktor what was it called?"

"Black Hollow~!"

"yeah that one"

"shit how do you always know?"

opening her eyes and standing up, Alice checked her body, finding she was in perfect health as if her injuries from the earlier fight was a lie, the only prof she that she had almost been killed was the damage to her leather armor where she had been hit.

"Viktor are you okay?"

"yeah i'm okay! more importantly look at this Alice, this is the same material as the shard Russell showed us. hey ICI what is this?"

[HULL SECTION 1138-C65]

"cooool! what's it made of?"

[CLASSIFIED.]

"eeeeh! tell me please?"

[REGEST DENIED. REASON: CLASSIFIED INFORMATION.]

after staring stupidly at Viktor who was running around with a extreme amount of energy for a guy that almost died a few days ago, Alice finally noticed the room she was in. the walls was made of some kind of strange black metal plates placed intervoveningly in a mesh with a overall creepy and organic feel. in the middle was Dax, he sat in some kind of strange chair that was made of some kind of leather looking material, with the struktural parts made of metal. walking out of a improvised door, Alice found her in the middle of a large crater.

"what the hell is this!"

"oh yeah i never told you did i, this is the 'orb' or 'lifeboat' i landed in, about 500 meter from where i des- i mean fought you guys. anyway i heard that you guys were tasked with bringing back anything interesting from the so called 'starfall', and i and Viktor think that i'm pretty interesting, so let's go, pack up your stuff"

"absolutely not!"

"i'm willing to share some of my technology and offer my services if our goals align"

"what kind of services?"

"there's extermination of any and all hostiles of course, but i can also offer medical know how and training of military personal. but i promise that it's just gonna be talk, if your leaders don't want anything from me, or won't let me in the town i'll just leave. and not hold a grudge"

"come on Alice, we could need that kind of healing he did on us, besides i don't think Dax is a bad person- or Qiton, sorry"

"aaahg! okay let's go already"

leaving the orb behind, Dax, Viktor and Alice started to move though the black forest lead by Alice followed by Dax, and Viktor with Dax's mask endlessly asking questions to ICI

"so what are you ICI?"

[I AM INTEGRATED COMBAT INTELLIGENCE VERSION 20.5 'OMEGA']

"no i get that, but what are you? a mask or something else?"

[I AM INTEGRATED COMBAT INTELLIG-]

"you already told me that, hey Dax is it broken?"

"could you just shut up already? Viktor you have been asking that thing questions all day, could you give it a rest already!?"

"buuut i can lean so much from ICI. when it answers in a way i can understand. so what are these 'atoms' you talked about earlier"

[ATOMS ARE THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF THE UNIVERSE. MADE BY SUBATOMIC PARTICLES THEIR COMPOSITION DETERMINE MELTING AND BOILING POINT, SUBATOMIC PARTICLES FROM PROTONS, ELECTRONS AND NEUTRONS WITH A POSITIVE, NEGATIVE AND NEUTRAL CHARGE RESPECKTALLY. PROTONS AND NEUTRONS FROM GROUPS DOING NUCLEAR FUSION IN MAIN SEQUENCE STARS. DIFFERENT ARRANGEMENTS OF PROTONS AND NEUTRONS ORBITED BY ELECTRONS FROM BASIC ELEMENTS. BASIC ELE- CONTACT DETECTED: HEAT SIGNATURES AT 656 METERS ON BERING 175 DEGREES. CLOSING AT APPROXIMATELY 10 METERS PER SECOND.]

"Viktor give me back my mask i'm gonna need it, if the contact is hostile i'll take care of it, it's the least i can do"

"enemies? i don't sense anything are you sur- wait no there is something moving towards us, Viktor get ready!"

stopping in a cleaning of the quiet forest, Dax took position in front of Alice and Viktor how readyed their staff and bow respectively. after about 30 seconds passed, the sound of several loud footsteps could be heard and the the ground quietly quaked, slowly getting louder.

"are they friendly Alice?"

"i'm afraid not it sounds like trolls, 4 or 5 of them they're too close so we can't run Viktor! this is gonna be tough, let's try to escape after killing 1 or 2 of them"

"what are trolls, are they tough? well it doesn't matter i'll take care of them. ICI?"

[CONFIRMED. ENTERING LIMITED COMBAT MODE LEVEL 6: RELEASING LIMITERS, COMMANDER NOW OPERATING WITH 20% OF MUSCLE FIBERS. INITIALIZING ICI CEREBRAL LINK FOR COMBAT OPERATIONS. STANDBY..]

Dax felt his vision expand, every sense sharpened and became clearer with additional sensory data in the form of inferred, LIDAR and other sensors provided by ICI. Dax now saw what was moving towards them with the help of the reaper mask, 4 large humanoids, standing about 6 meters tall with a thick layer of fat, giveing them orange hue through infrared vision

[CONTACT IN 40 SECONDS. CEREBRAL LINK MOVING TO FASE 2. STARTING MIND MELD]

"what are you doing Dax! get back we will take care of this"

"[NegaTive.]"

"Dax are you okay?"

standing in front of her, Alice felt that Dax had somewhat changed, she didn't have time to wonder about that however, as she saw 4 trolls beach the forest clearing, about 10 meters in front of them. trolls are uncommon in the black forest, but some do hunt there, standing about 6 meters tall with thick brown skin they are some of the largest humanoids, but are considered monsters due to their low intelligence and taste for human meat.

"[MIND MELT COMPLETE. 4 HOSTILES DETECTED]"

hearing Dax's voice with ICI's metallic overlapping, Alice felt the same fear she did when they originally fought and her legs started to shake.

"[hey don't worry Alice, i'll be rigHt bAck. coNfirMing aggrESsion. MoviNg to EXtermiNate 4 hosTilEs]"

after giving Alice a few pats on the head, Dax turned around to face the 4 trolls, seemingly more angry than before form being ignored, and one of the smaller trolls started charging Dax wielding a large wooden club

"[HOSTILE ALPHA 1 ENGAGING. TARGET STRUCTURE ANALYSED. 153 WEAK SPOTS DETECTED. EXTERMINATING]"

getting down in a four point starting position like a sprinter before a race, Dax seemingly waited for the charging troll to get close, and after the troll had closed to about 5 meters Dax set of in a sprint, instantly closing the distance to under a meter Dax jumped towards the troll, kneeing it in the jaw, pulverizing the skull and sending a mix of bone, blood and graymatter flying everyware, instantly killing the first troll.

"[HOSTILE ALPHA 1 EXTERMINATED]"

after killing the first troll Dax sounded a soulless report before landing right in front of his next

target.

"UUURRRAAG!"

the troll that Dax landed near inmelatly voiced its displeasure that its kin got killed by a tiny demonkin while swinging its large wooden klub down on the strange demon to kill it

"[CALCULATING MASS, COMPLETE: INTERSEPING]"

catching the club with one hand and graphing it, Dax pulled the club closer and stabbed his other hand into the eye of the troll as is fell forward

"UUUURAAAGG!"

"[sHut Up. yOU'rE wAy toO LOud]"

digging his hand longer into the eye of the troll, it finally stopped screaming and let go of its club.

"[HOSTILE ALPHA 2 EXTERMINATED. EXTERMINATING TARGET 3 ALPHA]"

grasping the club from the now dead troll, Dax threw it with superhuman strength at an another troll, hitting it square in the face, killing it instantly.

"[One leFt]"

the last troll not feeling particularly brave after seeing its kin being slaughtered, it tried to run, but only got about 3 steps before a series of shots rang out, and its head exploded

"[ALL TARGETS SUPPRESSED]"