275 Extermination 4

Before Alice realized what was going on she had been surrounded by some sort of strange armour as she was hurling down towards the ground.

[Welcome to this spontaneous drop pod aptitude test, listen closely as I will only say this once: Blue is normal operational mode, yellow is ready for deployment of break thrusters, as for red…]

"What's red?"

[Dead. That's all, good luck~]

"Don't just 'good luck~' me! Hey! DAX!?"

Despite Alice's initial panic she quickly got the hang of the drop pod's systems as it's control interface was fairly simple to understand, even while free falling head first towards the ground. With active guidance and semi autonomous control, all Alice needed to decide was when to deploy and whether or not to follow the beacon.

(Since the display is blue then this is the normal operation mode, yellow is just before the hover slam and red is too late for breaking…)

Continuing to follow the beacon down towards the surface, Alice started to question if the display was functioning correctly as the ground became visible and gave her a reference as to exactly how fast she was nearing it.

"Yellow! Please turn yellow!"

When she started being able to distinguish the individual trees and erratic plant life on the ground Alice really started to turn desperate, but instead of responding to her commands the drop pod only seemed to speed up further, that is until it Alice was only a few seconds from crashing into the ground when the guidance display finally turned yellow and she squeezed the bottom to activate the braking program with all her might. In a split second, the outer protective shell was purged, a series of manoeuvre thrusters spun her around in the air as a series of parachutes and breaking thrusters brought her to a complete stop just above the ground.

[Good job on the deployment, regroup on me.]

"Roger! 20 seconds out!"

Normally Alice would have a lot more stuff to say after being put through such a situation, but since they were currently on active deployment she chose to suppress it for the moment. Bringing out her greatsword, Alice activated her manatech armour before stomping her foot into the ground, injecting mana which strengthened the ground she stood on before she activated strengthening magic and shot off towards the rendezvous point.

Meanwhile, Dax and Lux had already landed and made contact with the enemy, it would seem that the elders had seen through their attempt at an ambush.

Not that it really mattered that much.

"Switch to formation 4."

"Affirmative."

"Fucking irregulars! It seems like they're more of them than there were supposed to."

"Yeah, no shit… Alice, get into formation!"

"M-moving!"

With Alice finally joining Dax and Lux, it finally became possible for Dax to cross the desolate field between himself and his objective which had made for an extremely annoying and hard to pass kill zone. 

"Lux, shields Alice, Alice smash trough."

Now having appropriate forces there was no real need for complicated commands, with the wonders of modern decentralized command Dax only needed to relay the general outlines of his current plans and his trusted subordinates would take care of the rest.

"Advancing, cover."

Sprinting out of her cover without a hint of hesitation, Alice started charging the defensive line consisting of about 20 elders with multiple irregulars along with them. The elders responded to that with multiple multiple spells which Alice made no attempt to defend against. The reason she didn't was that Alice wasn't given the command to, thus she trusted Dax when he gave the order to charge but also Lux's ability to keep her safe.

"Covering."

Appearing out of thin air right in front of Alice, Lux used her ridiculously sharp sword to cut apart anything which would threaten her adorable subordinate, taking the occasional chance to hit targets of opportunity whenever they presented themselves.

"Optimal assault formation achieved, advancing."

Meanwhile, Dax started advancing on his own, keeping a 100 metre separation from Lux and Alice, the reason he did that was that unlike Alice and Lux who solely specialized in offence, Dax had an even focus between offence and defence. Creating a phalanx formation out of his crystal shields in front to cover himself, Dax kept up a leisurely pace as he advanced, every single time an enemy spell would harmlessly deflect of off his shields or be absorbed by extreme gravitational tidal wave forces Dax would return fire, and every single time he would draw blood.

Or whatever, black, slime like ozze was equivalent to blood for the elders anyway.

While Dax, Lux and Alice were busy charging the enemy fort, Phillipa, Solaris and Irfit were still fighting for their lives as they kept retreating with an ever angrier swarm of elders behind them.

[We've landed, advancing on the fort now.]

"Okay, what do you want us to do?"

Firing another slug from her semi automatic shotgun which the Hermies locked on to, Phillipa signalled to her subordinates that new directives were incoming.

[Lilly is incoming, crush them with her help, then advance.]

Feeling Dax disconnect the call right after he relayed those directives, Phillipa wiped the grim expression off her face as her lips curled up into a full on bloodthirsty grin as she relayed their new directives to her subordinates.

"New directives! Crush them!"

"Finally~✿"

"It's about time!"

With her subordinates responding in kind, Phillipa's smile only grew wider as she finally stopped retreating, digging her heels into the ground for a moment she let out a suppressive salvo before she started charging.

"Advance!"

""Advancing!""

In the end, the elders and their mighty forms were of little worry as they didn't seem to be cooperating in the slightest, after only 4 hours of work, the last elder on the imperial continent was destroyed. Following the operation, Dax found himself even tied up with the cleanup and countless announcements, speeches and dinners which followed ridding the world of magic of their united enemy. Doing those countless backroom talks and negotiations, Dax started silently breaking the news that he was going to leave the planet and return to the war he had left behind, in his absence multiple different directives would be handed over to an IMI system which could be directed by the planetary council to make decisions, basically creating a planetary government. At the same time as those talks were happening, Ra and Mu compleated multiple generations of manatech armour and equipment, fully perfecting the technology before they turned their attention towards the only trace left of the elders, their modifications to the FTL drive which had originally belonged the cruiser Dax and Lux marooned with.

-

"Hmm, good work Ra."

Examining the remains of the elder's flesh and electricity eating fungus which now looked like some sort of white ash between his fingers, Dax pressed the ash slightly which made it fall apart and disintegrate into nothing.

"Why thank you… Although that was nothing more than a crude solution implemented to remove an even cruder device."

With a bitter look on her face, Ra stood in front of what remained of the FTL drive which had originally been installed in the Omega-7 cruiser, with nothing more than a wave of her hand its countless security systems were breached as she accessed its logs.

"So? Did you find out what they used it for?"

"... Not exactly. Although it is clear that the core was refitted to do something I'm not entirely sure what, what's worse Mu has no idea either."

"Could it be some sort of communication?"

"Perhaps, but that would be the worst possible scenario. I don't really need to tell you why right?"

"Yeah, but I'm just listing possible scenarios. Isn't it sometimes better to look at data with some sort of foregone conclusion?"

Needless to say, the very idea that the elders contacted someone or something would be really, really bad. But the concept was hard to rule out as Dax and his subordinates had completely annihilated the elders, leaving none alive to interrogate.

"Well, there's nothing to do about this other than being prepared... Anyway, are we not going back this week?"

"Yeah, first stop is the Hellwalker command in the capital, then the front lines after getting the troops in order. I'm guessing you and Mu want to go process all the data gathered here?"

"That's the plan yeah, I also personally want to work on getting a real body for Ifrit after hearing about how much they've been through."

After wiping out the final elder's Ifrit also finally shared their story with Dax and the others, explaining how they had led a colonizing force with their kin and other demons across dimensions at an event only know as 'the calamity' were the demons had suffered heavy casualties against some kind of other worlders which had allied themselves with the angels and created the archangel sanctuaries. When the demons realized they couldn't win they betrayed Ifrit and their kin, leaving them behind to fend off the angels, a futile fight which led to the annihilation of Ifrit's kin and Ifrit themselves getting their soul trapped in a sword to be used as a living weapon.

"I'm sure Ifrit would love that, just make sure you don't overwork yourself."

"I won't, have you forgotten who you're talking to?"