302 Blitz offensive 2

Waking up with a serious hangover to a loud alarm, it took Lux a few seconds to realize what was going on. As Lux's awareness returned to her fully, she found herself in the middle of a king sized bed inside what appeared to be a luxury penthouse hotel suite, trashed with countless empty bottles of hard liquor and passed out party guests.

(Ah, right.)

Starting to remember parts of the previous night as she started rapidly sobering up, Lux momentarily ignored the loud alarm which blared in full force. After bar hopping for quite some time Lux had eventually made her way to a high class club where she quickly had made new friends while drinking like a qiton, after they were eventually kicked out of that club, Lux had proclaimed that they would continue their party at the most expensive hotel room on the planet and using her limitless hellwalker credit card that was quickly handled. With her memories sorted out, Lux then focused on the alarm which was slowly waking the other party guests up as it continued blaring at full power, from what she could figure it seemed to be a general call for evacuation only used doing crisis and from what news bulletins reported it seemed to be planet wide alert.

(IMI, status?)

[HOSTILES INSIDE THE WIRE, GENERAL ALERT. EMERGENCE PRESENCE DETECTED PLANETSIDE, EXTREME CASUALTIES REPORTED.]

(... How the hell did they get planetside without us noticing?)

[UNKNOWN.]

"What the fuck?"

Getting updated on the current situation through her neural uplink, Lux rapidly sobered up as she found her baggage, quickly getting her rifle out and loading a magazine as the other guests seemed to have woken up and started panicking.

"What the?!-"

"Everyone, make your way to the shelters immediately!"

Taking control of the situation before an all out panic started, all attention quickly gathered on Lux.

"I need to work now, move like your life depends on it. Because it does."

Activating her mana forge and interface at full power, Lux quickly located the closest exit, the balcony, and jumped out of it without hesitation. Falling from the 70th floor, Lux used the time she was falling to contact Dax while preparing a spell which would keep her from splatting out on the pavement.

"What's the situation?"

[Unknown, all gravitational sensors went haywire 50 seconds ago, looks like the Emergence got its hands on more lost technology. Make your way to the event and suppress it before we suffer further casualties, weapons free.]

"Roger."

Having received her orders, Lux's eyes went cold as she covered them with a Reaper facemask, quickly making her way towards downtown where the Emergence ground forces had suddenly appeared along with a strange gravitational anomaly.

-

"R-run away!"

"The drones aren't moving, what the hell is going on!?"

(Tch, useless.)

Finding the local defence force utterly routed as their drones had started malfunctioning, Lux did the bare minimum survey of the street level battle for friendly forces before she pointed her rifle at a group of Emergence tanks which were advancing up the street towards the fleeing people behind her.

"Howitzer, loop armour pricing, semi armour pricing."

[DIRECTIVE CONFIRMED, LOOPING SPELL CREATION ONLINE, SCRIPT READY FOR EXECUTION.]

Switching her rifle to semi automatic, Lux aimed at the closest organic looking Emergence tank and squeezed the trigger. As the single round of armour pricing left the rifle barrel it was surrounded by a series of barriers made out of transparent mana crystals which lengthened the projectile and increased its speed up until the point it came into contact with the Emergence tank, hitting the outer armour the anti tank howitzer spell configuration first functioned like a tandem high explosive anti tank warhead, creating multiple plasma lances to carve through the outer layers of reactive tank armour as the shell continued making its way into the tank, when it reached the centre the shell then blew up and created a bright explosion, transforming the Emergence tank into pieces of superheated shrapnel which flew out in every direction and quickly caused havoc among the Emergence forces, not that Lux paid any attention to that as she was already picking out her next target.

"Phalanx."

Setting up her own defences, Lux leapt from the 2nd story balcony to the other side of the 6 lane road, landing on the opposed skyscraper around the 5th floor where she took aim at another Emergence tank to repeat the process as Dax contacted her.

[Status?]

"Engaging, minimal resistance."

Leaping from her shooting position as she gave Dax a status report with minimal emotion in her voice, Lux started working on a superheavy tank which appeared to keep moving no matter how many times she hit it with.

[I'm sending some Hornets to you, use them to push back the Emergence, keep them from the civilian population, it will be problematic if they start multiplying.]

"Roger." 

Landing on the street in front of the friendly forces Lux left deep cracks in the concrete below as she shot off towards the swarm of Emergence drones, aiming for the 6 metre tall superheavy tank which was partially melted but still somehow continued moving.

"Phalanx: Battering ram."

Carving straight through the foot troops which attempted to intercept her, Lux closed in on the tank at lightning speed as the first Hornet close air support drones appeared in the sky above her, immediately starting taking care of the lightly armoured Emergence forces using their Menhit rotary cannons. Closing to a range of 2 metres from the superheavy tank, Lux stomped the ground and sent a surge of mana through it, creating massive spikes made out of compressed concrete which shot up from the ground below the tank, exposing its weakly armoured underbelly to Lux.

"Take this!"

Forming a fist which was quickly surrounded by a dense layer of barriers, Lux's punch hit the tank in the centre of its underbelly, spreading out cracks as a shockwave spread throughout the street.

"Freeze!"

As her punch still continued to carry momentum into the tank a series of runes formed in the air behind Lux, quickly sucking in the surrounding air and supercooling it before compressing it into jets of highly compressed, supercooled air which surged into the cracks in the tank, freezing it solid as Lux jumped back to open up the distance.

"Will O'wisp."

With a snap, a swarm of small white flames formed around Lux and launched towards the tank like lighting, squeezing into the cracks made by her strengthened punch, the wisps quickly reached the centre of the tank, then detonated. As the still mostly frozen superheavy tank was quickly heated up by the explosions it suffered extreme structural failure as the internal components shattered under the extreme temperature change.

Having dealt with the tank for good, Lux immediately turned her attention to the rest of the Emergence forces in the area.

"CWIS."

With a single word incantation, countless fist sized blades made out of mana crystals formed all around Lux before rapidly accelerating until they became a blurry mass of fast moving projectiles around her.

"CWIS: Area purge."

Using the normally defensive spell for offence, Lux quickly fed target data from the Hornet close air support platforms above her into the prepared spell with a truly terrifying result. Having completed the spell and given targeting instructions for the blades, they suddenly spread out around Lux and created a hail of blades which targeted every single Emergence unit around her. From an outsider's perspective, the six lane street suddenly turned into a blender which quickly ground everything to dust while numerous Emergence drones exploded in bright flashes as their ammunition was hit.

"Area suppressed."

As the dust cleared, Lux was the only figure still standing, she was now surrounded by a sea of scrap metal. Having cleared out the local offensive, Lux connected to the IMI intelligence network to locate the next concentration of Emergence forces, then she set off in that direction without looking back.

"... What just happened?"

"Don't ask me, dude."

After a while the local forces Lux had come to the aid of seemed to snap out of their collective daze, but even after succeeding that, the majority of them were at a complete loss for words.