).-. Beatrice .-.(

The pen Bea tapped against the scratched and dented surface of her desk snapped halfway through the video. She hurled it into the wall and grabbed another from the cup her aide, Uzochi, now struggled to keep full. This cascade was an absolute mess. It caused spontaneous beast evolutions that threatened and completely overwhelmed entire outposts on the planet's surface, and the list of injuries and dire reports rolled in at a blinding pace. She needed more resources to level up her people and combat the problem before the cascade had time to continue. In the - she looked at the clock - ten hours since it started, she'd lost over a thousand troops.

And the rain and lightning that made the beasts impossibly strong showed no signs of stopping.

The main issue preventing her from properly responding to the cascade was rejection. Belar's proper channels were overwhelmed with the trade war, so she got outright refusals to process her ask. Her superior officers, when contacted directly, told her to use what she had to hold the planet, like gumption alone was going to solve all her problems. Her parents were predictably callous in their rejection message, and went on at length about 'how asking for help made her look weak'. Hell, she'd gone so far as to call and beg her 'auntie Bettany' for resources. Gods knew the woman could spare them - but the vile old witch required stipulations on top of stipulations that would've stifled Bea's ability to lead in the future, and would've made her relationship with Travis all but impossible.

Now, as if everything else wasn't enough, she found herself watching another one of the dumb cork leader's stupid videos where he played holier-than-thou. She had enough problems without his annoying old man ramblings.

"... how in all the cosmos you managed to cause yet another early evolution on the planet, but I can say with certainty that you are no longer allowed to leave. A CCE warrant has been issued for your immediate detention, where you will share the whole truth of what actions you took that forced such an outlandish grade jump. Your underlings are fine to go, for now, unless they are found to be complicit in whatever scheme you enacted. They may also be called back to remedy any fallout or side-effects of over-evolving a planet in such a short period. You are required to stay within Vuxarina's orbit until we arrive, where you will then surrender yourself to our custody. Failure to do so will result in harsher punishments and additional charges. You crossed too many lines, kid. Laws exist, even during wars. Don't be stupid."

Great. Just what she needed - even more targeted attention from an E grade force, that was now going to be able to get down to the surface of her E-grade planet as soon as they arrived. All of her plans and timelines were unraveling. She should have had years before they could break through the outer atmosphere. The situation started to feel like it was coming loose from her grip. She needed a win. Something to bring her back to a right course.

Her aide stepped into the room, and pursed her lips at Bea's face. "Commander, Elijah is here to see you."

She didn't wait for Bea to answer, but instead ushered the man inside. Bea blinked in thought, then her emotions swelled in recognition.

The man before her was dirty, wrapped in rags and wiry thin with sunken cheeks. He was Travis's aide, and a fairly intelligent one to boot. Bea had chosen well pairing him with Travis.

But Elijah and Travis weren't due out of their tutorial for a long time coming.

Hope warmed within her. Maybe they'd gotten out early because they already finished their missions. Or, maybe Travis figured out something else was going on and broke free of the space to come and lend his aid to her needs.

Thoughts flashed in and out like fireflies as doubt crept up her spine with cold hands.

Why wasn't Travis here himself? How would they have gotten out of a tutorial that quickly? Why was Elijah here alone, and in that condition?

Why was Elijah wearing a storage ring?

...

Her breathing quickened. The sunken man raised a hand, and stacks of material began to appear on her office floor.

She swallowed hard.

"Commander, Icebox Protocol was enacted in our tutorial instance, in response to the threats identified within these materials. Your soldiers conducted themselves with admirable bravery and conviction, and did their duty to the corporation. The Lieutenant wanted you to know... he was thinking of you during his final moments. His decisive action is the reason we have this intelligence at all, and..."

The world around her faded to a high pitched whine. Her vision blurred, and she slammed an arm down through the top of her desk trying to find her footing. She fell into the broken heap, then ripped her hands sideways to get out of the debris. Her hands grabbed whatever was in front of them, tore, and threw. her desk, then her chair, followed by the rest of the standing furniture and shelving in her office.

Her blind destruction stopped in front of a weak, low-grade couch.

Travis was dead.

Plans to prop him up, visions of their victory and success and future cracked and flaked away.

Bea fell to her knees, and sobbed into the couch.

#

When she was drained dry, on her knees with her arms slung over the side of the furniture, the real anger hit her. That cold, calculated, exacting motivation that had allowed her to rise to her current position.

The locals had killed Travis. Vuxarinans. Savages. Pests.

They didn't deserve to live. They didn't deserve leniency, or mercy, or the possibility to join her forces. They didn't deserve their planet.

She took a long breath, and stood. Her sense of hearing - and her surroundings - began to return. Small groans came from the far wall where a piece of her chair pinned Elijah down to the floor. Her aide stood in the doorway, eyes shifting smoothly between Elijah and Bea as her hand hung ready to type into her pad.

Bea cleared her throat, and her voice came out wrapped in iron. "Uzochi." Her aide snapped her attention fully to Bea. "Healer for Elijah, then get him into a recovery unit."

The woman's fingers flashed, and two armor-clad men came into the room with a green-coated one behind them. They worked to free and heal Elijah as Bea continued.

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"Standing orders. Every local recruit is discharged and gets put in a cell, immediately. Have the lowest leveled person in their unit shoot them for the experience. Cease all humanitarian and optics projects. Kill anyone that isn't a good fit for slave labor. I don't give a shit what it looks like, just get our food reserves back to us, and take what we can from the locals. Unless we need it, destroy anything left of their infrastructure, too. I want this planet to forget them in the next century."

Uzochi's eyes flicked up in surprise, but she dutifully kept typing away.

"Shift orbital defenses - I want minimal wide coverage, then concentrate the shifted assets on a full intercept of the corks - the peacekeepers. Give all batteries orders to terminate any outside entity that breaches the planet's approach lane." Her mouth crooked at a thought. "They might be rusty after so long on hold. Have them practice their aim against Vuxarina's moons."

The two guards holding a now-freed Elijah froze for a moment at her spoken orders. Destroying an orbiting body had a long list of potential issues it would cause. Bea didn't care. Really, she hoped the new debris might make the fight against the peacekeepers in orbit more even.

"Shut down any low-return mining projects, and bury or blow up the sites. Recall those troops here, and start getting them leveled up." Uzochi started to lift her head, but Bea waved her off before she could complain about limited distributables. "It's fine. We're going to get an influx of resources and distributables from my Aunt Bettany. Hard ramp evolutions for every able bodied soldier. Acceptable fracture rate 25 percent."

Twenty-five percent was an astronomically high number for fractured evolutions - but hell, she didn't care if they ended up capped in F or E. They wouldn't likely have even gotten out of G grade without taking from her resources. A 75% chance of a fully successful evolution was a benefit. She turned her attention to the icebox contents.

"Catalog all of this, and send me the most important pieces. I want to know what happened and why - and I want drafted plans from our hunting teams on eliminating any and all high level threats. None of the locals from that tutorial survive. NONE. And, get someone to replace all the furniture in here."

Uzochi nodded once more, hand still moving. "At once, Ma'am. We'll have everything swapped out for full set of higher-grade items while you have lunch."

Bea looked at the timers on the wall, and the rest of her office. She held up a hand.

"I take that back. Not everything. Don't touch the couch."

)+\( Hugo )/+(

He stopped at a small stall covered on the sides with thin cloth. A crafted table held up two boxes of ornate-looking knives. The proprietor, an older woman with a hunch and handkerchief covering her head, smiled wide.

"How blessed am I to be graced by our king? Surely my wares can't be that impressive?"

She spoke louder than necessary, and Hugo had to stop himself from sighing. It was a theme, as of late, for anyone he showed attention to loudly and conspicuously call out that it was happening. That was especially true for his 'walks' through the undercity.

It had been a few weeks since the teleportation and the rain and the flight down to where they were now. The initial surprise and splendor of an entire stone city sitting underneath the true one wore away, replaced by more monotonous concerns. Food, and proper accommodations and furniture. Structure and governance. Rules and etiquette. Where the pop-up shops could sell, and who was allowed to handle and transform food with magic. He had put together a small council to handle day-to-day matters - mixed between his nobles and notables from the tutorial, and others that had made it underground.

The people here - that had been here the entire stretch of the tutorial - were a melt of every kind of person you could normally find in the capital. Nobles - most of whom where happy to see Hugo - and their retainers, soldiers and knights, teachers and businesspeople and janitors and scientists. They had all been in one group or another with a mason that knew where to head, just like Gerald. With so many distinctly different people in a restricted space, stripped of their usual roles and ranks, things had not been smooth. In Hugo's mind, they still were not happy with one another, but the everyday minor spats from entitled people angry they shared living blocks with 'the help' were sharply curtailed.

With stability mostly achieved there and the council to keep it, Hugo had moved on to a new set of challenges - infrastructure and defense. The masons' work was exquisite, but regular stone was still only stone. He found and recruited engineers, mages, and masons to a task group that had the singular goal to reinforce the entire cavernous area that encompassed the undercity. Hugo wanted it to survive bombs, or grenades, or whatever else the invaders might be hiding. Gerald was not, technically, the highest ranking mason in the undercity - but the ease and closeness Hugo showed to the man ended up making him the de-facto head of the masons on the task group. They plotted, argued, built, and rebuilt as days passed.

The other side of infrastructure was mostly centered around water. The city's aquifers were overtaxed from Belar's use of the resource in their mining operations, which left little drinkable for the undercity. The plumb-ins for the city's normal infrastructure were also not returning clean liquid. The wastewater system was the only thing properly transporting liquids, really. The answers to those problems ended up twofold. One, a few of the engineers and mages split off from the reinforcing group to plan out additional possible waterways. Two - was Gerald again. The man ended up working double duty between mundane planning, and magical purification to give the city clean drinking water. He showed up to meetings with tired, sagging eyes. He asked for and was granted an aide whose magic let them provide a bit better rest. But the man refused to complain.

Defense was the final issue. In addition to the 'main' entrance from the lodge, there were a number of 'emergency' routes that allowed people in - or out. Putting patrols on those routes was unpopular, as it stopped brave or enterprising individuals from heading up to the city to loot shops and buildings. Hugo understood why they were doing it, and he did not fully dismiss the action. They were in a nigh-apocalyptic scenario. Stuck underground. Anything they could do to experience a bit of normalcy and grab pieces of their old lives was going to bring them comfort - or it would bring comfort to the people trading for or receiving the found goods.

Except it exposed the entire undercity to Belar.

He set soldiers and others into squads and forces led by knights and strategists. They had the responsibility to keep the entrances and exits free and secure, and to plot out potential weak points in the defenses. A few of his people with stealth-related skills were given official lease to scavenge on the surface, and some even volunteered to track and report on the invaders' troop movements. The scavengers brought back items like the knives he was now looking at, and the volunteers told a story of wanton destruction to their capital.

Hugo would have loved to go up and stop them - but he could not do it alone, and would not be able to without increasing attention on where his group had gone.

A low rumble shook the undercity, and a few panicked shouts rose from people that fled into 'safe' areas. The woman in front of Hugo made a frustrated grunt and looked towards the South side of the cavern. "How many more after this one?"

Hugo checked his quest.

- Questline: Domain Wars! Separated from your faction leader, you must carve a place for your faction into the world around you. You have chosen to reside underground, and angered the denizens therein. Defeat the local beasts, and defend your faction from the domain lord. Objective: Defeat enemy beasts ( 14 / 15 )

-

"Let us hope it is the last."

He trotted down towards the South end of the Undercity, and a few soldiers and knights flanked him as he went. The rumbling intensified as he made it to the edge of the walls - but a crowd still gathered around him. They cheered as he raised a hand and sent threads through the solid stone, found the beast, wrapped, and squeezed. It let out a roar audible through the rock, and stilled.

You have defeated Deep Hammerhead Worm - lvl 45. Experience Awarded. Questline Stage Complete!

Hugo skimmed the rest of the notification, and brought up a list as he doled out bonus experience to his people. Grunts and shouts came from near and far as the F grade xp pushed the undercity's residents out of G and into F. They knew they were on the list. They knew it would be painful. They still wanted to help, to grow and ensure Vuxarina could be taken back from the invaders. Hugo was happy to help them.

The questline updated, and Hugo spared a glance at the ceiling of the cavern. He would get back to the city proper. They all would. He just had to secure the undercity first.

Objective: Defeat Elite Hammerhead Worms ( 0 / 10 ) Bonus Objective: Defeat a Domain Lord Guardian ( 0 / 1)

Hugo nodded to himself.

One step closer to the domain lord.

One step closer to the next stage.

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