).-. Beatrice .-.(

Figures and maps flitted by onscreen as her Orbital Fleet Admiral, Isard, spoke to each piece of information with barely-suppressed glee.

"Your advice to practice against orbiting bodies was key to our early success here, ma'am. After forcing the JBPC's to drop approach speed early on the approach vector, we were able to use the orbital batteries to put an unavoidable amount of debris in most of the gravity sling lanes we could identify. That has again slowed the enemy's approach towards our position, and so far, they have not shown they have the range to hit us. Our batteries will be able to fire on their fleet within the next few hours. We predict..."

The situation report continued, with promises of casualty numbers on the enemy side that seemed far too optimistic. She would let them try for it anyway. Every dead enemy would be relief for her troops - in orbit, and on the ground. She approved the 'resource request' that capped Isard's report, and dismissed the call. Isard had proven both capable and cunning, and she was willing to drain some of her new, expanded resource reserves to see just how much more the Admiral could manage.

Her hands flicked through a series of windows, back to the end of a recording she'd watched multiple times this morning.

She rewound the recordings again, back beyond the initial point of interest. A younger local - not even an adult, really - had been attacking her troops before the real event started. He swapped between silver magic and lightning magic fast enough that she nearly mistook it for a dual-cast. Two highly powerful schools in their own right, and he'd somehow gotten both. His level of control with each was also troubling.

"Have our teams start a target file on this one as well. Try to find some emotional weaknesses in addition to the physical. The younger ones should be easier to break that way."

Uzochi nodded, and her fingers blurred as Bea let the recording continue on. The woman was even more productive since her evolutions. They all were. There was a limit to the amount of experience she and her officers could dole out in a day, but things had gone relatively smoothly. She wasn't even upset about the 30% fracture rate - it wasn't too far off from her target of 25, and the fractured soldiers were still useful.

No, Bea was excited.

Her forces were starting strong in orbit against the corks, and things were finally coming to fruition on Vuxarina's surface.

She slowed the recording's playback as she watched a high-level worm burst through the city, then flop over dead. It dragged a person out with it - her target. One of two powerful enemies defined in the icebox, and potentially the more tricky of the two. No one had seen the barbarian, but the violent monarch made a spectacular debut near an open mine, then seemingly disappeared. All searching so far had been inconclusive. Now she and her hunters had a true lead. She tapped a request into her screen.

Meresgeth, her ranking intelligence officer, slipped in silently just moments later. The short, skinny man was the descendent of ursine lineage, and his unusually small stature made him stand out, even amongst his own family. If Bea remembered right, Meresgeth had a distant cousin in Travis' tutorial. Good. That meant a personal drive for revenge would help propel him forward.

One of the converted mining skiffs went out of control and crashed into a building. Shouts about 'the soulcrusher' rang out from her forces, and she grimaced. There was a difference between naming an enemy and giving them lore, and things had leaned too far in the wrong direction for her liking.

The edited recording then swapped to the perspective of a ground soldier as the rest of the flying craft crashed in quick succession. The soldiers that were unfortunate enough to crash close to the enemy each shook violently for a fraction of a second before they permanently stilled.

Bea felt a mix of shock, horror, admiration, and anger. Shock and horror at witnessing a real soul mage at work amongst peers of their own level. Admiration of the power and ruthlessness on display. Anger at herself for failing to discover and pre-empt the danger of that individual. Anger at the individual for being part of the reason why Travis was killed. Anger at the cosmos for giving such an obscenely rare gift to someone who didn't deserve it.

Her soldiers raised their guns to fire, and the camera shook hard before freezing stock still.

The native's glowing white eyes were visible before his form broke free of the smoke. He walked with both hands outstretched, ivory armor marked by char and damage. His skin was broken and scratched in multiple places, but his presence was rigid.

His voice rang clear and loud in the recording, carrying conviction in every word.

"I am Hugo Vux. You are done harming my world, and you are done harming my people."

The camera shook, then fell as the soldier crumpled to the ground. Bea turned away from the rest of the recording she'd already seen three times. It was just a shot of the murderous 'monarch' of Vuxarina stepping over the corpses of her soldiers.

"Meresgeth. Good work getting this trimmed and distributed so quickly. Share your analysis."

The ursine nodded. "An empowered race of worm beasts explains a few things. First, the tremors we've been getting in the mines around that area where the old Vuxarinan capital was. Second, it explains the loss of a few of our exploratory mine units, if they stumbled onto those beasts. Third, the disappearance of Targets One and Two. It is likely this 'soulcrusher' stumbled on a worm-created tunnel that scraped into some city basement, and they've been hiding down there ever since. Depending on how many shallow tunnels exist, there could be an underground network that allows the natives to get past our patrols and checkpoints. I've re-tasked exploratory mining units to accompany the scout-elites embedded in our empowered squads, to give us better information if and when we see another breach or entry point. We also have the countermeasures on standby - the only reason they haven't moved yet is I lack the authority to give the order."

Bea nodded along at his words. It fit with her interpretation of things - and she appreciated the imitative to send tunneling experts with their dedicated scouts to localize target two. Maybe they'd even find the barbarian - target one - while they were at it.

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She leaned back in her chair. "I want them in a ring around the city perimeter, then do a small cluster near the mine where their tutorial first exited. Have them collapse on his position as soon as he's found again."

The man grinned and rushed out of the room, barking orders as soon as he hit the hallway.

She stood, and walked over to the worn and damaged couch on the back wall of her office. She ran a hand gently over the furniture's fragile surface.

"Soon," she promised, "We'll see how these animals like my surprise."

+ Reid +

Reid - he's on an island

Reid lifted his shield, and used it like a plow as he pushed more of the accumulated spider corpses over the side of the mountaintop.

There were not dozens of guardians. There were hundreds. Plus, thousands of elites that had come out of the woodwork when he really started to make noise. The damage his shrapnel bombs did to the great web appeared to be the cause of that particular fiasco. Reinforcements had appeared from every side of him - most tried to attack him directly. Some attempted to cannibalize the corpse of their recently departed domain lord. After his captive spider's evolution, he understood why they did it. They wanted the lord's power as their own, and were simple enough to believe it would make any difference.

It was still gross - and they still died.

At no point during the engagement did Reid feel like he was in danger from the mass of spiders - but the fight did give him a chance to test himself in a drawn out engagement. He'd fought without boosts, but Reid had very much lost track of how many times he'd recalled his Marrowbombs. He felt the strain on his mana reserves, but also knew he was capable of engaging in a real fight if one found him.

That also rang true of his physical endurance. Despite all those throws, Reid's arm felt fine - and his aim was still good. It would definitely have been different if he was empowering every throw - and felt good knowing he could keep himself going against large waves of enemies.

Each time things seemed to quiet down, Reid had started to clear the basketball-court sized mountaintop of arachnid corpses, and dealt with the new spiders that inevitably found him. This time, he hadn't heard the usual skittering or seen any of the beasts lifting into the air to come at him. And he'd just finished shoving the majority of the corpses downhill.

Finally alone and unbothered on the peak, Reid took a minute to relax.

A bone chair and table at the center of the space. A barrel-sized container of water he promptly dove into and scrubbed himself in. He was still dripping when he sat down and summoned a bit of fire-roasted crinoptera on the ivory table, and unceremoniously grabbed it with both hands and started to devour the meat.

"You are entirely capable of crafting silverware. You made a table... why are you eating with your hands?"

Reid swallowed, then took another bite and shrugged.

"Tradition? Not sure. I just felt like it."

"Hmm. Well, remind me to get you back to some semblance of having manners before we find the little prince. Now, I have some... less than good news."

Reid shifted more upright in his chair.

"What's the matter?"

"How easy do you think it is to trick the system, Reid?" He slowed his chewing, and stayed silent. "Good. The silence tells me you understand where I'm going. Your stunt with the captive beasts was very close to failing, multiple times. It didn't, because you managed to start 'progressing' the overarching questline each time it was close to doing so. You've been riding a knife's edge between the system recognizing your actions as a clever way to complete the overall goals of your questline, and the system seeing your actions as an attempt to sidestep the given quest. Just like those old sidescroll games were you had to not touch the ceiling or the ground as you moved forward."

Reid looked to where the corpse of the domain lord was splattered against the ground, and the realization sunk in. "I touched the ceiling by killing the domain lord, which means its only a matter of time before it decides I'm trying to avoid the wave quest..."

"Spot on. And before you ask, no, I don't know how much time you have. Killing the guardians and the elites was likely also tracked as progress towards the second objective; the one to kill half the spiders in the domain, so you got another extension out of that. But all the enemies in the local area here are probably gone, so now there's no more extensions. All that time spent in limbo doesn't just go away, if you don't complete-"

Reid was on his feet and moving before she finished the sentence.

Everything near him was dead. There were no more 'convenient extensions' to be found. Nothing to stop or delay whatever repercussions the system might have for sandbagging the objective. His mind worried through scenarios as he barreled through trees and bushes, feet skidding as he practically threw himself down the slope.

Maybe the system would send waves after each settlement. Maybe it would send double the normal amount. Beasts that were twice the level of the rest.

Every idea was a potential death sentence for the regular Vuxarinans in the way of his accelerated questline.

He pushed power into his legs, and pressed on. He kept part of his attention on the map from his bangle, and used that to keep himself on track. When he was close enough, Reid dismissed the map entirely and summoned a marrowbomb from storage. He burst through a thick section of foliage, and wound back his arm.

The spider, still in the dinner-plate cage he'd made for it, thrashed as hard as it could with wild abandon.

Reid let the projectile loose, exchanging momentum for range. His feet dug back into the dirt as soon as the ball left his hand as he launched himself forward again.

The slug smashed into the spider's face, and obliterated it entirely.

-

NOTICE: Beast Waves Defeated! Experience Bonus Awarded to residents of Dayo Wolte. No bonus experience awarded to Unnamed Camp due to level disparity.

-

Reid skidded back to a stop, and panted with his hands on his knees.

-

NOTICE: Irregular wave activity detected. Compensation enacted. NOTICE: Unnammed camp is no longer a valid wave target. Targeting adjusted.

Next Wave (15 Enemy Beasts) begins in 4d 23h 59m 59s for Ferber Compound, Dayo Sovni, and Dayo Wolte.

-

"FUCK!" Reid threw a fist into the nearest tree. It splintered into toothpick-long chunks as the top and crown fell to the ground. "I made it in time! What the fuck? It still lowered the wait, and it doubled the beasts! They're attacking three settlements now, too!"

Reid stared angrily at the dead spider in his capture chest until his breathing normalized, then turned and trudged back towards the top of the mountain.

"That escalation is less than what it could have been. You still did good, Reid. You gave them plenty of extra time to prepare. You just need to hope they used it well."

Reid nodded, but said nothing.

"Now, don't let this rock you. Think yourself forward. Analyze the situation. There's never a perfect solution to anything. Figure out what you can't do, what you can do, and what you could do."

He brushed aside a thick section of plate-sized leaves.

"I can't be in three places at once. I also don't think there's any way I could reach Dayo Wolte or the Compound settlement. They both felt way too far. I can easily kill any spider I come across. I guess I could try to kill enough to meet objective 2 in the questline? If I get to 50%, it would stop additional wave quests from getting generated. Probably."

He walked up the slope in silence. Nyx was letting him do the actual reasoning on his own.

"But there's no guarantee that I'm even close to making that option work. The only thing I know is I haven't reached that 50% yet, and I killed a massive number of spiders on the mountaintop. So my best bet is to try and defend one of the settlements from the next wave - and the only one I have a chance of reaching is Dayo Sovni. I could run there - but I can't be certain I would make it that far, that fast on foot."

Reid gave himself a small nod.

"Five days... I have five days to figure out how to manifest elemental wings, use them, and fly to Dayo Sovni."

He felt a wave of approval from Nyx.

"Good. Now get to it."

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