Chapter 270 – Acceptable Losses

Emily collects Rotwin and takes him and Silvia back aboard The Blade to recover.

“She’s in a state of light qi-exhaustion,” the chimaeric hound says as they Blink onto the ship’s bridge. “Most would take a day or so to wake, but our Vice is particularly hardy, so she’ll probably be up again in a few hours.”

“Okay, can I leave getting her back to her quarters to you?” Emily asks, creating a thin platform of mana and floating the vampire over for Rotwin to take hold of with his own dwindling qi as he nods firmly in agreement. “I’m going to head back out to take a look at that corpse.”

“I’ll send you a data packet with the exact dimensions of all of this fleet’s remaining storage spaces,” Lethia says, her eyes glued to an extensive damage report as she vents excess heat from The Blade’s plasma cannon. “I take it you can handle the harvesting alone? We lost most of our ships with precision cutting hardpoints installed.”

“Yes, I’ll be fine.”

Emily turns to her children, gesturing them closer and catching Pod’s eye in the process. He raises a questioning brow and glances pointedly towards the bicep of her mechanical arm. She silently nods in agreement before Blinking back out into open space with Mensacus and Silica in tow.

“What are we looking for in particular?” her son asks, as they stride towards the dead world-eater.

“I need a more accurate analysis of its energy signature so I can refine the barrier to keep the storm out, and I’d like to know where exactly we should be targeting to end the fight faster next time,” Emily explains, placing a hand on one of the beast’s pitch-black scales and flooding its corpse with a sea of machina. “How much did you gain from its death?”

“Enough to noticeably push me closer to my next ascension,” Mensacus purrs with satisfaction, guiding Silica towards one of the gaping wounds scattered across the corpse after she tries to bite down on the scale her mother is touching. “Though even with my Death Dimension’s help, a lot of energy was wasted. It’s fully saturated, and it will take a while to refine. Also, there’s a strange feeling of resistance inside me already. I suspect consuming others’ kills alone won’t be enough to reach fifth circle.”

“We’ll have to find you some more appropriate prey then; the same with your sister.”

Emily glances over at the fox in question, watching her put all her strength into tearing away a thin strip of flesh to gnaw on with immense satisfaction, her tail swishing back and forth happily.

Emily’s scan reveals several interesting internal structures. The serpent has four glands, two at each end, a few metres back from its heads, for producing its acidic venom, along with two hearts, both near the centre of its long body, to pump qi-filled blood throughout. Three of the four glands are shredded nearly beyond recognition, and one of the hearts was completely pulverised by Silvia’s final strike. In the very centre of the serpent’s being, there’s a cracked, crystalised energy core filled to the brim with qi and directly linked to two separate stomachs, both of which are still half-filled with the dissolving remains of the generators from the stolen vessels.

With targetable weaknesses duly noted, Emily turns her focus to picking apart the serpent’s unique signature from the dense energy in its core. It takes a few hours to narrow down the exact balance of elements best suited to counter it, centring around water and darkness to dilute and combat the mild corrosive qualities layered into it. She’s partway through testing how some of her stored beast materials interact with the corpse’s qi, having dug through the cold flesh to expose its energy core to the vacuum, when she feels Silvia’s signature pulse behind her.

“That doesn’t look like harvesting to me,” the vampire comments with an amused tone, snapping Emily out of her focused experimentation.

“It’s not. I’m testing which materials will be best used to counter the world-eater’s qi,” Emily replies, looking back to where she’s holding a chunk of archite flesh, pouring her mana into it and watching it crackle and hiss as she pushes it towards the exposed energy crystal.

“As interesting as I’m sure that is, we do need to get on with taking what we want. We probably only have a few hours till the assholes that gave us these coordinates shows up to try and steal our prize, and, though I’m confident we can beat a few cowardly merchants, we’re in no state to fight if they’ve hired another large pirate or mercenary group.”

“I thought that might be the case, but don’t worry, we’ll be long gone by the time they get here.”

“You’re sure?”

Emily looks back at the vampire and flashes her a confident grin.

“You have my word. I may have failed to keep it once today, but I don’t take my promises lightly.”

“I’d hardly call our losses a failure on your part. None of us were expecting the second head, and I never expected you to hold alone against a head-on attack from this thing,” Silvia says, her tone a touch softer than usual.

Emily scoffs, refusing to agree and continuing her tests. Silvia silently settles behind her, falling into a meditative state and drawing in some of the qi within the energy crystal, increasing the amount of free-flowing energy for Emily to play with and recharging her qi reserves in the process.

After a couple more hours, satisfied with what she’s gathered, Emily finally turns back to face the woman.

“You may not see it as a failure, but I told you I’d handle defending the fleet, and I didn’t.” She activates The Clock. “I’ll be damned if I let my word lose its value.”

***

Emily finds herself back on The Blade just after she revealed her nature to the crew. She immediately enters her Dimensional Factory and slips into one of the workshops within Elisime to get started reworking one of her barrier disks.

She pulls the device apart with a wave of machina before expunging the embedded crystal powder etched into it with a delicate application of neutral mana. A quick cast of Forgemaster on an ingot of a matching alloy lets her fill in the carved array lines, preparing the device for reenchantment using a carefully balanced blend of magic crystals and beast materials.

This time, after successfully applying Mental Lock to the fleet once again, when their ships drop out of lightspeed at the edge of the qi storm, Emily calls for caution before Silvia can give the order to open their energy vents.

“I think the storm is conscious,” she says, drawing all eyes in The Blade’s bridge to herself, “at least, to an extent. I’m not sure if it’s hostile, but those changing density patterns look eerily similar to the reactive mana signature of a living magical phenomenon I met on my home planet. Do you know of any creatures that would create a qi storm this large in their presence?”

“I can think of a few, and none of them good news,” Silvia replies, a frown creasing her brow.

“Should I block it till we know more?”

“You can?”

“I believe so. One of my stronger barrier artefacts will be able to cover the entire fleet and, so long as I boost it with a little mana and machina, it should hold against the passive pressure readings we’re getting,” Emily states confidently, glancing at the readings covering Lethia’s displays as if she were considering new data.

“Okay, go ahead. If it’s any of the beasts I have in mind, such a large barrier should get us a reaction.”

Emily pulls the modified barrier disk from her belt, sending a pulse of mana into the four greater darkness, water, and space crystals fixed at its centre to activate it. Immediately, a dark, translucent film is projected out, passing through the ship’s hull without resistance and rapidly pushing back the dense qi outside. The barrier balloons out, covering every single ship in the fleet within seconds before freezing at a fixed size just large enough to keep them all protected.

“What reaction are we look-” Pod’s cut off before he can finish his sentence as a visible fluctuation passes through the qi just outside the barrier, and the energy readings outside begin skyrocketing.

Emily adds a touch of machina to her mana flowing into the barrier disk, using the unique interaction between her energies to boost its strength even more as she enters a battle of willpower with the distant world-eater that’s now fully focused on their fleet.

“Shit. Looks like we’re dealing with a world-eater,” Silvia says, looking at Emily with an appreciative gleam in her eyes. “Well done noticing the danger so quickly; looks like you’re adapting well to space already. How long do you think your barrier can hold?”

“We have half an hour before the crystals fuelling it run dry, but I can swap them and hold out for at least four before my own reserves tank too much.”

“Okay, Lethia, can you work out where this thing is now?”

“Yes.” The gunner nods.

“Get us there as quickly as you can.”

“Understood.”

The pilots of the fleet once again flood their ships with machina and set course for the distant source of the new fluctuations in the qi storm. They get within view of the colossal serpent just before Emily has to change the crystals in her barrier disk a third time.

“I’ll protect the fleet if you can keep that thing’s attention,” Emily says, preparing to cast Blink on Silvia and Rotwin once again.

“You read my mind,” Silvia purrs with a bloodthirsty grin, her qi already starting to roil in anticipation.

Rotwin steps up to her side, and Emily activates her spell, sending the two out to face their enemy. The battle flows much the same as before, except that the moment they get within range of The Blade’s cannon, Emily begins preparing a large portal spell, deploying several of her spatial anchor birds to guide the spell.

The second head reveals itself, surprising everyone living the fight for the first time, but Emily calmly sends its attack straight back at it, soaking the scales connecting the head to its body. She sends a message to Silvia as the vampire flies over to take the head’s attention back, informing her of the locations of the serpent’s hearts, venom glands, and its energy core, asking her to avoid damaging them too much to preserve them as materials, but pointing out several other weak points filled with blood and venom pathways waiting to be severed.

Rotwin dutifully tears away at the first head, spilling large drops of blood to aid his Vice-Captain as she dances around the world-eater with glee, covering its surface with hundreds of gashes and gathering blood for her final strike.

Emily redirects two more acid beams and resists several attempts to drag the fleet’s ships through space into a waiting maw, draining her energy reserves to near empty by the time Silvia finally enacts her devastating final move, turning the beast into a giant pincushion. The vampire doesn’t fall unconscious after her attack, but she’s still noticeably exhausted when she approaches an equally tired Emily with a glowing smile of satisfaction.

“That was wonderful. I have to say, for your first battle in space, you performed outstandingly. It’s almost like you knew what to expect,” Silvia says with a light tone, standing beside Emily in the void and admiring the twitching corpse of the world-eater.

“I have good instincts,” Emily says evasively, sending out a few robots to recover the smashed remains of a few of her birds that were targeted by the serpent and breathing in the thin qi left from the now dissipated qi storm to slowly refill her reserves.

“I’ve noticed.” Silvia chuckles, typing several orders into a handheld Terminal to direct the fleet to start harvesting the corpse. “You reacted to my attacks when sparring almost before I even knew I was going to make them, and it appears you’re even better when it really matters. I have to say, you really are fascinating. I can’t wait to find out what really makes you tick.”

“You really think you can figure me out?”

“I can certainly try.” Silvia’s crimson eyes glow with an entrancing light as she glances at the woman at her side, her face still flushed from the pumping blood of battle.

Emily notices her gaze but doesn’t respond, a sinking feeling settling in her gut as her drive for perfection fades as the universe’s warning about using The Clock rises to the forefront of her mind.

“We should get moving. Soon,” she says, glancing over her shoulder, back the way they came.

“I couldn’t agree more.” Silvia nods, her smile slipping into something more serious. “We’ll leave as soon as we have our spoils. I’d rather not stay to meet the ratch that tried to use us.”