By the end of it, they were drenched in sweat but moving in perfect rhythm.
Each failure had shaved off another layer of hesitation. Each success stitched tighter the invisible threads binding them together.
The final run-through ended with the dragon’s projection collapsing into a burst of pixelated ash. The lights dimd, leaving only the thudding sound of their heavy breathing in the silent simulation chamber.
Nioh leaned against a nearby column, wiping his forehead with his sleeve.
"Three minutes and twenty seconds from entry to suppression," he said, glancing at the tir above the field. "Not bad."
"Not good enough either," Althea grunted, flexing her gauntleted fingers.
"If this was the real thing, we’d have had about ten more variables to account for. Terrain shifts. Secondary targets. Thermal surges."
Akron nodded, dropping to a crouch to catch his breath.
"And it’s angry. A projection doesn’t capture that—how creatures fight differently when they’re cornered."
"We’ll make it cornered," Nioh said, a hard glint in his eye. "We’ll make it desperate.
Desperate things make mistakes."
Althea smirked, the blue glint of her arm blades retracting back into her gauntlets with a hiss.
"Just make sure we aren’t the ones making mistakes first."
--
The days passed quietly while Nioh and his team prepared for their second official mission. The synergies between their attack formation have been refined over a hundred tis. The overall confidence of the team had risen drastically.
The fight in the arena against the Warden hall, the rescue mission, and the constant probing of the council had brought them closer. Sharing secrets and trading blows was the best way to make friends.
Nioh began to understand the intricacies and strengths of his partners. Akron was the one who liked to take initiative. Despite his petite stature, he would not hesitate to punch first and ask questions later. His biocore was purely physical and on an astronomical level.
Last week, he saw him bend gold with his bare hands during a mont of anger. He still was not sure what Akron’s biocore was, but it was nothing short of extraordinary.
Akron was loyal and principled; he understood rules and was not overly invasive. He was, however, quick to temper and a little self-righteous. Very savvy when it ca to military strategy and fighting approaches. He was a good representation of his noble bloodline.
Althea, on the other hand, was like a firecracker. She didn’t fit and never intended to. She was bold and assertive, very calculative and instinct-driven like Nioh. She had a good sense of space and personal awareness. She was versatile because of her biocore. She could be a sniper, a vanguard, or an assassin, just like a Swiss knife. She was humorous and easy going, but most importantly, she had one allegiance, and that was money.
Although they had gotten closer, Nioh still could not shake the feeling that she was keeping both him and Akron at bay. Never fully letting them in.
Right now, he was updating the cryo binder.. He ca up with the idea after facing the Gyroshark. The need for external tools is important for a good hunt. He was using a counter-elent effect against the lava dragon, hoping to restrict its montum, or at least the oppression of its elental advantages.
The hum of the forge filled the lab, steady and low, like a dragon sleeping under layers of earth. Nioh adjusted the cryo binder’s magnetic coils, his fingers moving with the precision of a pianist. He was adding a failsafe, a tid frost surge in case the initial contact didn’t hold. Experience had taught him one thing: dragons were never kind enough to follow the plan.
Akron was in the corner of the lab doing pull-ups on a reinforced beam, his shirt tossed on a bench, muscles straining under his own weight. He’d been quiet all morning, his thoughts caught sowhere between excitent and nerves.
Althea lounged on a stool near the entrance, a toothpick between her lips as she flipped through a digital dossier on the Larva Dragon. Her eyes skimd data like a sniper sighting targets, focused and exact. Her cryo-bracers lay beside her, cooling slowly after their most recent compatibility test.
"This thing’s been lting miners alive," she said without looking up. "Sixteen confird casualties, two missing. That’s a damn good reason to kill it."
"It’s just hungry," Akron replied, dropping from the beam. "It’s doing what it’s made to do."
"So are we," Nioh said, tightening the last screw. "But we do it with taste."
He activated the binder. A low hiss followed by a sudden shimr of blue mist curled around the coils. The updated energy flowed evenly—cold, elegant, efficient.
"Althea," he said, tossing the device to her. "Try it again."
She caught it, strapped it onto her forearm, and flexed. Her hand morphed fluidly into a blunt spike. She stabbed it into a steel test slab mounted on the wall. A crack burst through the tal, followed by a blooming frost flower.
"Better," she said. "Tighter sync."
"It’ll hold for about ten seconds," Nioh warned. "After that, the elent will destabilize."
"That’s all I need," she smirked.
Akron grabbed his shirt, wiping his face. "When do we move?"
"Magnus sent word," Nioh said. "T-minus eight hours. We drop in during the low tide of thermal activity. He’s rerouting the terraforrs to give us a thirty-minute window."
"Perfect," Akron nodded. "We should review the flanking approach. The terrain shifts every few hours."
"Already adjusted," Nioh said, pulling up a topographic holo. "Ash dunes now cover the eastern ridge. We’ll move in under cover. You’ll go left and draw aggro. Althea breaches the soft plates. I’ll provide orbital jamrs and micro-shocks to disrupt the heat sensors."
Akron leaned over the display. "And the fallback route?"
"Cavern line seven. There’s a coolant pipeline buried under the north basin. If everything goes to shit, we blow it and flood the nest. That’ll cost Magnus millions but buy us an exit."
Althea gave a low whistle. "Guess it’s ti to pack."
Nioh stood up and rubbed the back of his neck. "It doesn’t feel like our second mission, does it?"
Akron chuckled. "Feels like war."
"It is war," Althea said, slinging her gear. "Just not declared yet."
—-The hum of static filled the lab as Nioh slid the final cryo module into Althea’s bracers. A faint hiss of pressure confird the sync, blue frost crawling over the tallic surface like veins awakening beneath skin. Althea flexed her wrist and smirked.
"Ready to kill royalty," she said.
"Wrong kind of royalty," Akron muttered, tightening the clamps on his gauntlet. "This one breathes lava."
Nioh nodded once, quiet but focused. He packed the last of the disruption beacons into his satchel and looked around. Sothing about today felt final.
--
Magnus stood alone in the command vestibule of Citadel Stratus, gazing down at the holographic terrain map rotating above the stone pedestal. His reflection in the black glass was a study in control—calm eyes, scarred knuckles clasped behind his back, the steel gray of his uniform catching the low light of the room.
Below him, the Heart’s pulse was growing fainter.
A good sign.
The terraforr engines were working. The geological scanners had predicted a two-hour window when the volcanic pressures beneath the Maw would lessen, forcing the Larva Dragon to the surface to feed.
That was the mont Magnus had been waiting for.
He turned as Overseer Hask approached, his long coat brushing the polished floor.
"Deploynt status?" Magnus asked.
"All units ready. Subterran rails active. Terraforming rigs thirty percent through the cooling cycle. Teams Aegis and Wyrm are in position at the choke points."
Magnus nodded. His mind mapped the pieces without looking. He trusted his people. They knew their marks, their firing lines, their fallback points.
Still, it was not enough.
This was not a simple extraction or hunt.
This was conquest.
"Activate Phase Two of Operation Crowncatcher," Magnus said.
Hask hesitated—a small flicker—but obeyed.
"At once."
The overhead lights dimd slightly as dozens of encrypted orders left the citadel, spreading across the valley like silent ssengers. Far below, hidden charges embedded in the rock, invisible to thermal scans, blinked to life.
Plasma anchors, gravity wells, and kinetic disruptors.
Not to kill the Larva Dragon.
To bind it.
Magnus moved to the side panel, inputting a secondary encryption key. A hidden file blood on the screen: a three-dinsional rendering of a harness. Thick, woven cables of carbon-diamond threading. Neural override spines braided along the length. An entire modular platform was being assembled to cage the creature’s spine and override its primitive reflexes.
A throne for a king.
Or a general.
Magnus flexed his hands once, feeling the latent weight of his own biocore humming under the skin. Railgun impulses, magnetic tension coiled inside his bones like a caged predator.
With the right mount, with the right channel, he could bring entire battalions to their knees with a single charge. If he could force the Larva Dragon to sync with him—not as a tad beast, but as a weaponized extension of his will—the control over the shard lines would be absolute.
No more proxy wars.
No more fragile treaties.
Power drawn raw from the old veins of the world.
Magnus would ride the storms themselves.
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