263 Reconquest 2 (1/2)

”... And that makes 6, they must start to realize what's going on at this point.”

Cutting the supply of mana, Dax let go of the battleaxe which was still embedded in the elder's core as it dematerialized at the same time as he stood back up to look at the field of carnage and destruction which surrounded him. Once more he had fought and survived long enough to enter a new stage of warfare, but compared to the times he made rebels disappear from the shadows or when he advanced over earth scorched by nuclear fire, this level of destruction truly was something else, the visceral amount of blood and gore from his opponents combined with the destruction which was like countless natural disasters had happened all at once filled Dax with a truly ecstatic feeling, humans might call this feeling 'the joy of battle', but Dax and all other qiton's called it something else.

The joy of existence.

(Shit, again?... I would seem I've been more off centre than normal lately.)

Needless to say, Dax was repulsed by such a feeling, for the simple reason that his mother had taught him doing his childhood: An excited qiton is the same as a dull blade, while still somewhat effective its nothing more than a blunt, imprecise instrument.

(Return to zero…)

Completely killing what little emotions were still left inside him for the moment, Dax once more focused on the state of the reconquest of the Imperial continent.

Phillipa, Lux and Ifrit had each killed a handful of elders themselves as they had advanced inland together with Dax while spreading a newly developed herbicide capable of killing the elder's flesh and electricity eating fungus they had brought with them from the lost sanctuary. Although he wasn't sure what exactly the elder's needed that fungus for, Dax figured it wouldn't hurt exterminating it, at best he had taken something important from the elder's and at worst he had exterminated the fungus that a lot of imperial natives utterly despised.

(Still, there has to be some reason why they bring that stuff with them wherever they're going, otherwise, they wouldn't do so… Then there's the issue of the towers made out of fungus and biomatter which we've found in every major city so far and the missing recon force, biological matter aside we should at least have found some kind of remains, but there's nothing…)

With too many mysteries still surrounding the elders, Dax was well aware he couldn't afford to act on emotions, but it would seem fate had other ideas for him.

[IMI REPORTS: HOSTILE CONTACT, BEARING: 003, RANGE: 5.091 METRES, CLOSING FAST.]

(... Here we go again.)

Snapped out of his train of thought by IMI reporting imminent hostile contact, Dax fired up his neural connection and accessed the supercomputer aboard the Hermes to aid him in spell creation. Falsely believing this was going to be a fight like any other Dax sent out the N generation drones to deal with the closing elder, but as the first one was destroyed only a few seconds later the qiton realized his mistake. With the destruction of the first drone, the next ones quickly followed as the elder targeted them without issue, completely negating any of the drones attempts at cloaking or dodge, indicating that it had figured out how to neutralize the passive jamming Dax and his drones had so far used to hide. Nailing home the fact that it could see him, the elder's mana flared as it pointed a mass of tentacles directly at Dax.

”Oh fuc-”