Fluid Pestilence (Sci-Fi, LitRPG)

[E.I.G.]

--- 21 - Bastions ---

It took a couple of days for Flamescale to have everything to make the attempt. After trying she kind of wished that it had not worked. Sledge clearly had never used practical Synch-Tech before, it was a lot different to be in a virtual or Void Entity body compared to a machine that only had as much of you put into it as it needed to work. Humanity had learned quite well how to make Synch-Tech devices that cleared themselves of whoever used them last to let someone else link to them, but the consequence of that was a degree of discomfort and distance compared to one that needed to be manually cleared.

"You know, I've never been to earth before," Sledge said as he ended synch with the Care-A-Bot prototype Helen had at home. An old prototype that she had purchased instead of letting it get scrapped, at least a full generation behind when she got it, and most of the delay had been getting the thing working again after sitting in her closet for over a year. "Seeing it like that, being in that instance again." Flamescale wasn't sure she liked their home universe being called an 'instance', but it was likely the right way to think of it. "I believe I understand better why you would say you wouldn't want to linger afterwards."

"I think I will remind you both that I have been stuck with those bodies since the accident," Yellow-Glow grumbled from nearby at a generic console in the rest area they were all in for this event.

"It was the point six nine prototype, Yellow-Glow. You remember that one don't you?" Flamescale pointed out, because it was actually a concern on that front.

"You couldn't get him one that didn't feel like you were made out of broken glass?" her old friend sighed. "I want to let him try a real, worth actually using, one now. Just so he doesn't get the wrong idea about what this has been like for me."

"Given what the new Liquid Crystal ST is like I think she doesn't realize it is that bad," Sledge cut off her complaint, although she had not tried that ST yet to compare to it. "I didn't have another liquid form myself before getting one, and it has some of the same odd feelings. I suspect that is why she still has that drone."

"You didn't like being liquid?" Flamescale asked, having decided to not to address the other parts of that statement. Then she realized something. "I can actually ask people that and expect an answer now."

Then their discussion was interrupted by the appearance of a Void Strike update message. Specifically a warning that a new season critical Mass Instance mission was now available, or in other words something so serious was happening in instances that they were asking for multiple Void Entities for a single objective. "Outbreak, main objective is destruction of a gate they cannot destroy themselves, followed by the destruction of all ancient computers, and secondary of clearing out any Rhizocephala or Asteroidea. That is apparently the name for the ancient disruptors," Yellow-Glow explained dully. "We need to move."

"Who do we have on the short list?" Flamescale asked as she started by checking where her infected creatures were, and after giving an order to abort some trips to the arcology that luckily had not started yet she added her bio-weapons skills. Then she split off a body to get Sixteen to prepare her combat teams.

"Jovian and Stone," Sledge answered dully as he started towards his armor and weapons. "Maybe Wolfy too, but he said he was trying something new, and he doesn't know the truth. How exactly is this a situation where they can't destroy the gate themselves?"

"No idea, sending the mission details," Yellow-Glow said. "I'm going to go prepare my combat ST, wait for my return."

The Nine-one-eights had their own concerns. "Are we opening the gate now? I thought we had more time," the researchers questioned darkly. "I need more time to rebuild the gate prototype, at least another hour."

"Emergency mission," Sixteen answered before she could. "I don't think we're going for a gate."

"We have a major issue, an open gate that isn't being closed the blunt way," Flamescale corrected him as she inspected the various linked weapons these infected needed to use. They didn't have enough heavy rifles of any kind for this. "This is one of the situations we were halfway prepared for. The locals want the gate closed, but we are going to do that after getting a small group in." Smaller than planned, they wanted six Entities with strong combat STs to go with her ability to hopefully take a beachhead. "You aren't being brought in until and unless we have a chance to take the far side of the gate."

"I'll get some extra head volunteers ready," Sixteen sighed and left to do that. Flamescale could also tell he wanted some more remade with the hives hidden in the facility and set the ones he was thinking of to start.

---

Flamescale emerged from the Mass Rift quickly to check what was on the other side for any immediate threats, quickly followed by the boys, and found only a quickly abandoned storage facility. Mass Instance missions started you off all at the same place, and it was rather clear from the not-quite-hum of ancient disruptors that the over-sized Rift was needed to make it here at all. It looked like at least a dozen Void Entities, with the three they expected and a number of others clearly not that concerned with sticking together.

A few even grumbled or commented about Sledge's presence as they ran off out of the building to deal with the targets. Flamescale knew firsthand that he had made himself a bit notorious with how often he went into the major season three mass instance missions and worked more closely with the locals than most Entities liked. It seemed like he spent entire days just running the pirate king assault to the point that he earned his own thread to warn others about his actions, and Flamescale personally did not have a single attempt at that one where she didn't run into him during season three.

The extra three they had contacted instead stuck with them as they made their way out of the building more cautiously. Which gave Flamescale time to double check their allies for their own secret mission. "Jovian Gate Guard", typically just Jovian, was a humanoid three tailed fox, with grey fur with white tips and a Decay elemental Skill Tree that was not also necromancy themed, and apparently actually worked at one of the Jupiter research stations. "DeepStoneMiner", always called Stone, on the other hand was human, but short and hairy in a way she knew was commonly thought to be somehow not just human, even if she didn't understand how. Stone mostly used heavy guns, in this case what looked to be a Macrophylla rotary cannon from one of their power armor suits. Finally "Constant Werewolf 2180", who preferred Wolf but everyone called Wolfy because of his overly common name, was typically a rather impressive massive wolf man, but currently was a shiny purple goo wolf with crystal fur and plates that didn't look entirely uncomfortable with being liquid.

"Do we have a- Oh shit that's a space battle," Wolfy said with a glance to the night sky above them, which was streaked with combat even while some small groups of Rhizocephala found them. "Why are they fighting in space?"

"If we are lucky, someone thinks they can control this," Flamescale grumbled as she checked her current cybernetic 'implant', which looked more like a slightly discolored bit of her liquid inside of her. They had mostly focused on getting ready for this operation, so her cybernetic options were currently limited to a basic hacking mod with build in comms, and her current cybernetic. Right now she had a small sensor array specially tuned to Void Materials to track down gates and other void devices, and a quantum comm unit to allow her to talk with the others even on the other side of a gate.

"If we are unlucky then we might not be able to stop the other gates in this instance from being opened," Sledge sighed as the combat group finished taking out the initial group of foes. His hammer not even used as raw strength was enough to deal with the few scout units that had found them.

"Tracking ancient computers that made it onto those ships is probably too difficult, and we do not know if they can reproduce yet," Yellow-Glow added with a glance in the direction Flamescale was already moving. Her old friend was carrying a more high tech vehicle scale plasma autocannon that was only able to be controlled in its current state due to his mechanical nature. "How far out is a void gate core?"

"Not far, but there are some good sized collections in the way, probably ancient disruptors," Flamescale specified as her body began to grow from her now arriving extra heads. Her other three bodies were back at her infected's facility, two of them growing to full four head size and the last remaining there to be ready to make replacements. "We should go quickly before one of the others stumble onto it."

The difference between an unfinished and a finished combat ST was plain to see as they moved as fast as they were able across the hilly farmland between them and the gate site. Yellow-Glow's rather impressive use of a completed weapon enhancement branch was matched by what had to be a similar ST used by Stone, both of them able to make their heavier than normal weapons hit even harder and quickly erase or punch holes in the heavier enemies present.

Jovian on the other hand was sending out bolts of energy that made their targets wither and die, quickly taking out the medium threats. The fox also had an aura of that same energy did the same to any lesser enemies that got close, and both of those likely were able to heal Jovian given how those branches worked out. Flamescale wasn't sure if he could make decay illusions too, it was somewhat implied by his form but hard to say if his ST allowed for it.

Sledge had figured out which way they were going and had taken the lead. Between enhanced armor and melee weapon, along with a surprising speed if you only looked at his bulk, the pangolin Void Entity carved through the enemies that showed up in front of them.

By contrast even with a four headed form Flamescale simply did not have the rate of fire for her bio-weapons to contribute more than a few kills at a time, and Wolfy clearly and understandably had not found time to complete a brand new and just discovered Skill Tree before this fight. The goo wolf could let off a burst of crystals, form a limb into a crystal blade, fire crystal shards that seemed made for it, fire larger crystal missiles, and even had a crystal cannon like weapon, but all of them were only barely faster firing than Flamescale's bio-weapons and clearly not as hard hitting.

The gate itself turned out to be hard to miss, and Flamescale wasn't sure how long it had been open, because the formerly dead and lifeless coral structure that held it was now a number of shifting colors and clearly alive. With three ancient disruptors and four computers present and clearly doing something to the structure.

Even with two of them being underpowered that group of enemies went down quickly. With the heavy weapons, and a few carefully rationed laser 'rifle' hits from Flamescale, breaking the shields on the disruptors and allowing the rest to kill the starfish constructs. The green liquid crystal bird-squids took a moment longer, apparently able to regenerate if not hit with similar firepower, but were also cleared. Despite that Flamescale knew more were close by from how the ancient infection was still controlled, and as a result could not be easily overwhelmed by her own.

"Ha, how many of those shuttle laser shots do ya have, Flamescale?" Stone laughed after they cleared out the immediate area around the gate for a moment. "I thought you weren't at a high combat level yet."

"It is just a regular laser rifle made bigger. I get the same shots per battery, and I've only got fifteen batteries for this mission," she explained quickly as they made their way to the active local made gate. It was a much more obvious appearance than a Void Rift, with a pale unnatural uniform grey circle suspended in the air in front of the generator, with a few more Rhizo coming out. Sledge's hammer came down immediately onto the single heavy laser Rhizo among the latest group, while the rest fell to massed fire from the group. "The problem is that they basically don't recharge, so that is all the really heavy firepower I have."

"You have more than me," Wolfy sighed and slumped down a bit, a familiar movement that seemed to surprise the other goo Entity as he puddled. "This is why I can't help with this early secret mission run. I've got some demo charges, so I can make sure its closed after you guys, but this is definitely as far as I can go."

"I think we can handle at least an attempt," Jovian laughed. "And that way we still technically complete the main objective, which should be fine enough." He fanned out his tails. "So, are we ready to be the first to see where this leads?"

"We don't have time to talk," Yellow-Glow cut off the rather amused discussion. "The other Entities have figured out this location and we might not need to wait for Wolf to destroy the gate if we hesitate."

That was enough to prompt the group to simply go through the strange barren portal, and Flamescale was right behind the four fighters they had on hand. The other side was not what she expected, as the first thing she saw was the 'sky' around them. The same flat almost fake looking grey as the sky around the Void Nexus, and clearly simply exposed to the flat ground they were on. That ground was more of the multicolored and living coral like structural material that the ancients seemed to build with, covering an area that was large enough to move around a lot of supplies that contained two other ancient void gate devices each set well apart to either side and inactive.

There was a low wall around the sides behind them that contained the void gates, but in front of them was a much larger contained structure with a number of fixed bio-weapon emplacements and a single large checkpoint door. Otherwise they were simply in a flat yard open to the nothing around them, as if air was just an assumption here. With regards to size, Flamescale could possibly fit a nine headed body here, if she wanted to literally cover the entire construct. Big enough for all of her current max sized four headed bodies, or in this case a half dozen ancient disruptors with their own ancient computers.

"We need those shuttle lasers!" Stone yelled at the sight of those, and Flamescale obliged by moving her other two four headed bodies to this side of the gate. Which did make a tight fit, but gave them enough of those lasers to let the combat Entities quickly break through the shields.

"Flamescale, this place looks alive, can you take it over?" Sledge asked quickly as he took on another ancient computer, a larger one than any of those in the disruptors.

"I need the computers gone for that," she answered with a head that had just spit a toxic glob at one of the weapon emplacements as part of her current attempts to do just that. "They aren't just coming out of those holes in the floor, they are controlling everything here directly. I need some clear space to start getting my troops here." Sixteen was ready for her signal to bring two dozen heavy plasma rifle armed serpents to the field to take some pressure off, but they needed to know it was worth committing that gear first.

"I don't suppose you can see how far that structure goes from up there?" Jovian asked. The fox still sounded amused with everything despite how he had been pushed to using her as a way to keep the stronger Rhizo weapons off himself, the missiles and cannons that were hitting hard enough that Flamescale was about to start up her replacement head healing method soon.

"About half the size of this open area," Flamescale said with a laugh of her own, because she was actually that tall with her highest heads. "There are some holes up there I might be able to use to get inside, and I don't know how far down the whole place goes, but it is not very big across at all."

"This is not the expected result," Yellow-Glow said, and that removed some of her own amusement. "This is far too small, we are looking at a still active network of some serious size to support this many Rhizocephala. Break down that door, we need this site under control now so we can move on." Naturally that was when the gate they used to enter closed. "Flamescale, cover me while they break the gate and take out anything inside. I will attempt to link this gate to our shared base area."

"Might be a good thing to have left Wolfy behind then," Stone grumbled as he let his rotary cannon cool a bit and switched to a small single shot grenade launcher to blast the door from a distance. "I'm gonna be honest, the kid probably doesn't realize this isn't actually a game."

"Have you found out if you died or not yet, Stone?" Jovian questioned as he frowned at the latest issue, a bubble of green goo that was now forming from some of the holes in the ground. Which turned out to be a use of Liquefy Cargo by another of the larger ancient computers to bring another set of heavily armed Rhizo. "Oh I do not like that trick."

"Ha, if I knew for sure I was I would probably join one of the dead guilds," Stone laughed as he loaded a second grenade because the first had not taken out the door.

"As for that trick," Flamescale added to change the topic. "I would like it a whole lot better if I could do it like that, but I can still do it a bit." With the area mostly cleared it wasn't too dangerous to let lose her infected creatures, with the two dozen linked heavy plasma rifles ready to eliminate both that first group of transported Rhizo and a second that was simply dropped and abandoned by their ancient computer as the bird-squid sank back into the floor immediately.

"Please tell me we can work out how to do that too," Sixteen requested at that display. "Because that would solve half our gear issues."

"Focus, Sixteen, we have more places to get," Flamescale said a bit harshly, unsure why the former local was only taking things as seriously as the rest of them. "How many more computers do they have here?" she questioned the group that had made their way to the now open door in that time.

It turned out to be just that third over-sized one, as her infection suddenly overtook basically the entire void construct as that bird-squid fell next to another void gate behind the checkpoint. An open and active one, although one that Flamescale now had under her control as the entire coral structure changed to her red color and began to ooze out her infection.

"Oh wow, that's a lot of lava fruit mist," Jovian said with amusement and a cough as Flamescale's infectious vapors started to pour out of the entirely living surface of the location. "Um, is there a reason the little snakes don't like the sound of that?"

"It is a long story," Yellow-Glow cut off Clumsy's angry response about scented filters before the very stripe covered infected snake could start it. "The way out is ready. Flamescale, bring one body forward with us while the rest set this place up as a fall back location."

"I might bring Left-and-Right's team in to take a look while we have the chance," Flamescale agreed as one body went through this second gate just behind the combat Entities. Then she paused at the sight of another relatively small ancient void construct with a similar layout to the last.

Unlike before the large open area featured three open void gates instead of two of them being inactive, with the other two gates both to the right of them, and the enclosed security area was much larger. Flamescale could not use the cybernetics to tell how many gates were beyond the latest open area, because the ground below them had quite a bit of Void Materials present inside. It also had another set of defenders, but the ancient computers here seemed more hesitant to engage.

"We need to clear those other gates," Stone declared quickly as the short human opened fire on some of the ancient disruptors.

"I'll help hold this side," Sledge offered, and made good on that by crashing into the only oversized computer currently visible.

Flamescale brought forward her other two four head bodies, although it turned out the ancient force was more prepared as one ended up triggering Splash and turned into a puddle by a surprise strike from three hidden laser Rhizo. Their movement to one of the other gates was slowed briefly to clear out the worst of the threat, although it seemed that the ancients were mostly trying to have their massive starfish constructs fall back into the structure here.

She wasn't sure why the ancient forces weren't cutting off the gates to stop them, but it didn't take long to clear out the rather small area they had and soon enough they were through the next gate. Which led to a nearly identical security checkpoint structure to the first of the these constructs. With only one over-sized computer this time, and no other computers as destroying it immediately caused Flamescale to have two massive void constructs under her complete control, although this new one didn't have any of its four outer gates active.

They barely paused once that was taken, going back out and right into the next gate to make sure that they didn't have anyone at their back, but once again they found a similar situation of a near abandoned construct with only a single ancient computer. Giving them a trio of gates where Flamescale controlled one side and now she simply had her infected creatures start setting up hives and defenses on all of them. She also brought all her research staff over to see what they could figure out.

"Is this good news fast or bad news fast?" Sledge questioned while they took a moment to collect themselves after that rapid action.

"Looks like just more gates to the instance," Flamescale specified. "Barely guarded and with closed gates out farther. My research team is seeing what they can find."

"So are we going to keep trying every gate we find, or is there a point where we're stopping?" Jovian asked fairly seriously for once. "Because this is looking like a much more complicated issue that I thought I was signing up for."

"If it goes much further I'm going to start eating farther into some of my ammo stock than I wanted," Stone agreed with a huff. "Those shields aren't easy to take down, and the goo things take more than I expected."

"Flamescale, can you cut off the gates once you gain control over them?" Yellow-Glow questioned with a clear check of his own weapon as well.

The answer was something she was working on. "I don't think they can close on their own, but that doesn't mean I can't work out how to close them," Flamescale admitted and went to check the details her researchers had found already with another body. "Give me a bit to try some things out, and be ready just in case they figure it out."

"We should at least clear this one out so it is something she can do," Sledge pointed out, and Flamescale mostly just followed them idly while they cleared out the larger structure.

"We have an issue," Left-and-Right then said to her from the third of these structures they had taken. Specifically from next to a now open void gate in that one.

"Is there a reason you opened that gate?" Flamescale had to question the two headed infected creature. Then blinked as she realized it linked to her infected facility.

"This is the other side of our facility's gate. It appears we are not putting off exploring the other side," they specified. "These three new infected locations are each linked to a different instance of reality by default."

"Help me work out how to open and close these things directly," Flamescale ordered quickly and got to work on that, while Sixteen took advantage of this development to get some non-linked weapons and gear through to help with the defenses.

"Problem, we have a meta-instance," Flamescale said to the combat Entities, even as she cringed at the first area of the structure. Which was a broad travel area clearly meant to both go directly between the two new gates at either end of the enclosed corridor, and also with access out to the other gates. "Yellow-Glow, we don't need to do this again for the far side of the facility gate."

"We need more data," Yellow-Glow immediately replied as the over-sized ancient computers in the corridor fell. "I suspect there is another inward gate here." He was soon proven right as the farthest part of the structure did include a single gate, and the final ancient computer that had not fled.

"I don't think we can keep taking these one by one if there are just more and more gates," Jovian pointed out at that discovery as Flamescale gained a fourth construct. "Can we close these for now and try and re-open them later when we are ready for this sort of thing?"

"I could use the break," Stone admitted with a grumble as another group of Rhizo made their way in one of the corridor gates. The crab-like enemies were easily eliminated, but the point was made by the next few attacks from those three gates that kept them all busy while a way to close the gates was worked out.

"Okay, I have a basic idea of how to get these to close without outright destroying them," Flamescale informed the rest of the invading force after the first ancient disruptor tried to bring an ancient computer back to the captured area. Luckily it turned out that the computers had just as much trouble taking over a place Flamescale already held as she did the other way around. "They aren't supposed to close, but my people have found a minor modification that should work. It will take a bit to open them again, but I think that is better than the alternative."

"We can always perform some more rapid raids to map the area later," Sledge suggested, and the other Void Entities clearly agreed with that idea. So Flamescale went ahead and closed the three gates that opened to ancient controlled areas.

And she immediately found a mission completion screen appear, with new seemingly unfinished alerts for four "Captured Ancient Bastion" rewards. There were quite a few Liquid Crystal Skill Trees, one-off skills related to those trees she didn't have before, resources including some Void Materials, and a strange setup for the ST points gained. She had ten from the mission reward itself, but it appeared that each "Ancient Bastion" was worth one bonus point to clear out and two more to capture. Giving a total of twenty two points for the entire operation.

Closing that reward screen gave an even more worrying result, as a special announcement appeared that seemed to have been triggered by a "capture" of one of these Bastions. It was clearly unfinished, with several parts that were at odds with each other and a few features that outright had question marks next to them. One example being the possibility to create a Void Base door directly to a captured bastion.

"Well, that's something. Anyone else get an announcement for 'captured bastions' without getting any 'bastions'?" Stone questioned with a frown as the short human finally relaxed. "It isn't really saying how you capture one."

"I think Flamescale probably is the one who actually got those," Jovian pointed out, the three tailed fox once more joking. "I think I'll leave them to her honestly. I don't need eldritch coral reefs."

"I have some possible use for them," Sledge admitted as the pangolin looked over the area in a new light. "But that can wait until we get a better explanation."

---

[Author's Note]
It is time to start with the real exploration of the ancient threat. Also a few more characters because I couldn't just not specify who was working with them on this, and found some more character concepts.

 

[E.I.G.]

--- 22 - Armory ---

Flamescale had admittedly not done much herself in the aftermath of the bastion invasion attack. Having to work out what exactly she could and should use them for had taken quite a bit of time, although there was also the task of acting as the base of operations for the expeditions into the still ancient controlled areas of the larger bastion-network. That had strangely enough earned her a few ST points, despite not going on the unofficial missions herself and just holding the door open for the others to use.

Together with the big reward for taking the bastions and what she had built up before that mission, Flamescale now had enough points to go to five bodies and heads by putting another forty points into Multiform. It would take out many, but not all, of the second level skills she had been using recently, but the boost the larger form should give her would make up for that when she used it.

"So, does this place actually have enough room to use five heads in combat?" Sledge asked practically as they emptied out the facility side bastion loading area for the attempt. One major advantage of having the new shared base areas and her bastions was that she could actually get in person help with any new developments like this one.

In practice the bastions apparently counted as a sort of shared base space that locals could survive inside once they were marked as captured. Which meant that Flamescale could alter her character and skills while inside of one, although only as long as the gates were only linked to controlled end points. Even linking to an instance that didn't have a long term presence would disable that, although Flamescale had not worked out how exactly that was determined yet.

"We require the increased firepower enough for the larger locations," Yellow-Glow explained, currently in a winged insect themed body plan. "Four heads are sufficient for Ancient Bastions, but the other sites are too well defended." They planned on going over the findings in detail to review after this test, as Yellow-Glow had more information collected from other groups that were now exploring the Ancient Bastion Networks.

"We also need to go with Girant weapons," Stone pointed out from where that short human Void Entity and Jovian the three tailed grey fox man Entity were both waiting for that part of the explanation. Possibly also going with the rest of them on a supply run if they were both willing to help there too. "319 stuff is fine for ammo endurance, but for pure power Girant explosive rounds are what we will need here."

"More heavy plasma rifles would solve it too, without needing over-sized and poorly made guns," Sixteen complained with a huff. "If we have the free time they can even be modified vehicle versions like what Yellow-Glow has been using. My people are strong enough for those as well."

"Unfortunately we can't magically grab piles of those," Flamescale had to tell her infected. "It is hard enough to find an instance where more than a couple of them are in the same place, let alone how many we need. Though let's start with the upgrade that impacts me a bit more. I don't think I'll find ammo for Girant weapons that are scaled up." Given testing at four heads resulted in it trying to grab ammo she didn't have stocked so far.

"Perhaps you simply need to grab a whole vehicle depot's ammo stock," Jovian joked with a laugh. "Now, we've delayed long enough, let's see your first five headed hydra."

Flamescale did start on that, with only her natural bodies for the moment. She didn't want to make her infected serpents give up some time alive to just let her try out a new way to have extra heads. Although she was planning on trying to heal with heads the other way around now. Four heads was good enough for Bastion clearing, but the brief moment she shrank down was a possible risk to lose the body if she timed things wrong. This would let her instead briefly scale up.

Four heads were still the same as ever, although she did shift position a bit to make sure she didn't end up on top of anyone. Then she added the next head, so she had two below, two outside and above those, and one head at the top in a rough pentagon. She also felt just how much bigger she was getting this time, as she clearly was going to hit forty meters, and also be wide enough to look more like a small river of goo than a creature. Where before she could just see the top of the bastion structure, now she could just casually look over the top, and a glance back at the others revealed that they were outright tiny looking now.

"Um, maybe a bit too big?" she rumbled, the word 'said' not quite fitting at her current scale. "I mean, mostly for doing stuff... I am not getting into that doorway without being liquid, and then everyone inside needs to hold their breath."

"The next one is going to be a bit too large for the current threats," Yellow-Glow said unhelpfully, as that was quite obvious now. "Also, we still need to hear the stats."

"I think her point is a bit more practical," Jovian said, now not as amused. "I didn't think we were talking about her being bigger than some shuttles!"

"Well I want to know when she does find some ammo that works in a Girant rifle that size," Stone laughed, the short human clearly thinking of what might work. "Actually, bring one out if ya have it. I might know what is about that size. It's gonna be an artillery piece or shuttle gun, but I know a few that are similar enough."

Flamescale sighed, regretted that because of just how much air she moved with a sigh out of even a single head, and brought out one of the linked Girant heavy rifles she had mostly for her creatures. She actually had some Girant artillery rounds for her vehicles, although none of the associated vehicles were linked yet. Which turned out to matter when it successfully loaded those rounds into the rifle. "Uh, yeah that works," she noted and checked the stats of the gun. The very dangerous looking stats that made it a rather high end Fire attack with a sizable area of effect. "Oh, yeah we might want to go for Girant vehicle ammo too if I can use it like this."

"Let me see what's in there," Stone requested, and then whistled when she removed one of the rounds for him to inspect. "Why do you even have some of those? I would probably put up with being liquid to be able to use those in a gun."

"I still don't like how everyone seems to be acting like being liquid is that bad," Flamescale complained and moved onto her other weapons, after setting down the artillery shells she had now removed from her stores. The standard plasma rifle now had an ammo consumption that was unreasonable for infantry sized depots to sustain, but also had damage usually associated with shuttle sized heavy plasma weapons. Her laser rifle was similarly at a light warship scale now, probably able to outright down a dropship, or maybe one shot an ancient disruptor.

Her skill based attacks were similarly a bit absurd. Her vapors were over one hundred percent infect chance, although she now knew that being over helped with already infected to explain why it could go that high, but she had not considered how that impacted the damage. Which was high enough to be an actual combat threat for lesser enemies, like anything short of a heavy Rhizo or power armor, and that was without having the skill levels to improve its basic damage. Her residue was honestly close enough to actual lava at this scale that calling her "toxic" was outright wrong, and her spit attack would probably count as a volcanic eruption more than spit before taking into account that she could use it five times with a single body.

Flamescale's bio-tech skills were a bit new at the moment. There had been a good mix of one-off bio-tech and crystal skills from the small army of ancient constructs they had defeated, and she had added some of them already. One was a bio-shield, which normally wasn't that impressive, but with the size bonus was honestly enough to take quite a bit of infantry scale weapons fire. Although against anything worth shooting at her it wasn't going to do much before breaking.

Her four launcher Chitin Spike skill had been replaced by a two launcher Crystal Shards weapon. The quantity was worse, and otherwise the stats had been the same as the spikes, but they didn't actually need a full reload cycle after she melted down and even could reload while she was liquid. A two launcher crystal missile skill joined it as an outright better replacement instead of a trade off. Both of them were much weaker than her hand weapons, but her hand weapons were at the point where they could threaten spacecraft. The power was solidly in the shuttle weapon scale, and that was honestly at the point where the missiles would be best used on groups of enemies and the shards on heavy Rhizo or vehicles.

"Stone, I need something strange," Flamescale then said as she took off her bio-shield. "Shoot me a bit with that rotary."

"I've got this thing with my special anti-shuttle ammo. Only stuff it takes strong enough to deal with those disruptor shields," the short human warned her, but still shot her for a long burst anyway. "Flamescale, your health didn't even move."

"Infection Regeneration is percentage based," Flamescale noted a bit unhappily. "I'm going to ignore anything small right up until it overpowers that, and by that point they'll likely have found the big stuff." Which was a problem, because with how small everything around her looked she wasn't sure how well she would be able to tell when a crowd of enemies went from doing nothing to being a threat.

"Did you figure out what you need from the new crystal stuff?" Sixteen questioned. "Because Squeaky wants to know when she can send another supply mission, and I don't want to head back until I have an answer."

"Tell her I held you up for some practical tests," Flamescale answered him and removed those one off-skills. "Also, I'll tell her if she gets upset about an emergency use of them she gets to help fight it." Actually Squeaky would probably be on a combat rotation anyway if the former 319B got any more unreasonable about that sort of thing. Squeaky had turned out to have been named because the former bat could be the biggest and loudest perfectionist Flamescale had ever met, and unfortunately was typically just right enough to not be easily called out about that.

"Hm, that reminds me of some things," Jovian said quietly, and that made Flamescale wonder about her hearing because she kind of expected it to be worse at this scale. "Does anyone mind if I stay behind to talk while the rest of you get some more gear? I don't exactly need it myself."

"Take the offer," Stone said with amusement. "He is nowhere near as strong as he thinks and is useless for carrying actual supplies. If we aren't going for those light little 319 guns he isn't any help."

"This is why I try and just work with simple weapons," Sledge lamented. "Things that need maintenance more than ammo. I cannot remember the last time I actually raided a supply depot... for myself at least. Sometimes the anti-pirate forces need some extra supplies." Given that apparently included nuclear weapons Flamescale wasn't sure she trusted Sledge's idea of 'simple weapons'.

"We should probably start with the new information if Flamescale is done with the tests of her new skill level," Yellow-Glow pointed out, and started up a projector screen. A full sized one that her currently insect looking friend had apparently managed to fit in his body somewhere.

"We probably can start off," Flamescale agreed, then decided to stay giant for this as she started her part. "I'm fairly sure the developers are still messing with what exactly we can do with ancient bastions, as some things haven't been stable. We do not have the doors that it was talking about right now, but we did for a short time yesterday, and we have more than enough gates to link those instead. The structure itself is made out of a combination of the standard ancient building materials and some nodes of an odd Void Material none of us have seen before. I've been hoping to check if the Void Nexus has any of that, but it isn't even in the Void Bases as far as I've been able to see."

"I think I know the stuff you mean," Sledge grumbled while Stone and Jovian both seemed to laugh at the pangolin. "I cracked a wall on one of the other bastions and there were some off looking bits inside."

"'Cracked' he says. I took two grenades to break down a door and he 'accidentally' brought the entire wall down with a single swing," Stone laughed loudly.

"Any luck with working out how the ancient bio-technology works now that we have some live examples?" Jovian asked to continue the explanation, despite clearly wanting to continue to joke about that.

"Not much, there are only a few bio-technology constructs on these bastions," Flamescale admitted. "The gates are the main thing we actually can use, and honestly I'm adding more functionality than they started with. Otherwise it is just some sensor systems and data storage that will need ancient translation to do anything with. The good news there is that looking over the ancient gates was enough for my researchers to work out how to make infected gates that they can move around." It actually added a new entry into her Infected Material options, along with a couple of other project results. Apparently that was something that could happen if you developed the skill more, although most guides didn't mention that aspect either.

"Well that will make some things easier," Sledge admitted with a nod. "I think all of us wanted your... creatures, to be able to actually carry stuff out properly." Flamescale pretended to not notice his clear stumble over what to call the infected snakes, although she didn't really have a better idea herself yet.

Flamescale nodded and then looked towards Yellow-Glow because that was all that she had to explain. "I will preface with the confirmation that, while the ancient bastion networks do link multiple instances, there are in fact different meta-instances instead of just a single ancient network across all instances," her friend confirmed.

"So we will be fighting new ones forever," Jovian complained. "But we also don't have to deal with a group that controls all of existence."

Those were two of the implications, but Flamescale had another, "It also gives one explanation of why we haven't met any other versions of ourselves. If we are also a meta-instance, then we should also have variants."

"Please don't go into alternates," Stone requested with a loud groan. "I do not want to get lost on that topic again. I already deal with enough worries about alternate versions of myself on my own without talking about it with other people."

"Agreed," the other three declared bluntly.

"With that out of the way," Yellow-Glow continued to also cut off that topic. "We do know that the layout of the networks are consistent. On the outside there are individual bastions that each link to a single instance. These are the outermost spokes of the network, and between one and three of these are connected to each of the bastions of the outer ring. Literally a ring of bastions, with the corridor allowing easy access around the entire network."

"'Outer ring' implies an inner one," Flamescale pointed out as she put that into her mind. "Do I want to know how big the outer one gets?"

"Outer ring bastions connect to the inner ring, once again at a rate of one to three outer connected to each inner," Yellow-Glow confirmed, and then his projector lit up with a display of a series of rings of symbols. There were actually four rings if you counted the outside spokes and some larger inside ones that did not connect to the massive symbol in the center. The two middle rings were connected around in circles, and the inner of the two was notably smaller than the outer. "The inner ring has been recorded with between four and sixteen bastions along it."

"Four to one forty four instances?" Jovian asked with clear horror. "Over a hundred instances of reality? How big was the ancient empire?"

"There are very rarely more than a handful of worlds in any instance that were owned by the ancients," Sledge noted carefully. "In fact, there is an interesting mystery that these gates solved according to my local contacts. The ancient sites are specialized too much, it even looks like the pirate king strongholds were actually the ancient homeworld at one point, but even those were specialized to make only one thing at a point relatively far in the past from when they fell."

"The Girant have a few hundred worlds most of the time, the Leaf even more than that," Flamescale pointed out. "Wait, wait the Rhizo pirates always go for FTL ships. They always go for those. If the ancients had void gates, but didn't have FTL, then their entire civilization might have depended on those gates. Using a bunch of alternate versions of themselves instead of getting new worlds most of the time."

"That does seem to be the case," Yellow-Glow confirmed with a sigh. "But we should focus. As you can see, inward from the bastions of the inner ring are the actual infrastructure of the ancient gate networks. At the very center is the Citadel. Current brief looks with advanced scanners reveal it has a regular polygonal shape with between three and five sides, and those have ranged between ten and thirty kilometers per side. No actual ancients have been found in this arcology like void structure as of yet, as long as the Mucin are not in fact actually the ancients." 'Mucin' was the new official name for the ancient computers, but so far Yellow-Glow was the only one Flamescale had heard use it.

"Given how big those get I don't want to find out they are actually the ancients themselves," Jovian said with a shudder. "We spotted a literal wall of the stuff they were made out of when we tried to look at the Citadel connected to these bastions. I really hope that was a bunch at once and wasn't just a really big ancient computer."

"The other places had some that were a bit too big for my tastes," Stone agreed with a glare at his gun. "That's honestly why I'm happy to see we have something in their size range."

"Yellow-Glow, what does that mean?" Flamescale asked with considerable concern given how big she was at the moment.

"The inner bastions also link to currently unidentified structures. Due to the lack of translation at this time and the threat of Citadel defenses, I feel that we should focus on determining the function of those sites," he explained instead at first. "However, from our investigation they are heavily guarded themselves. Mucin grow larger the more important they are." The projector shifted to showing a model of an ancient computer, but the scale and the details the holographic projector were displaying did not sit well with Flamescale.

"Guys, that thing is at least my current size," she had to point out, fairly sure the green crystal coated goo bird-squid was actually larger than her current mass of red snake hydra goo. "Squeaky," she then ordered when it was clear that they were serious. "Pale," outright dragging both her quartermaster and craft expert to their location. "Prep a bastion for arrival of a 319 plasma gas tanker or two, and get ready to grab some of them," she cut off both of them before they could complain. "We need to be able to arm me at this size, and I think I need that much spacecraft scale plasma weapon gas to have enough ammo. We're testing if ammo stored on bastions counts for Magazine Link now, and we are going for any Girant ammo depots that might have more of these artillery rounds."

"Isn't this a bit extreme of a reaction?" Sledge attempted to ask, but did start moving to get ready.

"If we need to take on something that might have my level of regeneration, possibly to rescue captured Entities, I will need that firepower," Flamescale said bluntly and maybe a bit terrified. None of them really trusted that other players were getting ready fast enough for rescue missions. Ancient disruptors still prevented standard abort, and they occasionally had been noted to heal Void Entities that tried to die to get out with that method. "Liquid Crystal has a regen skill that might get the size bonus, and my researchers are fairly sure that there are ancient constructs inside the tubes of this place that are supposed to heal the computers along with what the starfish can do. We haven't confirmed it yet, or really found them, but it took too much firepower to take down the big ones if there aren't."

"Perhaps that should have been included in your part of the presentation, even if the data was incomplete," Yellow-Glow pointed out with some worry of his own. "I had a secondary target for our supply mission that just became primary. A major Girant ammo supply station that mostly contains vehicle scale ammunition."

"You want to get access to a couple of gas giant harvester stations I know of," Stone added seriously. "There are only a few places that collect and refine the warship grade plasma weapon gas, and an orbital fusion reactor core is about the only place you're going to find enough of those in one spot to be worth getting."

"We got Clumsy from one of those stations around planet nineteen," Squeaky pointed out rapidly, and Flamescale didn't have time to be annoyed with how excitedly her quartermaster reacted to these orders. "She might still have some access codes that could get us through security. They don't change them often enough."

---

Five bodies was at the point where Flamescale could start to consider doing multiple missions at a time. In this case one staying at the bastion to see what happened with using base construction tools to try and make some storage on the captured structure, one or two going to a 319 orbital facility with her creatures to capture some supply ships, and two or three going with Yellow-Glow, Sledge, and Stone to clean out an entire Girant ammo facility.

Clumsy it turned out had problems while there was gravity instead of just in general, as the very stripe covered serpent was able to move quite well in the zero-g environment as they took advantage of a lack of need to breathe in order to get from the civilian ship where their Void Rift had been formed to the 319 supply docks by using the structural elements around the massive station components.

"Lab one zero five is that structure there, we should make sure not to get too close," the former 319A specified over a cybernetic comms unit as they approached with an indicator marking a large block of the station rather close to the docked ships. "The cloning tubes are the most well guarded parts, but the real reason is that the docks don't like putting plasma weapon gas tankers on those slots. The pipes to transfer it are harder to use and take longer to draw from the station's main tanks. If we want to do this quick we need to go to the other side, next to those fuel bunkers over there." Those were half kilometer tall and quarter kilometer wide tanks on the opposite side of the smaller craft docking area.

While that group made its way to try and steal some space ships the two bodies with the other Void Entities arrived with three heads each, and the new crystal weapons back for both operations. She was only using laser weapons, mostly because it didn't make sense to waste ammo to get ammo, although Stone was at least using conventional and cheap Leaf rounds to get rarer and harder to get Girant explosive shells. The Girant were guarding the large tan concrete structure, in the middle of a large military base that the Slinks of that instance were actually asking them to eliminate.

Naturally with four Void Entities present the only question was how much of the contents of the base would be taken instead of destroyed, so Flamescale was mostly focused on her bastions. The gates were ready to move to both of the target sites, and she currently had two bodies taking advantage of the lack of a current link to a mission in order to add some base building options to the ancient structures. There were storage boxes and containers available for a wide variety of uses, and while there wasn't entirely a need to have them purpose made she was still using a tank design for plasma gas storage to mark off where she wanted to set the tankers. Along with another place that was being made into a fairly standard ammo depot they would be ready to start testing by the time the gates needed to be opened.

"So, I must admit," Jovian started, the only one of them staying behind entirely. "It is a surprise to see you with a command interface Skill Tree." The fox man paused deliberately. "I had thought your reason for avoiding them was the typical one, but seeing this I can clearly tell I was mistaken."

"There is a typical one," Flamescale didn't question. She had realized that this was the sort of confrontation that was the real reason he was staying behind, although not the specifics of what the issue was.

"After the update to the command interface there was a new aspect to intelligent minions," Jovian explained at that prompting. "Suddenly it was possible to get into all of the minds of whoever you took over. There are three ways players typically react to finding that out. They stop using those control skills entirely, like I did when I stopped being a necromancer. They could instead just stop using the intelligent skills, which is far more common and the only method that gets talked about on the forums. Or, they go all in, often staying in an instance that they practically take over in order to protect their new children-"

"Do not use the 'c' word," Flamescale cut him off instantly. "I am doing everything I can to use these skills and still avoid having to deal with being a mother to eternal eldritch monsters that are extensions of myself. Call it literally anything else."

Jovian didn't look impressed. "The local ideas on family isn't going to help you there," he pointed out, unfortunately quite correct. "319 consider being remade and put under the control of new management the closest thing they have to adoption. The Slinks have demon gods that you practically inspired, if we aren't dealing with time travel so you are their demon god. The Girant are a mess that still uses slaves after going interstellar, with social standards that match. And do I need to point out the Leaf ideas of family? We had an entire war that nobody liked because they think having a part of someone else added to them makes them family to the point they need to follow the family leader."

"There is a difference between people I've stolen from their lives, and creatures that only exist, that were created new and unique, because I made them," Flamescale clarified, well aware of all of that massive set of complications. Pale-Three-Moon-Sky had turned out to be a survivor of the mess with the Pale Stem General who had been sent on the mission to die, and the 319 under her command had barely changed what they had been doing before. She had spent plenty of time learning more about their thoughts since her poor idea of asking them about family and being converted.

Jovian simply gave her a look, while in the instances Clumsy was expertly disarming the local 319 with movements that were anything but, and Sixteen had Squeaky help start up a forklift hover unit to begin shifting the pallets of artillery shells.

"I'm probably going to try and get them to call 'Clumsy' 'Orbital' instead," Flamescale then sighed, resigned to her fate as probably counting as at least some form of family. "Not to mention I can't use the idea of letting Squeaky go into combat as a punishment now."

"Oh, and why not?" the fox Entity questioned while clearly ready to laugh.

"She just smashed a half dozen Girant off a bridge with a forklift, laughing all the way," she answered as Stone laughed loudly as well at the sight and Left-and-Right began to move the first infected gate to the Girant facility.

Working out how to switch names for one of her creatures was another question, and unfortunately probably had to wait until after that rapid infiltration force had already got away with the two tankers they had found in a good state. Flamescale was going to need Left-and-Right's team helping a bit more there to increase the base size of the gate to fit the spacecraft, and then Squeaky's people to get it set down.

"The Girant are getting ready to hit us with a small army," Yellow-Glow warned just as that first gate opened. "I believe they realize that the site is lost, but do not want to go for an orbital strike on this much ammunition."

Sledge responded to that by dropping a small theater shield generator, and then a mobile fusion unit to run it, out of his linked storage. "It still counts as one piece of gear," he then argued when they all stopped to stare at the two trucks bigger than he was that he had just materialized in the middle of a warehouse that was clear of every local except some Slinks, who honestly were probably going to be evacuated with the ammo if Flamescale had the choice. She didn't know where she was going to put some random Slinks after the fact, but she now had the option for them to not die.

"How serious were you about that Slink thing?" Flamescale asked Jovian as the first of the ammo started moving into the bastion next to them, thankfully successfully being stored in the new eldritch containers that held more than their volume.

"If time travel turns out to be a thing I will be quite upset," Jovian answered darkly. "However, with how strangely time seems to pass for some instances, I think we cannot rule out that it is a relatively recent idea inspired by your actions."

"I meant how they think about my new creatures," she specified while she started getting an idea of what the Slinks' existing plan was. "I want to make sure I don't give the ones I'm planning to evacuate the wrong idea." Their existing plan unfortunately was the typical idea of 'die while sabotage happens', and unfortunately she probably couldn't sneak them back to their instance easily.

"Flamescale, I mean this as nicely as possible, but taking a bunch of Slinks to this place, with its alien look and all of your red not-quite-lava goo, will very much look like their demon god's home," Jovian said somewhere between amused and exasperated. "To be blunt, they are going to be confused if you do that and don't just turn them into more snakes."

"I'll try and avoid that one," Flamescale sighed as the station team began to move to take the ships. Clumsy/Orbital easily leading some of them to the farther one from the tanks to check its load and hopefully try and top it off, while Flamescale personally did the same for the closer tanker. The ships themselves were probably forty to fifty meters long, and it would be a bit complicated to dock them, but it seemed the reaction time would be slow enough to at least get a partial load.

Opening a gate into space was surprisingly simple, as was making the gate larger to the scale they needed, although it did imply some uneasy things about just how arbitrary the ancient bastion's artificial not-instance was. If they actually had an atmosphere or not was still uncomfortably unclear, but at least it wasn't venting one if it had it. Getting the two tankers into the gate, well that was where things got strange.

"I have negotiated the transfer of these tankers in exchange for scanner data on the attempt," Left-and-Right suddenly cut in, as the 319 present pulled back from the two partially filled tankers. "We now should have time to fully fill them."

"Next time let me know before you try that," Flamescale immediately complained from next to the two head researchers. "I want data on void anything to be mostly contained. Get me your contact, and let me get Yellow-Glow here. Sledge too if there is a local anti-pirate group representative on the station."

"Boys, I have social issues that need handling. I'm sending more snakes to get the ammo, get ready for zero-g and no atmosphere in order to figure out what my researchers just messed up," she then said to the other team.

That worked to at least give her an idea on what the locals could actually figure out from their poorly tuned sensors while the attempt was made, and it also turned out to save them from having to deal with a laser cannon turret that they had missed during their infiltration. Then it turned out to give them additional help when they discovered that even the area around the bastion itself had eldritch gravity. Where there was a clear 'down' even well away from the structure, but the degree of that 'down' seemed to change by odd rules that took well over an hour of letting the 319 station crew into her bastion to help to get the ships docked.

This did have the upside that it convinced the Slinks that they were not in a demon god's abode quite clearly, but Flamescale honestly just wanted to make sure she had ammo for when something really went wrong by that point.

---
[Author's Note]
I'm not sure I can properly describe what it is like to try and balance both making sure readers understand what I mean, and also explaining things over time to slowly build up details. A mixture of unhappiness and pure amusement that honestly can make writing worthwhile.
On that note I'd like to thank IndustrialVice2 on SpaceBattles for some insightful commentary that impacted this one directly, if not in the exact way they thought it would turn out.

 

[E.I.G.]

--- 23 - Rescues ---

"My brother's been taken by the ancients," Wolfy started off his message, and they had barely waited for a target before they were at an arcology that had seen better days. The once pristine example of the greatest developments in local civilian infrastructure, places rarely touched by battle, was half covered with the foul smelling green ancient infection. No ancient computers, because there were already enough Void Entities here to have cleared the instance itself, but those Entities were mostly retired or related to non-combatants, and in many cases were avoiding hurting the infected locals with clear recognition.

Flamescale made a point to try and convert and reverse the infection of all the locals using some of her forces and an extra body, only keeping them infected long enough for her regeneration skill to heal them where needed, while her group made its way to the still open Void Gate. Some of the Entities who made it there first had already gone through to find those who were taken, but Wolfy had called them for a reason. They were prepared for this sort of mission, and waiting for it to come to pass, while the Entities already here had not been ready.

So they expected the broken and devastated bastion, but they also moved quickly to make sure that nobody had been caught trying to recover someone else. Thankfully the gates seemed to have been left intact, so they weren't slowed down by a need to replace them. They made sure to fully take what was left of the instance spoke bastion to allow Flamescale's forces to establish a defensive position to get everyone back to the arcology and make sure no more ancient forces got through.

From there they went to the connected outer ring bastion, and apparently the previous group of Entities had gone straight to the inner ring based on how shattered the main structure of the outer bastion had become. Either that or the ring gates had been destroyed during the attack and then repaired to a degree, because the inner ring bastion had its own structure broken to reach the inner ring corridor, but the wall that separated the inner spoke and Citadel gates was still sealed.

Their group quickly moved though the next gate along the ring towards the trail of destruction, and found an enraged dragoness blasting apart another bastion with a trio of lightning balls. ThunderFang77 was clearly too focused on one of the bastion control sized ancient computers, with the bird-squid Mucin being supported by over-sized Asteroidea ancient disruptors. Flamescale grabbed a fifth head that made her barely fit in the space, but also meant that the crystal shards she sent into one of those immediately broke its shuttle scale shield across multiple nodes and then let the crystal missiles immolate both the Asteroidea and the Mucin it was protecting. Then she shrank back to four to make sure everyone else could still fit.

The rest of them joining the fight was enough to make ThunderFang77's current efforts a bit less desperate, but it still took the rest of Flamescale's group a few moments to clear out the corridor and be able to actually take a moment to speak. "My mother called me about an hour ago," the dragoness said once the threat was gone, before the rest of them could say anything to ThunderFang. "A direct call from mars, an expensive emergency Synch-Tech call, and she said that Ms Smith had been killed and the whole family was captured by the ancients. Which didn't make any sense, she's been telling me about her new neighbor Ms Smith for months now."

"She was talking about a local?" Wolfy asked with concern, and a bit of worry. "My brother acts like that sometimes." The werewolf themed Entity currently had an actual combat Skill Tree he had finished instead of his new Liquid Crystal ST, so was a fluffy humanoid wolf at the moment.

"It took me a few minutes just to figure out what she meant, that she was talking about the whole family getting captured in the game, and-" ThunderFang paused with a deep breath to collect herself that made it easier to see just how much damage the dragoness had been taking to reach this point. "My mother has spent the past few months telling me about a local, and the first thing out of her mouth after using a direct mars to earth emergency line was something about a local!" There was clear confusion and concern on the Entity's face.

Flamescale checked through her current process to see if she could find who survived and who didn't. "Ms Smith didn't actually die," she clarified carefully. "She was infected, and hurt rather badly, but she should recover. Her kids are mostly alright, but her husband unfortunately didn't make it." Those weren't entirely accurate descriptions of the Remigrant family situation going on there, and even 'Ms Smith' was a bit of an awkward translation, but it was close enough for the time they had.

Wolfy looked at Flamescale like she was insane, but ThunderFang instead looked at her more seriously. "You're comforting me about what happened to a local," the dragoness pointed out, and then either began to laugh or to cry, probably both. "You, you are talking about them like that, and mom has been saying- This isn't a game at all, is it?" Wolfy froze at the question, but the rest of them unfortunately had to be honest in a time like this.

"I'm sorry," Flamescale said with a sigh. "There is never a good way to explain it."

"Honestly, there is a bunch of reasons why we never tell people who haven't figured it out themselves," Stone agreed with her.

"It is terrible to find out with this sort of disaster," Sledge understated. "However, at least you know that there are some survivors."

"I don't blame you guys for not telling me," ThunderFang replied to those attempts bluntly. "I blame my mother, who clearly knew this, for not telling me that I've been killing people!" Wolf flinched so badly he nearly fell over at that blunt statement. Flamescale felt bad for him, because she could tell he was taking this seriously, and that wasn't the kind of thing to figure out comfortably in better situations. "Although I guess my family needs someone who can do that right now," the dragoness rumbled dangerously. "Because I can definitely kill these ancients!"

"Do you have a way to tell where the captured were taken?" Yellow-Glow practically questioned, and got them back on the more important topic.

"Isotope tracker, my family has them in real- in the human- As humans," ThunderFang stumbled over the answer, but held up a small device. "It is important to be able to find people who end up lost, and I led." The dragoness seemed to realize there weren't any other Entities besides herself and Flamescale's group. "Oh. There were more of us before."

"One must take care not to lose sight of yourself in a rage," Sledge said solemnly. "It runs the risk of losing more people as you fight. With any luck the others were killed instead of captured, an odd situation but a rather noteworthy feature of being a Void Entity."

"You aren't really a roleplayer," Wolf realized quietly with wide eyes focused entirely on Sledge.

"We are ready for the threat that will will find, or at least we should be," Flamescale pointed out before that could go further. "If the path didn't go directly to the Citadel then wherever they are taking us is probably one of the unidentified sites."

"We could use the help, and the directions," Jovian said with a smile, and then it came down to the specifics of the tracker and the path to travel.

"Inward this time," ThunderFang specified and pointed towards the secured area. "They jumped us with those big ones here, and some of the other players who didn't get caught said there were oversized ones involved in the main attack before I arrived." The wall proceeded to collapse from the firepower that had filled the corridor just before, and revealed that the other walls of that area had collapsed earlier. "The left one." Thankfully the three inward gates were still working.

"Be ready, we have an idea what is on the other side," Flamescale specified as she regrew her fifth head and moved to enter first. "And I need to be bigger."

The other side was the first proper ancient void construct Flamescale saw for herself, and she made that distinction because the several kilometer to a side structure was clearly different from a bastion. One large open area along the middle with a number of spires, and structures along either side, and a pair of large dome structures at the far end that already had a Mucin of vast size growing out of them. It was clear from just a glance that bastions were just travel routes, small in comparison to this massive and well inhabited structure.

Inhabited by Asteroidea of three sizes, from the 'smallest' ones Flamescale had first fought with ThunderFang when she met the dragon, through the larger ones they had just faced outside on the bastion, all the way to a pair of them that were back by the large domes that once more out-massed her. Between those was the largest ancient computer that she had ever seen, rising out of both of the domes to dominate the other edge of the facility. "Guys, this one is bigger than what you showed me," she rapidly said as the rest of the Entities followed behind her and her body split into four forty meter rivers of snake. Her words almost drowned out by the not-sound of something that was making it slightly harder to concentrate.

"Still smaller than the Citadel one," Sledge pointed out, but he was also already going for a small army of Mucin present. There was not a Rhizocephala to be seen on the battlefield, but the many smaller goo bird-squids present had many more launchers and cannons like what Wolf had during his use of Liquid Crystal than she had seen on a Mucin before.

"That's smaller than another local?" ThunderFang demanded with clear horror, but still started to fight the smaller Asteroidea.

"Focus on the fight," Yellow-Glow ordered firmly. "Flamescale, keep the large ones busy while I identify priority targets. ThunderFang, area of effect duty, use that three sphere trick to break up formations and shatter shields. Everyone else, handle the swarm until I direct you otherwise."

Flamescale got started with that, and also decided that her creatures were needed now so summoned Sixteen to follow Yellow-Glow's overall instruction. Then she lost one of her bodies entirely from a pair of crystal cannon shots timed to hit just before a wave of missiles from the largest Mucin. It was the first body with more than three heads she had actually lost, and as a result her creatures weren't quite in the right position to replace it immediately. Luckily it did turn out that those crystal weapons did not have the same cool down, and the Mucin clearly didn't think it could afford to keep them at the rate of the slowest weapon.

Which was probably smart given she still had three of those bodies after that loss, and each of those had ten missiles of her own compared to the smaller number of larger missiles that had taken out that body. They also now had three of her limited number of heavy plasma rifles out because those were the fastest 'distraction' she could get to make it decide to try and go for her faster rather than smarter. Those rifles let her focus her missiles and shards on the two massive starfish that were clearly healing the even more massive bird-squid.

"Spires are the source of the enhanced void disruption signal," Yellow-Glow called out. "Sledge, Stone, handle those."

"Not enough, Yellow-Glow," Flamescale corrected her friend as her forth body with five heads returned, stats worse but not by enough to leave it behind. "Those are too big a priority," she said and directed the next set of her missiles to those instead, along with one Girant artillery shell. The spires on the far end of the field shattered, and the ones left behind after that were much closer for the others to reach.

"Keep on the big ones, Flamescale," her friend countered with a bit of anger, but changed priority immediately. "Jovian, check those buildings, see if there are any more of those domes inside."

Flamescale then had to deal with the side effects of Yellow-Glow's orders, because the main ancient computer apparently realized that the smaller Entities were the ones actually doing important things at the moment. Which meant that she had to body block a number of attempted attacks by the light warship scale enemy goo monster towards her much smaller allies.

"Okay, Yellow-Glow, I'm guessing that you think the domes are making more goo things," ThunderFang pointed out with notable worry, but also as she shattered one of those domes with a blast of electrical energy. "Because we are getting a lot of the goo things, faster than I've seen Rhizo made."

"Okay, if you've seen Rhizo made anywhere near fast enough to compare to this I want to know when," Wolf declared as he clawed through a few of the smaller Mucin. "Can they do what you're doing with the little snakes, Flamescale?"

"I can confirm that these are hives like ours," Sixteen answered the overall question from near one of the larger domes. "Orbital, go back and get a gate. We're going to want some demo charges."

"The buildings have containment units," Jovian declared as Flamescale lost her newly replaced fourth body again, although thankfully not the Girant weapon or its ammo. "There are a lot of Entities there."

"Leave them for now, they are mostly non-combatants," Yellow-Glow ordered. "Focus on the larger domes, they are healing the main Mucin, and the lesser ones are all extensions of it. Possibly able to grow into new ones, but also possibly destroyed when it is destroyed."

"Final tower down!" Stone declared as the majority of the not-sound vanished, and suddenly Flamescale realized how much that presence had been holding her back. With a quick burst of fire based attacks she shattered the hearts of both of the starfish shaped ancient disruptors guarding the main ancient computer. Similarly she could see ThunderFang literally tearing an arm off of one of the smaller Asteroidea, and that everyone else was moving much more quickly.

"Domes next!" Yellow-Glow said quickly. "We need that Mucin dead!"

Flamescale decided that meant to shift to actually trying to kill the thing, while she let everyone else handle the domes. That meant focusing on the stronger Girant artillery and bringing out the laser rifles until she drained the one battery she had them share. It would not be worth it to take the time to replace the battery over just changing back to the more energy efficient plasma weapons.

"Getting the tanks!" Sixteen called out just before the lasers' battery ran out, which was a sign that they had taken enough ground space to fit the things and keep them safe enough to bring in. "We aren't getting close enough to the big domes." Then there was a series of thumps Flamescale didn't have time to look at. "Why do you have all of these, Sledge?"

"Because I work with locals all the time, and locals need tanks to fight at my level," the pangolin answered, apparently already at a medium sized dome along the left side of the facility that shattered to reveal it was filled with green goo.

"I really want an explanation of this all being real when this is over!" Wolf then shouted from close enough to the main threat that Flamescale had to dive in the way of an attack directed at him. "Because everyone is taking that snake seriously, and that is not Flamescale!"

"You'll get one when we aren't fighting anymore," Flamescale complained over the sound of an enemy missile hitting her instead of him. "Now stay back if you can't take the hit."

"I think we probably need someone who has a fully finished shield branch to handle this at our size," ThunderFang pointed out as the dragoness attempted to bombard one of the largest domes. "Which I would like to have here, but the rest of that ST is still terrible."

A number of tank shells then slammed into the other of the two largest domes, and cracked it noticeably. With that suddenly the colossal Mucin's regeneration rate cut massively, and that loss made it take only a few seconds for Flamescale's firepower to remove the rest of its health. As it broke apart and the massive crystal at its core fell to the ground Flamescale felt her infection overcome the ancient facilities and forces present, including the minor Mucin. Although she could feel their minds just sort of collapse and that they were, unfortunately, being made into nearly mindless infected creatures of her serpentine kind instead of staying bird-squids.

"Okay, alright, suddenly changing that much is new," ThunderFang said as everyone else realized the fight was over. For a moment nobody said anything more.

"Yellow-Glow, tell me there is something worth that fight here," Flamescale demanded to end the silence. "Tell me we have something here worth taking down a warship grade enemy with their own personal army."

"Saving people isn't enough?" Wolf reasonably questioned.

"Most 'players' don't know that this isn't a game," Jovian pointed out as the group collected around the ancient computer's core, a massive crystal that was larger than any of the other Void Entities present. "We have an endless number of these, and we need to save people and work out how to stop these places from figuring out new ways to catch us. We can't wait for a patch or administrator to reset the Entities who get caught, because one isn't coming."

"Nor can we find enough who know it is not merely a game with the power to do this without the rest of the Entities," Sledge agreed with a sigh. "There is a reason why I still take on new Pirate King mass instances, and have been working out how to take them on without needing other Entities."

"Yellow-Glow, rewards? I would take a big enough pile of Void Materials, maybe a hundred Skill Tree points," Flamescale repeated, now quite worried as the fact that it had taken down one of her current sized bodies with a single barrage sank in. "I'd say a unique Skill Tree chance, but we already have everyone saying that Liquid Mobility isn't good enough."

"Close the gates and redirect to get us a route for the recovered back to the instance," Yellow-Glow said instead of giving her an answer. "What is going on with the captured?"

"I'll need a bit to figure out how to open the chambers they are stuck in, unless we want to just break them," Flamescale answered as she started to reconfigure things. Sixteen had got a gate of their own to the site, and it didn't take much to connect to another in the spoke bastion. Then she closed the two captured ancient gates that still connected to the bastion network, and triggered the mission completion results. "Oh, yeah, that would do it," she then said faintly as she read the description of a new reward.

"Yeah, that makes it so we have to worry more about too many people trying for these instead," Stone said with a whistle. "I know I'm motivated."

"I need to make a full guide for these," Yellow-Glow said dully. "We need to work out what counts as a source of these."

"I want in," ThunderFang said firmly. "You all know what is going on, you're ready to fight these now. I want to help, and I know I can with a few of these."

"This, is either the greatest thing the developers have ever done, or the most insane," Jovian said, sounding like he was torn between amused and horrified.

"I have no idea what to use this on," Wolf admitted simply, but very distracted as well. "I- There are too many options. I've been collecting STs."

"It is a pity we are capped at enough points to max out a tree," Sledge lamented. "We probably will need all of the extra points that gave, but we also need well developed trees to actually fight those Mucin."

"That depends on what a Skill Vine is, they might be something else that earns points even when you have a maxed out tree," Flamescale admitted as she considered the full results. Another set of various STs and Void Materials were the more normal results. The one new bastion was only two ST points for the capture due to those who were there first being the ones to actually clear it, the Ancient Void Lab was worth three points to clear and seven to capture, and it turned out that killing the 'Advanced Ancient Computer' was worth a massive twenty points, to go with ten for the mission's regular reward. All giving a total of forty two points for a single mission.

However, the real prize was another reward listed as being from killing an Advanced Ancient Computer. A new consumable item called a "Void Grafter", with the simple description "One time use, moves a Skill Tree Branch to another Skill Tree or to create a new Skill Vine". Closing the mission rewards allowed a new major announcement to appear, declaring that the new reward could be gained by the destruction of enemies that threatened all Void Entities, and giving the 'Advanced Ancient Computers' and 'Core Ancient Computers' as two examples in the current season.

---

[Author's Note]
This change to the status quo has been planned for a long time. I want to assure people that I did not just come up with this without consideration to the effects it has on the world I established.
... actually a part of me really wants to go into the thought process behind the Void Grafter, but that is probably best saved for after next chapter, where the details will be defined for this new development.

 

[E.I.G.]

--- 24 - Crystallization ---

A console in the middle of the captured Ancient Void Lab was playing one of the first videos made by Void Entities who had managed to get some Void Grafters. As they mostly expected it was only moments after the announcement that every single high end Void Entity still playing had started to form large groups to take on the larger sites of the ancient bastion networks, although it did appear that Flamescale's group had also only been the first by a few minutes at most. Possibly even not the first at all if someone else had finished while they were only starting the mission to save the civilian Entities.

"So, here we have one of those things I never expected the developers to actually put in, but that everyone has been saying they should add," RedStarScribe said from the screen. The deep orange/red furred lion man was looking directly at the screen, with the special tools to let you share menus enabled so it could reveal the Void Grafter stats and menu more clearly. "The good news is that my worst case of a swap of one skill between trees at a time didn't happen. Or re-rolls of existing branches like most people thought it would be.

"The Void Grafter at least has an acceptable challenge to get one, you need to get into a group that goes up against what is basically a warship fight without your own warship. I have been on three attempts at getting an Advanced Ancient Computer down, and I only have one Grafter to show for it so far."

"I'm guessing they weren't all Void Labs?" Flamescale paused the video to question. "Because I would expect someone getting captured to come up if they failed to take one of those." She was present with the entire group that had taken the lab, and honestly it had only been five or six hours. The video was practically brand new, but it was also clearly someone who had not spent that time getting civilian Entities and locals calmed down after an ancient invasion.

"From my understanding it is not a reward for all inner spoke facilities," Yellow-Glow answered. "The original size I showed you is only a 'Main Ancient Computer', ten Skill Tree points per kill but no Grafter. Initial reaction is that they are valuable for leveling a modified ST, but should only be attacked after the fact. Five points for a cleared and captured site instead of ten as well."

"One day, I will be brave enough to ask how easily he analyzes that much information so fast, but that day is not today," Jovian joked tiredly. "Start it back up."

"Now, there are two modes to this thing. One where it switches around entire Branches of your Skill Trees, yes more than one despite the description text, and another where it turns a single Branch, just one for this one, into a new kind of Skill item I'll go into later," Red continued as Flamescale let the video play again. "Let's start off with the first mode." He selected the item and then chose the modification mode marked Skill Tree, instead of Skill Vine, and was presented with the ST selection menu. "First select the Skill Tree you want to move a branch out of," he picked a Liquid Crystal tree. "And then we need to cover the limits."

This time it was Yellow-Glow who stopped the video, and simply glared at Sledge. "I did not say he made good guides, just that I had watched them before," the pangolin defended his suggestion to take advantage of this video instead of just trying things out themselves.

"He at least tries out all sorts of STs," ThunderFang noted, but the dragoness' dark tone sounded like she agreed with Yellow-Glow's assessment of the guide's quality. "A real ST collector."

Yellow-Glow then resumed play, his point apparently made. "There are three limits to moving around branches," Red completely changed topic now that there was the action to select a branch to move on the screen. "The first is the reason this isn't just a way to make any ST into the perfect ST. There are two types of branches on any ST, primary and secondary. Primary branches are the ones where the ST gives you a level of the first skill on the tree just for putting it on, while secondary is everything else. The limit there is that primary branches cannot be moved off of the ST they come from, so this nice Crystalline branch with the regeneration skill and the damage boost for Crystal Weapons is currently something we can't get away from Liquid Mobility."

Flamescale did not like the guide maker's tone with that last statement, but if they stopped the video for every problem they might as well just test the things themselves instead of watching it at all. Which she was seriously considering. Then RedStarScribe took a moment to switch to a rather large six branch fungal zombie ST.

"So we weren't wasting our time finding all of our really rare STs, because you now need a good set of primary branches to start with and then to get other STs with those nice secondary branches you can finally add to something that actually uses them," RedStarScribe joked. "I for one am looking forward to seeing what I can pull off, although the second limit does mean you still want multiple STs. Each ST now has a limit of nine branches." He paused for effect, and then laughed. "Yeah, nine is the limit. I don't think I've seen one with seven and they're giving us nine to start. Although there is a trick there I will be covering later." Flamescale had opened the menu long enough to know she was at eight out of nine for her Fluid Pestilence Skill Tree, so she actually had to consider that limit.

"The final restriction is also the most obvious one, but it does have some nice features along with it, you cannot move a branch somewhere to make a tree that doesn't have the required skills for a branch. So for instance I have a Mass Infection branch here, and if I try and move that one over to this other tree on its own," He selected the branch, then smiled with great amusement at the camera as he selected a Fluid Pestilence ST. One that turned out to be four branches Liquid Mobility, Ice Toxin, Enhancement, and Multiform. "Like my worst and rarest ST, then you can see that it is complaining that I don't have a Contagion branch or another way to get the skills it needs. This works the other way too, but in a much nicer way." He went back, and this time selected the Contagion branch that was above Mass Infection. The menu then seemed to take both branches instead of just the one selected. "As you can see, this is where that ten limit matters. We can in fact move more than one branch at a time, as long as the extra ones have a hard requirement of the one you start moving. Honestly just adding these two to my Fluid Pestilence here would make it almost worth it for someone, if they could handle the real downsides there." Flamescale glared at the half insulting way that was said.

"Now, there is another thing to point out," Red continued as he re-opened the Fluid Pestilence tree. "While it does let you just move into an open slot, if you have got close to nine then you can select to swap two branches between STs. So I could replace this useless Enhancement branch with actually valuable Contagion skills with a single Grafter."

Red then paused to go back a few menus, and Flamescale could feel Yellow-Glow's unhappiness for that awkward moment of silence in the middle of the guide. "Now, I promised a couple of friends who weren't around for the successful run that I would go over what a Skill Vine is before I started to speculate on what we can do with switching out branches, and honestly it is really worth it to do that," he finally explained once they were back to the mode selection. "Now, a Skill Vine is a single branch from a Skill Tree that you have split off onto its own using a Grafter. It has the limitations that you cannot make a primary branch into a Vine, and you cannot select a branch that has another branch that needs it for the tree to still work." He demonstrated the second one using the same fungal zombie ST and a show of how it did not let him try and select the Contagion branch now.

"The rest of the information I've got is from another friend who already used one to make a Vine. You see, the reason we have an odd limit of nine for a Skill Tree, is that we are also getting a single slot to add one Skill Vine at any given time. The things can only be equipped when you have the skills to unlock at least one of the Vine's skills, and they don't start with any points when you make one, but whenever you earn points for a Skill Tree you get the full amount for your Vine too, so those are going to level really fast. I can already advise that you should find a solid starter branch, I've got a few videos linked in the description on some options, and then level it up as something to keep on hand when you are building up a ST-"

Flamescale paused the video, hopeful that it was a good stopping point before the next topic. It was possible that he would get back onto the information they wanted later, but that was enough to at least know what was known. "So, what does everyone think?" she asked, then thought better of her phrasing. "About the Grafters, not the video or RedStarScribe's ability to inform people."

"I hate to admit it, Boss, but we probably want to start with some kind of bio-weapon stuff. Like the crystal things," Squeaky surprised Flamescale by answering before a Void Entity could reply, with Sixteen nodding in uneasy agreement. "We just can't keep solid weapon stocks for that kind of fight. We drained a tanker and a half with your plasma guns, which isn't too strange for a fight like that but we also can't afford for that to happen again. Not unless we're building our own ammo depot to make the gas ourselves."

"We have the same issues with the guns," Sixteen clarified. "We lost almost half of our heavy plasma rifles, including two of the ones you made giant however that works. I want to say we should get something to let us travel with stuff, but having a backup is more important right now."

"Well, I'm going for getting giant myself," ThunderFang laughed at that set of replies. "For pretty much the same reason. I'd like to start with a bio-shield branch, but I need a way to actually fight something as big as the monster Mucin we just went up against."

"I believe that we all can make use of these, but a better guide than that is my first priority once we have a method to take on the threat effectively," Yellow-Glow specified dully. "We should start by trying to clear as much of the civilian instance's ancient bastion network as we can. While we are clearly not ready to capture a Citadel, we do know that enough damage should be able to destroy one. Preferably after having tried to gather some data once the likely soon to be completed translation is ready."

"I'm probably going to start with those Skill Vine things," Stone admitted, the short human one of the few who did not seem unhappy with the guide. "My ST is already fairly well rounded, and I want to test things out before I try adding anything to it."

"I have to worry that some Entities are going to get caught trying to get these," Sledge noted with a sigh, the pangolin clearly not as interested in the reward compared to the other consequences of it existing. "It is good that there is a reward worth the effort, but I hope we get more successful missions than failures."

"Not to mention they're going to need to top this if we ever hit another problem this bad," Jovian pointed out even as the three tailed fox clearly was going through his own skill menus. "I'm not sure what is worse than being trapped in pods forever that didn't leave any way out, but I don't think we want to find something worse and not have another reward. More of these might work for a while, but it has the risk that we lose people we need to keep doing this or that stay just doing this instead."

"I mean, it isn't going to be that bad right?" Wolf asked uneasily. "I know this is real, even if you guys haven't actually explained anything yet," That explanation was their next topic to cover. "But that doesn't mean it wouldn't just be getting stuck here until we die right?"

Flamescale looked over at ThunderFang to see how the dragoness thought on that topic, only to see that ThunderFang was nervously looking her way too. "Since this is all real, that means Synch-Tech is actually Void-Tech," ThunderFang started, to Wolf's clear surprise. "And even if it wasn't, we were already at least stuck here until the servers were destroyed, even if we died as humans, or AI." Flamescale blinked at that last addition, which was for some reason directed at Stone.

"If there ever were servers," Jovian pointed out seriously. "I've heard from some of the first players before that the first few weeks had some messages about server downtime, and I can't imagine that they haven't been told to go to extreme measures to shut it down."

"Those messages did appear," Yellow-Glow admitted, which might be the start of an argument if Flamescale didn't keep things in check. "If the servers ever existed in the first place is something I question myself, despite having been here to see them."

"I think Wolf would prefer a clearer answer," Sledge then cut in. "I am dead, Wolf. I know, very well, that I died with no hope of recovery. I can even give you the details to look up the accident, including some that are harder to fake, although anything that can be proven can be found at this point. I am dead, and I am still here, and I will continue to be here for at least as long as Void Strike exists."

Wolf looked at Sledge carefully during the brief speech. "Ah. Okay, I have no idea how I'm explaining that to my family," he admitted. "I mean, half of them signed up when I started to make sure it wasn't too bad of a game."

"My whole family is here," ThunderFang reminded him. "Although now I am worried they all didn't tell me for some reason."

"I am currently near death, and also using Synch-Tech robots commonly," Yellow-Glow agreed. "I have the risk of dying right in front of them and not realizing it until they realize I am still talking despite that."

That drew attention from everyone but Flamescale and Sledge. "Okay, better question, is everyone else who I didn't already know is possibly dead doing alright? I can't do much from Jupiter, but I've got some resources to throw around while I'm alive," Jovian questioned looking between everyone but Sledge, Stone, and Yellow-Glow.

"I'm fine as a human," Flamescale admitted tiredly. "No issues with my life."

"No, I don't need anything as a human," Wolf said with a huff, but he seemed to be growing more uneasy. "Ugh, I have to say 'as a human' now, don't I?"

"So, what I'm hearing is that we can still use Synch-Tech robots back home when we die there," ThunderFang mistakenly focused on, shifting the concern again, this time towards the dragoness. "Hey, mars needs people with jobs to help support the colonies. We aren't just a couple of days from earth like the moon is, and it hasn't even been a hundred years since we first landed a settlement yet."

"Okay, I'd say that is insane, but I am currently dealing with that being our plan A if anyone critical to the station dies suddenly," Jovian sighed and flopped down over dramatically. "I made the mistake of talking about this with my manager, and next thing I knew the whole research team was ordered to get accounts. Turns out we might be slightly short staffed." He paused for an instant. "Do not tell anyone I said that, we do not need the investigation."

"I get the feeling my talk about this sort of thing went better than the rest of yours," Stone said with a shake of his head.

"Wait, if your relatives know you're still here, how do you not know if you're dead or not?" Flamescale questioned with considerable confusion.

"Maybe he has a backup that is lost somewhere?" Sixteen suggested. "I know you think this is strange, but backups are a thing."

"I don't think people outside of the 319 usually have backups, Sixteen," Squeaky countered.

"You are DeepStoneMiner Three, right?" ThunderFang questioned, once again to Flamescale's confusion as it sounded like the dragoness agreed with the two former 319. "The martian auto-mining rig that got lost in a cave in after getting a Synch-Tech comm system to keep in contact. I know they gave that one a Void Strike account for entertainment, and you look like the character they associated with number three."

"Ha," Stone laughed while they all looked at him with confusion. "Would you believe you're the first person to actually ask me about that? Yeah, still trying to figure out if my hardware is destroyed or just offline."

"Wait, you've known why you don't know if you are alive or not this whole time?" Jovian asked unhappily. "You've had me worried about finding a way to talk to your relatives from Jupiter this whole time!"

"I'm not sure what to think about the only human of our group not being one normally," Flamescale sighed, now completely lost on what they were talking about. The plan to talk about how this was real seemed to have not worked out.

"He's a dwarf?" ThunderFang suggested with confusion, which also confused Flamescale and Wolf. Although Jovian started to laugh and Stone just looked vaguely boggled. "You know, short people who mine stuff in the ground."

"They're lunar," Jovian started to explain, laughing all the way. "Go on, tell her what a 'dwarf' is for you guys."

"Short unless you count the ears," Yellow-Glow described tiredly. "Fuzzy all over." He clearly ran out of ways to describe it without just saying it. "Like small rabbit people who really like big hammers, digging holes, and making that paste stuff I don't like much. We usually don't see much on the moon that uses the older variation on the concept. A lot of games and books actually give a lunar makeover to their dwarfs for us. I think they replace 'beards' with 'ears'. It is beards, right?"

"You need to ask if it is beards," ThunderFang grumbled, while Jovian laughed harder. "Wait, there is a lot of stuff they can do with their beards. What does that even look like when you use ears for it instead?" It honestly did get rather impressive. Shiny trinkets of both gemstones and raw metal were very common, often with fantastical brilliance. Although Flamescale didn't like the more horrible stories about cutting them off, which sounded just strange if it was only beards instead, even if dwarf ears grew back.

"So, they do have a lost backup then?" Sixteen asked with confusion. "Because I was kind of joking. Backups never work that well, and I didn't think Entities needed them?"

"I'll try and explain later," Flamescale reluctantly promised her combat leader. "I think we're going to get distracted too often if I tried now."

"On the topic of the little snakes who are apparently people," Wolf then specified, looking unhappy to end the brief amusement. "Have I been killing people? Because I'd like to know if I have an actual body count." ThunderFang huffed out sparks at that, and there was a pause for everyone to figure out how to answer the question.

"Well, that says a lot about what you guys are if he actually needs to ask if he's killing people at all," Squeaky said before a kinder person could talk. "Yeah, you definitely have been killing people if you've been killing people."

"You get used to it if you keep going," Jovian said bluntly in addition to that now that the silence was already broken badly. "Many do not when they learn of this. This instance is not the only one where those who cannot handle our nature live."

"We mostly just go after targets that we feel are better off dead than alive for the instance as a whole, or at least try to," Flamescale admitted with the best she could say about the topic. "We don't always manage that, but the alternative isn't for me at least."

"I have got to talk to my family about it," ThunderFang said somberly. "I'm going to help you guys with this ancient thing. They're at least a target I don't mind killing, but after that... I need to know if my family realized what I have been doing and didn't tell me, or if they were acting like these locals were people without knowing somehow."

"Honestly, I'm not that picky," Stone admitted gruffly. "I do things to get stronger and pass the time, and generally just avoid the really messed up stuff." The short human, Flamescale refused to think of something with ears that short as a dwarf, then shrugged. "Well, not if the idea is to fight the messed up stuff, that's always good fun."

Unfortunately none of their clarifications seemed to actually help Wolf out, as the wolf shaped Void Entity seemed to get only more and more horrified as they went on. "I- I can't do this," he said with a break in his voice. "I can't, I'm not. I gotta go." Flamescale made sure that he picked the right direction to flee towards the civilian arcology, but otherwise nobody stopped the wolf man on his quick retreat.

"I think he expected us to say he had not," Yellow-Glow said sadly.

"It probably says worse things about us that the rest of us are not stopping than about him since he's deciding to stop," ThunderFang said and relaxed notably. "Nothing good about us at least."

"I thought you needed to talk to your family?" Sledge questioned with some concern.

"My family already went over the basics when I got them home again," the dragoness rumbled. "They apparently 'weren't sure' about letting me keep killing people before, but now they are 'very glad' I was and 'proud' of me for having 'an actual body count' as Wolf just put it." Sparks literally flew out along with spit at the word 'proud' and the quote of how Wolf had put it. "I need a break from them and some acceptable targets right now, so I hoped going easy on him would keep him from panicking and give me an excuse why I wasn't staying with them right now."

"Well, there is an option I didn't know to worry about when I have to explain my own 'body count' to my family," Flamescale admitted, finding it even more uneasy that they might take her kills that way. It was one thing for her family to be disappointed, but proud was another thing entirely.

"Are we part of the body count, the family, or both?" Squeaky had the audacity to ask. "Because we do need that explanation too."

"Squeaky, I understand that you have a point, but you are about to lose speaking privileges," Flamescale said tightly to her creature.

"How about we change topic back to getting ready for our next step?" Jovian suggested. "Maybe try out our Grafters now to see if we can make the next one easier to get, even without Wolf."

"What exactly is the plan for the next step?" ThunderFang asked as Flamescale got started with looking at her best options for moving branches. "I think I'm the only one here who wasn't part of your group before, so I don't actually already know."

Flamescale paused in her comparison of Light Bio-Weapons, Heavy Bio-Weapons, and Crystal Weapons to consider that reality. Wolf had honestly not been given the full details yet either, but they were at least planning on him if things had worked out better. A part of her had mistakenly discarded that thought when Wolf left, probably because ThunderFang had so quickly joined the rest of them in their explanation to Wolf.

"There are three primary objectives for our group at this time," Yellow-Glow helpfully started to explain, probably with the speech he had ready for Wolf. "The first is to identify the critical parts of an ancient bastion network that need to be a priority to destroy for the safety of Void Entity operations in associated instances. Once that is done we then must ensure that all civilian Void Entity instances such as the one your family dwells within have had those critical components destroyed or captured. Finally, we must create proper guides, actual ones worth using, that allow for other Void Entities to safely engage these targets on their own to make any instance they are operating within safe."

"First thing we do in practice will probably be to clear the rest of the inner ring of this meta-instance," Sledge added with a nod at the dragoness. "Find out if we missed any other Void Labs that people might have been taken to, see if there is anything else on the ring that gives a Grafter, and I personally want to see if we can simply destroy a Citadel with a few megaton scale nuclear weapons. To make sure that this civilian instance at least is safe before we move on to the others."

That prompted a more detailed discussion of their typical combat requirements that Flamescale had heard before, so she went back to her own choice. A Skill Vine would probably be the best option if she wanted to get as many points as possible if it really did get the full amount rewarded with the ST, making it so you effectively got double the skill points. However, it also would start without any points, and would be limited to just the single branch. At the moment she needed extra firepower now, not after another few missions, so instead of the optimal path she was going to directly add a branch to her Fluid Pestilence Skill Tree.

Light Bio-Weapons had Chitin Spikes, Acid Sprayers, and a shotgun like Fragment Cannon, along with other skills to upgrade each of them in a variety of ways. She would need to deal with the weapons only reloading when she was solid, but she would also have access to the reload rate skills and damage improvement skills that would make that less of a complication. The main downside was that it would take many points for them to equal heavier weapon systems.

Heavy Bio-Weapons had the Bio Missiles, Bio Cannon, and powerful Bio Laser skills, along with their own improvement skills. Heavier weapons that cost more points to upgrade, but came with more combat ability. However, even at their best they would not have as short of a reload time, and that could be very limiting with the reload resetting whenever she or her creatures liquefied.

The two ranged Bio-Weapons branches also both had the downside of being exposed weapons. She would have to leave the skills unused, or add the Hidden Bio-Weapons tree as well to hide the few that could be hidden without losing access to them for a time.

Crystal Weapons by contrast did not have any direct damage upgrades to the weapons it provided, although it did use only a single skill to reduce the reload speed for all the weapons instead of needing a specific skill to speed up each one. It also had more of a mixture of weapons, with a melee focused Crystal Blade skill that was possibly similar to some skills from the Melee Bio-Weapons branch that she outright was not considering, the Crystal Shards launcher skill that was similar to Chitin Spike although without as many levels or upgrades, a Crystal Cannon that did have its own damage upgrades but could only stack to two cannons, and the Crystal Missiles skill that again did not offer as many missile launchers as the Bio-Weapons variant. However, both the Shards and the Missiles came with a skill to hide the launchers, and the blade skill seemed to be somewhat hidden as well.

Really it wasn't a choice, Crystal Weapons did everything she wanted for after this rush to fight was over. It wasn't perfect, she personally did not like that the cannon did not come with a hidden version and would have liked the ability to make the Shards explosive the way the Chitin Spikes could be augmented by a skill, but it was good enough for her needs. Using the Grafter to move a Crystal Weapons branch from one of her many Liquid Crystal Skill Trees to her Fluid Pestilence was just as easy as the video had implied, with the only minor complication being a message that had her confirm an automatic removal of the one-off skills that would now be part of her current Skill Tree.

A part of her expected to feel some form of change to altering a Skill Tree, something special for such an unusual new effect, but there wasn't anything different immediately but the lack of her one-off skills. She had forty two points unspent from the assault, and she immediately sank most of them into the new branch.

Bio and Crystal Weapons branches all broke from typical skill costs in that getting multiple levels of some weapons had a flat cost for every level instead of an increasing one, but that was balanced by the other skills that actually improved their stats being costly. Crystal Shard launchers cost one point per launcher, and could be stacked ten times in total, less than the fourteen times that a Chitin Spike skill could stack to at the same cost per level. Up to six of them could then be improved with a two point per launcher skill to allow them to hide, making it so she could only have six if she wanted them hidden which was also four less than the hidden version of Chitin Spike. With that in mind she spent six points right now to get used to what would be the full quantity she could hide later.

Crystal Missiles were more expensive, but still had a flat cost per launcher of five points. They also had a max limit of six launchers, again four less than the bio variant capped at, and only two could be hidden for the large cost of ten points to hide each launcher. All six launchers would cost the same thirty points as just having two hidden missiles. Ten of Flamescale's points went in now to get back her now typical two launchers.

After that she looked at the two other weapons. Crystal Blade allowed her to turn part of her body into a sharp crystal blade, although it would need more levels to do more damage and have greater durability, and it had a fairly long time before she could forge another. One point to have it as an option was all she put into that melee option.

Crystal Cannon was powerful, but could not be hidden and was a base cost of five points, with another ten point skill to get a second cannon. Like the blade this skill increased in cost per level normally to improve damage and area of effect. Unlike the blade she didn't add this skill, as while it could be helpful she had not had good luck with getting the bio-weapon version to actually fit on her body in a reasonable way. She did not want to look silly with a giant cannon on her, especially when she could instead just get more missiles for the same cost as the first cannon skill level.

The final skill of the branch was strange for a Bio-Weapon branch, but welcome here. Crystallization Speed was a flat reload time reduction for every single one of the Crystal Weapons at the same time. Two points for the first level with an increase of two points per level was somewhat costly, but paying twenty points total for the first four levels of ten was worth it. That investment nearly cut half the reload time off the Crystal Shards, and almost a quarter off the missiles. Which told her that there would be very little reload time at all for the shards at the max level of ten, and half the time for the missiles.

That left her five points, which could have gone to another missile or a cannon, but instead were invested into her other skills that did grant some bonus damage. A third level of Infectious Strikes impacted those weapons as well for the biggest bonus she could get out of what she had, then the last two into a second level of a skill to increase the damage of the Fire status effect. All together it gave a nice boost to her combat ability for their next operations.

"Wait, you guys are going to be doing this right now?" ThunderFang fully realized just as Flamescale finished. "Not that I mind getting my family safe sooner, but I didn't think we had a reason to rush right now."

"We do not know for sure that we found everyone who was taken," Flamescale repeated, just in case ThunderFang had not realized why they wanted to see if there were any other labs on this meta-instance. "I don't know if anyone had a full list of everyone who lived in your family instance, and we also don't know if there is another instance that is connected, or if you missed some of those who were traveling with you that got caught."

"We do, I made sure to check in with all of them I could remember," ThunderFang corrected thoughtfully. "But I guess we didn't all get there in time to know we didn't miss anyone else who might have gotten caught." Then the dragoness grew in size quite a bit, from five meters to fifteen. "Okay, that will help, but forty points for the next level is a bit more than I expected."

"Your next level is equal to my five headed form," Flamescale pointed out dryly. "I spent one hundred to get there."

"You have five of those slithering around, I just get the one," ThunderFang joked back, with Jovian and Stone both seeming rather amused with that counter.

---

[Author's Note]
Here we have a more complete explanation of the new capability for changing skill trees around.

 

[E.I.G.]

--- 25 - Ancient Forge ---

The smaller inner facilities that didn't give a Void Grafter still were worth fifteen points each between the defeat of the massive Mucin "Main Ancient Computer", the reward to clear the site, and the site capture reward that Flamescale's group was still picking up since the whole goal was to figure out what everything did. Combined with capturing other bastions that was adding up to a lot of points very quickly, and Flamescale had not been surprised to see that the guides that were already out focused on teaming up to use that factor to rapidly level upgraded or new STs.

It was honestly going a bit too fast for her, as the last pause for a break had revealed that she earned more than enough points to sink ninety more into the speed her Crystal Weapons reloaded, enough to actually complete that skill's ten levels. Which would help considerably, as it was also clear from those fights that the ancient forces were starting to break out everything they had to slow or stop her conquest. The worst part of it was that they had only cleared out part of the overall network. Four of those minor inner facilities, two inner ring bastions, four connected outer ring bastions, and the ten instance spoke bastions that were connected to those.

Although Flamescale was about ready to stop actually capturing the bastions herself. They were in theory useful to have more of, but after rapidly adding twenty new locations to her personal network her forces were stretched a bit thin keeping track of all that space.

"I think we can count you in the combat STs now," Sledge mentioned as the latest spoke bastion's very minor bird-squids found themselves bombarded by multiple rapidly fired crystal shards from both Flamescale's four headed bodies, and her creatures. "You might be able to take on the bastions yourself at this point, Flamescale."

"I think I made a mistake with going entirely for size," ThunderFang admitted at about thirty meters instead of the dragoness' current max of around forty five. "I mean, I don't usually use guns, but..." ThunderFang trailed off to look at what was left of this bastion. Flamescale admittedly needed to use her Material Movement or massive size to get between the now shattered fragments of the bastion, and there was a real risk that they would need to work out how to reopen broken Void Gates after ThunderFang's poorly thought out attempt to spear only two of the now far more massive lightning spheres. "Yeah, I need to be more careful fighting anything smaller like this."

"We should halt operations on the outer ring and instance spokes," Yellow-Glow suggested from near the inward gate. "It is taking too much time and has too little impact. The locals can most likely handle the Mucin that remain should we only leave behind those bastions."

"I think the locals can at least bomb the places until they're clear," Stone agreed, and the short human eyed the red of Flamescale's control that had overtaken the bastion's fragments. "Although they are going to need a lot of ammo for that. There aren't many forces on the bastions, but with the infection they will need a lot of things killed."

"I'm just happy that I don't need to find as much ammo myself," Flamescale admitted, but the extra firepower of regular guns would be a nice bonus on top of her new baseline. "Although, my next thing is probably putting the hidden skills for these Crystal Weapons if we don't get another Grafter soon."

"I'd be happy with those too," Squeaky said as the black serpent with red spots arrived from where the infected quartermaster was looking over a material stockpile they had captured not long before. "Bad news boss, this is another pile of junk that needs to be refined all over again for us to use it, but Left-and-Right think this stuff is what they used to make the platforms and Asteroidea. At least it matches what they wanted me to keep an eye out for."

"Everyone, prepare for major conflict," Yellow-Glow suddenly said at that news. "There is still the other gate at the inner bastion we came from, and the information available so far shows that the most common locations for Grafter sized Mucin are Void Labs, and Asteroidea foundries. That proximity might be an indicator of the next site's function as a major site."

"I don't like the sound of it being platform material either," Stone pointed out. "That refinery you called a piece of crap earlier was getting fresh raw material from somewhere, and if they could just build another lab we might have a bigger issue in the long run." They had held off on the other inner spoke site in the hope of finding another outer spoke with open gates to explain where those raw materials had come from.

"On that note, I still want to see if there are any open instance spokes that they were using to get those resources," Sledge specified as the pangolin checked his hammer and looked out towards where they had found more unopened gates. "But that can wait for the time being. Are we still prepared for the main fight?"

"I'm good to go," Jovian said easily, but the three tailed fox was the least equipment limited of their group other than ThunderFang.

"My ammo is at forty percent," Stone specified. "Which isn't great given I was at one hundred forty percent of my usual load when we went up against the last one. Even if this isn't another Grafter computer I need to have another big restock mission after this one. I might have some backup stuff if you only need my help for bastions."

Flamescale looked to Sixteen for his opinion. The added ability of her infected creatures to bulk out their force had let them take on an Advanced Ancient Computer with what was apparently an undersized team as far as initial assessments were showing. Eight to ten Void Entities with combat STs was the initial standard, with some suggesting more since that technically gave out more Grafters overall, even if the things could not be traded.

"The last boost to reload speed is enough that we're hitting as hard and fast as some Girant rifles without the need for extra ammo, and the missiles are just plain nice to have at this rate compared to that first boost you got us, let alone how slow they started," Sixteen answered. "We're much better off this time, although I would still like to have time to fix and expand our vehicle force if we want to do those more often. Not to mention more forces in general if we actually keep all of these places, although we could do without whatever those things we've been getting from these guys are. I don't like seeing others like us without any minds in them."

"How is the Citadel plan?" Flamescale took a moment to ask Sledge. "Do we have the nuclear weapons to at least take out the gates?" Her creatures had scouted out the other side of the Citadel gates they had found so far, and hopefully discovered the gate layout of the innermost core of the network.

"I have three weapons at the moment, they are not trivial to get," Sledge admitted carefully. "If there are more than three gate locations I cannot guarantee we will cut it off entirely, or if that will be enough to destroy the overall site. They also will need time to be setup and armed, although Sixteen seems to have the people to handle that for the time period we require."

"If it works I'm still putting it into the guide," Yellow-Glow specified, apparently to the surprise of the others. "I've put 'just use a nuclear warhead' into them before." Flamescale on the other hand knew very well that Yellow-Glow was quite practical about his guides, and if 'nuke it' was on the table it at least made it into the end notes. Thankfully there weren't many targets tough enough for that plan to be less trouble than a regular solution. "We may wish to perform that test relatively soon. Knowing the side effects of a destroyed Citadel could be valuable as well."

"One more inner facility and then just take over the inner ring to finish scouting the Citadel?" Flamescale suggested with a consideration on how well that might work. "No, we would have to figure out if they have a faster way of making their mobile forces first. I don't have enough infected minds to keep a full ring contained if they can move out from the Citadel or some of these inner sites while we got ready."

"Have any attempted that yet?" ThunderFang reasonably asked.

"None yet, but we need to have forces on standby just in case. We've been cutting the ring and Citadel gates we don't control until we have time to clear them so far," Sixteen responded with a nod. "If we can also cut the outer ring connections then I think we can actually handle the full inner ring. It isn't as large of a front line, and we can reposition quickly enough that they would need either a very large force or a lot of coordination."

"I have some more advanced sensors that should let us find all gate locations without needing control over the entire inner ring," Yellow-Glow specified with a sigh. "Worst case we infiltrate more deeply so the limited weapons we have on hand can be more effectively deployed."

"I think I can get us more nuclear weapons," Squeaky contributed thoughtfully. "That arcology we just saved can definitely find people to chip in a few, and if we can get their move-stuff ability with another 'Grafter' then we can reposition them quickly. If we don't get that capacity then we need to use our Infected Gates instead, but it is possible."

"In that case we should move to take this next site sooner rather than later, so I know if I can add that," Flamescale said and that got everyone else moving.

---

Unlike most of the inner facilities they had found so far, this one was full of Rhizocephala. Flamescale's five headed body was first onto the site, which seemed to be a large pentagon shaped central area with a number of smaller complexes extending off the four sides that did not contain the gateway itself. She could immediately see that the closer pair were far more well crafted structures for the creation of Rhizo than she was used to, which unfortunately implied that they could in fact build them faster. Further back were the starfish shaped ancient disruptor Asteroidea, clearly newly built from the back left side, and more concerning a few slabs of ancient construction material and unfinished ancient hive structure domes being made by the final side.

There were many small Mucin and domes present along the entire structure, but three massive domes and another Advanced Ancient Computer were right in the middle of the open space, and clearly had been making a force to strike back at them with the resources on hand.

Flamescale did not wait to launch all of her crystal shards and missiles into the best targets she could spot, while spitting at the ground in the largest open spaces she could see. Which was very needed to get her three other five headed bodies onto the field to start to thin out the many missile, cannon, and laser armed Rhizo that were more of a threat to her allies. As she expected, that first body was lost immediately from the massive Mucin's counterattack.

"We have a small army on the far side. ThunderFang, you need to be bigger to help me clear these out," she instructed with her single headed backup body as her other bodies tried to get a first wave of missiles into that crowd. Then added and split off a head to get a start on a replacement. "I think I need to invest in Reformation soon. Maybe strip it off into my first Skill Vine to double the points I get." Also to give her another space in her ST for stuff she really wanted to use after the Season.

"Focus Flamescale, if we have an army to fight we need to deal with the fight first," Yellow-Glow specified as ThunderFang started to grow and flew through the Void Gate.

"Definitely my last mission until a resupply," Stone complained as the short human followed ThunderFang through along with Sledge and Jovian. "This is why we're nuking the Citadel," he then added when he actually saw the army they were up against.

"We need this place intact or gone," Yellow-Glow agreed as he went through last. "I also need that translation yesterday."

"No time travel talk," Jovian complained as he sent a blast of Decay that turned into a shimmering dome of darkness. "The universe is confusing enough with me actually being a magical fox monster without risking time travel turning out to be real too." The effect was clearly an advanced use of Elemental Illusions, one that appeared to have been tuned to cause some Decay status effects. That made it easier to tell it was an illusion, but was better for combat uses and effectively a more free form way to effectively cast elemental spells. In this case it allowed Jovian to add ranged area of effect damage to his skill set to go with his aura of damage around his body and single target skills.

Flamescale only barely had enough free thought to handle spotting that detail as they spoke. If not for Sixteen and her other leader infected creatures she already wouldn't have the chance to handle all of her infected outside of vague orders, the focus to know what they were doing was too much work in active combat against a foe of this size and threat level. Just keeping the heavier weapons the ancient force had from taking out ThunderFang while the dragoness did real damage to the main Mucin was difficult enough, and that had been a concern at the smaller forces from the other facilities they had hit.

Flamescale's multiple heads covered in rapid fire Crystal Weapons were the better option against smaller foes, each of her five viewpoints on each of her four bodies she sent in could track a group of Rhizo, while ThunderFang only had one set of eyes and one set of cooldowns for the dragoness' attacks. Each head had its own array of six crystal launchers and twin missiles to handle the groups, or to be turned against heavier targets all at once.

Although this Mucin had a lot more heavy ground forces, with a whole lot of the typically rare laser Rhizo that were using the strongest bio-weapon available. Bio-lasers were strong enough to still be a threat at the scale Flamescale and ThunderFang were currently at without being on something that size themselves. Not a significant threat individually, but this many of those solid damage over time attacks countered much of Flamescale's regeneration and could quickly remove both of their basic shields.

Then there was the massive downside that the nearby production facilities seemed to be creating new laser Rhizo to join the main force along with cannon and missile variants. "You jinxed us," Flamescale said to ThunderFang and punctuated it with a barrage of crystals towards one of the larger domes instead of the Advanced Ancient Computer itself. "Because they are making these Rhizo as fast as the Mucin."

"Focus fire on the main domes, we need control cut on this one," Yellow-Glow ordered. "We cannot clear these forces fast enough otherwise. Rhizocephala are better armored than Mucin," he then reminded the two of them on behalf of the part of the group that were not giant monsters.

Flamescale decided that meant trying her laser rifles on the largest domes. With ThunderFang to help with the biggest enemy, she could spare the battery on those instead of needing to use it to cut down the health of the Mucin again. Flamescale's lasers carved through the three domes quickly, and spilled large amounts of the green goo onto the ground, but it wasn't another instant victory. This Mucin had taken far less damage before the domes were destroyed, but it did mean that the main enemy was actually losing health at a measurable rate instead of barely being chipped away.

Before they were able to take the Advanced Ancient Computer down they nearly lost Stone when he got caught switching to another weapon by an Asteroidea that the rest of them had ignored too long due to it not having actual weapons. Unfortunately it was more than capable of physically lifting the short human to prevent him from fighting back while a number of missile Rhizo all targeted the incapacitated earth-dwarf. Yellow-Glow ended up personally taking out one of the starfish creature's arms with a grenade of some kind to get Stone out in time, because the rest of them were too busy with more dangerous targets of the main enemy or even more laser Rhizo.

When the Advanced Ancient Computer finally died Flamescale didn't waste any time before closing any remaining gates outside of the captured area. They needed a break and time to look over the results. More general rewards greeted her, along with another Grafter and yet more new points. "Are we going to destroy the Citadel today? Because I can see if Squeaky can find those nukes if we are," Flamescale questioned a bit tiredly.

"I want it gone," ThunderFang growled deeply, still the size of a small building. "This was building another lab, I can see all the parts. We can't let them keep any of this running."

"Even though I can't really help now, I have to agree," Stone said tiredly as he checked the replacement gun that had not taken the grenade well, although the missiles would have been worse for it. "We can't let these things rebuild. They will learn how to do that better if we let them survive."

"We must finish this network today," Yellow-Glow agreed unhappily. "The civilian instance needs to be made entirely safe, and the ancients being able to rebuild infrastructure with only what is present on the network was not in my original plans. We must capture or destroy the remaining inner spokes, destroy the Citadel, and then clear any open instance spokes."

The rest of the group quickly started considering backup options to get that done today. Flamescale knew her part of that was to add Liquid Utility to her Skill Tree so she could move those nuclear weapons as fast as they needed to. She was out of empty slots, but she had an Enhancement branch that was not worth it in comparison she could outright replace with only a single Grafter.

Liquid Compression was the base skill for the Liquid Utility branch, and as a result adding the branch took off her one-off version with the transfer. The first level was a single point, and also was the same effect as her one-off skill by letting her reduce her liquefied body to half its natural volume. A brief test of leveling it up more revealed that the second level was one quarter volume, then the third was only one tenth. The fourth made her slightly uncertain, as it went to one percent of her natural volume, but there was still a level to go after that.

"'Can reduce down to a single drop?'" she quietly questioned, uncertain if that actually worked when she was at her larger sizes. If it did that could be a rather extreme option for getting into places with far too much firepower. Although with a total cost of fifteen points she couldn't justify going that far just yet, so she spent three there for the first two levels and decided to be content with one level better than what she had before for the moment.

The first level of that skill unlocked two more. Liquid Creation was nearly useless to her, although double checking revealed that the skill was listed as already gained for zero points, with the Liquid Travel skill associated with it also unlocked in that way. Both of those were clearly things she already had other skills to do. The last of that side of the branch was a skill to convert liquids she touched into more of her goo, a skill that wasn't worth the points at the moment.

The other side was the entire reason to get this branch, Liquefy Cargo, and the augmentation skill for it to allow passengers as well. It was five levels starting at two points and going up by two points per level, so somewhat costly, in order to allow her to temporarily turn anything she carried within a size limit into liquid to move it with her liquefied body. The first level allowed things one quarter her size, the second allowed for half her size, the third let her take something up to her own size and also let her spend ten points on the skill to take living passengers, then the fourth went up to letting her transport stuff twice her size, and the fifth allowed a rather extreme four times her size that she had to consider more carefully.

"Guys, if I could bring stuff four times my size along, what does that mean when I have a lot of heads?" Flamescale asked aloud to the gathered group, having spent all thirty points to be able to do that, along with the ten more for passengers.

"It means I am having you get me some space ships," Sixteen and Sledge both said slightly out of synch. Her combat leader with a tone of annoyance, the pangolin Void Entity with excitement.

"It gives me unpleasant ideas about what a Mucin can do with their ability," Jovian said more practically. "We have seen them bring along entire groups of Rhizo before, but that implies they could possibly transport the starfish too. Which is a bigger issue now that we know they can replace them this easily. The one that grabbed Stone was new, and I didn't see how it got so close to him."

"It went through the back of the Rhizo factory," ThunderFang specified as she touched down and finally shrank back down to only five meters long. "I saw the thing, but it was taking all I had to just keep up with that Mucin. I can see why Flamescale drained a warship's worth of plasma gas against the last one, they have a lot more health than the other ones I've fought at this size and they heal far too fast. Which is a problem when we need to clear out an army before we are safe enough to take out their support domes." The dragoness then shrugged her wings. "I think this Grafter is going for the Breath Weapons branch. I know that one stacks with my Evoker branch instead of just giving free levels. The last new guide I read was complaining about adding a second Evoker element. If the skills are too similar then you technically get both for free, but it apparently works out oddly for how multiple elements go together."

Flamescale brought out a lighter linked Girant rifle with her only single headed body while ThunderFang went into detail on that, and found that apparently Liquefy Cargo was one of the skills that linked weapons got from her as it easily melted the ammo she loaded into it with its Linked Magazine even though she wasn't the one to use that skill deliberately. Then the ammo reformed nicely when she returned the weapon to being solid.

"Okay, I just got here to tell you I can get us four nuclear weapons in about half an hour if twenty five megaton will work, but what you just did with that gun is the best news I've had all day," Squeaky said from next to that body. "Two hours if we need bigger than that, so I need an answer on what we need for yield now."

"We cannot go under fifty, and I would prefer twice that yield per gate set to make sure we break the platform itself," Yellow-Glow answered quickly and clearly. "But past fifty megatons we might run the risk of multiple blasts interfering with each other at the target scale. Our best bet is to instantly destroy enough of the living infrastructure that the rest cannot survive long enough to matter without gates."

"In that case we need to see the results screen as soon as the bombs go off," Sledge said with the practical tone Flamescale knew was from actually doing this before. "Usually that just lets you pick out mission objectives and small details from the rewards, but here we are getting clear rewards when the Mucin dies. Can we reopen the inner spokes if we close them to pull that off?"

"We don't want to let them sit without knowing what is in them," Flamescale specified, even as she sent orders to Left-and-Right to work out how quickly they could shut down and reopen those gates. "If we do that we need to handle them by tomorrow at the latest, because my people still need a gate-to-gate link. If the gate is offline they can dismantle it to lock us out until they are ready for us, but it should take a bit for them to think of that. We might still risk it if they are already considering that, but I don't want to do it to the Citadel either while we take them. They could possibly use that tactic there to much worse results for us."

"Worst case, I have a new breath weapon branch and some points to use with it that aren't in Titanic Scale yet," ThunderFang pointed out. "I think between myself and Flamescale we can break the lesser spokes quickly enough. As long as there isn't another Advanced Mucin among them we can clear it out properly first."

"We can afford to have another of these still working more than a Citadel," Jovian countered. "You haven't seen a Core Ancient Computer yet, and even I haven't seen all of one yet. They probably will need a maxed Titanic Scale to fight it one on one. If we can take out the core first it would be best."

---

Flamescale was not ready for the Citadel's size. It wasn't bigger than the largest arcology she had seen, although it was solidly larger than the smallest. The issue was that it had a number of larger pathways and open areas compared to one of those self contained cities. The Citadel was massive, but it also was not truly a city from what she could see. It was clearly made as a capital, but there were not enough places that looked to be homes. Not enough locations that were not just storage, computation, or other administrative needs. More like a machine's core than a place for people.

"Either the Mucin are the ancients, or something might have happened to them before the fall," Flamescale noted to her allies as they held the four gates that were being used to deliver the nuclear weapons, in a way. The Citadel was more of a diamond than a square, but was still four sided with one set of gates in the middle of each side.

"Not enough data yet, we need that translation," Yellow-Glow cautioned. "Can you see the Core Ancient Computer?"

"You can't miss the Core Ancient Computer," Flamescale admitted about the one thing so obvious that it almost didn't need to be mentioned in comparison to everything else. The green goo and crystal bird-squid was by her measure actually larger than Titanic Scale could manage, and she knew there were even larger regeneration domes hidden somewhere in the infrastructure around them connected to the massive pillars of green goo that held up the ancient computer. "Not unless there is one of the buildings in the way, and the layout isn't quite setup to have that happen." Then she paused as she considered that nobody else was actually at the Citadel. "We probably shouldn't have the person who can't give out useful replay files scouting this place."

"You aren't scouting, you are planting four bombs and getting out of there," Sledge pointed out. "Well, maybe getting out? You kind of also can afford to not make it out better than the rest of us too."

"I can't get deep enough to possibly survive the nuclear weapons," she specified, with a mental check of how Sixteen was doing with getting them armed properly. "Honestly, I'm only getting the look I'm getting because I'm entirely fluid." Four melted single headed bodies compressed to one quarter their full volume was apparently small enough to not quite trigger the Citadel defenses, although it was clear that the Core was preparing for an attempt to break out of the rough confinement they had with the captured inner ring. With Rhizo and newly made Mucin gathering at each set of gates, although she had a hint where the open outer spokes were based on the largest concentration.

"Any ideas why they might not have noticed her yet?" Stone questioned reasonably. "They've been fairly fast to respond so far."

"We haven't actually tried sneaking into these yet," Sledge pointed out. "Although I don't think it will last very much longer."

"They know I'm here, but I don't think they realize I'm more than just scouting," Flamescale specified with a glance from her puddles to the nearest enemies. "I've got a lot of weapons pointed at me, but they seem to have focused on the gates themselves instead." She was slowly working her ways to blind spots where there would hopefully be enough time to move the bombs without letting the ancients have time to destroy them before proper detonation. It would be cutting things close, there were a couple of laser Rhizo waiting for her to try something and only so close they could set the timers.

The plan was for ten seconds for transport and reformation of the nuclear weapons at the most, with the hope that none of the fifty megaton bombs would detonate too early and destroy the source bastion before it could go off on the Citadel itself. Although one destroying another before it could detonate at the target was a bigger worry for Flamescale now that she could see there were some rather clear paths between the four sets of gates that might funnel the blasts partially. If she was more confident that the ancients would not take it as a reason to shoot her she would be trying to move her scout bodies into the nearby structures. If they had the firepower or resilience to handle the Citadel defenders then she might have suggested going back to plan A of invading long enough to take a location better suited for the weapons.

"We're going," Flamescale said to the other Entities as the few laser Rhizo were momentarily distracted towards the gates, likely anticipating an attack from that direction, and then sent the order for the four volunteer infected creatures who were taking the weapons for her to move out. The ancient forces clearly realized the issue when those serpents started to reform with the weapons. A few spine Rhizo were able to successfully strike the bombs, but Squeaky had come through with a set of anti-ship missiles complete with the armor needed to survive that job. That armor held for the final few seconds, the Rhizo weapons didn't go through fast enough without the speed and firepower of the lasers, and then Flamescale lost those bodies and the infected creatures.

Despite all of the Citadel gates closing in an instant it took a few more seconds before the results screen actually appeared. Ten points for 'clearing' the Citadel, but obviously none for the capture. "Core Ancient Computer is destroyed," Flamescale said just in case the others didn't get that. That would be a big loss, as the core was worth forty points and a surprising three Grafters.

"Yeah, three Grafters is probably fair for that sort of work," ThunderFang said sounding a bit torn on if she was joking or not. Flamescale at least wasn't sure if that was an easy win or just a tricky one.

"Getting enough of those weapons is that hard, yes," Sledge agreed with the statement sincerely. "Did you need the armored variants? Those normally end up destroyed before they allow them to be captured, and you don't want to know how much they cost."

"Needed the armor, the ability to move between instances as liquid, and ending up underestimated," Flamescale specified as she started to go over her next Grafter options. "Everyone did get those Grafters, right?"

"Yeah, although I kind of hope there aren't any more places in this network that give more," Jovian admitted. "We need a break."

---

[Author's Note]
A bit more developments for the season, and hopefully an interesting showing of what the Grafters are already doing for this group.

 

[E.I.G.]

--- 26 - Grafting ---

The Void Nexus had grown since its release with a lot more Void Entities using it for a lot more reasons. Flamescale could see a few of the food places from before now had proper shop fronts and signs, along with even longer lines. The weapons sale locations were also more advanced, with actual prices on display now, apparently there was a bit of a quality scale for what Void Materials were worth what. One storefront seemed to be dealing in Void Gate coordinates, presumably to bastion networks that had not been cleared yet.

"So, this place is busy," ThunderFang commented as their group made their way to see the developments in the Void Council Halls. "I didn't really check this part when it released, was it always this full?"

"No," Jovian said slowly. "There also wasn't as much open discussion of some of the topics I'm hearing." The three tailed fox Entity seemed quite disturbed by a couple of open discussions of the reality of being Void Entities they had passed by. Not loud discussions, but more than had been present the last time Flamescale had been here, and in particular they had passed a group talking about the issues with intelligent minions.

"Yeah, there is a lot of talk I didn't expect already," Stone agreed as the short human Void Entity looked with some interest at an ammunition dealer. The prices were fairly steep, but Flamescale could at a glance spot that it was mostly rare high end ammo types instead of the common stuff. They would probably stop back later to see how much those cost in practice after they had finished with checking out the updates.

Then they all paused after the next corner. Just past them was a store that wasn't as well traveled as many of the others near it for the moment, but did have the most interesting product for sale that they had found yet. "That can be done?" Sledge asked thoughtfully. "Because I would like some for my personal projects, and I've been trying to figure out how to get them myself."

"I'm probably going to have more than I can deal with real soon," Flamescale said as she inspected the prices listed for the store selling Ancient Bastions. "So if you need them I'm willing to pass some along as soon as I know how they are doing that. Do we go up and ask?"

"Perhaps after checking the updates," Yellow-Glow admitted with curiosity, currently spider shaped again, and they started moving again. "I know that it isn't common to have the skills to capture instead of simply clear yet."

The Void Council Halls were still without any actual 'council', but apparently were being used enough that their group ended up in a partially filled tracking center room instead of an empty one. Some were by the now completed Ancient Translation one-off skill display that was the main reason Flamescale's group was here in the first place. Although some new displays were a concern Flamescale had not had the time to consider yet, with progress on the local response to the Ancient Infection.

"Ah, yeah that is something people aren't going to be happy about," Jovian said at the small unhappy crowd of Entities with obvious Contagion branches. "Sorry, Flamescale, looks like you have a time limit on using that to get into places."

"You say that like I'm not looking forward to having an excuse not to use it every time," Flamescale said with enthusiasm that even surprised herself. Now that she was faced with the possibility, it suddenly was a very welcome way to keep from her desired mission types getting too easy. "Although I'm less sure I'm going to like what they find for solutions. They have had a while to look into the infection themselves, and I didn't like the stuff they were trying before that I've found."

"Yeah, the Macrophylla were doing some things I really worry about in the labs I went after at the start of this Season," ThunderFang agreed as they took a spot in the short line for the translation. "Although, they are probably going to get the gates open first. They are already using living creatures for their gate controllers, or at least are planning on using them."

"That is a concerning development, although I wonder if there are more details than just the main three opponents," Sledge commented with a long look at the new display. "I have plans for the future that might be impacted by that information."

"Now I'm slightly worried about what you are planning to do with bastions," Jovian noted but that also marked the end of the line and a response was cut off by everyone going to the menu to add the new skill.

"Well, Left-and-Right liked getting that so much I can feel it," Flamescale said with a wince at the sensation.

"So, just like Squeaky did when you added the skills to hide your crystal weapons?" Stone asked with clear amusement at her unease. That had taken Flamescale a good portion of her points from clearing the rest of the civilian instance's ancient bastion network, but it was worth it in her opinion, and there had been a lot of points available. The fifty from the Citadel itself had gone into a sixth body, although she had not tried six heads yet.

"And like how Sixteen reacted to Bio-Hacking," Flamescale confirmed with a thought to that surprise. Apparently being able to interface with systems was on its own something Sixteen wanted for their combat force. 319 military and combat elements were still 319, and the group prided themselves on having the most advanced technologies available despite being a relatively minor power overall. They weren't an entire species like the Girant or Macrophylla, but they were advanced enough to be counted among those two even by other locals.

The Bio-Hacking branch had been the second actual change to her ST that Flamescale had made after the destruction of the Citadel. The first had been to split her Reformation branch off into a Skill Vine, and as a result she now had fifty points in that Vine to allow her to get a couple of levels of its skills already. The base skill to reform with forty percent health was twenty points, then two levels of the improvement skill boosted her to sixty percent health on reformation for ten and fifteen more points, and the last five points was put into the ability to reform from material, mostly because she had the extra points to spare for the moment.

Bio-Hacking itself was something she had added in place of that branch after they had finished clearing the network. The base skill, Bio-Interface, simply allowed her to biologically interface with computer systems directly, with it being particularly made for the ancient tech but usable everywhere. The next skill was Bio-Data, a simple way to download and store data in yourself that matched what Flamescale had tried before with skills that went with attempts at being mechanical like Yellow-Glow and was also very familiar to her former 319. Then there was a biological version of the single level skill to make your own data chips, a useful skill but the results tended to be lower quality by local standards, with less capacity and sometimes worse speeds.

After those there were the skills to improve what and how you could hack. Hacking Processes was effectively the skill version of security crackers, with ten total levels of increasing capability. The fourth level was where it reached the current best available cybernetic technology, which was actually a local advancement from where it started at level three being the best you could find. Then the Override Speed skill improved how quickly you could hack things, with two levels out of ten being the best available in cybernetics.

The final Bio-Hacking skill, System Control, was a common hacking skill, but didn't really have a technology version available on the market. It was the most expensive skill per level, and only had five levels. It was also the only skill she had not put any points into yet. In theory the ability to take direct control over anything linked to the computer you hacked was massively useful, in practice it was only valuable if you knew the system wasn't going to get fixed by a local administrator, and the ancients should be more than able to regain control over their systems given she got the branch from their Mucin.

"You gave former 319 the ability to use our kind of hacking?" Jovian said to draw her back to the present, and make her realize she had been considering what she added for hacking in the middle of everyone else looking at her in quiet horror. "Well, that's a new concern. I did not even think about how those skills work with minions."

"There are a considerable number of skills that never appeared in minion skill trees before," Yellow-Glow agreed uncomfortably. "If many of those pass along it could result in some very strange outcomes." 'Strange' in this case clearly meant 'worrying'.

---

Everyone had some time to rest and prepare while Yellow-Glow and her researchers looked over the now translated data. Flamescale was spending it working on any issues with her forces. She needed them in good shape, and hopefully with actual weapons to make things easier. Built in Crystal Weapons were a good baseline, but more was better with the forces they were up against.

"Boss, I need a space dock. A full shipyard if we can pull it off, but that needs a lot more infrastructure first and a dock is the first part of that," Squeaky said as Flamescale spoke with her quartermaster at the storage bastion that still had two tankers docked on makeshift berths. "Actually I want to upgrade all of that ancient crap to some worthwhile refining and manufacturing infrastructure, but again, I need a space dock to actually get us anything like the supplies we actually need."

Flamescale considered that request carefully, really more of a demand but this was Squeaky, before she replied. So far the biggest news out of the investigation without translation was that the ancients seemed to be rather unimpressive when you actually had working examples of their capabilities. The bio-tech refinery was still functional, and it made stuff that the bio-tech fabrication centers wanted to make other ancient tech. Unfortunately the refinery couldn't make anything without notable impurities, and the fabrication devices seemed to introduce even more impurities as they made things between ten percent larger than standard tech and twice the size of what locals could make for the same purpose. It was all valuable for being effectively completely automated, but in practice they couldn't use it for anything that the ancients weren't already making.

"Planetary gates aren't going to let us bring enough stuff here?" Flamescale questioned to clarify the reasoning here. She could understand getting the dock ready if they had some other ships already, or even just to get their current ships set up better now that they could more easily build more bastion material. She could even understand it being the basis for a shipyard given that Sixteen definitely wanted them to be able to maintain warships of their own now that Flamescale could in theory steal them herself.

Squeaky laughed harshly at her, the black snake with red spots then motioned for her to follow towards the ships. "No, definitely not. The sort of stuff we're using to get funding for purchases is raw materials and refined materials. I'm at a literally up a gravity well battle just to sell the stuff, and the quantity I need to sell needs to go to orbital trade hubs instead," Squeaky explained. "Even with finished goods, which we are not ready to make let alone sell, we'd get the best outcome from going to orbital hubs."

"I have some deep stores of resources, but not that deep," Flamescale pointed out. "I know from experience how big cargo freighters can get, and if you're asking for a proper dock you don't mean one that can go into an atmosphere. Where is the rest of it coming from?" They had ancient storehouses, but those had been filled using ancient refineries. Flamescale didn't think they would get more than ore prices for those without refining them all over again.

"Different instances have different resource distributions. That is one of the first things I've looked into with the translation, just to know why they went so far to specialize their various homeworlds," the other goo snake explained. "Which explains why my attempts to find some things for the prices I expected in different instances hasn't been working, but also means I can get us some profit by taking stuff between them. I need some starting resources, and additional instances to make sure the trade cycle completes, but we have both of those from taking these ancient sites. Which just leaves the transports to take stuff where I need it, which is between those trade hubs. Unless you want us opening gates directly between orbital hubs?"

"You want to setup trade between instances," Flamescale said, cautious now. "Which is a big change if we are also making things ourselves eventually, but not on its own big enough to need this much work to convince me. What's the real issue?"

"I don't just need the infrastructure," Squeaky admitted finally. "I need people. Crews for the ships, dockworkers for actually moving things around, refinery and factory experts. The kind of people you don't convert on your missions."

"I take it there is a reason they would need to be converted?" Flamescale asked, even as she prepared to make a choice she didn't want to consider. If she wanted to keep all of these infected creatures around, then she did need to get that infrastructure built. A part of her had hoped that they could just use the automation of the ancients instead, but Left-and-Right had been growing more unhappy the longer the translation had been available. This talk with Squeaky was supposed to be an easier issue while Flamescale prepared for whatever bad news her researchers had found.

"Do you really think we aren't going to need to replace one of those ships? You can just bring us back if we die, and I'd rather not train replacements instead of just yelling at whoever managed to mess up so badly they needed to be remade," Squeaky pointed out. "Even just being able to ignore industrial accidents is a big bonus to being remade into a Devourer."

"We are not calling ourselves 'Devourers'," Flamescale said, and made sure that everyone knew that. She would accept Slinks calling them that, but it was not a name she was using herself and she had opinions on the topic. "If you absolutely need something to call us you can either find something better than that I like, or just go with 'Lava Vipers'." It was the first thing that came to mind, and Flamescale had been hoping to find something better before she admitted that the only thing she had was that basic first thing to come to mind.

"You mean like just plain saying we are lava fruit creatures?" Squeaky said dully. "I hate how that is actually better than the Slink name. Let's try and get a better one."

"Figure out where and how you want to recruit, and keep in mind I will be doing the final check before they end up converted," Flamescale finally allowed, unhappy but unable to avoid the situation.

---

"I have never been more disappointed in a discovery in all of my life," Left-and-Right said together as soon as Flamescale emerged into the section of the Ancient Void Lab they had taken over for the translation investigation. Bits and pieces of most of the ancient devices they had recovered now littered the open space at the center of the platform. "Even the realization that we had been trying to replicate impurities pales- No, no this is merely an extension and clarification on just how disappointing that actually was."

"I take it the ancients missed more things we already know how to do?" Flamescale questioned as she checked their twin minds. Not identical, not by a long shot. Like Squeaky's resource distributions Left and Right had lived similar lives with noticeable differences. They just were in synch with each other, two different lifetimes that resulted in the same outlook.

"They were agrarian. They discovered Void technology before they discovered industry," the two headed snake spat at her. "We have mistaken a civilization that stumbled upon the key to making the mystical real before they worked out how to properly understand physics for an advanced precursor race that mastered the technology of biology. All of their life forms are Void based."

"Void creatures?" Flamescale questioned seriously, and only held back from going over their minds entirely due to her lack of speed on that skill.

"Like myself and my fellow 'Lava Vipers'," Left-and-Right answered together, apparently already having heard the name despite it not being that long since her conversation with Squeaky. "Creations of use of the Void, but still physical things. Not eternal marks on reality like yourself and the other Entities."

"I'm not going to like how you know there is a distinction there, am I?" Flamescale questioned as she took in that specification that she had never said to her creatures. She looked at a containment unit that was mostly disassembled nearby for one possible source.

"The ancients may not have understood technology well, but they knew Void effects and had captured your kind before," they specified, handing off sentences again. The two headed snake twisted to look at a number of the crystal data storage systems scattered about. "I am still going over those details, and I want to work with Yellow-Glow before I give any real options there, but it is enough to understand the nature of their creations."

"Were there any older Void Entities that were trapped here?" Flamescale questioned at that news, uncertain if she would have noticed during the aftermath itself.

"Possibly, I need Yellow-Glow here to verify," Left-and-Right answered, but then changed topic immediately. "It is more important now to understand the nature of their creations. The unusual creation of bio-weapon ammunition, the regeneration of their bodies, and even the very base function of the Mucin are all the result of Void exploitation. Which was a considerable problem for them when suddenly there was a disruption to such a degree that it prevented most Void effects for at least thousands of years."

"Now I'm worried about a lot of things my civilization does with Void tech," she admitted slowly at the idea that the effect they saw on all instances was able to get that strong. The interference that she had even risked checking for in the human instance. She had found that it was at the same magnitude there as well. "So that is why we didn't see any Mucin before?"

"As well as living structural material and Asteroidea," Left-and-Right confirmed. "The Rhizocephala are at a much lower level than those, possibly to save resources but my team has not found the details on how the designs are made in practice to know if that is the case. We have manufacturing data, research data, and the refinery database, but again I must note that the ancients were not industrialized. The data is not clear enough to know what is accurate information and what is merely rumor or myth."

"You also said that they found out how to make the mystical real. Dragons and other creatures that wield the elements directly are fantasy and myth in my home instance," Flamescale pointed out. "What we both are at the moment is quite fictional there, or at least was."

"This is the most disappointing discovery I have ever made," they complained as they acknowledged that point. "On a better note, we have the controls for the captured ancient infrastructure translated now. I do not think we want to use Rhizocephala ourselves, and functionally the surviving Mucin generators are the same as our own hives, but the platform construction tools and Asteroidea support units may be valuable. I need to speak with Sixteen more about those."

"Do we know everything the Asteroidea can do yet?" Flamescale asked, thinking of the Skill Trees those foes gave out. There were some branches that might be worth making into Skill Vines, but if she could get the same functionality with the starfish shaped ancient constructs directly it would save her the Grafters for other options.

"Unfortunately no, but the Void Entity information you have provided did allow for more to be used directly," Left-and-Right specified. "It is unclear if there are different models of the constructs, if there are construction methods that allow for other functionality, if it is developed over time as they age, if it is related to the Mucin controlling the units, or if some functions are only available to Void Entities that destroy them."

"Entirely possible," Flamescale said with a sigh. "Do we at least know how they are making these platforms? I know you hoped that would give us better Void Gates."

"I do think that we can develop a gate-to-point system instead of being restricted to gate-to-gate links," Left-and-Right said more happily. "It wasn't something they seem to have been able to do casually, but they also were using terrible raw materials in their attempts. It is a major use for a paired gate set in their case, where a platform is constructed next to an existing platform, with both gates present in the same location, and then the new platform and gate is transported into nothingness." The two heads of her head researcher twisted to look at her seriously. "Which is when the Void technologies in the platform material establish the local rules and limitations of the new space that produces. We will need to be cautious about destroying too much of any given platform during combat, it could produce a total collapse of the artificial space."

"Hm, on one hand, I want you to look into what we can do to avoid that issue if we were attacked," Flamescale admitted at that development with a glance over at some shattered material. "On the other, I want you to look into what we can do to cause that sort of break deliberately." Because it was best to have one thing to look into for both things you wanted.

---

Flamescale had gained another Void Grafter after the fall of the Citadel from clearing out another ancient factory complex. Giving her two available after turning Reformation into a Vine and adding Bio-Hacking, and that meant she could create her next Skill Vines at any time. Reformation as a whole took just under two hundred points to fully complete, under a tenth of the over two thousand that Fluid Pestilence now sat at for completion. With the high point values of her current targets there was a solid chance she could complete Fluid Pestilence this season, and that meant she would waste points if she didn't have more Vines to fill out.

One option was to pick apart Flame Elementalist trees. Not her completed one, that was going to stay intact for sentimental reasons at minimum, but she had been playing long enough to have duplicates of most of the STs she had used before. Typically worse copies from when she was trying to get a setup she liked. She could add Fire Evoker for more literal firepower, with those skills very likely assisting her 'Lava Vipers' as well, but she didn't really want two combat SVs to start. Elemental Illusions had a few possible sources in her collection, but there were better stealth branches. It had been wonderful at the time for giving both combat and stealth, but now she could consider better options to mix in immediately.

She also had Infiltrator STs she had used before. Mystical Agility from there would be better if she was capable of jumping, as that was a required part of the best skills on that branch, but it at least was worth considering for the possibility of getting to the final skill fairly quickly. One hundred sixty five points to max the branch gave the final ability to literally walk or run on the air, although you couldn't stand still in mid air, and that almost seemed to be a reasonable amount of points to build up with how things were going. It came with a couple of other skills that were both useful in combat missions and infiltration ones, but probably not good enough to get right now.

Those STs also had a much better choice in the long run. The Cloaking branch on its own wasn't the most advanced 'hide from sensors' method, but the better branches were much rarer and usually Cloaking was part of the best combinations of multiple branches for the effect. It had skills for changing body color dynamically, visually cloaking yourself, heat sensor cloaking, sonar based sensor cloaking, and another great maxed tree skill where you could briefly move through solid objects. It also was five points cheaper for the entire tree than Mystical Agility.

"Is the Ethereal branch better than Cloaking now that we can just put it on a Skill Vine?" Flamescale asked Yellow-Glow where she found him alongside Sledge in their shared base area. It was yet another interesting branch on that front, one that gave a better way to go through walls with a couple notable downsides.

"Being Ethereal doesn't actually do anything about how easy it is to see you," Sledge pointed out first from where the pangolin was inspecting and cleaning his weapons. "But if you don't need the Cloaking skills for that then it is just plain better."

"Have you tested the fully leveled Liquid Compression skill?" Yellow-Glow asked thoughtfully as her friend turned from the database he was going over. "Because you just gave me the horrified idea of a single drop of you going through walls."

"I have tried it, I'd probably need Better Flow maxed to get anywhere at a reasonable speed. Movement speed scales with compressed size, I can barely move right now as a drop, unless it is downhill," Flamescale specified. "I wouldn't want to try that while phased out of reality. Actually, that is an argument for Mystical Agility."

"That is one I am getting," Sledge said with a nod at her for that possibility. "Being able to move more effectively is my best way to improve at the moment, although I suspect I have more space for branches than you do, Flamescale."

"From what I have heard you possibly had the least open space for branches out of all Entities," Yellow-Glow noted. "I still have not seen anyone else who has found a seven branch, even with the new counting. Multiform is also still nearly unheard of to find. I have seen many who have been going for the Fluid Pestilence tree to try to get it among those I've contacted about the Void Grafters. It is the most well known way to find it, and it appears that the Mucin Skill Trees have Titanic Scale in its place as the rare giant monster skill."

"There are more people willing to put up with being liquid?" Flamescale asked, without much hope for confirmation.

"There are more ways to use Multiform without Liquid Body," Yellow-Glow corrected her as she expected. "It isn't common to find a way to use it otherwise, but there is more interest in many bodies at once than being fluid. The few who have found it so far have been upset with my 'claim' that I know someone who likes it. Although at least one of them said it is too good to pass up even with the mental downsides."

"Maybe I should just wait until I have enough Grafters to make every branch that catches my interest into Skill Vines," Flamescale sighed happy for a lighter topic and the moment of rest. It was very welcome in the part of the Season where she started just waiting for things to calm down again.

---

[Author's Note]
Some overall progress and lore here. We're getting closer to the end of the arc, and I have a bit of work to do for the next few chapters to get them how I want them.

 

[E.I.G.]

I want to thank everyone who has helped with the "Void Grafter/Skill Graft" name confusion issue. Even though the alternative I have come up with isn't any of the specific ideas proposed in the threads, it did lead to me actually considering some more options that gave me something I think sounds nice. That option is "Skill Vine", because like a tree it grows and splits, but it is notable smaller and often found growing on top of trees.

Next up is a test of that, so for the moment I have only updated the latest chapter with the new term to see if it works for people before I make edits to the rest of the story to reflect this change:

Fluid Pestilence (Sci-Fi, LitRPG) Original

--- 26 - Grafting --- The Void Nexus had grown since its release with a lot more Void Entities using it for a lot more reasons. Flamescale could see a few of the food places from before now had proper shop fronts and signs, along with even longer lines. The weapons sale locations were also more...

forums.sufficientvelocity.com

Edit 5/11/2024:
Updates have been completed.

 

[E.I.G.]

--- 27 - Ancient Citadel ---

Flamescale was at maximum possible compression, down to just a drop, for three different six headed bodies. Those tiny and vulnerable drops of herself were carefully making their way across the small Citadel that was their current target. Her goal was to find and interface with some of the local ancient database systems, and the current question was if it was at all possible to infiltrate one of these living facilities long enough to get the data they wanted.

"How is it going?" ThunderFang asked from the single inner ring bastion they had taken as part of this plan. Yellow-Glow, Sledge, Stone, and Jovian were also nearby for either the second phase of the plan, or for plan B if this attempt failed.

"Slow, I knew I should have leveled Better Flow, but the hacking levels seemed like a better idea, and I thought a fast drop of me would be more noticeable than a slow one," Flamescale confessed. They had done some missions to get enough points for her to max out Liquid Compression, and to get Hacking Processes and Override Speed up to the point that Left-and-Right were confident they would be fast enough for this plan. "I think one drop has been spotted, and I am about to pull that one back. If they hit me with anything while I am like this I'm losing the body."

"In that case we should get ready for plan B," Stone said with a smile, the short human now had a brand new weapon that Flamescale didn't recognize. It appeared to be 319 made, but she suspected it was a prototype the weapon expert had found during their short break. "ThunderFang, how are those shields you got?"

"Expensive," the dragoness bluntly declared, and Flamescale had dismissed getting the branch as her next Skill Vine for that exact reason. It was a branch that cost over three hundred points to max, with lots of high cost skills. "I've got full base shield strength and four shield nodes, but I only have the first level of the node strength multiplier, and I can't extend it over other people yet. I'm looking forward to being able to just stick my nodes on something or someone else, but I need those to be extra nodes instead of the only ones I've got." ThunderFang flexed her wings and bit and showed off how those four nodes were located at the midpoints and tips of the forward edge of the spiky limbs. "Although I'm thinking of moving my wingtip nodes to my chest and back. The size boost gives them a lot with the full base strength skill, but I'm probably going to get one side broken and then be out of luck with this layout. Unless I make the wingtips into the first ones I can send out?"

"Well, we might have wanted that before we needed plan B," Jovian said to get them back on track. "Do we have the nuclear option in the worst case scenario ready?"

"As long as we can hold a location long enough," Flamescale specified with a nod towards the fox. "We have a three sided Citadel, and Left-and-Right's latest information says that one fifty megaton is going to be enough. We have two of them ready to go. Although Left-and-Right have asked me to take over a Citadel for them, and we lose out on that if we need to go for plan C."

The main goal was to get a map of this newly found local bastion network to find the most critical sites, and more importantly work out for the guides if it was easier to run a fast infiltration of the Citadel to get those maps. At minimum if they could explain how to get those maps so that they could be sold later by groups that followed those guides. The majority of the Void Entity inhabited instances had turned out to have already called out for groups to clear their networks, and from the inquires they had made it seemed the exceptions had simply assembled their own groups.

It wasn't the Season's issue solved just yet, Flamescale considered with some annoyance as she discovered smaller Mucin were already present at the access locations that she had been looking for. While fixed Entity locations were safe, there was a new display in the Nexus that listed captured Void Entities and a research for the ability to track them more directly. It was possible that this mission would assist directly with that research, but a better outcome would be to be able to get the maps of where the ancient void labs were to send groups after them.

"Have we worked out what size of Mucin means what on the smaller scale?" Flamescale asked Yellow-Glow and Left-and-Right at the same time, if not the same place. "I think I've got some of the first size we saw at the nearest consoles." She paused for a moment to get an answer, but cut Yellow-Glow off. "No, that's bad enough. We need to go to plan B."

"We do not," Left-and-Right still answered her question shortly while the Entities elsewhere prepared for a major conflict. The two snake heads were nearly entirely distracted by their work. "The most we have discovered is that the mindless ones we have seen made so far are not proper Mucin. They cannot become independent creatures, so if you are finding those it might be a hint that the Citadel has the key to that creation process."

"I am not looking forward to this," Yellow-Glow commented as he came close to one of Flamescale's bodies while she split off another extra body as another drop from one of the infiltrator drops. "Everyone, main target is the domes, try not to destroy the crystal data cores elsewhere. We want to minimize the data loss here."

Flamescale's hacking skills were taking away points that could go into combat skills at the moment, they were set up to try this infiltration instead of the minimum that Sixteen wanted for his troops, but they were not up to Yellow-Glow's now augmented hacking ST. Even with the difference between biological and mechanical hacking, he had far better ability to get the data fast, and they were on a time limit. As a result the plan was to take advantage of the fact that Flamescale could transport living creatures now.

Her three infiltration bodies were the first to act, growing to their full size again as quickly as she could in order to draw attention away from the gate the rest of the group was using. With that gate breach then distracting from the fourth and fifth bodies that were being used as a method to get Yellow-Glow inside. When she was at fifty meters and still growing her Lava Vipers began to emerge from her bodies and clear the nearby buildings to establish some infected material locally for her to return herself when she lost bodies. Her sixth body was at the backup disposable bastion where her forces had the small number of nuclear weapons for the worst case scenario, and to let her reform faster there.

"Sending in the Rhizo scouts," Sixteen declared while Flamescale approached full eighty meter size for her three distraction bodies. "Hopefully these don't turn against us," he added with clear preference that they were lost that way. Flamescale wasn't the only one who was unhappy with ThunderFang's last minute suggestion that they use the Rhizocephala production facilities for more combat force production. While the cannon and laser Rhizo were stronger than any weapons Flamescale currently had in large numbers, they had the downside of being Rhizo. Flamescale did not want to be commonly associated with those creatures.

Unfortunately for both of them, but fortunately for the progress of the mission, those Rhizo were not captured by the ancient infection, so they were followed up by the first wave of Flamescale's laser Rhizo. Which quickly became the main target for the larger ancient ground force. That gave everyone more time to get their real objectives done, and Flamescale's forces could keep up a force of this many of those units for a while longer.

Although eighty meters was still tiny compared to the massive and somewhat strange looking Mucin that dominated the air above the Citadel. The rangefinder in Flamescale's cybernetics reported the highest point she could track of the creature at just over two kilometers, larger than any warship she had ever seen. It was also strangely gooey, with very few crystal components unlike the smaller variations that seemed mostly linked to the weapons along its body. Weapons that it seemed almost reluctant to use, as it was only a limited number of crystal shards that destroyed her first six headed body to be lost instead of even just a single missile. Admittedly shards that were comparable to the heavy weapons of local capital ships at minimum, but it also should have been able to fire those more rapidly.

"Well, some good news," ThunderFang said over comms while everyone got started. "The big one only has one head. So it can't focus on all of us at once." Flamescale briefly spotted the dragoness flying between two buildings from one of her larger bodies. "Bad news, I am not making any progress against it. I think it has enough regen that blowing up the place would take less firepower."

"First wave of Rhizo in place, starting to see what we can grab from the terminals we are finding," Sixteen said over comms as well, one of her few Vipers with a communications cybernetic to keep in touch with the Entities. "Hopefully my team will help keep them from tracking you down, Yellow-Glow."

Flamescale didn't make out Yellow-Glow's reply, too focused on getting six headed bodies out of the buildings Sixteen's teams had taken and replacing them as the massive Mucin focused entirely on her as the largest target. She honestly started to consider going down to five or even just four heads to make for a smaller target, but the main goal was a distraction and her Reformation Vine provided a faster way to help replace the larger bodies. Although it required a constant supply of Lava Vipers, that was available from their many hives back on controlled bastions, but took away from the forces Sixteen had to keep the smaller enemies busy. The main upside was that her new size allowed for her vapors and residue to leave a lingering area of effect that limited how the ancient forces could move for a while wherever her bodies were taken out.

"We have found a really big dome connected to the big guy. Stone is putting some heavy charges on it while we have the chance," Jovian commented on the line next. "It seems to be in a small factory complex, or something similar at least. Possibly making new Rhizo. We are going to scout the rest quickly before we trigger the charges. Maybe try and take out most of the stuff here."

"A small number of Mucin just left through a gate as I passed by," Sledge then warned everyone. "Expect reinforcements to begin to arrive from the gates soon."

"Acknowledged, Sledge, I will see if we can spare some cannon and missile Rhizo to act as guards," Sixteen replied quickly. Then Flamescale was distracted by the core Mucin hitting two of her bodies one after the other with just enough shards of crystal for each of them. Which was followed by an attempt to take out ThunderFang that the dragoness partially avoided by turning into a cloud.

"Large dome down," Jovian informed all of them by the time Flamescale was back with a new set of five of her largest possible bodies to draw fire. "The building is clear and-" Whatever the fox Entity was going to say was cut off by the impact of crystal missiles launched from the core Mucin. The sound of the missile's detonation was heard before any of their group could really react properly, with Flamescale just barely able to track them for at most a couple of seconds as the two missiles went towards one of the larger structures near one of the Citadel's points.

The entire building fell in the wake of the strike, with a couple of nearby structures also clearly heavily damaged. There was a moment of quiet as the entire platform of the Citadel shook from the collapse and everyone who wasn't partially liquid or airborne had to keep their footing. Unfortunately the largest opponent and many of the ancient forces were also partial liquid, so that wasn't as much of an opportunity as it could have been for Flamescale and her Vipers.

"This is Stone, Jovian just took a capital ship missile to the face," a pained voice cut in to the comms line with a cough. "I'm buried under the rubble. I'm going to try and play dead for a bit while I recover, and then see if I can figure out where I am. There were some tunnels we found while we were clearing out the factory components, and I think I fell into one of them."

"Guys, we might have a problem," Flamescale had to say next, because things were not working out normally. "You might need to move sooner than that, Stone, because my infection has started to take hold near the impact site." She could even feel some of the Rhizo in that area changing sides despite the presence of a few Mucin that were not. If she wasn't missing something she might have even grabbed one of those intelligent Mucin somehow.

"Core Mucin's health is falling, get ready for more retaliation," ThunderFang declared and Flamescale was able to see the dragoness dive into a nearby structure for a moment. "Sledge, how close are you to the next major dome. I think I know where the farthest one is, but if I go for it I won't be able to help with the ground forces."

"I've located one, but we might want to take them out sooner rather than later," Sledge advised, and Flamescale made a choice.

"Sixteen, get forces ready to get everyone out. That thing might try and take the whole platform out if it is dying, and we need whatever data we got to survive that," she ordered on the comms to keep everyone informed, and to get Yellow-Glow ready to leave. "ThunderFang, verify where the other one is. The layout I'm seeing makes me think we have three of those domes here, and I want us to be ready to take out the last one quickly after the second goes down."

"We lost some data archives when the first was destroyed," Yellow-Glow quickly cut in. "Before the destruction of the structures themselves. Give me two more minutes before you break another, and then get me out."

Two minutes was a long time in this context, but data loss from dome destruction was a new problem to handle. The core Mucin's health stopped falling before the first minute was up, at about one third of its prior maximum and with a notable decrease in overall size. The implications weren't hard to see, and it explained some of the early reports from Entities that had tried to take Citadels so far. Although most Entities so far had just tried to level the Citadels until they hit enough stuff to break the location entirely in the 'successful' attempts their group had read about so far, with the less successful ones not surviving the core.

Two minutes was also long enough for the ancient reinforcements to arrive in quantity. Asteroidea units were particularly common, and seemed to be trying to move toward the section where the destroyed dome had been. That quickly tied up Flamescale's heavier Rhizo forces, as the starfish shaped constructs were shielded and able to defend nearby ancient forces with those shields.

"I'm out of the rubble and into the tunnels, but probably need extraction," Stone said just before the time was up. "My gear didn't take the impact well, and this is getting expensive. I remember why I stopped taking good guns into the season three stuff, and that didn't have orbital firepower unless you really messed up."

"Two minutes are up, Sixteen, get Yellow-Glow and Stone out of there. Sledge, hit it," Flamescale ordered even as she was forced to start to engage the ancient reinforcements instead of the core Mucin due to their increasing numbers. "ThunderFang, get ready for yours. We want to see the reaction, but not to lose anyone to it."

It was impossible to miss when the next dome went down. The core Mucin clearly and bluntly went from trying to gain control over the situation to trying to clear them all out regardless of the damage. Flamescale luckily took most of that focus, with a full barrage of the capital scale missiles briefly clearing her from the field entirely as all five bodies took direct hits. When she got back with quickly made replacements she found about half the structures leveled and ThunderFang in the middle of a dive towards what was likely the final target.

"Data gathers are out, but we lost most of our mobile forces that were on the surface," Sixteen reported. "I'm sending what we have left to grab Sledge and get out. Sledge, see if you can get to those tunnels, most of what we have left is trying to use them, but we can't hold if the big one is attacking directly."

"Hitting the third dome now," ThunderFang declared loudly over the sound of massive crystal weapon strikes and collapsing coral. The decrease in the core Mucin's size had impacted those weapons to a degree, but with the scale it started even losing over a third of its size still left it at the scale of the largest warships. "Core health is decaying again, faster this time." Flamescale's infection was also progressing much more rapidly as well.

"Take out the last one," Flamescale declared as she lost two more bodies. She wasn't sure how many she had lost so far, but getting her Reformation Vine finished was important given how much the max health decrease from reforming was affecting her up time in this sort of fight. Although if they finished this Citadel off she would definitely have enough points to finish the important skill in the branch.

It was easy to tell when the final dome broke, because Flamescale's infection suddenly started to overtake the entire site much more quickly, despite the presence of a few smaller Mucin that she knew had arrived from other parts of the bastion network. Mucin that now were falling back to the gates in terror, and seemed to be attacking the gates they were not using on their way out even as the Asteroidea and Rhizocephala that had come with them seemed to also be falling to Flamescale's infection. It was also plainly clear that something here let her take over those intelligent Mucin too.

Flamescale still had to focus her attention on the Core Mucin, with some help from ThunderFang as soon as the dragoness emerged from the structure before one final wave of large missiles could level it. The construct's health was falling at a speed usually seen from mortal wounds, with it now seeming to collapse instead of shrink. Green goo flowed down the various paths of the half ruined Citadel, some of it turning red as it passed over sections Flamescale had control over.

It quickly became clear that the Core also could not reload its crystal weapons at all anymore, and as the last of the outgoing gates were cut off by the ancients themselves Flamescale actually saw and felt her red infection overtake the Core Mucin in the moments before it completely collapsed into just a flood of what was now Flamescale's goo.

---

"Ten points for clear, twenty five for capture, forty for the destruction of the core, for a total of seventy five points to complete a Citadel," Flamescale specified as they gathered again to go over the end results of the attempt. Left-and-Right had brought in a technical team to go over the remains without being ordered to do so, while Jovian and the other Entities who had not been at the site at the end had returned. "Along with three more Grafters, and a new ST I hope other people got."

"If you mean the massive nine branch 'Ancient Core' skill tree, yes we all got one," Jovian specified from where the fox was looking over the rubble of the structure he had been killed in. "Given mine gives Crystalline as a secondary branch we probably need to add that as a valuable reward."

"It has Titanic Scale as a base skill, although mine only had seven branches," ThunderFang pointed out. "It gives the first level of Titanic Scale just for having it, I think that says a whole lot about that thing. This is the big puzzle boss reward. Which is really weird, right?"

"Left-and-Right are going over what exactly was going on, but the initial results are looking like the Core Ancient Computer was being made larger than normal instead of just naturally that size," Flamescale pointed out with a glance over to Yellow-Glow for confirmation.

"I suspect that the domes themselves were a part of its overall function, even before the loss caused the destruction," Yellow-Glow confirmed. "It is clear that a significant part of the local database was actually the memory of that core construct. I hope that we can find more data in the crystal cores that survived the fight, but this attempt seems to have been a failure overall. The attempt to distract from data extraction escalated the overall battle too far."

"If the goal was mostly to extract the network map, then we at least should be able to pull that off," Sixteen argued from where the Vipers were clearing debris. "I had the hacking teams focus on that, and with the way the big one reacted I think we can pull off a raid to just get the map and get back out. We were holding pretty easily until Jovian and Stone took out the first dome, and my teams had that data by then."

"Show me the data extracts," Yellow-Glow requested and walked over to that group.

"So, how did the rest of the network look?" Flamescale asked Jovian, who had been most of the way back using the bastions when the gates had finished being destroyed.

"Controlled panic," Jovian answered quickly. "I got there just in time to see Rhizo breaking gates, and that was after hitting a couple of larger than normal patrols. I think we need someone to clear out the rest of this one fast."

"I think I need to stop helping for a while," Stone admitted as he carefully repaired his current unique looking weapon. It had taken this mission better than the rest of his gear, which unfortunately could be harder to replace. "I'm not really that great with missions that end up facing orbital strike level attacks. Its the armor really, you just can't keep that stuff... Sledge, is your armor healing itself?"

"You take care of armor properly by getting a good armorer you trust," the pangolin declared. "Especially a Leaf that knows how to fit an auto repair system into lighter mechs. This is merely a patch job, and my armorer will be upset with me for the damage, but destruction is very unlikely. Skill Link and a regeneration skill assists there as well, but doesn't perform as nicely without the repair system to start things off."

"A partial success then," Yellow-Glow declared loudly enough to attract their attention. "This does show the information can be found quickly enough." Everyone paused to see if that was all he had to say. "I have a backup group to finish the clear of this network ready. If possible I would like to try this again with a focus on limited combat. The main goal for the moment is to get a better way to map these networks documented."

---

[Author's Note]
For anyone who hasn't seen the informational yet, there has been a revision to the name of the extra skill branch to 'Skill Vine' for the chapters starting at "23 - Rescues".
As for the chapter... I am hoping that this does work out in the long run. The battle here escalated faster than I wanted, but my characters weren't as cautious as my planned outline when it came down to it.
(It does not help that Jovian and Stone weren't characters yet when the outline was made.)

 

[E.I.G.]

--- 28 - Ancient Discoveries ---

Points had come quickly during the week after Flamescale got her first Citadel. That was simply a consequence of making a series of detailed guides on just what it took to take on ancient bastion networks with the least hassle. Enough points to finish her Multiform branch, which was honestly the biggest place to put points she had that helped with their current issue. Going from six heads to nine was over two hundred points, and she needed that for their next goal.

Clearing an entire bastion network was hundreds to thousands of points if you got everything you could out of one. Flamescale's group was sticking with just Citadel attempts and inner sites for the most part, but those were the biggest individual rewards, with even just extracting the map data from a Citadel and leaving giving five bonus points. Even though that didn't stack with a clear or capture it was still a steady reward for every Citadel they practiced against. Naturally that meant that she had finished her Reformation Vine a while before they were actually done working, and had time to start trying out a few others.

The Cloaking branch had been her next pick, and immediately reminded her why it was a branch to leave unused until you had more points. The base skill, Visual Masking, just let you change the colors of your body to match your surroundings. Not very useful if you needed any gear to do things, although possibly enough for the basics in her case. However, every other skill on the branch required you to max the first skill before you could start to level them, which meant that you needed twenty points overall before you could even think about using the other skills. Flamescale had still done enough missions to try all of those extra modes, but against the living infrastructure of the ancients the skills on that Vine were fairly useless, so it was being set aside until after they were done in bastion networks.

"So, did you pick Petrification for the intimidation factor, or was there more logic behind that Vine?" Jovian asked from near the obsidian statues of Rhizo. The full group was gathered again inside Flamescale's main R&D center for a new report on some quite serious findings.

"They do fit the rest of the decor," Stone pointed out with a long glance at the red goo and obsidian stone that had replaced most of the ancient coral. He actually looked like a dwarf for once, and Flamescale thought his braids and adornments looked much better drooping down either side of his head on long ears than just dangling from hair on a human face. "Did you really need to get rid of all the ancient stuff?"

"First, the Petrification branch is great for capture missions once you get the skill to turn targets back. It just isn't quite working out against the ancient forces," Flamescale argued with a sigh. "As for the way everything looks, that is actually just the long term effect of my control on ancient life forms. The Asteroidea in particular end up rather intimidating, although Rhizo don't change much. Something to do with the fact that they are Void creatures." Her Asteroidea were coated in her red goo with a thin obsidian shell under it, but below that was mostly the same structure as before, and damage revealed that quickly. "Apparently they take on aspects of their controller naturally, mine are probably a bit better looking than some people's. I've heard a horror story about a bastion covered with fur."

"I personally think my scales work rather well for my own bastions," Sledge countered with a laugh. "I guess I had not considered that not everyone has actually tried having a bastion yet. I think it is possible to control to a degree, but that might take looking into custom construction options. Those are still shifting a bit every couple of days, but the strange part is that the changes don't do much to the actual bastion. Just alteration to what we can add, and even then once something has been added it doesn't go away if the option goes away. Sometimes we cannot remove something at all after placing it."

"Likely a side effect of Void Entity rules interacting with Ancient Void Construct rules," Left-and-Right pointed out from where the twin headed Vipers were getting a display ready with Yellow-Glow. "We are ready for the presentation anytime the rest of you are willing to listen."

"Please excuse my army of Vipers, a lot of them are rude," Flamescale sighed at that. The good news on that front was that Sixteen was used to this group, and Squeaky didn't have a report that anyone other than Flamescale needed to hear. "To start off, we have investigated the Bio-Support branch that is found from Asteroidea." She nodded at a few tools and devices made while she was using that other new Vine. "The Healing Mist and Healing Connection skills are both nice medic skills, and we have verified that they both have been used by the starfish."

"I've been considering that one for a Vine myself," ThunderFang admitted thoughtfully. "How did the crafting skills work out?"

Left-and-Right gave Flamescale a dark look at that, because the researchers were convinced that getting that Vine was a waste of one of Flamescale's Grafters. "Bio-Fabrication can make a number of worse versions of stuff you find as a bio-tech skill, but in the form of stuff you can use without augmentation," Flamescale started to specify. "More levels apparently let you get better stuff, but it is a way to hand out healing units fairly easily. Bio-Construction is a standard custom construction skill, with a biological theme. Not that useful if you already have another construction skill you like better. Bio-Augmentation is weird, it basically lets you give out bio-skills to created creatures or locals. Probably not worth it without an army on your side."

"Okay, that sounds good enough for what I need- Wait, can you heal yourself with those first two skills?" ThunderFang quickly cut herself off.

"It can work like that, part of why the Asteroidea are so resistant to damage until their shell is broken, yet die quickly afterwards, is that they heal themselves quite rapidly until they take critical damage," Left-and-Right specified. "In them it is more a function of their internals being full of the fluid that produces the healing effect, and that evaporates into the mist when their internal temperature increases during active use of their jamming ability." The dragoness seemed quite happy with that result.

"So, did they fight Void Entities before? Because I'm still not sure how their stuff being 'Void' stuff works with that," Jovian questioned, with an obvious look at a rebuilt disruptor tower. "I don't see why they have stuff made for this if they were only around millions of years ago."

"The Void Collapse occurred between forty and two hundred thousand years ago, not a full million," Yellow-Glow specified with annoyance, more because of what they had found than with the question asked from what Flamescale knew. "We will get to the details of that topic later, but we have confirmed that there were Void Entities around at the time."

"To start with we should go over why we looked into the Asteroidea skill branch," Flamescale took back the topic. "We wanted to know what they can do, and with the core data stores we have worked out why they were developed. They were actually made as repair and construction units. The Void Rift Disruptor part of them is a relatively recent addition to them."

That gained the full attention of everyone present. "They added it to the Asteroidea," Sledge noticed aloud. "They didn't need to deal with Void Rifts for some time after they made those things, but those are Void Constructs."

"The bastion network is an artificial environment that matches the condition of the ancient homeworld prior to the Void Collapse," Left-and-Right started to explain the next major topic. "That includes the Void interference level of the area. With that and the records of the ancients we have confirmed that they were able to produce some Void related effects without Void Materials or a Void Entity to support the result. That is in fact how they gained access to their initial Void Materials without the industrial and scientific knowledge to create infusion devices. It is those methods that are currently used by the ancient processing facilities to create new Void Materials of inferior quality."

"Not 'refineries'?" Stone questioned thoughtfully. "Why not 'refineries', what are they doing that would make you pick something different on purpose now?"

"Because we've found seed vaults in the inner spokes and Citadels," Flamescale answered. "Large ones that we first thought were just more raw material storage. The ancients were agrarian, their entire civilization was based on farming plants. They just found out how to use what is basically magic to make plants that grow metals and other things we associate with advanced civilization. They are 'processing' instead of 'refining' because it is mostly taking plant matter that is unneeded off for composting or other uses, and then preparing it to be eaten by whatever artificial creature they used to make the final product."

"The true source of the destruction of the ancient civilization was the loss of all their Void augmented crops. Their original bodies died of starvation while their 'ascended' Mucin upper class was simply destroyed by the Void Collapse itself outside of the networks," Yellow-Glow explained grimly. "Although it appears from the records that the Rhizocephala are a Void altered combat life form engineered from their original species that does not have the same food requirements. Their idea of 'person' assumes that the majority of the body is only under the control over the person themselves, not biologically that person."

"Okay, I didn't understand that last part," ThunderFang admitted, and apparently not many of the rest of the group had looked up what 'Rhizocephala' meant given Stone and Jovian were similarly confused. "What does that have to do with them being like the Rhizo?"

"Rhizo themselves are actually a parasite nervous system attached to a crab-like body," Sledge said, and then unfortunately continued to describe the way Rhizo pirates sometimes replaced damaged bodies or upgraded to better ones after growing smart enough. Flamescale wasn't quite sure how to stop him, because at least it wasn't Yellow-Glow or Left-and-Right going into even more detail, and she knew one or both of them would just take over if she interrupted.

"Wait, they are an entire civilization of people who think body-jacking is normal?" Jovian questioned bluntly to cut off the tail end of the description. "How did that work out with first contact situations?"

"We are still analyzing their reaction to the local races," Left-and-Right answered. "Unfortunately they did not in fact encounter other intelligent life prior to the Collapse. Personally I am more uncomfortable with the side effect that detail had on their population. From analysis the bastion networks typically contained around one tenth of the total ancient population, with most of those being their administrative class inside the Citadel itself. Which sounded bigger until we were able to confirm that by their census they never broke two billion population."

"On hundreds of worlds, giving them very small official populations. However, it does not include their living creations, some of which might have been intelligent," Flamescale pointed out before anyone questioned too much how that could be. She wasn't convinced of those numbers herself yet, but all of the data they had found so far gave smaller numbers instead of the slightly higher one they arrived at from looking at the size of the sites. "Although we can't really tell where their line for person was."

"You have a couple of Mucin with minds from the Citadel," ThunderFang pointed out, and Flamescale was trying to avoid that particular topic. "Can't we just ask them? I mean, they did 'ascend' to be immortal right?"

"A few of the standard Mucin were caught in the effects of the core dying," Flamescale confirmed, because the side effects there were important to what Yellow-Glow wanted and everyone needed to know that the Citadel allowed for some ways to bypass the typical infection restrictions. "However, Mucin are not actually immortal. The only exception is the core, and the reason it died when we broke the domes is because those domes were the only reason it was still alive after all this time."

"What I had mistakenly identified as data storage units were actually something closer to remains," Yellow-Glow added with a glare at one of those 'devices' sitting nearby. "They are the fused remains of deceased Mucin, retained to allow the parts of their knowledge that could be retained after death to aid those who come after them. Only the core exists as a remnant of the ancient's empire in its original form, and it is the only source of the information I now desire."

"Is the 'last big mission' you wanted us for to try and take over a Core Mucin?" Stone asked with an incredulous tone that was honestly justified, and a jangle as his ears raised up to full height. "Are you serious?"

"The core's age makes it extra vulnerable to that sort of attack on the domes that support it," Flamescale specified, uneasy with the idea herself. "We can get the information on the current state of the bastion networks without an intact core, Sixteen has worked that mission out enough to do it without me. What we can't do is learn more about what caused the Void Collapse without at least taking control of those systems for long enough to extract the knowledge. I can't pull that off and distract the core at the same time, so Yellow-Glow will need to be guarded while I do that."

"I'm willing to help out on core distraction," ThunderFang agreed easily, which was a relief. Flamescale didn't think she could count on anyone going with this strange idea, but someone to help with the main distraction was honestly better than more defenders on the ground. "But, is it really that important to figure that out?"

"At this time it is unclear what caused the Void interference surge that destroyed the ancient empire," Left-and-Right immediately began to explain, because they had been ready for the question even if they didn't like it. "The worst case is that it is a natural phenomenon, possibly even a cyclical one, that threatens the world of your mortal lives. Another similarly hazardous option is that Void Entities that did not originate from the ancients were somehow the cause after being targeted by the ancient research efforts. Our findings of how Void Entities are formed give some details on what is possible there."

"Void Entities are minds and rules impressed upon the Void, the same way this location is material and rules imposed upon it," Yellow-Glow started to go over those findings unhappily. "The difference is that those minds cannot be attacked outside of the rules they operate under. If the rules we are made with do not allow for our destruction, then we cannot be destroyed." To Flamescale he was clearly avoiding the news on that front he didn't like. "Which is where the issue of difficulty in making a Void Entity appears. Ancient records show that it is possible to create a lesser Void creature with rules that allow for destruction, but they end up unstable. Similarly having rules too loosely defined also results in unstable creatures."

"Rules that are too loose? Sure we... wait," Jovian laughed sarcastically, but then grew more serious. "Wait, we can't do a lot of things without following our rules. I need to go into the character creator to style my fur. We can eat, but we don't need to, which doesn't sound that big but it means that we don't have rules for eating."

"We have rules for eating, they just aren't about needing to eat," Flamescale had to bring up with a thought to how she had skills to clarify how exactly she could eat just about anything. "But, all of the stuff we do is defined by the rules of Void Strike. And from what we found, there are rather big limits to what the developers can do to alter those rules. The game was made to be updated, but they can only go so far. That's why it is taking so long to get some features."

"'The game'," Stone quoted her dubiously. "Why are you calling it a game now of all times," the dwarf complained more than genuinely questioned.

"Because the most common source of viable Void Entities within the ancient records relates to those who misused Void materials for the purpose of playing a game," Left-and-Right answered anyway and they all grew more quiet as he continued. "It is the most common and viable way to ensure a sufficient set of rules exists from the recovered data, although they do phrase things such that they believed a degree of influence from it being a game was also a factor. Games have clearer rules than reality, and the easiest way to attempt something is to begin with a game or simulation of the thing with tighter rules than reality."

"You found a reason why this could have actually been a game to start with," Sledge said for the group. "This is a known consequence of trying to make a Void based game."

"It is possible to arrange for the conditions without starting with a game," Yellow-Glow argued sharply, then sighed. "However, I will need more data on the topic to find a way to rule out that possibility, and it is looking unlikely now. I need that core data in order to proceed from here."

Flamescale knew that news would cause a bit of an issue, although she wasn't sure how exactly it would be taken by the others. The disagreement between herself and Yellow-Glow meant they didn't talk much about it with the rest of this group. Left-and-Right had taken the news rather well, actually it seemed most of her Vipers were slightly happier with the idea that it was all a side effect of trying to make games, although she had not worked out why yet. Brief looks into their minds since the discovery weren't helping.

ThunderFang once more didn't seem surprised, but it was also clear that the dragoness also worked with Synch-Tech and understood better from that. That seemed to put her with Sledge, who did know the arguments to some degree. Both seemed to just be waiting for more information than that.

Jovian on the other hand seemed to be trying to find a trick. "What kinds of games were they making that caused this sort of thing if they didn't have computers?" the fox asked the question that wasn't that great to answer.

"We recovered some of them," Flamescale unfortunately had to report. "It is much worse to become a Void Entity for a game where losers end up turned into stones. Not like those Rhizo I petrified, actually turned into rocks." They were still trying to find the specific rules of that game, and if there was a way out of being a rock or not. "For the most part they are fairly primitive games. Lots of symbolism and superstition. Okay, we might just hope it was only superstition."

"We have some of them," Stone said slowly now looking at the few pods located nearby, although not the specific ones that were being used at the moment. Those were in a more secured location. "Can anything be done to help them?"

"There are unconfirmed reports of the possibility to switch between sets of rules," Yellow-Glow said bluntly. "It is possible that a goal for older Void Entities might be to promote the creation of a new rules that they can transfer themselves to using."

"The idea there being that we were encouraged to make Void based games in order to create a new kind of Void Entity that those Void Entities could become," Flamescale admitted to go with the 'it was both' option that both of them hated being very possible now. "We need more information from the Core to know more about what other kinds of Void Entities were around back then. So we can work out if there are any risks from them."

"So, you think we could be... 'transferred'," ThunderFang said quietly with a thoughtful nod as the dragoness looked directly at Flamescale. "We do need to know more about that."

"Okay, that convinced me to help with this madness," Stone admitted with a sigh. "Although I am not going with this Lunar dwarf body again. I won't criticize what I've read about their ears again after putting up with what this feels like."

"What, you don't like longer ears?" Jovian questioned with a deliberate flick of one of his own foxy ears. "Fine, I'll go along with this mad plan if it helps us figure out how not to collapse the entire Synch-Tech industry. I need that to keep working in case I die."

---

"Meeting went long then, Boss?" Squeaky asked after the planning session for the group's last big job for the season. "I've got two groups to look over, and three ships that were in good enough shape. Not great ones, but we're on a budget at the moment, and Left-and-Right have promised me some use of the Asteroidea to try and patch the worst one up a bit."

"Are we getting a shipyard before we get their new gate-to-point prototypes?" Flamescale questioned curiously as she inspected the area they were in. Prefabricated and other standardized construction materials had been acquired and assembled in one of their bastions to give the appearance of a mundane location to interview new recruits and interact with the locals of various instances. A location chosen instead of the sites they possessed in a few instances now because they didn't intend to recruit from instances they actually interacted with regularly.

Flamescale wanted a clean break for any new Lava Vipers. As little link to their origin instance as possible, and it turned out that Squeaky and the others agreed with the concept. They were not creatures of any single instance, and they were not the locals they used to be either. It also avoided some issues with people looking for what happened to those who signed up.

"A basic level of repair and refit is possible with just a basic dock," Squeaky replied bluntly. "Now, do you really need to check everyone's minds before we change them?"

"I want them to know what they were getting into properly, even if I have to push that knowledge into their heads myself," Flamescale declared, a statement that honestly was less of a threat in a universe where the 319 were a common sight than back among humanity. Admittedly it was also much more literal, but less threatening because of that common ability. "I also want to avoid recruiting anyone who isn't giving up their life knowingly." Squeaky gave her a glare. "If they are already as good as dead they aren't giving up any life. There is a reason I can turn victims back before that point."

"Did you really need to eat all of us the first time, Boss?" Squeaky finally questioned directly.

"You've met Sledge, he was in charge of getting rid of the place," Flamescale specified, although it was more accurate to say that Squeaky had a tendency to help Sledge with destruction the few times they had worked together. "Besides, I think I made out well taking you all instead of just killing you all."

"Oh right, it did end up nuked, never mind," her quartermaster sighed. "Just through here for the first group. They started complaining about the smell a little bit ago."

The two of them did not go into the room with the collection of possible recruits, but instead a viewing room next to it where they could see the crowd without being seen. This had been the plan the whole time, with Squeaky talking with this group directly before their conversion, and then Flamescale only had a chance to actually meet them on their tasks at most. She honestly had not met most of her Lava Vipers properly, and also wasn't sure that she wanted to try and know all of them. That so many were now extensions of her existence was awkward enough without the reality that she was not a natural or trained leader.

"Fine, unaware, spy, spy, cheater, fine, unaware, spy, fine, fine, unaware spy," Flamescale began to list as she inspected the minds of the infected recruits one by one.

"Just give me an overlay," Squeaky complained. "Huh, that is a lot of spies, although not as many unaware as you thought." Flamescale was in fact surprised by the number who were both fully aware that they were being changed into another 'species' and not going to see their old lives again. Some who genuinely knew the full issues were actually among the spies, but not many and those few wanted out of their situation with their lives.

The majority of the spies knew enough to think they could possibly get information on the new 'species' out again even after a change in life, but not enough to realize there was a Void Entity involved. Those were not getting a mental push of the full consequences. Flamescale didn't actually need more spies, she had plenty already from places she had attacked so far and honestly would rather train new ones instead of just taking them. That was the sort of thing that fit her desired skill set after all.

"Are any of the spies any good at what I need them to do, or are they just here to spy?" Squeaky asked once the overlay she requested was in place. Flamescale modified the results slightly. "Ugh, I hate spies faking skills. A minor database implant just to know how to answer all of my questions?" Flamescale might have included notes for the particularly terrible options. "Great, I'm going to need at least four groups at this rate."

"That's less than I expected," Flamescale admitted, although it was mostly because there were more aware options here than she expected. "Also, don't count out the unaware just yet. I still need to see how they react."

The answer was that it instantly turned the room into a very heated discussion of just how some of those inside had been aware of the real issue, and also a sizable number of spies that now clearly wanted to back out. Something she would deal with using a bit of memory modification for the ones sent back without a new existence.

"Flamescale," Squeaky started then, her name not used commonly any of the Vipers. "Left-and-Right have said that it may be possible to turn us into Void Entities, and that Yellow-Glow agrees."

Flamescale considered the implied question if she agreed with that assessment too. "Left-and-Right don't entirely understand Synch-Tech and its properties yet. Yellow-Glow doesn't want to admit that Void Strike started as a game," she began. "The list of conditions that result in unstable Void Entities matches a number of deliberate things Synch-Tech developers try for, because they make it so you don't end up with an endless synch. It is hard to break one of those, you need to find the Void Material that is the target of the synch, if one exists."

"Alright, that is not a 'no'," Squeaky noticed carefully. "What are they missing?"

"You can be in more than one Synch-Tech link at a time. I doubt that 'transfer' is the right word for getting a new set of rules. More likely you become more than one Void Entity at the same time," Flamescale admitted. "I am not sure what exactly would happen to you, or even to me, if you became any kind of Void Entity, but I am confident you would still be one of my Lava Vipers."

"Huh, so I'd still have to put up with not having legs," Squeaky grumbled, somewhat lying but more accurate than Flamescale really liked.

"I have to put up with having them right now," Flamescale pointed out, not the first time she really admitted that out loud, but possibly the most she felt the issue this strongly. "I can see about alternatives after the next Citadel."

---

[Author's Note]
We are getting close to the end of arc 2 now. Here we have some more answers, but just enough to show where they need to find the answers they really want.

 

[E.I.G.]

--- 29 - Season Final ---

It was Flamescale's first time at nine heads. Her first time at a scale that was so large it was almost useless against locals. Her Crystal Weapons were monstrously strong at this scale, able to outright destroy warships with repeated hits, but not anywhere near fast or agile enough to hit targets in orbit from the ground to pull that off in most practical situations. Her laser weapons were another story, those had a possibility of doing some damage due to reaching a size where calling them 'rifles' was just silly.

It was a scale where the two kilometers of a Core Mucin was only a bit more than three times her six hundred forty meter size. Something only ThunderFang could exceed with the dragoness' maxed Titanic Scale branch that put ThunderFang at over a kilometer. A scale where the three of them, the Core, Flamescale, and ThunderFang, seemed almost like the only creatures present.

Which actually matched with her bodies on the ground. She could not fit nine of those colossal forms on even the largest Citadel, so she had extra bodies to spare for lower level conflict below that of titans. Bodies who could barely make out what was happening between the largest fighters present. At the scale of the rest of the group, and where she was going with 'only' forty meter five headed bodies, the largest might as well just be moving walls of goo instead of creatures.

That was the point of course. Having bodies large enough to actually distract the Core was their only hope to take a Citadel's full 'database' intact. As long as the nine headed Flamescales and ThunderFang kept that up the five headed bodies could support the ground force without drawing heavier firepower.

"Should I even ask what fighting that thing at that size is like?" Jovian complained as one of Flamescale's five headed bodies cleared the pair of laser Rhizo that had cornered him. "You aren't distracted by being up there and down here?"

"It's almost like I'm in two different places," Flamescale admitted, and then pulled him into a nearby building to avoid a surge of red goo that nearly enveloped them. "Honestly, I don't even know which me that was right now."

They were close to the first major dome that Yellow-Glow was trying to capture for data extraction. Flamescale wasn't sure what ST he had added the Mechanical Conversion branch to, or even if he had turned it into a Vine instead, but she did know that it had enough hacking capabilities to make full use of the branch. The Mechanical Conversion branch started off with Mecha Body, a single level skill that altered you into a machine, or more accurately made it so you needed to use a machine character given that wasn't as restricted as being made out of goo was for base character options. The next skill was Flesh to Metal, which was actually just a petrification variant that turned a biological target into solid metal with five levels to make the process faster.

After that was the single level Machine Conversion skill that changed it into making the target into a machine version of themselves, something that on its own didn't actually make the target obey you. That required either hacking the resulting machine, or the next single level skill of Machine Control that added that effect automatically. Finally, there were four skills to allow the user to add components to their targets during the conversion. Including communications units, ballistic rifles, laser rifles, and if you got a lot of the skills you could give a limited number the ability to convert others.

It was a powerful branch in theory, but it used to have the major downside that it didn't appear on a Skill Tree with either hacking skills or combat skills. It was very rare and only found as the most interesting branch of an otherwise rather mundane ST full of basic stat boosts and equipment boosts. Now though, Yellow-Glow had clearly combined it with some kind of hacking ST, which allowed him more ability to edit the end results, and possibly even a construction branch given the small setup he had produced next to the dome they were starting with.

"I would like this a lot better if I wasn't trying to keep the locals from breaking things," Stone pointed over the comms out from where the dwarf was using one of Flamescale's Asteroidea as cover. She wasn't sure why he only had worthwhile armor for his new rabbit-like shape, but getting armor wasn't something she ever had much luck with given her body shape. "Are we really doing a protection mission for the place we're trying to capture? Those missions end up skipped for a reason you know."

"Maybe you skip them," Sledge countered with a laugh. "I personally enjoy finding just the best way to pull those off."

"I don't know how you pulled it off before we got Linked Gear," Jovian criticized as the fox left the building Flamescale had pulled him into. "But I have seen you pull a mobile shield unit out of storage to do that sort of thing, and it looked like you had practiced that move."

"Can we keep the main comms line clear," ThunderFang pointed out as she took a full barrage from the Core onto her shields, which at this scale and with her current node layout held reasonably as long as there was time between hits like that. "It is hard to tell where anything your size is at this size, and I need that more than commentary. Unless you want to find out what my friendly fire is like?"

"ThunderFang, you aren't exactly the best at keeping buildings standing at smaller scales," Flamescale said aloud from the closest colossal body she had to the dragon. The words at that scale distorted to the point of being almost impossible to make out by their smaller sized allies, which was both why they had not understood the Core last time they fought one and why they needed comms at that scale. "You're already rattling the rooftops."

"Intruders, rivals? Deploy force six to street eight," the Core Mucin said with the mixed tone of someone struggling to remember how words work and the automated response of someone who has done nothing but act as a living computer for ages. "How long has it been without a sun's light?" they then lamented slightly more quietly.

The larger fight was going in an interesting way. Flamescale and ThunderFang could do some damage to the Core with their basic attacks at this size. Flamescale's crystal weapons were actually undersized a bit for a Void Entity of her current scale, but she had far more of them due to her many heads. Against a warship fleet she could clear lighter targets quickly, but would need to focus her fire for anything her size or larger. ThunderFang on the other hand had basic attacks about the same level of danger as an entire barrage from one of Flamescale's bodies, and could possibly escalate to combination attacks able to cut down the largest warships should they connect. Flamescale could go farther with Linked Gear as well. The Core Mucin was in a middle ground of not hitting as hard as ThunderFang or as often as Flamescale, but still more than able to take down any one of their foes with focused firepower.

However, none of the colossal combatants were using full power on each other. Mostly to avoid damage to the Citadel itself as they all wanted it intact, but also because it would waste resources they needed to save for later. Even if Flamescale and ThunderFang went all out they couldn't take out the Core's massive health and regeneration before they ran out of high end attacks, and similarly the Core could not focus down on any one of the bodies they faced because the others would still be there. Even taking out ThunderFang was a temporary measure for it, as Flamescale could quickly get the respawned dragoness back to the fight. Something that the data from the other ancient sites confirmed the Core should be well aware of.

That left the small scale as where the actual conflict was happening. Despite Jovian's criticism, Sledge was a mobile attacker at the moment going after larger threats before they reached the lines of the rest of them. Taking on the Asteroidea and heavier Rhizocephala that were arriving steadily from the gates. Stone and Jovian were staying in the buildings immediately adjacent to the main dome, supporting Flamescale's smaller five headed bodies and her Lava Vipers.

"Conversion of first dome is completed," Yellow-Glow declared smugly over the comms line to end the silence that ThunderFang's pointed statement created. "Flamescale, my forces will be available soon enough to hold the site, begin taking the second."

"We aren't waiting to see if you can get everything from holding one?" Flamescale had to question, because they were actually holding fairly well and it was now well known that Citadels were best handled with minimal escalation.

"One dome is insufficient," her friend said simply, although the effect of the taken dome was now becoming obvious. The coral of the ancients was steadily converted to machine and metal outwards from the dome, and it was clear soon enough that at least some Rhizo creators were included in that as a number of mechanical versions of those creatures began to emerge from the structure and take the place of her Vipers.

"If we are trying to have two domes are we taking this side of the gates between them, the far sides, or do you want us to split our forces between the two locations?" Sixteen quickly questioned. "We have plenty of Lava Rhizo, and even a number of Asteroidea in reserve to set up some fixed defenses, but I need to know how thin we are making the lines. We only have so many Rhizo cultivators, and don't expect us to replace any lost Asteroidea." With the implication that they better not lose any of his Asteroidea. A part of Flamescale was happy that her Viper was now confident enough with this group to actually leave the implication in instead of keeping quiet about it.

"We take the second dome first, then the space between them," Yellow-Glow replied after a moment of consideration. "I will be spreading the control from both, but it is best to have that process begun from the other dome before we take the side of the Citadel." They picked a medium sized four sided Citadel for this project, one larger than what Flamescale captured but smaller than some that had been encountered.

"Are we moving normally, or by liquid?" Jovian asked, with the second option delivered in a dark tone that earned him a glare from one of the five heads on the body Flamescale was supporting him directly with. "Because I almost want to try being liquid normally to travel like that instead of being carried again. Being like the water in a shaking bottle has turned out to be much worse than just being a slime."

"Do not tempt me with that sort of thing. I'd like to see you with that kind of ST," Flamescale grumbled with a touch of amusement. "We need to move fast if we aren't taking those gates. Yellow-Glow has already been moved that way."

Flamescale had Lava Viper scouts across the entire Citadel in order to allow for quick repositioning, although admittedly with notable losses against the Rhizo guard force that remained behind the combat lines. Sixteen had decided not to use those to disrupt enemy formations due to the possible need to move around the site more quickly at times, and Flamescale trusted his judgment there. Already it let their entire force travel quickly to the second target.

"Rivals," the Core decided unhappily. "Actions match that of rivals from records." It still sounded old, but a touch more focused now. "Focus shifted to gates outside of rival controlled area."

"Yellow-Glow, please tell me you aren't making the core smarter," Flamescale had to ask in response to that increased focus.

"The ability for it to oppose us should decrease as we progress," Yellow-Glow sighed as he got to work on the second dome. The time it took to overtake something with the Mechanical Conversion branch was another downside, although the scale of targets here was a bigger contribution to that delay. It was slower than Flamescale's option would be if she could as easily overtake the dome itself, with the structures of the first dome still slowly turning to metal and machinery. "The third dome will be critical."

Flamescale paused at that statement, and she wasn't alone. "The plan is to copy the full archives," she pointed out in person. "Not to take the entire site with Mechanical Conversion."

"The plan is to acquire the entirety of the data present here," Yellow-Glow countered, and Flamescale sighed with all her bodies at her friend pulling a stunt like this again. That drew a look at Helen from the new girl at work, but Flamescale needed every head to properly show how displeased she was with that argument even if he couldn't see the human one right now.

"Why are you sighing?" Jovian asked without the benefit of hearing that private conversation. "What did the two of you say that made you sigh?"

"The data he wants is spread across all the domes," Flamescale lied to cover for her friend, who nodded smugly to tell her that wasn't actually a lie as far as Yellow-Glow was concerned. "Sixteen, would it be better to cut the core off, or to leave the gates open?"

"We have four pairs of two gates here," Sixteen specified, clearly thinking out loud. "If we can turn the rest of the local structures to our side that would let me hold them from this side more easily. I hate to say it but we probably want them open. They can't focus their forces as much if we can strike out of those at any time, and with extra machine Rhizo I can hold more easily."

"We take the gates between before we hit the third dome," Stone declared at that, the currently rabbit-like Entity had brought a number of automated turrets this time that he was setting up again. "If we are using that plan we need the fixed positions before we try and expand." The turrets were quick to set up, and even quicker to transfer with the help of her Vipers, but moving them with Liquefy Cargo put them in a state that needed some tweaks to their targeting. The weapons specialist had taken Sledge's advice on how to pair equipment with health regeneration, and then mostly went with plasma models for easier ammunition supplies. Lasers would be even easier with the quality of Stone's Power Link one-off skill, but Flamescale was quite sure Stone didn't have as many of those.

"We have a situation, a large force of heavy Rhizo is moving towards the captured area under large Asteroidea shields," Sledge informed everyone unhappily. Flamescale could just spot the pangolin Entity moving out of the way of such a group with one of her nine heads from the body that she just moved to physically block a number of attacks the Core now directed towards the converted structures. "I think they are trying to destroy it instead."

"The Core seems to agree with that idea. I might have to send a shield node to the dome," ThunderFang added with a flap in the same direction. "I only have two of those right now, and that takes away from my defenses too."

Flamescale moved her five headed bodies to take out the force Sledge spotted, letting the rest of the Entities and her forces handle the defense of the new target. Those were their heaviest weapons that both could be moved quickly, and also weren't so big that they couldn't risk them at street level.

"We just changed the large scale," she added on the comms as one of her nine headed bodies intercepted a volley of crystal missiles with her own crystal shards to keep their explosions away from the converted buildings. "The Core doesn't need to be careful about shooting down anywhere anymore, and that's only going to get worse as things progress." The good news was that the Core wasn't losing health and size this time, but that was the bad news too as without the loss of size they still could attack at full power. "I can only block so well without Minor Shape Change to let me spread out my size more."

"Speed of conversion should increase as we progress," Yellow-Glow offered. "The third should be faster than the second, and the fourth shouldn't take very long at all."

That didn't really help, Flamescale had only fit three nine headed bodies on the battlefield so far, and the Core was using their full fire rate against the one that was blocking the first dome. In fact there were already notable shrapnel hits on the secondary buildings that she couldn't stop. "I hope you don't need absolutely everything," she warned as she found that most of the new enemy Rhizo were missile variants. "Because we are losing some of these buildings unless it is a lot faster."

"Try to minimize damage to the structural elements. The tunnels below might cause secondary collapses if nearby buildings go down," Yellow-Glow reminded her. "The internals of secondary structures can be lost."

"I kind of wish the rest of the Vipers could get more heads too," Jovian complained with audible effort. "I had gotten used to how much firepower a forty meter snake monster was giving me. How long before we get those back over here?"

"You could always get your own Multiform, a Cerberus fox wouldn't be that silly," Flamescale suggested half-jokingly as she did her best to quickly clear the missile attack force so she could get back. "I'm going to have to respond to our biggest threats. We probably should plan for working without me for the rest of you if we are taking the whole place, I need to split my firepower for that."

"Error- Error? What is 'error'? Statement is wrong," the Core said with a new kind of confusion immediately after the second dome was captured. In fact that was what told Flamescale that the second had just been captured. "Thoughts are changed. New threat recognized."

"ThunderFang, shield domes on the two we haven't captured yet!" Flamescale said quickly as she realized what the creature was now planning as it turned to the domes they didn't have access to. "Sixteen, get Yellow-Glow to the other two fast, I'm going to make things crowded."

The Core had turned their weapons to the cores they had not taken yet, and Flamescale barely grew one of her five headed bodies to seven before half the Core's missiles could fire at the one she couldn't body block with an existing nine headed body. Seven heads still wasn't enough to survive that level of firepower, but it was barely enough to prevent the structures around her from being destroyed. ThunderFang's launched shield nodes slammed into the other two core buildings and extended a defensive field around them just a moment later, and the large scale fight shifted entirely to effectively keeping the Core from destroying itself before it could be captured.

A fourth nine headed body was made soon afterwards so Flamescale had one for each dome, and then a fifth that really did not fit at all to close to melee and just grab the Core. The ground team began to complain about how much of the surface she had drowned in her goo, but the Core had weapons that they could hurt themselves far more easily than they could afford. Contact with the other goo creature felt strange, an odd oil on water effect where both of them ended up clearly separate liquids, but still had parts flow into the other's overall location. It was an entirely different sensation compared to mixing with her own creatures and infected, although it was only unpleasant because of how strongly the Core struggled to turn its crystal weapons on themselves despite Flamescale physically stopping it.

It was a sort of physical contact that Flamescale suddenly realized she wished was less combative. That she knew somebody else who could be a separate goo creature who wasn't an enemy that only wanted to fight her when this close together. "Please stop, we don't want to kill you," she said relatively quietly to the Core from the body grappling with the other goo creature. "I know the alternative isn't much better, but..." She still didn't have a good argument for this one despite doing it to so many locals herself.

"Final dome is being taken," Yellow-Glow cut in over the comms before she could find something else to argue. "Just a few more seconds, conversion speed should be significant after it is taken."

"Alive is better than dead," Flamescale said, more to herself to convince herself that this was a good idea than to reassure the Core. She then backed off from the Core quickly as the conversion went even faster than she expected. The shift from biological to mechanical swept over the rest of the Citadel in just seconds, and worked its way up the Core to change it from green ancient infectious goo into what looked like a silvery liquid form of nanotech devices. "Sixteen, how are the gates?" she then asked over the comms to see what was happening.

"Its gone past the gates! Yellow-Glow what did you do?" Sixteen demanded as something major seemed to happen. The battle stopped with a harsh clatter as all of the ancient forces were put under Yellow-Glow's control.

It only took a couple of confused minutes for the answer to arrive, during which Flamescale spent a lot of time looking at the rather confused looking Mucin Core. "Yellow-Glow, I need you to tell me you didn't just capture an entire bastion network all at once while I had a finished Skill Vine equipped!" she declared at the sight of a mind boggling amount of points from that outcome. "Four hundred fifty three points, Yellow-Glow! That's more than enough to max just about any entire branch! Six grafters, a pile of junk so big- What was that!"

"Please wait, data connection overload occurring," her friend said unusually blankly.

"New controller is experiencing 'errors'," the Core told her with confusion of their own. "Everything is different, connection unfamiliar to new controller but also unfamiliar to self. Some systems recovering faster than before, please wait."

"This, was a terrible idea," Jovian pointed out. "At least most of us had stuff to finish on our Skill Trees, right? Mine's done for now, with some spill over that I lost now because of that being too much, but at least I got something."

"It was overkill for my Vine too," ThunderFang admitted tiredly. "Although I have enough to basically finish my shields now."

"My gear made it through, so I don't care if I missed out on points, this was a good win," Stone declared. "Now I can get out of this bunny getup."

"I had a new Skill Vine and quite a bit of room for other points," Sledge said happily, while Flamescale just quietly sighed at everyone missing the problem the Core just pointed out.

"You've been running around behind enemy lines hitting things, and you took a new Skill Vine?" ThunderFang questioned, and that was about as much of that argument as Flamescale was interested in hearing. Sledge had a Temporal Control branch now, and she knew how strong being able to move faster than everything else made you.

"Do you know how serious it is?" Flamescale asked the Core quietly while everyone else apparently got Sledge to explain how to be able to fight as best as possible without completed Skill Trees.

"I am doing alright, Flamescale," Yellow-Glow answered over the communications line instead. "I was not prepared for the control system to extend beyond the Citadel. The conversion went more quickly than I anticipated, and the ancient forces were not able to cut the gates in time. So no, I did not intend to have us get hundreds of points all at once."

"I think I am done with special missions for this season," she said to her friend. "I really think that this was a step too far, Yellow-Glow, and I really need a break from bastion networks."

"Agreed, this has been too many surprises, and I better have all the information I wanted now," he agreed strongly.

---

[Author's Note]
This is the planned climatic fight for Arc 2. Hopefully this was different enough from the last Citadel fight to be worth having two of them.