MC squeezed past the jump seats where his squad of ten sat secured on either side of the sub’s narrow corridor. Four Dyn and six Zevan. Three ex-knights, and three mages boasting fire, lightning, and barrier capabilities. If all went according to plan, the troops would see no action, but MC liked to cover his bases nonetheless. After giving his squad a once-over, he strapped into his own seat just aft of Edana at the helm.

Like most submarines, this one lacked windows of any kind, relying on advanced holoprojectors to simulate the surrounding scenery. An amalgamation of Dyn and human technology, it was both lighter and faster than any submersible humans had built.

This particular vessel also boasted advanced composite armor, but the same couldn’t be said for its weaponry. The illusion generator itself took up half the length of the sub, and they’d only completed construction of those yesterday. With the Sanctuary repairs going on, the Resistance engineers had only managed to mount half a dozen laser weapons that retracted flush into the sub when not in use. The onboard Zevan mages would provide the rest of their firepower if things went south. Hopefully, they never would.

The pale moonlight quickly fell away, and soon the world became black as the submarine descended into the lake’s depths. After diving for a minute, the lakebed revealed itself under the sub’s powerful floodlights.

“Depth: three-hundred feet,” Edana announced.

It didn’t take long to locate their target situated at the bottom like an enormous drain. Yet despite its size, it wasn’t nearly wide enough to allow the submersible to turn around once inside. The sub was equipped with both forward and reverse thrusters, but mistakes would be costly—a fact their pilot knew all too well. Luckily, Edana was as good of a sub pilot as she was at flying Reaver. She angled the sub ninety degrees down like a pen on its tip, then plunged them into the opening.

Edana shut off the sub’s exterior lights as soon as she discovered the tunnel, opting to use the sub’s AI simulations of their surroundings that projected imagery onto her visor. She handed MC his own visor, allowing him to ‘see’ the sub’s surroundings in real-time.

The tunnel twisted and turned for several hundred yards, and just as they were getting comfortable, they came upon their first obstruction.

“What is that thing?” someone whispered.

A circular maw of flesh throbbed rhythmically like a beating heart with purple veins that traced across the organic surface. Attached to the tunnel’s circumference, the flap surged water with every beat.

“It’s a pump. A Qephyx flesh-tech pump,” Edana reported.

“We knew they were pumping the water. I guess we just discovered how,” MC said. “Think you can navigate through that without destroying it? I’d rather not tip them off this early.”

“Leave it to me,” she said, positioning the submarine at the very center of the tunnel. The folds of the pump’s flesh were thinnest at the center, where they flapped like a mutated, circular tongue. Edana waited for the next beat, then slammed the thrusters to their maximal setting.

The acceleration surprised even MC as they rocketed forth, pinned firmly against their seats.

Just as the fleshy tongues opened to pump mutagenic water, the sub pierced through, barely touching the organic substance. The ebbs and flows of the current tried to snare the vessel, but mother nature was ultimately no match for their thrusters. The squad let out a collective breath.

“I’m guessing we’ll be seeing plenty more of these. Bravo squad, Charlie squad, expect Qephyx flesh pumps. It’s gonna take some fine maneuvering, but I expect you all to make it through in one piece.”

“Yes, Executor!” came the enthusiastic replies.

MC’s hunch proved correct. They encountered a pump every few minutes without fail. He couldn’t begin to imagine the effort the Dyn had spent installing these all around the planet. The mutagenic water’s purpose remained as ambiguous as ever, but the Resistance seemed pretty confident that there was more to it than merely poisoning the Zevan worldwide.

Alpha squad journeyed in the silent darkness for hours. Each subsequent pump became less and less of an event as Edana showcased her masterful skills time and time again, giving MC plenty of opportunities to appreciate just how blessed he was to command such a fine force. Any general on earth would kill to have these troops, and that went equally for the up-leveled Zevan warriors as it did for the Dyn. He wasn’t lying when he said that they were all precious to him. Each and every Resistance fighter had earned his respect.

MC began to grow restless when the minutes turned into hours, until Edana finally made an announcement. “We’ve arrived.”

MC set his visors to double the brightness, but it did little to help; the tunnel gave way to a great black expanse where light did not shine.

“How can you tell?” he asked.

Edana pointed a finger upward, anticipating his question. Craned his neck, he saw a sight he’d never expected. Especially not here, of all places.

Schools of bioluminescent fish circled lazily above, joined by gargantuan iridescent squid-like organisms. The sub had exited the tunnel at the bottom of a vast undersea column that rose up into the distance.

As the submarine ascended, various coral-like organisms came into view, decorating the walls with their soft glow and muted hues. Much like the mutagenic ponds, an entire underwater ecosystem flourished in this subterranean ocean, nestled far below the surface of Kelruhn.

“When Nova and I first stumbled upon this place, we’d thought this ocean was just a few feet in depth. How wrong we were.”

“The depth appears to vary drastically depending on location,” Edana replied. “I am no engineer, but these columns are likely in place to generate enormous pressure, making the job of pumping water to the rest of the planet easier.”

Several fish bumped up against their invisible craft as it ascended, though Edana made sure to maneuver around the larger ones. As strong as their hull was, there was no need to risk exposure.

“Charlie, Bravo, sitrep,” MC called as their sub ascended.

“Machine-One, this is Charlie-One, we’re still navigating the tunnels. Had some issues with a couple of the pumps, but nothing that jeopardizes the mission. ETA one hour.”

“Bravo-One here. Nothing to report on our side. ETA two hours.”

“Alright. As planned, we’ll begin ahead of you. Report when you’re in position.”

The bullet-shaped sub continued to rise, seemingly forever.

“Surface in sight,” Edana reported. “We exited the tunnel at a depth of over one-thousand feet.”

MC looked up in awe. The scale of this operation was just mind-boggling. There was perhaps no other facility on the planet as vast—not even the Legatus’ planetary HQ at Kyron.

Edana halted the sub at a depth of twenty feet, where she activated the horizontal thrusters, sending them to their target—the first of four pillars their team was tasked with destroying.

In hindsight, the plan was obvious, but MC had wracked his brains trying to come up with it. Normally, Nova would be the one offering innovative, out-of-the-box solutions, but they were on their own this time around.

MC’s fists clenched as anguish took him. “Where are you, Nova?”

“Sir?”

“Nothing. Continue as you were, Edana.”

While MC had provided the strategy, Krar had been the one to refine it. They’d all huddled to devise a plan that destroyed the pillars, minimized risk for the assault teams, and also inflicted minimal casualties upon the enemy civilians.

The vast majority of Dyn in the pillar complex were scientists and researchers. Non-comms who were just obeying the will of the Dyn as they had for their entire lives. The Resistance had no qualms with them, and eliminating them wouldn’t reduce the Legatus’ power at all. All it’d do would polarize the already-antagonized Dyn on Kelruhn against the Resistance, especially now with the Legatus’ propaganda machine operating at full steam.

Going in guns blazing was off the table, but with luck, the assault teams would be long gone by the time their depth charges went off. Unlike their smaller mutagenic brethren, these pillars were anchored securely to both floor and ceiling. Toppling them was not in the cards.

Instead, the three teams would leverage MC’s Relocator to hollow out a ring within the rock beneath the pillars’ root system, flooding them with mutagenic water. In parallel, MC would hollow out an identical ring directly above, separated by a foot or so of rock.

He’d discovered early on that fusing rock into nearby rock created a vacuum-filled gap. So what would happen if he created a vacuum ring right above the ring of water, and then proceeded to blow the rocky barrier separating the water from the vacuum?

Like sucking on a straw, the water would rise, rushing up into the hollow. On its own, this strategy wouldn’t be good for anything, but that was where Krar’s revelation came in: the trees’ innards were not immune to their own mutagen. Only the tough exterior and the root system possessed those protections.

And that meant they could mutate the pillar with the very mutagenic water the pillar secreted. The mutagen would spread far and wide, transforming and corrupting the entire pillar in short order. The Qephyx alien had informed MC that such a transformation would be irreversible. The Legatus would have to regrow the pillars. A task that could take decades.

They could of course forego the charges and just poison the trees when the sub passed underneath, but that wouldn’t allow them to synchronize the explosions. When the Dyn realized that one pillar was infected, they’d react immediately, putting the mission in jeopardy.

The sub arrived at a nondescript rocky wall directly under the great pillar. It was MC’s turn to deliver.

From within the sub, he Relocated a tunnel ahead of them. As he hollowed out more rock, water would immediately rush in, allowing Edana to maneuver the sub into the hole. MC would then hollow more rock, and so on.

They continued in the same fashion until they reached the pillar’s root system, embedded deep into the rock itself.

“Luckily, the root system’s lack of sensitivity should allow us to cut it without much risk,” Krar informed him over comms. “However, ensure you do not vacuum out too much material above you; the softer flesh located closer to the surface will trigger their alarms if harmed.”

“Got it,” MC replied, focusing his attention upwards as the sub proceeded into a tunnel of his own making. Edana would move the sub forward before stopping to allow MC to fuse a section of rock directly above them, creating an isolated vacuum pocket.

Their pauses allowed the troops to finally mobilize. They retrieved the bombs one-by-one from the portal that connected back to Sanctuary and loaded them into the sub’s mine-layer chutes. As the vessel progressed, the bomb operators deployed mines behind them, allowing the explosives to float suspended in the water-filled tunnel.

MC’s comms channel came alive just as he was wrapping up his mining operation under the first pillar.

“Executor, Bravo squad is in position. We are ready for your magic.”

“Copy that, Bravo-One. Standby, I’m on my way.”

MC gave Edana a pat on the shoulder as he left his seat. “Nice work. Get the sub in position to the next pillar by the time I get back.”

“You got it, boss.”

MC squeezed past his troops to get to the portal at the rear of the sub. The size of a narrow full-person mirror, the portals were portable, in case they ever needed to abandon the subs. Stepping through, he found himself back at Sanctuary’s portal room, where several reserve troops awaited. Wasting no time, he turned right back around and entered the middle portal, sending him into Bravo squad’s sub.

Over the course of the next several hours, he jumped from sub to sub, Relocating and hollowing out rings of rock under each of the organic towers. As he worked his magic, the other two teams would navigate their subs to the next pillar, minimizing his downtime.

For MC, it meant continuously activating his abilities, which took its toll, even with his recent upgrades. He began to slow down, and after the sixth pillar, he’d been forced to call it a night. The headache had grown bothersome enough that he’d be compromising his combat capabilities if he continued. That, and he’d simply lacked the determination to argue with Nina nagging him about his health.

“All teams, rendezvous at the air dome. We’ll pick this back up in the morning.”

Edana navigated their sub back down into one of the enormous columns. Thanks to their undercover operatives, the Resistance had a bit of intel on the primary geological features in the area, including a sizable underwater air pocket located some five-hundred feet below the ocean’s surface. It made for the perfect place to stow the subs while MC recovered.

Alpha squad’s sub was the first to make it to the narrow tunnel that led to the air dome. A bit too narrow; MC had to Relocate several areas to allow the sub to fit. Minutes later, they found themselves surfacing to the silent, untouched cavern that stretched above them.

MC threw open the hatch to find breathable air and pitch-black darkness. The sub’s spotlights flipped on, dousing the great chamber with brilliant illumination. Thousands upon thousands of enormous stalactites hung from the wet ceiling, some hundred feet above. Calcified structures dotted the landscape and some even pierced through the water to form small islands of salt. Small streams ran down the limestone walls, creating an eerie, mystical ambiance. In the distance, low waves lapped against a rocky shore.

MC and his team were likely the first people to ever visit this place. It exuded a sense of untouched pristineness unlike anything he’d ever experienced on Earth.

Edana edged the sub up to the shore, killing its motors several dozen feet away. As MC teleported the crew off of the sub onto the flat area, another set of lights flicked on—Bravo squad, and Charlie right behind them.

The other two vessels docked alongside the first, and soon, his crew of thirty was busily occupied setting up camp. MC debated allowing them to hang out at Sanctuary while he recuperated, but decided against it. If the portals went down for any reason, the mission would be compromised. Better to stick it out on the shore, even if it was a slightly less comfortable experience.

“Still wished you’d let others take care of the drilling,” Nina said over comms, concerned.

“We’ve been over this, princess. The sound generated from any driller we could mount to the subs would be loud enough to tip the Dyn off, and the Illusion generators can’t mask anything that’s transmitted into the rock itself. My powers are both silent and instant.”

“I know,” she sighed, “I just wish there was more we could do to help. Make sure you get some shuteye, bro.”

“Y’know, I think I’ll do just that. Thanks for looking out for me, princess. As always,” he said, taking a seat against a wet, rocky wall. With the migraine pounding in his head, a little quiet time sounded pretty damn good right about now.

He only hoped tomorrow would be as uneventful. For some reason, he seriously doubted it.