Chapter 15 : The Hive goes to War

'Still not enough Gladia ?...'

[Just a little more… NOW !!]

When I heard Gladia's signal, I did let go of the energy I was concentrating in my arm and a huge explosion sounded in the gigantic hangar.

'Result, Gladia.'

[hm... you did better than the last test, I calculated the power released at 14%. It is your best result so far.]

'Only 14%... In almost a year I'm still unable to use more than 15% of what I used during the fight against the centipede... It is depressing.'

[Be patient, Jun. Actually, 14% is a very good result. The most important thing is that now you don't have to put your life in danger if you want to use the void energy. Normally, it would have taken you several years just to be able to control 1% of this energy. I don't know what's so special about you, but I feel like all these coincidences added together have allowed you to manage something that would have been impossible for anyone else.

As weird as it may be, we can truly say that your luck is your greatest strength.]

I was currently in a deserted part of the hangar which served as a training ground for testing weapons or skills.

We have been here for several months now. During this time, we were able to rest, recover and more importantly stay safe. As we suspected the hive didn't try to attack us, even when we go out to hunt some swarmlings they still refuse to attack this hangar.

We guessed that the intelligence controlling the hive must be smart enough to know the sleeping army the ancient beings left here, and it prefers not to risk getting them out of this hangar. That's probably why they even had to condemn the first tunnel through which we had passed to reach the golden door.

During these few months, many things have changed. After analyzing my strengths and weaknesses, I decided to develop my control over void energy as much as I could.

After many tests, I understood that when I first used it against the centipede, my survival was only due to a stroke of extreme luck. If I hadn't transferred the void energy into the same arm where I had absorbed the Netherite, I would have died without a doubt.

So I had to think of a way to use void energy without having to lose a limb, or worse, lose my life. After a long discussion with Gladia, we managed to find a simple but effective way. My arm, though I still can't use it, serves as a link to the void. Much like an antenna can pick up waves, my arm can transfer energy from the Void.

According to Gladia, by training myself to use a tiny amount of energy every day I can slowly accustom my arm and the rest of my body to the Void energy. Gladia has analyzed how much energy I can deploy compared to the first time I used the Void energy. At the moment, I am able to deploy 14% of the energy I used against the centipede.

It doesn't seem like much, but in reality, it's already huge. Gladia even estimated that it would have taken only 10% of what I used against the centipede to kill it, so we took this event as a base to compare with my training.

'Leader, I detected hostile movements at the surface. It seems that the surfaces monsters are preparing to invade the hive.'

'I see. Alice, regroup everyone in the flagship control room, I'm coming soon.'

Although I have been training extremely hard every day for several months, I am probably the one who has progressed the least in the squad.

When I learned that we would have to live in this underground hangar for almost a year, I immediately gave long-term instructions to each of the squad members.

Each of them trained as hard as I did, and although they were already very strong individually, they became even more lethal.

We also organized outings in the hive to fight in groups and train our synergy.

At present, we all know each other so well to the point we no longer need to talk in the middle of combat. I no longer need to give them orders as I have trained them to act on their own ; I only need to give them general directives such as 'defend this perimeter' or 'eliminate enough enemies to force the alphas out'.

Instead of ordering them to kill enemy X in the middle of a fight, they now know that they must neutralize the most dangerous threat and they will focus the enemy X on their own.

After teaching them several 'what if' kinds of situations and telling them what to do in every one of these situations, I trained them just like I would create an algorithm. They are now able to react to most situations on their own, and only need my input for the specials and rares situations that do not fit in anything they learned.

Strangely, I got inspired a lot by the Scyllas and their protocols.

Except for this behavior and intellectual training, I also forced each of them to train on a particular subject depending on their capabilities, to optimize their strength and compensate for their weakness.

For example, to train Alice, I asked her multiple time to enter the hive without being spotted, eliminate 5 alpha swarmlings and come back stealthily. When she did get spotted by the swarmlings, she had to redo the whole exercise until becoming as invisible and lethal as a true assassin. Now, she can roam the outer region of the Hive freely during days without being detected.

During a group outing in the Hive, I ordered Douglas to take out about 20 swarmlings rushing us at full speed before they could reach melee range. If one of them reached our front line, he also had to retry until he is fast and accurate enough.

As for Jerome, I didn't need to order him anything when an extremely powerful kind of swarmling, which we now call Omega because of its size and power much higher than a regular alpha, attacked us by surprise. Jerome not only reacted fast enough, took its focus to protect us and defend his surprise attack in just a few seconds, he also managed to eliminate it all by himself, without receiving help from any of us. He's not just a very tanky rifter anymore, now he's also extremely powerful and probably the best of us when it comes to melee range and close quarter combat.

Kat was probably the most difficult to teach and the hardest was to point her in the right direction because I didn't know how her ability worked in detail. She herself was unable to explain it precisely enough for us to understand.

I had to find a way for her to grow, and after testing her ability multiple times, I found that although it was extremely useful, it was less effective on targets with more resilient minds such as the omega swarmlings and even if it was wide, it didn't have a very great range.

When I advised her to improve these two points, I would never have expected that I just created the most frightening and terrifying anti-biological weapon I've ever seen. Gladia compared the devastating effect of her field skill to a short-ranged nuke.

She even managed to overcome the resistance our dark matters developed to make us immune to her skill, which means that if she uses it at full power she is, in theory, capable of incapacitating, seriously injuring and even killing all of us in a single blow.

As for the range problem, the last time I asked her, she assured me that she could use it at full power up to 50 meters, and be able to use it with a little less power up to 100 meters.

She became an extremely lethal area damage dealer, she is the most dangerous of us all. What is the most surprising isn't the strength of her skill, but the speed at which she is improving ; if my evolving rate is walking, the other rifters are running, but Kat, she is literally flying above us in terms of progress.

She truly is worthy of being a high lethality vector, as assessed by the monolith.

Lastly, Gladia has also improved herself a lot. Although she spent most of her time taking control of the core of the flagship and recharging its batteries, she also improved her calculation and analysis skills to an unfathomable level ; they were already extremely high due to the natural skill of her race in this domain, now she is probably faster than all the supercomputer on Earth working together.

As for me, I am able to fully control the black matter now. My body finally finished absorbing it and it is now more than just a part of me ; it IS me.

We are not 2 entities in the same body anymore, the black matter is now me as much as I am the black matter. Even if I still feel human, I can't say anymore that I am a human. Gladia even told me that if I were to have children, they would have modified genes with a tiny trace of black matter inside that would grow at the same rate as them, and once reaching their teens they would be able to interact with the black matter and manifest its skills.

One of the benefits of being able to control the dark matter that has been completely absorbed is that now, I can reshape my armor as I wish.

I started with the most important, which is the sensory system. Gladia advised me to display several vital information in my field of vision directly via my eyes, but I found it too unpleasant and I even had trouble fighting when I tried. I ended up keeping my eyes clean and instead just using a kind of helmet, like the other rifters, with a visor that shows me what I need to know, namely the state of my body, my physical and mental energy, my link with the Void, the current state of each member of the squad and a detailed mini-map.

I can hear sounds of different frequencies, my touching sense coupled with Gladia capabilities allow me to analyze everything I touch at the atomic level and I can also change my vision for thermal, ultraviolet, or even X-ray vision.

'Gladia, show my status.'

[Alright.]

| Species: Homo sapiens-sapiens

Race: Secundum Genus Humanum

Subject: Jun-Yeob / Squad Leader B213-84

Stats :

Awareness: medium

Agility: low (peak)

Intellect: medium (peak)

Stamina: low

Strength: low (peak)

Resistances :

Physical: medium

Psychic: medium (peak)

External control: none

Current state :

positive: Red Mist effects improved by subordinates loyalty

negative: Left-arm serious injury (permanent - unusable)

negative: Scylla mind control (temporary - remnants)

Skills :

Dark Armor (completed)

Dark Visor (completed)

Dark Blade (completed)

Dark Explosion (91%)

Red Mist (61%)

Void Rift (43%)

Void Surge (14%)

Void Blade (8%)

Void Step (5%)

Dimensional Links :

Void (14%)

Singularity (4%)

Unknown ( ?? %)

Notable abilities:

High adaptability

Highly versatile genome

Extremely high psychic potential

Manipulation of void energy possible

Strategic mind

Entities :

Obscura Materia: good condition

Nihil Conscientia: good condition

Rifters: linked

Flagship : 97% charged

Rank: Unknown Lethality Vector

Estimated battle power: 72 - low lethality vector (peak) |

When I asked Gladia to create a panel displaying all the important info about me, I told her to take inspiration from the monolith status and shorten the terms it used. She also added several important factors, such as dimensional links or the skills I learned.

It is difficult to assess a certain skill, but it helps to have a visual report on the progress of its learning. It lets me know that I'm not training for nothing, and seeing my stats or skills improving day by day is giving me more motivation than I expected when I first thought about making a status panel.

After verifying that everything was correct, I started moving to the flagship to join the other rifters. Once inside, I saw all of them standing in line in the control room, with a Reaper in the middle, all waiting for me.

Before I could take full control of the flagship and its ancient army, I asked Gladia to release a single reaper. She prevented me to not do so at first, as I would be unable to control it until the core charged and both me and Gladia are permanently linked to the ship core.

It was what I was looking for anyway, I wanted to release a reaper to evaluate their battle power. I was expecting it to attack us on sight and we were all ready to fight when it came out of its capsule.

What I didn't expect, however, was for the reaper to recognize us as comrades, and to recognize me as his leader. After going out of his capsule, he instantly knelt on the floor. No matter how much we waited, he didn't attack us nor did he move until I ordered him to do so.

The reapers can not talk, but they can transmit thoughts. It was very uncomfortable at first, I felt as if my mind was getting forcefully invaded, but after some time I got used to it and now it doesn't bother me anymore. I just hope that once the 499 other reapers are released they will not overload and fry my little organic brain.

'Welcome. Back. Master.'

"Leader."

Both the rifters and the reaper I named 'Alpha Zero' saluted me when I entered the room.

"At ease. Alice, report."

I sat down and calmly listened to Alice's report.

"I was able to detect important troop maneuvers at the surface, when I tried to explore the outer area of the Hive to understand what was happening, I've seen an extremely important number of swarmlings rushing the surfaces entrances.

I've seen at least hundreds of omegas and a few thousand alphas. As for the low-tier swarmlings, I couldn't count them, but from the signatures, my consciousness detected they were more than fifty thousand rushing the surface, all ready to battle. I also spotted a dozen of unknown swarmlings we never met before, much bigger and seemingly more powerful than omegas."

"Hm…The surface invading the Hive now isn't good news for us. Even if the Hive tried to eliminate us, we also killed plenty of them and they served as a natural shield and repellent for surfaces monsters. Now that they are clashing with each other, we wouldn't be able to defend our position for long if one of their sides decide to siege us in the hangar.

No matter how large and deadly is the ancient army inside the flagship, for now, it is useless as we cannot use it yet. Not before Gladia and I take full control of the ship core which would take a few more days, a week at the latest."

"Leader, we should prepare for intense combat. I already placed a bunch of traps in the tunnel, we can detonate them to gain time if we get attacked."

"You did good Alice, but unfortunately I doubt a few traps will be enough. You all need to understand our situation, if any of the two side decide to attack us, once they pass the door we are doomed. We can try to defend ourselves in the tunnel as it will reduce the numbers of foes we'll have to fight at the same time, but once they get in the hangar it will be the end for us no matter how much we progressed and improved during the year we spent here."

I started to think, and I suddenly had a very bad presage.

'Gladia, when you told me that our links with the Scyllas have been severed are you sure it is still the case ?'

[Yes it is. If the Scyllas wanted to find you, they would have sent a rifter squad earlier don't you think ?]

'This is what I'm afraid about. I have a feeling the surface monsters didn't choose to attack the Hive. No matter how strong they may be, fighting the swarmlings in their territory is pure suicide.

Without even considering their strength, their numbers alone would be enough to wipe out any invaders dumb enough to attack them frontally. Alice spotted more than fifty thousand units in only a single day, who knows how big is the Hive and how many forces they have in reserve. They may be millions or trillions and we wouldn't even know it."

[What are you implying ?]

'What I mean is that this attack is too sudden and does not benefit the surfaces monsters at all, no matter their strength they will never win and even if they does, they will loose too much to make it worth. I can't put myself in the shoes of the Scyllas, but if I was an arrogant, villainous and remorse-less being like they are, I wouldn't mind sacrificing thousands of live to achieve my goal.'

[If they know we are alive, and their goal is us...]

'...Then they might use the surfaces monsters as mere bait to keep the swarmlings occupied while they send a squad to catch us. We should also expect a highly specialized squad, probably a dozen of high lethality vectors.'

Seeing me silent for so long, the rifters knew that I was discussing with Gladia.

And they also knew that when I talked so much with her without being aware of my surroundings, it wasn't announcing good news.