With enough inspiration, just about anyone can learn how to fly. The people who crashed on this world, civilians mostly, move with utmost haste the minute they see the ship above, thinking themselves saved.

That’s why we’re here, but I’m not sure how to explain that we’re not bringing them back home.

Thankfully the lower decks of our ship are largely clean, except for a few spots that are stained in the blood that’s dripped down from the top deck. The majority of people end up crawling into the lower parts of the ship, simply gathering into the ship’s hold but it gets a little tight on space when they bring along most of the property that they’ve put together in their time here.

Much of this stuff was crafted from the very wood and crystal of the ship that they landed here in. The crystal, apparently an excellent conductor of space magic, has been used to create a good selection of floating tables, trolleys, anvils, and all other strange sorts of tools, while the wood of the deck is strong enough to be used in just about anything.

“So, we’re not headed back to the Unified States?” The stone man asks, he’s always seemed like the leader of their group. The feathered vanguard and the archer both hold back a little further as they stare at me in suspicion.

“No, not unless you’re ready to start fighting a war. We barely made it out of the last battle alive, well, some of us did. There were… it wasn’t a battle I’d choose to return to.”

“You fought?” The birdman asks, leaning in close.

“We fought,” I reply. “I won’t say that we won, but we escaped with a few ships. One much larger than this, too. That’s where we’re staying for now until my friend can give me a destination for us.”

“You’re a leader?” The stone man asks, leading the conversation back to topic.

“Empress Kyra Baker, at your service,” I say, giving a small bow. “My empire is a little far, and the refugees I picked up aren’t much of a replacement for them. They’re a bloody sobbing mess and… how do you guys feel about some cleaning work. The corpses and giblets are rather unsettling.”

“Giblets?” The archer asks, leaning away from me in disgust.

“You’ll see when we get there,” I say. Looking over the crashed ship.

The leftover wood and crystal not used in construction have been largely taken apart and piled together, thankfully it’s easily hauled into the ship with the surviving civilians. I draw the mana from the last of the scrap that we’re forced to leave behind before flying back on deck.

It’s easy to float now and guide myself around slowly with some soft shoves this way and that, but my ‘flight’ is still rather jerky. I slam into the tacky deck with a little too much force, and while I don’t exactly splinter the deck a few shouts of surprise rise from the deck below.

“Ready to fly?” Vii asks, smiling from ear to ear as she hovers just barely over the deck. She really has taken to flight now that we’re in control of the ships, has she forgotten all the crashes we’ve had?

“Everything is loaded?” She asks, practically skipping through the air.

“We have enemies gathering at the edge of the forest!” The feathered soldier shouts, “If we’re going to leave, then we should do it now!”

“Wait! Hold!” Vii calls, stalling the ship as it was rising from the surface. “How edible are these enemies?”

“What?” I ask.

“There isn’t much food, a good feast would do everyone some good. Liven the mood a little, y’know? There isn’t much food in the big egg, so we need to do some hunting, and there’s lots of room in the lower decks, so…”

“Good thinking,” I say, giving her a smile as I look down over the forest. She’s exaggerating about the volume of storage remaining onboard, but there is enough for some food. “Shame that Eshya’s not here, she’d have thought of that before you.”

“Yep, yep,” Vii chirps, flying by my side. “She’s sleeping safe at home instead.”

“Who wants in on this?” I ask the fighters still standing with us. The vanguard is quick to jump on it, and the archer readies an arrow, staring down at the forest below.

“They did taste pretty darn good,” Shrue says. It twists my mind that I stole that name from birdguy’s head, and without even getting his name to boot. It’s all just sounds corrupted by how our brain chips work, but I don’t really want to try and dig into the coding to understand it any better.

I jump from the ship for the second time in the last hour, falling into the clearing where the small town has just been removed. Vii flies after me and the rock man falls right after, slamming into the ground and throwing soil all around.

A small army is gathered to assault the town that we’ve already made off with. They charge out of the forest the moment they see an opportunity. Their eyes glow red with rage as they rush out at us, ready to spill blood.

Thick as an ancient tree, they’re round like pigs with trotters much the same, if scaled up considerably. Their heads, however, are far from the shape I’d expect of a pig, a triplet of glowing eyes shine bright on the top of their heads. A massive set of jaws with crushing teeth to the size of hands, open wide as the first of them reaches us.

I slide right by, mana bursting through my legs to push me faster while a shove of force gives me an added boost. I may have learnt this from an ancient machine, but Eshya was the one who helped me bring the Skill to where it is now. There’s still further to take it, I need to learn how to move while weightless and incorporate my force magic in a more refined fashion, but that’s for tomorrow.

The creature spits a mouthful of twisting writhing tentacled tongue at the spot where I’d been standing, the writhing purple tongue snatches up a mouthful of twigs from the ground, crunching them in its massive jaws.

I don’t leave it the chance to go in for a second bite. As per the rules of Pokémon, it’s now my turn.

I hesitate for a moment as I consider the cuts of meat before me, I don’t want to spoil the festival by taking the hog off the table. Instead, I aim for the ugly head, cutting it through with annihilation targeting the spine and neck.

A burst of fire cuts through the ashen alleys that I carve through its flesh, cooking the beast as it falls to the ground. It smells like pork.

I move away from the next one, leaping at me while the first is still falling, exercising my new Skills in combat awareness and mobility. My heart pounds in my chest, but it’s not as painful as our last fight.

Vii is flying through the air, redirecting the magics and stones tossed her way as she cuts through their numbers with blades of wind. At a glance she’s not advanced since first we fought together, but the wind now moves back and forth, compressing down on the flesh and bone rather than dispersing into the air around it.

The beasts don’t stand a chance.

A few arrows end those beasts that move to flank us, or who snipe at us from afar, while the stone man and the vanguard move around one another in a conservative formation. It gives them time and a chance to support one another, but it’s clearly designed to create opportunities for execution.

It’s unnecessary. We’ll need to train them out of that.

The beasts fight hard, they war against us but only succeed in delivering food to our tables. This is the way wars ought to be fought, from a position of absolute supremacy.

I’m sure there’s some sort of rule of war along those lines.

We’re not even breathing heavy by the time the beasts decide to cut their losses and retreat. I’m not sure what their leader’s thinking but, it gives an unhappy squawk our direction just before running back into the forest.

“Looks like meats back on the menu,” I say, looking up to our ship high above. A feast would do us all some good.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“What the hell is this…?” The birdman asks, gazing up at the massive ship as we arrive back to the glass egg.

“Our mothership. It’s right where we parked it,” I say. “It’s one of the toys we got when we divorced from the Unified States. Not worth the price we paid, but I’m sure that our enemy feels the same.”

War isn’t worth it… is what I want to say. Unfortunately, the universe is set on a rather cruel set of rules, and war is often worth the price. Even this could be seen as a win when considering that most of those we lost in the fighting weren’t all that ‘valuable’ pragmatically speaking.

It was worth it, by many measures. I just wish that it weren’t the case. The new additions to our group don’t quite flow into the common area that’s filled with the trauma patients we brought back from our academy home.

Well, it’s not a home anymore.

Either way, the newcomers stir up the atmosphere a little. Some faces pale at the sight of the meat getting pulled from lower decks, but I’m not ready to hunt down some vegetables for dinner and that’d only be discrimination against vegetable people anyway.

“What happened here?” The stone man asks, his brow cracking under the pressure as he rubs at the blood on his hands. The top deck is still a little tacky from it.

“War,” I reply. “There’s a reason so many people want to join the Unified States, even knowing all that troubles it. War is… painful.

“If there’s anything you guys can do to make things easier for…” I wave my hand over the crowd of shivering disaster relief victims. “Well, help would be appreciated. We’re putting together a feast, so food, song, dance, that sort of thing. We’re also hoping to have all the blood and gore cleaned away for the event.”

“Yeah, that sounds like a decent enough idea…” Shrue says, the words sound a little hollow.

“Good, because it seems like I have an appointment to catch,” I say, charging back to the control room, where Arduelle has just warped in.

“How the hell did they get this?” The birdman asks, waving his wings about at the massive ship and the crystal tree that makes up the core and beating heart of the massive egg-shaped ship.

“War, that’s what she said,” the stone man says. His eyes still levelled at the survivors, not nearly so interested in the ship.

“It was a bit of a mess,” Vii says, laughing emptily as she hangs back to walk them through our new city.

They seem to be good people, and the others with them are callous enough to work even through difficult situations. The cook is already looking at the stacks of meat with wide-eyed excitement.

His own oven isn’t going to be enough, but it seems he has a few people jumping at the chance to get a few more stoves, spits, and ovens put together. They’re a spirited group, and even for all that they’ve been through they haven’t given up in the face of death.

They’ve thrived, and I hope that they’ll do just as well in the empire that I’m building.

Rushing through the halls, I’m joined by the same long-eared little cat/rat/rabbit guy. He doesn’t say anything to me, but I’m sure he’s here to ask about his collar again. Either that, or he’s just wanting to get in on the ground floor as we take the next step.

“It seems you stirred up quite the mess,” Arduelle says as I enter the command room. Her glare is levelled at me but I can tell that she isn’t entirely serious about it.

“You were the one who told me to put up a fight and leave under my own power. That’s what I did,” I answer her. “Are there any issues with the welfare officers? Is Frey still alright?”

“She’s fine for now,” Arduelle answers. “It’s difficult to be sure whether or not we’ll make it through this next stage. They’re repopulating the academy at least, so they’re not abandoning the world entirely, but Frey and I will likely have to survive harassment for a number of years before they give up on the idea of subduing us.”

“You’re confident that it’ll be alright?”

“Frey and I are safe, everyone else is likely doomed, however,” she answers. “It’s not the first time, but I had hoped that we wouldn’t have to go through this nonsense again.”

“In other words everything went well?” I ask.

“Stealing this ship certainly riled them up, but yes, all-in-all, the plan worked,” Arduelle replies, covering her mouth with a fan as she looks out and around the vessel with apparent interest.

“Are you interested in the ship?” I ask.

“I’m curious if you’ll use it well,” she says without showing anything through her expression.

“We’ll grow into it.”

“This isn’t a set of hand-me-downs that you give to a younger sibling,” Arduelle replies. “It’s an advanced vessel made of invaluable resources. In theory, it could even be upgraded to allow for a mana vortex, but I suppose space vortexes are too rare to be spent on something of this scale.”

She clears her throat and sharpens her gaze.

“I’ve given your pilots the right address, and they’re in the process of charging your vessel to ready for departure.”

“What should we know?” I ask. “Our neighbours? The dungeon itself? Local environment? We have room to expand, right?”

“The only issue that might be considered a concern, is the anti-social nature of the dungeon itself. I’ll introduce you shortly unless you wish to stay with your ship?”

I turn my eyes to Eshya, lying in her bed. She’s starting to move around a little more, and I think she’s close to waking. It should only be a few hours until the ship teleports, but if I can get there sooner?

“The meeting will be quick?” I ask.

“I can promise you that with confidence,” Arduelle replies with a demure smirk.

“I’ll stay,” Adler says, meeting my eyes and grabbing my hand. “Take care of her, okay? Red and I will make sure we arrive safely, just remember the rest of us up here, okay?”

“I know, I still have an empire to take care of.” I say, turning to Arduelle, “Can you bring Vii with us? She’s… she needs to be with us.”

“I can afford as much,” Arduelle replies, and I ignore the implication of a cost. I’ll borrow whatever power that she’ll give me, even if she gets snide about it.

“Let’s not waste any more time,” I say as Arduelle reaches out for me.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Stats and Skills

~Mana Form:

Current mana density: 60,892 / 60,892 units

Current mana volume: 30,271 / 30,271 shards

Mana volume at crystallisation density (Max. mana volume):

Kyra: 30,271 shards

Kyra’s armour: 20,777 shards

Kyra’s throne: 1,109,298 shards

~Forms

Mana Canon

-Annihilation Heart (Adapted)

-Blood Fuel (Adapted)

-Bone Magic Storage (Adapted)

-Nail Shifters (Adapted)

Dancer

-Flash Nerves (Adapted)

-Quick Perception Mind (Adapted)

-Burst Reflex Muscles (Adapted)

-Layered Space Muscles (Adapted)

Turtle

-Rebinding Tissue (Adapted)

-Catalyst Sweat Glands (Adapted)

-Repulsive Skin (Adapted)

-Prehensile hair (Adapted)

-Fatty Tissue Blood Storage (Adapted)

Investigator

-Wide eyes (Adapted)

-Wide ears (Adapted)

-Sharp nose (Adapted)

Misc.

-Clean bowels (Adapted)

-Mana Drive (Adapted)

~Favourited Skills:

Magic:

-Annihilation Magic (Customised)

-Fire Magic (Functional)

-Space magic (Broken)

-Force magic (Functional)

-Ice magic (Broken)

-Wind magic (Broken)

Movement:

-Hand-to-hand casting (Functional)

-Mana surge movement (Functional)

-Stealth (Functional)

Senses:

-Eyes of an Empire (Customised)

-Combat Awareness (Functional)

-Watchmen (Functional)

-Hidden bug (Mastered)

-De-tagging (Mastered)

-Anti-stealth sight (Mastered)

Special:

-Spirit Transformation (Broken)

-Conformity (Broken)

-Training mana form (Functional)