Crucible (3)

"-3. 2. 1. Begin!"

As Elise had declared the start of the duel between Dax and Terra that just had received her new prosthetics, none of them moved. Terra stood completely still and slowly raised her sword towards where Dax has while she appeared to try and pick up ambient sounds from the surroundings that would reveal Dax. Dax, on the other hand, was slowly in the progress of lowering his centre of mass as a blade slowly extended from the forearm guard of his artificial arm while he carried an expressionless confidence on his face.

"Mistress! Watch out, he has a-"

Trying to warn Terra about Dax's hidden sword, one of the maid's shouted out, by she never got to finish her sentence as she was punched in the gut by one of Dax's drones and collapsed to the ground.

[FINAL WARNING: INTERFERENCE WITH THE DUEL WILL BE PUNISHED, NONCOMPLIANCE WILL LEAD TO USE OF LETHAL FORCE AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE.]

Slightly panicking Terra tensed up when she heard one of her family maids being punched, Dax sensed the opening and lunged forward, but not being able to use all his strength because of the duels restrictions Terra managed to barely doge the lethal strike as Dax's sword scraped her cheek. Not giving Terra time to rest, Dax started a ruthless assault at point blank range.

"I thought you were gonna show me~?"

Assaulting Terra with a mix of lounges, kicks and open palm strikes, Dax wore a bloodthirsty smile on his face as he taunted his patient. Terra being busy with dodging and blocking attacks didn't have room to answer as her entire being was concentrated on sensing Dax's attacks and either blocking or dodging them before it was too late.

(Fuck! Why is he that fast? I can't even hear his heartbeat either- shit!)

Sensing a punch approaching, Terra dodged to the side quite recklessly, only to be met by a kick and being blown a few meters away.

"GUA!"

Landing on her back, Terra briefly lost all the air in her lungs as the impact forcefully knocked the air out of her.

"That was a cute noise just now, please do it again~"

Not giving Terra a second to rest, Dax tried to crush her head with his foot after almost instantly closing the range once more. Rolling to the side Terra accidentally let go of her sword and tried to kick Dax as she scrambled to get on her feet again.

"Good dogging~ But you lost your sword now, what will you do my cute little patient~?"

Seemingly allowing Terra to get back on her feet once more, Dax retracted his sword and took a new stance to account for it.

"Not this will be boring if I just keep attacking, so it's your turn now. Come at me with the intent to kill~"

Taking a few seconds to catch her breath, Terra also adopted an unarmed fighting stance and gradually inched closer to Dax, stopping about 2 meters from his reach and channelled strengthening magic trough her body.

(I can't allow this to draw out… Need to end this in a single strike.)

Noticing the dull pain ringing out in her body from overuse of her new prosthetics and how generally out of shape she was, Terra decided to end the fight in a single hit. As her body gradually was filled with the power of magic, but she quickly noticed that strengthening magic didn't extend to her prosthetic limbs.

(Shit, I didn't think about that… But then again this is not the first time I've faced these kinds of odds!)

Determined to beat (or kill) Dax, Terra focused herself and gathered all the mana she was able to in the surroundings, making her skin glow in faint runic patterns.

"I will make you acknowledge me you piece of shit!"

"Interesting! Then come at me and face defeat like the immature brat you are!"

Responding to Dax's taunt, Terra broke the ground as she rushed forward, momentarily disappearing from sight as she drew an arc with her flesh and blood leg, preparing it to turn Dax's head into a cloud of red mist.

"DIE!"

"Naive!"

Caching Terra's leg with his artificial arm, cracking the other armour on it in the process, Dax used Terra's own momentum to slam her into the ground, reaping her consciousness.

[WINNER: COMMANDER DAX.]

"You're 800 years too young to even try and beat me, still that move at the end was interesting, I guess I'll have to take her seriously…"

Checking the health of the passed out Terra as his own sight returned, Dax had an interested smile on his face.

"I WANT YOU OUT!! GET OFF MY PROPERTY THIS INSTANCE!!!!"

The second the dual finished Russell walked over towards Dax threateningly with a sword in hand.

"You wanted me to heal your daughter, but I'm not so sure what you want any more"

"I asked you to heal my daughter! NOT FUCKING BEAT HER UP!!"

"When you keep a flower you keep it inside your locked up castle?"

"What the fuck does tha-"

"EVERYTHING! If you want Terra to not waste away you have to nurture her! NOT FUCKING LET HER WASTE AWAY! Why did you lock her up in that room!? Why did you not trust her!? You just saw her fight right! She's clearly able to handle herself without issue. IF YOU WANT HER TO THRIVE SHE NEEDS TO EXPERIENCE LIFE. SHE NEEDS TO DO WHAT SHE WANT AND NOT BE LOCKED AWAY, BUT YOU PROBABLY NEVER REALIZED THAT SEEING YOU DON'T EVEN LOOK AT HER ANYMORE!"

Finishing his outburst, Dax seemingly regained his senses as he looked around at the surrounding people.

"I'll be leaving now to check up on another patient and doing some rearming. I'll return here in a few days if you don't require my services when I return that'll be the end of our agreement and I'll remove the prosthetics I've installed in Terra. But please for once in your pathetic existence as a parent listen to your child."

---

After packing the bare essentials, Dax left the Williams estate with two of his drones, himself and them each carrying a rifle and a 200 litre backpack.

(How likely do you estimate that failure of a parent is to listen to his daughter?)

(THAT QUARRY FALLS OUTSIDE MY UNDERSTANDING.)

(Yeah, I figured, just trying to process the data… oh here we are units 01 and 02 please wait here)

(HOLDING PATTERN CONFIRMED, STANDING BY IN CODE BLUE.)

(Good.. Let's hope they let me see him…)

Having arrived at the military barracks near the centre of Black Hollow, Dax and his drones looked extremely out of place as he tried to find someone that could show him to Viktor. Finding a concentration of people that wore the same uniforms as Viktor, Dax slowly drew near with his signature smile.

"Excuse me, I'm looking for one of my patients, his name is Viktor. Any of you fine people know him?"

Getting only confused starres in return to his question, Dax was about to give up when one of the until one of the mages, a young man with bright red hair asked him a question.

"This is a military installation demonkin, what's your relation to Viktor? And drop the act, there's no way you're a doctor."

"Yeah, I certainly don't look the part do I? My name is Dax and Viktor helped me out with something a few days ago, doing that he was injured and I was forced to perform first aid on him so I'm just checking by to see how he's holding up."

"You had something to do with that episode? Ever since Viktor came back he hasn't been on duty at all and just spends his time at the practice fields"

"Don't tell me he's casting magic already?"

"He's not, why?"

"It's not safe for him to use magic yet, I got the Ranger corps captain to ground him until I've taken a look. Could you show me the way there?"

"Yeah no problem, we were just about to head to the practice fields. My name is Emil, I'm the 5th mage core platoon leader."

Following along with Emil and the group of mages, Dax inserted himself right next to Emil and started asking questions.

"So, mage core platoon leader. That's mighty impressive for your age, how did that happen?"

"You really are blunt you know that?"

"I've been told so multiple times~ 'With age comes wisdom and patience.' That's a load of bull, with age comes… Impatience, I've seen it all before over the years. So is it skill, talent or connections?"

Exuding a certain presence, Emil was unable to simply ignore the strange demonkin's questions.

"You have seen it all? I know some demonkins age slowly, but you don't look that much older than me, how old are you?"

"811~ I feel like it's a mix of all, right?"

"8-811!..."

finding himself speechless at the demonkins age, Emil breathed a sigh and answered Dax's question.

"It's a mix of all of them, yeah, being a son of the Barron ruling this city I've been groomed from birth to lead some sort of military unit."

"I see~ Well your future looks bright, seeing that you can clearly recognize when you're walking on thin ice. As long you keep both your feet on the ground you should be fine, and don't forget that any formation or system, be that anything from a human being to an entire nation, is only is as strong as its weakest point~ Oh that's Viktor over there, excuse me Emil, son of the Barron."

Leaving Emil and the other mages behind as he spotted Viktor standing in the middle of the practice fields.

"What the hell was that?"

"I've no idea… but my instincts tell me that we should never cross that being.."

Watching Dax leave Emil felt an extreme amount of relief as he was certain that Dax could easily snuff out their lives in seconds without even blinking.

Observing Viktor as he got closer, Dax noticed he was continuously building magic spells and stopping right before completion.

"What did I tell you about using magic?"

"Oh hi Dax, I'm technically using it"

"You know what I mean, anyway can I take a look at your mind?"

"Sure…"

Extending his artificial arm towards Viktor, it split in half as he deployed the sensory array.

"Is that a new arm? Looks like it's cracked?"

"Yeah it's new, and I kinda broke it a bit. Now stand still, ICI give me a full cerebral scan"

[PREPARING FOR FULL CEREBRAL SCAN, STANDBY…. 3%....4%-]

"This will take a while, so what have you been doing over the last few days?"

Taking a deep breath, Viktor started explaining what he had been up to over the past few days.

"Since I came back?... I wanted to try and make some new spells, but whatever you did to me makes that unnecessary."

"Unnecessary?"

"Yeah, completely unnecessary. Before I used to spend days improving or optimising spells, but now I can do what usually took weeks in seconds, and all without even casting a single spell.. What the hell did you do to me Dax?"

"I took what was inside your staff and had ICI optimize it about 4000%, then I printed it directly into your brain, uniting the two systems in one efficient package."

"I see… That actually makes a lot of sense, but I feel like that's not the only thing that changed?"

"That's because it isn't. Your mind has been affected by ICI, so I expect you lost most of your capacity for empathy."

"Well, that explains it."

[CEREBRAL SCAN COMPLETE. NO MAJOR ISSUES FOUND, LIFE EXPECTANCY NOMINAL]

"You heard it, so what do you want to do from now on? I could use a skilled mage"

"I'll have to decline. I want to go to the royal research institute and try to understand and apply the knowledge you've given me."

"I see… Well good luck with that, when are you leaving?"

"Tomorrow I think.."

"We'll properly meet at some point in the future, so this is not a goodbye, rather a 'see you later'."