Chapter 47: Mission Accomplished

When the storms of lightning finally finished its dance, all that remained in the Shield bubble are smoke that stemmed from the burned clothes of Sadie, catalyzed air molecules and him kneeling unconsciously on the ground with an exceptionally bad sun burn. Then, the bubble's released and he fell onto the ground.

Reaching out towards the blade that he warped into the Shield bubble with his glove, Rydel summoned it back and dispersed it back into his body.

'Take that, my ultimate move, the...the portal lightning? Summon...SHIT.'

'You will need to work on your battle cry, mate.' Valerie said from sitting on the floor, 'and don't even get me started with the name of the move.'

Rydel threw his hands up to his side, 'I am not really about the naming life here.'

'Evidently.' Valerie said, rising to her feet and started walking towards Rydel, 'it took you long enough.'

'Well,' Rydel shrugged, then he turned his attention to the drones still hovering in the air, 'but you had help!'

'Bitch please, you had two artifacts.' Valerie said, poking into Rydel's sore stomach muscles before giving him a quick hug, 'you look like shit.'

'I am not the only one though.' Rydel said, padding Valerie gently on the back as they both winced as the soreness and pain from the battle before still remained on their body. Both of them took quite a beating, but both got the job done, 'now, let's go save Zel again.'

'Don't say that to him.' Rydel laughed at the notion before letting go of Valerie. As they approached the main gate of the building that all of the soldiers have retreated back into, the sound of movement came from behind them.

Sadie was crawling and moving his fingers, fighting and struggling to get up. His voice is muffled, and he is saying something that is inaudible to Rydel and Valerie.

They both spun around, and shared a look.

'You go, I will lock both of them down.' Valerie said, handing over her shield generator and spare ammo, 'there isn't much time.'

Knowing that Valerie's artifact will do a much better job at locking down the two dangerous artifact users they both just fought than a sucker punch to their jaws, Rydel nodded and took the spare weaponry before turning and running towards the building.

'Be careful!' Valerie said as she ran away, 'and learn to finish the job next time!'

Giving her a middle finger, Rydel switched on the recharged shield generator and kicked the door down before he stormed into the building. It turns out this is the back entrance of the building, as he was lead straight into an empty corridor. There are various foot prints on the ground that were left behind by the soldiers that went away, but from the look and sound of things, he is alone in this corridor curiously. Zel has shared a lay out of the building with them prior to his return to the shuttle, so Rydel simply loaded it up and marked down where the room of interest is. However, the strange quietness is making him feel rather uneasy.

There are cameras monitoring every corner of the rooms and corridors, and Rydel knew that the scrambling noise generator that they have used on B1 to conceal their presence may not be applicable in this setting as this base is much better designed with a much more rigorous security protocol. Thankfully, he does bring a personal sized noise generator. Finding a socket in the nearest room, Rydel conjured the Lightning Blade and stabbed it right into the socket before sending an enormous amount of electricity output through the building's network.

The sudden spike overloaded the system instantly as the building circuit's protective mechanisms kicked into actions, however, even those man-made protections have a limit before their physical properties were overriden by theoretically impossible values of energy, and if there is anything an artifact does, it is to break the theoretical impossibility.

The lights in the corridors flickered before they were burned out as smoke filled the building. As most of the devices are knocked out and overloaded, Rydel left the room and started running towards the room of interest. That's when suddenly, Zel appeared two meters in front of him with only one arm and he grabbed Rydel's hands before warping him into the Pocket Domain.

'ZEL?!' Rydel shouted loudly at him, 'where's Elmyra, are you okay?' Then, he looked down at the empty sleeve, 'where did your arm go? Are you OK?'

'They had it, but that's not an issue.' Zel said, grabbing Rydel by the shoulder, 'I am sorry, I couldn't stop them...'

'What do you mean?' Rydel asked, and Zel simply gestured for him to wait as he brought the pocket dimension through the floors directly to the room that Elmyra is being house in.

After escaping without his arms from the pseudo-Lock Downs, everyone in the room but Zel thought that he had already been captured, however, the unstoppable process that is Elmyra's procedure has already begun, and nobody can truly afford to pay attention to what he is doing during this process beyond trying to keep him out of trouble.

That's also when Zel retreated back into his pocket domain and sought to work around the circuits in another way. He may not be as much of an expert in the systems engineering areas like Elmyra, but years of making his very own prosthetic and the intricate circuitry within has given him some innate understand of what certain circuits and systems do, and that's how he had some semblance of idea of the mega-circuitry that involved multiple artifact users right in front of him, though there is no way he could tell what exactly they are trying to accomplish exactly.

Then, as he dived in through the layers and looked on through the paths of circuits, he saw a single hand written note left on one of the main branches.

'If you terminate the connection suddenly, she will die.'

It was a simple line, and Zel initially thought that it was merely a bluff, and almost reached out to pull on the circuits that linked the control room with Elmyra's pod, freeing her. That's when the brightness of the room changes as Elmyra's body shined like a sun with the amount of artifact activation nobody in the room has ever seen.

Even from being in the Pocket domain and having the intensity of the light being reduced by the nature of his artifact, he is still struggling to make out what is happening in the room. All of the soldiers and Lady Lily all activated their goggles as the Pen of Rearrangement was taken out. Rising from the kneeling position from being 'in' the machine, Zel saw blood flooding out of Elmyra's skull as she lied there quietly. Then, she started moving and shuffling her entire body...no she was spasming. Lady Lily's Pen shined bright too, but no where near the intensity of Elmyra's shine as she constantly fixed up the injury that is being done on her body as it showed up, reversing it back to its previous healthy state.

Then, as the injuries accumulated more and more and faster and faster, the state of healthy state went from no blood loss to minimal blood loss until Elmyra's body went motionless, but the artifact continued to be activated.

Zel couldn't stay in the area for any longer, and he had to look for a way to cut this. The note said the connection shouldn't be terminated and it seemed like it is only talking about the neural link that is established, the part of the system where the other artifact users are at could also be influenced, and perhaps that would have a lot less of a negative impact on Elmyra. He know that for sure Elmyra will be kept alive by Lady Lily for the time being, but that is not exactly something Zel want to bank on.

He needed to figure something out.

As he exited the operating room finally, the circuits were fried out in the building by Rydel as the back up generators immediately kicked into gear as one soldiers manually separated the building's circuit with this current circuit.

'So what do you think we can do...' As they rose through the floors towards the room, Rydel can already see the light on her body seeping through the windows and the doors.

'I...I don't know...' Rydel said as they stood by the side of the pod, watching Lady Lily fighting to keep Elmyra alive, 'what...exactly are they doing...There is nothing we can do, but...'

'Come on, Elmyra! Search!' Zero commanded, as Elmyra is tied to the chair in the mansion deep within her subconsciousness, the construct of her entire artifact usage galary, 'follow these visual and sensational cues from Hong Fu, search! Look for the trajectory of the remaining artifacts!'

'Ahhhhh!' Elmyra screamed as her body lit up and glowed orange like the sun as Zero's construct in her brain instinctively covered his eyes, 'I can't...there is nothing, but everything, so dark, yet so bright.'

'What do you mean?!' Zero approached her and continually pressed on, his ears now hearing the worlds from Hong Fu as his hands moved to alter Elmyra's physiological state of optimal artifact usage at the expanse of her bodily functions. In just the short amount of time that he has breached into Elmyra's subconscious, he has pushed Elmyra expand out the scope and radius of her artifact and see the fates of all that is in the galaxy, trillions of strands and trajectories of things in both space and time, the raging sea of information that Zero once fearless dived into is now presented in front of Elmyra for her to choose.

And yet, Elmyra still couldn't find the few strands that are needed the most.

'Look for it, Elmyra,' Zero said, 'Do the strands of fate for artifact users look and feel different?'

'Ah...ah!!!!' Elmyra screamed out in pain as her head violently jerked to the side as if she is trying to escape, but there is no escape here. Her mind is overloaded with information, and diving through an unthinkable amount of information to look for the right one is what Zero can do, that's not her ability.

'I don't think she can do it.' Hong Fu's voice said inside Zero's mind, 'she may be able to perceive them all, but only you can pick the right one.'

'What are you suggesting?' Zero asked.

'You need to dive deeper,' Hong Fu said.

'A doubling neural dive?' Zero said, he know the risks, but he cannot stop here. Elmyra won't be able to stay in the current state of perceiving all that is and all that will be for long despite Lady Lily's efforts.

'I will guide you from over here with my power' Hong Fu said, 'establish a connection with this construct of Elmyra, then just go in. I will control your outputs from here.'

Then, as the Probable sprung into life, Hong Fu took control of Zero's control room outputs and is now personally responsible for Elmyra's physiological state as Zero focuses on his task. He does not want to help Zero any more than what he had to, but right now, the best shot at keeping Elmyra in somewhat of a good shape is to finish the mission as quickly as possible, giving Zero what he wanted.

With a hand on the Elmyra in Elmyra's subconsciousness, Zero repeated the command phrase that will bring him into the state of neural diving and dove deeper. When he opened his eyes again, he found himself floating in the midst of darkness surrounded by millions of strands of light.

This is what Elmyra is seeing, that's what her mind is being overloaded with, and Zero had to immediately activate his own artifact in order to sieve through so much information. He doesn't have a lot of time here, so he needed to be snapping with his decisions.

'Filter, new time points and beyond.' Zero murmured to himself, as he got rid of all of the information that he considered to be non essential. As his artifact paused, all of the strands of light that does not fit the logical criteria were ignored, and yet the tightly packing of light all around him doesn't appear any less dense. There are an near unlimited number of events happening in the future, and even more possibilities out there that Zero simply can't sieve through in this short a time.

He can feel his heart pumping faster and faster, as he continued to arrange, filter and disgard the information he doesn't need. Getting rid of the strands of light that doesn't revolve around the artifact users instantly got rid of most of the strands of light, and yet all of the possibilities the twenty artifacts will experience is still a gigantic tangled mess, albeit it is a lot easier to handle than before. However, the filtering process of getting rid of everything else was the difficult bit, as there wasn't exactly a button he could have just pressed.

Instead, he looked far into the future for Absolute Being during their inevitable fight with the third group of artifact users and worked backwards. By that time, there were more artifact users than there are now, but their fates are all entangled together in a mess that is impossible to comprehend.

Do the job, worry about it later. Zero reminded himself, and worked backwrads in time, getting rid of all of the strands of light that does not touch those from the artifact users.

That's when he saw the various points in time when those artifacts are stationery, or in an inactive state. This is it! That's what he needed.

'Ze...ro...hurry...broken.....time...' Hong Fu's voice is now just a completely distorted and muffled echo from the deeper level of neural dive, but Zero can make out from the desperation from his tone that there isn't much time left.

Reaching out with his hand, he moved the points in time when the artifacts are activated by the various individuals, and yanked them towards him, shortening the lengths of time that it takes for those artifacts to be activated from some time in the near future to now. Whether that future is before or after Absolute Being's fight against the third mysterious group, Zero simply cannot tell.

The lights began to flicker around him as his environments shakes. There are no more time for him to stay here, and he needed to quickly get out of here. Murmuring the command to exit the neural dive twice, Zero was ejected in a tunnel of light back into the world. As he opened his eyes in the body that he normally resides in and fought the recoil from exiting the dive way too quickly, he found himself also bleeding from the head as he fell to the side onto the floor. The soldiers in the room immediately reached forward to catch him and prevented any chance of injury.

His body is hurting, but there is nothing anyone can do here. However, he thought that he did whatever he needed to do.

'...Zero! Are you out?' Lady Lily's worried voice came through the communications channel, 'have you done it?'

'I...I think I have...' Zero said, slurring his words as saliva in his mouth began to be secreted uncontrollably as he is losing control of parts of his body as a side effect of overusing the artifacts, 'I...think I have...'

'Right!' Lady Lily said, now doing the best she can to fix up the bloodied up Elmyra who looked pale like a corpse when suddenly, the space in front of them twisted and opened up as Rydel, Valerie and Zero jumped out of the pocket domain. Rydel's Lightning Blade is in hand and jolts of lightning hit everyone in the room, including the fatigued Lady Lily who wasn't really paying attention. As all of the people were knocked back into the walls behidn them, Valerie locked down the region of space around Elmyra immediately as Rydel warped away the entire pod, then, all of the bearers exited the room as quickly as they came.

'What...what happened?' Zero asked, his eyes are now seeing a blurry vision.

'They.....they took Elmyra back!' The soldier said, trying his best to remain calm as their master is leaning against him, 'and they are out.'

'That's not the worst of it.' Hong Fu's voice came through the communications channel, but that's not the channel that all of the artifact users are using to talk with each other, but rather the internal security channel for all of the soldiers, 'I am sorry, but I am going to get out of here.'

'Hong Fu...'

There is a clicking sound in the channel and no reply from them. Then, the channel is filled with various orders and commands as the commanding officers quickly organized themselves as a wave of new threats are arriving. The reinforcements of the GBI has arrived, and all of the soldiers are preparing to fight until the end.

'Master, what's your orders?' The soldier next to Zero sounded like a young man, but he is trying his best to keep everything together. He is not quite able to receive any pseudo-artifacts yet, but he is trying his best at all times.

'Retreat, away from here.' Trying to concentrate all of his energy to give as clear an order as he could ever give, Zero leaned into the mic and said, 'self-destruct the base, bring all of the users, scatter and regroup. Protocol 3.'

'You heard it, protocol 3!' The commanding officer now took over the channel from the main control room as all of the soldiers in the room shot to their feet and started carrying out the orders. At the end of this, this base that once belonged to Infinity and Absolute Being will be nothing but a pile of dusts and metal, and the gigantic pseudo-artifact of Mass Projector will make sure everything that's left here will be ripped apart to the point of unidentifiable.

There might be some questions that will need to be answered, but that is a worry for another day. Right now, Absolute Being is in an extremely fragile state, and all they wanted to do is to get out of here in one piece. Thankfully, due to Valerie entering into the pocket domain to preserve Elmyra's bodily function, her grip on Sir Deva and Sadie Allen has loosened, and the soldiers took an enraged Sir Deva and a severely burnt Sadie Allen back into the base before tens of small shuttles lifted off from the top level of the building.