May 16th, 625

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking.”

Umara smirked as she heard John’s voice chime through the comm channel with artificial sultry smoothness. Stealth systems were cranked up so high around them that she could barely see the walls of the vehicle they were driving in, sounds of battle ringing outside.

“I’d like to welcome everyone aboard the Chameleon Model B. We are currently operating at an altitude of seven thousand four hundred feet above sea level with speeds sitting at about fourty miles per hour. The time is an hour past noon, with light winds of about fifteen miles per hour, smoggy skies, and cool weather with a high of 22 degrees. As we make our approach I would just like to remind everyone to keep their hands, feet, and objects within the interior of the vehicle at all times. In the event of a catastrophic upset during our ride, there are emergency exits located to the rear, front, and top of the vehicle. If there are no unexpected incidents during our travel, we can expect an ETA of about fifteen minutes. I will check in once more toward the tail end of our trip, so until then just sit back, relax, and enjoy the mostly smooth ride afforded by bleeding edge suspension technology. Thank you.”

Umara chuckled and clapped a bit, the others around her smirking, helmets in their laps.

Blackblood scoffed.

“Mostly smooth, he says.”

Right after his words, the entire vehicle violently jolted after hitting a divot in the ground, throwing everyone into the air for a short split second. It was not the first time it happened, and Blackblood grunted after knocking his head against the roof.

The ride progressed swiftly, everyone chattering for a while before John suddenly announced again.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain. There’s been a small hiccup and I felt it necessary to inform everyone aboard the vessel that we will be ending our trip inside a wall.”

“What do you mean, inside a wall?”

“I mean inside a wall. In about three seconds.”

Everyone suddenly felt the vehicle hit something and launch into the air. Hands locked around handles before they slammed into the aforementioned wall. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

Everything was silent for a second before their comm systems clicked again.

“And we have landed. I’d like to thank everyone for riding with Cooper Transportation Services. Please remain seated while the vehicle dislodges from the wall.”

There was another jolt, and they all fell through the air before slamming into the ground.

“You may now remove your seatbelts.”

“I didn’t have mine on.”

“Sounds like a personal problem.”

Blackblood grunted as he untwisted himself, everyone climbing out of the car through the various hatches.

Miraculously they were still upright. After stepping out, Umara spotted the hole in the wall that they had created. Funnily enough though, their active camo systems were still working perfectly well. None of the nearby monsters had spotted them.

She turned as John exited. He was wearing another exosuit, what he called the Specialist Configuration: Infiltrator. It was sleek, with ghillie fabrics hanging from the suit and muted colors that flickered with invisibility systems. Combined with his normal stealth abilities, it was impossible to find him when he didn’t want to be.

He kept himself in view of the team though. Despite all the monsters around them being oblivious to their presence, they could detect each other just fine.

“Let’s move.”

John raised a rifle that blended with his suit, a thick integrated silencer peeking from the end of the weapon.

The rest of the Desert Eagles fell in behind him. They maintained vigilance as they ran toward the heart of the Nexus. It was a massive building of metal and calcified materials. Near it, the Gargantuan Intestine was sticking out, troops running in and out of it to do battle with Iron Legion forces beyond the walls.

The siege had been initiated after over a week of constant firebombing. The once dense concentration of monsters and Corrupted soldiers had been whittled down to a fraction of the original number. Now it was just a cleanup of the remaining forces.

What they were doing required a bit more finesse, though. Nobody knew what was inside a Nexus site, and John had decided to infiltrate this one and find out. The enemy Authority 11 Royal that had been stationed here had already left to do battle with Iron Legion’s Marshals. While other Authority 10s had been detected inside, the Desert Eagles could handle any that came their way, if they were noticed at all.

They would get in, scour the place for anything interesting, and leave them a present on the way out.

They strode across the fleshy grounds, bypassing every monster and worker beast in the area. Gunships were slinging shells at anything that obviously stood out from above and parts of the walls were being blasted inward as the Superheavy tanks closed the distance.

Thankfully, orders were given not to fire on the main building and bring it down. They wouldn’t be buried with it.

They were silent as they walked into one of the entrances to the building. They had to be careful not to hit any of the monsters making their way through. Giving a signal, Aki was ordered to bring her team up the tower. There were large stairways that led to different levels, which they quickly split off into.

John led them down another direction, finding some hidden pathways that led underground.

Other teams had already used various devices to map out the structure. One of them was a pulse scanner that could be fired from a tank cannon. After making contact with the building, it would use powerful bursts of mana to map out everything around it before beaming the information back and detonating itself. They weren’t exactly subtle, but it wasn’t like the Scourge would have any idea what those waves of mana were doing, especially when they were busy being firebombed hour after hour.

They knew where they had to go, so they found the paths and traveled down them. Along the way they encountered several Royals of various power levels, the intelligence behind the Scourge. They refrained from killing any as they made their way to the first set of rooms.

After going through a few sets of doors, they found themselves amidst living areas with both Royals and Corrupted. Umara knew that all of the Desert Eagles were recording everything they encountered using cameras on their suits, including John, so they sifted through some more private areas before moving on.

They continued deeper, finding nothing of interest. Storage areas, more living areas, and processing facilities were all they found. The facilities were processing things like food or other war materiel, but since they were almost completely biological, there was little they could do to study them besides taking samples.

It was only at the deepest levels that they found the things they were looking for.

They stepped down the last stairway that previous scans showed. It led to the deepest portions of the Nexus. Apparently at the end of it, they would be finding a massive shielded room. They weren’t sure what was inside of it, but that was why they were investigating.

John put up his hand right before they turned a corner. He took a step back, then waited.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Umara could sense a Royal approaching. It was easily Authority 9, but it didn’t seem like it was a King Blood.

John raised his rifle, and when the Royal turned the corner, its head was right in front of the muzzle. Its skull was greeted with a bullet, which punched a clean hole into the brain, stopping inside. It was given just enough power that the bullet didn’t exit and embed itself into the opposing wall.

After the corpse fell, John stepped past it. Feiden came in behind him, retrieving the corpse into a spatial storage while Jaya followed up by incinerating the blood and residual fluids.

They continued on, finding one last pair of doors. John dropped next to it while everyone surrounded him, Auras primed.

He took out his SEER Knife, stabbing it into the doors and watching the enchantments across them light up with power. Psyka flooded through the knife while the corruptive power of the Neural Gem flooded the enchantments, rendering them inert and bringing them under John’s control.

With a few more moments, only after every connected system had been usurped, John placed a scanner on the doors, which pulsed with barely discernible mana.

It gave everyone a view of the room beyond. They could see all of the bodies within, humanoids that rushed around the place with urgency, naturally because of the ongoing raid outside. It seemed they were setting up a formation around the room, filling the walls and floor, as well as auxiliary structures.

More importantly though was the massive object in the center. It was a beating heart pumping with active poisonous mana. Umara guessed that it was at least 200 feet tall and nearly just as wide. While the mana wasn’t absurdly powerful, there was a seemingly endless amount of it being pushed through. Only now was it able to be felt after John took control of the enchantments, which brought down the shielding.

Umara was able to sift through the ocean of mana though, feeling the faint spatial fluctuations radiating from the formations.

She spoke over comms.

“They’re setting up a teleporter. Probably to transport the heart out.”

“Looks like it. Get ready to raid the place. We need to kill them fast, preserve any intel. Don’t let them destroy anything.”

“I’ll prepare my spell.”

Umara started casting after John nodded, a dense ball of spatial energy forming between her hands. The others prepared themselves as well, their HUDs blinking with tags as John assigned them targets.

There were two Authority 10 targets, but neither of them were King Bloods. It seemed those were outside fighting, buying time so that the formation could be completed.

“We have those Brigadiers.”

Kwon spoke for him and Song, John nodding to them.

“Ready.”

Umara signalled after a minute or so, John dropping an illusion device by the door. It would mask their entry, none of the Royals within knowing that the door was opening.

Then, he pressed, cracking open the door and letting everyone slip through. Once they were all inside, John raised his rifle, aiming at his target.

His word came.

“Mark.”

His shot fired, killing outright another Authority 9 Royal. Then Umara’s spell released a split second later. Every minor enemy through the room was eviscerated as spatial fissures opened up near their bodies, tearing them to shreds.

The others lunged at their targets, Kwon and Song flying toward the two Authority 10s and pinning them down. They were brutal with their charged attacks, both enemies mortally wounded with the surprise.

Only a few seconds later, they were decapitated, corpses falling to the floor.

Everyone gathered in the center, not a single humanoid alive in the room. John quickly moved to start taking control of what looked like more systems. While they were partially biological, they were still enchanted and they still contained data. In fact, the neural gem was more suited toward biological intrusion anyway, given that it too had come from a biological creature.

Umara looked over at Song and Kwon.

“That was awfully fast. I thought they would at least put up a fight.”

“We’re much better at surprise attacks. It was our primary mode of battle for many decades before we escaped the ruined Mantle of Wisdom. You could never stick around to fight for long when there were powerful enemies everywhere you went.”

“True.”

She nodded with impression. It wasn’t every day that the twins got to go all out and fight in their element. She was impressed every time she saw them work. They were always in perfect sync, capable of explosive power that she hadn’t seen from any other knight. Even Feiden was attempting to learn from them, considering his attacks had unparalleled explosive potential with his speed.

Before long, John had collected the data he needed. Umara went to his side as he took control of all the room’s enchantments.

“So? What’d you find?”

“This heart is a conduit. Every Nexus has one, and from them grows the biomat that we know and love. They also feed the spore nests. Putting it plainly, this heart is the center of the Scourge’s terraforming efforts. They corrupt the land ceaselessly. Even the Intestines are built toward that end.”

“So we kill these hearts, and reclaim the land.”

“Yes, though I doubt there’s much to reclaim farther north. Still, if we don’t destroy these, the land will continue to be poisoned. If we do though, we can push back their territory.”

“Sounds like what we need to do is pretty straightforward then.”

John nodded, going silent for a bit longer before tampering with the SEER Knife.

“It’s odd though. Alongside the heart, there’s an intelligence. It’s small, infantile, but it's there.”

“Is it doing anything?”

“Not since I took everything from it. Chances are that it’s meant to be significantly stronger than it is now, but it didn’t have time to grow since this Nexus is relatively new. We’ll need to be careful with the next Nexus we go to. Any intelligence from these monsters isn’t a good thing.”

There was a flash from the knife, the entire heart clenching with a burst of mana. Then, John motioned to her.

“Mind cutting that down? I want to bring it in. I also want to see if Pup can eat it. Maybe it’ll be nourishing to him since Flickers feed on the Scourge.”

“Sure.”

Umara nodded before launching blades of air and space toward the veins and arteries that the heart was suspended from. The entire thing fell to the ground once she was done, mana so dense that it looked like a liquid spilling out from the wounds.

It filled the room like a lake, Umara scrunching her nose. If it was normal Magika, then it would’ve been fine, heavenly even. But this Magika was deathly, filled with venomous vitality.

Eventually, the heart started to ooze actual blood. It looked oily and black as the heart deflated. Still, Umara brought out Pup.

The large wolf, which had grown to be just as tall as Umara was on all fours, turned to the heart with salivating fangs. He looked back at Umara, excitement in his eyes.

She chuckled.

“I’m certainly not eating it. Go on.”

She waved, and Pup dove in, chomping down on the massive heart and tearing a huge chunk from it. Umara heard a chuckle from John. He went up to it and carved out some samples, sending them away before setting up the explosives.

Pup ate through the heart like his stomach had no bottom. His body purified the Scourge’s influence from his food. Even the oily blood would be vaporized from his coat if it splashed onto it.

In record time, half the heart disappeared, and it was only then that Pup seemed to have enough. With a bulging stomach, Pup trotted back to Umara, nudging his large head against her and asking for pets.

“Alright, go on back so we can get out of here. You need time to digest anyway.”

Pup gave a bark before disappearing into Umara’s soul. John sent the rest of the heart into another spatial storage, and then they all moved to leave the Nexus.

They headed all the way back up so they could meet with the others. Along the way, they planted more explosives, ensuring every structural support would collapse.

When they got back outside, they could see Iron Legion annihilating everything in their path, descending upon the Nexus. Not wanting to be in their way for much longer, the team retreated to their stealth vehicle, the Chameleon, and started driving away.

John gave the signal after they made some distance.

“I’m clear. Take that thing down.”

“Roger. Missiles away.”

They got a response, and a pair of jets made their approach overhead. From them lit streaks of fire, a cluster of missiles heading straight for the nexus.

John hit his detonator right as they made impact. From above and below, explosives went off and turned the Nexus into a massive pillar of violent fire that could be seen for a dozen miles around.

No longer inhibited, Gunships and tanks went to full force, lighting up everything around the Nexus. Blackblood stuck his head out the top hatch of the car, chuckling as the others did the same through the windows.

“Well, ain’t that something?”

“Just the first of many.”

They drove away as what used to be the Treehouse was purified by righteous flame. All the remaining Corrupted, those who had once been soldiers for the base, were swept up like every other structure.

Umara glanced at John, sensing nothing from him. Once upon a time, he had been responsible for making the Treehouse into what it became, reinforced by hundreds of thousands, and later becoming a graveyard of corruption as a result of its fall.

Now, they had finally retaken it. They had made up for the sins of the past through brutal mechanized warfare.

And it was only the start. Umara knew John wouldn’t stop until he was forced to by powers he couldn’t resist.

She just hoped that this campaign wouldn’t hit him too hard by the end of it. She hoped that he wouldn’t be driven further into the insanity of the Great Barrier than he had already been.