Having been lead into a large hut Dax met with the current leader of the white lagoon village for a private conversation between the two of them. Like her daughter the village chief had large blue eyes and long gray and white hair that glistened like a gemstone in the light inside the hut, but unlike Opal she seemed to emit a more adult aura as she bowed down to Dax and expressed her sincere grat.i.tude as a mother for having her children returned to her.

"It was nothing. As somewhat of a parent myself I understand your grat.i.tude, please raise your head."

Strongly sensing a 'but' coming Dax decided to first answer her grat.i.tude before anything else.

"But having been entrusted with the role of village chief by my late husband there are other things that I must put first. Even if I myself am willing to express my grat.i.tude towards you and your companions, the will of the village must come first. Please leave this place, and never return."

So far everything was within Dax's expectations. After being suffering under and being subjugated by a foreign power the small village in the middle of nowhere had turned xenophobic, and even if Dax and his companions had done so much for them they were still just outsiders. Sadly just leaving wasn't an option for multiple reasons, and even if the by far the easiest option was displacing or killing the villagers Dax didn't really feel like doing that even as he was perfectly equipped for such a task.

(It couldn't just be that easy huh?...)

Looking at the strange one armed demonkin mercenary Ellen sighed to herself while organizing her thoughts.

(I am definitely not suited for this job.)

The mercenary leader had not responded to her request to leave and don't come back, in that case she had to find out what would make him leave peacefully.

"Let's discuss compensation."

As the mercenary broke the immediate silence Elle felt her face starting to cramp up from the seer bluntness he was displaying.

(Of course a mercenary would want to be paid for his work..)

"We don't normally deal with coins all the way out here, but we do dive for precious gemstones and pearls. How much-"

"Ah no I'm not talking about you compensating me or my comrades, even if it would be nice to obtain some rubyes or the like to use for railguns we have already been paid."

"Then what are you talking about?"

"How much should I try and squeeze out of the eastern Empire for their aggression towards your people? Even if you don't have much trade I think some other sort of valuables would be appropriate, like materials to repair your village or medicine perhaps."

"Eh?"

(What is this demonkin saying?)

Ellen truly comprehend the person sitting casually in front of her. Even being out in the middle of nowhere she knew of the eastern Empire and their might, especially after experiencing it herself. The Empire bowed to no one, not even the angels as they themselves had a sanctuary within their borders that was integrated into their power structure.

"W-we don't need compensation from the Empire, it is simply enough that they don't interfere with us again."

Fearing divine intervention if she accepted that offer Ellen politely declined any help form the strange mercenary in front of her.

"Then we'll go with that. As for your request to immediately leave I'm afraid we can't do that yet. Please allow us 3 days to stay outside the village, we won't interfere with the village in any way."

"I guess that will be appropriate.. You have 3 days."

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"I couldn't ask for more, if you would excuse me I have a tight timeframe to work with now and need to get started immediately."

Exchanging a handshake Ellen saw the matter to be settled and struck up some smalltalk.

"So what will you be doing before you leave this place, if I might ask?"

"We'll be busy with a healthy mix between salvaging and exorcism it seems like."

"Eh?"

"Of course any villagers are free to observe us while we do so, this is your home after all."

---

Leaving the confused village elder behind Dax made his way to the camp Terra and Lux had set up near the sphere, letting the gravitational disturbance present around the small atoll guide him.

"Ah welcome Dax!- Wait what happened to you!?"

The first one to notice him was Lilly, as she seemingly had been waiting for him. The short, red haired elver with completely golden eyes and long pointy ears showed a large warm smile when she finally spotted, but quickly noticed that there was something wrong and rushed over.

"What happened to your arm!? And your legs too!"

Looking like she was about to cry as she almost tore off Dax's s.h.i.+rt to see if he had other injuries.

"You don't wanna know, trust me."

Thinking back to the strange creatures inhabiting the seemingly abandoned lunar station and the implications such an existence would have on this world that had yet to develop s.p.a.ce travel Dax had chosen to make the event and everything that happened there strictly confidential. Lilly of course knew nothing of that, only that Dax had somehow been gravely injured and refused to talk about it with her, this caused her to tear up slightly.

"You don't trust me?"

"It's not that simple, I would tell you if I could. But don't worry about this small injury, I'll be back to normal in a years time."

"You are a horribly bad liar!"

Not being able to stop her tears flowing Lilly shouted Dax in the face before she ran off.

(Well, s.h.i.+t.)

Lilly had completely seen through his lie, Dax had in fact no idea if he would ever be back to full strength again. The real problem was not losing 3 limbs, the replacements were already being printed, but the sword that had pierced his chest. Some kind of curse had activated when it pierced Dax's chest, the effect seemed to be a mix of constant intense pain and some kind of interference with Dax's nervous system that greatly impaired his fine motor skills. The curse revealed itself to be completely outsides of Solaris' area of expertise so in the end he only had to endure.

(This f.u.c.king sucks…)

Looking at his shaking hand as he strongly clenched it Dax decided to think a bit more about his approach as he handed over control of his body mostly to ICI so it stopped shaking.

"Let's get to work."

Ignoring everything else for the moment Dax approached the sphere, stopping just outside it's area of influence.

"ICI give me a full spectrum surface scan"

[ORDER CONFIRMED, COMMENCING FULL SPECTRUM SURFACE SCAN, ALLOCATING DRONE SWARM…. COMPLETE.]

Getting multiple Specter drones to survey the sphere for any structural weakness Dax could use to quickly break through the sh.e.l.l to the contents inside his work was basically over for the moment.

"Hey, long time no see."

Which was when Terra chose to approach him.

"Hey, good work. We're going to have to temporarily delay our sparring matches for the moment."

"I could have guessed that.. What happened?"

"You don't wanna know."

"Okay.. I can see why Lilly is mad now."

Seeing how completely emotionally inept her teacher continued to be Terra could only breathe a deep sigh.

"Yeah I'll work on appeasing her in a bit.. Where's Solaris?"

"The angel? She's up there."

Pointing up in the sky Dax saw the small figure of the six winged angel flying around up in the sky.

"What the h.e.l.l is she doing?"

"She told me she was going to look for any more surveillance spells, it would only take a few minutes apparently."

"Neat."

-

(That is the last one…)

Dismantling the last spell formation after blinding whoever was unfortunate enough to operate it Solaris breathed a sigh and flapped her wings once before disabling the levitation spell that kept her flying and started a free fall back towards the small atoll that was only a speck below her. Free falling for a bit a green dot appeared on her sight, making her remember she was wearing her new mask.

"What is that?"

["It's a marker, it means 'come over here'."]

"HII! D-Dax?"

Slightly startled by Dax's voice suddenly appearing in her head all of a sudden Solaris let out a slightly embarra.s.sing sheik and felt her face slowly heat up.

["That would be my name yeah, I have something strange here I need you to deal with."]

"... On my way."

Folding in her wings and rapidly dropping alt.i.tude Solaris made her way back to the strange sphere Solaris landed without sound or kicking up a speck of sand.

"Here I am."

"Show off.. Well it's this.. Thing."

As Dax pointed towards the sphere Solaris noticed it. An amalgamation of flesh and corruption hovered in mid air, letting out corrupted mana.

"We have no idea what it is, but we know very much what it was. A mage acting like a researcher used a strange spell to strengthen himself-"

"But died before he activated it fully."

Taking over Dax's explanation Solaris spoke with mix of anger and frustration poorly hidden in her voice as she started forming a complicated spell in the palm of her hand.

"Who ever killed the mage before the spell took complete effect did the right thing, it is a malignant corruption that feeds on flesh and mana… The one thing I don't understand is why it is still contained."

"That would be the offensive barrier."

"The what?"

Instead of answering Dax just gestured towards the ball of flesh that was slowly expanding, until it reached a certain size and a certain reaction occurred. Suddenly the air s.h.i.+fted, and all depri around the ball of flesh came to a hold.

"What is that?"

"The stabilizing pulse. Once you're caught in that you can't escape unless you can emit a counter pulse in time, or are on the systems whitelist. Next would be the final identifying pulse followed by the dispersion and compression wave in quick succession."

On cue like Dax described the ball of flesh was violently drawn apart at an molecular level before it compressed down to the size of a coin.

"This has happened precisely 419 times so far, and still it keeps growing."

"That's because you can't kill was doesn't have a material form."

Having finished constructing her spell Solaris targeted the small ball of flesh with an arrow of blinding light that pierced the flesh without harming it, on the surface at least.

"It's dead now, I've purified and shattered the corruption."

"Great. Let's get to work opening up this sh.e.l.l then."