"I'm touching what's left of your leg, to check what nerves need to be regrown and what can simply be grafted."

"Yaa~ We both know that's not what you're doing~ If you want to touch me just ask~"

After defeating the demon and wiping out its lesser kin Dax tried and failed to secure any immediately useful intelligence, then he went onto the next issue: Healing Hemera who had lost the most of her left leg in the final fight against the demon. Imeaditatly after sealing the demon and setting down the beginnings of a purification ritual, the 10 winged angel who had lost a leg not even an hour before started drinking hard alcohol straight from a bottle. Dax found Hemera when she was about halfway through what she described as 'painkiller' when he confiscated it, but the damage had already been done.

Extreme pain, significant trauma and intoxication not to mention the painkillers Dax gave Hemera had the unfortunate side effect of making the 10 winged angel elder quite high, and therefore extremely obnoxious. While he did the preliminary examination of the would the angel herself had closed up with magic, Dax had to touch the leg directly with his newly instaled cybernetic arm to scan for deeper tissue damage and nerve damage before he could completely put Hemear under. The touching and dismissive att.i.tude seemed to have an 'interesting' effect on the inebriated angel, which caused the examination to be much more tiring for Dax.

As luck would have it, right as Hemera was about to literally throw herself on Dax, Solaris joined them.

"... Dax what the f.u.c.k are you doing?"

Hearing an unnaturally low tone of voice from Solaris, Dax didn't even have to turn his head and look to know that she was p.i.s.sed off.

"Sometimes I wonder that myself."

"Ehh!~ Don't tell me you like younger angels?~ Come on, if you ignore that baby I'll show you something amazing~"

Apparently unhappy that Dax's attention was being taken by Solaris, Hemera wrapped her arms around him and whispered into his ear, loud enough for Solaris to hear of course.

"Okay I will admit this looks bad, and that it will most likely look even worse before I am done and explain myself to you, but please trust me."

Dax still had a calm expression on his face as he pried Hemera off and continued his examination as to get it over with as fast as possible, metaphorically digging his grave even deeper.

"... Okay. Then let me help you."

After battling with her own internal conflict for a few minutes Solaris appeared to decide on trusting Dax, offering her own help to make the process faster.

"Great, hold her down please."

Seeing what he a.s.sumed to be Solaris' agreement and forgiveness, Dax switched gears as he once more pried the intoxicated angel off himself.

-

"That was the last part, now it's time to sleep Hemera."

"NO! Ehehe~ Your face looks funny~"

After having felt around for nerves and tissue that needed to be discarded for a smooth healing Dax tried placing a breathing mask on the injured angel, but of course she didn't want to cooperate.

"Okay then, do you want to feel really good?"

"Dax?"

"Are you finally going to touch me? Ehehe~"

"What are you doing."

Seeing Dax's complete switch of att.i.tude, Solaris called out to him when he suddenly placed a hand on Hemera's cheek. Of course Dax completely ignored Solaris as he locked eyes with Hemera and slowly brought the breathing mask closer to her face.

"Now take a deep breath, you feel really good~ That's it, good girl."

Caressing her face while he made sure she was slowly sedated, Dax felt the temperature drop as he felt he could no longer ignore Solaris.

"What the f.u.c.k are you doing Dax?"

"Gaslighting. Yeah, that's it, breathe slowly in and out, after you wake up we are going to have some fun."

After about a minute Hemera was finally knocked out and Dax could continue with the operation that would give the angel a new leg to replace the one that she lost, but first he had to deal with Solars.

"So what was that?"

"What? Ah I needed t-"

"Was it necessary to touch her like that?"

"Ye-"

"Was it?"

"It c-"

"WAS. IT?"

".... Not strictly no, but it-"

"So you didn't need to touch her like that, but you chose to do so, right in front of me no less."

"N-"

"YOU. DID, RIGHT?~"

Before Dax knew what was happening he was prostrating on the floor in front of Solaris.

"... I am deeply sorry."

As an experienced general and field marshal, Dax was extremely knowledgeable about grand battle tactics. Sometimes the best move was to lose and cut one's losses.

---

In the end, the event that came to be known as 'the incident at the magic academy' or 'fall of the magic academy' turned out to be disastrous for the central Kingdom. The 2 and a half day siege, hostage taking and demon summoning was catastrophic for the academy, the students and it teachers. 2 thirds of the students were either dead or missing and only 7 of the teachers survived, but the heaviest damage was to the academy itself. The subsequent demon summoning, infestation and sealing had completely wiped out all essential facilities, with all the non essential being at least critically damaged. But all those losses paled in comparison to the damage inflicted to the area around the academy, as the ambient mana had been partly corrupted everything within a radius of 70 kilometres had to be abandoned without exception.

The malignant traces that still remained in the ambient mana had a sickening effect on everything living, short therm it meant very little, but over longer periods of time crops would die, animals and monsters would be corrupted and men would lose their sanity. Even as a first cla.s.s purifying ritual put in place by to archangels had been set up right after the demon was sealed away from the normal plane of existence, it would still take decades for the area to return to normal, until then it would be no different than the monster infected territory of Eglax.

The king declared a full month of mourning over the loss of so many bright and promising children, in the weeks to come they were all buried doing state funerals in Kingstead, with most of the coffins empty as the copse either couldn't be found or were too corrupted. The students that survived such nightmare were almost universally scared deeply and only after serval years of therapy offered by the Galactic Empire could they re join the society.

---

"An absolute tragedy… And a great humiliation that has not only stained this country but also my family."

"Indeed, we should have seen it coming. This is without a doubt the worst intelligence and battle response failure of the 125th, in the next coming weeks, months and decades I will dedicate myself entirely to ensuring such a tragedy will never happen again, you have my word."

In a private meeting between the king of the central Kingdom, crown princess, Teresa Vi Gruffydd XI, and Dax the qiton started out with lowering his head to the floor as he apologized from the deepest part of his heart.

"... What steps do you plan to take?"

After absorbing Dax's apology for a moment Teresa spoke up, there was no reason to dwell on the past, and it would be rude to accept Dax's apology on behalf of all those that lost their life.

"... To make it easier to understand I will be breaking the steps I am currently taking into 3 parts: Intelligence, offence and finally defence. As for intelligence, the 125th are launching 5 new surveillance constellations in low, high and geostationary orbit respectively, moreover, we are establis.h.i.+ng 900 new permanent drone stations throughout the central Kingdom."

"Surveillance constellations are satellites right? Those that allow you to see everything that's going on from the sky?"

Making sure she understood everything correctly and making sure she broke down everything so her farther could understand, Teresa asked questions as she wrote down what Dax said for further reference.

"Exactly, but satellites can't catch everything, that's where the permanent drone stations come in. Situated along the border both here in the Kingdom and the northern Republic plus all major cities, the stations will have eyes on everything and everyone that leave and enter, at all times."

"That seems like a large undertaking… I'm guessing you'll be asking to lease the ground where those stations will be built?"

"Of course. While they are tiny on the surface and will be mostly constructed in remote areas, I will compensate the Kingdom for each plot of land I build on, as per our original agreement."

Pausing to drink some water, Dax made sure Teresa had understood and written down everything.

"For simplicity, I will be explaining the defensive measures next. The fall of the magic academy revealed many shortcomings in my defensive and reactive net so they will be toughly patched. In each town with a population larger than 500 people, the 125th will construct at minimum 3 high calibre railgun turrets that have interlocking firing arches and at least 1 permanent relay base with the addition of all infrastructure necessary to maintain such fortifications, with larger cities scaling up in defensive armament as needed. Of course plots of land on which such defensive armaments will be placed will be leased, and the bases and infrastructure will be mostly below ground as to not impact the residents too much."

".... Okay…. Before we continue I think both me and my father will be quite pleased to know how the 125th will compensate the central Kingdom for all that land and the disruption this will cause the general populace."

As the sheer scale of Dax's plans dawned to the crown princess, she was quite eager to know how Dax planned to pay for all those projects.

"In 5 years I will provide a boost of at least 20% of the central Kingdom's GDP every 2 years for the next 50 years. Moreover, the 125th promises that any and all monster and bandit activity will be completely wiped out in 5 years."

"... What else?"

(If even half of those promises follow trough the central Kingdom will enter a golden age unlike one the world has ever seen!)

Doing her best to suppress her greed Teresa noticed Dax was still not done.

"Of course I will be sharing my weapons and medical technology up to a point, but those details can be discussed later."

Seeing Dax's smile widen a tiny bit as a minuscule amount of bloodl.u.s.t leaked from his body, both the king and crown princess knew what he was going to talk about next.

"Finally I will share the improvements to the 125th's offensive capabilities~ First is the expansion of my standing army, construction has already begun on a brand new offensive minded drone battalion that include not only a new fire support vehicles and an armoured core. Moreover, I will also personally lead an offensive against those who attacked us, I will teach them the gravity of their errors before I make them beg and cry for mercy."