"Less talking, more running!"

While Dax was busy putting as much distance as he could between him and the creatures who emerged out of the portal in the throne room, Lux called, it appeared she was confused because Dax had enacted the MAD and Exterminatus protocol out of nowhere.

[... What's the status?]

"Code is as follows: Brimstone, thunder."

Doctrine stated that the status of weapons of ma.s.s destruction should never be spoken out loud, therefore the 125th, like all other units who used those kinds of weapons, spoke in code when dealing with them. In this case, 'brimstone' was an exotic matter annihilation ordinance direct impact missile and the word 'thunder' meant that it had already been fired and was seeking out its target without relying on external guidance, a so called 'fire and forget' mode. 

[Why not lighting?]

Lighting would be the term used when the missile was being remotely guided into its target by a human operator, the benefit of such measure was that the missile could be terminated if the situation changed on the ground.

It appeared that Dax had no plans to cancel the strike.

"Because I said so, now get your a.s.s to the fallback line omega, complete disengagement. I'll explain everything later!"

Cutting off the communication with Lux, Dax only had a split second of quiet time before another message arrived.

[ICI AFFIRMS: FIRE MISSION PROCESSED. CODE: BRIMSTONE, RED.]

"Requesting additional fire mission, fire for effect! Code is: Lance, h.e.l.lfire, gla.s.s. Second code: Hail!"

[FIRE MISSION RECEIVED, PROCESSING…. REQUEST APPROVED, FIRST CODE: LANCE, h.e.l.lFIRE, FURY. SECOND CODE: HAIL, BLAZE.]

"Dax, what was that earlier message from ICI?"

"It meant: Run before you get nuked, now get a move on!"

Rounding a corner inside the castle Dax s.h.i.+elded his face as a deafening explosion rang out right in front of him, when the smoke cleared it was revealed that a CAS-7A had blown its way into the imperial castle about 150 metres up. 

"Get in!"

Securing both Solaris and Alice (Who was told to abandon her exoskeleton outside the throne room) in record time, Dax didn't even bother strapping in himself as he took direct control over the s.p.a.ce plan and maxed out its afterburner in an instant.

"Urg!"

As Solaris was the least reinforced individual among the group she immediately felt faint when the CAS-7A accelerated without warning, going one direction one second, then plunging to the ground without warning the next.

"Bear with it for just a bit longer Solaris! We need to escape over the horizon before they turn their attention on us!"

"I… Know!.... Don't… Mind me!"

Being the only other person to have seen the monsters which had up until a few minutes ago been trapped on the moon, Solaris didn't mind going through an extreme amount of pain to escape from them.

"What exactly is chasing us!?"

Alice, however had no idea what was going on, but even then she had never seen Dax or Solaris that scared before, which itself freaked her out a fair bit.

"I have no idea, that's what f.u.c.king scares me! Now no more talking, don't bite off your tongue as it makes a mess!"

Back in the throne room the first creature who stepped through the portal had just finished up absorbing the last parts of the minister of magic, it was just now it turned its attention to the numerous drones who continuously fired all their weapons at them. The bullets, fragmentation and other projectiles never reached the creatures however, as when they came within 10 metres of the creatures they just stopped mid air, like their kinetic energy and the effect of gravity had been cancelled out completely. Coalescing some of its feelers, the fungus covered creature simply pointed that ma.s.s at the drones, then they completely disappeared, along with a considerable amount of the castle behind them, like water hitting a warm pan it all just evaporated into nothing. After the drones had been dealt with, the creature turned its attention towards the bug who had managed to flee for the second time in a row. Reaching out a ma.s.s of spore filled and rotting feelers towards the bug who was in the middle of the imperial city at this point, the creature gathered some kind of energy for a fraction of a second before unleas.h.i.+ng its devastating potential.

"Here it comes!"

Feeling all the hairs on his back stand upright, Dax banked the CAS-7A hard to the side as it accelerated past its factory designated limits to avoid the attack. Only a split second later, a large circle shaped void was carved straight through the skysc.r.a.pers in and around it, forming a straight line from deep into the ground all the way up from the imperial castle.

"What the f.u.c.k was that!?"

"I said no talking! Don't make me gag you!"

While Solaris had closed her eyes and started praying with a frightened expression plastered all over her face, Alice started flipping out like a raging toddler, and as such Dax treated her like a toddler as he secured her tightly to his seat before he threatened to stick her with a pacifier too. While it seemed like Dax had enough composure to f.u.c.k around while piloting, nothing could be further from the truth as he had mostly left dealing with Alice and Solaris to a combination of ICI and the cursed sword as he constantly a.n.a.lysed the creatures targeting him while planning routes through the dense stone jungle.

"s.h.i.+T!"

Sensing another attack coming, Dax tried to avoid it but it seemed the fungus covered creatures had already adapted to that fact as they started using less destructive by faster charging spells. Seemingly out of nowhere a small circular hole appeared in the CAS-7A right next to Dax's head, it had been so close to outright remove Dax's head that a small part of his chin and one ear was shaved off and had disappeared from existence.

"ICI!"

[ROGER, SATURATING TARGET AREA USING ALL OPERATIONAL UNITS.]

Feeling like it was way past the time when he needed a distraction, Dax commanded ICI to make every single heavy weapon which had been part of the siege force to open fire on the imperial castle. From one second to the next an earth shattering roar could be felt all over the imperial capital as the imperial castle was suddenly hit from all sides with high calibre railgun munition, Viper cruise missiles and even orbital lasers started pulverizing and melting the imperial castle at a terrifying rate. Even across the great sea did Dax's units started a.s.sisting him as they rapidly dumped their long range monitions, even the 24 540 mill railgun turrets which surrounded the capital of the central kingdom all trained on the same target before starting rapid fire, dumping so much waste heat into the air that the chilly autumn wind started reminding the inhabitants of a blazing summer. Rus.h.i.+ng out to her balcony the first princess looked with fear at the railgun as they fired, it was clear that something had gone really wrong with Dax's expedition this time around.

"Keep it up! When the guns in this area can't fire anymore enact denial protocol!"

[DIRECTIVE CONFIRMED, 11.057 UNITS MARKED FOR END OF SERVICE, DENIAL PROTOCOL ENABLED, 11.057 UNITS SET TO SCUTTLE ONCE COMBAT EFFECTIVENESS DROPS BELOW 90%]

With the impressive amount of destruction happening around them the twisted creatures seemed to lessen the frequency of their attacks a fair bit, and while the CAS-7A took a number of grazing hits none of the creature's attacks managed to almost hit Dax like the earlier one. After one of the most intense 30 minutes of his life, Dax collapsed limply on the cabin floor of the CAS-7A as he turned it over to autonomous flight once more.

"... Are we alive?"

Timidly opening her eyes Solaris started looking around after she had noticed the craft started flying more calmly, finding Dax collapsed on the floor with a minor wound on his face.

"Yeah, at least for now."

Seeing that it was okay for Solaris to speak now Alice timidly opened her own mouth to speak.

"Then will you tell us what that just now was?"

"I will, we're just waiting for the others to join up then I'll explain everything."

---

"When I confronted the emperor he tried using the castle's portal formation, while I jammed it pretty much instantly it seems like it still managed to make a weak connection with a sanctuary on the other side."

"So it was angels how did all that?"

Having retreated all the way out into the middle of the great sea Dax started his debriefing about what had happened in the imperial capital, or at least he attempted to do so.

"I said you need to wait until the end if you have any questions…"

With a tired look on his face, Dax glanced down at Lilly who was embracing him, but instead of any normal response she started digging her nails into his back while smiling in a way which indicated that she wouldn't take no for an answer. Seeing the effectiveness of such a strategy Alice, who was currently embracing Dax's right arm without any intention of letting go for the foreseeable future started mimicking the small elver, even Solaris who had claimed Dax's left arm did the same. With a tired look in her eyes Terra sighed deeply when she looked at such a sight, but she still somehow managed to accept it.

When Terra, Lilly and Lux had been retreating as Dax told them to, Lux had caught a glimpse of what was shooting those terrifying spells after Dax and displayed it to the others. As the only one of Dax's lovers who was not with him when they escaped the imperial capital Lilly was quite worried about Dax and thus immediately latched on to him the second she saw him and refused to let go, leading Alice and Solaris to copy her and placing Dax in his current predicament.

"... Remember when you girls went with Iris down south while I worked on something with Solaris? At that time we had discovered the location of a hidden sanctuary which had long been lost. When visiting said sanctuary we found lots of things we couldn't explain with either technology or magic, key among those things were those creatures which also tired to kill me last time."

Displaying a hologram in between himself and Lux showing compiled recordings from both the lost sanctuary and the imperial throne room of the creatures, the colour immediately drained from the faces of everyone who saw it, including Lux and Dax.

"... What the f.u.c.k are those creatures?"

"No idea. I have found out nothing about them other than the fact that they can use mana to an extremely scary level and seem to have some sort of connection to my original world. Other than that I have no idea, it's not even certain if the creatures operate based on what that parasitic fungus tells them, if their organic bodies are still alive and in control or if they are some kind of biomechanical constructs…"

While everyone had grim looks on their faces Lux was the only one among them who tried to have a positive outlook as she attempted to cheer up the others.

"But that doesn't matter anymore as Dax hit them with 3 kinds of WMD's, they, and the portal they are invading from have long since turned to ash."

"If only that was the case…"

"Eh?"

Switching to another recording on the hologram, Dax showed how the exotic matter missile, a 20 by 5 metre rod of solid tungsten and a swarm of red matter was entirely annihilated before getting anywhere close to the imperial capital.

"So we're f.u.c.ked?"

Losing all the optimism she had held up until that point, Lux asked Dax the simplest question she could think of.

"Not yet, we still have a slim chance of victory."