"So you plan to leech of my dad for the next 20 days, then run away?"

"I'll start the examination now, excuse me"

Completely ignoring Terra's sarcastic remarks, Dax went over to her bed and sat down at her bedside.

"I'll need inspect your wounds, let's start with your eyes, how did that happen?"

"I blew myself up"

"With what exactly?"

"Some kind of secure metal container, it had a anti tampering circuit that I activated, making it blow up about half a meter from my face"

"So micro shrapnel is most likely still present, any pain or irritation in the scar tissue?"

"Yeah it f.u.c.king hurts! sometime it feels like my face is on fire and rubbed in gla.s.s shards, do you have any idea how that feels!?"

"So severe nerve damage, yeah i know how that feels, do you also get that itch that slowly turns into a burning sensation?"

"How the h.e.l.l do you?.."

"Miss Terra, Dax has a eye patch over his left eye. Scarring around his eye looks real so I'm guessing it's missing completely"

"Ah, thank you Elise…"

As the loyal maid Elise served as Terra's eyes her aggression turned down slightly.

"I need to take a look, would you please allow me remove the bandages?"

"Don't touch me"

Holding up her hand defencefly Terra warned Dax in a steen voice against touching her, as he heard the slight sound of metal sc.r.a.ping behind him, leeding Dax to believe Elise had drawn some kind of bladed weapon. Sighing deeply, Dax slowly backed off and turned to Elise to see she had a small dagger in hand.

"What do you plan to do with that my dear maid?"

"It's time for you to leave, I nor the young lady approve of you."

"Is it because I look like a demonkin?"

"Of course it isn't! You clearly have no medical knowledge and is just trying to exploit the young lady!"

(So for once this isn't a race issue…)

"It seems you're both more or less doubting my abilities? I'm hurt, ICI prep the reaper mask for open protocol interfacing"

[PATCHING, STANDBY]

While unattaching his mask from his belt, Dax instructed ICI to prepare for a link to Terra. Sadly the loyal maid saw that as an attempt on her masters life, and decided to quickly, almost instantly moving to stab Dax in the chest. As Elise pieced Dax's t s.h.i.+rt he took advantage of Terra's confusion and placed his mask on her face.

"Nice stab Elise, but if I s.h.i.+fted myself about 6 centimeters to the left the blade would have a chance of it hitting your master"

"What the f.u.c.k are you made off?"

"What the h.e.l.l did you just put on my face?"

"One at a time my lady's. My skin is the result of a series of bad choices in women, and I just started the first step of your recovery my sweet and unwilling patent~"

The same time as Elise was completing about her inability to kill Dax, and Terra was freaking out over having some unknown thing placed over her face, Russell arrived, having finished the last of his paperwork.

"What the f.u.c.k is going on in here!?"

"A unwilling patient and observer. But I have results, ICI active direct mind melt, but bypa.s.s optical nerves and interface directly to the occipital lobe."

[DIALING GUARDIAN 47 REAPER PERSONAL SENSOR UNIT, OPTICAL NERVE BYPa.s.s CONFIRMED. LIMITED MIND MELT IN EFFECT - HOLDING AT PATTEN GREEN, OPERATION CONFIRMED]

"Eh? is that you dad?"

With a crackling voice Terra stopped trying to remove the mask stuck to her face, as ICI fed data directly to her occipital lobe she saw for the first time in well over a year.

"What did you do Dax?"

"I made my mask into her eyes, this is a extremely short term solution but I figured that it would gain my unwilling and sa.s.sy patients trust. Now miss Terra can we continue with the examination?"

"ah that's you Dax, Are you also missing a arm?"

As Terra turned her head towards Dax she finally noticed the state of her current physician.

"Yeah I lost my prosthetic arm just a bit ago, so I'll be making a new one over the next few days. Can I inspect your arm now?"

"Yeah sure, go ahead. And Elise you can stop trying to kill him now"

"Okay.."

Withdrawing Elise stopped trying to stab through Dax's skin, that after about a minute of trying with all her might had proved entirely ineffective.

"Elise please prepare a guest room for Dax, we'll talk about your treatment of my guest later. I just came to check on how things were going so I'll go back to my paperwork again."

"Wait a second~ Viktor is not supposed to strain himself, so make sure he stays put"

"I'll go that. See you at breakfast tomorrow Dax and Terra"

Leaving a stern warning to the loyal maid, Russell left again to tackle his paperwork.

"I'll go prepare a room for our dear guest then, excuse me."

"Actually I don't need that kind of room, insted can you show my drones to some kind of unused storage room? The colder the better."

"Understood, excuse me"

Having received Dax's instructions, the pacified maid left Terra and Dax behind and led the strange looking golems outside, to a unused storage room next to the mansions very own training field.

"You can use this room- wait why am I talking to golems?"

[Thank you~ That'll be all tonight]

Spooking the nervus maid, one of the drones spoke exactly like Dax as it answered her monologue.

"Hiyaa! Is that you Dax?"

[[[Not exactly~ they are me, I am me, but they are not me. Therefore we all are, but not alike and still the same~ Makes sense?]]]

This time all the drones answered in a precise stereo, while slowly approaching the now freaked out maid.

"What the f.u.c.k are you saying!?- Ah, I'm extremely sorry my dear guest, it seems I've gotten tired so please forgive me"

While examining Terra's damaged arm, Dax suddenly started laughing like a child having pulled off a successful prank.

"Did something fun happen?"

"I'm pretty sure I just got under the skin of your loyal maid, her reaction was so adorable when she tried to apologize~"

"How messed up are you?"

"Extremely~ Now please act like you still had your forearm and moved your fingers"

"Even if you tell me that…"

Focusing on the feeling of her arm,Terra trailed of as her concentration increased

"I know it's tough, try to remember some kind of daily activity where you used that arm"

"Some kind of activity? Like what exactly?"

"Let me see.."

Looking around the room, Dax spotted Terra's tea set.

"Did you brew your own tea? Or did Elise take care of that?"

"She mostly did it, but she did teach me how one time"

"That's great! Try to remember how you handled the tea leaves, the warm feeling of the teapot as you soaked the leaves as the aroma spread across your room"

(NERVES MAPPED AND LOCATED, 154 CHANGES NEED FOR CYBERNETIC UPLINK, SENDING DATA MAP TO BIOPRINTER. STARTING DESIGN OF CYBERNETIC PROSTHESIS.)

As Terra imagined herself brewing tea her brain sent signals to her missing hand and they were recorded as that part of her nervous system was mapped, and the data need to adopt her arm to a cybernetic implant was successfully gathered.

"Okay that great that's all the data for you arm… Now for the real issue"

"What?"

"Emmm please don't hit me but I need to touch what's left of your leg…"

"..."

"Please stop looking at me like I'm some sort of dedengete…"

"..."

Even without being able to see Terra's face or her even having eyes, Dax could feel a large hole being drilled into his dignity by Terra's 'stare'

"It's for medical purposes."

"..."

"Do you want your leg back or nah?"

"..."

"Okay then let's do something else for now"

"....Sure"

"Then I need to remove my mask and inspect your eyes"

Removing his mask from Terra's face, Dax carefully unwrapped her banges to find what was under.

"This is?"

"Quite repulsing right? I've been told that by everyone that's seen it so far"

"No I was just surprised by how beautiful your skin looks"

"Please don't try and be nice just for my sake.."

"Sorry but that's really all I see, are you self aware about your wounds?"

"Of course I am! I've been told and felt it myself countless times, what's left of my eyes are decaying and most of my nose is missing!! My face is so repulsive that even my dad wont look straight at me when we're talking! And you just don't care!? Are you some kind of pervert!?"

As Dax had unwrapped the banges coverd the top half of Terra's face he had uncovered a truly horrifying sight. Like Terra herself described while trying to punch Dax, the upper part of her face was not something nice to look at. Both her eyes were missing, the top half of her nose had been removed presumingly as a result of her emergency treatment, and most her skin was scar covered, but as Dax said she had surprisingly nice skin.

"Could you just end it all instead, I hate being like this!"

While a mix of blood and tears streamed down her face, she asked Dax to just kill her instead of treating her.

"I'm sorely disappointed in you"

"Eh?"

"When I first heard your story from Alice I was sure you were like me."

"You know Alice?"

"Yeah I fought for survival with her a few days ago. Only right at the end did she lose hope and give up, well that quite normal really, when most people run out of all ideas they tend to lose hope, but when I heard about you I apparently naively envisioned someone like myself."

"Like you?"

"A survivor. Someone who doesn't flinch looking death in the eyes. Someone that claws themself out of h.e.l.l instead of screaming for help. Someone that keeps on fighting for survival even faced with certain death, even as their body screams in pain, breaking down, and every logical part of their mind tells them that they're going to die. Pain is the only reward in life, it appears when we do something that matters, when we go against the primitive part of our minds and strive to do something that really matters, I thought you also understood that by it seems I was mistaken… As promised to your father I will restore your eyesight, arm and leg, not because I feel like it is worth doing or even that it would make a difference in your sad life of self induced suffering and pity, but because we made an agreement that I can't break by Qiton code of honor. I'm done with the preliminary examination so please excuse me for tonight, I'll have your new eyes ready in 2 days, goodnight"

"Please wait!"

"I told you already: You're not worth my time."

Leaving the stunned Terra behind in her room, Dax had the expression like he had just swallowed a bug.

(Just when I got my hopes up, this f.u.c.king ball of filth really doesn't have anything worth my attention….)

(ACTIVATE PATTERN EXTERMINATUS? PLEASE CONFIRM OR DENY)

(Are you really sure?)

(THIS LOGIC PATTERN SHOWS THE HIGHEST CHANCE OF SUCCESS.)

(I'll strongly consider it so start looking into strategic cla.s.s weapons and the ignition point of this atmosphere, but only after honoring my agreement. For now I really need to kill something, boot endless fail simulation and start printing that crippled disappointments new eyes, but prioritize my own new arm.)

(CONSTRUCTION VIRTUAL BATTLEFIELD FOR ENDLESS WAR SIMULATION. SENDING SCHEMATICS TO UNITS 2 AND 3 FOR CONSTRUCTION)

Having reached the courtyard in his fit of rage and frustration, Dax sat down in the middle of the yard and started meditating.

(SIMULATION COMMENCING. ICI ENTERING SLEEP MODE.)