Victor DeRosa was having a bad day.  He’d known, of course, that there was a risk that Corthian Mining had some means of tracking his departure.  Despite the brilliance of his plan, he’d taken pains to protect himself.  Thus far, those measures had still proven valuable.  No, the greatest frustration was his failure to capture the magnitude of the Corthian Mining Response.  He’d planned on a handful of E Grades, some D Grades, with Malcolm Corthus leading the expedition.

Instead, he found his forces pressed against D Grades on all sides.  The goal had always been to draw the enemy in, and then overwhelm the opponents with a surprise attack force from below.  Unfortunately, with the power of his opposition, he needed his elites to take the field early.  If too many of the D Grades were able to rally around Malcolm, there was a chance that the Corthian Mining forces could emerge victorious.  Assuming that he wasn’t willing to use his trump card, at least.

As the fighting intensified, he made the decision to release both Reynolds and the captain on opposite sides of the battlefield.  He’d also sent his elite D Grades and legions of E Grades toward the settlements on Kertan Six, further fragmenting the Corthian Mining forces and sowing confusion through their ranks.

For a brief moment, everything was going well.  The captain crushed two entire squads of Corthian D Grades, while Reynolds ripped through several more.  Then things started falling apart.  While the captain was putting up an impressive fight, Reynolds’ rampage was stopped early.  By the time Victor was able to transition his consciousness to observe his former lieutenant, it was too late.  A group of mere D Grades managed to not only stall one of his strongest creations, but caused enough damage to force a recovery.  Then, even less conceivably, Reynolds just… died.  Victor was vexed, as all he was able to perceive was a faint silver glow before his connection to Reynolds simply disappeared.

That infuriated DeRosa.  The notion that Reynolds could have been defeated by a group of D Grades working together was not surprising.  His simulations resulted in this outcome nearly seven percent of the time, in fact.  No, the greatest problem was the unknown method with which Reynolds was disposed.

In converting Reynolds to a C Grade, all of the man’s passive skills had been retooled to focus on power and regeneration.  The modifications came at the cost of entirely severing Reynolds’ path, leaving him no further room to progress.  The result was an asset perfectly designed to fight against all but the strongest. From DeRosa’s reckoning, he should have been able to regenerate from the damage he’d taken up to that point in the fight.

While additional finishing skills or constant pressure from D Grade forces could have still spelled his end, the notion that a D Grade could destroy him so completely wasn’t something he’d ever considered.  Even more infuriatingly, it raised so many questions.  How often could the D Grade express such power?  What costs were there to using this technique?  Was it a skill that he could replicate?  How did it function?  Could it be used against him?

A clawed hand reached up and stroked the place where his chin used to be – an annoying habit that carried over from his time as a human.  He paced across the floor with thick legs, considering his next steps.  Part of him wanted to release his trump card now, but he recognized the foolishness of that decision.  Of his three masterpieces, only one had risen above the rest; shown it was capable of continued progression.  Releasing it now would ensure the defeat of the Corthian Mining expedition, but he felt in his core that it would be dangerous.  Unlike the others, where his colony controlled the entirety of the neural and mana pathways, he had to be directly involved if he wanted the third to follow his instructions.

No, it was best to wait.  While he didn’t expect that the captain would be up to the task of defeating Malcom Corthus, with some additional investment, he might be able to do enough damage to repel Corthian Mining altogether.  A prospect that he found to be quite attractive.

He pressed his hand against a wall of writhing fungal mass, his palm melding into the structure.  Closing his eyes, he assumed a direct view of the captain’s vision.  At the same time, he pushed in a trickle of mana.  Victor had to be cautious, as the relay he’d set up could be traced back to his location, given time.  Still, as far as he was concerned, it was worth the risk.  After all, he was set up on the moon of a neighboring planet, entirely outside of Corthian Mining’s blockade.

His vision blurred, and the next moment, Victor found himself staring down a veritable tsunami of magma.  Malcolm certainly wasted no time, DeRosa mused, fungal tendrils exploding out of the captain’s back, weaving together into wings that carried him aloft.

The captain was the first of DeRosa’s infected to be forcibly ascended, and Victor made some interesting adjustments.  The man inherently had a strong physique, and DeRosa was able to weave in quite a few different strains of his fungus to fully utilize the chassis.  As he took to the sky, lifted by the heat of Malcom’s magma, drill like claws emerged from his hands, while a large venom sac inflated in his chest.

A wave of noxious fumes bathed the area as DeRosa forced the captain to exhale, which was met by a flaming barrier.  The fungal spores inside the cloud were burned away as acrid smoke rose where the skills clashed, and DeRosa was too slow to recognize the fast-moving stone projectiles that flew out from the smoke, piercing holes in his vessel.

Fortunately, pain wasn’t a sense that translated through the connection, and Victor turned his attention to the retreating D Grades trying to get clear of the titanic battle.  Raising one of the captain’s drill-tipped hands, Victor launched an overwhelming wave of fungal spears.  Extending the skill like this risked destabilizing the captain, but as an early prototype that was an acceptable cost.  Every new advancement was built on the shoulders of a failure, after all.

A wall of blazing stone interposed itself between the captain and the D Grades, but not before several more fell.  And there’s the weakness, Victor thought with a smile.  Flying even higher, he renewed his assault from different angles, forcing Malcolm to expend ever-increasing amounts of mana to try and protect the retreat.

The Mage managed to score several more hits with the fast-moving stones, only highlighting another weakness that Victor had expected.  As Malcolm progressed through C Grade, his skill upgrades clearly merged the concepts of fire and stone affinity.  The resulting magma was incredibly powerful, but it lacked the speed that the pure stone manipulation had given him.  At this range, dodging the occasional blast of magma was child’s play.  The stones he couldn’t dodge weren’t powerful enough to take him out of the sky.

He bathed another group of retreating awakened in toxic gas, which was once more neutralized by the barrier of fire.  While DeRosa would have preferred to catch a few in the breath attack, he’d accomplished what he’d set out to do.  The retreat had changed from an orderly withdrawal to a full rout.  It was truly fortunate that Victor had chosen to intervene directly, because he doubted the captain’s more rudimentary instruction would have allowed him to take this approach.  Had his creation tried to fight Malcolm directly, the combat would have been short-lived indeed.  That thought reminded him of Reynolds, and his mood soured.

Turning to avoid a larger stream of magma that was aimed at him, DeRosa began to fly to the west, drawing panicked screams from below.  Malcolm was giving chase, riding a wave of molten rock as it blazed through the forest, destroying everything in its wake.  As he flew, Victor sent volleys of projectiles toward the scattered Corthian forces, though he didn’t slow down too much.

His connection to the colony below informed DeRosa that much of the infrastructure beneath the ground was being destroyed by the molten rock, though he’d expected as much as he began his retreat.  He was thankful that he’d moved his trump card away from the heart of the colony, or its containment may have been disrupted by the magma.  Indeed, that was part of Victor’s goal in changing the battlefield.  Some of the other attacks Malcolm launched were already dangerously close.

Once Malcolm had been drawn far enough away, DeRosa turned the captain’s body, raising one of the drill-like hands toward his pursuer.  With a thought, he released the entire arm like a missile, straight toward Malcolm.  Despite his forward momentum, the C Grade was able to raise a wall of magma between himself and the attack, layering it with a barrier of heat and flames.

The attack was neutralized, as expected.  What Malcolm was less-prepared for was the second hand being fired toward him directly afterward.  The remnants of the magma barrier were blown away as the hand pierced through, and then exploded.  The entire area behind the barrier was blanketed in fungal spears, followed by DeRosa forcing the captain to expel yet another cloud of toxic gas.

By now, the captain’s state was truly wretched.  The damage from the stones, coupled with the strain from DeRosa’s direct intervention, was causing the body to fall apart.  The hands were unable to be regrown, and the venom sac ruptured with the last breath attack.  It was disappointing, if not unexpected.  Below, Victor could make out the form of Malcom, wreathed in fire and magma.

He had to give the man credit, he was powerful.  He’d barely inhaled any of the gas before burning it away, and despite a handful of ugly wounds, it looked like Malcolm was still capable of fighting longer.  Alas, with only moments remaining until this vessel collapsed, DeRosa decided to leave a lasting impression.

Flooding the captain’s body with as much mana as he dared through the connection, he flew straight towards Malcolm, the captain’s head twisting and turning into a spear-like shape.  With a final push, he flew straight toward the man, who was already raising a hand.  The world blazed orange for a moment, as the entire forest around them shimmered in the heat.  The last thing Victor saw through the captain’s eyes was a wall of molten stone rising to engulf him.

Withdrawing his hand from the wall, Victor immediately felt that something was wrong.  Pushing his senses into the various arrays, he found the problem.  The containment on his trump card was breaking, all on its own.  At first, Victor thought this to be a result of a wayward attack, but a quick review of the containment pod proved that wasn’t the case.  He tried infusing his Willpower and intent directly into the pod to seal it, but it was too late.  He felt an overwhelming force pushing against him, cutting his access off bit by bit, until Victor’s consciousness was forcibly thrown back to his body.  All that remained was a lingering sense of hatred.

How did this happen?  Where did I miscalculate?  How did I lose access?  Questions poured through DeRosa’s mind as he considered the possibilities.  Whatever had caused this was beyond his expectations.  With a shiver, Victor was once again thankful that he’d taken the precautions of setting up somewhere far removed from the main colony.  He was free.  And Victor knew that a massive target had been painted on his back.