"How are you feeling?"


    With the immediate course of action now more or less settled, I finally could turn my attention back to where it belonged.


    "Ever since you… did something, it''s as if that suffocating feeling was nothing but a dream…"


    Still shaken by the experience, Fay continued to cuddle up to my chest, seeking warmth to repel the fright over what just happened.


    Her low mood didn''tst long, though. Before I myself could get enough of cuddling her, Fay''s thoughts already swirled,tching onto a different detail of the discussion that happened just before.


    A detail she could easily feel herself through our bond…


    And a detail that I found affecting Fay in a strangely intense way.


    "More importantly," Fay pulled her face away from my chest and raised her eyes to lock stares with me. "You are just one step away from turning supreme, huh?"


    The usual, dim blue of Fay''s eyes… was a bit more intense than I remembered it.


    "It''s affecting you too, isn''t it?"


    From what I could tell, my growth… in one way or the other, started to propagate on Fay too. And while it was a great thing if she could usher in the benefits of my system…


    Was it an intentional service that I''ve only now just unlocked? An aspect of my mysterious gift that refused to borate on any of the points I held great interest in?


    Or was it a bug, something that wasn''t supposed to happen, a result of the particr set of circumstances that was more of a curse than a boon?


    "Huh? What? No, you dummy!" Fay at first asked, taken aback by my suggestion, even though she could clearly feel it brewing in my soul. "I mean…" This time, the girl hesitated a little, twisting her neck to steal a quick nce at Makary, currently busy covering the entire area with a concentrated fire of non-stop orders.


    "I still can''t wrap my head around your growth. But regardless of its origin, your growth will… synchronize…?


    Fay pulled her eyebrows together, putting on an adorable look of intense focus as she jogged her memory in search of the right words for what she wanted to say.


    Bit by bit, Fay''s face gradually deteriorated from just focus into anxiety and annoyance.


    Snap.


    Reaching her mental limits, Fay shot her eyes up with a dissatisfied pout on her lips. She then simply… fell forward, crashing face-first into my chest and hiding her face from my prying eyes.


    "You are my mate," Fay muttered right into my breast, her warm breath caressing my skin and sending tingles up my spine. And when she started to rub her forehead left and right… "So I''m growing with you…?"


    Despite her best attempts at exining what felt obvious to her, Fay couldn''t dress her thoughts into words that would make it easy for me to understand.


    In the end, though, it wasn''t something that I had to bother with right this moment. And it just so happened that there were a whole lot of things for me to take care of, pushing the topic of how exactly my system affected Fay forter.


    "We are mates, so we grow together, right?"


    It was easy to just ept Fay''s words at face value and move on… But this was only a temporary solution to the problem. Once the time would be even the tiniest bit more fitting for this kind of conversation, I would dly sit down to figure out as much as we could with the current level of information we had.


    For now, though, I could already see how much Makary itched to interrupt our moment and bring my attention back to the matter at hand.


    "How are things going?" I asked, right as the massive, armored doors to the truck''s insides swung open, allowing battered and slightly bloodied Madam inside.


    "Are you okay?" Ignoring Makary who just opened his eyes to answer, I rushed up and dragged Fay along as I jumped up to Madam, ready to offer her my shoulder to rest on or help with dressing whatever wounds she might have.


    "I''m fine," Madam waved my courteous attempts away, stepping past me and approaching the holodesk instead.


    There, she cast a quick nce at the holographic disy of the situation, from the long, uneven line of blue dots making up a crude circle, through a swarm of green dots signifying Makary''s troops, all properly connected up to the system all the way to waves of red dots, all flowing away the field of battle and gravitating towards the forest''s edge.


    "Do you have some way to pass messages through the air?" Madam asked while raising her eyes from the disy and looking directly at Makary''s face.


    "Yeah, we do," the man replied after giving me a short nce.


    "I want to go out with my people to hunt down those who move deeper into the forest," Madam stated. "But for that, we need…"


    "That shouldn''t be necessary," Makary interjected before properly turning to face me. "Are you good now?" he asked while giving me a slightly excited look.


    "One second," I replied while shaking my head only to reach out for the holodesk, and summon an operating disy with a quick swing of my hand before pressing one of the holographic buttons that appeared.


    "Consider my earlier order to attack null," I spoke out loud, allowing the microphones hidden all over the truck to catch my voice, transfer it into a binary cipher encoded within an electromaic wave, and then spread it all over the ce, allowing thems of the soldiers to catch the signal, decode it and turn it back into my words.


    "Now, I should be fine," I stated before taking a step away from the holodesk as if to imply I had no further intention of messing up with Makary''s workspace.


    Our standing in the situation has yet to be rified… but there wasn''t a single shred of doubt that he was the one to give the orders for his men. And at the very least, in terms of military, he was the one holding the reins.


    "Good," Makary muttered silently while giving me a long look, only to quickly avert his eyes, click some stuff on his own terminal, and switch to one of the separate, less crowded channels before opening up hisms. "Maglev one, can you handle graphing on your own?"


    For a short moment, there was only silence. Then, after two snapping sounds of the static clearing, the Maglev''s pilot voice filled the insides of the truck.


    "Maglev one, affirmative."


    Makary''s eyes darted all over the holodesk before him. For a good minute, he continued to just stare at the holographs, analyzing the situation and constructing a viable strategy in his mind.


    "Can we borrow some of the devices you are using tomunicate?" Madam, clearly annoyed by the dy, finally posed her question out loud.


    Twitching when forced out of his focused state of mind, Makary swung his head to give Madam a quick nce, only to then silently turn his eyes back towards the huge disy.


    "Maglev two, I''m marking the zone for you to clear. Maglev one will keep the graphing on his own."


    Before he even finished speaking, Makary''s hands already shot into the holographs rising up from the surface projector of the holodesk. Bit by bit, the man''s fingers drew out several lines that divided up all of the area currently represented on the disy into two parts.


    The majority of the retreating human army found itself in the much smaller zone in the shape of a cone, starting at where the battle just took ce and spreading out towards the edge of the forest.


    With themanding truck''s battle processors kicking in, the demarcation line between the two zones red up for a second… Only for all the red dots beyond the said border to sh up and change their color to ck.


    "Targets acquired," the voice of the Maglev''s pilot filled the truck''s cabin once again. "Will do, boss."


    The jump from strict military lingo to a sentence that had no regtory right to appear on the battlems was enough to make Makary''s face twitch in slight displeasure.


    "Be on your way, then," he threw back into them before closing the channel and finally turning his head to properly face Madam.


    "It won''t be necessary for you or any of your men to put themselves at risk," he announced, before pointing out at the holodesk. "Just wait for a second and you will see."


    For a moment, nothing really happened. No noise of distant explosion reached our ears, and no sudden shockwave of said explosion shook the truck.


    And then…


    The ck dots started to appear one after the other, at a pace that made Madam raise her eyebrows.


    She saw just what firearms were capable of in a pitched battle when enemies all conveniently grouped together to make themselves an easier target for the gunners.


    But now?


    Whatever Makary did led to all those who were unlucky enough when picking the direction to run off from the battle to… Whatever Makary did, caused all those people who were running in every possible direction… to die one by one, without as much of a single noise appearing within the forest.


    "Now then," Makary muttered under his nose before taking a step back away from the holodesk when only about half of the ck dots remained on the disy.


    In his eyes, the task was done, even if roughly half of the people marked for death were still alive and kicking. After all, in this world, hardly anything could challenge Maglev''s supremacy in the sky. And without a worthy opponent within its element, the maic gunship was free to rain terror and death from above unhindered.


    "We will need to make a list of people allowed to…"


    As if not enough has happened in thest few hours, right as we were about to close the chapter of the battle and move on to the aftercare and actually press our advantage… something just had to go fucking wrong.


    "Boss!"


    One of Makary''s soldiers jumped right through the open doors of themanding''s truck, invading the sacred space of the field headquarters without any care for the hierarchy and the chain ofmand.


    "There''s trouble back at the garrison!"