Author’s Note: Hey everyone! Here is the Work in Progress for Chapter 181 I hope you guys enjoy! Sorry for the delay, my editor is still sick and is still recovering. We'll see if he can help get the final revised version of chapter 180 out tomorrow, but if not, then we'll stick with what we have for now and I'll have a revised version out for that sometime later! Though honestly, all that's going to be edited are just spelling and grammar mistakes haha, as the plot beats and narrative within that chapter are more or less set in stone in my Tuesday revision. There's only the matter of just spelling, grammar, and all that other fun stuff to take care of that my editor will work on! ^^;
Emma
There are times on deployment where months can feel like minutes, and where minutes can feel like months, and others where seconds become more important than both—
Shut up Lieutenant Dan, you’re not even Aunty Ran!
…
It was the visuals that hit me first — an implosion of every active window and the cessation of all accessory processes in exchange for a sudden transition into a very radical, but very necessary shift in the EVI’s HUD-focus.
It was nothing short of whiplash.
A virtual equivalent of going from sublight to lightspeed without warning and while on break.
Even the most AR-savvie civvie would find it disorienting.
Some might even find it nausea-inducing.
Heck, most greenhorns found that it gave them vertigo more times than they’d care to admit.
I’d know, because I was one of them. At least, I was, until it was trained right out of me by sheer force of exposure alone.
There was no way of getting around it. There was no ‘easy’ way to acclimatize a human mind to the expectations of a situation that could turn from R&R to high-intensity firefight in the span of seconds.
This was even more extreme for ship crews, where you were several more steps removed from the dangers outside your deceptively safe bubble.
But that’s exactly why acclimatization training was so very needed, yet so incredibly brutal.
It was training you for situations beyond what evolution or nature could’ve ever anticipated, even in the most extreme of conditions.
And it meant I could instinctively make a call even on the heel of the most jarring of moments.
The EVI, thankfully, made this whole situation much easier for me.
A web of branching options was brought to my attention, and with it, came the resultant ends of three distinct paths at the end of two very different nodes.
[COA 1: ENGAGE]
A third of my vision was suddenly dominated by a series of reticles, targeting solutions, and a prime target choice for my bullets to land.
[COA 2: EVASION]
The next third of my vision — dominating my center of vision — was marked by a clear escape route, weaving through Thalmin and Thacea, and towards the path least likely to be squashed by the drake.
I reflexively rejected it, prompting the middle partition of my vision to instead fold into the third.
[COA 3: EXFIL WITH FRIENDLIES]
Thacea and Thalmin were now both marked with an upward arrow beneath their highlighted silhouettes.
I blinked.
[CARRY MODE ACTIVE]
And I braced for a sudden rush of both speed and—
ALERT: LOCAL SURGE OF ‘30th’ ATYPICAL MANA RADIATION TYPE DETECTED: 300% ABOVE BACKGROUND RADIATION LEVELS!
I stopped.
And if it weren’t for the sudden shift to fully-compensated sports mode, I would’ve promptly fallen over from the abrupt start-stop motion of my 2-second armor-augmented sprint.
Thalmin had extended his arm out wide, preventing me from both picking him up… or more aptly, preventing me from approaching Thacea any further.
That second of hesitation would’ve been enough to squash us anyways.
But that didn’t seem to be what fate had in mind for us at the moment.
ALERT: LOCALIZED SURGE OF MANA-RADIATION DETECTED, 500% ABOVE BACKGROUND RADIATION LEVELS
The warning texts didn’t do it justice, no matter how hard they flashed.
Thalmin’s features could attest to that.
And thankfully, so could the WAID.
What I saw on that superimposed layer — that almost ‘echolocation-like’ weather-vane world consisting of turbulent waves, repeating, undulating, and ‘refreshing’ at a framerate that could’ve made anyone weaker sick to their stomach — was nothing short of mayhem.
It looked as if the formerly clean and tidy waves, the invisible… currents that made up the invisible world, had simply been disrupted.
Not in a ripple effect or a splash as you’d see in a tsunami formed from a meteorite strike or a subsiding island.
Not even in a turbulent shaking sort of effect as you might expect from a massive seismic event.
It was just… a sharp and complete obliteration of all waves in their entirety, rendering the ebbs and flows of the world — or the bare-bones outlines of such in my eyes — into a wobbly, shapeless mass.
Yet this whole… event — as extreme as it was — was logged in terms of mere seconds.
As not a blink of an eye later did mana come flooding right back into the obliterated void it’d been crushed out of.
Thacea quickly used this to her advantage, channeling the rushing mana into what I could only describe as a concentrated conical expression of twisting, winding, and highly condensed mana-streams, all concentrated up and around the falling drake that now hovered still above all of us; mere inches from our faces.
The whole world came to an abrupt and complete silence as a result.
Though I couldn’t tell if it was because of the floating mass of who-knows-how-many metric tons of pure drake that hovered over us… or if it was the means by which this sudden display of magical power had come to be.
Nobody moved.
Barely anyone dared to even breathe.
The only sounds around us came from the festive music several ‘blocks’ over, from streets and stalls still completely oblivious to the going over on this side of the exhibition hall.
But all that quickly changed… to the tune of several large FWOMP FWOMP FWOMPs, and the associated torrent of magically-augmented downdrafts that followed from the wingbeats of a certain blue Vunerian hot on the tail of this erratic flyer.
“IIIIII’lll take that~” The blue thing spoke in that sing-song, almost patronizing tone of voice, though it was clear he was more directing the sentiment towards the second-year student — a satyr by the looks of it — rather than any of us in particular.
If anything—
“Thank you kindly, princess~”
—his next sentiments more or less cemented that notion.
His bright crimson and green drake was quick to snatch the offending pilot, clasping the petrified student in between its maw, as he was taken limply up and away towards the hall’s great rafters with some serious speed for a winged creature.
… let alone something with a live passenger within its jaws.
Yet despite that… development, there was still the matter of the hovering drake still left up in the air.
This too, however, would be quickly rectified.
ALERT: LOCALIZED SURGE OF MANA-RADIATION DETECTED, 400% ABOVE BACKGROUND RADIATION LEVELS
PATTERNS CONDUCIVE WITH POINT-TO-POINT TELEPORTATION [54% CONFIDENCE]
Professor Chiska appeared on scene with a brilliant flash of light, quickly leaping atop of the drake, as she dipped her head low in Thacea’s direction. “Thank you kindly, dear! Might I say, excellent work with that spell! This all could’ve been quite a scene, if it were not for your quick and decisive actions!”
The professor paused, placing her chin between two fingers, feigning some deep thought before she outright yelled out the next few words in her typical display of high-octane excitement. “Twenty points to House Thun’Yandaris. And thirty points to your peer group!” She beamed, finally garnering some sort of attention from the otherwise petrified crowd.
Thacea could only bow deeply in response, making sure her head dipped lower than that of the professor’s just moments earlier.
“T-thank you, professor. I was merely acting in reflexive response to—”
“Oh hush now with your modesties! Take the points and the victory too, dear. What’s more, take this as a direct invitation to any of the clubs under my care!” Professor Chiska continued, grinning ear-to-ear in an almost cheshire cat-like grin. Though strangely, and rather counter-intuitively, this translated more as a well meaning expression rather than anything sinister; a trend reinforced by our experiences in PE over the past month.
Thacea once more bowed in response, and after what appeared to be a quiet series of tactful back and forths, Chiska too now turned to the rapidly thawing crowd. One which seemed to have set their eyes as much on the professor’s now-upright drake, as much as they were on the princess who’d just saved them from a great deal of pain.
“Now then, students! There’s no longer anything to be alarmed about! Please go about as you were! Unless, of course, any of you have any injuries or other such grievances to make note of—”
A hand was raised from the crowd.
A hand… belonging to a certain shatorealmer.
“Professor?” Airit Airus spoke with a faux-fearful lilt in her voice, as if trying to shore up a strong front in the face of adversity.
“Yes, Lady Airit Airus?” Chiska responded promptly.
To which the bat, much to her theatrical chops, and very much to my annoyance — slowly, and in dramatic fashion, raised a finger towards Thacea.
“S-she… t-that student… She showed her hand! It bled taint into the air in the midst of us all!”