Agent047
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897 - Reunion
🕑 Added 2025-04-28 04:41:02 +0000 UTCIt had only been three days since they came to capture the pirates, but for Dreznor, those three days had been enough. Enough to spend a full year trapped with them in VR. Enough to end all of his grievances, or at least, that’s what he thought, until he started reviewing the pirates' extracted brain data.
Among the information collected were the locations of hidden loot, stashed money, and, more importantly, data about the pirates' employers, the ones who hired them for specific, targeted attacks. And it was among that data that Dreznor found the answer to the question that had gnawed at him the most: Was the attack on them just bad luck?
The answer was a resounding no.
The attack hadn’t been random. It hadn’t been a case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. The pirates had been hired to kill them by the very family of their former master.
Specifically, by the new leader who had taken over.
They hadn't just been given the assignment, they had even been provided with their ships' transponder codes to easily track and ambush them. As for why the order had been for death instead of capture, the pirates hadn't been told. But Dreznor didn't need their guesses.
It was obvious. Insurance.
What good were rebellious slaves who had already escaped once? Even if recaptured, they'd only remain a thorn in the side, a constant risk, demanding constant surveillance, draining resources.
It was far simpler to kill them and cash out on their insurance policies. Quick, clean money. Enough to buy replacements, or cover whatever other "immediate needs" they had.
This information hit Dreznor like a sawblade, cutting clean through the progress he'd thought he was making toward healing.
All that pain. All that rage. It wasn't just fate, it was intentional.
He sat silently, staring at the hologram in front of him, reading the details for the tenth time, needing to be absolutely certain. What he was thinking of doing to them... he couldn’t allow himself to act without being sure. Innocents would not suffer because of his vengeance.
Finally, he closed the hologram with a flick of his hand.
“I’ll be coming for you," Dreznor said, his voice low and calm, but heavy with promise. "Not now. But I will make you pay, a hundredfold.”
Leaning back in the captain’s chair, he closed his eyes.
“How long until we reach our destination?” he asked, needing to shift his mind to the next step.
{One month until arrival,} came the answer through the ship’s communication system, still in the cheerful voice of the Little Protagonist. She had temporarily outsourced much of her processing to the ship’s supercomputers to conserve Dreznor’s energy. They had once pushed his body so hard he needed to eat nearly every few hours just to keep from collapsing.
“That long?” he asked, surprised. He had expected two weeks at most.
{We are not traveling at maximum speed,} the Little Protagonist replied. {The genetic modifications injected into the pirates need time to fully integrate with their bodies. Since we will be deploying them into action immediately upon arrival, reducing speed to match their transformation timeline was deemed optimal.}
“Oh, okay,” Dreznor said, sighing.
With a gesture, he summoned another hologram, this one filled with detailed schematics of the upcoming attack plan.
………………………
“We greet the princess,” echoed the voices of over a million Xor’Vak, prostrating themselves with their heads lowered inside the massive palace built in traditional Xor’Vak architecture. In front of them stood Seraphina, the last hope of their fallen faction.
These were the remnants of her faction, those left behind after the Grand Xor’Vak had abandoned her. Once powerful, they were now among the weakest, their leaderless faction barely clinging to relevance. Bound by oath to their faction for life, they could do nothing but endure their disgrace, powerless to change their fate unless one of their own rose to challenge and defeat the Grand Xor’Vak, an almost impossible feat. And now, they knelt before the one who might just make it possible.
Following Seraphina’s orders, the loyalists who had been ordered by her to return and act as her representatives had distributed VR devices among the faction. Once the first towers were activated, they had immediately logged into the network to meet her, eager to pledge themselves again to the only figure who could lift them out of obscurity.
Listening to their voices, Seraphina closed her eyes briefly, savoring the moment. She hadn’t realized how much she had missed this, the weight of authority, the reverence. The empire had treated her well, yes, but it had offered no true power, and for someone like her, kindness without dominance was hollow.
“Arise,” she commanded, settling into her throne.
“Endure it for now. Rest easy. Once I return and reclaim what is rightfully mine, we will repay every insult,” she said coldly, her voice devoid of warmth, as was proper, for in their world, softness was weakness.
“YES!!!!!!!!!!” they all responded in unison.
What followed was a full faction meeting. They reported everything that had occurred during her absence: how they had maintained resource collection despite their fall from power, how they had adapted to survive, and now, with knowledge of the Empire’s highway project, how they proposed delivering the stockpiled resources to her.
Listening to their earnest reports, Seraphina almost laughed but restrained herself. They had no idea, the annual resources the Empire provided her now far exceeded what they usually managed to gather for her over an entire decade. Had there been no limit to how quickly she could absorb and integrate strength, the Empire would have given her even more. It was only through that experience, the discovery of the limit, that she suspected she had stumbled upon knowledge known only to the Grand Xor’Vak himself. Knowledge that allowed them to estimate the true extent of his terrifying power.
And the estimate was enough to make her cautious about when to challenge him. The only good news was that the Empire’s researchers were making breakthroughs in their genetic research, moving closer to at least doubling that limit. If successful, it would allow her to gain strength at a rate at least twice as fast as the Grand Xor’Vak, if not more, giving her a real chance to bridge the gap in a much shorter time than anyone would have thought possible.
Comments
Jade
I agree!
Sol_Invictus(Hail the Terran Empire)
TYFTC!!!! Ohhh, Seraphina nice to see her
Jade
Thank you for the chapter Agent!
