Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner

[Location: Corvane Expanse — Designation Pending]

[Altitude: Low Orbit]

[Gravity: 1.04G Standard]

[Temp (Surface): 41°C, Dry]

The transport held steady in low orbit, engines idling on a whisper-quiet setting Kelvin had personally calibrated for exactly this moment, and through the small viewport the target world hung distant and unbothered below, a dull rust-colored curve wrapped in thin, hazy atmosphere, giving nothing away.

Angel stood at the head of the cabin, fully suited, checking her sidearm a second time out of habit rather than doubt, the kind of small ritual soldiers built for themselves to keep their hands busy in the last quiet minutes before everything changed.

”Recon element,” she said. ”Confirm gear.”

Sera ran a hand down the length of one wing, feathers settling smooth against the plating Faithful Feathers had folded itself into for atmospheric entry. ”Ready.”

”Comm check.”

”Five by five,” Sera answered.

Angel keyed the general channel. ”This is Angel. Recon element is go. Drop in sixty.”

”Copy,” the command transport answered, a klick out and holding position. ”Recon is go. Main force holds until you confirm.”

Angel nodded once to Sera, and the rear hatch cycled open, atmosphere hissing thin around the seal before the outer door slid back entirely, exposing them both to open black.

”See you on the ground,” Angel said, and stepped out.

They fell together, Sera’s wings catching the thin upper atmosphere and flaring wide, guiding the drop into something closer to a controlled glide than a fall, Angel’s suit thrusters firing in short, precise bursts to match her descent.

---

[Location: Surface — Unregistered Mining Depot]

[Time: Local Dawn]

[Wind: Light, Southeasterly]

They touched down half a klick out from the depot’s outer perimeter, dry red dust kicking soft around their boots, and dropped low behind a ridge of weathered rock immediately, scanning.

The depot spread below exactly the way Kelvin’s reconstruction had promised, low prefab structures clustered around a central shaft housing, cargo cranes standing idle against the dawn sky, everything painted the same dull, functional grey every mining operation in human space seemed to default to.

”Movement,” Sera said quietly, pointing.

Two figures walked a slow perimeter loop near the outer fence, rifles slung, unhurried, the posture of guards who’d done this same walk a thousand times without incident.

”Only two visible,” Angel murmured into her comm. ”Standard patrol pattern. This isn’t a hardened military position, at least not on the surface.”

”Copy,” Brooks answered from the command transport. ”Continue recon, confirm entry points.”

They crawled the ridge slow, Sera cataloguing every structure, every camera housing, every gap in the fence that might serve as a way in.

”There.” Sera pointed at a service door on the depot’s northern edge, half-obscured by cargo containers. ”Minimal camera coverage. Guards spaced far apart on that side.”

”Good eye.” Angel keyed her comm. ”Command, viable entry point confirmed, northern service access. Recommend staggered breach, minimal resistance expected on approach.”

”Copy that,” Brooks said. ”Main force inbound. ETA four minutes.”

---

Diana’s transport touched down in a shallow gully two hundred meters out, ramp dropping before the engines fully cycled, and she was first off, KROME’s boots crunching hard into red dust, Kelvin’s suit humming low as all six of his arms flexed once, testing.

Lila came down last, eyes scanning the terrain with a familiarity that turned her stomach.

”This is it,” she said quietly. ”This is the settlement.”

”You good?” Diana asked.

”I’m good.” Lila’s jaw tightened. ”Let’s finish this.”

They moved fast and low toward the service door, Angel and Sera falling in from the ridge to meet them, and the two guards never got the chance to raise an alarm. Diana closed the distance in three strides and drove a shield-braced palm into the first one’s chest, folding him over, unconscious before he hit the ground. Kelvin’s second set of arms caught the other mid-turn, a precise grip that dropped him clean without a sound.

”Door.”

Kelvin’s eyes flared green, one auxiliary arm pressed flat against the access panel, and the lock disengaged with a soft click.

They moved inside.

The interior read exactly like a working mine for the first hundred meters, corridors lined with support struts, ventilation humming steady overhead, nothing challenging them at all.

Then the alarm hit.

Red strobes flared bright along every corridor simultaneously, and a distorted, mechanical voice echoed through hidden speakers.

”Intruders detected. All personnel to defensive positions.”

”So much for quiet,” Diana muttered, shield already forming.

They came out of three side corridors at once, more than a dozen, and suddenly all their knowledge about dark chi from fighting Purge operatives suddenly felt understated the moment Diana actually watched the first operative move.

He came at her low and fast, faster than the corridor’s tight confines should have allowed, skin visibly hardening along both forearms mid-stride, a grey, cracked texture spreading like drying clay over living muscle. Diana’s shield met his first strike and held, fragments orbiting tight before rebounding the force back into his exposed ribs.

He staggered.

Then straightened, the hardened skin already knitting some visible fracture back together in real time, and came at her again without a flicker of hesitation.

”They heal mid-fight,” Diana called, voice tight. ”That last hit should have folded him.”

”Dark chi does all of it at once if you’re trained right,” Lila shouted back, telekinesis already wrenching two attackers off their feet and slamming them together hard enough to crack a support strut behind them. ”Hardening, speed, regeneration, projection. Pick your poison, they usually get more than one.”

A third operative broke from the pack and lunged at Kelvin, red-white energy crackling thick around a fist aimed for his exposed faceplate, and Kelvin caught it on one auxiliary arm, absorbing the impact with a grunt of effort while a second arm swung wide and cracked a fist into the attacker’s jaw.

The man’s head snapped sideways.

He spat blood, laughed, and the wound along his jaw sealed shut in front of Kelvin’s eyes.

”Okay, that’s genuinely unfair,” Kelvin muttered, adjusting his stance.

”Welcome to fighting properly trained dark chi users,” Angel said, driving a blood-hardened spike through a fourth attacker’s shoulder, twisting it hard before he could recover. ”This isn’t the academy raid. These are the real thing.”

Sera tore through the corridor’s upper reaches, wings clipped tight in the confined space but still lethal, a feather-blade catching one operative across the throat before he’d even registered her closing the distance. She spun mid-air, driving a second blade into another’s exposed side, and the man barely flinched, dark chi already sealing the wound as he turned to face her fully, grinning through the blood still staining his teeth.

”You’ll have to do better than that, birdie,” he said.

Sera’s expression didn’t change. ”I intend to.”

She came at him again, faster this time, and he met her blow for blow, chi-augmented speed keeping pace with wings built for exactly this kind of combat, the exchange turning genuinely close in a way none of the earlier fights on this campaign had managed.

Diana pressed her own opponent back through sheer accumulated pressure, shield taking hit after hit, cracks spreading finer across its surface with every impact.

”You’re at eighty percent structural integrity,” Kelvin called out between his own exchanges. ”I’d start thinking about conservation.”

”Little busy,” Diana snapped, catching a strike and driving her own counter into the man’s sternum, the impact staggering him back a full step before the healing caught up and he came at her a third time.

’This isn’t going to end through attrition,’ she thought, watching him recover yet again. ’Not against something that heals this fast. I need to hit harder than the regeneration can keep pace with.’

She let the next strike land, absorbing it deliberately, the shield’s fragments soaking up the force and compounding it into her next counter, released in a single devastating burst that cracked ribs audibly and sent the man skidding back across the corridor floor, too broken this time for the healing to fully outpace the damage before Diana closed the distance and finished him with a follow-up strike to the temple.

He didn’t get back up.

Kelvin fared worse against numbers than against any single opponent, three operatives converging on him at once, dark chi crackling thick around all of them, and he found himself genuinely stretched thin coordinating independent limbs against three separately healing, separately hardening threats.

”A little help,” he called out.

Angel answered first, a wall of hardened blood rising between Kelvin and two of the attackers, buying him the half second he needed to focus the third down properly, driving two auxiliary arms into a coordinated strike that finally overwhelmed the man’s regeneration before it could fully catch up.

Lila worked the crowd differently, chronokinesis snapping a stasis field around one attacker mid-strike, freezing him rigid, red-white energy caught mid-crackle around his fist, and used the brief window to drive three telekinetic strikes into the two flanking Kelvin, throwing them both hard into the corridor wall.

”Focus fire,” she shouted. ”Don’t let them recover between hits, that’s the only way through the healing!”

The fight burned on, brutal and constant, dark chi meeting shield and blade and blood construct in overlapping bursts, and slowly, through sheer coordinated pressure rather than any single decisive blow, the corridor’s defenders began to thin.

Sera finally broke her opponent’s rhythm with a feint that opened a gap in his guard, driving a feather-blade clean through his throat before the healing could even attempt to catch up, and he dropped for good this time, chi guttering out with him.

Kelvin’s third attacker went down under a combined strike from two auxiliary arms and a well-timed plasma shot from his own shoulder-mounted emitter, the man’s hardened skin finally cracking wide enough that the damage outpaced whatever regeneration he had left to offer.

By the time the corridor fell quiet, all of them stood breathing hard, blood and dust and scorched plating scattered across the floor, more than a dozen Purge operatives down and staying down.

”That was not what I expected from a mining depot’s security detail,” Kelvin said, chest heaving.

”Yeah, you were right about your skepticism. This was never really a mining depot,” Lila said quietly, staring down the corridor ahead. ”Keep moving. It gets worse the deeper we go.”

They pushed on, clearing two more corridors, and the resistance in each one matched the first, dark chi flaring bright and violent in every exchange, dark chi strikes somehow finding ways to do more damages than the likes of a three horn hit even managed. Diana’s shield was taking real punishment now, cracks spreading finer with every fight, Kelvin flagging her structural integrity with increasing concern each time.

The central chamber opened wide ahead of them finally, a genuine command center, banks of monitors and communication equipment lining every wall, and standing at its heart, flanked by a Purge operative whose chest gear carried three sharp stripes across the shoulder, stood the two people Lila had been dreading and preparing for in equal measure.

Mr. and Mrs. Rowe turned as the door blew open, entirely unhurried, expressions settling into something almost fond at the sight of their own daughter standing in the doorway, breathing hard, blood not her own streaked across one cheek.

”Lila,” Mrs. Rowe said, voice soft. ”You brought friends.”

Sera stepped up on Lila’s left, wings flaring wide to fill the doorway. Angel took the right, blood already pooling faint and ready around both hands.

”It’s over,” Lila said, voice steady despite everything shaking beneath the surface of it. ”There’s nowhere left for you to run.”

Mr. Rowe’s mouth curved into something cold.

”Wrong,” he said.

The striped operative beside him rolled his neck once, dark chi already crawling thick and visible up both arms, more violent and concentrated than anything the corridors outside had produced, and Lila’s stomach dropped at the sight of it, some old, buried instinct recognizing exactly what that level of saturation actually meant.