The last thing I remember of Lara was the smile on her face and the twinkle in her eyes as she went over the edge.

After that, everything was a blur.

In her final moments of charging her attack, when I had been fending off the creature from the void, she must have ended up making a call for backup after all.

I mean, with her death on the horizon I guess she had stopped caring about what her dad thought about her actions. He couldn't take her back and force her into his confinement if she was dead, after all.

Either way, within minutes of Lara going over the edge, an armed squad of defence drones arrived on the scene.

Defence drones.

They had fully automated combat robots and instead of bringing those in she had sent me and her to take down the creature ourselves.

She was an idiot.

The thought made my stomach turn. No, she hadn't been an idiot. She had been desperate and backed into a corner. She'd thought that going after the Invader herself was the only option that she had.

The drones had swarmed in with an arcane glow emitting from some gun-like protrusions on their sides. They floated through the air effortlessly despite the weird gravity in the area. When they had scanned the area and found no creature, their weapons levelled at me instead.

I could understand the consternation. A high ranking member of the Guard elite had sent out a request for assistance, and when the backup arrived the only thing that was left was a good for nothing dirty human. I'd be nervous too if I were them.

They didn't fire, though. Instead, thick tentacle appendages emerged from the tops of a couple of the drones and wrapped themselves around my arms. They hoisted me up and dragged me along, I was barely able to walk but did my best to stagger in pace with them.

We wound our way back through all the dusty alleyways of the mega building until we reached the entranceway that I had arrived through. They dragged me out across the plaza with all the food stalls, though they had now mostly been abandoned as the night had worn on. They dragged me across the bridge and back into the Guard complex. Only then did they release me.

Of all the people I had been expecting to see, Yr'Arl and Akash were not the ones at the top of my list to be greeting me on my arrival back into the guard complex.

As the tentacles of the drones released me, Akash whipped out his own vines to catch me before I fell. Considering how tightly the plant alien was holding me, I didn't think it was just to try and keep me upright.

As they took me, wordlessly, into the compound I let my eyes drift to the system display in the corner of my vision for the first time in a while. I clearly needed to utilise things more, because there was a whole load of text waiting for me.

[EMERGENCY QUEST COMPLETED: DEFEAT THE ??? BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY]

[REWARDS]

[+50 TO ALL STATS - ACCEPT?]

[+10,000 XP - ACCEPT?]

[??? - ACCEPT?]

I accepted the first two and felt waves of power rush over me. I instantly felt stronger than I had ever felt before, the previous fatigue having been washed away completely. I was quite sure that, if I wanted to, I could rip my way out of Akash's grip and there would be nothing they could do to stop me. That wouldn't exactly make me look any less guilty for Lara's death, however, so I decided to stay put for now.

Then I accepted the mystery reward.

[??? ACCEPTED]

[You have acquired a weapon]

[Void Beast's Claw, Curved Blade]

The weight on my back became a bit heavier as my sword shifted from one form to the next. Somehow the system in my head had managed to harvest the claw from the Null Space Invader I had fought and had forged it into a sword in record time.

[Void Beast's Claw: +100 to Strength while in use. Will absorb manna attacks and redistribute them at twice the power.]

That was a powerful weapon, an incredibly powerful weapon, and I had no doubt that it would see me through the trials that were coming my way with relative ease.

The system wasn't done with me yet, either. My XP from the quest and from the defeat of the Null Space Invader had yet to be applied.

[Level Up!]

[Level Up!]

[Level Up!]

[Level Up!]

[Level Up!]

[Jacob Lyre Stats Sheet:

Level: 12

HP: 1150

Manna Reserve: 5050

Strength: 500

Active Ability Points: 16

Passive ability Points: 6]

My health had gone up by a ton, and my manna reserves had almost doubled. I hadn't seen the strength stat before, but I was willing to guess that a base level strength of 500 was a pretty impressive level of power.

[Passive Ability System engaging]

[New ability acquired for 6 points]

[Manna Sense - You will now be able to sense the manna of other lifeforms while you are in Synchro Mode with your BB]

I had forgotten all about the ability system that had been granted to me by the Job System that I had accepted back in the battle royale, and since I was still being dragged around by Akash I decided to take a scan through it.

The list was long and expansive, it'd probably take me years to read through all of the skills and abilities, but one immediately popped out to me as potentially useful.

[Ability Acquired - Vital Strike]

[Vital Strike - Rush a single target at blindingly fast speeds with an attack that will always hit to deal damage. Cannot be executed while you are restrained by any medium]

[Active Ability Points - 6]

If I'd had access to this ability when I had been fighting against the Null Space Invader then maybe, just maybe I'd have been able to deal enough damage to it so that Lara wouldn't have had to sacrifice herself. Either way, I wasn't going to be caught off guard like that again. Now I had an attack that would always allow me to deal damage to my opponent, all while closing the gap between myself and them in record time.

<It wouldn't have helped,> BB said, his voice morose.

I had been wondering where my AI helper had disappeared off to. He usually came in with some wisecrack immediately after a battle had reached its conclusion and our synchro mode ended, but this time he had been completely silent.

<You didn't know her for long, but Lara was a good person,> BB said. <She fought for what was right, regardless of what her father allowed her to do, and in the end, was brave enough to make the final sacrifice, she deserved a moment of silence. A moment of respect.>

He was right, of course. Lara had been everything that I imagined the Guard was meant to embody, even if she had been reckless toward the end. Up until this point I had been kind of going through the motions a bit. I'd been allowing myself to coast through the system, had I even wanted to become a part of the guard? If I continued to live an unfulfilling life I'd be able to live forever in an infinity of universes, after all.

But now, things were a little bit different.

I was going to uphold the values of the Guard, I was going to prove everyone in this galaxy wrong about humanity, and I was going to do whatever it took to obliterate the Null Space Invaders once and for all.

[Secret Quest Activated]

[Objective: Obliterate the Null Space Invaders once and for all]

[Rewards: ???, ???, ???]

The quest had seared itself into my vision. It was my purpose now, and I was going to do anything that I could to follow it.

Deep Space - The Guard Main HQ

The leader of the guard was a man of habit.

He would wake up at the same time every morning, enter a vibra-shower and have the main newscast displayed on the holowall.

The news that he saw that morning chilled him to the very bones.

His daughter. His sweet Lara had been killed in a fight with a Null Space Invader.

It shouldn't have been possible. She was stationed on one of the safest of all the homeworlds, protected by the raging maelstrom of gravity caused by three moons and a world of ocean. The Null Space Invaders should have never been able to get close to them.

It had to have been the Human's fault, that was what they were all saying anyway. A human had been found with her, Jacob Lyre, and been taken back to the nearby Guard base for further questioning.

Humans. They were almost as bad as the Null Space Invaders themselves.

He'd make the Human pay. He'd take from Jacob Lyre just as much as the boy had taken from him. He'd burn the whole human race to the ground if he had to.