Author’s Corner: Captain, shields are failing! The comments, they’re coming in too fast! We have to fire off another chapter!

“John Hulett.” The figure above Yin’s body spoke, finally registering. “For the crimes of treason against the New Human Empire, you have been sentenced to death.” After he finished speaking, his body faded into view. The person standing there was a regular human, carrying a sword in one hand. I tried to muster up the strength to fight back, to attack the person that killed Yin. However, my body wouldn’t respond to my commands.

“John!” I heard Celeste’s voice calling into my head. “I’m on my way! The area was shielded against teleports, so I have to fly there, just hold on!”

I tried to respond, but I wasn’t sure if my thoughts were reaching her. All I knew was that the human was slowly walking up to me, and gripped his sword with both hands. “Now, in the name of the empire, I carry out this sentence.” Just as he raised his sword above his head, a shrill scream rang through the area, and his body seemed to freeze.

My head turned to look at the source of the scream, half expecting to find another of my friends dead. However, what I saw surprised me to no end. Yang, looking angrier than I ever thought possible for her, with her eyes a bloody red. Even with whatever magic was placed on me, I could feel her mana surging around her. When she opened her mouth, high pitched tones escaped, almost like when she sang for her crafting.

However, where her crafting songs were soft and gentle, this was fast and raging. Each tone carrying an oppressive energy. Standing above me, the human’s face seemed to contort in pain as he found himself still unable to move. “What… what’s going on?! She can’t--”

Before he could finish what he was saying, his mouth sealed itself. The flesh of his lips merged together, then seemed to bubble out. His arms started bending in unnatural ways, curling in on themselves. Blood sprayed out from wounds that appeared out of nowhere and were instantly sealed. Soon, his flesh became bloated, veins becoming visible on the surface and his features entirely masked. He was nothing more than a pulsating mass of flesh.

The worst part, though, was that it wasn’t just him. Six other people also let out screams as they appeared from thin air around us, all going through the same process. Yang’s rage seemed to trigger something, an aspect of her nature crafting that had never even been considered. And even with the deformed abominations that the human attackers became, I could faintly sense life from each of them. She wasn’t allowing them to die.

“S-stop!” The voice that called out this time was Tokemi, who grabbed onto Yang’s waist from behind in a tight hug. Hearing her voice, Yang’s song seemed to end abruptly, and she looked down at the girl holding onto her. The red in her eyes slowly faded away, and she fell to the ground powerlessly, as if she had used all of her energy.

Tokemi cried as she held tightly onto Yang, refusing to let go. Meanwhile, I was still unable to move until roughly ten minutes later when Celeste appeared. She cast a spell on me, and I felt the foreign mana leaving my body. However, before she could come over to see if I was alright, I shook my head. “Yin first…”

She nodded in understanding, not wasting a moment before moving over to Yin’s side. Thankfully, Celeste knew all of my skills. Her Soul Arts were no less developed than my own, and after applying a simple heal to seal the wound on Yin’s chest, she ripped out the soul energy from one of the masses of flesh near her, refined it, and then poured it into Yin. At first, nothing happened, and I was afraid that the resurrection failed.

Once my strength came back to me, I slowly stood up and made my way over. “Come on, Yin… you can’t just die like that.” I sent my mana into her body to see what was wrong, and smiled in relief. She had been revived successfully, she was just sleeping at the moment.

“She’ll be fine, John…” Celeste spoke with a soft voice. Though, that gentle tone did not last long. “Which is more than I can say for the people that did this.”

“Do you have any information for us?” I asked her, and she quickly nodded.

“When you were attacked, we received a data packet from one of the ships heading through the warp gate. It was, quite simply, a declaration of war. The New Human Empire, made up of the supremacists of humanity, declared war against… pretty much everyone. Their first act was to kill you, since you had ‘betrayed your people’.”

I nodded my head at that, and walked over to the nearest ‘human’. “I was hoping I’d never need to use this.” I grit my teeth, and extended a hand in a grasping motion. One of the new abilities I developed for my Soul Arts, Memory Scan. Since memories were stored in the soul, along with skills and experience, I came up with the idea of sifting through memories as I purified a soul.

Soon, I found myself kneeling inside of a temple, my head lowered. For some reason, I didn’t question it and looked up at the man standing in front of me. He seemed to be my boss… no, maybe master was a better word? “Your name is Jacob. From now on, you will fight for the New Human Empire. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.” I felt myself speaking in a voice that wasn’t my own. I tried to clear my head, remember that this was simply a memory of a dead man. As such, I burned the image of his master into my mind. Later in these memories, I would come to know that his name was General Martin.

The general was just over six feet tall, with a broad muscular build. His normally black hair was showing signs of fading, and he had a long scar down the left side of his face. The person whose memories I was viewing was an NPC created by the gold market. He was a disposable soldier, created for one simple mission, to kill me.

I watched as they waited in orbit around the Qu’Lopti world, biding their time. Their preparations were flawless, they had information on all of the combatants from my group. They knew about Yin’s telekinesis, Sharon’s shapeshifting, even Celeste’s arsenal. When they saw me coming down to one spot on the planet and preparing it for days at a time, they decided to lay their trap.

Under the cover of stealth, seven people descended to the surface and laid the various preparations. First, and most importantly, a device they created based on the anti-spawn barriers druids make. By forcefully normalizing all elemental mana in the area, elemental manipulation abilities can be nullified. This was their countermeasure against myself, and any other druids I happened to bring with me.

Next, one of their party members was a curse specialist. The moment I seemed to notice something strange, she cast her strongest curse on me, removing my ability to use magic and weakening my physical body. Had Sharon or Yo been here, she was also in charge of doing the same to them.

Finally, Jacob himself was one of the members assigned to stealthily kill any combatants in the area aside from myself. According to their orders, only people that started human, namely myself and Sharon, were allowed to have the privilege of knowing their attacker’s identity. As for Tokemi and Yang, neither of them have ever displayed combat ability. One was known to be a simple-minded crafter, while the other was a young child. In their minds, these two were no threat.

They never imagined that the one seen as the most useless would destroy their entire team out of rage. And to be honest, I never thought Yang was capable of that either. Thankfully, they didn’t seem to have information on my ability to resurrect people, or they would have taken extra precautions.

Closing my eyes, I finished sifting through his memories. There were two things that were clear from what he knew. One, they were not going to stop just because one team failed. They would keep coming until I died. And two… someone leaked information to them. Either a member of my current crew, or someone that has already left, but someone gave them information. Most likely, it was a former member, since the information they had on Tokemi was so scarce, but that still annoyed me to no end.

Celeste, having read the information from my mind, had her face darken even further. There was audible cracking as she tightened her fists. “John..”

“I know.” I nodded to her, closing my eyes. Calling on my Nature Magic, I located the place where Jacob’s memory indicated the device being planted. Then, I made all of the nearby roots stab towards it, shattering it and giving me back my elemental magic. “Tell the Qu’Lopti. We’re heading out once everything is ready.”

With that, I walked over to Yang, reaching down and picking her up. With one hand, I gently rubbed Tokemi’s head. “It’s okay, everything’s going to be okay.” Tokemi rubbed at her eyes, still sobbing. Though, she did manage a small nod.

Next, I pushed the button on my comm to activate it. “This is Captain John Hulett of the Ariadne. All available crew, report to the ship. In twenty four hours, we go to war.”

There was a mixture of responses from the crew. By now, most had already left to return to their own worlds. However, Sharon’s evolved companions had been training for years to be able to crew a ship. Even without the original crew, there were still over a thousand people ready to fly the Ariadne.

Once their jamming devices were taken care of, the five of us were teleported back up to the ship. Sharon met us with a panicked face, and seeing the two girls passed out in mine and Celeste’s arms, couldn’t stop herself from asking. “What happened? Is everything okay?”

I shook my head, signalling for Sharon to walk with us as we went to the medbay. “There was an assassination attempt. Someone’s declared war.” I summarized what had happened down on the planet, including Yin’s brief death. Sharon’s expression grew dark as I covered that part. I wasn’t the only one that was out for blood now. Sharon and Celeste both treated Yin as a best friend, even a sister.

However, once I covered what Yang did to the attackers, Sharon’s eyes opened wide and she glanced down to the unconscious girl in my arms. Then she looked back up to me. “What are we going to do?”

“They want a war, and they’re not stopping until we’re dead. So we’ll give them one. I’m mobilizing every ship that is willing to join us.” After saying so, I turned to look at Celeste. “Did you catch the location that they warped to with the gate?”

The warp gates were a new technology pioneered by the Qu’Lopti. In the future’s records it should have been the humans that came up with the designs, but since the Qu’Lopti were advancing so much faster in their Magitek research, they developed it first. By now, there were no more than ten warp gates deployed throughout the entire galaxy.

However, Celeste shook her head. “They used a coded password for the gate, and it connected to an unregistered location. I was on my way to you, and the connection was too brief for me to track it. They’ve set up a secret warp gate somewhere, and probably changed the password for it as soon as they were through.”

I thought about that, and muttered under my breath. “That means they could emerge from any gate they wanted to attack.”

Accessing my friends list, I sent a call to Talia, the elven queen. She seemed rather surprised to hear from me, and asked in a somewhat hurried voice. “You’re alive? Is everything okay?”

Judging from her tone, I was able to understand the situation. “The New Human Empire already contacted you. Place a heavy guard on the warp gate. They seem to have a private one somewhere, so they could attack at any time. Make sure you have enough firepower aimed at it to destroy the entire gate if something goes wrong.”

Talia hesitated for a few moments, before she responded in a calmer voice. “We understand. And yes, they sent their declaration just now. We’re searching for any possible spies, but that is hard when not every human is part of this group. We can’t simply oppress them all.”

“That’s fine. We’ll take care of it somehow. Just keep your people safe. And ask Maeve to mobilize any ships you can. These guys are using the gold market to buy disposable soldiers, so they likely have a way to endlessly produce currency for the market.”

She agreed to that as well, and soon Celeste, Sharon and I arrived at the medbay. We laid Yin and Yang down in the beds to rest, and I began making my way to the bridge. “Guess I don’t get that early retirement after all.”