Shattered super-soldier

As soon as Doc finished speaking, Matthew felt a horrible chill go down his spine, he had kept the fact she had just revealed a secret from Ripper that now silently tightened her grip on Matthew to keep him from fleeing, now that the cat was out the back Matthew turned to Doc as he felt his anger rise he yelled

“Why did you tell her that!?”

“...Sand prophet?”

Matthew blinked as the world changed in front of his eyes as he was brought back to reality, in front of him sat Matriarch Esen that stared him down with a frosty gaze, after all he had just suddenly shouted her in the face after spacing out for an unknown amount of time

“I apologize, my mind was elsewhere for a bit”

Matriarch Esen let out a sigh before she asked

“Do you remember what we were talking about?”

Matthew remembered after a moment and answered her

“You were telling me about my role and had just finished talking about my predecessors”

Esen nodded and continued her explanation

“Right, as the 4th sand prophet you will undergo education at each of the 6 clans in turn but before that you have to visit the central temple where any questions regarding your legitimacy will be laid to rest, that is where we are heading now”

Matthew nodded, it looked like he wasn’t completely out of the woods yet, never mind the problems with his current identity with the battered state of his Code Arrow 09 he would be dead within a month if he failed to find a material that could be used to resupply his stock of nanites

[Current maintenance status indicates a critical failure cascade is inevitable within 12 days, maximum life span after start of this have been calculated to be no more than 72 hours, please restore stock of bio-nanites soon]

‘Well, half a month then…’

“I understand, how long will our current journey take then?”

Esen shrugged before she gave an estimate

“We should arrive within 3 days, the city of Uliat lays North of central desert where you emerged from the sands, Uliat have been considered a holy city since the dawn of the devil comet for its protection of the maddening influence of its blue light”

Matthew nodded and noted in the back of his head to investigate the city when he was given more freedom of movement, anything that could guard against the blue comet had to be a piece of highly advanced tech or outright divine… one of the two at least, and if he was really unlucky, both

‘Let’s not go further down that line of thoughts…’

Matthew continued to learn about the local geography of the central desert, further north the land turned more arid until the land gave away to hills and further North lay unexplored endless woodlands, Matthew figured this was the natural between the central continent and the Willmir Empire along with other countries further North

‘Well, there might be some cultural exchange, but it seems pretty clear the two areas aren’t that well-connected… There might be a narrow corridor of trade through some sea route or the like…’

There wasn’t much to say about the West, as the central desert continued to spread out towards the West, in reality the central desert was simply the Western tip of the endless desert wasteland, though Esen specified that numerous adventures ventured into the Western wasteland in search of relics and ruins as it had once been the seat of power to a continent spanning civilization that had ended with the dawn of the blue comet

“Most Mystic power lineages can trace their lineage’s back to retainers of this civilization, however with the pandemonium that followed the dawn of the devil comet not even the name of this civilization have survived to this day”

“...And when exactly was it the blue comet rose?”

Esen showed a smile before she responded to Matthew

“That depends on who you ask”

Matthew blinked a few times as Esen’s answer knocked his train of thought clear of the rails

“How does that make sense?”

Esen’s smile widened as she explained

“It doesn’t, the blue comet is an enigma, historical texts indicate anything from the dawn of the blue comet taking place anything from 200 years ago to 1400 years ago, never mind the conditioning and multiple sightings of the same cosmic object in different areas at the same time”

‘... I don’t even want to think about the laws of physics being violated for this sort of time dilation to take place… However, none of what has happened since I arrived on this godforsaken ball of dirt have made any sense’

“To understand madness, one have to be mad themselves, the answer Wiseman from history have mostly agreed on is to not spare logical thoughts on that which ignores all logic”

Matthew nodded, like many things in life the easiest thing for people was simple: Don’t think too deeply about it

‘...Just like protein farms’

Matthew shuddered slightly at one of the few memories that reminded from his youth before the blockade, he hadn’t eaten meat voluntarily since he delved a little too deeply into that topic, never mind what logic dictated

“That aside, the South isn’t all that complicated either the lands is mostly covered in hills and mountain chains, most metal of the rest of the continent is mined and refined there, independent city states are dotted along the viable transport routes that control their local area and organize ore extraction and refining”

“Is there anything further South?”

Esen nodded

“In recent year's news have made it North that past the mostly impassable mountain chains in the furthest Southern reaches there lays a large feudal empire, however at this point nothing tangible have made it to my ears”

“I see… Then what about the East? You said… Lady Eilane was leading a campaign there?”

Esen nodded once again but didn’t explain right away, instead she gathered her thoughts on the matter for a few minutes before she spoke

“The East had for the longest time been unstable, kingdoms and empires rose and fell within generations… However, around 50 years ago that trend was broken with the rise of the Vermiun Empire that quickly subdued and conquered its surrounding nations with overwhelming military might… From there they continued to spread West until the 6 clans were forced to respond as the Vermium formally demanded us to hand over all our holy relics in order to earn their permission to govern our lands”

“That’s… A bold statement to make”

Esen nodded and explained

“That’s because they excavated a ruin filled with relics, among it there was some sort of machine forge that was capable of manufacturing relic weaponry”

Matthew blinked a couple of times, if they had found a working fabricator of some sort then it would only be a matter of time before their influence expanded over the central continent

“...That sounds pretty bad”

Esen shrugged, she didn’t seem all too concerned

“Well, according to the information I obtained through great cost their relic forge has malfunctioned in some capacity, so it can no longer make weaponry for them… I suppose that’s why they went after the 6 clans this aggressively, since it’s widely know we also possess a large amount of relics”

Matthew let out a sigh, was clear to him since he was in a similar situation, having grown used to the convenience of high-tech weaponry and appliances being stuck with a simple cold weaponry would no longer do for the Vermiun Empire

“...I see, so Lady… Eilane job is to stall their army and bleed out their weaponry and resources until they implode on their own?”

“Exactly, there is no need to deplete our forces for a temporary problem like the Vermiun Empire, from what news of the war that have reached me Lady Eilane have estimated the enemy will collapse within a month, from there the plan is to lead a strike force into the heart of Vermiun to acquire their relics and make it out before pandemonium returns to the East”

Matthew nodded, with the infamous Ripper herself leading a campaign of asymmetrical warfare against a less technologically advanced enemy time, fleeting as it already was, was all that were left for the Vermiun Empire

‘And suffering too… There’s no way that bitch has gotten less insane given the circumstances…’

-

“Ripper slash~!”

The high-pitched voice sounded less than energetic despite the strange pronunciation and way she dragged the end of her sentences were starkly at odds to the complete lack of emotion she showed on her face as the young looking woman slashed apart a soldier wielding a high-tech power sword that had run out of internal charge a while ago, except for initial unmotivated yell Ripper cut through the rest of the terrified soldiers with ruthless efficiency, in less than a minute the 38 soldiers had become over a little over 100 vaguely human shaped pieces

‘...’

Ripper started at the blood that pooled around her feet for a few moments before she let out a sigh, before she spoke out loud

“Aea…”

Since followed, there was no response

“Aea, could you wake up already…”

Silence followed once again, after a few moments she brought up her sword against her neck and attempted to server it, the blade only cut skin deep before her movements were restricted by a foreign will, a moment later a voice echoed out through her mind like a rusted saw

[SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSEEELFFFFF PERSSSSERVATIONNNNNN PROOOOOO]

However after a moment without completing the sentence the horribly corrupted voice of Aea stopped suddenly, this was the normal for Ripper ever since her bionic spine had been irreparably damaged from her catastrophic planet fall, no sensations entered her mind, no pain, no pleasure, no thirst, no hunger, no fear, no happiness, with all her sensations robbed from her Ripper (The self admitted hedonist) felt no desire to live on, however her life was not hers to end

“...I can’t die today either”