Chapter 15

Sera Westbrook's POV

Morning, and the sun was bright.

Dorian called everyone up to the third floor. The medical bay smelled of disinfectant. He spread a clean white cloth on the table and turned my pill bottle upside down on it. Then he flipped the bottle over and counted the pills that rolled out.

"At the current dose, this definitely won't last a week." He pushed the last pill back into the bottle. "This batch isn't concentrated enough to suppress Sera's GCI. It can barely maintain the status quo."

Vera stood at the door. "Then what do we do?"

"I've basically mastered the inhibitor manufacturing process now. Making inhibitors isn't the problem—what we need now is to produce a higher-purity inhibitor, and for that I need high-purity crystal cores." Dorian took off his glasses, wiped them, and put them back on. "Low-purity crystal cores are useless—no pharmaceutical value. There are only two viable sources of high-purity crystal cores right now: one, go to Sequencer remains, where there will be Eroded that have devoured corpses; two, go hunt Grade A Eroded—high difficulty, but guaranteed that every Grade A Eroded will have a high-purity crystal core inside its body."

With that, they all looked up at Kyle, waiting for him to decide.

Kyle said concisely, "We go to the Sequencer remains. Grade A Eroded are too strong—fighting them would put us at a huge disadvantage, and the cost is too high."

Dorian nodded. "Makes sense."

Kyle opened the projection on the wall. Odysseus pulled up an old record: an abandoned Sequencer outpost, with a line of gray text after the coordinates—overrun six months ago, bodies not yet found.

Kyle said, "According to current intel, the outpost has a lot of Eroded, and the levels are on the high side. If we kill them, we should get a lot of crystal cores. What do you say—want to go?"

Vera nodded. "Not bad. We can go."

And just like that, the final destination was set.

Odysseus projected a thin line into the center of the room, extending northeast from our current coordinates, cutting across an old commercial district. The street grid was covered in dense red markers.

"Here." Kyle tapped it lightly with the toe of his boot. "Low-tier Eroded density is very high, less than two kilometers from us. We clear it on the way and collect some low-tier crystals for reserves. For us, it's a decent warm-up too."

He assigned the tasks quickly: Cole to break through the defenses, Vera to hold the left flank, Jax to control the middle, Kyle to control the consciousness of the Eroded ahead, and me to finish them off with weapons.

In the first-deck armory, Taylor crouched beside a hover bike, installing filter screens, goggles pushed up onto his forehead. "All three filter sets are in. The bikes are fully charged too."

Vera hung smoke grenades at her waist. Jax fastened his armor and turned to Cole. "What level are most of the Eroded out there—Grade D?"

Cole pulled on his gloves. "Mostly D and C."

Dorian checked our lung-function monitor patches. All equipment was ready—we could move out.

We approached the Sequencer outpost. Outside the old commercial district, the road surface had been torn apart by mutated roots, the asphalt arching up into broken ridges. The storefronts on both sides had mostly collapsed, shattered glass covering the ground and refracting the dim daylight. More than twenty Eroded wandered slowly along the street, shoulder blades rising and falling, occasionally making a low scraping sound.

Just then, Taylor's drone feed projected onto our wristband screens: open ground, no cover, suitable for a frontal push.

Kyle scanned the surroundings. "Grade C Eroded will circle to the flanks and set ambushes. Watch the shops on both sides—don't get caught off guard."

Cole moved first. He pressed one palm to the ground, and the rock layer pushed forward along the concrete. The road was compressed into a narrow construction passage, the shop doors on both sides sealed tight with stone slabs, rubble squeezed out of the road surface. The harsh sound of grinding stone echoed down the empty street.

Jax held the middle, releasing earth-devouring to bring down the Eroded charging at him one by one. The ground collapsed under their feet, and they sank into the soil; before they could struggle, the earth and rock clamped down hard. Vera handled the ones that squeezed out through the gaps in Cole's barrier—one thrust into the neck joint, clean and quick.

Kyle raised one hand from the rear. Neural resonance spread silently, and several Grade C Eroded that had been nearing the left were forcibly turned and loosely funneled into my kill channel. When the Eroded turned toward me, I set up the machine gun and hammered their advance with firepower. Before long, their bodies were riddled with holes—even their mutated armor couldn't withstand the machine gun's assault.

Our rhythm gradually meshed. No matter how many Eroded came, we could wipe them all out.

"Go right," Kyle said over the comms.

Cole's defense line shifted right, Jax stepped right, and Vera held the left, clearing the few Eroded that remained.

I watched their positions shift in the rear without speaking. Most of the Eroded on the street had been cleared. But my attention had drifted elsewhere—something was off about this group's reactions. There was none of the panic of Eroded under neural suppression, none of the instinct to cluster toward sound and heat. They were scattering, probing outward, as if looking for something—or as if something behind them was pushing them forward.

"Kyle." I spoke over the channel.

"Mm. I know." He'd clearly noticed too.

The way the Grade C Eroded were scattering was too regular.

Just then, one Grade C forced its way out through a gap in Cole's barrier, its side armor scraping the stone edge with a sharp screech, charging straight at Jax's back. Jax was focused on the target ahead and didn't turn.

Vera spun back from the left and drove her blade into the Eroded's neck joint—the angle was half an inch off, the blade caught in the bone seam and didn't go through. The thing's head twisted to one side, but its feet didn't stop, and it slammed into Jax's back with its momentum.

Cole pressed down a stone slab and pinned it to the ground. I ran forward a few steps and finished it with the machine gun. The thing finally stopped moving, black fluid pooling on the ground and then seeping into the soil.

The street went quiet again, leaving only the sound of wind through the collapsed doorframes.

"Sera, watch your surroundings," Kyle said over comms.

"Got it." I aimed the machine gun at the Eroded elsewhere.

The last few at the end of the street were locked in place by neural resonance, unable to move. Cole sealed the exit, and Jax cleared them one by one. The final blow fell.

But he didn't get up right away to collect the crystals. He crouched there, staring at the cracks in the Eroded's chest for two seconds. "These crystals…"

Vera pried out a crystal core with the tip of her blade and held it up to the sunlight. "The quality is even worse than ordinary Grade C crystal cores."

Cole walked over and took a look. "Yeah. Fractured crystals, lots of impurities."

Kyle picked up a crystal core and studied it for a few seconds. "Their crystal core energy was probably absorbed by a higher-grade Eroded."

Dorian's voice cut in immediately over the channel: "If something nearby is draining crystal core energy, then the Eroded distribution in this area can't be trusted. Collect the crystal cores and pull out fast—there's very likely a high-grade Eroded nearby."

We stopped chatting and quickly began collecting crystal cores.

Vera sighed. "Mediocre haul."

"Really not much." Jax tossed the last gray crystal core into the bag. "But it's enough to keep the Titan running."

Kyle slid his blade back into its sheath. "So we can't pull out. Let's go back and rest first. After we rest, we'll go to the Sequencer outpost. Today we only wandered around the outpost—we didn't go in. Just near the outpost there were this many crystal cores. If we go deeper, there might be more and higher-grade crystal cores."

Jax said, "Makes sense."

And so, we returned to the Titan for a short rest.

After full-body disinfection, Vera changed into clean clothes and stood in front of the cabinet making coffee. The aroma covered the smell of disinfectant and rust.

Just then, Kyle walked up beside me and held out his right hand. "Let me see your wrist."

I was drinking the coffee Vera had made. I looked up, froze for two seconds, and said, "I'm not hurt."

Kyle said, "Let me see."

I had no choice but to put my hand in his. Kyle held my hand and checked it left and right, finally pressing on the wound from a few days ago. "It's fully healed."

I nodded. "Mm. My healing rate is very fast."

"Mm. Then it's fine." Kyle sat down beside me. "We're about to face high-grade Eroded. It's best if you don't act."

I asked, "Why?"

Kyle said, "High-grade Eroded are hard to deal with. If you use your ability, what if your GCI spikes?"

Looking into his eyes, I didn't quite know what to say. "You don't need to be that cautious. I've gotten through this before—my GCI is very stable."

Kyle glanced at me. "Don't get complacent."

I looked at him silently.

These past few days, he'd been controlling me constantly. Honestly, I wasn't someone who obeyed control.

I'd been resisting—but when exactly I'd resisted, I'd forgotten too.

Anyway, now, I looked at Kyle and lowered my voice. "Kyle, what my body should and shouldn't do—that's for me to decide."