33 Risen#re

In the ship bone, curdling screams could be heard it lasted for a full hour, and all of the crew were shivering.

Captain Klint paced up and down on the deck with a pair noise-canceling headphones to stop the sounds from reaching his ears, the other members had followed suit with music playing on their headset to offset the screams, it was scary, this was an enormous ship yet those screams echoed loudly throughout the ship.

At some point, they even heard the captive trying to scream out information but before he could string together two words his screams would rise to even higher volumes.

Unfortunately for Klint, he couldn't avoid the screams entirely as every few seconds he would have to listen out for Anya's commanded, she had ordered the ship to remain where it was until she extracted all the necessary information, that kid was truly unfortunate to survive he thought with a sigh.

He took off his headphones after an hour passed and he received a summons to Anya's room, as he got close a bloody smell mixed with the smell of shit and urine wafted into his nose making him involuntarily gag.

When he got into the room it was surprisingly clean at first glance, as he scanned the room for the corpse, he noticed a large mat on the floor he hadn't put in here, and on closer inspection, he took a terrifying step towards the door, it was no mat, rather it was a human fleece.

His eyes involuntarily quivered as he realized that the boy had been skinned alive, as he calmed his breathing, he saw something else the bones from a hand each bone laid out individually without a single shred of muscle or a drop of blood left on it.

As he stared at the bones, he realized it made up five fingers and the palm, with the last of his courage he looked into the hot tub it was filled with red water and a disfigured corpse was floating in it.

He turned to face Anya but dared not to even look above her feet, earlier he had been fine in her presence but now he couldn't even hide the shivers from her. He didn't even want to imagine the pain of having one's bone being cut out from their flesh while they were alive.

"Your orders!", he couldn't muster up the courage to say anything else in her presence.

"It's as expected there are hundreds of groups in the surrounding area all waiting for us, they all seem to be conscripted by some small black-market group called the Black-Hand with a dozen seventh-graders supporting it, from now on we will move without the warp for the next five days and we'll be hunting the hunters, I hope to remove a hundred fleets in that time, after five days we will visit their home base and erase those idiots."

There were many things that Klint was skeptical about but he wisely shut his mouth and left.

The way Anya saw it she had two options, one was to announce her presence to the next fleet they met, and immediately the danger would pass, the moment that it was known that aide to the empress was onboard the people plotting in the shadows would back off.

The reason was simple if it was an ordinary ship destroyed the empress would get bad PR for not providing sufficient protection and getting a thousand children killed and the most, she would be able to do in response is launch an investigation to hold a few people responsible, however since Anya was on board if anyone were to attack her the empress would have every right to launch a full-fledged investigation and accuse the instigators of treason for attacking the empire itself.

If Anya revealed herself it would be a deterrent but no one would get caught, hence she decided to keep her presence hidden and become the hunter.

The days slowly passed and in just three days they had managed to wipe out over a hundred fleets, with her [Blood Drain Resurrection] skill she had easily brought pandemonium to the ships followed by her [First Note of Death] slashes that left no room for survivors. It took her mere minutes to clear out all the enemies.

Due to so many fleets disappearing it wouldn't be long before the Black- Hand discovered that something was wrong so Anya moved up her plans and attacked their base.

As they drew closer to the Black-Hand they discovered a large rock floating in space, it was large enough to build a small country, on its surface great steel structures were visible and a series of lights flashed directing ships to the hangar.

"Your excellency this is a neutral station on the edges of the Primus and Cordula star domains, it is a major hub for white-orichalcum and caltun trading and there are seven major financial groups with branches here...", Klint continued to read out all the data on the station like a secretary.

As he finished the comms rang and a projection appeared, "I am commander Etlexa, your ship has been in orbit of my station for the past two hours please state your intentions or leave, if you do not cooperate, we will blow you out of the sky." a pink-skinned woman with blue hair spoke solemnly on the projection.

Anya walked up to the projection and placed her hand on the biometric scanner, "I am enforcement personal #012 of the Clovis empire Anya Capriska, hand over your command of the station, or I'll turn your little rock into a slaughterhouse."

The commanders' eyes widened slightly as she read all the data coming in on the feed, she looked like she had taken a bitter pill as she forced a smile and looked up changing her tone of address into a more respectful one, "Your excellence please understand that this is a neutral station I cannot hand over..."

"Tell me is there a section in my credentials that says illiterate?" she cut off the commander, "Do you think that I cannot read that this is a neutral station, do not waste another second of my time or I will not stay my hand."

Anya's tone brokered no argument, the commander gritted her teeth as she unwillingly signed over her command, at the same time she made a few hand signs to her workers to inform the people on the station.

As soon as Anya took command, she issued her orders, "Shut down the hangar I want no one coming in or going out if any ships take off blow them out the sky, and if a single ship should escape, I hope that you have all written your wills."

"Stay here and wait for my return," she ordered Klint and headed for the hatch.

In the pod room Lirian opened his once more, she left he thought in silence. Since the first time he looked at her battle Anya kept scanning over his location while she was in battle making it impossible for him to watch her but now, she had left the range of the ship, unfortunately, the station was out of his range as well, he would only be able to observe a little.

The energy around him turned silver once more the station was reflected in his eyes, but he couldn't make out any details, but after a few seconds, a vision of severed strings filled his vision. He shut his eyes and took a deep breath to calm his eyes.

It seems that these eyes of mine are quite special I can see the strings of fate with them but it's far too much for my mind to handle, something like this is just barely possible for a third-grade transcendent esper with a focus on the mind, a hundred severed treads means death to all, a thousand means a slaughter however if there is a hundred and one or a thousand and one it means fate can change, just that the likelihood of such change is very low.

Lirians eyes sparkled, this was a very great opportunity for him to gather fate particles but first, he would need to confirm if the tread count had that extra tread of fate.

He opened his eyes and did his best to capture the image in front of him, only two seconds passed when a blood vessel in his eye popped, he shut his eyes again and sighed in relief. The blood seeped out of his eyes but he used the surrounding energy to erase it.

He looked back at the image with his bloodshot eyes but this time nothing happened, the stress on his body probably stopped the vision from occurring but he already knew that the fate of the people down on the station could be changed.

He was thrilled to have found a place to gather a lot of fate particles, in essence, all beings have fate particles surrounding them it is something that one gathers through the course of their life, these particles are what give people a peripheral sixth sense that allows them to predict certain dangers or survive harsh tribulations and, in all transactions, it is unconsciously exchanged.

These particles are like an unspoken form of currency that very few know exist and there are very stringent rules that these particles follow, for example, due to Lirians speed at crawling, standing up, and talking he had earned a great deal of praise from his mother and those around him, by praising him they had inadvertently passed on some fate particles, if the praise was from an ordinary person it wouldn't be very important but the praise of a seventh-grade empress and her aids is something that most practitioners in the world would die to hear its value was incredible, to seventh-grade practitioners such as them the number of particles was minuscule, however to Lirian who had spent every last bit of his accumulated fate to reach the mortal realm it was an insane figure of fate, more than any ordinary king would have accumulated in a lifetime.

Most people have no idea how to use and manipulate fate so it only acts as a passive boon that enhances their luck to a degree but to Lirian it was very valuable, without it he would have never been able to scry outside the ship and watch Anya's battles or what was about to happen at this station, and this was just a simple application of fate particles.