Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner Chapter 862: Capture The Eight

Lila sat cross-legged on the counter beside Kelvin’s workstation, scooping ice cream straight from a tub with a spoon that had clearly seen better days, watching him spin lazy half-circles in his chair between keystrokes.

"So," she said, around a mouthful. "Is that enough? We’ve been at this for two days."

"Two days," Kelvin said, not looking up, "is nothing for a reconstruction this delicate. You want me to rush the science, Lila? You want a coordinate set built on rushed science?"

"I want a coordinate set built on any science, at this point."

"Rude." He swiveled to face her fully, spoon-pointing accusations forgotten in favor of an actual answer. "But also, fine, yes, I think we’re close. Real close." He turned back to the screen, pulling up an overlay again, a reconstructed sky color, some thermal match, and a ridgeline comparison sitting side by side. "This is it. I’d bet my entire honeymoon fund on it, which, considering how expensive that honeymoon was, should tell you something about my confidence level."

Lila leaned over to look, spoon still in her mouth. "That ridge."

"That ridge," Kelvin confirmed. "Matches an old anomaly scan almost exactly. Nobody explained the heat signature at the time because nobody had a reason to care about an empty patch of the Corvane Expanse. Now we do."

"Then let’s go tell the room," Lila said, hopping down off the counter. "Before Sophie sends a search party for both of us."

---

The strategy room was already loud when they walked in, voices overlapping, and Sophie stood at the head of the table with her arms crossed, looking like she’d been standing there arguing for longer than she wanted to admit.

"—and I’m saying we can’t just sit here indefinitely," Diana was saying, arms crossed to match Sophie’s, "while Hendricks walks around free, potentially married to the actual chaos god running half this entire war."

"We’ve been over this," Brooks said, tired. "We move too early, we lose everything."

"I know we’ve been over it," Diana snapped. "I’m allowed to still be mad about it."

"Everyone’s mad about it," Angel said, rubbing her temple. "Being mad doesn’t make the timeline safer."

Kelvin cleared his throat loudly from the doorway.

"You can all begin bringing your offerings now," he announced, striding in with both arms spread wide, "because yes, indeed, I am a god."

The room went briefly, blessedly silent.

"A tech god, specifically," Kelvin continued, undeterred, "a very specific, very niche deity of memory reconstruction and stubborn problem-solving, but a god nonetheless, and I have delivered unto you coordinates."

"Kelvin," Sophie said.

"I’m getting there, I’m building anticipation, this is called pacing—"

"Kelvin."

"Fine." He dropped the theatrics, pulling up the display properly. "We found it. The world Lila’s parents met with her."

Diana, despite everything, cracked a fond smile watching her husband finally get to the point after thoroughly enjoying himself first. Some things about him weren’t ever going to change, and apparently she’d decided she didn’t want them to.

The room’s energy shifted instantly, every argument from a minute ago swallowed whole by the weight of an actual lead.

"Show us," Sophie said.

Kelvin pulled the full overlay up, the star map, the ridgeline comparison, the thermal anomaly data laid out clean.

"Unregistered world, Corvane Expanse, sitting well outside any regular patrol route," he said. "Confirmed via reconstruction, cross-referenced against an old unexplained thermal scan. I’d stake real confidence on this."

"How confident," Brooks asked, already moving closer to study it properly.

"Confident enough to plan around it," Kelvin said. "Not confident enough to skip verification once we’re actually in-system. This is a reconstruction, built from Lila’s fragmented recall, not a photograph. Layout specifics, exact terrain, could shift once we’ve got eyes on it directly."

"What do we actually know about the site," Angel asked, tablet already out, ready to start building.

"Mining operation," Lila said. "I heard it the whole time I was there. Heavy, rhythmic thuds, consistent with extraction equipment."

"But," Kelvin added, "the energy bleed-off from the world is disproportionate. Way more than a mining operation that size should produce. And the rhythm wasn’t constant, there were gaps, irregular pauses that don’t match standard industrial cycling."

"Could be shift changes," Angel said.

"Could be," Kelvin said. "I’m flagging it, not ruling it out. I don’t want us walking in assuming we already understand what’s actually there."

"Noted," Brooks said, already sketching. "Alright. Let’s actually build this properly."

She pulled the star map closer, gesturing Angel in beside her, and the two of them fell into a rhythm that felt practiced, familiar, years of joint operations compressing into shorthand neither needed to explain to the other.

"Standard approach," Brooks said, "would be a direct drop, minimal stealth, overwhelming force on arrival. I don’t like it here."

"Agreed," Angel said. "If this is Purge-controlled and they’ve had years to fortify it undetected, walking in loud gets people killed before we’ve even confirmed the layout."

"So we go dark," Brooks said. "Staggered insertion. Small recon element first, confirm the actual site before committing the main force."

"Who leads recon," Sophie asked.

"Me," Angel said immediately. "My task force trains for exactly this. Small footprint, minimal signature, in and out before anyone knows we were there."

"I want Sera with recon too," Brooks said. "Her wings give aerial coverage nothing else on this team can match without lighting up every sensor on the planet."

Sera nodded once, serious. "I can hold altitude and stay silent longer than any powered flight option you have. If there is a perimeter, I find it first."

"Main assault force," Brooks continued, "moves in once recon confirms the layout. Two-pronged. One team breaches the facility itself, the other holds the perimeter, cuts off retreat and reinforcement both."

"I want to lead the breach team," Diana said.

"Figured," Brooks said, not unkindly. "You and Lila."

"Me?" Lila’s eyebrows rose.

"You know the layout better than anyone in this room, even reconstructed," Brooks said. "And whatever loyalty you’ve got left toward your parents, I need to know right now whether that compromises you going in."

"It doesn’t," Lila said, flat, certain. "I already told you where I stand."

"Then you’re on breach," Brooks said. "Diana leads, you navigate."

"Exfil," Angel said, moving the conversation forward. "This is the part everyone forgets to plan properly and it’s the part that gets people killed retroactively. We need a clean extraction point, not just an entry point."

"Same transports that bring us in stay in a holding pattern outside atmosphere," Brooks said. "No landing until breach confirms clear. We don’t want ships sitting exposed on the ground the whole operation."

"What if breach goes loud," Sophie asked. "What if stealth fails partway through."

"Then exfil becomes immediate priority over objective completion," Brooks said, firm. "I don’t care what we find in there if the cost is losing people getting it out."

"Agreed," Angel said.

Sophie studied the map a long moment, arms crossed, working through something.

"I want a third element," she said finally. "Not breach, not perimeter. A floating response team. Sera and I both have abilities that work better reacting to a developing situation than executing a fixed plan. If something goes wrong mid-operation, we need people who can adapt on the fly rather than sticking rigid to an assignment."

"That’s smart," Brooks admitted. "King’s Gaze specifically. If you can get even a partial read before we commit fully, that changes everything about how careful we need to be."

"I’ll try," Sophie said. "No promises. It doesn’t work on command."

"Understood." Brooks looked around the table. "One more thing, and I need everyone actually listening to this part."

The room quieted.

"We need to talk about who might actually be there," Brooks said. "Not just Purge ground forces. We’ve learned, the hard way, over years, that Arthur’s network doesn’t operate in isolation. The Eight, or whatever’s left of that original structure, has found ways to work directly with Harbingers. Not just tolerate them existing nearby. Actually coordinate with them."

"Kruel," Angel said quietly. "That was the first real proof of it. Purge operatives led him straight into the Eastern Cardinal three years ago."

"Which means," Brooks continued, "we cannot assume this facility is staffed purely by human Purge operatives. If it’s significant enough that the Rowes personally visited, there’s a real chance whatever’s guarding it isn’t entirely human."

"Lila," Sophie said. "During your time there. Did you see anything. Hear anything. Any sign of Harbinger presence at all."

Lila thought hard, replaying it. "No. Nothing. No sounds that fit, no smell, nothing that read as Harbinger to me. Just the mining sounds, and my parents, and the people who moved me around."

"That’s something," Brooks said. "Not proof of absence, but it’s something. Still, I want everyone going in prepared for the possibility regardless. Better to over-prepare for a threat that isn’t there than walk in blind to one that is."

"Agreed," Angel said.

Diana leaned back in her chair, looking between Brooks and Angel with something like genuine relief on her face.

"I’m glad you two are on our side," she said. "Genuinely. I don’t think I’d trust this plan half as much coming from anyone else."

"Same," Lila said quietly. "This is the first time since everything happened that I actually feel like we’re doing something instead of just reacting."

"Indeed," Sophie said, something steadier settling into her own expression now, watching the plan take real shape across the table in front of her.

Brooks looked around the room one final time, at every face now locked in, focused, ready.

"Alright," she said. "Let’s finalize timing. And someone go find Kelvin’s ice cream tub before Lila eats the rest of it and we lose our morale officer to a sugar crash before the actual operation even starts."

The planning ran another hour past that, Brooks and Angel finalizing timing windows, Sera confirming altitude ranges she could realistically hold without detection, Diana and Lila working through breach sequencing with Kelvin feeding them real-time terrain probability updates off his reconstruction model.

By the time the room finally started to loosen, exhaustion replacing urgency, Sophie stepped back from the table.

"I need to make a call," she said. "Before we lock this in fully."

Nobody questioned it. She stepped into the side room, sealed the door, and pulled up the private channel to Raiju.

Lucy’s face resolved on the screen a moment later, tired, drawn, something heavier sitting behind her eyes than the last time they’d spoken.

"Sophie."

"I need to tell you something before you hear it secondhand," Sophie said. "We found a real lead. A location tied to your parents, sorry, to my parents, tied to the Rowes and possibly connected to whatever Hendricks is actually building. The EDF’s agreed to move on it jointly with us. Full operation, real planning behind it, not a rushed guess."

Lucy’s expression didn’t change much. "When."

"Soon. Final details are still being locked down." Sophie hesitated, choosing her next words carefully. "Lucy, I need to ask you something, and I need you to actually hear me out before you answer. Please hold off on severing ties with the EDF. Not forever. Just until we see what this operation actually turns up. If this works, if the joint effort genuinely holds, that’s proof the relationship’s worth salvaging instead of burning down."

Lucy was quiet a long moment, jaw working.

"Does this mission," she said finally, voice careful, controlled in a way that felt like it was costing her something to maintain, "in any way, bring us closer to finding something for Lucas."

The silence on Sophie’s end stretched.

Nobody had briefed her for this question, and there was no version of the honest answer that didn’t hurt.

"Lucy," Sophie started.

"Don’t." Lucy’s voice cracked, sharp and sudden. "Don’t do the thing where you soften it before you actually answer me. Just tell me plainly. Does chasing the Rowes, does raiding some mining world in the middle of nowhere, does any of it actually help my brother."

"Not directly," Sophie admitted. "Not that we currently know."

Lucy’s jaw tightened, and for a moment she said nothing at all, eyes drifting to something off-screen, somewhere Sophie couldn’t see.

"I think you’ve all moved on," Lucy said quietly. "I think somewhere between Hendricks, and academies burning, and every other fire demanding your attention, my brother became a background problem. Something you’re still technically working on, somewhere, in whatever spare hours happen to be left over at the end of the day." Her voice shook, raw now, nothing held back. "He calls all of you family. Did you know that. Even you, Sophie, even people he’s known less than a year, he calls you family without a single moment of hesitation. And I watch this team chase every single thread except the one that actually brings him back to us."

"Lucy, that’s not fair—"

"Maybe not." Lucy’s eyes hardened, something final settling into them. "I’ve made up my mind."

"About what."

"I’m raiding the planet Arthur’s on," Lucy said. "Myself. With whatever forces Raiju can actually commit. I’m going to capture the Eighth, whatever’s left of him, and I’m going to make him fix what his network did to my brother. One way or another. I’m done waiting for the rest of you to circle back to him."

"Lucy, wait—"

The feed cut.

Sophie sat there a long moment, staring at the blank screen, the low murmur of the strategy room still carrying faint through the sealed door behind her, the operation they’d just spent hours building suddenly feeling smaller against the weight of what Lucy had just decided, alone, on the other side of the galaxy, without waiting for anyone’s blessing at all.