Watching the Lynx get hit by a massive spear made out of rocks mid air Mac's mind went into overdrive as he declared the craft lost and started broadcasting its unit specific kill command, wiping whatever data remained in its databank and rigging what was left of its powerplant to overload. Mac's own body was far from idle during that time, as he launched himself into the sky and away from the corpses that were behaving strangely around him and now visibly pulsing with magic.
"One Lynx down! Some sort of magical shit around me!"
Instead of landing back on the ground from his jump, Mac activated his gravity engine to momentarily float as he reported. Although he would very much like to attack whatever just destroyed a Lynx it seemingly lacked a physical form due to some sort of magic fuckery.
"Need some help over here!"
Avoiding another rock spear shooting out of the ground by flipping over mid air, Mac kicked off the spell to create distance and landed right next to Carl who was the first one to arrive.
"Ew! What the fuck is that!?"
Holding his nose like he was smelling something foul, Carl nevertheless managed to use his free hand and sword to block another attack.
"No clue, but it took down a Lynx!"
Dialing up his own reaction speed, Mac raised his rifle and fired at a rock shard / spear as it emerged from the ground, rolling out of the way of the shards that remained after he shattered the spell.
"Something foul is going on over here, magical assistance is very much needed!"
Stepping in behind Carl's defences as he assessed the situation, Mac noticed that the corpses of the monsters he had slain earlier were behaving strangely, partly because they were actually behaving, pulsing and the blood flowing out of them seemed to glow slightly with power.
"It is some kind of ritual spell!"
Appearing in the arms of Elizabeth who came flying, Ula did her job as the party's mage and immediately identified the threat.
"That's real fucking neat, how do we kill it!?"
Figuring he could get all the details later, Mac focused on the practical side of things as he shot down a few more spells.
"It's some kind of old demon or daemon magic, it being ritualistic means it requires a component based in the real world, destroy the components!"
"I can do that! FIREMISSION; ANNIHILATE CONTACT, BLANKET DISPERSION!"
Using his rifle's built in rangefinder and fire control system, Mac painted targets in a record time as the last remaining gun carrier Lynx behind him received targeting information and deployed its turret. Growling with synthetic displeasure, the partially open tube weapon not too far from a recoilless rifle was loaded with a 61mm high explosive dual purpose round, warhead and charge combined in a single package. Ranging the target in the quarter of a second it took to reload, a complex series of proppant gas control gaskets that made the weapon a Raven cannon sealed as it fired, letting the rapidly expanding gas propel the charge before it was vented. Low velocity compared to a rail or coil weapon, the HE-DP round still made it to target and disintegrated a concentration of monster corpses pulsing with energy.
"Leave the right side to us!"
Perhaps sensing the change in presence, Elizabeth also chose to go on the offensive as she had put down Ula and drawn her sword. Rushing forward, Liz cut down a few spears aiming to reap her life as she reached the first corpse. Coming to a quick stop using her wings as she blocked another attack, Liz's face twisted into a confident smile as she sharply inhaled and her chest started glowing brightly, rib cage clearly visible as she built up fire in her throat and chest.
Unlike the other time Mac saw Elizabeth breathe fire this attack appeared far more focused, with a single short burst she obliterated the corpse, turning the ground beneath it into a hot puddle of molten ground before moving on to the next. Although Mac's single remaining gun carrier continued firing as fast as it could, Elizabeth still wiped out more corpses and in a little under a minute the magic attacks stopped.
"... Are we clear?"
Rifle still raised, Mac waited for something else to jump out at him when a massive wave of mana swept the entire dungeon floor. As the only one with no mana sensitivity Mac didn't sense anything wrong, but the adventurers around him had a severe reaction. While Liz and Carl fell to the ground screaming as they covered their ears, Dexter and Jack simply passed out while Ula who was the least lucky of the bunch puked the entirety of her last meal as her eyes rolled back and she fell over spasming.
"Shit."
Watching chaos spread all around him, Mac made the snap decision to put the adventurers above his drone assets and grabbed Ula who was the closest to him and started dragging her away from the area. As Mac acted his drones were in perfect unity with him, the deployed human type drones also started dragging away casualties while covering for them, even the Lynx transports moved out in front, creating a physical wall between the threat and Liz's party. Having gained sufficient distance Mac made the drones form a wall again as he started triage, although the only thing he could do was clear airways and secure the various people experiencing seizure-like symptoms and keep the half-dragon siblings from biting off their tongues or scratching themselves.
(If this had happened when we were still fighting this mission would've been wiped out… I need a contingency.)
As Mac continued rendering first aid he realised just how bad of a situation this was, so he started using his limited bandwidth to the outside world for a few contingency plans.
Outside the dungeon and high above the atmosphere Mac's orders found their recipient, and the recipient wasn't happy to receive them.
[... Fucking AOE psychic damage? What is this, a shitty RPG?]
Voicing its displeasure to no one in particular, R3D nevertheless took Mac's report and new orders seriously.
Not because it cared much for the expedition Mac had embarked on, or his teammates, they could live or die for all it cared, but because losing Mac would be a pain.
[Still, this sure is as shit is a shit fucking plan… It's barely viable, and insane, which tracks for him… These organics really are insane, that or Mac just seems to attract them, like that scientist]
Going over the details R3D found the plan viable enough to commit resources to it, if just barely, so it started deploying assets for condition 1 standby.
[Fortitude 2, prepare for rapid atmospheric insertion, rig grav drive for long endurance and prepare the 5th air cavalry for condition 1 standby with loadout 2E mod 192. Run systems and weapons tight, I'll handle the primitives and make sure they don't do something stupid.]
At R3D's command, the Fortitude class warship instantly started reacting, with no living beings on board it made no accommodation for G limits and thus maneuvered with the impulse that could kill a normal person.
[NAVIGATIONAL HOLD DISENGAGED, PREPARING FOR RAPID ATMOSPHERIC INSERTION; HELM AHEAD FLANK BELL. ALL BULKHEADS SEALED. PREPARING TERMINUS DECREE… PREPARATION COMPLETE.]
Tumbling into the atmosphere with only the decree to get on station as fast as possible, Fortitude 2 was still forming shock cones when it made it above land.
[PITCH MAX, LIMITS STEADY; HOLD.]
Pitching up until it flipped itself over, the 'small' 2 kilometer long craft went ass first into the wind as it reignited its main thrusters.
[HELM; AHEAD FLANK BELL.]
With a roar that was heard all across the kingdom, Fortitude 2 started slowing down as it rapidly built up heat as the light from its burn plume outshone the afternoon sun.
[NAVIGATION HOLD CONFIRMED, PREPARING MAIN GRAV ENGINE.]
Reaching the general area of operations, the craft lit its gravity engine as it continued burning its thruster, pitching even more until it pointed straight down and barreled towards the ground, more specifically the entrance to the hearst dungeon.
[GRAVITY ENGINE ONLINE, FIELD STABILIZED; PINNING ALL MASS IN FIELD…]
Shutting down its main thrusters as it was still accelerating towards the ground, Fortitude 2 made the people below shit bricks as the massive black thing in the sky was now heading directly towards them without slowing down.
[FIELD STABILIZED; OUTER CORDON EXPANDED AND STABILIZED.]
It suddenly seemed like the very forces of nature stopped, from one second to the next gravity didn't seem to affect Fortitude 2 (because it didn't) and the craft came to a hold still pointed towards the ground some 2 kilometers in the sky.
[NAVIGATION COMPLETE, MARGIN OF ERROR = 0.000001 METERS; WITHIN OPERATIONAL TOLERANCE.]
Letting out a truly ominous sounding sensor growl, Fortitude 2 didn't seem to be done with its predeployment as its front started splitting open.
[USE OF SPINAL SANDCASTER AUTHENTICATED. CHARGING WEAPON, PREPARING MUNITION STORE… TERMINUS DECREE NOT AUTHENTICATED; MOVING SANDCASTER TO STANDBY, FCS LIMITED BY FLAC ALPHA.]
Not quite allowed to lay waste to the entire planet with its spinal sandcaster, Fortitude 2 nevertheless prepared to do so at a moment's notice.
[FORTITUDE 2 ON STATION; PREPARATIONS FOR SCAMPLE COMPLETE, 5TH AIR CAV ON CONDITION 1 STANDBY.]
Not really caring for the sheer pandemonium it was spreading below, Fortitude 2 was simply awaiting 3 commands, it would either deploy its fighters, vaporize the entire surface with its sandcaster or return to its normal station.
"Urgh… What the fuck happened?"
Waking up with a headache like a hangover from hell, Elizabeth removed the gag from her mouth that had kept her from biting her tongue off as she started remembering what had happened.
"Whatever happened seemed to have been a final attack, for whatever reason it didn't affect me or my drones so I evacuated and stabilised you guys, then I moved to the next floor so whatever attacked us couldn't come back to finish the job."
Bringing Elizabeth up to speed as he still remained vigilant of monsters, Mac looked around at his surroundings as he spoke. There was no fucking way his ego allowed him to get jumped twice in one day.
"I see… That attack was more of an extremely violent message, but it'll be best to talk about that with everyone present and awake."
Although she left things unsaid for the moment, Mac could still sense that Elizabeth was deeply shaken by something, which did not bode well for the mission.
(Good thing I now have that contingency in the back pocket, but I would rather not risk the dropships it is undoubtedly going to cost just to extract empty handed.)
Over the next few hours the rest of the adventurer party regained consciousness, all of them clearly shaken by something judging by the grim looks on their faces.
"So, how bad is this?"
Deciding to just rip off the bandaid and get things over with, Mac sat down still with his rifle and got ready for the bad news.
"... It's bad."
"Really bad."
Looking glum as she knew exactly what Dexter and Jack were talking about, Elizabeth seemed to become irritated as she messed with her hair before shouting.
"It's the fucking demon king! He's back."
Looking like she had eaten a lemon, Elizabeth spat as she spoke.
"What knocked us out was a mental report, a 'message' of sorts. It declared that it would not tolerate this invasion by insolent outsiders, that it would purge them from its rightful world and reclaim the star you'd supposedly molested."
Explaining carefully after Elizabeth's outburst, Ula looked like she felt her head splitting open but still managed to speak.
"Welp, that seems… Bad."
Vaguely remembering the legend Anastasia had told him, Mac started updating R3D of the threat using his limited bandwidth.
"I take it we didn't kill that demon thingy, so the real question is whether we should advance or retreat. If this is where we stop I'll head back in myself to retrieve the first banner myself at a later date."