Volume 1,Chapter 8: Doggy-Paddling in an Ocean of Knowledge “Will they… will they make it?” Watching the last of the Orion Guard warships disappear into the distorted, lethal shimmer of the jump point, Nova’s voice carried a tremor she couldn’t hide. A single tear broke free from her long lashes, tracing a path down her perfect, sculpted cheek. She didn’t wipe it away. Behind her, Jack said nothing. He was on his knees, hands clasped together, his expression more pious than he’d ever been in his life, muttering under his breath. Nova drifted over to his side, a flicker of curiosity in her eyes. She leaned in, listening. Her expression shifted from curiosity to confusion, and finally to an expression of utter, incandescent rage. “…and to the God of War, the Spirit of the Machine, and any other deity who’s listening, I beg you, please let those guys break through, draw all the Imperial fire, and for the love of all that is holy, don’t let them turn around and come back for Garipan. I don’t want to die yet, I haven’t even gotten married, I haven’t had a taste of a woman on Ms. Nova’s level…” THWACK! Nova didn’t use her pistol. Her long, combat-booted leg swung in a precise, elegant arc, connecting squarely with Jack’s fat ass. “You selfish, cowardly imbecile!” she roared, her beautiful face, pale with grief a moment ago, now flushed a stunning crimson with fury. “Get up! Read your schematics!” Reading schematics was a direct order from Dr. Thorne. But the old man’s prized pupil had been hijacked by Nova, the she-devil. “A strict master produces a skilled apprentice,” she had told him once. And in her hands, learning had become a form of exquisite torture. Forget food or sleep; her preferred method of “encouragement” was a short, black, polymer riding crop that left stinging red lines on his fleshy backside. At the sight of her reaching for the tool locker, all of Jack’s feigned injuries vanished. He sprang from the floor like an electrocuted rabbit and scrambled to the central computer, burying his face in the sea of knowledge with a look of desperate concentration.

Volume 1,Chapter 9: The Crucible Six months passed in the silent, sunless rhythm of the underground lab. On the surface, the war had devolved into a bloody, grinding stalemate. The official Commonwealth news feeds, piped into the lab's common areas, painted a picture of heroic victories and indomitable spirit. Jack, the only one among them who knew the true smell of a battlefield—that coppery tang of blood mixed with the ozone of scorched metal—said nothing. He knew partial victories were just a way of saying you were losing slowly. The Draconian Imperium was a nation forged in war; the Commonwealth was a nation that had forgotten what war was. This was going to be a long, ugly fight. Driven by a deep, gnawing fear of his own obsolescence, Jack continued to doggy-paddle frantically in the ocean of the lab's central computer. Thirteen near-death escapes had taught him one vital lesson: to survive this goddamn war, just being good at running away wasn't enough. You had to learn every dirty trick in the book. He devoured every data file he could access, his study list a bizarre cocktail of genius and depravity: Applied Mech Combat Theory Advanced Strategic Extrapolation A History of Human Warfare The Art of Wasteland Survival Introduction to Fleet Command Void-Fighter Dueling Principles Sub-Neural Hand Speed Training Advanced Thruster Modification A Primer on Military-Grade Toxins Sixth Sense & Battlefield Intuition... And, of course, the encrypted personal folders he'd cracked, uploaded by lonely, horny scientists over the years: The Art of the Bedchamber How to Last Longer A Diagram of the Ten Most Sensitive Female Erogenous Zones The Seventy-Two Sutras of Carnal Pleasure... He threw himself into all of it with a desperate, almost pathological fervor. He used the gravity labs to practice hand-to-hand combat and mech maneuvers until his hands trembled so violently that he could barely hold a wrench, until every muscle in his body knotted and burned with rebellion. Nova called it self-abuse. Jack just smiled his dumb, harmless smile. They didn't get it. For every dirty trick he learned, for every piece of forbidden knowledge he absorbed, he felt the odds of his own survival tick up by another fraction of a percent.

Under normal circumstances, I release a new chapter of the novel every two days. Only by maintaining this fixed rhythm can I fulfill my promise to readers on time.

@Arianna Kelly I just speak whatever comes to mind, so please don't mind. I actually like magic related to witches. As for other types of magic, I'm not very familiar with them.😅

Thank you for your support😁

There is such a character in my novel, an AI with its own independent consciousness.😀