Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner - Chapter 407

Chapter 407: Welcome to Lilivil

“Because the original awakening was different,” Uncle Dom said quietly, his voice carrying a weight of knowledge that made everyone turn to look at him. “The power that changed the first seven… it wasn’t just individual abilities. It was something more fundamental.”

Noah felt pieces clicking together in his mind, but the picture they were forming didn’t make complete sense yet. “Different how?”

“Think about it,” Dom continued, settling into one of the archive chairs like he was preparing for a long story. “Seven people exposed to the same energy source, but each one developed completely different abilities. Lightning, fire manipulation, enhanced strength, psychic powers… that’s not how energy absorption usually works.”

Kelvin looked up from the data streams he’d been analyzing, his cybernetic arms gesticulating as he tried to process this information. “Okay, but that still doesn’t explain why Grandpa Eight needs to keep collecting new people. I mean, if he got what he wanted from the first guy, why does he need a second? And a third? It’s like he’s running some kind of supernatural subscription service where the premium members keep expiring.”

“Maybe the copied abilities don’t last as long as we thought?” Sophie suggested.

“Or maybe there’s a degradation effect,” Lyra added, looking up from her notes. “Each successive copy becomes weaker than the original?”

Uncle Dom shook his head. “I don’t think it’s about the abilities themselves. I think it’s about what those abilities represent.”

“Which is what, exactly?” Diana asked, her patience clearly wearing thin.

“Access,” Dom replied cryptically, then seemed to lose his train of thought as he became fascinated by one of the holographic displays showing stellar cartography data.

Kelvin stared at him for a moment, then turned to the others. “Is it just me, or did Uncle Dom just go from making perfect sense to sounding like a fortune cookie that got hit by lightning?”

“Par for the course,” Lucas muttered. “Uncle Dom, what do you mean by access?”

But Dom was now studying the star charts with intense concentration, pointing at various systems and muttering to himself about “convergence patterns” and “dimensional resonance frequencies.”

“Right,” Kelvin said slowly. “So we’re back to square one with a side of crazy uncle commentary. Fantastic.”

Noah returned his attention to the communications logs, hoping to find something more concrete. The formal exchanges between families and the mysterious Eighth continued for decades, but they were frustratingly vague about specifics.

“Here’s something,” he said, highlighting a particular exchange. “This communication mentions ‘optimal genetic match.’ What does that sound like to you?”

“Like they’re shopping for designer babies,” Kelvin replied. “Except instead of picking eye color, they’re picking supernatural abilities.”

“But why would genetic match matter for copying abilities?” Lyra asked, scanning through related medical data. “If his power is to copy what someone can do, the genetic component should be irrelevant.”

Evangeline, who had been quietly observing their research, stepped forward. “There’s something else you should see. We have records of communication attempts from families who tried to withdraw from the arrangement.”

She activated another display, showing a series of increasingly desperate messages.

“House Meridian tried to break their agreement about thirty years ago,” she explained. “Their family head went into hiding, refused to report when his time came.”

“What happened?” Sophie asked, though her tone suggested she already suspected the answer wasn’t good.

“The entire Meridian bloodline disappeared within six months. Every awakened member, from the youngest to the oldest. Not killed—disappeared. No bodies, no evidence, no trace.”

The archive fell silent except for the humming of the preservation fields.

“Well that’s cheerful,” Kelvin said finally. “So it’s not just a subscription service, it’s a subscription service with a very aggressive collections department.”

Uncle Dom suddenly perked up from his star chart examination. “Oh yes, the Meridians. Lovely people. They made excellent tea. Such a shame about the… unpleasantness.”

“Uncle Dom,” Lucas said carefully, “did you know the Meridian family?”

“Know them? I warned them!” Dom’s voice became animated again. “Told them exactly what would happen if they tried to run. But did they listen? Oh no, they thought they could hide on some backwater colony and wait it out.”

He shook his head sadly. “The Eighth doesn’t like it when people break contracts.”

Noah felt a chill run down his spine. If Dom was right, then every family had been trapped in this arrangement for decades, unable to escape without risking total annihilation.

“But here’s what I still don’t understand,” Kelvin said, pacing around the archive space with nervous energy. “Let’s say our ancient grandpa villain successfully copies the strongest ability from each bloodline. Great, he’s got lightning powers, fire powers, super strength, whatever. Now what? What’s the endgame here? Is he planning to take over the galaxy? Start his own superhero team? Open a theme park?”

“Maybe revenge is its own endgame,” Diana suggested. “He was betrayed, left for dead. Maybe he just wants to watch the families that abandoned him suffer.”

“For decades though?” Sophie shook her head. “That’s a really long time to hold a grudge.”

Uncle Dom had wandered over to another section of the archives and was now examining what looked like shipping manifests. “Oh, interesting. Very interesting indeed.”

“What’s interesting?” Lyra asked, moving to see what had caught his attention.

“Cargo shipments to non-human territories,” Dom replied, his finger tracing through the holographic data. “Quite a lot of them, actually. And all to the same system.”

Kaia, who had been silent for most of their investigation, suddenly straightened. “Wait. Cargo shipments?”

She moved closer to the display, her eyes widening as she read through the manifest data. “These shipping routes… some of them go through sectors where my father operated. He used to complain about competitors moving through ‘his’ territory.”

“Competitors doing what?” Noah asked.

“Moving high-value specimens,” Kaia said, her voice growing more excited. “Exotic creatures, rare materials, things that required specialized transport containers.”

Kelvin’s eyes lit up. “Oh! Oh oh oh! What if the beast collection wasn’t just about having a private zoo? What if it was about having mobile assets that could be moved around without attracting attention from human authorities?”

“Except they weren’t being moved around,” Sophie pointed out. “They were being held at your father’s facility.”

“Some of them were,” Kaia corrected, and suddenly her expression changed completely. “Oh my god. How could I forget?”

She turned to face the group, her face pale with realization. “Not all of the beasts at the facility were permanently housed there. Some of the high-value specimens were temporary holds—creatures that were being moved from one location to another. And my father… he had a policy.”

“What kind of policy?” Lucas asked.

“Tracking devices,” Kaia said, her voice growing stronger as the memories came back. “Any creature worth more than a million credits got a subcutaneous tracker. It was his insurance policy in case clients tried to steal them back, or if specimens escaped during transport.”

The implications hit everyone simultaneously.

“Some of those tracked beasts were stolen during the attack,” Noah said slowly.

“And if the trackers are still active…” Lyra began.

“We can find out where they were taken,” Diana finished.

Kelvin was already moving toward the Sterling archive’s communication systems. “Please tell me your father kept the tracking frequency records somewhere accessible.”

“He did,” Kaia confirmed. “But they were stored at the facility, and most of that equipment was destroyed.”

“Most of it,” Matthias said quietly. He’d been observing their discussion with growing interest. “But not all. Sterling intelligence services maintain backup communication networks for monitoring interplanetary commerce. If your father’s tracking frequencies were ever used for legitimate shipping manifests…”

“You’d have copies in your commercial monitoring systems,” Evangeline finished, understanding immediately.

“Exactly. Give us the frequency ranges, and we can see if any of those trackers are still broadcasting.”

Kaia closed her eyes, concentrating. “The high-value trackers used a specific subspace frequency range. My father was paranoid about interference, so he used… 847.3 to 847.7 terahertz, with rotating encryption keys.”

Kelvin’s cybernetic arms were already interfacing with the Sterling systems, his eyes glowing green as he processed massive amounts of data. “Got something! Three active signals, all broadcasting from the same general location.”

He gestured, and a star map appeared in the holographic display. A single system pulsed with soft light near the edge of mapped space.

“Lilivil system,” Matthias read from the accompanying data. “That’s… unusual.”

“Why unusual?” Sophie asked.

“Because Lilivil isn’t human territory,” Evangeline explained, pulling up additional files. “It’s controlled by an alien species. We have very limited diplomatic contact with them.”

Uncle Dom, who had been examining the star map with growing excitement, suddenly clapped his hands together. “Oh, this is perfect! Absolutely perfect! The Eighth always did have excellent taste in hiding spots.”

“You know about Lilivil?” Noah asked.

“Know about it? I helped survey it years ago, back when I was still allowed to leave the planet. My father, your granddaddy,” he paused to point at Lucy and Lucas, ” He said it was part of the exercise to becoming a king,” Dom finished cheerfully.

“Fascinating place. Absolutely fascinating. And completely off-limits to human military operations due to the non-interference treaties.”

The pieces were falling into place, and Noah didn’t like the picture they were forming. “So if someone wanted to hold human prisoners somewhere our military couldn’t legally pursue them…”

“Lilivil would be perfect,” Lucas concluded grimly.

They spent the next hour planning their departure, gathering supplies and updating their transport’s navigation systems with the coordinates for Lilivil. Uncle Dom proved surprisingly helpful during the planning phase, providing detailed information about the system’s layout and defensive capabilities.

But he also proved consistently distracting.

“The gravity is about thirty percent higher than standard,” he explained while simultaneously trying to reorganize the Sterling archives according to what he called “temporal relevance patterns.” “And the atmosphere has a higher oxygen content, so you’ll feel energized but might get dizzy if you’re not careful.”

“Uncle Dom,” Lucy said patiently, “please stop rearranging their filing system.”

“But it’s so inefficient!” Dom protested. “How are they supposed to find anything when the data crystals are organized by date instead of by causal relationship?”

“Causal relationship?” Evangeline asked, sounding both fascinated and horrified.

“Of course! Events don’t happen in isolation, they happen because of other events. So obviously you should store information based on which events caused which outcomes, not just when they occurred chronologically.”

Kelvin stared at him. “That’s… actually not entirely insane. Weird and impractical, but not insane.”

“See?” Dom beamed. “Someone understands!”

“I said not entirely insane,” Kelvin clarified quickly. “There’s still a significant insanity component to your organizational methodology.”

They’d finished getting ready now and were prepared to leave the planet. Everyone felt a little bit of nerves.

Sophie was walking with Lucas at the front as they were discussing something Noah couldn’t hear because kelvin and uncle Dom were still bickering and neither one seemed to be prepared to drop it.

Lyra excused herself just as the group was walking to the communication facilities. “I need to update my research notes and send some messages to my trusted contacts in the EDF,” she explained.

She had a stiff look on her face as she looked at everyone’s face before leaving.

Noah thought nothing of it at the time, but later he would remember the tense expression on her face as she walked away from the group.

In the Sterling compound’s private communication chamber, Lyra stood before a secure terminal, her hands trembling slightly as she typed. The message was brief, desperate:

“I can’t do it! Let me be and stop threatening me!!”

She stared at the words for a long moment, her finger hovering over the send button. Her face was pale, sweat beading on her forehead despite the cool temperature of the room. Finally, with a shaky breath, she hit send and immediately deleted the message from the terminal’s history.

She returned fifteen minutes later, looking pale but determined. “Ready to go,” she announced, shouldering her equipment bag.

The flight to Lilivil would take several hours, giving them time to study what little information was available about their destination. As their transport broke away from Beta’s gravitational field, Lyra activated the ship’s research databases and began reading through the available data.

“Lilivil Prime is the only inhabited planet in the system,” she reported, her voice taking on the neutral tone she used for technical briefings. “The atmosphere is oxygen-rich but with trace amounts of gases that can cause euphoria in humans after prolonged exposure. Gravity is 1.3 times standard.”

“Population?” Noah asked.

“Approximately two million individuals, all female as far as human observers have been able to determine. They appear to be a single-sex species, though the reproduction mechanism is unknown.”

Kelvin, who had been listening with mild interest, suddenly went completely still. “Wait. Hold up. Time out.” His cybernetic arms started making small whirring sounds. “Did you just say ALL female?”

“That’s what the surveys indicate,” Lyra confirmed, consulting her data pad. “The species appears to be humanoid in basic structure, with pointed ears, enhanced height, and lifespans that may extend several centuries. Some human observers have noted physical similarities to mythological creatures from Earth folklore.”

Kelvin’s eyes were getting wider with each word. “What… what kind of mythological creatures?”

“The reports use terms like ‘ethereal,’ ‘otherworldly beauty,’ and several observers have made comparisons to…”

She paused, checking the data once more.

“To elves.”

The silence stretched for exactly three seconds before Kelvin exploded.

“ELVES?!” His voice cracked like he was going through puberty again. “Female space elves?! TWO MILLION of them?!”

He spun around to face Noah, his cybernetic arms gesticulating wildly. “And you didn’t think to mention this earlier because WHY exactly?!”

“Because I didn’t know!” Noah protested. “Nobody knew until—”

“Don’t you dare!” Kelvin pointed an accusing mechanical finger at him. “You’ve been sitting on this information! Planet of gorgeous space elves and you were just gonna casually drop it in conversation like ‘oh by the way, our rescue mission is to fantasy paradise’?!”

“Kelvin, calm down,” Diana said, but she was trying not to smile.

“Calm down? CALM DOWN?!” Kelvin was now pacing in tight circles. “Do you people understand what this means? This is like… this is like finding out Santa’s workshop is real except instead of making toys they’re all supermodels with pointy ears!”

Sophie rolled her eyes. “They’re an alien species, not a dating service.”

“But they COULD be both!” Kelvin shot back hopefully. “I mean, we’re going there for diplomatic reasons, right? Cultural exchange? Interspecies cooperation?” His grin was getting progressively more manic. “I should probably study their customs. Learn the language. You know, for the mission.”

“The mission is to rescue our fathers,” Lucas reminded him dryly.

“Right! Yes! Absolutely! Rescue mission first!” Kelvin nodded enthusiastically. “But like… if we happen to engage in some light cultural exchange while we’re there… you know, building bridges between species… that’s just good diplomacy!”

Lyra sighed. “They’re not going to be interested in you, Kelvin.”

“You don’t know that! Maybe they find cybernetic arms exotic! Maybe they’ve never seen a human with such advanced technological integration!” He flexed his mechanical fingers hopefully. “I could be their first contact with enhanced human males!”

“Or,” Diana said pointedly, “they could see you as a threat and lock you up immediately.”

Kelvin’s face fell for about two seconds before brightening again. “Yeah, but they’d have to get close to me to do that, right?”

Uncle Dom chuckled from his seat. “Oh, this is going to be entertaining. The Lilivilian leadership has very specific protocols for dealing with male visitors.”

“What kind of protocols?” Kelvin asked eagerly.

“The kind that usually involve extensive… evaluation processes,” Dom replied with obvious amusement.

Kelvin’s eyes lit up like Christmas morning. “Evaluation processes? Like… thorough examinations? Medical assessments?” His voice was getting higher with excitement. “I am SO ready to be evaluated by space elves!”

The entire team stared at him in varying degrees of horror and amusement.

“There is something seriously wrong with you,” Sophie said flatly.

“There is something seriously RIGHT with this entire situation!” Kelvin corrected, practically bouncing in his seat. “We’re about to land on a planet populated entirely by beautiful, long-lived, technologically advanced females who apparently want to ‘evaluate’ visiting males! This is literally every teenage boy’s fever dream!”

“We’re here to save lives,” Noah reminded him.

“And I will! I will save SO many lives! I’ll save lives with such enthusiasm and competence that they’ll want to reward me! Extensively!”

As Lilivil grew larger in their viewport, its surface covered in what looked like vast crystalline cities connected by flowing rivers of light, Noah felt his system beginning to ping with new energy signatures. Whatever was waiting for them on the planet below, it was unlike anything they’d encountered before.

“Everyone ready?” he asked, checking his equipment one final time.

The chorus of confirmations was interrupted by Kelvin muttering, “Space elves. Why did it have to be female space elves? This is going to end so badly…”

“For them,” He said with a wicked grin that made several of the females stare at him with varying expressions. Princess Lucy especially glancing at kelvin once and never again.

But as their transport began its descent toward the alien world where the king and Vex were potentially being held, they all felt a surge of determination. Complicated or not, dangerous or not, this was their best lead.

It was time to get their fathers back.

Oh this is about to be fun…