The journey out of the fortress was far less eventful than the journey in.
The alarms were silent now. The red emergency lights had stopped flashing. The only sounds were the distant, mournful groans of Madakaros soldiers still suffering from the after-effects of Lin Ming's "internal cleansing initiative." The fortress smelled faintly of regret and disinfectant.
Lin Ming walked through the corridors with a casual air, his hands in his pockets. He passed several squads of his own men—soldiers from the ASEAN forces who had been imprisoned here—now armed with captured plasma rifles, systematically securing the facility under Quynh Nhu's sharp command. They would snap to attention as he passed, their eyes filled with a mixture of awe, reverence, and a little bit of fear.
He was no longer just a young prodigy. He was a legend in the making. The man who had single-handedly broken a fortress that had stood for fifty years.
He reached the outer courtyard. The scene was one of controlled chaos. Pham Tuan, his diamond-hard aura now subsided, was directing cleanup crews. The massive hole he had punched in the main gate was already being assessed by engineers.
Quynh Nhu was perched on the fortress wall, a datapad in hand, coolly issuing orders like a queen on her throne. She saw Lin Ming and gave him a sharp, satisfied nod. Mission accomplished.
But Lin Ming's destination was a smaller, secondary fortress nestled deeper within the mountain compound. It was where the fifty thousand civilian survivors had been held.
As he approached, he saw a crowd had gathered at its entrance. They were a mix of old men, women, and wide-eyed children, their faces thin and pale from years of hardship, but now filled with a fragile, dawning hope. They whispered and pointed as he drew near.
Standing guard at the gate, like a mountain of reassuring solidity, was Pham Tuan. He was not wearing his helmet. His face, usually a mask of anxiety or grim determination, now held a soft, gentle expression as he spoke to a small child who was tugging on his armor.
"…and then," Pham Tuan was saying, his deep voice surprisingly soft, "the shiny diamond man punched the big door because it was being mean."
The child's eyes were wide. "Wow. Is he a superhero?"
"Yeah," Pham Tuan said with a small smile. "Yeah, he is."
He saw Lin Ming approaching and straightened up, a look of immense relief on his face. "Leader. It's done. They're all safe."
Lin Ming nodded, his gaze sweeping over the crowd. He saw the hope in their eyes, and the immense weight of it settled on his shoulders. This was why he fought.
An old man, who looked like he had seen a hundred winters, stepped forward. He was frail, his back bent with age, but his eyes were clear and sharp. He was clearly the elder of this community.
"You are the one?" the old man asked, his voice raspy but firm. "You are the one who broke the siege?"
"I had some help," Lin Ming said, gesturing to Pham Tuan. "We are Task Force Chimera, of the ASEAN Alliance."
The old man's eyes filled with tears. He slowly, painfully, got down on one knee. Behind him, the entire crowd of thousands began to kneel. The sound was like a wave rushing to the shore, a silent, profound gesture of gratitude.
"We… we thought we were forgotten," the old man choked out. "For fifty years… we held on. We prayed for a miracle. And then… you came."
Lin Ming felt a lump form in his throat. This was infinitely more overwhelming than facing down Vex.
"Please, stand up," he said, his voice gentle but firm. "All of you. You don't kneel to anyone. You survived. Your fight is over now. We're taking you home."
He helped the old man to his feet. The gesture was simple, but it sent a powerful message through the crowd. This wasn't a conqueror. This was a savior.
Just then, a commotion broke out at the back of the crowd.
"Let me through! I need to see him! He stole my badger!"
The crowd parted to reveal a young woman, perhaps in her early twenties, pushing her way forward. She had wild, unkempt hair, her face was smudged with dirt, and she was wearing a crude, hand-stitched leather tunic. Her eyes, however, burned with a fierce, intelligent light.
And trailing behind her, looking utterly bewildered, was Gary the Gnasher.
The three-headed space badger trotted along like a lost puppy, all three of his heads looking around nervously at the crowd. He saw Lin Ming, and a hopeful expression appeared on all three of his faces. He had followed the faint scent of the human who had given him the divine snack.
The young woman pointed an accusatory finger at Lin Ming. "You! You're the one who came in the truck! Gary hasn't been the same since you drove by! He won't eat his normal food. He just sits by the gate, staring down the road and whining! What did you do to my badger?!"
Lin Ming blinked. Pham Tuan stared. Quynh Nhu, who had just arrived, choked back a laugh.
Of all the things he had expected to deal with after liberating a fortress, a complaint about a "stolen" three-headed space badger was not one of them.
"Your... badger?" Lin Ming asked slowly.
"Yes, my badger!" she insisted. "Vex may have owned the fortress, but Gary was my responsibility. I'm the fortress's xenobotanist and part-time beast-keeper. My name is Mei. And you broke my badger."
Gary, as if to prove her point, trotted up to Lin Ming and nudged his hand with one of his wet noses, then looked at him with hopeful, expectant eyes. He clearly wanted more snacks.
Lin Ming sighed. It seemed his problems weren't quite over yet.
He reached into his pack. He still had one of Su Quyen's special ration bars left. He broke off a small piece and offered it to Gary.
The badger devoured it instantly and then proceeded to rub all three of his heads against Lin Ming's leg in a display of pure, unadulterated affection.
Mei, the beast-keeper, stared at this interaction, her jaw dropping. "He's never done that before. What is in that food?"
Lin Ming looked at the young woman. Her clothes were crude, but her eyes were sharp. She had survived fifty years in this hellhole, and she had somehow managed to tame a creature like Gary. She was clearly more than she appeared.
"It's a secret recipe," he said with a small smile. "Tell me, Mei the beast-keeper, what else do you know about this mountain?"
Mei's eyes narrowed, a spark of interest overriding her concern for her badger. "Why do you ask?"
"Because," Lin Ming said, his gaze turning towards the deeper, unexplored parts of the mountain range, "I have a feeling that Vex wasn't the only secret this place was hiding. I'm looking for something. Something old. Something connected to the very elements of the earth."
He felt a familiar pull, a resonance from the Tu Thu Dien. The Book of Earth was reacting to something nearby. Something powerful.
The quest to liberate the fortress was over.
But the quest for his perfect Golden Core was just beginning.
Later that evening, in the temporary command center they had set up in Vex's (now thoroughly cleaned) chambers, the team gathered.
The fifty thousand survivors were being processed for evacuation. ASEAN command had been notified of their victory. The mood was one of exhaustion and elation.
Quynh Nhu was lounging in a surprisingly comfortable chair she had 'liberated' from an officer's quarters, sipping on a captured bottle of what looked like Madakaros energy drink. "So," she said, "let me get this straight. We fought our way in, you gave an entire army a case of the runs, you beat the big bad, and your reward is adopting his giant, three-headed dog?"
"He's not a dog, he's a badger," a new voice corrected her. Mei, the beast-keeper, had been invited to their debriefing. She had cleaned up surprisingly well and was now poring over a datapad with Minerva. "And he's not adopted. He's just... on a temporary snack-based loan."
Gary, who was currently curled up asleep at Lin Ming's feet, let out a happy snore from all three heads.
"Leader," Pham Tuan said, looking at a geological map of the region that Minerva was projecting. "What is this about something else in the mountain?"
Lin Ming pointed to a specific location on the map, a deep, unexplored cavern system miles away from the fortress. "The Book of Earth in the Tu Thu Dien. It's resonating with something here. Strongly. I believe one of the other elemental Codices might be hidden here."
"The Fire Codex or the Water Codex?" Quynh Nhu asked, suddenly interested.
"I don't know yet," Lin Ming admitted. "But I have to find out. My breakthrough to the Golden Core realm depends on it. I need to forge a foundation with all four elements to have any hope of facing the real threats that are coming."
The mood in the room turned serious. They had won a major victory, but they all knew it was just one battle in a much larger war. Vex was just a disgruntled middle-manager in the grand scheme of the Madakaros empire. The real executives were still out there.
"Then we'll go with you," Pham Tuan said without hesitation.
"This is a personal quest," Lin Ming countered. "It could be dangerous. I don't even know what's down there."
"And we're your team," Quynh Nhu said firmly, putting down her drink. "You think we're going to let you go have all the fun finding secret magic books without us? Not a chance. Besides," she added with a grin, "someone needs to make sure Gary doesn't eat you."
Lin Ming looked at his teammates. He looked at the strange new girl and her even stranger badger. He felt a sense of belonging, of camaraderie, that he hadn't felt in a very long time, not even in his past life.
"Alright," he said with a sigh of mock reluctance. "But if Gary eats any of my snacks, it's coming out of your pay."