They wake up abruptly inside of dilapidated cathedral. Maibelle decides to look outside the window to assess the situation. The horrific sight assaults her psyche, the crimson hellscape of war's aftermath is too overwhelming.

  The severed head of executed belligerents were paved to the ground like a passable road, skinned corpses was impaled in wooden stakes, innards are being hanged around in the trees like decoration.

  Obliterated obscure war machines are scattered everywhere. The smell of war aftermath is insidiously assaulting, the air reeks of ionic plasma charges and blood. Maibelle shrieks in despair and pukes down in immense horror of the alien situation. Mei rush toward her to do the same monotonous routine, nursing to relieve her trauma. Meanwhile, Takeshi is rummaging in the church's cache for food supplies.

  Nikolai goes outside to look for several unknown pieces of military equipment to use. He salvaged working body armors and rifles from several dead soldiers to prepare against the hostile forces in this new world. Feng analyzes the unknown technology since he was graduated in mechanical engineering and worked for 5 years in Lockheed Martin.

  A long rifle class of electromagnetic railgun was attached with bayonet with an ornate engraving of Haemanthus with the written phrase in Latin word “CONFORMITAS AD NIHIL”. He noticed the metal alloy have rigid lattice pattern. Perhaps, a polymorphic metamaterials had intelligent shape-memory capabilities.

  Feng pales and feels awe at his discovery, this technology is ahead of 200-300 years of advancement yet the strange thing is, why does the atmosphere feel too ancient? Feng instructs Nikolai and others on how to use these technologies.

  “Operating this weapon is surprisingly simple and it use electromagnetic cartridge had maximum capacity of 5 ammo to insert the dumb slug in the cavity. Don't worry, the weapon is fully autonomous by the very latest model of artificial intelligence, using natural language system which is more precise and human-like in forecasting visual identification and vocal commands.”

  They nod at Feng's explanation and Nikolai wants to confirm one thing. He picked up a piece of glass and wounded his finger, then it regenerated slowly. Feng was terrified by regeneration rate, it's too slow compared previously in Crimson Cathedral. It means that the effects of biological immortality given by Null Reverends have not lifted, as he noticed the Haemanthus marks in their hand.

  It was a sign of the absolute ownership of Null Reverends towards them. But it doesn't mean that rapid regeneration is equal to having superhuman strength. In a sense, it is both a curse psychologically and a blessing physically. Also the issue of regeneration rate is quite worse in mortal realm, now is bounded by thermodynamic laws. Maybe it took weeks or months same rate as axolotl's regeneration depend on severity of injuries.

  “Standby, wear your body armor now. We have hostiles to deal with in”.

  Nikolai wear the armor suit and automatically changes to Gomboc shaped geometry to increase durability and beautifully ornated by Haemanthus motif. Surprisingly, the armor suit is flexible and light as cotton cloth. Visual interface is rather disappointing because it using analog display but incredibly intuitive as indicators are simple and very accurate in forecasting bioinformatics, radar display, and battle analytics. Also have excellent all around imaging modules like infrared, thermal, and night vision.

  Nikolai and others are positioned in their own respective post to defend the place, aiming their weapons against incoming enemies and Feng runs a simulation for battle tactics, optimized escape routes, and hacking the enemy's network to gather intelligence.

  A male soldier in an armored suit informed his superior about the intel findings.

  “Captain, there's a lifeform detected in a 3 km radius, less than five inside a dilapidated church”.

  Captain Sarah Schultz a middle-aged woman with bewitching and classical feminine beauty, dresses in crimson clerical robe. Her iron cold demeanor evoke intellectual rigor and unwavering professionalism. She establish connection to the reconnaissance satellites to confirm the visual identification. She type the coordinates to track the location and magnified the image in crystal-clear resolution.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  The five targets are hiding in the church equipped with military-grade hardware, and positioned in defensive formation. Captain Schultz was intrigued on what she saw and zoom them in maximum close-up resolution through quantum sensing mode to analyze the physical characteristics. Their average height is only around 5 feet and the body mass index have uniform somatotypes were most of them are ectomorph. Not much impressive at all, too inferior for both standard military and civilian physical requirements.

  Captain Schultz only piqued her interest on man with pockmarked face and his posture tell his battle hardened status. She starts running a bioinformatics software tool to analyze their DNA but her quantum analog cyberdeck was corrupted with line of esoteric mathematical equations and electronic components are shut down by unknown interference.

  She immediately issues an order, in calm and composed manner. It recognized the threat as classified anomaly and needed to dispatch the high-level tactical containment.

  “They are Interlopers, capture all of them alive and don't let them escape any one of them!”

  Soldiers affirmed and saluted in unison.

  “Yes, sir!”

  The enemy is moving along in the steep and treacherous terrain of a hill at night. Assisted by five multirole stealth drones armed with hypersonic missiles. Nikolai and others switch the vision to infrared while Takeshi hides at the top of a tree in optical camouflage mode. Feng reports the real-time status of nearby enemy movements to Nikolai.

  “There is more than 10 hostiles and dispersing their group per pair to maneuver in encircling form”.

  Nikolai aimed in the direction of 1 o'clock, the hostiles slowly appeared in digital optics and he waited for them to approach in optimal radius.

  Feng is quite intimidated by enemy soldiers' mesomorphic physique is perfectly chiseled like Greek statues and their estimated height is around 7 feet. They're too tall for standard military height even the common population here, have the same height as them.

  The two hostiles switch their rifle's feature to taser mode and crawl down at the position where Nikolai was positioned. The objective is capture Nikolai and its squad safely without any single wound or else they will face immediate execution from their own superior without trial.

  Nikolai fired down at them without warning, and his squad also followed. Firing in different directions were the hostiles, positioned at their own respective covers. The hostiles activate optical camouflage and move rapidly toward the church in a zigzag maneuver.

  Takeshi interrupts their movement by shooting one of the hostile through quantum sensing, automatically activating the kinetic absorption system and survives the fatal injury from a sonic shockwave. The armor still remains intact and self-repairing.

  The visual analytics shows the remaining structural integrity of the enemy's armor suit is 89%. Expected the armor to be exceptionally harder than diamond. Takeshi moves to another area to hide and avoid detection as the hostiles are distracted and scramble to find him.

  High-tech war is hellishly difficult which warfare Nikolai is already accustomed to in this mechanical despair. This is quite hopeless, the stealth drones are already surrounding the area and open their comms speaking in a female voice, ordering them to surrender themselves.

  “I'm Captain Sarah Schultz of Crimson Inquisition. Better not to resist and surrender yourselves, all of you will be spared under my mercy.”

  Nikolai's heart was palpitated on fear and its instinct tell the enemies are not reliable at all and issues encrypted order through non-pervasive neural links inside of protective suit.

  “We commence a guerrilla operation and activate optical camouflage. Takeshi, two of us will infiltrate the enemy camp and eliminate their superiors. If the mission succeeds, I send the coordinates for the extraction point. Now, move!”.

  Nikolai and his party disappeared in radar display and visual tracking. Captain Schultz expected the wild hunt to be tougher and she called immediately via comms.

  “Block their escape routes and don't let them gain an asymmetric advantage in the forest. Their group seems to have military experience, not bad for a rookie. Secure the defenses of our camp and don't let the enemy slip past in the perimeter even a mosquito”.

  Remaining three run towards the forest while drones and enemy infantry unit chases them. They activated the optical camouflage to blend with the environment, tightened the grip in their own rifles, and prepared for possible attrition.

  The hostile unit also activated their optical camouflage and dispersed individually to track them efficiently. Captain Schultz is tracking the status of targets but the visual feed connected to her soldiers, it shows nothing. Indicating their targets have already activated their optical camouflage.

  Decoy dots overwhelmed the radar display and the electromagnetic spectrum is being spoofed by interference. She took off her robe, donned the battle armor, and equipped herself with a railgun pistol and retractable sword. She going to join the fray and meet her own Reaper to pay the tribute.