[Campaign Zone Entered: Domain Keeper.]

[January 350th, GPY 3. Galileo Regio, Ganymede. 42°N 88°W. 0910. UGT.]

[Merit: 85]

After landing and venturing west into the campaign zone, Jordan looked away from his surroundings to focus for a moment on the blue shadows beneath him, stretching around ten meters in each direction and covering the ancient surface in a vibrantly ethereal fog that silently crept over the ice as Jordan raked his arms and legs across the surface to propel himself forward.

Moving at a rate of only a few meters per second, Jordan cautiously scanned the passing furrows, ridges, hills and plains in a blended mesh of visible and infrared light for both movement and heat sources. Through the fog of his domain, the ethereal glow of relatively warm rocks, the dissociative silence and grayed surface of the moon, it was easy to fall into a blissful trance that threatened to shed Jordan's diligent drive.

The various contenders of the domain; numerous as they were, were scattered across the desolate plains by distances of a least a few kilometers; if not dozens. Gathered in various pockets of constantly shifting digital colors that danced along the ice. While studying the horizon for the violet hue, the wisps of a smoky-gray domain quickly loomed from behind a curiously large ridge, about twenty meters ahead.

Inwardly cursing himself as he ducked into the nearest furrow, Jordan attributed his repeated tendency to fall for such distractions to his reluctance to rest after having his body once again filled and repaired with replacement parts. Each time he'd been upgraded in the past, he'd found himself weary and ragged after being released from Randy's hands. His haste in returning to the Zone's only meant he still had much to learn.

Immediately resetting and magnifying his vision, Jordan attempted to assess the new guest while remaining out of their line of sight.

Besides the white, coverall-like vac-suit shrouded around their body that contrasted loudly against the surface, the first thing that screamed at Jordan's attentions was their skittish display of turning about on their heels, almost at random. At first guess, it was an E-ranker, local to Ganymede. Unarmored and inexperienced in a way that made Jordan think of his first time spent of the ice-world.

Despite his efforts, Jordan's efforts to remain unhidden proved fruitless as the Ganymedean eventually took notice of Jordan and embarked on a slow approach towards him.

After confirming they wouldn't deviate from their interception, Jordan reluctantly pulled himself from the furrow and stepped off in their direction. If it were possible, he only wanted to fight Law during this particular excursion across the surface. In such a realm as the starting hours of Domain Keeper however, Jordan was more than aware of how tall of an order that was.

Stealth in space was nigh-impossible, after all; especially when the vast opposition in question could see in the infrared, the human body may as well be a blast furnace when compared to the blistering cold of Ganymede's surface.

With warm gusts of air brewed from a heavy sigh of discontent, Jordan pulled his daggers from their sheaths at his lower back and turned his focus towards the Ganymedean, descending from the apex of their lunge. "I'm sorry."

With each second, Jordan settled lower into his stance from the meager pull of gravity as his opponent approached. Once they were a few meters from the surface and beginning to brace for their landing, Jordan clenched his weapons tightly in hand and erupted out in a forward lunge toward them.

Still a meter or two above the surface, their legs bucked wildly as they reacted to the contact by readying a blatantly wide uppercut. Jordan switched to a reverse grip on his daggers before bounding forward again and crossing his arms before him to point the tips outward and with a final lunge, darted within striking range of the Ganymedean. Before he could react, Jordan felt a dull pressure suddenly well around his belly and begin digging into his ribs, forcing a vertical angle to Jordan's forward momentum and inadvertently adding leverage to the swing of his daggers.

Having no choice but to follow along with his momentum, Jordan leaned his weight into his daggers and pushed off the handles as he arced around towards their back, sinking the blades further and further into his opponents chest as Jordan's legs came to a rest on their back and his push was turned into a pull against their spine.

While twisting and churning the handles of his daggers in hand, Jordan pulled on the weapons while simultaneously pushing against their back with his feet. Slowly at first, then more easily with each passing second, the blades slowly dug deeper into their flesh, carving gashes between their ribs before ripping free, flinging Jordan from his target and sending him cartwheeling above the surface, towards the large ridge the Ganymedean had erupted from.

[Perk Awarded: Eye Candy- 10% Interest Applied to Associated Points.]

[Desmond Cortez, Slain: +220 Points]

[Merit: 305]

Peering through the notifications blooming into reality, Jordan saw the blue shadows; meters below him, bloom outwards to a diameter of twenty meters. Where they crept over the various ridges and depressions lining the surface and seemed to drop off into nothingness around the point where the late Desmond emerged from.

Before he could even think, crimson exclamation points augmented into Jordan's field of view, followed by red-dotted lines than began arcing trails all around him. Reflexively raising his arms to block against the barrage as best he could, Jordan traced the origins of the paths to two people standing in opposing basins of a pair of concentric furrows, made unaware of the other from the surface feature as they chucked rocks and ice shards at their new target.

As Jordan came to a landing near a plain-like area, relatively close to the large ridge he'd spotted earlier, they simultaneously rushed Jordan before seeming to pause after taking notice of the other. As if they quickly came under a form of agreement, the two recommitted their pursuits and lunged after Jordan, an obvious outcome in hindsight, as his shadow was bigger.

The moment the ground settled beneath him, Jordan kicked off the ice, lunging his leg outward in a front kick that landed in the upper thigh of his closest assailant; a lightly armored Ganymedean doused in an cyan suit.

Upon impact, Jordan felt the dull shocks rattle through his leg before the receiver of his strike violently folded at the hips before being sent backwards, hurtling comically over the ice.

Consequently, Jordan was sent on a slightly inclined tangent away from the other opponent.

Before they drifted too far apart, Jordan sheathed the dagger in his left hand before reaching out to grasp at their suit. Once the crisply cold fabric collapsed in his grip, Jordan tugged on the Ganymedean's body to both kill his relative velocity and to give the dagger, grasped tightly in his right hand, more leverage on its path towards their throat.

With a show of reflexes that came as a shock to Jordan, the stone textured helmet before him jerked to the side at the last second, causing the edge of the blade to seamlessly glide across the skin of their suit below the jaw; creasing out a long line of severed fabric that bloomed open before a gloved hand shot outward towards Jordan's vest, followed by a metal-capped knee that aptly drilled into his stomach.

However, with the entirety of his organs replaced, his skin armored, bones made denser and upper skeletal system and rib cage acting as shock absorbers, Jordan barely felt the impact of the Ganymedean's counter and thus re-countered with a swing of the dagger, down and around to stab the point at the base of their shoulder blade.

After turning it about and wrenching it free amidst their thrashes, Jordan tightened his grip on them in his left hand and readied for another stab. Just before he began to bring his arm down, Jordan felt the right side of his body contort and well with mild pain before his body was sent rocketing across the surface.

Just before his body rotated his line of sight out of view, Jordan saw the cyan-dressed opponent he'd kicked away, settling into place onto the ice and turning his attention to the most wounded member of the part.

As he raked his feet against the ice to grind his momentum to a halt, Jordan caught a flicker of motion in his peripherals and turned to see yet another Ganymedean; doused in a vibrant yellow suit, charging him from his right flank.

Without delay, Jordan turned to his ten-o'clock position before crouching low and crawling across the ice towards the now towering ridge standing a couple dozen meters away. After a working through a few strides and picking up a modest pace, Jordan hopefully peered over his shoulder and couldn't help but grin after affirming that the vibrantly doused Galilean was pursuing him in earnest.

Returning his attention forward with newfound vigor, Jordan worked to claw and kick and rake against the ice to propel him higher and faster up the hill. After a final turn to gauge their relative distance, Jordan began to stomp and punch and scratch at the surface to halt his momentum down to a manageable level before he was able to wedge his hand inside a crack in the ice, fully halting his motion with not much room to spare.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

With a sigh of relief, Jordan took a motion to gaze out from his precarious perch, down a harsh slope that steepened into a near-vertical wall that stretched hundreds of meters; if not a full kilometer, down to an expansive basin below that was sparsely speckled with with a rainbow array of digital domains.

With one eye, Jordan replayed what he'd just seen to calculate where and when his opponent was most likely to crest the hill. After sending the numbers through another iteration, Jordan reset his vision to normal began counting, coiling his legs onto the wall behind him as he kept his eyes trained above.

At the count of zero, Jordan launched from his perch. With his back facing the basin far below, Jordan found himself positioned in the same orientation as his yellow clad opponent, auspiciously and earnestly cresting the ridge before flailing in obvious panic at the drop presented before them. With both daggers held overhead in an underhanded grip, Jordan used his thrusters to flip himself forward just before he came into range with his opponent and sank the daggers hilt-deep into their trapezius'.

After using the weapons to pull himself into a mount, Jordan pried one of the daggers free and immediately sent it raining down once again. And again and again towards their heart, ribs, arms and neck, subtly halting and passing with a notable wet resistance that passed through Jordan's manufactured arms until the flailings of his opponent all but ceased around him.

Gently, Jordan pried his weapons free and resheathed them one-by-one before curling his legs under him, onto the stomach of his opponent. After using his thrusters to orient their body to be under him, Jordan jumped as hard as he could. Rocketing their body towards the basin at dangerous speeds and noticeably slowing Jordan's own rate of descent.

Feeling a sudden panic wash over him, Jordan clawed at the nearby wall; even after his maneuvering thrusters began firing, he kicked and clawed and felt his upgraded heart berating the inside of his chest in protest of his actions.

Despite the abysmally low gravity of Ganymede, the lack of air meant that during a fall from a towering height, one would continuously pick up speed and accelerate with each passing second, until they came to their eventual rendezvous with the surface.

Once contacted with the wall and secured in place, Jordan debated on climbing the ridge once again to tend to the other opponents or to just continue on the path. After an indiscernible length of time deliberating, Jordan was interrupted by the obtrusive notifications awarding him for his actions.

[Asa Postov Slayed: +200 Points.]

[Merit: 505]

With his decision evidently made, Jordan peered above him and started to reach for a secure point in the ice before abruptly halting in place. As he stared, the ice above him began to flicker with the red hue of a crimson aura. On and off again, as if the curvature of the ice were falling in and out of range of an unseen domain.

Craning his neck above and behind him, Jordan saw the opponent who'd stayed to finish of the injured, free falling spread-eagle towards Jordan, their triumphant high made evident through the conical clouds of gas blooming around him with wild abandon. Once his grip was adjusted to face the target directly, Jordan drew a single dagger and remained clung to the wall in a neutral stance, cautiously watching as the distance was closed.

Once in range, their body lurched forward, rotating them closer and adding force to an oncoming cross. While releasing his grip from the wall, Jordan curled his body to the side; dodging beneath the strike, before countering with a slice of the blade across their ribs before rounding the knife back around their back to slam into the nape of their helm.

[Raja Knapp Slayed: +200 Points.]

[Merit: 705]

After wrenching the blade free, Jordan cautiously turned on his heels to scan his surroundings. Seeing nothing but the virtually vertical wall and the expansive basin around him, Jordan chose the more obvious option and carefully made his way down the steep incline of the crater using intermittent periods of free falling mixed with gentle slides down the wall to slow his momentum.

Once around sixty meters from the average height of the basin, Jordan temporarily secured his position inside a small crevice and began battering at the ice to carve himself a small hole in the crater wall. As the minutes passed, Jordan could only become more and more aware of the ancient material falling in a lazy stream down to the surface, where they silently ricocheted and tumbled off in different directions across the basin.

Around half an hour later, Jordan couldn't help but grin at the modestly spacious area he'd carved out for himself. The space was long and tall enough for him to leisurely lie in, and even turn around in recline if need be. The initial hole he'd used as his entryway was oriented at a rough, forty-degree angle. Permitting his head a nice viewing hole to survey a significant; but still small, portion of the basin below him.

Now relatively safe in his perch, Jordan took a moment to both rest and ponder the cerulean aura augmented onto the ice all around him in a twenty meter radius. All but advertising the small section of crater wall as his personal domain and sending out a message to any potential passerby that screamed, 'I am here, come find me.'

Acknowledging such notions, Jordan quickly tested one of his minor theories and attempted to check if Law had yet to deploy into the zone. As expected, crimson warnings flashed throughout his vision, harshly denying him access to what he already knew he wouldn't get.

Regardless, it never hurts to try, and so Jordan quickly closed out the software before scanning what little of the basin that his viewing hold allowed him to see, filled with speckled shadows of each imaginable color, dancing, growing, shrinking, or fading out entirely.

Jordan ripped his eyes through a sudden wave of grogginess and immediately came to notice a twinkle of light reflecting off of the ice a ways below him.

'Was I sleeping?' Jordan asked himself, enhancing his field of view towards the sight until a gold tinted glass visor quickly occupied his vision. In his drowsy mind, Jordan thought it was Gelos, climbing the crater wall to come see him and, in his grogginess, followed through with such notions before becoming more skeptical of the situation.

After shaking his senses back to their full capacity, curled his legs behind him and took a second to adjust his position before launching from his hole on a rapid descent towards his opponent.

With his thrusters, Jordan rotated himself to approach his unprepared target feet-first. After landing in a rough mount on the side of their waist and knocking them from the wall in the process, Jordan grabbed at the back of their suit with his left hand while unsheathing one of his daggers with the other and began thrusting the blade in and out of his opponents gut in a relentless shank.

After many failed attempts to dig deep enough into their armor, Jordan held the knife at arms length beside him before gently releasing the handle, relegating it to a peaceful descent next to their bodies as Jordan cocked his fist back and sent his fist drilling into his opponents guard. With loud knocks that painfully rang against the vacuum-induced silence, Jordan's fists and the individual pistons in his knuckles rammed into the skin, suit, muscle and bones of his opponent, rocking their body backwards until Jordan's grip forced them back towards his barrage of jabs, crosses, hammerfists and elbows that impacted against their belly, ribs, sternum, arms and throat. Producing a symphony of cavernous thuds and bangs that quaked throughout each of their bodies and added to energy to their rotation, until the daggers and the looming wall beside them began spinning wildly around their bodies.

After a final elbow to the throat, Jordan plucked his dagger from its rapid spin beside him and took the time for his thrusters to kill his rotation to check the time.

[Raige Watson Slayed: + 200 Points.]

[Merit: 905]

[January 350th, GPY 3. Harakhtes Crater, Ganymede. 38°N 99°W. 1243. UGT.]

After coming to a not-so-graceful landing, Jordan continued heading west across the crater's basin, feeling somewhat amazed at the scarcity of the environment after having slept for only a few hours in his hole. He spent about an hour wandering the plains, silently observing the recovery drones pick and retrieve corpses from the surface and dodging the few domains that appeared over the horizon.

Right around the time Jordan began to think that he made a mistake in descending into the crater, he saw the violet wisps of the long familiar domain licking the ground at the horizon.

Magnifying his vision towards the knight, Jordan sent a comms request behind it as he leapt towards her direction. Surprisingly, he found himself indifferent to see her standing proudly in the middle of her domain, unarmed.

As soon as she received Jordan's contact, she turned in his direction and immediately lowered her torso in a formal bow; a strange sight to see on the barren plains of the crater's basin. "Under normal circumstances," she said. "The great spear; Vel, would be by my side. That said, that weapon is far too precious to toy with any longer, the circumstances to dire. My deepest apologies."

Jordan squinted in confusion as he came to a landing and leapt towards her once again. He was well over two-hundred meters from her position, but through his eye scanners, he may as well been standing next to her. "This is the Galilean Powers." Jordan waved her apologies aside. "Moreso, we're on campaign. There are no rules."

"And yet, your domain nearly competes with mine." Law chuckled sheepishly as she rose from her bow.

Jordan paused for a moment to stare at the two domains, dozens of meters away, inching ever closer with each passing second. "Only because we all agree to play by the rules." He finally shrugged, looking back to Law. "You seem awfully cheeky."

"Of course!" She boisterously chuckled. "I've retrieved Vel, and your transition is now complete. Our arrangements can now be sealed."

Jordan squinted at her behind his helmet for a second before replying. "So that's what you wanted. To make me like you? As much as you could, anyway."

"Obtaining a body capable enough to withstand not only these environments; but this lifestyle of ours, is the first task of anyone aiming to venture into it." Law pretentiously replied before lifting her fist up to chest height and shaking it from side-to-side. "No, Jordan. To remain candid, my intention was to seed within you, ambition. Passion. An obsession."

"In hunting Saturnian Knights." Law continued after long, but unnoticed pause. "Your name will surely spread throughout both the Powers, and the Empire. I wagered my career on the chance that after around a year, in these lands, such drive; or at least lack of imperial fear, will become seeded into the future minds of countless Galilean's. While in turn, our ranks can make the most of this arguably wasted opportunity afforded to us by these tours." She paused to point her gauntleted finger at the Galilean, coming to a rest before her. "You, Jordan Astros, will be the catalyst that drives the masses of Galilean's to seek out our knight's on campaign."

Behind the cover of his helmet, Jordan's lips and brows curled into a hideous frown in response to Law's claim. In truth, he wasn't sure if she were trolling him or if she were serious. Though she didn't seem like the type of do the former, the latter was simply unbelievable. He saw no hypothetical reason why someone would put themselves; their career, at the mercy of monarchs and a planetary empress. All for the sake of maybe having more experienced soldiers. "That-" Jordan finally muttered, shaking his head inside his helm. "That's so stupid."

"Such distinguishments are surely irrelevant to you, yes?" Law laughed before jabbing out painfully accurate accusations that were as quick and sharp as her gestures and body language. "I'm certain that you've pondered it many times since our first encounter, yes?- 'How many points will I receive for slaying Law?' I imagine the question is burning in your mind."

Under the sharp angles and deep grooves of her helmet, Jordan could only imagine her face curled into a feral grin as she settled into her stance. "All that's left for you to do is to claim your victory. Prove your hypothesis to be true."