"Targets dealt with!" Dan told everyone around him.

  He wouldn't lie, watching the Voyager getting her appendages around the Dark Lady and destroying it as if someone destroying a brittle leaf in their hand disturbed him. The ship barely resisted before crumbling into many pieces, all the crewmen were either in the water or crushed with the ship.

  Dan tried not to think of the ones who got crushed, not that the others got a better fate. Sam's Swarmers had already finished with their first target and turned their attention to the Dark Lady, any who found themselves in the water would only await a bloody death by the angry monsters. Well, after the Voyager moved away, they wouldn't be able to do anything to them while they were inside the Voyager's protective circle.

  At that moment, Dan and everyone who was still on the Voyager, were in the lower decks at the stern. That was the best place to avoid getting hit by anything that would get shot at them. It was the first thing that came to Dan when he decided to have the Voyager join the fight.

  They gave control to the Voyager and hid far away, with only Dan to help her and give her instructions on where to go and what to do.

  Just as he was about to have her turn around and catch up to the tenders to take them and leave, he saw her lift something from the debris of the Dark Lady. From their connection, he could feel her interest and wonder. He focused on what it was, trying to understand what might have caught her interest. In the end, what he saw was a one-meter glassy cube; on it, there were many weird inscriptions and carvings.

  "Okay, now big girl," Dan said as he saw her put the cube on one of the decks, "Go to the tenders, hurry, we need to leave here soon."

  The Voyager must have felt his urgency as she started turning around in her place as she did a 180 and returned to where she came from.

  As she was moving back to the tenders, Dan was worried about the people on them, so he brought up his walkie-talkie as he contacted Marcus.

  "How are things on your side? Is everyone safe? Over," he asked.

  "We are good," Marcus's voice sounded, "The others too from what we got, the pirates had no time to deal with us at all, you and the Swarmers had their full attention. Over."

  Dan's heart calmed down when he heard the reply, it was all he could have wished for, everyone being safe and sound.

  It didn't take them long to reach the two lifeboats. Fearing that the tenders were too heavy to be brought atop the Voyager, they went with their earlier plans on the matter. It all ended with Nik being the first person to get the privilege of being lifted by the Voyager.

  As soon as he was on deck, he went to one of the nearby cabins they had emptied up beforehand. He first dropped everything in his Inventory before the Voyager brought him back down again as he filled his Inventory once more.

  That was repeated a few times till everything on the boats got moved to the room on deck. With the tenders empty and ready to be lifted, they got tethered and finally, they were home.

  All while that was happening, Marcus had the 3rd tender turn around and return to the Voyager. So, just when the 2nd tender got secured, the 3rd was ready to be dealt with.

  Done with everything, everyone headed inside, they didn't want to take the risk of maybe getting attacked again. At the same time, Dan had the Voyager turn around and head deeper into the ocean; they needed to leave as soon as possible.

  As the Voyager began her journey, Dan feared that someone might have been alerted by the sound of their short fight. With that in mind, he had her change their shared sight to one of the stern's infrared cameras. He hoped that he would be able to notice if anyone was coming after them or not.

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  He didn't see anyone, but he didn't feel that calm though, parts of him did, but not all, he worried that someone he wasn't able to notice might still be coming after them. Still worried about that, he suddenly had an idea, he hesitated for a bit, but decided to go with it.

  He focused on the aura around him as he tried to do something he had never really tried, to sense the area around them with the aura itself, not the cameras. He knew that the auras the Voyager had had a wider range of detection than the cameras did. After all, the Voyager sensed the Ghostly Lantern before it got closer.

  He felt the aura and tried to pull it deeper into himself, deeper than he had ever done before. Whenever he had interacted with the aura he had either done it through the Voyager, controlled it externally or just used it as a bridge. It was the first time he tried to use the aura by bringing it inside him and connecting to it deeply, hoping to use it to sense their surroundings.

  He knew what he was trying might be dangerous, but he felt that with the Voyager connected to him, she would be able to cut the connection if she noticed something wrong.

  With that reassurance, he brought a tiny bit of the Voyager's gentle warm aura inside him. He expected pain or discomfort at that, but that didn't happen, he only felt his mind go blank for a split second before he returned to his senses, or not exactly his senses.

  He noticed how he was sensing things weirdly. It was as if he could still see the world as it had looked for him, but he knew that how he came to that result wasn't through the same means, it was as if his mind was translating some extremely different inputs into something he could understand.

  One of the weird things he noticed was how the walls on the Voyager seemed to serve no purpose. He could see through them as if they weren't even there. Moving on to the people, he noticed how every living thing on the Voyager glowed, some were weaker than the others, but everyone had a glow. The glow was blue in colour, as Dan focused on it, he noticed how it seemed as if deep inside everyone, aside from the blue glow, there was also a tiny dark aura. It was calm and seemed almost dormant.

  Extending his senses outside, he noticed that they were the same there. Everything outside the Voyager's protective circle had a certain glow to it too, they were missing something though, there was no dark aura inside them. The closest thing to the dark aura he saw was the Swarmers, those monstrous fish had a wispy hint of it too.

  Dan forced himself to focus on the task at hand, reminding himself why he even started this experiment at all. He pushed his senses even further, trying to see if he could notice anything else that the cameras didn't. Unfortunately, no matter how much he pushed, he couldn't notice anything at all, it was the same as what he saw through the cameras.

  Just as he was about to stop this experiment, something came to mind. The other aura, the dark foreboding one that only showed itself when the Voyager was in real danger or truly angry. He felt that that one might show him something else.

  The idea of letting it inside him made Dan pause though. He could still remember how painful controlling it was, even though it was external control only, and he had the help of the Voyager. He couldn't imagine how it would be to have it inside him, even if it was just a tiny bit.

  Dan wrestled with his thoughts for a long time, finally, his paranoia won and he decided that it would be best to try, and again, if things turned bad, the Voyager was always there to cut the connection.

  But again, there was the fact that even the Voyager rarely used that aura ever since she got better control. He always saw her just using her warm gentle one, not even when defending against those cannonballs or attacking the Dark Lady did she use it.

  Steadying his heart, Dan decided to go for it, he released the gentle aura and contacted the Voyager.

  He first made the Voyager bring that dark aura up, then made sure she understood what he wanted to do and that she should cut the connection if she noticed anything off about the situation.

  The Voyager hesitated for a long time, just when Dan was wondering if he should maybe ask her again, she brought a part of the dark aura in front of him. Dan felt speechless, calling the tiny droplet floating in front of his face a part of the aura was a major overstatement. But again, she knew what she was doing, most likely, and he wouldn't pressure her more.

  Preparing himself first, Dan got a hold of that tiny droplet and brought it inside him slowly. As soon as it touched him, his mind exploded.

  He felt as if he were an ant who was suddenly given the sight of a human for a second. Except, it wasn't even for a second, it was but a fraction of a second.

  As soon as the droplet made contact with him, he felt the Voyager start cutting the connection, it seemed that the poor pure soul wasn't going to wait for a reaction before separating him from that aura, she didn't take any chances.

  It was enough though, he got what he needed. In just that split second, he got a clear view of all the area around them, it was at least a 1 km circle with him as the centre. And from that, he noticed something.

  That whole area was empty, except for two figures floating a few hundred meters right on the borders of the circle. They blinked off as soon as he locked on them.