First Intergalactic Emperor: Starting With The Ancient Goddess-Chapter 454: Dimensional Delivery

Xavier leaned back against the cracked wall and waited, eyes half on the empty air where his system inventory would pop the moment something arrived. Waiting gave his brain room to be annoying, so of course it started working overtime.

If that merchant really had Axiom Vitae Residuum, why wasn’t it listed publicly? Why DM him like a street dealer instead of putting it on the shelf and letting the whales fight over it? And if this was a scam, what exactly did a scam look like when the marketplace itself lived outside normal space?

No refund clause already screamed "you’re on your own." He wondered if the dimensional store even had a dispute system or if complaints just vanished into some cosmic trash bin along with bad decisions and dead buyers.

Behind him, the surgeon hadn’t shut up for more than ten seconds.

"I’m telling you," she said, dragging a scanner over his face again like she was inspecting spoiled meat, "your cheekbone alignment is a mess, nerve exposure everywhere, and that eye socket... I’ve seen cleaner damage on people who fell into grinders."

Xavier glanced at her. "You say that like it’s supposed to upset me."

"It is supposed to scare you," she snapped. "You’re walking around like this is a bad haircut. You’re lucky you can still chew."

"I can chew just fine," he replied. "Watch." He popped another snack into his mouth and crunched loudly, deliberately exaggerated.

She scowled. "Enjoy it while you can. Faces like yours don’t age well. They rot creatively. You will never find a girl who will love you. So sad."

"That’s poetic coming from someone whose bedside manner feels like a threat. And I am not worried about finding a girl. Rather, you should worry about finding someone to carry you at your funeral."

She jabbed a finger at the scan projection. " I am telling you, there is no fixing this with normal tech. And you will never find Axion."

"Just you wait, old hag."

"You should get used to the mask. Make it your new personality. Saves on disappointment." She shot back.

Xavier tilted his head. "You really want me to believe this is hopeless, don’t you."

"I want you to stop wasting my oxygen."

"Don’t worry. You aren’t gonna live that long to worry about lack of oxygen."

She muttered something under her breath in a dialect that sounded like it had been outlawed for being rude, then went right back to listing worst-case scenarios, invasive failures, infections, rejection rates, neural collapse, and a few graphic descriptions that felt designed to ruin appetites for the rest of the day.

Xavier was about to fire back with another sarcastic comment when his vision flickered.

[Dimensional Inventory Updated]

Item Delivered

The notification hung there.

He stopped smiling.

The surgeon noticed immediately. "What?" she said, suspicious. "You just make that face when you finally accept reality? Did you finally lose hope?"

Xavier didn’t answer. He opened the inventory with a thought.

The item rested there, suspended in the system space like it had always belonged. A small, sealed vial, its contents shifting with a faint internal glow that didn’t behave like liquid or light. The label was minimal. Too minimal.

Axiom Vitae Residuum.

Xavier stared at it for a long second, then let out a slow breath. "Huh."

The surgeon followed his gaze even though she couldn’t see what he was seeing. "What is it?"

He closed the inventory and looked at her, grin returning, sharper this time. "You’re gonna hate this."

Her eyes twitched. "Why?"

"Because you were just wrong," he remarked.

Xavier pulled the vial out of his inventory, and it settled into his palm like it had weight and intent instead of just mass. The glow inside it shifted when his fingers closed around the glass.

The surgeon froze.

For a second she just stared, then reached into a drawer, yanked out a small injector, and stabbed it into her own neck without asking anyone’s permission. She hissed as the shot went in, rubbed the spot hard, then leaned closer as if her eyes had stopped lying to her.

"Put that down," she muttered. "No—give it here."

She snatched the vial straight out of his hand and turned it under the light, rotating it, tapping the glass, scanning it with two different handheld devices while muttering to herself. At first her tone was dismissive, almost annoyed.

"It’s fake," she said. "Has to be. I’ve seen replicas, synth-glow knockoffs, mimic cores—"

Her words slowed. Then stopped.

She scanned it again. And again. Her fingers trembled, just a little.

"...no," she whispered. "That signature’s wrong. That lattice isn’t manufactured. That’s cellular memory compression."

She swallowed and looked up at Xavier, eyes sharp now. "Where did you get this?"

Xavier shrugged. "Somewhere even dead people don’t get invited to."

She stared at him like she wanted to hit him with the scanner. "You’re infuriating."

"My pleasure."

She set the vial down very carefully on the tray, then straightened and crossed her arms. "Sell it to me," she said flatly. "I’ll give you more credits than you can spend in a lifetime. You walk out with your ugly face intact, and I’ll still try to patch it up. Honestly, now that I’ve looked at it longer, it’s not even that bad. You’ve got character."

Xavier snorted. "That’s the nicest insult I’ve gotten all day."

"I’m serious," she snapped. "That vial can do far more than fix your face. Axiom can reset organ failure, purge gene rot, overwrite terminal mutations, rebuild neural collapse. You could save a city worth of dying idiots with that thing, and you want to waste it on cosmetics."

He leaned back against the table, arms loose at his sides. "To me, my face is more important than all that."

She scoffed. "You could wear a mask."

"And let people decide I’m hiding," he replied. "No thanks."

Silence stretched for a moment while she studied him, really studied him this time, like she was reassessing the patient instead of the injury.

Finally she exhaled hard. "You’re an idiot."

"Still not selling it."

She shook her head, defeated, and reached for a prep console. "You do realize this is risky. Axiom doesn’t just heal flesh. It rewrites you to whatever version it decides was ’correct.’ You might lose adaptations. Trauma tolerance. Things you picked up the hard way. And it’s irreversible."

Xavier met her eyes. "I’ll take that risk."

She stared at him for another long second, then turned away. "Fine. If you’re going to burn a miracle on your own face, I’m not letting you do it wrong."

She started pulling equipment from sealed drawers, activating sterile fields, calibrating scanners that hummed to life around the chair.

"Sit," she said. "And don’t move unless I tell you to."

Xavier took the seat, watching her work.

"Just so you know," she added over her shoulder, "if this kills you, I’m charging your estate for emotional distress. Where are you staying?"

"At Veyr’s."

"Ah, that old bastard. I guess I am going to retire soon. Where were you all this time? This is my chance to make it big."

"You can think about all that later. Fix me up first." He smirked. "Make it hurt. I like honest professionals."