Xyrin Empire
Chapter 539: Another Biohazard Plane? Doubtful...

Chapter 539: Chapter 539: Another Biohazard Plane? Doubtful...

"Space vector traction completed, entering the Void Area, main phase interference commenced, fleet entering dense formation, auxiliary engines full charged..."

"This is the Ark Battlecruiser, we have transferred the control of the navigation system to the flagship, the Xyrin Host."

"This is the Light of El Holy Mother Ship, we have transferred the control of the navigation system to the flagship, the Xyrin Host."

In the endless Chaos, within the Void Domain devoid of direction and spatial concepts, a small orderly zone had been formed. Traversing this zone of order was a "small-scale" United Fleet, and here, "small-scale" was only relative to the Imperial Regular Army Corps.

Under the guidance of the Imperial Admiral’s Star Alliance Flagship, the current iconic royal command ship of the Xyrin Empire, hundreds of warships of varying sizes formed a spearhead formation, among them only three were Xyrin Spaceships: Faith-class Colony Ships, the rest included two hundred Human battle cruisers from the New Eden Federation, a Protos Holy Mother Ship, and over a dozen Protos Carriers. This configuration gave off a somewhat odd feeling—after all, it wasn’t the past battles; we didn’t need to bring a large regular army along, dragging these vassal armies of the New Eden Federation mainly aimed to familiarize them with the new trans-dimensional drive systems installed on their ships—Xyrin quality, always the finest, but even the finest needs a run-in period. As the most technologically advanced among all the Empire’s Servant Armies, the Federation Army is indeed laden with our great expectations.

On board the Imperial Admiral’s Star Alliance Flagship, the central bridge.

"How does it feel to be on a space battleship for the first time?"

I turned my head slightly, watching the group of Academy Seven Little Strong who from the beginning had been constantly looking around, almost jumping down to fiddle with the command consoles, and asked with a smile.

"Long live space battleships!" The first to answer me was naturally Fatty Hirano, known as a military otaku. From the moment he got on the battleship, he was the most lively one; I even once had to get two Imperial Soldiers to point their guns at his head to calm him down. But now he obviously found another outlet for his excitement, and his pudgy body was nearly bouncing with joy, "Giant cannons! Laser Cannons! Railguns! Nuclear Cannons! Positive Electron City Breaking Cannons!! Orbital pods airborne, landing ships airborne, Mecha troops airborne, satellites descending!! Mecha fights, fighter jet dogfights, warship broadsides, Space Army bombardment! The gunfire that tears planets apart, the cosmic flashes that evaporate everything! Lasers and explosions! Brilliant nebulas igniting in the vast and boundless outer space! This is a man’s romance! This is our pursuit! Life should indeed aim for the stars and the ocean ..."

I looked at Kazuo Komuro and the others, who all wore embarrassed expressions, then cleared my throat twice, "You guys wouldn’t mind if I tied this fatty up, right?"

"As long as you don’t kill him, anything goes."

The pink twintails genius girl casually said with no reservation.

Hey! This tragic Little Fatty was petrified by you on the spot! He’s cracking up, look!

"Du Dao, got something on your mind?" I turned towards Du Dao Sayaka, who had been quiet since boarding the ship. As her classmates were busy marveling at the wonders inside the gigantic spaceship, this girl seemed preoccupied, though she showed amazement at the "Imperial Battleship," she was clearly troubled about something.

"Ah, it’s nothing!" The contemplative girl hastily shook her head, and her chest heaved with a sudden surge, "Indeed, it’s a very very thrilling experience, just naturally inclined to tranquility..." p>

It seemed she hadn’t told her companions the truth: that the spaceship they were aboard wasn’t carrying medical devices for treating the dead, but a massive Doomsday Bomb. This girl, who assumed the role of the soul of the team with her calm and gentle nature, chose to bear this heavy truth alone, probably until the moment we fired the Star Melting Bomb.

Perhaps still caught up in the excitement of being on an alien warship, Kazuo Komuro and his friends didn’t notice Sayaka’s odd behavior and quickly shifted their attention, eagerly starting a new conversation.

I heard them, they were discussing the matter of their "homecoming."

When these people had just been brought to Shadow City, and Dingdang promised to let them settle in our world, unsure if we would find the world of "Academy Apocalypse" before the infection spread globally, I had already prepared them for the possibility of never returning to their hometowns, that even if they just came to this devastated world for a glance before evacuating to settle down in Shadow City, it would be countless times better than struggling for survival in a sea of horrific dead bodies. That decision had indeed cheered up Kazuo Komuro and his friends for a while.

But when the world of "Academy Apocalypse" was unexpectedly discovered earlier than anticipated, these mostly underage boys and girls clearly had new expectations:

It’s only been a dozen days or so, maybe the dead body virus hasn’t spread worldwide, maybe there’s still hope for their hometown, with the help of such a powerful alien civilization, perhaps... perhaps human society could recover soon, and they could return to the familiar daily life on Earth—studying, shopping, making friends...

Humans always long for their homeland. An otherworldly phantom city, known as "Shadow," no matter how safe it is, no matter how many people across worlds consider it a Holy Land, those wandering among shattered homes and lost families can’t help but feel desolate.

This was the new hope that Kazuo Komuro and his friends harbored (except Sayaka who already knew the truth) after learning that their world had been discovered ahead of schedule. They made no attempt to hide such desires in front of me—since it’s been discovered earlier, please save our world at all costs.

Ugh, this feeling really sucks. All the helpless people around you pin their hopes on you, yet your real goal is to destroy their world right before their eyes. Lin Xue, oh Lin Xue, you truly deserve the title of the greatest troublemaker in history, leaving me to deal with all the messy issues.

As I was feeling both sentimental and headachy, a little black shadow suddenly flew over from the bottom of the bridge and then plopped down in front of me.

"Yo, Mercury Lamp, enjoying yourself here?"

Lin Xue was right, having such a doll-like girl around did indeed serve to relieve boredom: watching our always high-and-mighty Mercury Chair fly around the massive command hall like a curious child, touching this and looking at that, and then returning with a proud yet contrived "I-am-very-calm" tsundere demeanor—it was truly quite amusing!

"Hmph!"

With a disgruntled snort, the 92.3cm Gothic Girl pretended to look disdainful and turned her head away, "You stupid human actually have some abilities! That makes sense, coming from a race of monsters that can create things like planet battleships..."

"But surely observing a planet battleship from the outside and being inside one is different, right?"

I knew that Mercury Lamp was just too proud to admit it, just pretending to be angry. She may seem bad-tempered and unapproachable on the surface, but in fact, she’s kind of a nice girl... well, at least she used to be.

"Well, that’s how it is... Hey, dummy, what exactly is that red crystal platform for? Why do those silly officers keep me from getting close and keep saying it’s a military secret? It’s infuriating!"

Curiosity didn’t just kill the cat, it could also be the death of Mercury Lamp. Chairwoman, have you not realized that you’ve turned into a complete curious baby?

"I really do suggest you don’t touch that thing," ignoring Mercury Lamp’s protests, I directly lifted her onto my shoulder, and she immediately started pitter-pattering on my head—like a massage, "ASCCI-T, or the Anars System, it can open a small hole to a four-dimensional space in three-dimensional space, about the size of a ping-pong ball. But... you can think of it like a tablecloth spread on a table, then someone pokes a hole from underneath, pulling the tablecloth down through the hole. Everything on the tablecloth gets ground into spatial scraps as it’s pulled down, and the piece of three-dimensional space itself turns into a crumpled ball of waste paper. The space-destroying range of the Anars System is about the size of twenty-two suns lined up. It’s a weapon tailored for stars and is even more formidable than the half-baked planet battleships currently in existence, with even greater importance because it ignores defenses below the law-level. Any gravity shielding, spatial blockades, or spatial stabilization means nothing to Anars, making it even more resistant than conventional space weapons. However, it’s Taville’s recently developed miniaturized experimental product. You saw too, even the control platform is newly installed in the command hall. Although he insists what he made, even a prototype, is flawless, I really worry that once we set it off, there’s no going back, so I’ve never test-fired it in my own world—Hey, why are your faces all twisted?"

"Hey, hey, hey! No matter what you say... this weapon really is too much of a cheat!!"

The one speaking was Kazuo Komuro, the guy I had pegged as a perverted reprobate on the first day who later proved not to be such scum. He’s just got good fortune to live among various bouncing bosoms, yet he’s actually a stubborn fool hopelessly devoted to Miyamoto Reiko. This made me temporarily abandon the idea of annihilating him on humanitarian grounds. Alright, since it’s this way, this Leader shall magnanimously grant you human rights and tell you something, "Ever heard of the Kepulu Star Zone?"

"Oh, I’ve heard of it. Isn’t that a territory you recently pacified?" Once the topic opened up, even Du Dao Kazuko showed interest, leaning in to ask.

"We formatted a space about twice the size of the Milky Way there."

The onlookers: "..."

"This world is really terrifying, for real." Kazuo Komuro said with a sheepish smile, completely extinguished.

Even Mercury Lamp who was busy tapping on my head just a moment ago froze in astonishment. Could this proud doll also be frightened?

"Hey! Dummy! And you other dummies, who’s going to tell me what the Milky Way is?"

Well, it seems the education of the Rose Maidens really is lacking, ahem, if they’ve really never been schooled, then...

"Can you write your own name, Mercury Lamp?"

"Hmph! As a noble Rose Maiden, writing one’s name... writing one’s name is just a triviality that doesn’t deserve attention, right?"

Ah dang it! Does this kid really not know how to write? This is different from the original plot, isn’t it? In the setting, Mercury Lamp can read, so why can’t she write?

"Dummy! Dummy! Dummy! Turn into trash and disappear!" Even though she couldn’t see my face from her angle, Mercury Lamp probably guessed what expression was on the face of the person beneath her, and she started cursing furiously (embarrassedly?). A small doll-like girl riding on the Leader’s shoulders, her little paws tightly embracing the large head beside her and shaking it back and forth— from the side, it looked...

What a harmonious father and son duo... although their interaction pattern is a bit weird—that was the first impression Kazuo Komuro and the others had when they witnessed the scene before them.

"World coordinates repositioning complete, fleet is about to exit Void Mode, Main Material Plane reentry process starting, please prepare key units for impact resistance—commencing countdown now, 1000, 999..."

Kazuo Komuro was stunned, "Do all your countdowns start from a thousand?"

I became suddenly furious, "It’s that damn Bubbles stirring up trouble again!!"

That pesky girl, last time she replaced the spaceship’s orbit alignment tones with Mario’s BGM, the time before last she substituted all Single Soldier Fighter Jet’s main control computers with Snake’s voice, and before that, she used Shadow City’s sky projection to play two hours of King of Fighters, nearly causing Bashen An and Qijia She, who had finally calmed down, to start fighting again, and this time... this time she actually gave me a countdown starting from one thousand!

Well, at least the harm wasn’t as severe this time.

Anyways, after enduring a long wait and the entire corps’ soldiers standing by awkwardly for more than ten minutes, the fleet’s reentry into the Main Material Plane finally came to an end...

A not-so-violent shake, at least that’s how it felt to me, the Imperial Fleet had exited the Void Plane and appeared near "Earth", concealed behind the moon. On the massive holographic projection beneath the bridge, something other than the bleak Void at last came into view: the desolate lunar surface and the partially hidden Earth covered by the moon.

At this moment, for some reason, I fancied the idea of firing a shot right there to see if the moon below the fleet was also a Planet Fortress filled with the Imperial Army’s factories—blame it on Visca’s grandiose figure that shone over Earth for seven hundred thousand years leaving too deep of an impression on me.

"Hmm, we’ve arrived... huh? What’s wrong with you guys? Du Dao Kazuko, why are you grabbing my arm? And why are the others lying on the floor?"

"Who told us there wouldn’t be any shocks when we arrived... blargh!"

Miyamoto Reiko, looking pale, leaned into Kazuo Komuro’s embrace, desperately fighting the urge to retch.

Sorry, I’ve gotten used to being with superhumans.

"I absolutely don’t want to feel this again!" Du Dao Kazuko unapologetically used my arm as a handrail, clearly frustrated, "I’d rather lie down in one of those coffin-like hibernation chambers than go through this."

Taville, you’ve finally found a market!

"Humph, humans are truly frail," Mercury Lamp was the only one on the scene without superhuman strength but still hopping about lively, finally finding a reason to be proud: no stomach, hence no vomiting, "I feel absolutely fine!"

But you’ve been swinging around on my neck, stop being so fidgety and hold on tight so you don’t fall...

"Splat."

See, there you go, falling down.

Perhaps it was the aftermath of being constantly troublesome and being secretly cursed by Big Sister, as Mercury Lamp seemed to suffer small and big mishaps almost every day. Whether she flew into a passing ghost, bumped into a stair railing around the corner, or hit an energy barrier on the window, she always needed to hit something to settle down, and when there’s nothing to bump into—look, she can even manage to fall on her own.

Chairman, to what end do you put your supporters with this saga of the unfortunate girl’s adventures? Be a good child, so Big Sister rescinds her divine powers!

"Darn it! You clumsy human! Don’t underestimate me ugh..."

Blocking Mercury Lamp’s flailing small frame as she lunged at me, I turned to the command hall below and ordered: "Prepare the landing troops, and my landing pod, I want to go down personally."

"Yes... Your Majesty?"

The officer below instinctively acknowledged the command, and then realized, "According to the original plan, weren’t we supposed to deploy the EOP directly..."

"The orders have changed."

In the end, the innate obedience of the Xyrin soldiers overcame any questions the other might have had. The commander responsible for low-orbit operations responded with a standard military salute, "Yes! Your orders are supreme!"

The Imperial Fleet finally came to a halt in Earth synchronous orbit. From there, the massive ships could easily be observed from the ground without activating their invisibility fields, but at that time, it was unlikely that anyone on Earth had the leisure to look up at the sky anymore.

Carrying us, Kazuo Komuro and his party, along with a hundred Imperial soldiers, several dozen landing pods descended blatantly onto the highlands near a city, finally injecting a bit of vitality into the lifeless earth and sky.

"What a desolate place after prosperity," I looked far off into the dead city which exhibited no signs of life and suddenly felt a strong urge to reflect, "This is my second time coming to a world enveloped by a biohazard crisis. The monuments of human civilization, after the silence of their creators, are nothing but withered tombstones. The grandeur of these buildings only accentuates the bleakness of a race’s doomsday..."

"That’s definitely not something you came up with! Stupid human!" Mercury Lamp pointed out sharply.

"...That was Lin Xue’s lament."

The doll immediately exclaimed in surprise, "Wow! You’ve switched to an even less likely person!"

For the first time, I discovered that Mercury Lamp could say things that were actually endearing.

"Has there been a fire around here recently?" Kazuo Komuro asked, frowning, as he surveyed the bushes and woodland around us for signs of scorched earth, wondering if it was the work of survivors trying to fend off the dead bodies with a large fire, "By the way, Emperor..."

"Just call me Chen, it’s rare to get a break from the Fortress, so let’s not be so formal."

"Ah, true enough..." Komuro revealed a somewhat relaxed smile, "Chen, when will those squads responsible for treating the infected bodies be landing?"

Dingdang and I exchanged glances, then I awkwardly responded, "Well, uh, we’d better wait for the people above in orbit to finish scanning the infection distribution map. After all, the number of Shamans capable of treating infection is limited, and we need to focus our limited forces— For now, let’s go check out that city over there. Maybe we can find some remnants of the human government to learn what’s going on."

The high school student with little worldly experience took my word for it quite simply; even Ju Chuan Jingxiang, who theoretically was an adult and a teacher, didn’t question my words.

...Truly, only the naturally naïve are the most endearing in this world.

What Komuro didn’t know was that apart from us, a large number of action teams had also landed on the surface of the Earth, each of them not a treatment troop (there was no longer any need for that, for all the time it would take to develop an antidote, the last remnants of people in the world would probably have died out): they were searchers, tasked with locating the living, uninfected humans on Earth as much as possible. Although we could scan life distribution from orbit, I still hoped to find as many survivors as possible, even if not everyone could be saved...

It’s always better to have one more survivor.

While Komuro and his people were not paying attention, I took another glance at the orbit scan map within my personal field of vision.

It was a rudimentary schematic drawn by a probe released by the mother ship after a rough scan of this planet, showing Earth, which could almost be described as a sight for sore eyes. This scan result wasn’t shared with Komuro and his group, but was only displayed in my personal view.

I touched my pocket again and took out a note that a certain Miss had stuffed into it before I left.

The line on it that was hugely perplexing had been read over and over again, a dozen times at least, but still seemed irritating—

"Wood, that world has more than just a biohazard crisis, take care of yourself, I’ll always be watching over you, and if you dare get injured in such an easy mission, you might as well find a hole and bury yourself — Signed by the invincible super beautiful girl Lin Xue across the universe.

Also, I know for sure you’re looking forward to hearing this: It’s not like I’m worried about you!"

(To be continued, for more details, please visit www.qidian.com. More Chapters, support the author, support genuine reading!)