Under the leadership of Baili Qing, Yu Sheng, Erin, and others boarded a giant "elevator" they had never seen before—the "carriage" of the elevator was almost a spacious hall, and its entrance was located in a mural hanging in the corridor near the Director’s office.
Upon entering the elevator, Yu Sheng noticed that the ridiculous carriage was surrounded by twelve extrely wide doors, with dozens of Special Service Bureau soldiers in light armor and several deep divers in heavy power armor already standing inside— all fully ard, with each diver even accompanied by two walking tactical robots.
As soon as Luo stepped into the elevator, she visibly tensed, retracting her chanical limbs into her body, and her lower half-wheel feet turned into legs. She even tried to lower her head to reduce her presence, seemingly wanting to hide sowhere—but surrounded by a group of mass-produced Erins standing at a height of 66.6 cm, there she was, a golden-haired elf with a silver dress standing at 1.7 ters tall... standing out like a crane among chickens.
"You look a bit embarrassing," Erin looked up at the awkward "Black Spot Warlord" and was quite blunt, "After all, you’re a villain boss!"
"I’m a scientist! Not a combatant!" Luo imdiately hurriedly explained, quickly lowering her voice halfway through, "And who said I’m a villain? From my perspective, you’re the ones who are off..."
"But the poker face said you’re the ’Black Spot Warlord’," Erin continued, righteously looking up, "Sounds like a bad guy."
"’Black Spot Warlord,’ what kind of title is that? That’s a slanderous label made up by outsiders," Luo frowned hard, "Within the Black Dot Group, we have strict job titles and divisions of responsibilities. Firstly, I am an S-Class scientist and engineer, and secondly, a regional director. I also have a..."
"Quiet down," Baili Qing suddenly interrupted the golden-haired elf’s ramblings, "When you usually contact , you’re quite sparing with words."
"Well, you brought here..." Luo instinctively began, then shrugged, "Alright, I won’t say anymore."
The entire "hall" trembled slightly.
From outside one of the nearby doors ca faint sounds of gunfire.
The expressions of everyone instantly turned serious as the fully ard Special Service Bureau soldiers and deep divers imdiately gripped their weapons, standing on alert near the elevator doors.
After a brief delay, the door slowly began to open.
The sound of gunfire outside suddenly beca much clearer, but it sounded as though there was still so distance.
"Deploy the walkers," one of the deep divers said in a low voice. Several walking robots equipped with high-powered shield devices imdiately left the carriage first, stepping into the corridor outside. The other soldiers quickly moved under the protection of the walkers’ shields, moving swiftly outside the elevator.
Yu Sheng heard several suppressed gasps.
He followed the Special Service Bureau soldiers out, looking at the situation outside with so bewildernt.
An extrely wide, dim, and chaotic space ca into view—the corridor extended forward in a winding manner, while the walls on both sides and the roof above seed to have been shattered, with fragnted debris floating as if weightless. Beyond its boundaries lay rooms, corridors, and halls of a style completely different from the Special Service Bureau Building, with massive architectural structures floating like mirages at distant intersections. Intersecting illusions moved slowly, with structures materializing only to fade and dissipate like shadows.
"I guess your customs floor didn’t originally look like this," he hesitated, glancing back at Baili Qing behind him, "Doesn’t this working condition sowhat touch on Subspace..."
Baili Qing didn’t speak for a mont, simply staring at the distance with a grave expression.
Amidst the shattered, floating corridor structures, the first batch of assembled Special Service Bureau soldiers were engaging in makeshift fire points, battling distant enemies. The muzzle flashes illuminated the surrounding eerie darkness, and strears of fire interwove into a net across the fragnted space, intercepting those phantasmal enemies constantly erging from the "convergence point."
Simultaneously, Baili Qing and Yu Sheng, also looking towards the distance, widened their eyes in unison.
They saw another force fighting in the shattered areas ahead of the corridor, combating enemies erging from the convergence point alongside the Special Service Bureau soldiers. Despite the thick smoke and dim lighting, Yu Sheng imdiately recognized it as the Black Dot Group’s security forces!
He couldn’t help it, their equipnt was too familiar to him, given their life-and-death connections.
"Hey, hey! Your troops are fighting alongside those Black Dot soldiers!" Erin also imdiately jumped up, raising her hand to point into the distance and shouting to Baili Qing, "They’ve hooked up, they’ve hooked up!"
Baili Qing ignored the jumping puppet and quickly walked forward. Yu Sheng paused for a mont and then hurriedly followed.
Along the way, he realized he hadn’t been mistaken—there were indeed several Black Dot combat teams fighting alongside the Special Service Bureau soldiers in the distance. Although it didn’t quite reach the level of "fighting shoulder to shoulder," and there was little cooperation or coordination between them, at least their muzzles were all pointed in the sa direction, fighting against the sa enemy.
"What’s going on here?" Baili Qing quickly arrived near a piece of cover, asking a field agent on site, "What’s with these Black Dot troops?"
"Director!" The questioned soldier was startled upon seeing the director herself here, but quickly regained composure and saluted hastily, "We, we’re not quite sure what’s happening either. Just now, the entire floor experienced temporal disintegration, and then those Algredians erged from the space rift—We fired a few shots, but they shouted sothing like ’for the sake of our humanoid kin’ and ’they’re coming,’ then turned their guns to shoot at the things following them out of the rift..."
During the conversation, another explosion bood in the distance, this ti mixed with the piercing whine of plasma—the Deep Dive Team, arriving for reinforcent, employed heavy firepower, repeatedly firing the plasma shoulder cannons that required power armor to operate, projecting clusters of dazzling blue light to the end of the corridor where the blurry, intersecting "convergence point" area was.
Heat waves surged, engulfing the twisted masses of bizarre creatures, seemingly fused with various aberrations, in the expanding plasma clouds, vaporizing them completely.
However, that convergence point only swayed briefly, followed by more bizarre spatial structures unfolding on the floor, with even more strange entities rushing out of the rift.
A series of heavy footsteps sounded from behind, as the support troops from other floors arrived on the scene. Yu Sheng heard a familiar voice nearby:
"Oh man! I finally got two days off!"
"Boss, don’t say that, ow, the director is right next to you..."
Yu Sheng turned his head to see Xu Jiali, who was setting up a walking tactical robot in power armor, and the cat-eared girl beside her.
"Don’t mind , carry out the combat tasks," Baili Qing gave the support troops a glance with her light gray eyes, nodding slightly, "The tech departnt is trying to close the space rift on this floor, they need ti to analyze the fluctuation patterns of the rift—give them so ti."
"Yes!"
"We’ve got to figure out what’s happening on their end," Yu Sheng watched the strange enemies continuously erging from the convergence point, his brow furrowing tightly, "Those Black Dot soldiers surely know sothing."
Baili Qing glanced at Luo, then turned and ordered the nearby combat team, "Bring the few Algredians on the left front over here."
A Black Dot combat team that had been firing from cover soon retreated to the front—they looked sowhat confused and nervous, after all, they were now on the Special Service Bureau’s turf, and judging by the situation, they had hastily escaped from the other side of the rift, so being suddenly taken away by a bunch of Special Service Bureau soldiers naturally made them a bit apprehensive.
But soon, that apprehension turned into bewildernt.
Because they saw their missing leader standing next to the Special Service Director.
"B-boss?!" The leading Black Dot soldier was utterly shocked, and despite the thick helt, the astonished tone made it easy to imagine his expression at the mont, "What are you doing here?!"
"It’s a long story," Luo waved off the explanation (after all, under such circumstances, she was too embarrassed to tell her subordinates she had been bundled up as a local specialty), "Right now, I first need an explanation—what’s going on?"
"It’s, it’s..." The Black Dot soldier hesitated for a mont, but after taking a breath, he spoke, "The Zolda Black Stone... is missing!"
Luo’s expression changed instantly: "Huh?! You an—missing?! Not out of control, not the lab exploded, but... missing?!"
"Yes, yes! Things were chaotic at the ti," the Black Dot soldier stamred nervously, "At first we received an ergency code from you, the nearest guards went to check, only to find you weren’t in the room, and then there was no signal from you anywhere in the space station. So the guard commander went to the lab, ordering the lab’s tech team to elevate the Zolda Black Stone’s containnt level to 4 and to stop the energy input to the Black Stone.
"All these were standard security asures, but those technicians... suddenly beca frantic, yelling they had reached a critical stage and couldn’t let it end in failure, refusing to comply... Initially, it was just the technicians who seed frantic, but soon, the lab security forces gathered as well, yelling about protecting the Black Stone as they surrounded and confronted us at the force field.
"The commander found the situation bizarre, so as per protocol, asked all lab personnel in contact with the Black Stone to imdiately head to the quarantine zone for ntal evaluations, while calling for backup from defense units from other space station areas—but just as the order was issued, all defense units rebelled simultaneously, destroying all shuttles and sealing the lab, then the lab security team started shooting at us. In the chaos, the commander used the code authorized by you to activate the nuke below the lab, and then..."
The soldier paused abruptly, seemingly at a loss for how to proceed, and Luo sighed at the sight: "I know, the nuke didn’t go off..."
"No, it’s more than that," the soldier shook his head, "I think we sohow pissed off that ’stone.’
"Before our eyes... it ’decomposed,’ just like vaporized, the Black Stone vanished out of the well-secured force field, and shortly after, the entire lab’s space started collapsing, with the anti-gravity platform at the center, the entire space station began to rapidly disintegrate..."
Reviews
All reviews (0)