Chapter 386: Chapter 386 Doomsday Countdown Chapter 386: Chapter 386 Doomsday Countdown The irritation from this evening was, indeed, for a reason. I’d thought it was due to the bad luck of eting with Aresta, but who would have thought, n’s sixth sense can be equally strong.
Upon returning to the research institute, what I saw in the living room was a figure who hadn’t co by for a long ti: a certain twin-tailed yuri BT girl, Misaka Mikoto’s headache of a junior, Bai Jing Heizi.
Although she belongs to the regulars who often co to play, because of her duties as a mber of the Disciplinary Committee, Bai Jing Heizi spends most of her ti patrolling or volunteering in various communities; she hadn’t been over for several days. But unexpectedly, she chose this ti to visit…uh, it doesn’t seem like she’s here to play…
“Hey, Black, long ti no see.”
I greeted her familiarly; after such a long ti interacting, we’re quite familiar with each other, and calling each other by nas is normal. Of course, this might have sothing to do with our “dinsional creature” identities…
Youthful girls filled with fantasy always yearn to play with aliens; testified by the leader—Oops, sidetracked.
“Ah, it’s Director Uncle … Sorry, sorry, I’m used to it, it’s Director Big Brother, right?”
You’re doing that on purpose!
After gulping down the iced black tea Qianqian handed , I let out a long sigh, shaking off the feeling of heat, then sat down next to Black, “Speaking of which, it seems that you Disciplinary Committee mbers have been extrely busy these days. This morning when Tsuruya and the others ca over, neither you nor Chichun showed up… The aftermath of the Fantasy Master incident? Hasn’t it been resolved?”
I hadn’t expected that bringing up this subject would provoke such a reaction. The young girl in front of imdiately burst into a towering fury— I’d never seen such a dark fog before even when Sister was researching the Calamity Beacon in the corner by herself!
“What’s… wrong?”
I asked cautiously, fearful of agitating this perennial yuri girl’s clearly overheating neural cells.
“It’s all because of so bastard…” Bai Jing Heizi lowered her head, her knuckles white from gripping too hard, “Because of so bastard who mysteriously showed up in Academy City!!”
“These past few days, practically all of the Disciplinary Committee mbers had their vacations cancelled. We’ve been working overti nonstop to track down a piracy gang that suddenly popped up in Academy City!!”
An enormous grudge erupted from the girl as she suddenly bellowed towards the sky in grief and indignation.
And then I Spartaned…
“Piracy… gang?”
I felt my voice trembling, vaguely sensing thunder rumbling three feet above my head.
Black, weakly leaning on the table, said in a muffled voice, “Ah, the piracy gang, no clue where they popped up from. We don’t even know if their mbers are Academy City students or working adults here. They appear and disappear unpredictably, peddling pirated audiovisual products, counterfeit watches, and even reading palms for wayward youth in every nook and cranny of the campuses. Lately, they’ve even taken over three shopping streets near the Eleventh School District. My god, are we Disciplinary Committee mbers going to die on the job from this kind of work?”
Bai Jing Heizi looked up to the heavens and heaved a long sigh, her sorrow likely surpassing that of Chu Ba Wang when he killed himself.
I asked with a tingling scalp, “Have you found any clues then?”
“Ah, there is a bit, their core mbers all wear black suits and sunglasses, and their main business is the circulation of pirated discs… But there are nurous organizations in Academy City, and security personnel and aides dressed like that are everywhere. We can’t just pick on soone for wearing a suit… Eh? Director Big Brother, your expression is strange…”
“Black, keep your shirt on.”
I smiled and gently pushed the concerned girl back to her seat, then turned and roared.
“Special ops team!!! Catch that wastrel Sicaro for aaaaah!!!”
To think that Sicaro managed to set up his own piracy network in less than a week staying in Academy City, even expanding his business to palm-reading, and exhausting the entire Academy City security system. Sicaro, oh Sicaro, you… you’re truly a talent! I now understand the feelings of those dozens of European countries when they unanimously expelled him; if it were , I’d make that day a national holiday!
I couldn’t bear to look back at how subtly Black’s gaze shifted towards once the truth was revealed. The image I had built, already low in her eyes due to my close association with Mikoto, must have completely shattered from now on.
“Boss, do you have any other instructions?”
After finally sending away Black, who was like an angry kitten ready to fight Sicaro, that Black Uncle Hei Chao who sells discs actually had the nerve to stand in front of asking for directions!
Both Qianqian and I sat back on the sofa, defeated, waving him off, “Just don’t go out and cause trouble for the next few days.”
Sicaro imdiately revealed a smile, pulling out a treasure from his black leather bag, shining and eye-catching, “Just right, I’ve been promoting traditional culture lately. I’ve been researching this and can expand the business when I return.”
An entire bunch of longevity golden locks—iron plated with copper!
At this mont, rhythmic footsteps echoed nearby. In this collective of saviors not doing their proper jobs, the only one who had such distinct and firm footsteps was Scorpion Vega.
Then looking at the earlier Black Uncle—this is the difference, this is a comparison!
“Commander, a ssage from the information center!”
“Only the good news, spare the bad.”
I said without looking back, my mood downcast.
Vega nodded, then turned to leave.
Hey! You’re really going?
I quickly called back that stubborn Scorpion who didn’t know how to turn around, asking her what kind of ssage she had brought.
Vega took out a projection board that was continuously refreshing information and placed it in front of and Qianqian. Imdiately, a plethora of complex data and geotric figures appeared on the coffee table, and then she explained in detail, “About thirty minutes ago, Lady Lin Xue had a premonition of Star Ring Fragnts appearing.”
Qianqian and I imdiately beca serious; after such a long wait, what was ant to co had finally arrived.
“What is this on the screen?”
Pointing at the constantly changing patterns and scattered lights on the holographic projection, Qianqian curiously asked.
“According to the foreknowledge of Lady Lin Xue, we have observed the gravitational conditions of several major suspicious points in space, and launched a number of space-ti jump probes to further investigate the points of gravitational anomalies. What we can confirm now is that there are at least two to four such points that could potentially threaten Earth. Here are their gravitational values, and below are the corresponding regional space curvatures—the gravitational asurents and curvature start to fluctuate first when Star Ring Fragnts jump from the Void Plane to the Main Material Plane, and they have already begun to show abnormal oscillations.”
“So, the Fragnt has not appeared yet?”
“Yes, there is a process for entering from the Void Plane to the Main Material Plane, and these points are all quite distant from Earth. The furthest one is nearly a light-year away…”
“A light year?” I raised an eyebrow. “Light takes a year to travel that distance. How long would it take for a fragnt to get to Earth from there? We could dispatch the fleet to intercept it in advance.”
“If only it were that simple, Wood. The trouble this ti is big.”
It was with such words that Lin Xue ca over from the side.
“I’ve seen sothing quite terrible; you’d better be prepared to mobilize the entire Imperial Fleet.”
Seeing Lin Xue’s serious and sowhat weary face, I tensed up: “What did you see?”
“The future has changed, evolving in a worse direction—the Fragnt didn’t enter this universe directly but first swept through a nearby Plane. There it split into three parts, and then… brought us this.”
As she spoke, Lin Xue placed a small crystal into the slot of the projector on the coffee table. This tiny device was Taville’s latest achievent sent over yesterday. As a high-precision Spiritual Wave Decoder, it could transform the visions in Lin Xue’s prophetic hallucinations into images, process them, and output. Lin Xue had adjusted it based on the characteristics of her own spiritual power fluctuations, achieving output stream quality on the level of Blu-ray high-definition.
“Is this the Sun?”
Looking at the image of a massive fireball that first displayed on the screen, I said uncertainly.
“Fifty percent correct, but it’s another Constant Star.”
Lin Xue took a deep breath and continued, “The first part of the Fragnt, after splitting, is in the core of that Constant Star. I don’t know where else it went before entering this universe to pick up such a dangerous thing, but clearly, it has affected this star. Its mass is almost 327 tis that of the Sun, and its core’s liquid iron, under the surging of Abyss Energy, is tempestuous. The whole planet is in a state of utter madness. The first part of the Fragnt will carry this big Bomb, jumping straight into the Main Material Plane from the farthest point—about 1.6 billion kiloters away from the outermost gravitational zone of the Solar System. Don’t think that’s a long distance; for such a massive star, this is close enough for its gravity field to wreak havoc.”
I listened, only half comprehending, “So, you an to say, in no ti, a new gigantic Sun will appear out of nowhere next to the Solar System, and then…”
“Then, the new Constant Star’s gravitational tidal forces will start to churn the entire Solar System into mush. That’s the optimistic estimate. The bad scenario is, there’s a Star Ring Fragnt filled with Abyss Energy inside that new Sun. The stronger the carrier of the Abyss Energy, the more damage it can cause. There will be a real explosion next to the Solar System. In the future I saw, that star collapsed in the second month, burning the entire Solar System into a sea of fire, as if its sole purpose of coming here was to destroy Earth.”
“Okay, okay,” I covered my forehead, “I know there are two more parts, go on.”
Lin Xue pressed fast forward, skipping over a bunch of undecodable images, and what appeared before us was a dark and heavy planet.
“A planet, about 1.5 tis the size of Earth in volu, mainly composed of heavy tals, thus its mass is almost 10 tis that of Earth. The second part of the Star Ring Fragnt is lodged at its equatorial position, making this big, honest fellow very irritable. It will jump straight to Mars’ orbit—of course, not hitting Mars. It will then move directly towards Earth, completely defying the laws of physics, and then knock Earth straight into a one-way trip towards the Sun. Fortunately, humans won’t be burnt to death by the Sun afterward, but the bad news is, everyone will have died in the Big Collision before then.”
“This is the third part, an asteroid belt, also the part I least understand. The third part of the Star Ring Fragnt is situated right in the middle of the Asteroid Belt, radiating Abyss Energy onto every asteroid without physical contact. The entire swarm of teors is the last to arrive and the most difficult to deal with. They are nurous and will appear directly in Earth’s orbit, with no ti to shoot them down one by one—right, they appear and surround Earth, then begin a saturation bombardnt for more than three days. Each of them has the power of several tactical nuclear bombs. Wood, now do you have anything to say?”
“…How much resentnt must Visca have had when evacuating Earth to pull the entire star system over just to demolish a planet?”
Lin Xue shrugged her shoulders, turning off the projector, “Do you still rember the last ti Visca went mad?”
“Now the fragnts I’m roughly seeing seem to be hinting at sothing; it was the day when the Star Ring Fragnt was supposed to appear anyway. At least in that instant, the Star Ring Fragnt had already established a connection with this universe. Then Visca lost control.
As the embodint of Visca’s spirit, the loyal Star Ring still rembered its mission. After receiving the mad command from its forr master, it imdiately escalated its originally designated terror activities to a strategic level. That’s why it was so late, and why it showed up with its entire family in tow. If the timing had been just a little bit off, the recovery of the Star Ring Fragnt would have been completed long ago. Wood, we’ve got a good sister…”
I was left dumbfounded, then broke out in a cold sweat on my forehead, “Let’s not let Visca know about this, or that girl will start obsessing over it again.”
Right now, we’re facing three crises—well, you could also say it’s just one: a Star Ring Fragnt that has gone into a paranoid state is determined to destroy the entire Earth in two or three months. It has sent a sun that is about to explode, a planet made entirely of heavy tals moving at high speed, and thousands of ard-to-the-teeth teorite hoodlums. A brush from any of them would an the end of everything.
We’ve uploaded all this intel to Shadow City, where the real experts are. Sandora, with her broader perspective than Pandora who only knows how to fight, might find a way for us to deal with these threats with extrely limited external aid. But the outlook doesn’t seem very optimistic. Taville told us with a whole load of theoretical reasons that there’s no way other than to evacuate all of humanity from Earth.
When we told the dedicated female scientist that we needed to save as many as seven billion Earthlings, she straightforwardly recomnded a bomb called “EOP-03” to . Its main feature is that it detonates and spreads rapidly, with strong high-energy radiation, providing an entire planetary civilization with a peaceful death and effectively reducing your sense of guilt.
“The asteroid belt is the easiest one to deal with,” Sandora analyzed seriously in the video conference, “We can assemble a specialized United Fleet powerful enough to sustain an entire planet’s defense, Shield, plus Sicaro that bootleg peddler’s super Skill that doubles the military’s defensive power. Enduring the asteroid bombardnt for five days is no issue, and we can also collect quite a bit of potentially useful resources—sorry, occupational habit. The second easiest is that high-speed planet appearing in the Mars orbit. Although it’s troubleso to manufacture Star Weapons, one month is enough to use them, Lin Xue predicted they’d appear one after another in two months, right? The mont it shows its face, we’ll blow it up, then we need to deal with the gravitational disturbances, which just requires so high-powered gravity independent devices. But this… this Constant Star planning to self-destruct next to the Solar System… we now lack weapons of sufficient power, and we don’t have ti to make those things. Even if we work overti to produce a star annihilation system, we can’t use it. A Constant Star with a mass more than three hundred tis that of the Sun, its own gravity field is a huge threat. You can’t imagine what the result would be if such a huge object was destroyed near the Solar System, even just its presence is enough to warp the orbits of all the planets in the Solar System.”
“So, you’re saying, with our current Fleet, we can only resist the attacks of the asteroid group and the impact of the heavy tal planet, but we are powerless against the deadliest Constant Star?”
Lady Lin Xue asked with concern on her face.
Vis, standing alongside, explained on my behalf, “Commander, it’s not that we can’t destroy a Constant Star of that magnitude, but that we can’t obliterate it without ensuring the Solar System next door remains unscathed. We lack several specialized warships necessary, nor do we have enough power in gravity isolation ships and electromagnetic isolation devices. We don’t have the key technology for these in our hands.”
The information center fell into Silence.
I never imagined that a salvation mission I thought was simple would wind up pulling such a huge, tangled ss, and we’d end up dealing with a bunch of stars on top of the already headache-inducing task of coping with a pre-Fallen Apostle in human form!
But we absolutely can’t give up…
I admit, I’m a guy who gets attached easily, hopelessly a nice person, so the idea of sitting by idly as the world’s humans et their end is sothing I absolutely cannot accept.
And to add that it would happen because of my own sister—the thought alone I haven’t even dared to let Visca know about this. She always felt guilty about things she had done in the past, and I can’t imagine how depressed she’d be if she knew about all this.
But how should I put it, though this saying sounds quite cliché, it’s the truth: unexpected turns of events often occur amidst hardship.
A sharp, slender voice suddenly rang in my ear without warning, brimming with boundless energy and sweetness amplified by six plus signs, “Yay! Ah Jun, I knew you guys would be here! Dingdang’s spatial sensing ability is just too amazing! Ah Jun, Ah Jun! What are you playing at here?”
Dingdang! Our God has returned!
How could I have forgotten about an unexpected ally barging in? Such a handy Golden Finger!
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