IWYTBW - Chapter 56
Chapter 56
There's a Reason Why Experts Specialize in Their Fields.
[Player, calm yourself.] Within Tai’a’s synthesized electronic tones, a trace of something akin to softness emerged. [You still have the means to salvage this situation.]
Yi Zhen’s back rose and fell with ragged breaths. Since arriving in this world, he’d felt anger, sure, but it was usually tempered with a detached, almost amused tolerance. Provocation was met with escalated retaliation; challenges were met head-on. He was the protagonist, after all. This was his world. That was why he ruthlessly eliminated every transmigrator he encountered, while treating the often-spoiled but talented native inhabitants with the detached care of a gardener – pruning unruly branches, plucking sharp thorns.
But it was still his flower, his garden! If anyone dared reach in to rip and tear, he would crush their hand. If they dared stomp through his sanctuary, he would grind their corpse into the soil for fertilizer!
Tai’a was right… he could still salvage this. There was still time. Certainly enough time to dig holes for all this fertilizer.
“...Those heads must belong to students from the elimination points,” he said, his voice raw. “That energy isolation field you mentioned… has to be the Golden Hind pirates’ doing too. They land on Longhua Star, and the first place they hit is an elimination point? Is the universe really that coincidental?”
[You deduce that someone provided them with a detailed map of Longhua Star’s facilities.]
“Exactly.” Yi Zhen released the Bone-Eroding Spirit Scorpion and the Three Smiles Butterfly, letting them familiarize themselves with the Bonecrushers’ lingering scent. “They… they are the ‘other side’ Prince Azoth was colluding with.”
Catching its own scent on the corpse, the Bone-Eroding Spirit Scorpion scuttled closer curiously. It dipped a pincer into the congealing blood and tentatively brought it to its mandibles.
…Gag, retch, spit, spit!
[A prince of the empire, colluding with star pirates – symbols of rebellion. I find the implications… intriguing.]
“He wants to grab someone specific from among the contestants,” Yi Zhen straightened up, tossing the six stag-head medallions into his Mustard Seed Pouch. “The children of powerful ministers, the heirs of dukes and marquises… The selection of the Crown Prince is imminent. He’s using these pirates to stir chaos in the imperial court, muddy the waters.”
“But the Golden Hind aren’t some small-time thugs you can just hire and dismiss,” he mused aloud. “What exactly did the prince promise the Scourge as payment?”
[What is your intended course of action?]
“First, find Li Youdeng and She Xin. Especially She Xin – he’s in extreme danger,” Yi Zhen stated flatly. “Then, locate Ai Ling, and Natalia. Mainly Natalia. I don’t know the intricacies of Azothian power struggles, or what role her grandfather plays in the fight for the throne, but there’s no doubt that the little prince has her marked as a target.”
[And if you capture Aivan Azoth? How will you deal with him?]
Yi Zhen systematically destroyed the Bonecrusher corpses, leaving the incinerator cannons and other gear behind. He wasn’t a member of the Golden Hind; the weapons were useless to him anyway.
“So the kid’s name is Aivan Azoth? Simple. First, I’ll give him the ‘three cuts and six holes’ treatment, then finish him off.”
[He is a prince, you understand that right?]
Yi Zhen sneered. “Prince? So what? Piss me off enough, and I’ll butcher his father too.”
*
At that precise moment, Li Youdeng and She Xin were concealed deep within the woods, observing the low-flying auxiliary craft descending nearby.
“No doubt about it. Bonecrushers,” She Xin murmured.
“Bonecrushers? Weren’t they wiped out?” Li Youdeng frowned, searching her memory. “That was only about ten years ago, right…? I remember the news reports about their homeworld being destroyed. Sticks in my mind because the Bonecrusher story was right below the headlines about Saint Seresa, the galactic diva, announcing her tour.”
“It was their species’ hunting season then,” She Xin explained quietly. “Many adolescent Bonecrushers were off-world, undergoing rites of passage. They survived the cataclysm. Afterward, almost all of them turned to piracy. The Golden Hind recruited the majority, incorporating them as one of their primary legion forces.”
Li Youdeng stared. “How do you know all this in such detail?”
She Xin’s gaze was distant. “Because one of the targets they were hunting during that fateful season… was one of my own kin.”
Li Youdeng winced. “Ah. Right.”
“The story goes, she couldn’t tolerate the family’s suffocating control any longer and slipped away from her designated starship. Bad luck led her straight into a Bonecrusher hunting party,” She Xin continued. “Their tradition dictated status on their homeworld by the value of the skulls brought back from the hunt. A Desnian skull… that’s like finding a flawless pearl in desert sand. The hunting party didn’t hesitate; they immediately began pursuing her.”
“Gods above,” Li Youdeng breathed.
“Right then, the Titan-class starship dispatched to retrieve her warped into the system. They arrived to find the hunting party relentlessly chasing down a tiny escape pod.”
Li Youdeng winced again. “Uh oh.”
She Xin shrugged slightly. “And then… there was no ‘then’. The presiding Elder aboard the Titan declared the Bonecrusher hunting tradition ‘a perilous activity presenting extreme potential harm to juvenile Desnians.’ What followed was a sustained, thirty-minute orbital bombardment that completely shattered the Bonecrusher Homeworld.”
Li Youdeng sucked in a sharp breath. “Okay… wow. But… isn’t that a bit… much?”
She Xin sighed, a rare display of weariness. “I know. Sometimes, the elder Desnians… they are incredibly rigid, incredibly stubborn. That kind of suffocating overprotection… it makes it hard to breathe.”
A thought struck Li Youdeng. “Hey, since you’re the expert here, let me ask – was it actually the Golden Hind that Aivan Azoth was colluding with?”
“That, I don’t know,” She Xin admitted honestly. “I only know the current Azoth Emperor has three children of legitimate bloodline: the eldest son, Prince Austin; the second child, Princess Clova; and the youngest son, Prince Aivan. While Austin is gifted, the Emperor dislikes him. There was a major court scandal before his birth that made the Emperor doubt the Queen’s fidelity. Even though Austin’s legitimacy was later proven, the seed of resentment remained. Combine that with the Emperor’s own… promiscuous tendencies and numerous illegitimate offspring… if a Crown Prince were to be named, Austin’s odds aren’t necessarily the best.”
Understanding dawned on Li Youdeng. “Ah, I get it! So the little brat is here trying to rack up bargaining chips against his older brother?”
“That remains unconfirmed,” She Xin cautioned. “Hush! Someone’s coming.”
Both fell instantly silent. Li Youdeng closed her eyes, extending her mental awareness. Her internal landscape bloomed with over a dozen ominous, crimson blurs – hostile presences.
Definitely not friendly.
She tugged She Xin, easing them backward inch by painstaking inch.
“Hold your breath,” she whispered, barely moving her lips. “Sixteen hostiles approaching.”
She Xin pressed forward, covering her protectively. His vibrant green, seaweed-like hair cascaded down. His skin visibly hardened, taking on the texture of bark, while his hair stiffened into tough, fibrous vines. He completely enveloped Li Youdeng, transforming into something resembling a living wood carving sprung directly from ancient roots.
“The Golden Hind pirates possess an uncanny knack for locating living beings,” She Xin murmured, his voice muffled by the transformation. “Let us hope this deception suffices.”
Li Youdeng whispered back, “And if it doesn’t?”
“Then… let there be Heavenly Retribution,” She Xin replied, his tone unnervingly casual.
The heavy, chaotic footsteps drew closer to their hiding spot. Li Youdeng’s breathing became infinitesimally shallow. Hanging around Yi Zhen had its perks; she’d picked up a few tricks for masking one’s presence. She kept her eyes lightly closed, sweeping her own luminous mental energy across her consciousness, imposing a state of absolute calm, a self-hypnotic suggestion for stillness.
The guttural chatter grew louder. Suddenly, a wide-area stun grenade landed nearby with a thump. Li Youdeng squeezed her eyes shut tight. A wave of high-voltage electricity surged outwards like a crackling tsunami, instantly washing over several hundred square meters.
Blue-white sparks danced and snapped across She Xin’s hardened form, sizzling amongst the vine-like hair. The discharge instantly fried every small creature caught in its radius; the acrid stench of burnt flesh stung Li Youdeng’s nostrils. Yet, She Xin remained utterly immobile, his expression unchanged.
The incredibly long maturation period of Desnians resulted in bone and tissue density that defied belief. Once they initiated this physical transformation, even ferocious electrical discharges were reduced to mere tickles.
Sheltered beneath him, Li Youdeng was completely unharmed.
“Nothin’ here,” the lead Bonecrusher kicked aside the charred carcass of some unfortunate forest creature. “Map! Get the target’s visual out! Burn it into your ssskulls qq: do i regret making their dialouge like this? mayhaps. enough to fix it?... ehh... (I'm up to chapter 112, just slow to upload here...) , then ssspread out! Move, you grubss!”
His squad responded with guttural roars. Hearing the words “target’s visual,” Li Youdeng felt an intense itch to risk a peek, but painfully aware of the chasm in both strength and equipment, she remained pinned beneath She Xin, rigidly still.
The Bonecrushers gradually fanned out, forming a wide search line, and began rapidly pushing deeper into the woods.
Li Youdeng had studied the map earlier. She frowned internally. Where are those pirates headed?
Following their trajectory… four kilometers in that direction lay an elimination point. Nothing else of note.
Are they planning to assault the elimination point directly? No, if that was the goal, they landed too far out. But… if their aim is to hunt down students who scattered from that elimination point, then this distance… this distance is perfect.
Damn it… They needed to move fast too, every second was critical. This kind of stealthy reconnaissance was child’s play for Yi Zhen. For two non-specialists like them? All they could do was try their damnedest.
To unravel this mess quickly, Li Youdeng and She Xin’s objective was one of the auxiliary craft dispatched from the Golden Hind’s main ship. If they could just infiltrate one, access its navigation logs, they might uncover critical intelligence: the Hind’s true mission parameters, perhaps even that visual of the target everyone was searching for.
“Go!” As the Bonecrushers moved further away, She Xin reversed the hardening process, shaking dust from his now-flexible form. They both rose. Li Youdeng instructed, “Stay low! Like Yi Zhen does. We sneak over, nice and quiet. No shooting!”
“Okay.” She Xin nodded, dutifully mimicking her crouched posture. Following Li Youdeng, they moved in a zigzag pattern through the trees, steadily closing the distance to the landed auxiliary craft.
Li Youdeng froze mid-step.
“Crap,” she muttered under her breath, exasperation clear in her voice. “They left two guards watching the ship.”
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