Support Zone, platform.
Caelus had come back again, carrying a hot boxed takeout meal, ready to grab some fries at the dock where interstellar ships moored...
...though there were no seagulls here.
What he had instead was a sea of stars vaster than any ocean.
And—
beep beep.
A string of phone notifications.
March 7th: Ta-da!
March 7th: We've arrived above Jarilo-VI!
March 7th: A world of endless white—this is so beautiful~~ Look at the asteroid belt in the distance too!
Galaxy Baseball Bat Hero: ...
March 7th: What's with that? Even if you regret it now, it's too late—the jump is already complete!
Galaxy Baseball Bat Hero: ...
March 7th: Fine, if you bow your head and admit you were wrong, I'll beg the conductor to let us jump back and pick you up, okay?
Galaxy Baseball Bat Hero: No.
Galaxy Baseball Bat Hero: I was just going to say, I can't see any of that. Are you flexing empty air at me?
The moment he sent that, the chat froze.
Caelus bit into a fry and looked at the phone screen. Half a minute later, photo after photo from March 7th flooded the display.
Beep beep beep.
Before he even had time to open them, Pom-Pom's stickers came pelting in after them.
"..."
It felt like... they were assaulting his eyes.
He had clearly planned to live a peaceful life on the space station, so why was it so hard to cut off contact with that energetic girl?
March 7th was warm, friendly, and so full of life that even her text messages radiated the vitality of summer sunflowers. Even Caelus—who seemed permanently steeped in the faint "dead-inside" air of an overworked office drone—couldn't help smiling.
A Suzumiya Haruhi—no, a March 7th Brigade—making the world a livelier place.
March 7th: So?
March 7th: Can you see it now? Regretting it yet?
Galaxy Baseball Bat Hero: No.
Galaxy Baseball Bat Hero: A snow-covered world like that looks freezing. I hate the cold.
March 7th: ...
March 7th: If you'd boarded the train, you'd have the Nameless's protection—you wouldn't be afraid of heat or cold!
March 7th: I'm literally skiing in a super-short skirt with bare legs!
Galaxy Baseball Bat Hero: Let me see your legs.
March 7th: ?
Galaxy Baseball Bat Hero: I think you're lying. Your legs definitely aren't bare.
March 7th: image.jpg
"..."
Caelus paused for a moment.
Then he saved the selfie to his album.
In the photo—
March 7th's legs gleamed with an ivory-smooth luster, her skin fair, soft, and nearly flawless. The lovely curve of her legs flowed gently from thigh to calf: slim lower legs, slightly plush thighs, and those pale, delicate feet disappearing into black heeled ankle boots, tantalizingly half-hidden.
They looked like meticulously sculpted works of art.
Because March 7th had taken the picture from above while sitting on the red sofa inside the train, the skin above her knees caught a touch of camera light. Against the sofa's color, her knees looked all the more rosy and luminous, full of youthful softness. Her long legs bent naturally, their lines elegant to the point of perfection. One slightly raised right leg made the hem of her short skirt lift just a little, revealing the softest curve of her thigh, while the thigh strap tightened faintly into the flesh, making that leg look both supple and irresistibly springy...
March 7th leg pic... Get☆Daze!
...She's way too easy to fool. Feels like I could talk her into having five kids.
Galaxy Baseball Bat Hero: Thanks for the meal.
March 7th: ?
[Galaxy Baseball Bat Hero retracted a message]
Galaxy Baseball Bat Hero: I mean, you might actually be right. You weren't lying to me.
March 7th: Of course I keep my word!
March 7th: The Trailblaze protection is super convenient, you know. No fear of heat, no fear of cold, no fear of pressure—you can even breathe in space.
March 7th: Well? Tempted yet?
Galaxy Baseball Bat Hero: No.
March 7th: ...
Galaxy Baseball Bat Hero: The things you listed seem like things I could do naturally from birth.
Galaxy Baseball Bat Hero: Maybe it's the Stellaron's power?
March 7th: Ugh, you'll regret this sooner or later!
Galaxy Baseball Bat Hero: You should worry about yourself first. The train's stuck right now because of the Stellaron outbreak on Jarilo-VI, isn't it?
Galaxy Baseball Bat Hero: Even if you wanted to jump back and pick me up, you'd have to wait until the Stellaron problem is solved.
March 7th: How do you know that?
Galaxy Baseball Bat Hero: I saw it in my previous life.
March 7th: ...
March 7th: Cut it out! I'm not that easy to fool!
Galaxy Baseball Bat Hero: I'm not fooling you.
Galaxy Baseball Bat Hero: I even know that from above, the terrain northwest of Belobog looks like Pom-Pom.
March 7th: Huh?
March 7th: I'm gonna go check.
Galaxy Baseball Bat Hero: Anyway, be careful on your trip.
Galaxy Baseball Bat Hero: Watch out for the blue-haired Belobog wild woman, and the blonde woman with the ridiculously good figure.
Galaxy Baseball Bat Hero: If you meet a perfectly symmetrical beauty, you can call her big sis.
March 7th: ?
Caelus set his phone aside for the time being.
He was not really worried about March 7th. After all, the Belobog arc was basically just a "starter village."
The Astral Express crew's raw power completely outclassed the version boss, the "protagonist" was not all that crucial, and the timespan of the story did not seem to be more than a few days anyway...
"Trailblazing, huh..."
Caelus sighed softly and shook his head.
With a fry between his lips, he gazed out at the boundless universe, yet what occupied his mind was Bronya's looks and figure, and Pela's ruler-straight black stockings...
"..."
"...Hm?"
Crunch.
Caelus bit through the fry.
At the edge of his vision, he noticed what seemed to be a human-shaped meteor drifting slowly away through space, as if its brain had completely shut down...
...
Base Zone.
At that moment, the medical bay after the disaster was packed with people. The space station's proud medical facilities claimed that as long as a person still had a breath left in them, there was always a way to save them—
Heaven Canceller?
Caelus found it impressive without really understanding it and looked around.
On the bed beside him, he spotted a bandaged-up researcher, injured but full of fighting spirit, poking at his phone screen with swollen fingers. In the end, he gave up and switched to voice input instead:
[Lily, I got an IV today. What kind of IV? An "I miss you" IV!]
Caelus: "..."
The guy looked vaguely familiar. Caelus glanced at the chart by the bedside.
Name: Rocky. Department: Galactic Geographical Survey.
Who...?
Caelus could not remember for the moment.
Then again, he had quit the game halfway through. He might not even remember the main story clearly, let alone the minor personal stories of every male NPC...
Tap tap.
While he was still trying to remember, a pair of pale, jade-like bare feet in black high heels appeared before him. Their skin was delicate and luminous, the ankles soft and elegant. They were clearly small and dainty, yet somehow carried an inexplicable air of nobility, to the point that the surrounding researchers instinctively stepped aside, making way for her arrival.
"Station Master Asta!"
"Station Master Asta..."
"..." Caelus slowly raised his gaze, climbing from the graceful lines of her slender legs upward until he met her face. "...Asta?"
Asta gave a slight nod.
Under the watchful eyes of the surrounding researchers, the sweet, approachable smile on her face drew in a little, taking on the faint authority of a cool female boss. In her clear voice, she explained why she had come, thanking Caelus for saving a researcher who had been on the verge of being listed as missing...
"...Researcher Rongcang Zhong, is it this one?"
"No, over here—"
Asta's gaze shifted away from Rocky and toward the bed on the other side.
There lay another researcher, likewise wrapped in bandages around the head, his features impossible to make out. And beside him floated a misty little cloud, like a strangely colored Gastly. Looking closer, it turned out to be a translucent, wavering spherical ghost, ringed by a faint halo like a miniature planetary ring.
"Wooo~ wooo woo?"
It was a Wubbaboo.
Asta lowered her gaze slightly. Recalling Rongcang Zhong's personnel file, she remembered that his unfinished research project had been Wubbaboos...
Caelus reached out, grabbed the Wubbaboo, and gave it an experimental squeeze. Unexpectedly, it felt like cotton candy.
"Wooo~ wooo woo!"
The Wubbaboo puffed up like a pufferfish, wobbled angrily, then zipped away.
And the researcher on the bed finally struggled upright as well.
"I... I'm actually not dead...?"
"Live on." Caelus held out his fist to him.
"What...?"
Rongcang Zhong looked pained. The headache still left his vision and awareness blurry. He hissed through the pain and stayed hunched over clutching his head for quite a while before finally lifting his face to look at the unfamiliar person standing before him—
Short dark-gray hair, deep golden eyes, and...
It was hard to describe specifically, but somehow he looked like the kind of handsome man who ought to appear on the front page of Interastral Peace Entertainment.
Standing beside him was Station Master Asta, graceful and beautiful, rumored to come from an extraordinary family background. The two of them together looked like a couple—like a still cut straight from an old movie—and the sight left Rongcang Zhong momentarily dazed.
"..."
...
Base Zone, inside the corridor leading to a half-Fragmentum-affected monitoring room.
—Boom!
With one swing of his bat, Caelus smashed apart several Voidrangers blocking the way.
Following his memory, he stopped before a locked hidden room. He took out the damaged access card he had gotten from Rongcang Zhong and pieced it together with two other broken cards, their corners cracked and lettering worn away. When the light happened to refract across them just right, he could barely make out the blurred words:
Thousand Stars ██ Group
"A combo mega-card..."
The middle characters were too damaged to read.
But one thing was clear: the system's slow prompt sounded—
[First-level... second-level... third-level access authorization confirmed.]
[Several Herta System Years have passed since your last visit here.]
[The board has been sincerely awaiting your reply all this time. In any case, welcome back—]
[Miss Asta.]
"Success..."
Caelus stepped inside.
It was a small room, yet... luxurious.
The room was piled high with all sorts of rare objects that looked bizarre, expensive, and undeniably valuable. When Caelus pulled open a drawer, he even found a thick stack of credits inside.
"..."
Expressionless, Caelus pocketed the credits, patted his now satisfyingly full pocket, and then picked up the note lying on the desk—
[Don't move. Yes, I'm talking to you!]
[The moment you discovered this note, you entered the monitoring range of this Station Master's personally handwritten "All-Seeing Eye" program.]
[In other words, the little exploration operation you thought was completely secret has already been entered into my notebook.]
[I went to great lengths to set up triple encryption for this room precisely so I could lock all that boring past away in here.]
[Now that you know the earth-shattering secret of this young lady's background, I can't just let you swagger out of here anymore.]
[The instant you entered the room, you inhaled hallucinogenic poison gas.]
[The toxin is so potent that even the best medical researchers on the space station would be powerless to save you...]
[In short, your life is over!]
[...]
[Ha! Did that scare you silly? That's what you get for barging carelessly into someone else's private territory~~]
[All right, all right. There's no "All-Seeing Eye," and no poison gas either.]
[On the contrary, this room contains some rare old curios. Of course, they're all things I don't want anymore.]
[As a reward for cracking the triple authorization, you may take whatever you like.]
[That's right—far from punishing you, I'm rewarding you. It can't be helped. That is this Station Master's governing philosophy—]
[Encourage every curious adventure. Reward every rushing current of knowledge.]
[Be grateful!]
[And don't forget to put back anything you messed up before you leave. Take the reward you want and go.]
[Do not linger. Do not get greedy. Otherwise, if you make me angry, the consequences will be unimaginable!!]
[—Your dearest, dearest, dearest, dearest, dearest, dearest all-knowing Station Master Asta]
[Mwah~]
"..."
Caelus folded the note shut.
"In that case, this room is mine from now on."
-------
My : pat*eon*com/RuneA
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