Chapter 78
Translator: True Detective
Chapter: 78
Chapter Title: The Serpent Swarm
The battleship slowly descended onto the dark gray plains of Umbra Star, kicking up clouds of dust across the endless desert.
Moments later, the hatch slid open. Celia and Heinrich, both wrapped in cloaks with anti-gravity devices strapped to their waists, stepped down from the gangway side by side.
Umbra Star's atmosphere was thick, with no real sunlight year-round. The ground was damp and bitterly cold. A piercing chill wind hit Celia, pushing back the restless heat stirring deep in his body. He shivered involuntarily.
Though the sandbat leather cloak was heavy, Heinrich noticed immediately and asked in a low voice,
"How are you holding up?"
"......Nothing."
"Put on another layer?"
Celia hesitated for a moment, then shook his head and led the way down from the gangway onto the damp sand.
Heinrich had only been to Umbra Star once before, many years ago, campaigning alongside Celia. But over the years, he'd replayed that secretly saved projection footage hundreds of times. Every detail of those brief ten-odd minutes was etched into his bones. So he immediately sensed something off about the surroundings compared to his memory.
—No electromagnetic winds.
The Umbra natives existed as electromagnetic waves. Moisture and electromagnetic winds were the hallmarks of their activity, permeating every inch of the planet. Yet now, there was only the howling cold wind and swirling sand. Not a single cluster of Umbra natives in sight.
Celia walked ahead of him. For some reason, he suddenly sensed something and turned back.
"What's wrong?"
"......You know what I'm thinking?" Heinrich blinked in surprise.
Celia looked baffled.
"What are you thinking?"
Heinrich:
"......"
This wasn't the time to explain. Heinrich shelved his doubts for now and briefly described the anomalies around them and his suspicions. He skipped the part about secretly filming centuries ago, just saying he'd passed through Umbra Star during an inspection long ago, and it didn't match the current situation.
Celia didn't press and just nodded.
"It's off, after all......"
He cut himself off mid-sentence, his eyes locking straight onto something behind Heinrich.
"......What's going on?" Heinrich whipped around, but the thick fog behind him revealed nothing. When he turned back, Celia's face was unusually grave. Suddenly, Celia reached out and gently pulled his hand.
"Get beside me."
Heinrich had clawed his way up from mountains of corpses and rivers of blood. Battlefields were more familiar to him than any palace. Celia's expression alone told him something was wrong behind them. He didn't react overtly, just followed as Celia led them one behind the other for about half a meal's time. Along the way, he noticed Celia frequently checking the ground, deliberately choosing drier patches.
Soon enough, they left the damp sand behind. The ground turned to hard-packed earth. Celia released his hand, but Heinrich gripped it tighter in reverse.
"What was that just now?"
"......" Celia tugged but couldn't break free. He shook his head.
"Nothing. A dune seemed to shift. Might've been my eyes playing tricks."
—His tone was calm, but the slight tension in his cheek muscles betrayed something unusual.
He'd lived in deserts before and knew the unpredictable dangers of such wastes intimately. A moving dune meant one of two things: quicksand trailing them—dangerous, but no real threat to a powerhouse like Heinrich; or something moving under the dune. That was deadly.
You never knew what lurked beneath your feet—lava, quickmud, or colossal subterranean beasts. The Empire had no pure desert worlds, so Heinrich's knowledge was limited. After a pause, he asked,
"Could it be sandbats?"
Celia shook his head firmly.
"No. Sandbats only surface in sands over forty degrees Celsius. And though they're huge, they don't move well underground. They couldn't shift a dune that big."
Heinrich's expression shifted slightly at that.
Sandbats tunneled through desert cores, with wingspans over fifty meters and weights up to dozens of tons—the undisputed apex killers of the wastes. If even they couldn't move a dune "that big," what freakish thing had stirred below?
His encounter on that hellish planet flashed back vividly. Heinrich instantly recalled the colossal Voidghost Serpent, his face darkening.
"Could it be—"
Before he finished, he glimpsed something and shoved Celia aside!
—Whoosh!
Heinrich felt a chill slice across his arm, like a blade carving through muscle. The two tumbled to the ground. He shielded Celia behind him, rose to counterattack—and then his vision went black!
In that instant, he couldn't react. His legs buckled, knees slamming into the hard ground with a thud!
"Heinrich!" Celia caught him, grabbed his arm, and checked the wound— the thick cloak was slashed open wide, a three-to-four-inch gash angling across his upper arm. The cut was ragged, and purple-black venom surged rapidly from the everted flesh!
Poison!
Celia's pupils contracted. He roared,
"Gryphon!"
The Gryphon earring blazed to life, morphing into a combat knife in the roar. Celia snatched it mid-air and slashed backhanded!
A wet *splurch* followed as the blade cleaved a creature lunging at Celia's ear from behind clean in two!
A membrane-shattering *hiss* erupted amid spurting black blood as two segments dropped with wet *plops*. Celia looked closer, his face changing: writhing in the puddle like finger-length black strings—what else but bisected snake bodies?!
"Quick......get out......" Heinrich's voice was pained and distorted.
"Something's wrong here. Back to the......battleship......"
No need for a second warning. A nauseating stench suddenly filled the air. Far off, the sand split open like a geyser, spewing hordes of writhing black strings that rustled toward them!
Black snakes—every one!
Gryphon panicked,
"Run! They fly!"
Gryphon sprang up, shifting to shuttle mode. But then the surrounding sands surged like ocean swells in a encircling wave. Hissing filled the sky—thousands upon millions of black serpents in an endless tide!
"Damn it—" Heinrich cursed, then Celia shoved him hard into the shuttle cockpit. Celia jumped in after. The nearest black snake dove at them like lightning. Just as it reached their faces, the hatch *slammed* shut, crushing it into bloody pulp!
Celia barked,
"Back to the battleship!"
"Wait! We're surrounded!"
The shuttle lifted off, but the serpent tides from all directions rose too, crashing down like layered waves. In desperation, Gryphon deployed the electromagnetic cannon from the prow and fired point-blank, blasting a gap in the tide. Countless snakes vaporized into fireballs amid ear-piercing shrieks, and Gryphon rocketed through the raining black blood!
From above, the entire landscape was a black sea of serpents. They surged and galloped across the ground, massing into tsunami waves that nearly dragged the shuttle from the sky several times.
"What the hell is this......" Heinrich panted, leaning into Celia's arms. His body alternated fever-hot as if roasting in flames, then plunged ice-cold seconds later. Celia held him tight, leaning down to yank the medkit from under the console. He bound Heinrich's upper arm with a leather strap, then rapidly mixed a universal antivenom and injected it.
"Aren't Voidghost Serpents non-venomous......" Heinrich asked weakly.
Celia's face was grim as stone.
"No. Deadly poison."
He wanted to use a suction tube on the wound, but inflation took about thirty seconds. Every second dragged eternally as he watched the flashing red light on the tube. Finally, gritting his teeth, Celia bent and sucked hard on the hideous gash!
Heinrich jolted in his haze.
"What are you doing!"
Celia ignored him, spitting purple-black venom, then sucking twice more. Heinrich thrashed in shock and fury, but his limbs were too weak. He could only watch as Celia spat several mouthfuls, his lips graying faintly, before grabbing the now-inflated tube.
"You can't just—"
Celia raised a finger to his lips for silence, grabbed universal detox tabs from the medkit, dry-swallowed them, then suctioned the remaining venom. The antivenom kicked in; the wound faded from black to red, oozing fresh blood, and sensation slowly returned to the numb arm.
Heinrich stared at Celia's pale, impassive face, rasping after a long moment,
"How do you feel?"
"Numb. Gryphon, where are you flying?"
Outside, the serpents massed into a colossal mound, then rocketed skyward at the shuttle. Gryphon dodged left and right while blasting with particle guns, snapping furiously,
"Can you two stop flirting?! Look down!"
Celia:
"......"
Celia's eyelid twitched. He peered out the porthole. The battleship on the ground was a seething black mountain, thick serpent waves crawling and hissing over its surface—the sight alone made one's scalp crawl!
"Who the hell is behind this?" Heinrich leaned over too, voice turning queasy.
"Gryphon, electromagnetic cannon on the snakes at the hatch!"
"But what if it breaches the hatch—"
"It'll hold!"
"I won't!" Gryphon wailed like a banshee.
"My neural fluid's critically low! Haven't you noticed I can only shift to shuttle, not full mech? When was the last time you topped me up?! You stupid humans only know how to boss mechs around—ever think about how we feel?!"
The Emperor:
"......"
The Marshal:
"......"
The shuttle veered sharply up over the battleship, barely dodging another serpent wave. Heinrich's mouth twitched as he turned to Celia.
"Darling, when did you last top it up?"
Celia deadpanned,
"Forgot."
Gryphon never whined about low energy like other mechs—it silently clung to Celia, siphoning pheromones to convert into neural fluid. Celia had once monitored it, but it always showed 100% with extras stashed away—for a "dowry" to Phoenix, supposedly.
......Celia had no words, so he let it be.
The dumb lion had endless supply tailing Celia, no issues ever. But these twenty-plus days on the battleship, it'd locked onto Heinrich, even indirectly aiding the Emperor in "devouring" the Marshal—earning the Marshal's fury and a near-flush down the toilet.
Guilty 3S dumb lion had hidden in corners playing invisible, not daring to sneak fluid from Celia. It'd already burned plenty in that Alliance Parliament brawl, plus twenty days idle, and just fired a massive electromagnetic cannon—energy now in orange alert.
"Climb higher! Hold fire systems ready!" Serpents geysered from some sand patch below the battleship—utterly revolting. Celia averted his eyes, pulling a small knife from the console's tool slot.
"Where's your energy port?"
Gryphon hastily extended a small metal recess from the console. Celia slashed his arm, pressing the wound to drip blood into it. But Heinrich looked up and freaked,
"—What are you doing?!"
"Topping up neural fluid."
"Isn't neural fluid from the brain? Why this way?!"
"No need for me to explain—"
Gryphon yelped,
"Wait!"
Heinrich:
"You were about to say no need to tell me?!"
"It's my private—"
"Wait! Both of you!"
"Nothing about your body is private!"
"Shut up and stop freaking out!"
"Both of you shut up!" Gryphon roared, utterly aggrieved.
"I can't absorb this neural fluid!"
The cockpit fell silent. The Emperor and Marshal's imperious gazes turned.
"What?"
"......" Gryphon shivered.
"Pheromone levels too high, neural components insufficient...... It's pre-heat jizz. Can't process it."
Dead silence in the cockpit.
Heinrich's half-dead pallor vanished instantly, his face lighting up as he eyed Celia.
"......" Celia's brow twitched. He suddenly recalled Phoenix rejecting his blood at the Royal Academy startup—never got the awkward reason then. Though his blood was rich in neural-convertible stuff, heat pheromones spiked it a hundredfold; even 3S mechs struggled to extract viable amounts. More liquid aphrodisiac than blood.
"Need neural fluid? No problem—my turn!" Heinrich clutched his wound and sat up.
"Brain extractor? Hurry, I'm fine!"
Celia eyed his eagerness with a toothache, but no time to hesitate. Gryphon pulled the extractor from storage: a helmet linked to a converter, with slender metal probes inside.
This was standard for neural extraction. Normally, it came from the pilot's brain in tiny yields, processed with energy fluid into high-grade fuel for S-class mechs. Gryphon used this with Aaron, but post-Celia, it gathered dust in storage until now.
The Emperor shot Celia a predatory, amused glance—like a hunter fattening prey—and gleefully donned the helmet.
"......" Celia's head filled with ellipses. He turned to the porthole. The plain was blanketed in serpents; the battleship drowned under millions of writhing blacks, its wings faintly visible. The hatch was directly below the right wing.
What was really going on?
Who orchestrated this mutation on Umbra Star?
·
"Neural fluid at 26%, orange alert cleared. Alert, neural fluid at 26%, fire systems ready......"
The mechanical voice chimed. Heinrich yanked off the helmet—eyes bloodshot, sweat-slicked hair, face ashen. Extraction was taxing even normally; with venom lingering, pushing to 26% had drained him dry. More risked irreversible brain damage.
Gryphon mixed the fluid with energy and primed fire systems, asking tensely,
"Electromagnetic cannon on hatch? Power level?"
"Full blast!" Heinrich gasped.
"Imperial battleships can take it!"
A hum built as cannon pods extended from the shuttle's forward wings, barrels trained on the serpent-shrouded hatch. Urgency peaked as another wave shrieked upward. Collision imminent—the muzzle flared white, then—
*BOOM!*
Dual electromagnetic blasts lanced out like descending thunderbolts, cleaving the serpent tide; cannonfire then hammered the hatch, exploding the blacks in sprays!
"Now!"
The hatch blasted open. The shuttle dove, threading gouts of black blood through the gap onto the deck! Momentum carried it crashing into the wall before halting. The forward hatch irised shut just as serpents surged anew, *clanging* sealed a second before.
Inside the shuttle, Emperor and Marshal exchanged glances, both wearing lingering dread.
"You okay?" Celia asked.
"Hanging in. You?"
"Fine."
They climbed out separately. Gryphon reverted to earring on Celia. The battleship was dim and quiet. Heinrich backed to the wall, clutching his wound and panting.
"This isn't natural for Umbra Star, right? Who do you think's behind it?"
"I heard from the Umbra natives back in the Alliance—" Celia's voice cut off. Familiar laughter echoed from behind, freezing him.
"—Dear senior brother, didn't expect it'd be you."
The voice paused, then sneered,
"Ever think we'd meet again?"
Celia's pupils dilated slightly, shock plain in his eyes. After a long beat, he slowly turned, enunciating,
"Osrode......?"
Author's Note:
Sorry, danger before heat again...... Why am I so obsessed with them banging outdoors! (Because you're a fujoshi XD)