As the call with Herta ended cleanly and decisively, a deadly silence settled over the spaceship cabin, leaving only the low hum of the spaceship's engine echoing through the air.
"..."
Silver Wolf stopped chewing her bubble gum, while Kafka, whose violet eyes were filled with undisguised surprise, stopped swirling the wine in her glass.
Now, both of them simply stared at Lucian in stunned disbelief.
"D-Did you seriously just straight-up ask Herta?! And she actually told you and even gave you the password?!"
Wearing an expression of complete disbelief, Silver Wolf finally spoke, raising a trembling finger and pointing it at Lucian's phone.
Honestly, after witnessing such an absurd scene with her own eyes, she felt as though her hacking skills had been thoroughly insulted.
What kind of invasion was this?
Clearly, this was walking straight through the front door!
"What exactly's your relationship with Herta?" Silver Wolf continued, her gaze getting more and more complicated. "Do your words really carry that much weight?"
"What else was I supposed to do?" Lucian replied, calmly slipping his phone back in his pocket, his expression totally matter-of-fact. "Seriously, why go through all that trouble? I'm Herta's VIP guest."
A VIP guest of Herta Space Station?
Lucian?
Silver Wolf and Kafka exchanged a glance, each seeing the sa deep disbelief reflected in the other's eyes.
In Elio's script, there had never been such a person on Herta Space Station—a figure capable of directly calling Herta and casually asking for confidential information.
If such a heavyweight figure truly existed, how could Elio possibly have failed to see him?
'Oh, right...'
Not only Kafka, but even Silver Wolf suddenly recalled that the last ti she had ntioned Lucian, Elio had warned her that he could not see Lucian's fate and had specifically told her to avoid interacting with him.
Now that she rembered that conversation, everything finally made sense.
"Let's go, I'll take you to the Stellaron."
Lucian extended his hands and placed one on Silver Wolf's shoulder and the other on Kafka's.
Silver Wolf didn't care, but Kafka could not help but frown, mainly because she disliked physical contact with strangers.
Under normal circumstances, the hand resting on her shoulder would already have been severed by her sword, but the situation was special now, leaving her with no choice but to tolerate Lucian's touch for the ti being.
In the next mont, with a push from Lucian, Silver Wolf and Kafka suddenly saw the scenery before their eyes shift. By the ti their vision cleared again, they were no longer inside the cabin of their spaceship.
Before them stood rows upon rows of monitors, making the place resemble a research facility. Quite a few researchers were busy working inside, so when the three of them suddenly appeared out of nowhere, they imdiately attracted a great deal of attention.
"Uhh..."
Being the focus of all those gazes made Silver Wolf and Kafka feel an impulse to silence everyone, but...
"Get back to work. I brought so friends here to handle sothing."
As soon as Lucian spoke, all the researchers imdiately smiled and nodded in response, then stopped paying attention to them and continued their respective work.
"Damn, we're really out here invading a space station in broad daylight… guess I've kinda made it big this ti."
Silver Wolf could not help but remark in astonishnt.
Kafka, on the other hand, showed almost no reaction and remained perfectly calm, keeping silent.
In the Storage Zone, Lucian, with Silver Wolf and Kafka following behind him, walked toward the courtyard area, passing through several pathways before finally stopping in front of a tal door, which was none other than the entrance to the Gallery of Shadow.
Lucian swiped his pass, and as the tal door slid open, an enormous room with a long corridor appeared before them.
Inside the room, a towering do stretched high overhead while soft light poured down from above. Countless oddly shaped objects, each emitting different energy fluctuations, were placed within cubes ford by transparent energy barriers and displayed along the left and right sides of the corridor, making the entire room resemble an imnse museum.
Aside from the faint humming of the energy barriers that filled the air, the surroundings were frighteningly quiet, making the breathing of the three of them clearly audible.
Needless to say, this was Herta's private gallery, the Gallery of Shadow, an entirely separate subspace opened solely to serve as a storage vault for her collection of curios, extravagantly luxurious in both scale and design.
Lucian, Silver Wolf, and Kafka then walked inside, observing their surroundings and the displayed curios as they proceeded deeper into the gallery.
Soon enough, the cabinet labeled 'A-465' that Herta had ntioned ca into view at the far end of the corridor.
Lucian approached the cabinet and casually swiped his pass across the authentication device beside it, causing the cabinet to slowly slide open to the side and reveal a concealed room hidden behind it.
As soon as the cabinet fully slid open, the three stepped inside in one smooth sequence and imdiately saw that, at the center of the room, their target, the Stellaron, was floating within an extrely complex multilayered energy barrier. Dense streams of data-like runes flowed across the surface of the barrier, radiating an aura that made one's heart tremble.
In front of it stood an authentication device displaying a clear designation: 'A-097.'
"Hmm, so this is it, huh... We actually got it this easily..."
Silver Wolf spoke as she looked at the floating golden orb just within arm's reach, then glanced at the tightly layered defenses surrounding it.
"Not gonna lie, this feels so unreal..."
Indeed.
In her eyes, the whole situation felt completely absurd, almost like a dream.
"Kafka, we're not getting tricked by Herta, are we?" Silver Wolf asked, glancing at her silent companion beside her. "I an, everything's gone way too smoothly."
"No... things really are just this smooth..." Kafka replied with a faint smile. "Your helper is simply far too reliable."
"Hey, what are you standing around for?" Lucian urged, glancing at the two of them. "Aren't you gonna print the Stellaron's vessel or sothing?"
Right after saying that, he entered the password, 'Genius Herta is number one in the cosmos,' into the authentication device, and then...
*Zing—*
In an instant, the energy barrier covering the Stellaron vanished.
"Yes, yes, here I go."
Silver Wolf began operating her specialized equipnt, using aether editing to print a human physical body.
*Zing—*
Light flickered as Silver Wolf ticulously constructed the vessel for the Stellaron, outlining a clear human silhouette in the air.
Several seconds later, the body of a tall, slender woman rapidly took shape.
Lucian folded his arms and watched with interest.
Truth be told, all of these technologies were beyond his understanding.
Things like aether editing and the containnt of a Stellaron within a human body were simply far too complex for him to fully comprehend.
He couldn't help but wonder how the Stellaron Hunters had managed to seal a Stellaron inside a human body, considering that even a genius like Herta seed completely clueless about such a thod of containnt.
What he did notice, however, was that Silver Wolf had only printed a single body—it was Stelle's body rather than Caelus's.
A few minutes later, as the humming gradually subsided and the light slowly faded away, Stelle's entire figure was finally revealed before Lucian.
Stelle was a young woman who appeared to be around seventeen or eighteen years old, with a height slightly above average, a well-proportioned figure, and smooth, delicate skin.
Her facial features were so refined that they seed as though they had been sculpted by a master artist, while her long, silvery-gray hair resembled the thin mist of an early morning, draping softly over her body. It looked slightly ssy, yet that very untidiness added a touch of wildness and vitality to her appearance.
Her outfit was both stylish and eye-catching, consisting of a white inner shirt beneath a jacket with its sleeves rolled up, a tight black mini skirt that accentuated her slender legs, and a light blue garter wrapped around her left thigh.
"Alright, you're up next, Kafka."
Silver Wolf called out, and Kafka, holding the Stellaron in her hand, imdiately shoved it straight into Stelle's chest with brute force!
*BANG!*
Because the Stellaron was forcibly stuffed into Stelle's chest, the impact was so powerful that it actually sent her flying, causing her to tumble and roll several tis across the ground before finally coming to a stop.
Seeing the scene, Lucian couldn't help but frown, wondering why Kafka couldn't have been a little gentler, considering that Stelle was basically still a 0-year-old child.
"Kafka, I feel like Stelle being a total fool is your fault. You must've knocked her brain loose with that just now."
Lucian remarked casually from the side, causing Kafka to blink and raise an eyebrow at him.
"Fool? Well, her foolishness is only temporary. Once she rembers her past, she'll beco smart."
Kafka did not mind his remark at all and instead responded casually with a smile.
Just then, Stelle, seemingly stimulated by the light in the room, had her eyelashes tremble slightly before she slowly opened her eyes, revealing a pair of beautiful, large golden eyes that looked like Lucian's.
Pure and clear, her eyes were filled with the innocence and confusion of a newborn infant as they reflected the figures of the three people standing before her.
Stelle opened her mouth as if she wanted to make a sound, but she ultimately only released a faint breath, looking like a chick that had just broken out of its shell, curious about the world yet slightly uneasy.
Kafka looked at the girl before her, and a motherly smile appeared on her face.
"Nice! Now we just gotta get Stelle on the Astral Express next!" Silver Wolf said with a faint smile, but then she frowned slightly. "But Elio's script failed, so how are we even supposed to get Stelle onto the Astral Express now?"
Kafka looked toward Lucian and revealed a faint smile.
"If Herta's VIP guest speaks up, I imagine the Naless won't refuse, right, Lucian?"
At her words, Lucian simply shrugged.
"Well, getting her onto the Astral Express isn't that hard, honestly."
Lucian didn't consider such a matter troubleso at all—in fact, even if he said he wanted to board the Astral Express himself, it would probably be extrely easy.
"Man, I've never felt a mission could be this easy... Is this what it feels like to just ride soone's coattails?"
Silver Wolf let out an astonished sigh, feeling that with Lucian helping them, carrying out missions felt less like work and more like going on a picnic, as everything seed almost too easy and enjoyable.
"By the way, I want to talk to Stelle for a mont, then we can leave."
Kafka looked at Stelle, a trace of softness flashing through her violet eyes as she slowly extended a hand, seemingly intending to pat Stelle's head.
"Stelle—"
Kafka had only just begun to speak, her voice gentle and unhurried, when Lucian suddenly made his move.
Standing behind Kafka and Silver Wolf, Lucian casually raised his hands and gave each of them a light push on the shoulder, as though he were rely brushing away two tiny flies.
In the very next instant, both won were teleported away, vanishing from the spot without a trace.
"My bad, Kafka, but I'm gonna teach Stelle sothing first..."
Lucian smiled faintly and muttered under his breath as he glanced at the still utterly clueless, gray-haired girl before him.
===
[A bonus chapter for every 300 Power Stones.]
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