Chapter 671: Hello 19 (Finale)

The Time Black Water below had descended into a complete frenzy. Even from several thousand meters up, the endless chanting of “Hello,” “Hello,” reached the ears of Moira Lynch and the others, a maddening sound that left them agitated and irritable.

Seeing this, Ellers decisively activated the level-three protective measures, blocking out the maddening sound.

Ellers’s expression was grave, as were the faces of the three Marshals, including Yarrow.

Silence fell within the spaceship. After an unknown amount of time, Ellers’s voice broke the quiet, his words carrying an immense weight:

“I prepared for the worst-case scenario before we came, but this planet’s condition is even more dire than I anticipated.”

Ellers couldn’t fathom how the creatures living on this planet had managed to get it into such a state.

Dustin Foster watched the screen, a flash of savagery in his eyes. “When this is over, I will bring every creature on this planet responsible for this before The Interstellar Federation’s military tribunal. Neither of you are to interfere.”

Dustin’s words weren’t a suggestion; they were a warning.

As someone who had clawed his way up from Garbage Star to the rank of Federation Marshal, Dustin Foster valued planetary environmental protection more than anyone.

After all, his own home planet had once been polluted by a group of people and turned into a garbage star.

In the end, after doing their dirty work, those people had simply dusted off their hands and left as if it had nothing to do with them, leaving only Dustin and his people to face a world that had become a garbage star.

When he finished, neither Jeanette Norris nor Yarrow spoke, tacitly agreeing to Dustin’s declaration.

Just then, Moira Lynch, who had recovered from the pain of severing her spirit silk, spoke up. “Do you know of any races that live underground?”

“There are many races that live underground,” Jeanette Norris said. “Moles and rabbits, for example. They are races that live underground year-round.”

Shane Rhodes steadied Moira. “Moira, why do you ask?”

Moira shook her head. “When I was probing just now, I sensed what felt like living people beneath the Time Black Water. Not the creatures we’re seeing now, but human-like beings. This Time Black Water is also being discharged by them from underground.”

“And that monster in the water,” she added, “they bred it. They have over a dozen such monsters, spread across every corner of this planet.”

She had inadvertently discovered this last part via the Heavenly Eye outside.

After hearing Moira’s words, the expressions of Ellers and the three Marshals all turned grim.

“If what you’re saying is true, then… could they be replicants?”

“Replicants? You mean clones?”

Hearing the term “replicants,” Moira and the others’ first thought was of clones.

However, Yarrow shook his head. “Replicants and clones are different.”

Seeing that Moira and her group still looked confused, Yarrow explained, “This all happened a very long time ago. It’s normal for you not to know about it.”

“Then give us the short version.”

Moira Lynch, Shane Rhodes, Kai York, and Hugh Finch all turned to him with looks of eager curiosity, waiting for his explanation.

At this, Yarrow explained with a sigh of resignation, “Replication is an ability. In all of recorded history, this ability has only appeared once. The person who awakened it was a young genius.”

“After discovering his ability, his ambition began to swell uncontrollably. He wanted to build a nation that belonged only to him. So, he used every means at his disposal to replicate all of The Federation’s top scientists, ministers, and celebrities, intending to use them to realize his ambitions.”

“And then he lost control?” Moira asked.

By this point, Patience had already found some records of the incident on the Astranet based on Yarrow’s account, though they were mostly unofficial histories and fragmented snippets.

But even from those fragments, it was clear that the young man had failed because his replicants had gotten out of control.

Yarrow nodded. “You guessed right. The replicants did indeed get out of control.”

“The replicated people would obey his commands, but they also had their own thoughts. They weren’t willing to spend their entire lives as replicants who could never see the light of day.”

“Some replicants even killed their original counterparts to take over their identities and lives. When this was later exposed, all the replicants, including the young genius, were sentenced to death.”

“But on the day before the execution, the young genius vanished, along with a large number of replicants.”

At this, Jeanette Norris continued, “The Federation issued a warrant for the arrest of those replicants, but they vanished without a trace, as if they had simply evaporated. If your senses weren’t mistaken just now, the people living beneath this planet’s surface must be them.”

“Then how can you be so sure?” Shane Rhodes asked curiously.

“We don’t need to be sure.” Dustin Foster’s tone was ice-cold. “Whether they are or not, they deserve to die.”

‘If they aren’t replicants, they deserve to die for polluting this planet to such an extent. If they *are* replicants, then they deserve to die even more.’

Hearing him say that, Moira thought, ‘At least the ones on the surface are safe now.’

‘She knew that in The Federation, the unjustified, large-scale destruction and pollution of a habitable, resource-rich planet with a complete ecosystem was a capital crime. Life imprisonment would be getting off easy.’

‘As for the people below, she swore she hadn’t wrongfully accused them.’

Because of Moira’s discovery, the purification operation turned into an extermination mission.

During this time, Moira and her group remained on the spaceship until the game ended.

The dispassionate voice sounded in their ears once more:

[Congratulations on completing the mission, Player Moira Lynch, Player Shane Rhodes, Player Kai York, and Player Hugh Finch. I will now fulfill my promise. The environment on Caelus will return to normal within one month. Do you choose to leave now?]

Hearing the emotionless voice, Moira and the others all breathed a sigh of relief in unison, feeling as though a great weight had finally been lifted from their shoulders.

As for returning, they unanimously chose “No.” After all, their quarantine period wasn’t over yet. What if they went back and caused secondary contamination?

However, Moira’s group immediately sent the good news back to Caelus so they could start preparing.

With this major burden lifted from their minds, the group instantly felt an indescribable sense of ease wash over them.

“Moira,” Kai York sidled up and said conspiratorially, “we just got a message from Caelus. To commend our contributions, they’re going to record our deeds and put them in textbooks. They’re even going to erect statues of us!”

“Putting it in textbooks is fine, but let’s skip the statues.”

Moira rejected the idea of being able to see a statue of herself whenever she walked down the street.

‘Just thinking about it was horrifying.’