Chapter 149: When You Hold a Weapon, You Always Want to Pull the Trigger

You were still entirely unaware of the tense, life-or-death standoff unfolding on Wis’adel’s end.

Ever since you couldn’t resist the urge to ping her custom-made tracker three times a day—and subsequently got caught red-handed—she had suffered a complete meltdown, cursing you out for an entire week straight. Behind your back, the furious Sarkaz had secretly pried a standard Oripathy monitoring bracelet off a random Rhodes Island Operator and cruelly discarded the bespoke, high-tech one you had gifted her.

Look, whether someone truly cares about you can always be seen in the little details.

If that custom bracelet had been given to her by Theresa, would she still be throwing such a massive temper tantrum over a trivial privacy invasion?

Huh? She probably would. Never mind, then. Pretend you didn’t think that.

Fortunately, the standard-issue bracelet she snatched also had a backdoor surveillance feed built into it. (^.^)

The concealment protocols weren’t quite as strong as your custom model, however. To avoid being detected and subjected to another week of verbal abuse, you mostly restricted yourself to checking her basic telemetry—blood oxygen levels, heart rate, and active Originium cell density. That was the routine, right up until today, when you finally had a spare moment to carefully check in on your beloved, free-range, top-tier meta carry.

At first glance at the visual feed, you thought Wis’adel’s summer swimsuit skin had been cursed by some deranged fan artist.

Are you there, artist? Why does our little Wis’adel’s swimsuit outfit look neither seductive nor dashing, but instead features a twisted, cursed expression that rivals Ho’olheyak on a bad day?

Looking closer, the reality of the situation snapped into focus. She was in the middle of a brutal fight.

The camera perspective shook violently. The owner of the bracelet raised a hand, forcefully wiping a smear of fresh blood from her cheek. Intermittent blue error screens flashed across your monitor, and the environmental detection indicators skyrocketed. The neural damage she had just sustained had briefly shattered the safety threshold.

But just as that lethal damage was about to take root in her nervous system, a faint, warm golden light pulsed from her collar, forcefully suppressing the erratic biological fluctuations back into the green zone.

Clearly, Wis’adel’s stable vital signs weren’t the result of her being evenly matched with whatever monstrosity was lurking in the sea. She was only surviving because she was carrying the trump card you gave her—a device that was currently working overtime to save her life.

A violent flash of crimson surged beneath the surface of the ocean. Without a second of hesitation, Wis’adel dropped to one knee. Six Nachzehrer units flickered into existence simultaneously along her heavy gun mount. Deafening, blood-colored explosions ripped across the sea level, churning the water into a miniature tsunami of steam and gore.

A pained, haunting melody echoed from the entity beneath the waves. The singing sounded distinctly off-key, but the sheer kinetic force of the blast forced the creature to dive back into the murky depths.

“Go back!” Wis’adel screamed at the churning water, her voice raw. “Get back! You are not allowed to come ashore!”

The crimson shadow in the water darted away into the distance, and Wis’adel broke into a sprint, pursuing it relentlessly along the coastline.

Wait, little Wis’adel, exactly who are you fighting?

You stared incredulously at the red shadow swimming through the feed. The good news was that Skadi the Corrupting Heart wasn’t actually that weak. The bad news was that Skadi would never sing that horribly off-key!

Was she seriously relying on that tiny life-saving device—an item you weren’t even sure had enough charges left—to pick a fight with an abyssal god?

You instinctively reached for the voice command console to order her immediate retreat. Even though you had no idea how this bizarre Skadi lookalike had offended Wis’adel, it was painfully obvious that the angry mercenary was playing the role of a mantis trying to stop a speeding armored vehicle.

Suddenly, the Wis’adel in the video feed raised her hand mid-sprint, pressing the tactical communicator hanging by her ear. A split second later, your personal terminal began to ring.

That “I’m back” message you had sent earlier was a one-click broadcast on the official Rhodes Island dedicated channel. The encrypted, rogue frequency you shared exclusively with Wis’adel couldn’t receive it.

Opening the private channel, you were instantly greeted by a cascading waterfall of dark red [Channel Disconnected] notifications. Starting from the third day after you left, she had been desperately trying to contact you.

You scrolled down line by line. For a long moment, you couldn’t even reach the bottom of the log. Every single call had gone unanswered, timing out and disconnecting in less than ten seconds.

“Doctor, I [Sarkaz profanity] you!” Wis’adel sneered through the comms, accelerating her pace as she locked her sights onto the beautiful, terrifying figure gliding through the ocean.

You hesitated, your fingers hovering over the transmission button. A complex knot of emotions tightened in your chest.

She really was a reckless gambler. What if that small device had rusted from years of disuse? What if it was only a single-use item?

Pressing two fingers against your temple, you let out a soft sigh, smiled, and spoke directly to PRTS. “Welcome ba—”

Thousands of miles away, on that desolate coastline, the weather abruptly shattered. In the midst of a stormy, overcast dusk, magnificent, blinding auroras that had no right existing in this dimension suddenly ignited across the sky.

Wis’adel instinctively skidded to a halt, looking out over the sea level. At the very edge of her vision, where the churning water met the horizon, a colossal, unbelievably clear metallic mirage materialized out of thin air.

Overlapping parallel worlds began to forcefully merge. The sheer weight of reality tearing through the dark clouds obliterated the fake sky. The core energy of the orbital spectacle blotted out the sun, burning brighter than a dying star. It was the ultimate signature of its creator’s indelible achievement—melting the scorching sun into liquid gold that flowed through ten thousand ravines.

You slowly withdrew your hand from the console, finishing the second half of your sentence with a calm, infuriating smile. “—back to Rhodes Island. Doctor, you can’t rest yet~”

The activation sequence terminated instantly. The mirage vanished. You were just trying to scare the creature off.

If that weapon had actually fired, even at its absolute minimum power setting, it wouldn’t just erase the threat. It would erase Iberia off the map, taking your beloved little Wis’adel with it. You really had to praise your past self for maxing out the precision tree in manufacturing technology; the operational accuracy required to abort that sequence was like using a heavy broadsword for microscopic woodcarving.

“Hello? Why are there so many missed calls from you? Did you miss me that much after just a few days?”

Estimating that Wis’adel’s adrenaline had spiked and crashed enough to leave her somewhat coherent, you finally connected to her headset, leaning back in your chair and pretending to know absolutely nothing.

“Doctor, you [Sarkaz profanity] me [Sarkaz profanity]!”

Right on cue. The moment the audio linked, a crisp, breathless string of the foulest language known to Terra assaulted your eardrums. Wis’adel didn’t bother explaining the apocalyptic lightshow or the abyssal monster. It was as if a dam had burst, and she was venting a week’s worth of pure, unadulterated stress by verbally attacking you from head to toe.

She insulted everything from your fundamentally terrible personality to your absolute garbage taste of dipping dumplings in chili oil.

“So, what exactly happened out there?” you asked mildly. For a second, you genuinely couldn’t tell if you wanted to hear her explanation or not.

Fortunately, you were overthinking it. After a brief, heavy silence, Wis’adel didn’t even mention the near-death experience she had just survived. “Why the hell didn’t you answer my comms?! You haven’t even paid my wages yet, forcing me to take on garbage field missions and pay out of my own pocket just to act as a bodyguard for some fragile, arrogant idiot!”

She didn’t say a single word about her own dashed expectations or the sheer terror of being ignored. For a moment, you didn’t know whether to feel a pang of genuine guilt or immense relief.

“Is that all? I’ll immediately transfer the wages for Adnachiel’s field work to your account. It’s fine, he doesn’t have anywhere to spend his money anyway…” You paused, letting a hint of warmth bleed into your normally flat tone. “—You silly thing. Remember to come back in a few days. I’ll give you a proper physical examination.”

Within 0.01 seconds, you severed the connection, perfectly blocking out the impending, devastating roar of the Sarkaz mercenary on the other end.

Watch closely, PRTS. This is how [Tactical Planning: ■■] is truly used!

Forcibly suppressing the bad habit of keeping the surveillance feed open to watch her reaction, you dragged your attention back to the towering stack of official business on your desk.

“Rhodes Island Annual Leave Team Building Project Plan.”

Why else did people say that Terra was a place of total madness? On one hand, apocalyptic crises were erupting in every single nation, with world-ending disasters ready to topple civilization at any given moment. On the other hand, management still expected everyone to pack their bags and head to Siesta to attend the Obsidian Festival.

If you went to Siesta for summer vacation first, and then immediately hopped over to Dossoles for your annual leave, would Kal’tsit understand?

You thought about the old feline’s inevitable lecture and immediately decided against asking for permission. Kal’tsit wasn’t going anyway. It would be infinitely easier to just forge some paperwork, impersonate a regular Operator, and sneak out!

You had just drained Adnachiel’s field subsidy to pay off Wis’adel’s wages, so it was only fair to spare the poor sniper any further suffering.

Perfect. I’ll just steal Steward’s annual leave identity instead!

[Rhodes’s Note: “Super Big Cup” is Chinese gaming community slang used to describe something of the highest tier or quality. In gacha games, it refers to a “T0” or incredibly overpowered, meta-defining character.]

[Rhodes’s Note:

Enjoying the operation so far, Doctor?

(This daily grind literally pays the landship’s rent!