Book 10: Chapter 11: Captured

“What?” Robin was startled to hear there were hidden creatures nearby. Like Qin Lun, her first thought was that the group had no weapons. However, she was used to leading teams in battle and had strong crisis management skills, so she quickly came up with several backup plans.

This was where she was better than Qin Lun. It wasn’t that Qin Lun couldn’t handle crises. He just had no concept of teamwork. Even without personal danger, he would consider using others as pawns to gain greater benefits…

Although Qin Lun understood that this world required unity, he had become so accustomed to his ways that it was second nature. Given time to plan slowly was one thing, but if something happened suddenly, he could only act according to his own methods. He knew this, which was why he informed Robin first instead of taking command himself.

“Balin, break through towards me, don’t hesitate!” Numerous thoughts flashed through Robin’s mind and vanished just as quickly. Listening to Qin Lun’s real-time feedback, she wasted no time and connected telepathy to Balin, who was being attacked by four people.

Balin received Robin’s communication and felt slightly surprised. However, he did not hesitate. His Bingren Mecha emitted a layer of golden light and flames, reaching maximum speed as he charged towards Robin.

Balin was originally the leader of a medium-sized team of over fifty people called “Sha Lin” in the Order Front. He often led teams on missions himself, so when he heard Robin’s serious tone, he knew something had gone wrong.

“Robin, be careful!” The other three who were attacking Balin didn’t know what was happening. They shouted a warning and chased from the other three directions, but they trusted Robin greatly and believed she could hold the opponent.

However, to everyone’s surprise, Robin’s movements slowed down at that moment, allowing Balin to narrowly break through the interception. The other three felt slightly puzzled, but they didn’t stop, speeding up their pursuit. Bright trails of light and flames streaked across the Star Void.

“What’s going on?” Complaints came from several Apostles who were watching the battle. They had already withdrawn from the fight and were in a neutral position. They would praise their companions in battle for impressive performances, but if mistakes occurred, they would also complain.

Due to the sudden change just now, the fighters were now in a chase situation, and the battle area gradually moved away from here. They now activated their mechas, planning to leave their original observation spots.

“Be careful, there are cosmic creatures in the asteroid belt behind you. Accelerate away slowly. Vice Leader Qin Lun will cover you…” Just as everyone started moving, Robin’s warning finally sounded in their Soul Sigils.

Hearing the warning, the spectators were all shocked and immediately understood Robin’s previous actions. However, they were elite Apostles after all and didn’t panic. While carefully accelerating, they quickly exchanged telepathic messages.

“Could it be Jannamer?”

“No, the Gith monitor Jannamer very effectively. They wouldn’t let their mortal enemy get this close without knowing. Otherwise, this battle wouldn’t need to be fought!”

“Could it be Gith monitoring equipment?”

“Impossible! Why would the Gith need to hide other monitoring devices from us? They could just tell us!”

“Hmm, we’re still too inexperienced in space combat. We can’t leave all security to the Gith. If this were on the ground, we wouldn’t make such a mistake. We must summarize this later!”

Because of the unexpected situation, everyone completely opened up their telepathy this time. Listening to the discussions coming through the Soul Sigil channel, Qin Lun gained a new understanding of these people’s thick nerves. Fortunately, although these people complained, they still concealed it well on the surface. They neither looked around randomly nor activated high-power detection equipment, avoiding arousing suspicion from those red dots in the asteroid belt.

But Qin Lun, who was the only one able to observe the hidden red dots, became even more silent now, even feeling a slowly growing excitement inside. The weapons these Apostles were currently using were all laser guns. Although they could simulate various beam weapon effects, they actually had no real damaging power.

However, Apostles were different from ordinary Gith pilots after all. They had abilities obtained through Star Void replacement, and a few of them still possessed offensive capabilities.

For example: Bobby’s biological particle state. The arc magnetic vibration knife in his hands was filled with ordinary batteries, so its power wasn’t high and couldn’t break through companions’ AP fields by itself, but with the help of biological particle state, it became possible.

Qin Lun was the same. The two Gauss pellet guns in his hands only had one type of soft-core bullet similar to playdough, but he had another way to make the Gauss pellet guns cause damage.

“Watch out!” Qin Lun, who had been keeping silent, suddenly flashed his eyes and shouted loudly to everyone. At the same time, the disguised small asteroid suddenly exploded, with already hardened Holy Thorns scattering in all directions like bullets. A silver-gray Bingren Mecha appeared from within the asteroid.

As soon as it appeared, the Bingren emitted silver light and flames, spinning sharply in the air to stop abruptly, leveling two large-caliber short-barrel Gauss guns.

At the instant Qin Lun shouted his warning, behind Sawa, Bobby, Dean, and Frank, more than ten small asteroids bloomed like flower buds opening, with over a dozen black shadows shooting towards the four like lightning. Clearly, the cosmic creatures hiding behind them weren’t willing to let their prey escape and decisively launched a sneak attack.

At the same time, the four who received the warning instantly lit up with light and flames on their Bingren, accelerating to escape first. The Apostles’ swift reactions clearly surprised those black shadows, as their lightning-fast pounces all missed.

“What are these things?” At the moment these black shadows missed their attacks, Robin and others also boosted their Bingren’s detection equipment to maximum power, clearly seeing the “assailants” before them.

These cosmic creatures hidden in the asteroid belt were larger than the sixty-meter-tall Bingren Mecha by a full circle. However, while Bingren were humanoid mechas, these things somewhat resembled arthropods, looking quite like spiders. They had four pairs of appendages on both sides of their bodies, with a pair of ferocious fangs at the front of their heads, though there was no clear distinction between head and thorax.

They had asteroid clusters attached to their bodies. If they curled up and tightened their appendages, they would be practically indistinguishable from small asteroids, no wonder everyone had overlooked their presence before.

After their pounces missed, these creatures clearly weren’t willing to give up. Several of them bulged their abdomens, their mouth fangs separating left and right, spitting out globs of liquid shimmering with dark green fluorescence. Meanwhile, several others flipped 180 degrees in the void, pointing their large tails towards the four.

That liquid shimmering with dark green fluorescence, under powerful ejection, had speed comparable to the bullets from Qin Lun’s Gauss guns. Because the distance was too close, although Frank and the other three had accelerated, they still got sprayed all over.

What surprised everyone present was that the AP fields, already boosted to maximum power, actually melted rapidly like butter under this liquid’s splashing.

Frank, who was at the very back, had several APB field plates on the back of his Bingren Mecha that looked like boiling water, bubbling with countless bubbles. It was worth noting that these APB field plates weren’t just force field radiation panels—they were defensive armor made of high-density composite materials themselves.

But now, those four had no mood to notice how much damage their Bingren had sustained. Just as the other cosmic creatures turned their bodies around, pointing their large tails at them, all four Apostles felt a sense of dread, as if something extremely bad was about to happen.

However, at this moment, the cover Qin Lun provided them also arrived. Two rubber bullets dragging long trails drew two beautiful arcs in the void, accurately hitting two cosmic creatures that had raised their rear ends high and opened wide.

The two creatures that got attacked suddenly convulsed as if struck by lightning, their mouth fangs trembling rapidly. If sound could travel in the cosmic vacuum, everyone would probably be able to hear their painful cries by now.

But Qin Lun’s support ended here. Besides these two unlucky cosmic creatures, the other large “spiders” with wide-open rear ends had already spat out globs of liquid shimmering with dark green fluorescence.

Frank and the other three knew something was wrong and accelerated to flee, but their AP fields were mostly damaged now, and because the enemy’s attack was too dense, some liquid still stuck to their mechas.

Different from the previous venom with strong corrosive ability, this liquid seemed to have strong viscosity. This liquid quickly solidified in the void, becoming dark green threads, one end sticking to the four’s mechas, the other end connected to the cosmic creatures’ rear ends.

Frank and the other three quickly discovered this liquid had no actual damaging power, but their mechas’ speed was visibly decreasing rapidly.

Looking back, they saw that although those dark green threads were stretched long and thin, they never broke. Like extremely resilient steel wires, they firmly pulled on the Bingren, incidentally dragging the opposing large “spiders” into flailing their appendages and tumbling in the vacuum.

But this phenomenon was fleeting. Seeing their companions had “caught” the prey, all the cosmic creatures turned their bodies around in the same rhythm, starting to raise their rear ends—clearly they wanted to add several more layers of insurance to prevent the prey from escaping.

During this period, two more large “spiders” were attacked by Qin Lun, joining the previous two in angrily charging towards him. The other large “spiders” completely ignored Qin Lun’s harassment, spitting out that viscous “spider silk” again, thoroughly pulling Frank and the other three.

All four Apostles felt their hearts sink simultaneously. As more than three large “spiders” joined each tug-of-war, the Bingren finally lost control, being pulled back repeatedly, flying towards the asteroid belt where the cosmic creatures originally resided.

Bobby glanced into the distance—Robin and others were rushing over, but there was still some distance. The recent incident actually hadn’t taken much time at all, so currently they could only rely on themselves.

“Of all people, it had to be these four who withdrew from battle, all First-Rank Apostles!” Bobby’s expression turned somewhat ugly, his small face wrinkling up dryly. Although the difference between Second Order and First-Rank became smaller when piloting Bingren, everyone currently had no weapons, and Second-Order Apostles clearly could replace more abilities than First-Rank ones.

“Whatever, consider it making up for previous mistakes!” Bobby sighed sadly. Under everyone’s watchful eyes, his entire mecha suddenly lit up with far greater light and flames than before, as if a dazzling small sun had suddenly appeared in the cosmic Star Void.