The brief peace was like the stillness before a storm, weighing heavily on everyone’s hearts.
The Antimatter Legion’s first wave had been repelled, but everyone knew that was only the beginning.
The true fear came from the unknown, stronger enemies yet to come.
One year later.
Herta was twenty-one.
The warning system’s shriek once again tore through the stars, this time far more piercing than before.
The star chart was completely swallowed by a surging tide of crimson representing death.
The Antimatter Legion’s vanguard—the true vanguard force—had arrived.
Its scale was like a locust swarm that blotted out the sky, dozens of times larger than the last.
And among the dense cluster of Antimatter soldiers and war mechs, a massive figure like a moving mountain slowly revealed its vicious outline, radiating a terror that made the soul tremble—a Doomsday Beast.
It was the embodiment of destruction, a war beast under Nanook’s command.
Its enormous body seemed to be made of pure destructive energy and twisted metal, dark red energy veins writhing and bulging across its surface.
Wherever it passed, space itself twisted.
Small escort ships were easily torn apart by its residual energy waves, like paper toys.
Blue and its remaining defensive forces fell into utter despair.
Orbital defense platforms were reduced to cosmic dust by a single energy breath from the Doomsday Beast.
The surviving fleets were like candles in a storm within the enemy’s tide, teetering on the edge of collapse.
Inside the Seeker, alarms, explosions, and the groans of structural stress overload mixed together.
Herta stood at the main console, her expression more solemn than ever before.
On the holographic projection before her, the Doomsday Beast’s energy readings were off the charts.
Its shield strength and structural stability far exceeded any model she had previously built.
“Conventional weapons ineffective.
Energy weapons deflected.
Proton warheads cannot penetrate its outer armor.”
“Third and Fifth Combined Fleets…
completely annihilated.”
“Blue’s equatorial defense line breached.
Ground under direct attack.”
Bad news poured in like snowflakes.
Herta’s brain was working at full speed, trying to find a weakness in this monster, any possibility of counterattack.
She had made some theoretical progress—she had identified a possible frequency resonance in its energy core—but turning theory into actual attack required time, required a vessel to carry her theory, required…
a miracle.
And right now, what was most lacking was time.
The Doomsday Beast was steadily approaching the Seeker and the fragile Blue behind it.
At this moment of suffocating despair, that familiar figure moved again.
Baida had been clinging to Herta’s side, her small hand gripping Herta’s clothes, her body trembling slightly from fear.
She looked at the nightmare beast outside the observation window, at the starships being easily destroyed, and listened to the cries and desperate shouts from her home on the communication channel.
An emotion stronger than fear surged in her simple, pure heart—protect Herta, protect this “home” she shared with Herta.
Her gaze bypassed the chaotic main control room, pierced through the porthole, and landed deep in the dock, on the massive, incomplete shadow standing silently—the Wanderer mech.
It was a giant humanoid decisive-battle weapon designed by Herta based on her cutting-edge theories of space-time jumps and heavy particle armament.
The concept was ahead of its time, and the blueprints were works of art.
However, the required material strength, energy conduction efficiency, and, most critically, the pilot neural connection system capable of withstanding massive data flow and physical loads, had become insurmountable technological barriers.
It was only a huge unfinished frame, a steel shell many privately mocked as “the genius’s delusion.”
Baida let go of Herta’s clothes.
She pointed at the massive shadow in the dock.
Her voice was not loud, but it cut through the alarm’s chaos with unusual clarity, carrying an unshakable certainty:
“I think it can work.”
Four simple words, yet they made the entire main control room fall silent for a moment.
Everyone looked at Baida like she was insane.
“What did she say?”
“The Wanderer?
That half-finished thing?”
“Does she know that thing can’t even stand?!”
“Crazy.
Absolutely crazy.”
Herta also whipped her head around to look at Baida, her eyes filled with shock and a trace of something she herself couldn’t understand.
“Baida!
Don’t be ridiculous!
That’s not a toy!” Herta shouted, trying to stop her.
She knew the Wanderer’s theoretical potential, but she was also acutely aware of its practical impossibility.
Sending Baida in there was suicide.
But Baida didn’t listen.
Like an arrow released from a bow, she dashed out of the main control room, relying on the speed from [Strength Enhancement] to race through the shaking corridors, heading straight for the Wanderer in the dock.
“Stop her!” Herta shouted into the communicator, a hint of panic in her voice that she herself hadn’t noticed.
Several nearby crew members and security personnel tried to block her, but Baida moved like a nimble fish, easily dodging them. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
She even pushed open a heavy bulkhead door that had warped and jammed from the explosion with her bare hands.
She reached the foot of the Wanderer.
The massive steel giant loomed over her like a mountain.
The cockpit entrance was at chest height.
The door wasn’t even fully closed, exposing thick cables and uninstalled cushioning devices.
Baida didn’t hesitate.
She grabbed the external maintenance ladder—which to her was like a cliff—and climbed up with astonishing agility, hand over hand, like a small white dot, throwing herself into the dark, unfinished cockpit entrance.
“Baida!
Come back!” Herta’s voice came through the external speakers, carrying unprecedented urgency.
Baida crawled into the cockpit.
It was empty inside.
No comfortable seat.
No complex control levers.
No panoramic screens.
Only cold metal framework, exposed wiring bundles, and a rough metal platform in the center that should have connected to a neural suit but hadn’t been installed.
She walked up to the platform, reached out with those small, fair hands—the hands that had kneaded Play-Doh, pieced together robots, and were now about to control a steel god—and gently pressed them against the cold, rough control interface.
She closed her eyes, shutting out all the noise from outside, Herta’s shouts, and the threat of doom.
Her consciousness sank into emptiness, leaving only one pure, overbearing thought, branded into her soul like a scar:
“I reckon,” she murmured softly, her voice echoing in the empty cockpit, “this big guy should move now.
Should go fight.”
HUM—!!!
An invisible, surging force, as if originating from the universe’s primordial essence, erupted with Baida at its center.
The Wanderer’s dim eye monitors suddenly burst into a supernova-bright white light.
Between the gaps in its white and black armor, molten-like energy surged and flowed, emitting a low, rumbling roar like an ancient beast awakening.
“BOOM!!!”
The massive steel body moved.
It stood up with an agility and coordination that completely defied its cumbersome appearance, almost violating physical laws.
Its huge metal feet slammed onto the dock deck, causing violent tremors.
It reached out its giant hand and grabbed the massive weapon lying on a nearby platform—a heavy particle ship-cleaving blade designed by Herta, theoretically powerful but never battle-tested, crackling with unstable energy arcs.
“Impossible!!” Everyone in the dock who saw this cried out in shock.
“The energy core hasn’t been activated!”
“The transmission system isn’t connected!”
“Neural link is zero!
How…
how is it moving?!”
In the main control room, Herta stared at the monitor screen showing the steel giant standing tall, its eyes glowing with that familiar yet unfamiliar white light.
She felt her heart being squeezed by an invisible hand.
Shock.
Disbelief.
But more than that, a fear that made it almost impossible to breathe, and…
heartache.
The Wanderer, this creation that had carried her highest aspirations yet remained unrealizable, was now forcibly “brought to life” in BUG-like form under her foolish sister’s unreasonable [I Reckon].
The steel giant took a step, each one shaking the earth and sky.
It charged out of the dock like a meteor tearing through darkness, fearlessly meeting the Doomsday Beast that radiated the very essence of destruction.
A brutal and spectacular battle of mech versus colossal beast erupted in the cold vacuum of space.
The Doomsday Beast let out a roar that could shatter asteroids, its dark red destructive energy gushing forth like a flood.
The Wanderer displayed an agility completely at odds with its massive frame.
Baida’s piloting had no technique, no training, relying purely on wild instinct and the superhuman reflexes from [Strength Enhancement].
She rolled the mech into a clumsy yet effective dodge, avoiding the deadly energy breath, then counterattacked with a slash.
The heavy particle blade, with a shrill energy shriek, hacked violently into the Doomsday Beast’s leg joint.
Sparks flew.
Shockwaves of energy annihilation rippled outward.
“ROAR!!” The Doomsday Beast, enraged, swept its massive tail like a mountain range.
The Wanderer ducked low, narrowly avoiding the strike, while its shoulder-mounted auxiliary cannons—also “I Reckon”ed into existence by Baida—opened fire fiercely, pounding into the Doomsday Beast’s relatively vulnerable abdomen.
No sophisticated tactics.
No flashy moves.
Only the most primitive, most savage collision of power, and Baida’s combat instinct that was almost premonitory, always seizing on the enemy’s weaknesses.
“Left side!
Watch out for its claws!” Herta couldn’t help shouting in the main control room, though she knew Baida couldn’t hear her.
“Energy readings dropping!
Attack its energy core!
In the chest area!” She quickly analyzed the data, trying to provide assistance, but the Wanderer on the battlefield seemed to have already seen through everything.
The battle was brutal.
The Wanderer’s armor twisted and flaked under the Doomsday Beast’s terrifying power, exposing internal structures flickering with unstable sparks.
Damage rate quickly exceeded 40%, then 50%…
Finally, when the mech’s damage exceeded 60%, one arm nearly crippled, and the energy core alarms wailing continuously, the Wanderer let out its final roar.
Using its last strength, it launched its massive body like a projectile, ignoring the Doomsday Beast’s frenzied attacks.
It drove the already cracked heavy particle blade, along with all the mech’s remaining energy, deep into the Doomsday Beast’s chest core, the source of its destructive radiance.
“BOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!”
An unprecedented explosion bloomed in the stars, like a supernova.
The blinding light temporarily blinded all observation equipment.
A violent energy storm swept in all directions, instantly vaporizing nearby small enemy ships.
The light gradually faded.
The Doomsday Beast’s massive body shattered piece by piece from its core, ultimately turning into cosmic dust.
And the Wanderer, only a half-destroyed torso and head remaining, floated silently at the center of the explosion, like a warrior who had fought to exhaustion, all its light extinguished.
Rescue shuttles risked flying into the still-unsettled energy currents.
When they finally cut through the severely damaged, nearly melted cockpit door, they saw a heartbreaking sight.
Baida’s small body was pinned in the center by deformed metal structure.
Several broken control levers had pierced through her body and thigh like blades.
Blood stained her torn pilot suit.
Her face was deathly pale, her breathing so faint it was barely perceptible.
But at the corner of her mouth was a faint, almost imperceptible curve of relief, as if she had completed an important mission.
“Quick!
Medical team!” The rescuers’ voices cracked with tears.
After Baida was rushed into the Seeker’s medical bay and given the most thorough examination, an even crueler truth was laid before Herta.
Baida’s body had suffered severe physical trauma, but the ship’s medical technology could sustain her.
However, medical scans showed that deep within her life signs, a cold, decaying, dark red energy was entwined—the energy erosion containing the Doomsday Beast’s original destructive will, inflicted just before its death.
This energy was like the most vicious curse, slowly and steadily dissolving her vitality.
It could not be removed, neutralized, or cured.
It was an incurable condition that current medicine could not explain or treat.
Her life had entered an irreversible countdown.
In the ward, only the ticking of instruments remained.
Herta stood by the bed, looking at her sister lying there, covered in tubes, face pale, as if she might shatter at the slightest touch.
This foolish sister who always wore a silly smile, who warmed her like a little sun, who had saved her with miracles time and again in her most desperate moments…
Herta, always calm, even cold, felt as if a piece of her heart had been forcibly torn away.
A fear she had never felt before, a fear of “loss,” flooded over her like the cold vacuum of space.
Tears, without warning, rolled from her eyes that could see through the universe’s mysteries.
One drop.
Two drops.
They fell onto the cold metal floor, shattering the rational shell she had always used to protect herself.
She reached out, trembling, and gently took Baida’s small hand—the one without the IV, still ice cold.
“…Fool…” Her voice choked, thick with tears.
“Who told you…
who told you to go…
you…
idiot…”
Baida seemed to sense something.
Her long lashes trembled, and she slowly opened her eyes.
Her gaze was a bit unfocused, but when she saw Herta by the bed, especially the tear tracks on her face, she seemed to freeze for a moment.
Then, weakly, she pulled at the corners of her mouth, revealing a smile as pure as when they were children, yet deathly pale.
She struggled to lift her other hand, the one not being held.
The movement was slow and difficult.
Finally, gently, with the last of her strength, she squeezed Herta’s hand back.
Then, as she had done as a child seeking comfort, she lightly hugged Herta’s arm and pressed her cheek against it.
Her voice was as faint as a whisper, yet it reached Herta’s ears clearly:
“Herta…
don’t cry…”
“Protect…
Herta…”
“Big sister…
is here…”
At that moment, Herta could no longer hold back.
Tears poured out like a broken dam.
She bent down, pressing her forehead against Baida’s cold hand, her shoulders trembling slightly.
In this world of rationality, data, and cosmic laws, the genius girl Herta, for the first time, shed helpless and sorrowful tears for her foolish older sister.
And Baida, smiling weakly, feeling her sister’s warmth and tears, used the last of her strength to gently, over and over, pat the back of Herta’s hand, just as she had done countless times before when soothing her.
Inside the cold medical bay, filled with the scent of medicine and the shadow of despair, only the sisters’ tightly clasped hands passed on a warmth that transcended life and death—a warmth that no destructive will could erode.