The Seeker sailed through the quiet sea of stars for several years, like a lone boat drifting in the boundless ocean of knowledge.
During this time, Herta’s wisdom grew at an astonishing rate.
Her connection with Nous grew closer, and her understanding of the universe’s laws deepened.
And Baida continued to play her role as the colored shadow, leaving her mysterious, uniquely shaped inventions in every corner of the ship, warming Herta’s rational world with her pure companionship.
But the universe was not always a quiet classroom.
The shadow of destruction, like a lurking beast, would eventually bare its fangs.
When Herta turned twenty, disaster struck without warning.
Alarm.
A piercing, highest-level intrusion alarm instantly tore through the Seeker’s peace.
Red warning lights flashed wildly, coating the cold metal bulkheads in an ominous bloody hue.
“Warning.
Large-scale high-energy reactions detected approaching.”
“Warning.
Signal identified as Antimatter Legion vanguard forces.”
“Warning.
Home planet Blue’s star system is under heavy attack.
Seventh and Ninth Defense Fleet signals lost.”
The cold electronic voice repeated the bad news over and over.
On the main control room’s holographic star chart, the crimson markers representing enemy forces spread like a plague, rapidly swallowing the blue dots representing allies.
Their star system, and even their home, Blue, was under frenzied attack by the forces of the Aeon of Destruction, Nanook.
Almost at the same time the alarm sounded, the Seeker shook violently.
Loud explosions came from outside, and the hull let out groans of metal under strain.
Through the observation window, countless twisted antimatter soldiers glowing with an ominous dark red light, along with vicious war mechs, like bloodthirsty locusts, frenziedly attacked the ship’s energy shields.
Scorch marks had already appeared on the armor plating.
“Initiate emergency evasion procedures.
Maximize shield output.
Analyze enemy energy patterns.” Herta’s voice remained calm, but her words came out fast.
Her slender fingers turned into blurs on the main console, pulling up countless data streams, her eyes fixed on the scrolling enemy unit information and energy readings.
“Antimatter core…
annihilation reaction drive…
energy shield frequency fluctuating between 0.73 and 1.15 candela…” Herta muttered to herself, her brain working at full speed, trying to find weaknesses in these war machines, patterns in their energy operation, and possible counter-strategies among the overwhelming data.
“Need time…
at least three minutes to build a complete response model.”
But the battlefield changed in an instant.
The Antimatter Legion wouldn’t give her those three minutes.
The communication channels were filled with desperate cries and the noise of explosions:
“This is Blue’s Third Orbital Defense Platform.
We’re surrounded.
Requesting rein—”
“Destruction corrosion too strong.
Shields overloaded.”
“Retreat.
Retreat now.
The line is collapsing.”
The distress signals from the home planet were like dying moans, striking everyone’s hearts one after another.
The front-line fleets were being swallowed and dismantled before their eyes.
Despair seeped into every corner of the ship like the cold vacuum of space.
The other crew members and researchers in the main control room turned pale.
Some even collapsed to the floor from sheer terror.
Against these horrors built only for destruction, they had no means of fighting back.
At this critical moment of life and death, when everyone pinned their hopes on Herta, who was calculating frantically, a figure that had always been overlooked moved.
It was Baida, who had been clinging to Herta’s side, her face pale from the sudden turn of events, instinctively holding onto Herta’s arm.
She looked at the ugly, malevolent antimatter soldiers frantically attacking outside the observation window, listening to the cries from her home on the communication channel.
An instinctive urge to protect her sister, to protect home, overpowered her fear of unfamiliar combat.
Her gaze gradually shifted from initial panic to hollow focus, just like when she made those little gadgets before.
But this time, there was a determination in that focus that had never been there before.
She let go of Herta’s arm.
“Baida?
Don’t run around.” Herta noticed her movement and snapped without turning her head, her entire mind immersed in data analysis.
But Baida didn’t listen.
Like a nimble little leopard, she turned and dashed out of the chaotic main control room, heading straight for the ship’s lower repair bay.
“Where’s she going?” a crew member yelled.
“Don’t mind that fool.
She’ll only cause trouble.”
“It’s over…
we’re all done for.”
No one had any expectations of Baida.
A fool who couldn’t take care of herself and needed her genius sister to look after her—what could she do in a moment like this besides panic?
Baida burst into the warehouse piled high with spare parts, discarded engines, and repair tools.
It was a mess from the earlier explosion, parts scattered everywhere.
She looked at the materials covering the floor.
In those hollow, focused eyes, countless invisible lines seemed to be quickly sketching and combining.
All the noise from outside seemed to fade away.
In her world, there was only this cold metal and one overwhelmingly strong thought.
“I reckon,” she murmured softly, her voice not loud but carrying a strange certainty, “we need some turrets that can move on their own and smash those ugly things.
And they need to be super strong.
The really good kind.
Just turrets aren’t enough…
they need to be able to grow, to get even stronger.”
The next moment, a jaw-dropping scene unfolded.
Baida’s hands once again became blurs too fast for the naked eye to track.
She didn’t even use any tools.
She grabbed a half-person-high discarded propulsion engine.
The heavy object seemed weightless in her hands.
She tore open its shell with her bare hands, pulled out the core components, and roughly straightened and connected the complex energy tubes like pulling noodles.
She pried off several ultra-high-strength alloy plates used for hull repair—metal that required large hydraulic presses to bend—and under her tender little hands, they became like soft Play-Doh, easily folded, twisted, and shaped into bizarre structures with edges and the rough form of gun barrels.
She grabbed a bundle of energy wires of varying thicknesses and colors, and without even looking, haphazardly yet with a strange underlying pattern, she forcibly stitched together the engine core, alloy barrels, sensors, energy capacitors, and other parts scavenged from discarded instruments.
Her movements were wild and rough, completely ignoring all engineering principles, circuit logic, and safety standards.
The wires she connected so messily didn’t short-circuit or explode.
Instead, the moment they connected, they lit up with stable, intense energy glows.
One, two, three…
In just a few dozen seconds, a squad of about ten robots, rough in design and even a bit comical, stood in the warehouse.
They had boxy bodies pieced together from discarded alloy plates, hand cannons or drills welded to the ends of several mechanical arms, and treads or multi-legged chassis underneath.
They looked like something a child had thrown together with Lego blocks, full of the [I Reckon] style.
But in the eyes of these seemingly crude robots, if the blinking sensors counted as eyes, hostile red lights flickered to life.
“Order: eliminate hostile targets. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
Mode: collect, upgrade, eliminate.” Baida gave the simple command in her unclear voice.
This strange creation, which Baida named “Self-Building Construction Robots” because she thought they were initially meant for building houses, immediately let out buzzing roars, automatically formed attack formations, and charged out of the repair bay like arrows, surging through the corridors toward the breaches in the hull.
The antimatter soldiers attacking the shields outside seemed to pause for a moment at the sight of these oddly shaped metal lumps charging out.
Then, something that left everyone—including the Seeker crew watching through the monitors—utterly dumbfounded happened.
These Self-Building Construction Robots didn’t open fire directly.
Instead, like worker bees, they quickly pounced on the wreckage of destroyed enemy units and the broken armor plating that had fallen off the ship’s exterior.
Their mechanical arms rapidly grabbed, dismantled, and hauled the wreckage that contained destructive energy and special materials.
Under everyone’s incredulous gazes, these robots began installing the collected wreckage onto themselves like Transformers.
Dark red antimatter energy cores were embedded into their chests.
Twisted metal limbs were dismantled and reassembled into larger arms.
Broken armor plates were attached to vital areas.
“They…
they’re upgrading themselves with enemy wreckage?” a crew member stammered.
In the blink of an eye, those ten construction robots, originally only half as tall as a person and looking crude and silly, swelled in size.
They became three-meter-tall combat robots, covered in vicious enemy armor, with ominous red lights flickering at their joints.
Their appearance still carried the patchwork [I Reckon] feel, but the energy fluctuations and oppressive presence they emitted were enough to make even real war mechs turn their heads.
“Elimination mode, activated.” Baida’s voice came through some invisible link.
The next moment, the cannons on the backs and shoulders of these ten upgraded combat robots lit up with blinding light.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
Intense and concentrated firepower, like a storm of steel, precisely covered the cluster of antimatter soldiers attacking the Seeker.
The fire seemed to carry some strange property that could disrupt or even neutralize antimatter energy.
The struck Destruction soldiers erupted in unstable energy detonations, turning into dazzling and deadly fireworks.
The pressure on the ship’s previously faltering shields dropped sharply.
The defense line had been temporarily stabilized by these ten bizarre robots that appeared out of nowhere and could devour enemies to upgrade themselves on the spot.
The main control room fell into dead silence.
Everyone was stunned, including Herta, who had just completed her preliminary energy model analysis.
She stared blankly at the monitor screen, where those ten wild, untamed combat robots were wreaking havoc among the enemy ranks.
Then she pulled up the repair bay’s surveillance playback—the image showed Baida’s focused, hollow gaze, and those small hands that had transformed a pile of scrap metal into killing machines in an instant, as if casting magic.
Herta’s data pad slipped from her hand and clattered onto the console.
Her eyes, capable of seeing through the universe’s mysteries, now held unprecedented shock, bewilderment, and a trace of a complete shake-up of her own understanding.
This…
this foolish sister, who had always been protected by her, couldn’t even speak clearly, spent her days playing with Play-Doh and making junk.
This burden that everyone, including herself, had always seen as someone who needed to be taken care of, someone who had nothing to do with words like “battle” or “salvation.”
Had actually, in the face of a destruction crisis that left everyone helpless, using a pile of scrap, bare-handedly pieced together a robot army that could turn the tide.
Herta opened her mouth, but found her throat too dry to make a sound.
For the first time, she so clearly realized that she might have never truly understood this twin sister connected to her by blood.
Back in the repair bay, Baida, looking a bit tired after making the robots, wiped her forehead.
There was no sweat, only some grease stains.
She looked at the monitor screen showing her children performing brilliantly.
She nodded in satisfaction, revealing a silly, slightly proud smile.
“Mhm…
super strong…
really good.”
She seemed completely unaware of what earth-shattering thing she had just done.
She simply felt she had completed the mission of smashing the ugly things and protecting Herta.
The crisis of destruction was not yet over, but the balance of the battlefield had already subtly shifted because of one foolish sister’s instinctive act.