“Meow~”
“A cat?”
Not long after Little Herta and Herta left, Asta had barely taken a few steps when she heard a cat meow.
She turned toward the corner at the end of the corridor.
A black cat with fur as dark as ink sat there, its long tail swaying gently.
Its sapphire-blue slit pupils, beautiful and seemingly aglow, quietly watched Asta as though waiting for her to approach.
‘Why is there a cat on the space station?
Did it escape from a biology lab?’
Asta stopped and stared blankly at the cat.
The kitten was adorable, but as lead researcher, Asta was more concerned about why a cat had appeared on the space station.
After all, the space station was almost entirely occupied by researchers and scientific facilities.
Although pets weren’t explicitly prohibited, aside from researchers in biological fields, Asta was the only one who kept a pet—her dog, Peppy.
If small animals ran around everywhere, no one could guarantee that they wouldn’t bump into or damage some outrageously expensive piece of research equipment.
Thus, everyone tacitly refrained from keeping small animals.
Even if they did, they never let them out.
“Meow~”
Perhaps because Asta remained standing where she was, the black cat meowed at her again.
It rose from its seated position, turned its back on Asta, then looked over its shoulder at her, its black tail held upright and swaying gently.
“Do you want me to follow you?”
“Meow~”
The black cat meowed in an extremely humanlike manner, seemingly answering Asta’s question, then began trotting in a certain direction.
The appearance of a black cat was far too strange.
After a brief hesitation, Asta jogged after it.
“You’re not getting away!”
Meanwhile, in the space station’s Seclusion Zone…
“Ahaha! You can’t catch me~ You can’t catch me~ Stupid Herta~”
Little Herta spun and leaped through the bands of light and peculiar devices Herta was using to capture her, occasionally making faces to taunt her.
To keep Herta from growing suspicious and discovering her objective, Little Herta had even led her through several pointless jumps after she caught up, deliberately wasting time.
Herta, meanwhile, didn’t want Little Herta to notice anything amiss, so she pretended to be furious and maintained the same pursuit efficiency as before.
‘It should be about time.
I need to head over.’
After evading Herta’s capture once again, Little Herta glanced back at her and pressed the quantum jump device on her wrist once more.
Blue light symbolizing quantum power flashed.
The next instant, Little Herta appeared on the lowest level of the Seclusion Zone.
As soon as she landed, Little Herta habitually scanned the surrounding quantum tide fluctuations to determine where Herta would appear.
“Huh?”
After confirming Herta’s arrival coordinates, Little Herta was mildly surprised.
This time, Herta hadn’t chosen a location convenient for ambushing her.
“This ends here!”
Herta appeared in the direction Little Herta was watching.
This time, she didn’t launch a sneak attack or any other offensive.
Instead, she tapped her key against the floor and straightened her entire body.
As though declaring her victory, she stared confidently at Little Herta.
‘Hmm?’
‘Did she prepare something to deal with me too?’
Little Herta was puzzled by Herta’s posture, but she didn’t show it.
Instead, she mimicked Herta’s stance and reminded her:
“It certainly does end here. Take a look behind you, great genius of the Genius Society.”
“Crack—crash—”
The moment Little Herta finished speaking, Herta clearly heard glass shattering, metal snapping, and liquid dripping onto the floor.
‘What’s this reaction?
What the hell is that?’
At the same time, Herta herself sensed an enormous imaginary energy reaction behind her!
She hurriedly turned around.
Then she saw it.
At the center of the enormous circular room on the lowest level of the Seclusion Zone, a huge spherical incubation chamber hung from the ceiling.
Its glass had already cracked, its supports had shattered, and the incubation fluid inside was constantly leaking out.
Judging by its structural deformation, it had reached its load-bearing limit.
And then—
“Boom—!”
The incubation chamber shattered with a thunderous crash.
A violent gale swept broken glass and snapped pieces of metal throughout the entire space.
Herta hastily deployed a force field to block the debris, and once the gale subsided, she saw a colossal creature where the incubation chamber had once been.
It was a gigantic blue beetle-like insect with two pairs of enormous mandibles radiating blue imaginary energy.
Merely hovering in the air and beating its wings was enough to unleash a storm that swept through the entire room.
With this energy fluctuation and appearance, the well-traveled Herta couldn’t possibly mistake it.
Starcrusher Swarm King: Skaracabaz—a genuine—
—Emanator of Propagation!
‘Ruan Mei actually cultivated something like this on my space station without even telling me!’
How could Herta fail to understand where this thing had come from?
It was obviously an experimental specimen cultivated by Ruan Mei, except that little brat had released it.
“Hehe, have fun playing with it. I’ll be leaving first~”
Seeing the Starcrusher Swarm King break free from its chamber, Little Herta ignored both it and Herta and prepared to make a quantum jump.
Herta would inevitably engage the Starcrusher Swarm King to protect the space station, and while Herta was fighting it, Little Herta would make her escape!
“Huh?”
However, when Little Herta attempted to jump, she froze.
And its range was—
“The entire space station?!”
‘So that was what Herta meant when she said, “This ends here”?
She anchored the quantum space throughout the entire station?’
‘I’m cooked.
Once Herta deals with the Starcrusher Swarm King, I’ll have no choice but to surrender obediently!’
“No! I don’t want to go cosplay falling down in the kitchen—”
“Bang—!”
Just as Little Herta was despairing over her future, something slammed directly into her, sending them both tumbling across the floor several times.
“What the hell? Red… Herta?”
Once they stopped rolling, the first thing Little Herta saw was a red liquid.
Only then did she realize that the object that had knocked her over and tumbled with her was Herta.
Herta, covered in red blood!
Insects didn’t have red blood, and Little Herta was an inorganic life-form who couldn’t bleed.
Did that mean this blood belonged to Herta?!
“Don’t move!”
Herta swiftly braced herself against the floor and raised a hand.
A blue hexagonal barrier enveloped both her and Little Herta.
Only then did Little Herta notice their surroundings.
Red and blue Stings filled her entire field of vision.
The moment Herta deployed her defenses, dozens of red self-destructing Stings lunged directly at them.
“Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom—!”
Explosion after explosion erupted.
The impacts were so powerful that even through Herta’s barrier, they thundered in Little Herta’s ears.
“H-How? How could you be injured?”
Seeing Herta’s obvious wounds, Little Herta panicked—completely panicked.
Although she always called Herta an old witch, she had never actually intended to hurt her.
“I’m human. Of course I can be injured!”
Herta answered casually, then scooped up the dazed Little Herta.
Raising her key-shaped Staff, she counted off several seconds before firing a beam of light.
The instant it cleared away a swath of Stings and created room to move, she swiftly dodged to the side.
The next second, a massive beam of blue energy pierced through their previous position, leaving a scorching trail across the floor.
After The Swarm came the Starcrusher Swarm King’s attack!
“That’s not what I mean! You’re an Emanator!”
‘You’re an Emanator—an Emanator of Erudition!’
‘The Trailblazer could survive against this bug for fifty-six seconds and still be lively enough afterward to confront Ruan Mei.
How could it possibly be a match for you?’
★ ★ ★
T/N: If you spot mistranslation, do tell me!