Herta Space Station, in the medical room.
“Station Master, Madam Herta’s injuries have mostly healed. For now, all she needs is rest, and she’ll wake up soon.”
“Mm, thank you for your hard work, everyone. You can go back and rest for now. I’ll personally look after Madam Herta. But remember, don’t let anyone know that Madam Herta was injured and fell unconscious.”
In a daze, Herta heard Asta talking with someone, followed by the sound of everyone leaving the room.
When she opened her eyes again, she found herself lying in the bed of a luxurious private room, while Asta paced back and forth beside it.
“Mm…”
Herta tried to sit up, then realized her head felt a little foggy, probably from a mild concussion.
“Madam Herta, you’re awake. Is anything bothering you?”
Asta noticed Herta had woken up and hurried over to ask with concern.
“…”
Herta didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, she sensed the state of her body and surveyed her surroundings.
She had no injuries left on her body.
Asta was in the room, two Security Department guards were at the door, and her Four-Sided Mirror was hidden in the shadows, keeping watch over her.
Only after confirming there was nothing unusual did Herta look at Asta and say:
“I’m fine. How long have I been unconscious? Has anything unusual happened on the Space Station during that time?”
“It’s been about half a System Hour since I found you. As for the Space Station…”
Asta paused to think, then said:
“Aside from the Space Station’s surveillance system and Spaceport System still being locked down, the only thing worth mentioning is a Little Black Cat.”
“It led me to where you were unconscious, then mysteriously disappeared after I found you.”
“Also, the doctor said you need to rest.”
Puppet 4423 was responsible for locking down the Space Station’s surveillance system and Spaceport System.
And that Little Black Cat…
Before losing consciousness, Herta had indeed heard a cat meow.
As for the need to rest, Herta simply ignored it.
When it came to her own body, the genius that she was knew better than any doctor.
“What about 4423?”
The doctors must have removed it while treating her.
“4423?”
“The puppet I was chasing earlier.”
“Sorry, I haven’t received any reports about her.”
Asta’s words made Herta’s heart sink.
In the half hour since then, no Swarm Disaster had broken out on the Space Station, which meant the Starcrusher Swarm King had probably destroyed itself after 56 seconds, just as 4423 had said.
But Asta hadn’t mentioned 4423, so she was probably dead.
‘The Seclusion Zone first!’
Having made up her mind, Herta immediately got out of bed.
She didn’t bother with shoes, and barefoot, fished 4423’s Portable Quantum Warp Device out of the pile of her belongings on the bedside table, then took out her Key Staff.
“Madam Herta, what exactly happened? The Energy Department examined the energy residue on your wounds earlier and said it matched the residue left by a Corrosive Sting.”
Seeing that Herta was getting up as if to leave, Asta asked with deep concern.
Earlier, when Herta was injured, there had been energy residue on her wounds, so Asta had sent people to examine it.
The result was that it was energy residue from the Corrosive Sting, notorious throughout the cosmos.
“I’ll let you know if anything comes up.”
Leaving those words behind, Herta lightly tapped the ground with her Key Staff and vanished from the spot.
After Herta disappeared, Asta’s phone rang with the special notification tone she’d set for Herta’s messages.
When Asta picked up her phone, she saw a few messages:
[Herta: It’s been taken care of. Don’t worry.]
[Herta: Send these materials to my laboratory on the Space Station.]
[(A long file containing a list of materials)]
The Seclusion Zone.
“Phew… Thank goodness, the Logic Core and Data Storage Core miraculously weren’t damaged.”
When Herta found Little Herta, she was startled, because Little Herta’s current appearance was hard to reconcile with her being a Herta Puppet. The source of this chapter is g.com.
With exposed wires and a shattered shell, she looked less like a Humanoid Automaton than a wreck made from a heap of scrap metal.
Only after confirming that Little Herta’s Logic Core and Data Storage Core were both intact did the knot of worry in Herta’s heart finally loosen.
However, a new question arose: how had 4423’s core survived intact after her body had suffered such extensive damage?
Judging from the marks on the remains of Little Herta’s body, the chance that her core had escaped impact and damage was vanishingly small, yet it had in fact remained perfectly intact.
This reminded Herta of the time she’d planned to teleport away with Little One, only to run into an event whose probability was infinitesimally close to zero—something theoretically impossible: a Warp deviation had sent her straight into an attack by the Starcrusher Swarm King.
After putting Little One’s Logic Core away, Herta looked up at a corner of the wall.
A surveillance camera’s red indicator was blinking there; it seemed to still be active.
After drawing up a list of the materials needed to make Little Herta a body and giving it to Asta, Herta went to the workbench in Ruan Mei’s Laboratory.
Herta looked through Ruan Mei’s experimental records concerning the Starcrusher Swarm King, as well as the surveillance footage from the Seclusion Zone Third Floor.
“The Starcrusher Swarm King didn’t get annihilated after 56 seconds like the calculations predicted. It lasted a full 20 minutes? And it only died at the same time Little One collapsed? Hm? Why is part of the footage missing?”
“And this garbled data in the recording is… Nous?”
After checking everything, surprise flashed in Herta’s eyes.
According to Ruan Mei’s records, the Starcrusher Swarm King should indeed have been annihilated after 56 seconds, but it survived for 20 minutes, only dying at the exact moment Little One fell.
Then, at the same moment Little One fell and the Starcrusher Swarm King died, Ruan Mei’s instruments detected a mass of garbled data.
After analyzing it, Herta knew she couldn’t be mistaken: it was the Path Trace left around the target of Nous’s Gaze.
In other words, someone here had been the target of Nous’s Gaze at that moment.
At the same time, although only a very short section of the surveillance footage was missing, it was clear that someone had deliberately deleted it.
Their methods were highly sophisticated; even Herta herself couldn’t restore that section of data.
Something very important must have happened during that time, which was why they had deleted the footage.
“You’ve been watching for quite a while. Don’t you have anything to say?”
Unable to find the answer, Herta decided to ask someone who might have been involved.
She glanced to the side.
At a corner of the control console, a black cat sat upright, staring silently at Herta with sapphire-like vertical pupils.
“It’s an honor to meet you, Madam Herta. I’m Elio of the Stellaron Hunters.”
Elio bowed slightly, like a human, and spoke to Herta.
★ ★ ★
T/N: If you spot mistranslation, do tell me!