“Strange. For some reason, I checked two vending machines today and couldn’t find any Trick Snack snacks.”
A researcher returned to his workstation with a glass of sparkling water and asked his snack-hoarding colleague:
“Do you have any Trick Snack snacks left?”
His colleague, who was playing on his phone, looked up at him as though he were some country bumpkin.
“You still haven’t heard?”
“Heard what?”
The researcher who hadn’t managed to buy any Trick Snack snacks was baffled.
“The group chat has exploded over it!”
The snack-hoarding researcher waved his phone and explained:
“A Herta Puppet stole Madam Herta’s spatial teleportation Curio and a spaceship, then came to the space station and kidnapped Station Master Asta. She forced Asta to help her buy every last Trick Snack snack on the station.”
“Now the Herta Puppets are searching the entire station for her.”
“Something this big happened while I was out buying snacks? Tell me everything.”
The researcher sat at his workstation, his curiosity piqued.
“Check the group chat yourself for the details. There are even videos.”
The snack-hoarding researcher waved him off, then bent down and opened a drawer stuffed with snacks.
Pulling out a pack of Trick Snack snacks, he said:
“Here. This is my last pack.”
“Thanks, broth—”
Before he could finish the word, a mechanical puppet hand snatched the Trick Snack snacks away.
“I’ll take this pack. Ask Big Sis Asta for the money.”
“Huh?”
Big Sis Asta?
They both turned to look beside them.
Somehow, Little Herta—the very person they’d been discussing—and Asta, who wore an awkward smile, had appeared there.
“Good. Now I’ve got the last pack on the space station too.”
Little Herta ignored the two stunned researchers.
After muttering to herself, she turned to Asta.
“Sorry for causing you so much trouble, Big Sis Asta. I’ll pay you back when I get the chance.”
With that, she pressed the portable quantum jump device on her wrist once more.
This time, however, she didn’t take Asta with her.
“…”
‘So she really did bring me along just so I could buy her snacks?’
Asta felt a little dejected as she stared at the spot where Little Herta had vanished.
She had originally hoped to spend more time with Little Herta.
Now it seemed that Little Herta had only brought her along to sweep up every Trick Snack snack on the space station.
Once she had all the snacks, she no longer needed Asta, so she had left without the slightest hesitation.
She might have been a sweet talker, but her willful personality was exactly like Madam Herta’s.
Oh well.
Being called “Big Sis” so many times hadn’t been a bad deal.
Though still a little disappointed, Asta quickly composed herself and looked at the two researchers, who were also standing there in a daze.
“How much was that pack of snacks?”
Asta took out the Interastral Peace Corporation’s black card.
“No need! No need!”
The snack-hoarding researcher hurriedly refused.
It was only an ordinary pack of snacks.
There was no way he could charge Station Master Asta for it.
Herta Space Station, Curio Collection Room.
Blue quantum light flashed, and Little Herta appeared.
As soon as the teleportation was complete, Little Herta took several packs of Trick Snack snacks out of her storage device, tore them open, and wolfed them down in rapid succession while repeatedly muttering, “Upgrade my specs.”
Thanks to the high-efficiency food-to-energy converter Herta had installed as her “stomach,” she felt nothing even after devouring another twenty packs of Trick Snack snacks.
By now, her specs had risen by a terrifying 2,350% in total.
“No littering.”
Since there was no trash can in the Curio Collection Room, Little Herta stuffed the empty wrappers back into her storage device.
She then looked up at the room’s surveillance camera.
“Now I should have enough processing power to hack the space station’s surveillance system.”
Once Little Herta judged that her processing power was sufficient, she connected to Herta Space Station’s network and successfully took control of its surveillance system.
Cameras were everywhere on the space station.
To avoid constantly being found by the Herta Puppets and to lift the spaceport lockdown so she could steal a ship and escape, hacking into the station’s network and taking over its surveillance system was the necessary first step.
The second step was confirming the current situation at the spaceport.
“As expected, they left more than a hundred puppets guarding the spaceport.” Enjoying the story? Read on at novelping.com.
Through the spaceport’s surveillance feeds, Little Herta immediately assessed the situation.
More than a hundred Herta Puppets and personnel from the space station’s Defense Department had completely sealed off the docks and the ships.
The old Little Herta might not have been able to do anything about this.
But now, she had both a quantum jump device and the ability to hack the space station’s network.
Stealing a spaceship and escaping would be as easy as breathing!
Little Herta immediately prepared to make a relatively long-distance quantum jump straight back to the spaceport.
However, because the distance was considerable, she first had to activate her tactical eyepiece at maximum power, carefully survey the space station’s quantum tides, and calculate precise coordinates.
“What’s going on with these two abnormal quantum-tide singularities?”
She had only ever activated some of the eyepiece’s functions before.
The first time she used its quantum-tide detection function at full power, she discovered two extremely massive quantum-tide singularities within the space station.
One was very close to the Curio Collection Room, while the other was at the very bottom of Herta Space Station.
The nearby one was probably the Stellaron sealed aboard the space station.
As for the one at the bottom…
“The Starcrusher Swarm King created by Ruan Mei? Or is Ruan Mei herself here?”
Quantum and Imaginary went hand in hand.
The existence of a quantum-tide singularity meant one thing: there was a substance or individual containing an immense amount of Imaginary energy.
The reason for the first singularity wasn’t hard to guess—it was the Stellaron.
As for the one beneath the space station, Little Herta suspected that, at this point in the timeline, Herta had already leased that area to Ruan Mei.
Even if that singularity wasn’t the Starcrusher Swarm King created by Ruan Mei, it was still connected to her—or it might simply be Ruan Mei herself.
“Forget it. Even if it’s Polka Kakamond, it has nothing to do with me.”
Given Herta’s personality, she would never lower herself to ask someone else for help with something like this.
Little Herta therefore had no intention of investigating.
She activated the quantum jump and vanished.
When she reappeared, she was already inside the cockpit of a warp-capable spaceship at the spaceport.
Then came step two: hacking the spaceport’s network and lifting the lockdown.
“Excellent. Easy.”
As expected, her immense processing power allowed her to lift the spaceport lockdown without difficulty.
She then immediately started the spaceship.
Before the Herta Puppets and Defense Department combat personnel outside could react, she pushed the engines to full power and shot out of the space station.
However, Little Herta failed to notice that someone wearing a witch’s hat and holding a key-shaped Staff had silently teleported behind her and was gazing down at her without a word.
★ ★ ★
T/N: If you spot mistranslation, do tell me!