After who knows how long, Ling Lan muzzily woke up and was greeted to the sight of dim darkness. Ling Lan could not help but be taken aback — if not for the fact that she could feel the seatbelt strapping her in, Ling Lan might have thought that she was no longer in the cockpit of her mecha.
Mind you, as long as there was someone in it, the cockpit of a mecha would always maintain a certain level of illumination unless something was wrong with the mecha; only then would this kind of situation occur.
Ling Lan had just thought to move when she found her entire body beginning to ache terribly. With that, she knew that she had already been determined to be in a severely injured state by the mainframe of Mecha World. It made sense when she thought about it. Going up against a magnetic tsunami which was capable of swallowing everything in its path, being able to live was already a great blessing. Of course, this outcome was also thanks to the impressive performance of the imperial mecha's defensive equipment.
Forcefully suppressing the pain, Ling Lan reached out to press the activation button of the mecha based on memory.
The resulting 'beep' made Ling Lan's heart ease. This sound was like music from the heavens, for it meant that her mecha could still be used normally. Very soon, her screen had lit up, and she entered the mecha piloting system. At the same time, the cockpit became bright again, everything in perfect order. Apparently, the mecha had just entered standby mode because no one was piloting it to save energy. The moment the activation button was pressed, it had started up again instantly.Ling Lan did not concern herself with the situation outside. The first thing she did was to take out a tube of healing agent and slap it onto her body. Only then did she feel her condition improving. This was the virtual world, so recovering was as simple and speedy as that. If this were the real world, based on the extent of Ling Lan's injuries, recovery would not be as simple.
After sorting out her own body, only then did Ling Lan have any mind to spare to investigate her surroundings. She found that the surroundings of her mecha were just as dark as the inside of her cockpit before. She decisively turned on the external lights of the mecha. With that, she found that her mecha was currently floating in mid-air, and there were countless metallic scraps bobbing around her.
Seeing this, Ling Lan was quite baffled. Where in the world was she? The last thing she could remember was using the imperial mecha to block the magnetic tsunami and finally falling to crash into the mainship before falling unconscious. Could it be that the mainship had not escaped disaster in the end and had become debris in space? But if they were truly in outer space, it still would not be this dark!
In endless space, there was actually a certain amount of light. This sort of pitch darkness would not happen, so Ling Lan decisively threw out this possibility.
Just as Ling Lan was pondering this mystery, a voice choked with tears suddenly rang out in her mindspace, "Boss, you've finally woken up! Boo hoo hoo, that's really great!"
"Little Four ..." Ling Lan's forehead twitched involuntarily. She had only been unconscious and not about to die — now what reason was there for this behaviour of Little Four's?
As if sensing Boss's displeasure, Little Four sniffled and said, "Boss, you've already been unconscious for a whole night. No one was paying any attention to me. I was so scared!" For that night, it was like Little Four had been shut into an enclosed little black room. The soundless world had almost driven him insane — it had reminded him of his time in Ling Lan's previous world. He had constantly been alone by himself waiting for Ling Lan to notice him, but unfortunately Ling Lan had only heard his voice right at the very end of her life there, making him wait for a whole 21 years.Little Four was afraid that things had returned to how it was before. Having gotten used to acting spoilt and fooling around with Ling Lan, Little Four could no longer bear to experience that loneliness of before. He believed that if something had truly happened to Ling Lan, his processing chip would certainly choose to self-destruct.
"Don't be scared. Haven't I woken up now? You need to have faith in me, your boss!" Seeing this, Ling Lan's heart softened. Inside the mindspace, she lightly petted the emotionally wounded Little Four, comforting him to ease his fears.
"Yup yup yup, Boss is the bestest!" Little Four's tears had yet to dry and he was already smiling again. That appearance of his was simultaneously adorable and pitiful.
At the sight, Ling Lan could not help but fall silent. She suddenly realised that Little Four was not an omnipotent intelligence entity. He was just like a real living person with his own emotions — joy, anger, sadness, likes and dislikes, and things that made him sad or afraid ...
Ling Lan silently caressed Little Four for a while, finally getting him to calm down. After that, she tried to pilot her mecha to investigate the surrounding environment but found that her mecha was tied down by something. Ling Lan zoomed in on the image of where she was tied down, and only then did she discover that she was being held down by the tight embrace of the leopard's mecha. It was clear to see that the leopard had not eased up on his grip at all.
Seeing the leopard's mecha currently completely still and silent, Ling Lan's heart stuttered and she shouted frantically, "Leopard, leopard ..."
"He's fine, just unconscious." Having calmed down, Little Four saw Ling Lan's anxious demeanour and so told her about the other's condition.
Ling Lan thought back to when the two of them had been thrown at the military vessel by the magnetic storm at the end — the force of their impact had been fully borne by the leopard — and she could not help but feel guilty. "He is only so terribly injured because he was protecting me ..."
"If you hadn't blocked the magnetic tsunami before that, he would not have just ended up terribly injured but completely destroyed. He should instead be grateful to you," responded Little Four, baffled at Ling Lan's reaction. In Little Four's eyes, [Self-Defined Destiny] playing the role as a cushion was the requisite cost for his survival. Why would Boss feel guilty and even feel grateful towards the other?
Little Four's words rendered Ling Lan speechless. She did not know how to explain to Little Four that his perspective was not quite right ... knowing that Little Four was someone who only looked at pure cold logic, Ling Lan wisely did not continue discussing the issue. Instead, she connected to [Self-Defined Destiny]'s comms channel and began calling out to the leopard again and again.
Ling Lan was well aware that she needed to wake the leopard up as quickly as possible, or else the other might die from his injuries due to not applying treatment in time.
Perhaps her cries were effective, for not too long later, Ling Lan heard a slight groan coming through the comms. Ling Lan was overjoyed and quickly shouted loudly, "Leopard, leopard, are you alright?"
"Cough cough, I'm fine. Rabbit, it's fine as long as you're fine," the leopard finally replied. His voice sounded very weak — it looked like his injuries were extremely severe, probably even heavier than Ling Lan's had been. It made sense. Even though Ling Lan had received heavy damage when blocking the magnetic tsunami, she had been using an imperial mecha. The protection afforded to a mecha operator by an imperial mecha just could not be matched by an advanced mecha.
In just a few moments, the leopard's voice began sounding more spirited. He too seemed to have picked up on the surrounding situation, and he asked Ling Lan, "Where are we right now?"
"I'm not sure either," said Ling Lan with a wry smile as she looked out at the pitch-black space they were floating in.
"I only know that we were hit into the inside of the mainship at the end. Who knows if we're still inside it now ..." said Li Lanfeng after briefly rallying his spirits.
His words had barely faded when a corpse floated by the front of their mecha. It was dressed in the uniform of a mecha support staff of the mainship — they could clearly see the insignia pinned on his shoulder. It looked like they were indeed still inside the mainship. However, this also proved that this military vessel had already been pretty thoroughly broken.
Seeing this, Ling Lan's heart sank. If the military vessel had truly been completely destroyed, just based on their mecha alone, it was impossible to fly to the base camp of the Swift Dragons. Could it be that after striving for so long, she would still end up with the outcome of failing the mission with all of her companions dead?
"It's alright. Although the command mainship's condition is really terrible, its basic mobility is not broken. It is still in motion." Little Four could sense Ling Lan's worries and quickly rushed to reassure her, "However, Boss, you are now in the tail end of the ship which was utterly destroyed. They have already sealed off the doors of the airlock on this end, which is why this area is in this anti-gravity state."
"Then, do you know the situation with Qi Long and the others?" Ling Lan began to worry about her other companions who had entered first.
"I'm not very sure. Everything in the tail end has been destroyed, so I also have no way of using the mainship's surveillance system to find them," said Little Four regretfully.
"Since we're fine, I believe they'll be fine too." Ling Lan still had a lot of faith in her companions. In fact, that explosion at the tail end of the ship in those final moments was a death blow to those support staff members without the protection of mecha. They were basically all wiped out in that final explosion — the only ones who could survive were the mecha operators protected by the defensive power of their mecha.
"Rabbit, I seem to feel like our position is shifting. Maybe that magnetic tsunami did not cause fatal damage to the mainship." Li Lanfeng seemed to have sensed something of the situation, and he quickly communicated his findings to Ling Lan.
"Yes. Let's figure out the situation first then find Combat and the others. After that we can arrange our next plan of action." Ling Lan instantly made her decision. They would first look for their team members in this heap of ruins.
The two of them operated their mecha to weave among the debris. Countless corpses floated by them — it looked like all these staff without any protective measures had been sacrificed during that magnetic tsunami. Despite knowing that all these staff members were just NPCs, Ling Lan could not help but have a heavy heart in the face of all this death. Still, Ling Lan very quickly rallied her spirits. She began to think about how this was perhaps even more advantageous for her team because everyone who knew they had stolen aboard the ship was now dead. Perhaps they could change their identities and stealthily infiltrate the ship as official mecha troops of the mainship.
After a round of searching, they found no sign of Qi Long and the others. Ling Lan would rather guess that they had already entered the safe areas of the military vessel. What was more surprising to them was that when they happened to touch some standard Federation advanced mecha which were still functionally intact overall floating through the air, the system actually prompted them with a pop-up notification asking them whether they wanted to retrieve the mecha. This meant that these intact mecha could be freely taken by players.
Ling Lan and Li Lanfeng naturally would not let such an advantage pass by. It should be known it would require an extremely high amount of points at the redemption centre to redeem these mecha. Moreover, Li Lanfeng's mecha was already running on empty — obtaining an advanced mecha with abundant power right now was undoubtedly a stroke of timely luck 1 for Li Lanfeng. Mind you, once one's mecha's power ran out, not only would the mecha be unable to move, the oxygen levels in the mecha's cockpit would not be able to be sustained for long either.
The two of them chose two of the mecha in the best condition to keep in their inventories. It wasn't that they did not want to collect even more, but they would not be able to support the mecha even if they took more.
Within a player's inventory, each mecha would exhaust a set amount of power calories every hour. If a mecha was left unused in an inventory for a long time, it would still become a powerless empty shell of a mecha in the end. After that, it would merely be dead weight in a player's inventory and increase a player's fatigue level. This was also one of the methods Mecha World employed to prevent players from accumulating too many mecha so that the players would not end up unable to focus on training properly with one mecha.
