When the clerk opened his eyes again once more, there was no longer any trace of sorrow within his eyes. All that was left was an endless coldness. Since Hollow Ground had left his hopes of life to them, then he would have to complete the mission Hollow Ground had handed to him — he would protect his team members and make sure they escaped from this place.
The clerk stared coldly at the enemies who were beginning to panic. Ignoring his injuries, he forcefully circulated his spectre power which was nearly exhausted to wipe out all the enemies' consciousness. Let these people be sacrificial offerings for Hollow Ground ...
However, forcefully overdrafting his spectre power made the clerk pay a heavy price. For some time after this, he would not be able to use his spectre power at all. Still, the clerk felt that it was worth it!
Seeing the clerk kill off all of the enemies, the commander and his adjutant instantly breathed a mental sigh of relief. Looking at their other team members who had survived with them, they had a strong sense of having evaded a disaster. However, their mood became heavy again very soon, because the clerk told them that he was unable to use his spectre power for the time being. In other words, he could no longer protect them, so it would probably be dangerous to continue staying here. No one could tell whether that unidentified faction had any other spectres with them after all.
As such, the commander quickly decided to withdraw his entire team. On the way, they did not forget to send a message to their waiting companions about the plan to control the starship — they would follow their original plan to escape from the Swift Dragon base.Although they were not sure where this unidentified faction had come from, they already knew that the Swift Dragon base was now under the enemy's control. Their mission was pretty much completed. Furthermore, the commander was afraid that there were still other spectres in the base. In order to protect the lives of his team members, he needed to bring his team members to escape from this place as soon as possible.
Little Four, who had been secretly monitoring them all this while, immediately intercepted the message they sent and fabricated an 'order received' message from the targeted waiting team in response to the commander's message.
Meanwhile, at this time, at the spaceport of the Swift Dragon base, the Federation soldiers who had already taken action earlier had taken control of the starship without any difficulty. They did not know that they had accomplished it so easily because Little Four had already finished off all the top-class hackers from Caesar controlling the base. Otherwise, even though they still had a hacker providing cover by creating false information, they would have still been discovered by the enemy hackers controlling the base.
They waited patiently for the commander's arrival on the starship; they had sent the news of their success to the commander when they had taken control of the ship. However, the commander's team seemed to have encountered some difficulty, for he only sent a message telling them to wait patiently before going silent. This made the waiting team begin to feel a little uneasy.
Sure enough, it was not long before they noticed that the defence of the Swift Dragon base had suddenly tightened up. The guards of the base had begun closely examining the NPC survivors at the temporary camp. This made them even more anxious and worried. They were anxious that they were about to be exposed, and they were also worried that it would become infinitely more difficult for the commander's team to sneak back to the starship.
However, after waiting for about half an hour, the commander sent another message: ' Already here. Open the emergency access. Let us board. ' The arrival of this news was an instant relief to the waiting soldiers.
The commander's team silently boarded the starship; the entire process was so smooth and unhindered that they almost could not believe it. Many times, it had clearly seemed as if the other party was about to discover them, but then the other side would be strangely drawn away by something to head in another direction instead. Puzzled, they could only believe that their luck today must be off the charts allowing them to sail through danger again and again.In order to ensure security, the Federation soldiers who were there earlier had already killed off all the NPC soldiers guarding the starship. This allowed the commander's team to instantly relax once they boarded. They did not hesitate to go directly to the main control room of the starship. With the limited amount of manpower they had, they could only focus on getting the starship safely started; they had no mind to bother with the other areas of the ship.
Anxious to rejoin his comrades, the commander did not notice that not long after they left the emergency access, the access opened again silently. Ling Lan, who had been following them all this way, quietly slipped into the starship.
Little Four mastered the entire starship instantly and very soon found the hiding spots of Qi Long and the others.
Without hesitation, Ling Lan walked towards Qi Long and the others' hiding places. Her arrangements had been set — now, she only needed to wait patiently for these Federation soldiers to start the starship and bring them back to the central district.
On the way to reunite with Qi Long and the others, Little Four did not forget to brag about his achievements in the mindspace. The communications between both the Federation parties were actually fake — Little Four had intercepted all messages on both ends before sending them out at the perfect timings, leaving no signs of his involvement.
The moment the commander arrived at the control room, without giving himself time to catch his breath, he had already begun instructing his team members to take over the operations of the various key procedures of the starship. Once everything was prepared, he gave the order to start the starship.
While the starship was still, the NPCs of the Swift Dragon base had not noticed anything amiss here. But when it was suddenly activated, the loud roar of its engines and the energy response it gave out instantly startled the calm spaceport into wakefulness. Everyone in the Swift Dragon base knew immediately that their starship had been hijacked by an unknown faction.
This made the administrators of the Swift Dragon base extremely angry. They decisively dispatched the armoured missile troops of the base to bombard the starship, trying to destroy the ship before it fully activated.
Everyone in the starship stared nervously at the activation progress of the starship. For the starship to launch and fly, it needed to gather 100% of its power, and the prep time for this was a full three minutes. Everyone knew that these three minutes would very likely determine whether they would be able to escape from the Swift Dragon base.
"Commander, they've fired the attack missiles," reported a team member, having seen the warning sign on the screen of the radar he was monitoring.
"Activate the defensive shield first," said the commander through clenched teeth in the end, after considering several options in his mind in quick succession.
"Yes!" Another team member in charge of operating the defence system decisively turned on the defensive shield. The power store which had been shored up to 10% dropped in one go to rock bottom again. In other words, the starship had to start shoring up energy all over again.
Still, the commander's directive was correct. Activating the beam shield prevented the many missiles from destroying the main body of the starship. But even so, the explosive force of the missiles shook the starship around enough to make the people inside stagger.
In the #3 mecha hold of the starship, Ling Lan's team were already seated in the standard mecha of this starship within secure seats. The anti-shock system of the mecha themselves was also much more stable than that of the starship, so despite feeling the vibrations, they were not as thrown by it as the people in the control room.
Seeing this, Qi Long's loud voice rang out again in the team's comms. "D*mn, this mission is just too exciting! Whether going or returning, it's all so thrilling!"
"If it wasn't thrilling, would it be called an SSS-rank?" responded Han Jijyun lightly, leaving Qi Long speechless.
Several soft snickers could be heard within the channel — it was Xie Yi, Lin Zhong-qing, and the others. To make Qi Long shut up, other than Boss Lan, only Han Jijyun could do it.
The others were still alright, but Chang Xinyuan was rather nervous. He could not help but ask, "We'll be fine, right?"
Ever since Ling Lan had brought up the fact that if they died here, they would revive within the Swift Dragon base and not the central district, Chang Xinyuan had been afraid he would die here due to the little bit of mecha control skills of his that were utter rubbish. That would hold the team back, forcing Boss Lan and the others to turn back to save him.
"Yes. The defensive shield has already been activated. The anti-aircraft missiles of the base won't do much damage to the starship," replied Ling Lan evenly. Little Four was faithfully reflecting everything that was happening in the control room to her mindspace.
Ling Lan's words made everyone on the team calm down. They knew that it was not as simple as Boss Lan had said to escape from the Swift Dragon base. Every base possessed ultimate weapons to deal with starships and powerful mecha — their only hope was that the supreme commander of the Swift Dragon base would choose not to utilise those weapons out of concern that there might be soldiers from the base on the starship.
Finally, the starship's power gauge was full. The commander shouted joyfully, "Start moving at low speed!"
Amidst the echoes of this order, the team member in charge of operating the starship slowly lifted the head of the starship and the starship slowly rose into the air.
At this time, witnessing this scene, the command team of the command centre turned to look anxiously at the supreme commander of the Swift Dragon base, awaiting his final order.
The supreme commander calmly zoomed in on the image of the starship and then slammed a hand onto the screen. He ordered, "Activate the ultimate weapon, the magnetic energy beam cannon."
At this command, everyone's expressions shifted. Even though some still felt it was rather inappropriate, in the strictly hierarchal NPC world, the lower level officers did not dare to voice any objections.
By this time, the starship had already pulled several hundred metres away from the ground. As long as it could rise up to a height of 2000 metres, it could shift from low speed to high speed and leave the gravity pull of the base's planet to truly enter outer space. Only at that time would they truly be safe. Everyone in the starship's control room had cold sweat pouring from their foreheads. This was generally the most dangerous period for starships — this was the moment where starships were most easily struck by weaponry attacks from the ground.
Suddenly, the team member monitoring the surrounding situation yelled out in horror, "The base has activated its ultimate weapon! We'll be shot down ..."
The commander rushed over when he heard this. On the edges of the base, he saw what had seemed to be a large but normal, barren mountain suddenly split open, a massive cannon barrel slowly rising from its depths. Although only its head was currently visible, the commander could tell what it was with just one look. His face instantly drained of all colour.
If the starship was destroyed, even though they would not really die, with their resurrection point set to the Swift Dragon base, it would not be long before they were certain to become the prisoners of the opponent. The commander did not have the confidence to successfully lead his team in escaping death for the second time. By the time headquarters noticed anything wrong and sent more people to stage a rescue, it would still be a month later at the very quickest ... if the unknown enemy still had spectres hidden within the secret base, they might really end up losing all their lives here.
At this time, the adjutant who had been standing quietly behind the commander all this time suddenly spoke up to say, "I'll go."
