Chapter 9#

The Beta Lieutenant Colonel Who Died for His Country#

At this critical moment, Shuite suddenly dropped from the sky and landed astride the guard insect’s head. The enraged guard insect lunged at him with its sharp pincers, but Lu Heng blocked every strike, not allowing the guard insect to touch a single hair on Shuite’s body.

Apart from the Queen, the Zergs weren’t very intelligent. Stripped of the Queen’s mental control, they acted purely on instinct. Lu Heng and Shuite’s coordination left it with no options—it could only thrash its head wildly, trying to shake Shuite off. Its struggles were futile. Shuite’s powerful legs gripped the guard insect’s head like a vice, locking him in place. With a flick of his wrist, he drove his dagger into the junction where the insect’s antenna met its head. With a savage twist, the entire antenna was torn free.

Shuite repeated the process on the other antenna. Deprived of its sensory organs, the guard insect blundered about like a headless fly, crashing into everything. Shuite then plunged his dagger deep into the open wound and violently shredded its brain.

The guard insect’s massive body crashed to the ground. Though its limbs still twitched faintly, it posed no further threat.

“Feel your heart fluttering yet?” Shuite hopped down, striking a dashing pose.

Lu Heng suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. Bracing his hands on his knees, he caught his breath. Without waiting to rest, he deployed his mental network. Lu Heng possessed master-level proficiency in the use of mental power—he could survey his surroundings entirely without alerting the Queen. No second guard insect had been detected nearby, which meant this one had stumbled upon them by chance. Fortunately, Lu Heng had expanded a mental shielding net at the earliest possible moment, preventing the guard insect from transmitting a message to the Queen, which had kept the other Zergs from being drawn to their location.

Shuite walked over, grabbed Lu Heng’s hand, and began spraying healing mist on it: “Even with a 3S physique’s regenerative ability, you should still treat your wounds.”

“We need to find the Queen’s hiding place as quickly as possible, before she discovers us.” Lu Heng frowned deeply, finding the situation somewhat troublesome.

“Relax a bit. Rest first.” Shuite plopped himself down on the ground without a care in the world, lacing his fingers behind his head and leaning against a tree trunk. “How about we roast that bug and eat it? Remember the roasted insect we had on Planet TRX during our graduation exercise? It was surprisingly delicious.”

During their graduation exercise, Lenna and Shuite had been assigned to the same combat squad. That time, it was as if they’d been abandoned by the Goddess of Fortune—misfortune followed them relentlessly. First, a rare electromagnetic storm trapped them on Planet TRX for nearly a month. Having consumed all their nutrient rations, they very nearly starved to death.

Then, whether by fortune or misfortune, the two encountered a small swarm of Zerg. By fighting a guerrilla war of attrition, they whittled down every last one of them. The Zerg corpses became Lenna and Shuite’s sustenance during that period.

However, their bad luck was far from over. When they had completed their mission and were preparing to return, they ran into a high-level Zerg with a peculiar ability. That Zerg could actually mimic human mental fluctuations and emit a distress signal. The two followed the signal and were caught completely off guard by the Zerg, nearly losing their lives in that battle.

But danger often came hand in hand with rich rewards. The mutated Zerg corpse they brought back enabled the Imperial Research Institute to develop a method for altering mental fluctuations. The device invented on the basis of that research could mimic the Zerg’s mental waves, luring and killing Zerg insects.

The two exchanged a glance, independently arriving at the same idea for locating the Queen.

“Little Nana, it’s up to you—you’ve always been better at mental power than me.” Shuite rose to his feet, assuming a defensive stance in front of Lu Heng.

Lu Heng closed his eyes. A vast golden net appeared within the boundaries of his perception—the Queen’s mental web. Slowly, Lu Heng separated out a single thread of mental tendril, mimicking the mental fluctuations of the guard insect he had just fought, and carefully wrapped it around the net. Before long, the Queen’s mental web accepted Lu Heng’s tendril. Following the information carried by the web, he quickly located the Queen’s whereabouts.

“Found her. The Queen is at the northernmost point of this planet. At full speed, it should take us about three days to get there,” Lu Heng said.

“Tch, not being able to use mechs is such a hassle.” Shuite scratched his head, clearly irritated.

After a brief discussion, the two decided to scout the Queen’s hideout. After all, this was humanity’s first opportunity to get this close to a Zerg Queen. After three days of traveling without sleep or rest, they finally arrived at a location not far from the Queen’s lair.

Shuite and Lu Heng pushed through a dense patch of jungle, and before them, the terrain suddenly opened up—a sheer cliff face. Looking into the distance, the two were stunned by the spectacle before them. Below the cliff lay a basin, surrounded on all sides by towering rock faces. Thick white threads stretched from the cliffs on every side toward the center, and suspended at the very middle hung a massive, cocoon-like object.

“Is that the Queen’s nest?” Shuite was so awestruck by the magnificent sight that it took him a long while to speak.

The answer was obvious—from time to time, golden guard insects could be seen entering and exiting the white cocoon.

Lu Heng formed a small shielding dome with his mental power, enveloping his communicator within it, and began recording the invaluable intelligence.

The instant the data analysis was complete, Shuite immediately pulled his mech out of the spatial button. Lu Heng joined him inside the cockpit. Shuite’s mech was a single-pilot model, but it also had a dual-operator mode. When the two piloted together, they could often unleash far greater power—of course, provided they had the seamless coordination that Shuite and Lu Heng possessed.

It had been quite some time since the two had piloted a mech together, yet Lu Heng and Shuite still performed flawlessly as if they were a single person. Before the Queen’s mental web could capture their trail and issue pursuit orders, they had already broken through the planet’s atmosphere, retreating toward the wormhole.

However, just as Lu Heng was about to breathe a sigh of relief, he spotted on the radar display a Thunder-pattern mech plummeting toward the planet.

“ZR-177? What’s going on?” Lu Heng couldn’t immediately recall who owned that mech.

“It’s Carlos. Why is he here?” Shuite’s expression darkened, and he prepared to turn back.

“Yes.”

Back on the bug planet, Shuite and Lu Heng found the half-destroyed ZR-177 near a lake on the southern end. Fortunately, the cockpit was still intact, and the person inside shouldn’t have sustained any serious injuries. Shuite opened the cockpit only to find Carlos unconscious, his face as white as paper.

“His mental power has completely destabilized.” Lu Heng withdrew the mental tendril he had extended into Carlos’s brain and frowned. “Disruption of this magnitude… it looks like he used Drug No. 1.”

Drug No. 1 was issued to every soldier. Upon taking it, it would break through their physical limits, temporarily elevating anyone with an A-rank or above physique to 3S-level. However, this drug was generally only used in desperate situations, because afterward there was a 99% chance of mental collapse.

Lu Heng thought to himself, No wonder Carlos was able to cross the wormhole alone and find Shuite in the original timeline. But to survive Drug No. 1 without his mental power collapsing—truly the treatment befitting the chosen one of fate.

“Luckily, the core of his mental power remains intact. Once we return to the flagship, have Dr. Eileen sort it out for him. With some rest and recovery, he should be fine.”

Shuite let out a sigh of relief. Mental collapse was no small matter. Carlos was, after all, the child of the man who had saved Shuite’s life. If something happened to him, Shuite would likely carry guilt for the rest of his life. Shuite took out a repair pod, placed Carlos inside, and put him in cryo-sleep first, planning to resume treatment once they returned to the starship.

“Why is Carlos here?” Shuite asked, puzzled.

“Wasn’t it you who told him?” Lu Heng shot him a glance. The scouting mission near the wormhole was something only the two of them knew about. The only person who could have told Carlos was Shuite.

“A few days ago, Carlos asked me to coach him on combat techniques. I said I had preparations to make, so I turned him down.” Shuite glanced at Lu Heng’s expression and, with a guilty conscience, added, “I didn’t think it was classified or anything, so I mentioned it casually. I have no idea why he followed us.”

Of course it was for you, Lu Heng thought, though his face remained impassive. By the plot’s logic, shouldn’t Carlos risking his life to find Shuite have moved him, making this whole event the overture to their romance? What was with Shuite’s completely oblivious demeanor?

【Assistant, are the feelings between the chosen ones of fate really unshakeable?】 Lu Heng asked for confirmation.

【Relax! According to a comprehensive search of my vast database, the number of such cases is zero. Even if you don’t trust me, you should trust the professionalism of the Matchmaker Department.】

【I’m just afraid of losing points! Getting a negative score on the very first task means a punishment tour of the Eighteen Levels!】 The scenes Lu Heng witnessed while visiting the eighteenth level during onboarding orientation still gave him chills just thinking about them.

Perhaps Shuite was simply the kind of person who was slow when it came to matters of the heart. Just as Lu Heng relaxed and was about to say something, he suddenly saw Shuite’s expression sharpen. Without needing to exchange a word, their tacit agreement said it all—Lu Heng drew his dagger and spun around to lunge. After the two worked together to kill an ambushing guard insect, Lu Heng sensed several more guard insects appearing not far away.

Shuite directly summoned his mech: “It seems the Queen has already discovered us.”

Since their location had been compromised, there was no need for caution anymore. Using their mechs would resolve these guard insects faster and with far less effort.

Seeing this, Lu Heng also summoned his own mech, readying himself for a grueling battle.