First Interstellar Guide Chapter 18: Top-Secret Information

Chapter 18: Top-Secret Information

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: Karai

Most of the students at Sentinel Academy went to the ceremony site, and some second-year students were playing in the snow on campus.

Over by the grounds, a few students having a snowball fight were excited, their laughter echoing from afar. The ground was a must-pass area on the way to the library from the isolation wall. Yu Ran had the nine-tailed fox activate its invisibility ability and quickened their pace forward.

One of the students accidentally threw a snowball, hitting Yu Ran who was passing by. As the student was about to say “sorry,” they froze in place upon seeing no one there, “Huh? I thought I hit someone just now, why is there nobody there?”

Their companion followed their gaze and chuckled, “Obviously, there’s no one there. You must have mistaken something.”

The 14-year-old Sentinel scratched his head, ignoring the incident and continued playing snowball fight with his companions.

Yu Ran gently brushed off the snow from his body and calmly passed by the side of the playground. The nine-tailed fox’s invisibility ability made dealing with these young Sentinel students very easy. However, his “invisibility” only prevented the opponents from consciously detecting him; it didn’t mean he ceased to exist. His body still interacted with the surrounding environment, leaving footprints, getting touched by people, and he had to find ways to erase these traces.

In less than three minutes, Yu Ran arrived at the library of Sentinel Academy as if it were a familiar route.

The library was shaped like a shield standing on the ground. The building was fifteen floors high in total, with access control requiring students to swipe their student cards to enter. Turning left at the entrance led to the security room, and through the lobby was access to the three elevators going upstairs.

The second-year students hadn’t officially started classes yet, so there were many people reading in the library. Yu Ran waited for a moment and soon saw a boy of about 14 years old with a backpack heading towards the library’s entrance – he should be a C-level Sentinel, and his spirit body was a small black cat, which hadn’t noticed the presence of the nine-tailed fox at all.

As the boy reached the entrance, a clear and cold voice suddenly sounded in his mind, “Where’s your student card?”

“???” The boy looked bewildered as he took out his student card from his backpack.

Yu Ran took the student card from him, and the boy was completely unaware, standing there like a frozen puppet, staring blankly.

The voice in his mind said, “You’re here to study in the library. If you find your student card missing when you reach the entrance, go to the ground to look for it. After finding it, then come in, it will delay you a bit.”

The boy nodded dazedly and turned to the ground to search for his student card.

Yu Ran, holding his student card, swiped it to enter the library.

It was already nine o’clock in the morning, and there weren’t many people coming in and out of the lobby on the ground floor of the library. Yu Ran quickly walked into the security room on the left.

The duty security guard was puzzled – the door had been pushed open, why hadn’t anyone come in? He looked out of the door in confusion, unaware that a red mental tentacle was silently creeping up to the back of his neck.

A strange voice sounded in his mind, “The library’s surveillance system is malfunctioning.”

The security guard, with a bewildered expression, mechanically repeated in his mind, “The library’s surveillance system is malfunctioning.”

“You’ve been on duty in the security room all day and haven’t noticed anything unusual.”

The security guard nodded blankly, “Yes, nothing unusual.”

Yu Ran went to the monitor screen and deleted all the surveillance records and access control records for the library today, and then closed the surveillance program.

Following that, he entered the elevator and pressed the 14th floor.

The 15th floor of the Sentinel Academy library was not open to the public. The “15th floor” button in the elevator could not be pressed, only those with the highest authority in the academy could access it. Usually, teachers and students never went up to the 15th floor, so Yu Ran had to take the elevator to the 14th floor and then find a way to climb up to the 15th floor.

As expected, the fire escape door leading to the 15th floor from the 14th floor was locked.

Fortunately, this door used a regular lock. Yu Ran took out a thin metal probe from his pocket, his hands were very dexterous, he rotated it a few times in the keyhole, and with a soft “click,” the door lock opened smoothly. Yu Ran quickly climbed up to the 15th floor through the fire escape stairs and then arrived at the heavy metal door.

“Library Archives, No Trespassing”

At the entrance stood a sign, and the metal door was secured with a high-security password lock and iris recognition device. Yu Ran slightly furrowed his brow; cracking an eight-digit password wasn’t difficult, but his distinctive heterochromatic eyes could easily be recorded by the iris recognition system, making it impossible for him to enter directly through the main entrance.

Yu Ran glanced around and quickly spotted a more portable passage. He gently tugged at the skin on his wrist – he was wearing a pair of specially made gloves, as thin as silk, almost melding with his skin when worn. They could adhere to the walls and leave no fingerprints.

Yu Ran opened the window at the stairwell without hesitation and climbed out.

This was the 15th floor, high above the ground. Yu Ran used his special gloves to cling to the wall, climbing sideways like a gecko, agile and swift.

If it were Lu Zexuan, he could have flown directly over with his eagle-like flying ability. Sentinels with climbing-type spirit bodies could also climb tall buildings with the strength of their limbs.

But Yu Ran was a guide. Guides didn’t have the inherent physical prowess and strength of sentinels; if he wanted to climb, he had to rely on tools. And because of this, no one would ever think that the person sneaking into the archive room by climbing through the window of the 15th floor… would be a guide.

Yu Ran agilely climbed to the window and inserted an extremely fine metal probe into the gap, manipulating the lock and opening the window. He then leaped into the archive room with a roll, landing steadily on the ground.

The archive room contained student records from previous years of Sentinel Academy, neatly arranged in rows of folders, none of which were Yu Ran’s target. He headed straight for the depths of the archive room and opened a hidden door.

Inside the less-than-ten-square-meter secret room, a holographic projection screen was flickering with blue light. Yu Ran took out a microchip and connected it to the computer; immediately, a prompt popped up on the screen, “Permission error! Data will be destroyed soon…”

A piercing alarm sounded in the secret room.

Yu Ran frowned slightly, his gaze sharp and cold. His slender and nimble hands swiftly tapped on the virtual keyboard, and a dense array of white characters continuously scrolled on the screen, dazzling to the eyes.

After a moment, the warning characters disappeared, replaced by a green prompt saying “Verification Passed.”

Yu Ran seized the time to copy the data inside. He stared fixedly at the computer screen, and the copying progress on the screen rapidly climbed from 1%, one folder after another being copied onto the chip. When the progress reached 100%, Yu Ran immediately pulled out the chip, flipped out of the window, and retraced his steps.

At the same time, at the Central Command of the White Tower.

“Alarm, alarm! Intruder detected in the Sentinel Academy archive room!”

The mechanical voice sounded in their ears. The middle-aged officer’s face darkened, and he quickly dialed the internal line, “Immediately go to the Sentinel Academy!”

A small spaceship took off immediately, heading to Sentinel Academy in the suburbs of the capital at the fastest speed.

As Yu Ran descended in the elevator, the security guard had just woken up, subconsciously thinking that nothing had happened, that he had just dozed off. The student who had been mentally prompted to find his student card had returned, just in time. Yu Ran handed the student card back to him, and the student, as if waking from a dream, turned and entered the library on his own.

In the distance, inside the gymnasium, the host exclaimed excitedly, “Let’s give a warm round of applause to Major General Lu Zexuan for his speech!”

Applause floated in the air above the academy, the white eagle still hovering in the sky, while the nine-tailed fox spread its tails, protecting its master as they swiftly retreated.

Passing by the playground, Yu Ran saw those students still having a snowball fight. He mentally suggested, “Sentinels should exercise regularly. Run back and forth from the ground to the isolation wall a few more times.”

The students nodded obediently, “We’ll go for a run!”

The sentinels acted promptly, forming teams to run, quickly trampling the footprints in the snow into a mess.

***

Next door, the opening ceremony of the guide academy was still underway.

When Yu Ran returned to his seat, Professor Morvi had just finished his speech. The auditorium thundered with applause, and the white fox, who was standing in for the master, swiftly retreated as Yu Ran calmly took his seat and joined the applause with the surrounding students.

His roommate, Kamiya, looked at Yu Ran and smiled, “Ran-ge, Professor Morvi gave a great speech!”

Yu Ran nodded, “Yes, he did.”

Kamiya didn’t notice the few drops of sweat on Yu Ran’s forehead. This time, Yu Ran used mental suggestion to modify the short-term memory of more than six individuals. Fortunately, they were all low-level sentinels and wouldn’t resist his mental suggestion.

The biggest variable was still Lu Zexuan’s white eagle, an S-class spirit body with extremely keen eyesight. For the nine-tailed fox to slip past it, it would take quite a bit of mental energy. The white fox, who had been pretending to be the master, was also getting tired.

In his mind, Yu Ran said, “Alright, you two can rest now.”

The nine-tailed fox and the white fox returned to their respective mental landscapes. Yu Ran gently closed his eyes and began to repair his heavily depleted mental world. In the vast primeval forest, sunlight spilled onto the ground, and the withered flowers and trees began to take root and sprout anew. All of this happened silently, without anyone noticing.

Meanwhile, in the sky above the Sentinel Academy, a small spaceship bearing the special insignia of the Federation suddenly appeared. The spaceship flew over the school and landed directly on the rooftop of the Sentinel Academy library. A tall man dressed in black jumped down from the spaceship, summoning his spirit body expressionlessly.

The exceptionally sharp-eyed white eagle immediately reported, “Master, it’s a spaceship from the Investigation Division – Zhu Tianyi has arrived.”

Lu Zexuan squinted as he looked into the distance.

A giant black spider with eight sharp legs extended from its body, resembling a gigantic battle mecha, crouched on the rooftop of the library. Countless white silk threads rapidly spewed out of its mouth, forming a huge spider web that enveloped the entire building.

Zhu Tianyi, an S-class sentinel, evolved his spirit body into a “Black Spider,” an ability that created an inescapable spider web. It seemed that something major had happened at the library. To actually alert the head of the Investigation Division, Zhu Tianyi?

A hint of unease rose in Lu Zexuan’s heart. When he was invited to be a guest at the opening ceremony of Sentinel Academy, which gathered most of the students in the gymnasium, he had already felt that something was amiss, which was why he had instructed the white eagle to patrol the area.

Unfortunately, the white eagle hadn’t detected anything unusual. Who could have made a move under the watchful eyes of an S-class spirit body like the white eagle?

Lu Zexuan frowned and instructed the white eagle in his mind, “Go and see what’s happening at the library.”