FT DR Chapter 146: Guide Team Mission

Chapter 146: Guide Team Mission

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: Karai

An hour later, the invisible starship returned unexpectedly. Apart from the monitoring chip, the small team also brought back a live captive. He was a port ground crew, an ordinary human. It was unclear why he hadn’t evacuated with the main force but was left behind alone. According to the squad leader, they found him in a cabinet in a storage room. At that time, he was already terrified, unable to speak coherent sentences.

Facing Jin Xuan, the ground crew showed no fear as if he hadn’t noticed that the enemy commander was standing in front of him. It was as if an invisible wall completely separated him from the outside world. While his body was here, his soul remained with the Beta Frontline.

“What exactly happened?” Jin Xuan handed the chip to his subordinate for translation and personally interrogated the ground crew. “Where did all those Beta Frontline people go?”

The ground crew sat motionless in the chair, lips moving rapidly but silently. His gaze unconsciously fell on Jin Xuan’s face, but his mind seemed elsewhere. Jin Xuan leaned closer, listening intently. He faintly heard the ground crew muttering, “Can’t see… I can’t see…”

“Does he have eye problems?” Jin Xuan asked the squad leader. The squad leader shook his head. “No, he can see. He walked onto the ship by himself when we brought him aboard.”

Since his vision was fine, “can’t see” must have meant something else. Considering the messages sent back from the observation post earlier, Jin Xuan was almost certain that the deaths of those sentinels were related to either the consciousness cloud or the quantum beast— the only two things regular people “couldn’t see.”

The ground crew shrank in the chair like a frightened quail, trembling. Jin Xuan sat opposite him with a stern face. Suddenly, he slammed the table hard enough to make the cabin ceiling buzz. The trial team leader and the squad leader were both startled by his sudden action. The ground crew seemed to snap out of his trance, shivering. His pupils contracted, and his gaze focused on Jin Xuan’s face.

“No! Don’t come near me! Leave! Leave! I’m just a regular person! Spare me!” The ground crew suddenly screamed hysterically, lunging towards Jin Xuan. Two guards immediately restrained him, pressing him firmly into the chair.

“Take me away! Don’t leave me behind! Take me away!” The ground crew burst into tears, snot and tears covering his face. “I don’t want to die, I’m just a regular person…”

The medical officer wanted to administer a sedative, but Jin Xuan stopped him. The ground crew cried for about ten minutes, gradually calming down. His eyes returned to normal, looking at Jin Xuan and then around the room. He stopped struggling and laughed and cried, saying, “Heaven, where am I? Is this the Federal Legion?”

Jin Xuan couldn’t be bothered to indulge him. “This is the ‘Tianzhu’ fleet, and you’ve been captured. Don’t resist.”

“I… I’ve really been captured?” The ground crew cried tears of joy again. “Heaven! This is great, I’m finally saved, thank you, thank you all! Thank you, General.” He recognized Jin Xuan’s shoulder insignia and almost knelt down to him. “Please, don’t send me back, it’s too terrifying, they’re all dead, all dead.”

As he mentioned the Beta Frontline, he began to have a breakdown again. Jin Xuan interrupted him, asking, “What exactly happened to the Beta Frontline? Why were large numbers of sentinels transported away, and the garrison at the port disappeared?”

“There are evil spirits!” The ground crew stared in fear, eyes wide. “We were attacked by evil spirits!”

“Evil spirits?” Jin Xuan was surprised. “What kind of evil spirits?”

“Invisible evil spirits!” The ground crew nervously glanced around as if avoiding some unseen enemy, lowering his voice. “Two days ago, people in the port started dying inexplicably, all sentinels. The evil spirits killed their quantum beasts, extinguished their consciousness clouds, and they all turned into wooden, living dead!”

His expression twisted strangely, his voice low and chilling, giving an eerie feeling. The trial personnel couldn’t help but shiver. However, Jin Xuan felt no fear. He approached the ground crew and asked sternly, “Be clearer. How do you know their quantum beasts were killed?”

“Someone saw it and spoke!” The ground crew’s words were somewhat disjointed. “They came, the sentinels saw them, but couldn’t resist. They cut off the sentinels’ consciousness clouds like harvesting wheat, killing their quantum beasts…” The ground crew’s pupils began to dilate again, his eyes becoming manic and fearful. “Invisible enemies, yes, they are invisible enemies. No one can resist… Everyone left, those who couldn’t leave died. I wanted to leave with them, but they left me behind…” Suddenly, he screamed hysterically, “No! Don’t! Don’t leave me!”

His mind was under too much stress. Asking further might drive him insane. Jin Xuan shook his head, indicating for the guards to take him away and for the medical officer to administer a sedative. “He’s in no condition to answer anything… What about the chip? Is the surveillance video repaired?”

“It’s done,” the special ops team leader said. “The information unit just sent it over.”

“Open it up.”

The Voyager Army’s video encoding was different from the Federal Legion’s, so even after decoding, the clarity was still low, and the footage was choppy. Jin Xuan quickly skimmed through it at five times the speed, selecting a slightly smoother segment. “He’s right, there are invisible enemies, look here.”

The special ops team leader leaned in to watch. In the video, a sentinel soldier was running towards an exit. Suddenly, he stopped as if he had seen something terrifying. Then he started to retreat, taking his gun from his shoulder and holding it in his hand. But before he could pull the trigger, he collapsed backward onto the ground, motionless. Two other sentinel soldiers, presumably seeing what was happening, ran over, firing repeatedly at an empty spot with fearful and ferocious expressions. But none of their attacks had any effect; the energy beams from their rifles pierced through the air and hit the metal wall, while the energy grenades exploded in the distance, creating a deep crater in the empty ground.

“They encountered an attack from higher-dimensional enemies,” Jin Xuan said solemnly. “Normal people can’t see those enemies, and ordinary camera devices can’t record their images either.”

His words were incredulous, but no one dared to refute him. Jin Xuan watched the continuing video playback silently. Then he said, “What’s even more terrifying is that our existing conventional weapons are completely ineffective against these enemies.”

The special ops team leader shuddered. “That’s terrifying. What should we do? They’re still in the Voyager Army’s jurisdiction. What if they cross the Alpha Line and come to the Federation?” Wouldn’t the Federation fleet face the same “bloodbath”?

Jin Xuan’s expression grew serious, and he remained silent for a moment. Then he lightly flicked his fingers across the video and asked, “What’s this?”

Following his finger, the special ops team leader saw a petite female soldier supporting a sentinel with a colonel rank as they retreated. The sentinel had obviously been attacked by unknown enemies, but strangely, he didn’t lose consciousness instantly and became one of the living dead like the others did. Although his eyes were red, his body twitched, and he struggled to retreat. The female soldier beside him looked extremely pale, as if she was in great pain, but there were no visible injuries on her.

“She’s a guide!” the special ops team leader suddenly exclaimed, pointing at the female soldier in the video. “Look at her eyes, she has vertical pupils!”

“She’s resisting the invisible enemies,” Jin Xuan said, his eyes deep as he stared at the fleeing pair in the video. “She’s protecting her sentinel.”

The interrogation room fell silent as Jin Xuan, the special ops team leader, and the squad leader all watched the video silently, lost in thought. After a moment, Jin Xuan tapped the table and instructed the guards, “Go ask the medical officer if the captive’s condition has stabilized. If so, bring him over.”

A few minutes later, the medical officer wheeled the ground crew back into the interrogation room. He seemed to have been administered some medication, looking very calm but with a somewhat vacant expression, his mouth hanging open and drooling.

“His mental breakdown was severe. I had to give him a strong sedative. He should be stable now, but we’ll need to provide further treatment once we get back to Fort Alpha. There shouldn’t be any lasting effects,” the medical officer apologized. Jin Xuan nodded in approval and asked the ground crew, “Did any sentinels escape from the ‘evil spirits’? Did you see?”

The ground crew’s lifeless eyes twitched slightly, landing on Jin Xuan’s face. After staring at him for a while, he murmured as if in a dream, “Yes… some… they escaped… she stopped them…”

“Who? Who stopped them?” Jin Xuan prompted. “The girl? The guide?”

“Yes,” the ground crew continued to mutter in a low voice, saliva uncontrollably dripping from the corners of his mouth, seemingly oblivious. “She could stop them, but she was alone… Then they ran away, leaving me behind… sob…” As he spoke, he started to cry, covering his face and sobbing uncontrollably. “Don’t leave me, I don’t want to die, sob…”

“Take him back to Fortress No. 1 immediately.” Jin Xuan got the answer he wanted and instructed the medical officer, “Hand him over to my deputy fleet commander. They must ensure he is healed as quickly as possible for detailed interrogation.”

“Yes!” The medical officer acknowledged and left. Jin Xuan pondered for a moment then turned to the special ops team leader. “Send a battle report to headquarters. Provide them with a detailed account of the situation here and what we have discovered. Inform them that we may soon encounter enemies from higher dimensions and require a large number of guides to establish mental barriers for our sentinel soldiers. We also need special weapons for dimensional combat.” His brows furrowed deeply. “Notify Fortress No. 1 that I need a team of five guides to survey the situation in the Beta Line immediately. Arrange for several experienced aggressive-type guides to join them.”

The special ops team leader hesitated, “Five guides?” Even though the front line legion had just reinforced with over a thousand guides, five guides were still extremely precious. Sending them into the dangerous Beta Line could be a one-way trip. What if…

“People can’t see the attackers. Only by sending sentinels to investigate can we gather intelligence. But based on the intelligence, sentinels have no self-defense capabilities against these enemies. They must be protected by guides,” Jin Xuan explained ironically. It had always been guides relying on sentinels, sentinels protecting guides. Who knew that one day it would be reversed, and sentinels would need protection from guides.

Thinking back to Wu Chenghe’s theory of “mutant gene evolution,” which he had never fully agreed with before, Jin Xuan felt something inside him being overturned.

“Understood.” The special ops team leader realized that this was indeed the only way. If they didn’t send capable individuals to assess the situation and formulate countermeasures in time before the enemy spread to the Alpha Line, they would become the next Voyager Army! If all the sentinels died, what could the remaining guides do? Nothing but wait for death.

Battle reports and orders were swiftly dispatched. The shuttle carrying the captive flew back to Fortress No. 1, while the frontline observation post kept sending messages. The Beta Line had already collapsed completely, with a large number of ships fleeing towards Gabriel, leaving behind masses of dead troops. Just as the ground crew had said, invisible enemies were harvesting the lives of sentinels like reaping wheat, or more accurately, their souls in higher dimensions.

Inside the special ops battleship, the atmosphere was heavy and oppressive. Everyone was in a somber mood, including Jin Xuan. They were all waiting for the arrival of the guides, but no one knew if they would return alive.

Half an hour later, the shuttle from Fortress No. 1 docked with the special ops battleship, and eleven reinforcements entered the main control room. Jin Xuan saw the familiar figure trailing behind them and exploded, roaring, “What are you doing here?”

Wu Chenghe took off his military cap and smiled amiably. “I’m here to reinforce you.”

“Who authorized you?!” Jin Xuan was thoroughly enraged. “Weren’t you supposed to discuss the surgery with the obstetrician? I thought you should be lying on the operating table right now!”

“My electrolytes were a bit off. The doctor said I had to adjust them before the surgery could be done. I’ve already taken the medication, but it’ll take another three or four days to recover,” Wu Chenghe said calmly, as if he had no idea where he was or what dangers he would face in the future. “I read your battle report and guessed that you might personally lead a team to the Beta Line, so I came over…”

“Go back!” Jin Xuan interrupted him angrily, grabbing his shoulder and turning him around, calling the guards, “Escort Lieutenant Wu back and tell the deputy fleet commander not to let him leave Fortress No. 1 again, not to let him see my battle report again. His task now is to recover and give birth. His place is in the medical room!”

“Stay calm!” Wu Chenghe broke free from his grasp, his voice becoming stern. “I am your guide, and my place is always by your side. This is stipulated by federal law. Even if you are my superior, you cannot violate the basic constitution!”

“Go back!” Jin Xuan used authoritative language, ordering him with his eyes. “Listen, from now on, you’re not allowed to leave Fortress No. 1. If you do, I’ll have you locked up and tied to the bed!”

“No! I won’t!” Wu Chenghe resisted with all his strength, his body trembling involuntarily. “I am a federal soldier, and I haven’t violated any regulations. You have no right to imprison me! Jin Xuan, if you’re going to the Beta Line, you must take me with you. Only I can protect you, do you understand?”

Only I can protect you… Those words pierced Jin Xuan’s ears, softening his gaze involuntarily. Wu Chenghe took advantage of the opportunity to influence him. “Would you let this child lose his father before he’s even born?”

“You!” Jin Xuan felt the influence, but he was already deeply immersed in it and couldn’t break free. His hands released involuntarily, stepping back, shaking his head. “You’re using your influence on me… You’re forcing me…”

“It’s the best choice. I am your strongest partner and the most suitable candidate,” Wu Chenghe took a deep breath, calming himself down, not wanting to affect the child in his stomach. Then he said, “Don’t waste any more time, Fleet Captain!”

Jin Xuan’s chest heaved violently, the muscles in his face tensed tightly. He closed his eyes for a moment but ultimately didn’t force Wu Chenghe to leave. “Fine, everyone, get ready. We depart in half an hour.”

Half an hour later, the stealth starship set off again, carrying not only Jin Xuan and Wu Chenghe but also five pairs of sentinel-guide pairs. These pairs were carefully selected by the deputy fleet commander, with experienced veterans as sentinels and aggressive-type players as guides.

Since traditional guides were mostly gentle, three of the five guides were volunteers who had just registered, and it was their first time on such a dangerous mission. Sitting beside their respective sentinels, they were visibly nervous.

“Relax,” Jin Xuan noticed their unease and said, “We’re not going deep into the Voyager Army’s territory, just scouting on the edge of the Beta Line. The danger is limited.”

“Yeah,” Wu Chenghe echoed, “From the surveillance videos, guides pose a certain threat to the ‘Reapers.’ That female guide wasn’t an aggressive type, yet she managed to save her sentinel.” 

The term “Reapers” was the temporary code they had given to the invisible enemies during their pre-battle discussion, derived from the description given by the captive—”They harvest sentinels’ consciousness like reaping wheat.”

As Wu Chenghe spoke, he subtly used his influence, and indeed, the guides calmed down slightly after his words. A female guide with insect-like features bravely said, “I wonder where the Reapers are now. Did they follow those starships heading to Gabriel, or are they lingering in the ruins of the Beta Line?”

Upon hearing the word “ruins,” Jin Xuan frowned, finding it oddly grating, but upon reflection, considering the scattered deaths of the defending troops, although the fortifications were intact, with no one around, it was indeed akin to ruins. “We’ll only know once we get there.”

Indeed, that was the purpose of their journey… Silence fell over the group. So far, all their knowledge of the Reapers came from a rough video and the disjointed narrative of the ground crew. No one could clearly explain what form of life the Reapers were or where they came from.

For a moment, everyone felt the weight on their shoulders.

Soon, the stealth starship crossed the Beta Line. Just as the reconnaissance team had described before, it was silent, deserted, and unguarded. As the starship passed through checkpoints, there was no inspection or inquiry whatsoever. Jin Xuan piloted the starship himself, bypassing the unmanned outposts and passing through one empty port after another until finally docking at a dock in the far rear of the front line.

“Beyond here is the Reapers’ headquarters,” Jin Xuan said softly, activating the energy wave detector. “The energy fluctuations are still ongoing, indicating their retreat. We can’t get too close; we might be detected.”

“We can use their ship,” Wu Chenghe activated the external monitoring system, scanning left and right and pointing to a shuttle. “There’s a shuttle over there. We can fly it to a port behind them and assess the situation.”

“Agreed,” Jin Xuan shut down the engines. “Activate camouflage and prepare to disembark.”

The twelve individuals activated the camouflage program on their military uniforms. The Federal Legion uniforms were very similar to those of the Voyager Army, differing only in color. With a few adjustments to the color parameters of the fabric and the shoulder patches and badges, they transformed into a group of Voyager Army soldiers.

“It feels eerie,” Wu Chenghe, whose consciousness was particularly sensitive, frowned as soon as they disembarked. “Do you smell it? There’s a strange odor.”

The female insect-like guide nervously looked around, sniffing, “It seems so. Sweet, with a hint of blood.” 

Her sentinel agreed, “Yes, and a bit like rust.”

Jin Xuan remained silent, but he also detected the strange smell. Simultaneously, his consciousness sensed a sticky, uncomfortable sensation, reminiscent of some ugly crawling creature leaving moist traces on the ground, or perhaps some insect with slimy mucus wriggling through the grass, leaving shiny nasal secretions everywhere.

“Be careful,” Jin Xuan murmured, leading the team through the passage next to the dock to the shuttle. Not far away lay two sentinels motionless on the ground, their faces lifelike, their chests still rising and falling slowly, but their consciousness had vanished, and their quantum beasts were nowhere to be found.

Although they knew the Reapers specifically targeted consciousness and quantum beasts, hearing and seeing it was completely different. The insect-like guide turned pale, covering her mouth as she whispered, “Heavens! Where are their consciousnesses and quantum beasts?” She looked around desperately, trying to find even a trace of the quantum beasts’ bodies, but found nothing.

“Get in,” Jin Xuan opened the shuttle door, ushering the insect-like guide into the cabin, and motioned for the others to board. He then accessed the control system via the personal terminal at the pilot’s seat, bypassed the permissions, and instructed in a low voice, “Stay calm, everyone. The situation so far is as we understand it. Remember, our goal is to uncover the truth, not to fight. If we encounter the enemy, don’t linger in battle; retreat quickly.”

“Yes!” The group acknowledged solemnly. Jin Xuan quickly obtained the necessary permissions and started the shuttle’s engines, easing it out of the dock.

The shuttle had a holographic monitoring system inside, but Jin Xuan still converted the canopy above the control console into transparent mode. Through the transparent canopy, everyone could see the situation outside—countless sentinel bodies scattered around, mostly in disarray, with expressions of terror and fear. Some hadn’t realized what happened and were frozen in running positions.

In the distance, the largest port behind periodically emitted faint blue flames, indicating the departure of large starships. But whether they carried living people or the living dead was unknown.

“Slow down,” the shuttle flew about fifty to sixty meters away when Wu Chenghe suddenly sensed a slight fluctuation in consciousness. He gently pressed Jin Xuan’s hand and said, “Wait, something’s wrong… I sense a strange power approaching.”

Jin Xuan’s expression froze, and he reduced the engine speed, stabilizing the shuttle in mid-air. “What is it?” he asked.

Wu Chenghe shook his head, but his eyes gradually turned into vertical pupils. Through mental sensing, Jin Xuan “saw” his powerful consciousness surging, countless fine mental tendrils extending from all directions, constantly stretching… extending… reaching towards a slightly vibrating point in higher-dimensional space. The other guides also felt his consciousness fluctuation and followed his guidance, extending their mental tendrils towards the same place. Gradually, everyone’s focus converged on one point.

 

 

 

 

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