QT: LAC Chapter 90: Sixth World (14)

Chapter 90: Sixth World (14)
Translated by Shiya of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Due to the full preparation and the ability of each team member, Lestrot’s team won first place without doubt. There were no accidents like a pest going berserk or an Omega going into heat. After all, this was a very serious test being broadcasted live, and a large part of the students involved were noble Alphas. Since the school was responsible for the test the choice of the site had to be carefully picked. In addition, the school must send teachers to supervise and hire the army to clean up the potential threats in advance. No accident was allowed, since the school could never bear the responsibility of any accident.

With such excellent results, Bai Duan naturally won the school’s notice, and was even recommended by Professor Zieger to take the examination for skipping a year.

It was really not easy to get such permission. After all, as the top school in the human country, studying in the Royal Academy of Delmo was not easy at all. Ordinary students found it very hard to deal with daily courses, and they had no extra energy to learn more advanced knowledge. Since the establishment of the school, only very few students had been able to jump, even a person like Lestrot, who has always been shrouded in the aura of a genius, had not been qualified.

For a while, Bai Duan was very popular in the school. Those who envied Bai Duan because of his close relationship with Lestrot also restrained their ugly faces, they dared not slander him anymore. Even people outside the school had become aware of him from the live assessment, now many knew of a talented Beta student in the academy.

However, although Bai Duan had attracted some attention, the news that had attracted most people’s attention during this period was not him, but a new group of star thieves.

The star thieves group had robbed several small transport ships before, but there were countless star thieves in the universe, so it had not entered the public’s field of vision or aroused the vigilance of government departments and noblemen. Recently however, perhaps they had finished testing the water. The actions of this particular star thieves group was getting bigger and bolder. Not only did it quickly accumulate a large amount of assets, it also made the public remember its name — the Soul-Eating Ermines.

Bai Duan had been paying attention to all the news related to star thieves because of Eddie, and somehow paid attention to this name at first sight. The media had speculated about what kind of creature it was or what meaning the name was trying to express. Unfortunately, even though there were different opinions, no one was sure.

No one knew what an ermine was, but Bai Duan felt like he had heard of it from somewhere before. He couldn’t help but feel warm and an incomprehensible love. Moreover, Bai Duan instinctively believed that the agile ermine group was related to Eddie — even though he knew that Eddie couldn’t build a force of his own in such a short time.

But Bai Duan still couldn’t control his attention to its every move, and he even felt a kind of weird pride and joy. When it first came into the public’s view, it was just a common star thieves group composed of two small ships. But since then, its scale had expanded at an astonishing speed. Every time it made an appearance, the fleet would have an addition of one to two more warships. In addition, they had committed frequent crimes. Now they had crossed the threshold of the medium-sized star thieves group and became a new force that could not be underestimated.

If it was just an expansion in the number of people and ships, it would have not been intimidating. After all, quantity doesn’t mean quality. It was not uncommon to see a small number win in interstellar combat. But what people were afraid of was its changeable combat style and unpredictable ship configurations.

The Soul-Eating Ermines star thieves group definitely had a very excellent ship commander. They didn’t feel like a new fleet at all in battle, they were more cunning and tricky than those old star thief groups, which were already beyond difficult to deal with. No one could predict its fighting style. It was like an ambushing viper. Anyone who was stared at by it couldn’t escape the result of being bitten hard.

At the very beginning of its appearance, it created a ‘miracle’ with a few small warships; it played tricks on and attacked its opponents. With the advantage of speed and strong protective cover, it constantly detoured and rushed around like a ghost, destroying the enemy’s formation, luring them away from the proper channel, and then took them out one by one. Even when the battle was over, its enemies couldn’t see why they lost so terribly.

Of course, to achieve this, in addition to tactical advantages, the performance of the ship was also extremely important. The reason why the star thieves could stand up to the pressure and stand in the universe was that they had gathered the wisdom and technology from all races of the universe.

But sometimes, it was not a good thing to have too many scientific and technological resources. After all, the technological advancements of the intelligent races had developed in a variety of ways, some of which were very far apart from each other. If they couldn’t be integrated together, no matter how many technological resources they had, it wouldn’t help. Even if they forced cutting-edge technologies from different branches of science and technology to be installed on our own ships, they would be more self-harming and bring more troubles to themselves.

Therefore, most star thieves groups would only transform their ships in one aspect — most of them chose speed — and would not greedily try to improve all aspects with the technology at hand, but the Soul-Eating Ermines thief group broke such rules.

It was quite certain that, in addition to the excellent ship commander, it also had one or even several talented ship designers and remodelers. Although, on the surface, it was not much different from ordinary ships, the Soul-Eating Ermines carried out in-depth transformations on all aspects of their ships.

It was almost like a small monster that looked soft and harmless on the surface, but was actually full of sharp spikes. No one knew how the ship had been transformed, but they would attack suddenly in unexpected places and give heavy damage to the enemy, making them unable to evade in time.

Such powerful ship technology, combined with strange and unpredictable tactical skills, made the Soul-Eating Ermines invincible. Even though it was a sinful star thief group, people were still fascinated by it, so they constantly searched for their battle data, trying to decrypt its ship technology and behavior mode. In any case, the Soul-Eating Ermines were still shrouded in a veil of mystery, looking up and down at others with cold eyes.

Yes, it was like a mystery. Its origin was a mystery, its leader was a mystery, its members were a mystery, its ships were a mystery, its tactics were a mystery, and even its name was a mystery. No one could figure out the enigma, and its hunting range was within the human alliance area only, which had brought huge losses to the human countries. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, among the serious victims was the O’dean family.

The O’dean family was deeply rooted and powerful, and had several small planets as its own resource warehouse. In order to deliver money and resources to those storage places, it naturally had more than ten large or small transport ships as convoys. During this period of time, all the departing fleets unfortunately collided with the Soul-Eating Ermines and were looted.

Although the collapse of several fleets was not enough to hurt the O’dean family, such a huge loss still left the family in a mess. As the next successor, Lestrot also had to take a temporary leave from school and return to his home to help solve this dilemma. At least, until the strife with the Soul-Eating Ermines calmed down and the hostile Soul-Eating Ermines were defeated.

Maybe the Soul-Eating Ermines were too arrogant for a while and touched the interests of several other old star thief groups. Maybe it was that those star thief groups were provoked or bribed by other forces. Maybe it was that they were envious of the ship technology owned by the Soul-Eating Ermines. In a word, the current star thieves were in a mess. The old forces were challenged by the new forces. As a result, it was possible that the new forces would die out under pressure, or that the old ones would fall apart.

However, in any case, this development was a good thing for the human country which had lost a lot in this period of time. The O’dean family was a little relieved and regrouped, so that Lestrot could go back to school from the family and continue his studies. When he got back to school and solved the problems he had accumulated for a while, Lestrot immediately found Bai Duan.

Lestrot was somewhat surprised to find that Bai Duan was studying the news about the rampage of the Soul-Eating Ermines. “You are also interested in the star thieves?”

“…No, just taking a look.” Bai Duan turned off the news page in a flat voice. He didn’t want to talk to others, especially not Lestrot, he didn’t want to share anything he knew about Eddie.

Seeing Bai Duan’s insincere perfunctory attitude, Lestrot’s smile deepened a little. The Bai Duan he knew only had a single interest. Apart from mechanical matters, Bai Duan never showed curiosity for anything — then, if Bai Duan was paying attention to the news of the star thieves, that must be for his sake, right? After all, the O’dean family was a big victim of the star thieves’ rampage. Bai Duan will worry about him, since he had asked for leave from school for so long.

“I’ve been busy at home for a while now, and I’ve missed your test. Congratulations on passing the test.”

“Thank you,” Bai Duan nodded to Lestrot with a light smile — since he was so sincere in greeting, he could not be too unscrupulous.

Bai Duan had been cold since he joined the college, because of the wild pursuers in college. Even Lestrot rarely or rather never saw his smile. At this time, Lestrot suddenly saw Bai Duan smiling. Even Lestrot was dazed and flattered by it.

However, the smile was like a flash, and it soon disappeared. On one hand, Lestrot was embarrassed by his response as if he was addicted to beauty, on the other hand, he couldn’t help feeling lost. Thinking of his family’s affirmation of his chosen technician partner, Lestrot became calm and serious, “Bai Xue Di ¹, the field practice assessment and your successful grade jump not long ago showed that you’re talented. Now, I would like to solemnly invite you to become my exclusive mecha technician after graduation.”

Hearing Lestrot’s words, Bai Duan was not shocked. God knows, he had been waiting for Lestrot to spit it out for nearly a year. Looking up at Lestrot with the same solemnity, Bai Duan firmly replied with the answer he had prepared for a long time, “Sorry, please allow me to refuse your invitation.”

Lestrot, “…” Wait, this development seemed a little wrong? Xue Di, are you too excited that you said something wrong?!