Chapter 99: War Council

Hiroyuki only knew that among the worlds admitted to the Interstellar Alliance, there was no planet called the Hive.

Perhaps Rebeje had washed ashore here and crowned himself ruler, or perhaps this world was one of the Alliance’s shadow planets, outwardly neutral, yet in truth controlled by the Alliance.

But that did not matter. At least for everyone present, uncovering the truth was not their main task.

They had all vanished here by accident. Before they disappeared, each of them had had their own mission, their own destination.

Take Zero, for instance. He knew that injustice was unfolding on this planet, but his power was restricted. On his own, he could barely manage self-preservation, much less save the poor souls wallowing in the mire. His assignment had been to go to Earth, and he carried several duties besides; ending up here was a complete accident, and all he wanted was to leave as quickly as possible.

Of course, if he managed to get out, he would report everything here to the Security Corps at once and let the regular forces handle it.

Baleru and the others had also joined the program for reasons far from pure. Their true target was a red crystal floating at the top of Starport Tower.

There was a rumor that this city had been developed around that very crystal. And indeed, the red crystal stood at the city’s center.

Baleru and the others had gone to see for themselves, and they found that the roads carved through the city radiated outward in a clear pattern, extending from Starport Tower in every direction.

"Suspicious, isn't it?"

"Very much so," Hiroyuki agreed with a nod. "If that crystal is the core, the key to the suppressive field of energy here, then I would hide it away, seal it in lead, and make sure no one could see it. Yet now they have hung it high in the air, with nothing around it, visible to everyone. At first I even thought it was just an obstruction light on top of a tall building... There is only one explanation: only by placing it there, and by not covering it with anything, can its suppressive effect function under these conditions."

Zero nodded as well. "That is our theory. In any case, the Cave itself is relatively unimportant to investigate. Or rather, it is nowhere near as worth examining as the crystal at Starport Tower."

They had also found a way to approach the crystal without arousing suspicion.

"So during the battle, I mostly stayed on the perimeter and did not join in the fighting, because I was taking the opportunity to scan every level of Starport Tower, count the personnel and weapons, and map out an infiltration route."

Zero tapped the side of his head. "It's all stored in here. By the end of today's fight, the pressure had eased off quite a bit, so I used that chance to finish drawing the final route."

"You made such fast progress."

"After all, we've been here for more than ten days."

Pega, who had also spent more than ten days here, wanted nothing more than to dig a hole and crawl into it.

"Wait, you can use telekinesis?" Hiroyuki had found the key point.

"I can. Can't you?" Zero asked, sounding a little surprised.

Hiroyuki thought for a moment, then reached out toward a piece of candy on the table in front of Zero. The candy stirred, vanished the next second, and then appeared in Hiroyuki's hand.

"Yes, I can."

Hiroyuki nodded.

Homare was stunned. It was the first time he had seen Hiroyuki perform that trick with his own eyes, and it felt as though a door to a whole new world had suddenly been flung open.

Pega looked down at his own hand in suspicion. Why couldn't his ability activate?

"Because this doesn't really count as a special ability, does it? It's like walking. It should be... a basic ability?" Hiroyuki casually peeled the wrapper off, put the milk candy into his mouth, then looked at Zero and asked, "Then can you..."

Seeing the way Hiroyuki hesitated, Zero understood what he wanted to ask. He was asking whether he could return to his original form.

Zero shook his head. "I haven't tried. As soon as I landed, I was like this... Still, there were several Elekings and Tigulis that were teleported here with us. They were all adults, but their size was suppressed. The tallest were only a little over ten meters."

Though Maguna did not know what the point of Zero's remarks was, he still added a detail from their own group's observations: "When we arrived, there was also an adult Red King on site. It had also been reduced to a little over ten meters."

That seemed to trigger some kind of PTSD in Zero. The moment he was teleported over, some force had automatically reduced him to a more energy-saving form, which meant that an unknown suppressive power was present nearby. It made him even more cautious. He would not act rashly until he had figured things out.

"In any case, our plan is to infiltrate the top floor of Starport Tower, seize a ship, and escape this place."

Baleru summed it up in a flat voice, his gaze sweeping over everyone in the room. "I trust that all of you are reliable."

Meaning they would not secretly report them to the Armory.

Hiroyuki did not catch Baleru's scrutinizing look. He was reading the list Zero had written out on paper of the defenses inside Starport Tower, and then frowned. "I don't think something like an invasion needs to be handled so cautiously. Is the security at Starport Tower really only this much? Their personnel and weaponry are both very limited. If it had only been the three of you before, then yes, caution would have been necessary, but I don't think that's needed now."

Hiroyuki glanced around the room. The whole hero team was here; with this luxury lineup, they could have headlined a theatrical movie. This was just an ordinary television episode, yet with such overwhelming strength, it was hard to imagine losing.

"If the opponent is only at this level, then I think we could just storm it."

"No."

It was Baleru who spoke. He shook his head. "They have reinforcements. They are not stationed at Starport Tower all the time, but their response speed is extremely fast." He paused, then said, "It's a monster weapon unit, usually based in the Cave. About a hundred Sanderiases, and all of them are fully grown in normal form. They must have done something to free those Sanderiases from the suppressive force... There are also more eggs there waiting to hatch. There may already be more than a hundred now."

As a ninja, Baleru had maxed out his stealth skills, and he had already wandered through every corner of the area as though it were his own home, including the Armory headquarters in the center of the upper city, the Cave.

Zero added, "Sanderiases aren't very strong in combat, but they're extremely fast and they're flying monsters. They really are well suited to an emergency response force. As long as something happens at Starport Tower, they can complete the encirclement within three to five minutes."

"A hundred? Did they raid a Sanderias nest?"

"They're breeding them. They've been keeping some Sanderiases in captivity and hatching the eggs in batches."

"So they've already started mass-producing monster weapons?"

Homare felt his teeth ache. He knew of the monster called Sanderias. It was a giant monster, and even one of them would count as a natural disaster wherever it appeared. If there were not one but a hundred, then it would be a hundredfold disaster. Calling it world-ending would not be an exaggeration, and the few of them would definitely not be able to handle it.

"As far as I know, there is indeed a secret factory here, and the people recruited into it seem never to have left the factory grounds again. Security is extremely tight. My guess is that those workers are probably being exploited for labor, but they should not have been killed. After all, they still need people to do the work."

The cosmic ninja, master infiltrator Baleru, flipped open a small booklet. In it, he had recorded a great deal of observational data in the script of his homeland. No one in this world could understand that writing, so it was effectively a built-in cipher.

"Every three days, an armored vehicle leaves Starport Tower for that secret factory. It should be carrying something from Starport Tower to the factory. Because the weight of the vehicle differs between departure and return, the armored vehicle coming back from the factory is slightly lighter overall."

"You all even know that?"

Hiroyuki could not help asking when he heard that. Had they dug a hole in the ground and buried a scale there?

"Galum observed it," Baleru said, gesturing toward the Gaiz alien beside him. "You can tell by the deformation of the tires if you look closely."

That...

Hiroyuki understood at last.

Their ability to act was indeed outrageous. In just over ten days, they had nearly turned the city inside out. The Armory still expected to soften them up with villas and luxury cars, hoping they would become lazy and lie down quietly on the chopping block.

Dream on.