A lot of times, it's not a smart move to explore a wrecked ship.

In the same way, exploring space hulks in the course of subspace voyages is not a wise move.

But there are also times when you know you're not going to do something wise, and you have to bite the bullet – like when you face a ship that is clearly loyal to the Empire.

During the subspace voyage, many of the devices that can operate in the physical universe have anomalies, and it has become nearly impossible for two ships to transmit data to each other in the form of radio waves in close proximity. However, after the Lionmane sends a star-language communication to the other party in despair, a well-coded and well-organized star-language response is heard from the Iron Hand's ship. That's enough to prove something.

Whatever the circumstances you see a stranded ship, you should pull as much as you can when you can, and this seafaring tradition, which has been handed down from ancient times, is also true in the distant and treacherous subspace. Even Ranmaroke, who was opposed at first, had nothing to refute in the face of such ironclad evidence, so he could only start preparing for the rescue in a foolish manner.

However, the ability to respond in star language does not mean that the situation on the other side's ship is safe. While the messages themselves are not worn out at such distances, they are limited by the form of psionic communication itself, which does not allow it to convey overly detailed and precise information.

According to the information analyzed by the Lionmane's Star Chorus, the reason why the opposing ship was trapped in the Sea of Souls was that it was invaded by subspace creatures after Geller's position was damaged, and the ship's power system was damaged during the battle, and its function was greatly reduced, and it was unable to start the subspace engine and tear the curtain open. The reason for the accident is not unreasonable, but it seems somewhat strange in the current situation:

What would it take for a ship of the Iron Hand to have a mechanical failure to shut down and leave the crew helpless?

What's more, their Geller position has clearly become invalid. The concept of time in subspace is so confusing that even they themselves may not be able to tell how long they have been drifting unprotected in such a state.

The ship may be filled with some of the Astarte comrades who have been killed, or it may be a trap set by some unknown enemy. It's impossible to figure out what's going on without actually getting on board and exploring.

"-To sum up, that's the way it has been so far, I'm going to ask you next, Enkidu!"

Rika Fujimaru in the summoning room folded her hands and said to the young man with long grass green hair in front of her.

When you're going to fight in subspace, what better fighter than a subspace entity?

The initial proof of the concept of "human reason" has led to a number of other things, and the existence of "heroic spirits" generated from the history, legends, and fictional stories of human civilization has also been recognized. The structure of the base plate makes Ritsuka Fujimaru's summoning work much easier - although the Heroic Spirits she can summon are still copies of the "Realm Record Belt" from her original world, which is slightly different from the native Heroic Spirits here in terms of existence and execution.

As for the so-called "native heroic spirits", the more widely known name is the "Cursed Legion", which was originally a subspace-like entity formed by the dead souls under the influence of the emperor's psionic energy. Unlike the form of "Heroic Spirits dropping copies of themselves from their seats" that Rika Fujimaru was familiar with in her own world, when the Emperor's Cursed Legion appeared in the material universe, each of them was equivalent to the Nether of the Body.

Obviously, the disadvantages of this mechanism lie in risk and efficiency, but the continuity of the parties' memories is also an advantage. It's like now: Fujimaru Rika had actually borrowed Enkidu's Lingji several times in the previous six months, but the usage data obviously didn't really reach the seat. In the face of this summoned party, she still had to quickly pick out the highlights of a series of things that happened after she came to this world.

Even from the fact that she could start by saying "after coming to this world", that is, after she had to separate from most of the Immortal Spirits, it was already evident that her bond with the Immortal was strong: more commonly, even if she summoned a projection of the same realm recording tape in both summons, the summoned Heroic Spirit itself would not keep any records of what had happened since she appeared in the realm, but only had memories of "before death".

"Well, I probably understand the situation." Enkidu, the "Locks of Heaven", a conscious god-made weapon, and a close friend of King Gilgamesh, smiled kindly, "It's great that I'm in a good position to help, Master." ”

The crowned master, Fujimaru Rika, is very aware of the chaotic nature of these heroic spirits, and because of this sentence, he keenly felt some sense of disobedience:

“…… Although this question is meaningless, you probably didn't appear in the summoning form after successfully robbing someone else's present qualification here? ”

"No, it's just that Gil has the reserve of a king as a king."

Enkidu smiled kindly as usual.

Rika Fujimaru probably understood, and then she decided to change the subject.

"Although the Chaldean summoning system will also give you some 'modern' common sense knowledge while performing the summoning, there should be no problem with language and basic common sense, but the world itself ...... Well...... It's better to see than to hear. She chose a rather euphemistic way of saying it, "The impact of 'simply knowing' and 'actually seeing' many things is not on the same order of magnitude, and I hope you can deal with it as calmly as possible." Most of these things have complex reasons behind them, and they are not problems that can be easily solved by making a big fuss. ”

“…… That doesn't sound good, you're dealing with some complications again. ”

"Haha, hahahaha." Fujimaru Rika laughed dryly, "Enkidu said that there is no easy part of the work of saving people." ”

"That's true, but you're really prone to getting caught up in all sorts of situations."

In fact, Rika Fujimaru, who jumped into "various situations" by herself, looked away with a weak heart.

This time it was Enki's turn to chuckle.

"It's okay, anyway, everyone has long been used to you messing around." When the Divine Weapon mentioned this topic, it even showed a little nostalgia and emotion, "After all, you have no pursuit of the 'root' itself, but you would have thought of solving the problem by 'reaching the root' This way has already startled everyone." When the plan actually started, everyone thought that they would never see each other again, whether they succeeded or failed, but they didn't expect that you could fall through the root vortex into an unrelated world. ”

"Actually, I thought I would stop at the root and never reappear again...... By the way, the structure in this world that is similar to the Vortex of Roots is called the Well of Eternity, and it feels terrible when it comes out of that place. ”

"In the end, it's a journey to the roots, and you're the only one who has survived to tell your feelings, and no matter how you feel, it's undoubtedly worth remembering – so how? Did you gain any knowledge from reaching out to the roots? ”

Fujimaru Rika thought about it bitterly, and rubbed her hair painfully: "No, I can't remember anything, I don't even have the impression of meeting Miss Liangyi and Ziggy, and I don't know how I fell here." It felt like the whole process was deleted from my head with one click. ”

Enqi nodded unconcernedly: "Probably the self-protection mechanism of the human brain is working." Because you don't pursue forbidden knowledge per se, but are very attached to your own human identity, your brain instinctively deletes memories that are 'not needed by humans' through subconscious judgment. That's why you can stay the same after the impact of information at that level, and 'Fujimaru Rika' can still exist under the name of 'Fujimaru Rika' (basket), which is not bad. ”

"I don't think that's all the reason—"

Before Rika Fujimaru could finish speaking, a loud bang chiseled into the door of the summoning room abruptly cut off her unspoken sentences. She instinctively glanced back, and then wanted to open her mouth to make a round, but at this moment, Enkidu had already walked forward in high spirits, transforming into a sharp temperament that seemed to be "on the verge of battle", and the door of the summoning room opened under his control—

In the next moment, Enkidu raised his hand and used his seemingly unprotected body to steadily catch the fist that had been viciously smashed down outside the door, wrapped in dark blue lightning-streaked power armor, and then with a light push, the Terminator armored Midnight Lord who was standing firmly in the doorway slammed into the wall across the hallway.

"Hello, according to the records, you should be the kind of modified human warrior named 'Astarte', right?" The god-made weapon, who looks human on the outside but is far from human in self-awareness, smiles and asks a question that he already knows the answer to, and then makes an understatement evaluation:

"Judging from the tentative fight just now, in terms of performance as a weapon, I am stronger."

Across the hallway, the former Blackguard Terminator who had been rushed to call for someone writhed angrily in the pit in the wall.

-----------------

Let's not mention how Rika Fujimaru made the two of them suspend the fight and start the official work together. During this time, the Storm Boundary has arrived near the subspace hulk as a temporary landing craft for the Lionmane, where it can be used for gang-hopping missions. And the participants of this mission, in addition to Fujimaru Rika and Enkidu, who were supposed to go, also included Conrad Coz and a temporary formation of ten Midnight Lords, including Saivita.

- As a psyker with insufficient knowledge and control of psionic powers, Yago Sevitalyon was tragically excluded from the list in this gang-jumping operation located in subspace, along with Joan of Arc J. Alter had to stay on board with the imperial statuette as his companion.

The 10 people who were allowed to act as the original body guards in this mission were the 10 people with the highest scores selected after being judged by their overall performance in the previous simulation training. It's a pity, but it's reasonable, that they are all veterans of the Great Expedition, and even the old Black Armor Guard of Sevita occupies eight places. As a result, the men were allowed to claim their original Power Armor, which had been repaired by various means on the Storm Frontier, and all "inappropriate" decorations had been removed. But if their mission is to "defend the originals", ......

Looking at the current Conrad Coetzes, Rika Fujimaru decided not to comment. It's good to smile at this time, and there's no need to make it too clear that everyone is actually a tool to expand the scope of exploration, right?

After holding down the god-made weapon that was once again eager to "test performance" against the artificial god of the original body, the gang jumping operation began in an almost barbaric form: after being detected and calculated in detail by Somny, the Holy Sword suit in the bow of the Stormborder was excited at low power, aimed at the ship marked with the Iron Hand warband emblem on the surface, and duly carved a hole in it, through which the team of participants in the mission was dropped to the target location.

It wasn't comfortable, but no one complained about it. This level of harshness was commonplace for the Primordial, for Astarte as a war machine, or for Rika Fujimaru, who had to walk the difficult road, so there was nothing worth mentioning.

- In the same way, the next advance to the center of the ship seemed to everyone in the exploration team to be commonplace and not worth mentioning.

It's not that nothing happened along the way. They did confirm in the process that the ship had been corrupted by Chaos, and that some of the messy subspace creatures had been disposed of. If it were an ordinary Astarte team to carry out this kind of exploration, it might be possible to suffer damage under the influence of mental chaos and attacks that violate the laws of physics, but what about a team that contains the original body and divine weapons, and can also deal with the spiritual pollution caused by chaos with the emperor's psionic energy at any time...... It can only be said that this time it was the Chaos Demon who kicked the iron plate.

"So far, that's just it, but the closer you get to the inside, it's not necessarily the same." Rika Fujimaru reasoned, "There was a change on the ship that made it impossible for the Iron Hand to repair the power system, and I don't think the situation on the inside would be as easy as it was on the outside. ”

"As much as I would love to question it, this is not the time to spend a lot of time questioning your criteria for quantifying whether a situation is in crisis or not." Conrad Coetzes said inexplicably with a little boredom, "As planned, you take five people to check on the navigator and the Starwhisperer on this ship, and I'll take five people to check on the core power room, and as for this one—"

He squinted down rudely at Enkidu, who smiled tepidly at him, "Search for hostile instances and eliminate them, right?" I'll just act alone. ”

Seeing that the atmosphere between the two became tense again, Fujimaru Rika interjected on the side without saltiness:

"Enki and I are fine, but what about you? Don't you see the soldiers of the Iron Hand being treated like enemies and being overwhelmed by heavy fire after the battle? ”

"-Shut up!"

"All in all, don't be so aggressive at first, you know that Mr. Ferrus is easily angry, and his heirs must be similar. To start a conversation as much as possible when both sides are calm—"

Conrad Coates no longer paid attention to Fujimaru Rika's nonsense, turned around angrily, and gave a tough order to the Midnight Lord's five-member team that had been divided at the beginning: "Let's go!" ”

In a wondrous atmosphere, the ten-man Terminator formation was split in two. The five people who followed the original body on the expedition left unreasonably, step by step, and the five people who were left behind were also shrouded in a strange atmosphere and were silent.

Enkidu didn't care about this wonderful atmosphere among the heirs of the legion, and smiled indifferently at Fujimaru Rika: "It's a shame that you dare to provoke him like that." ”

"It's not a provocation, it's just a diversion from him. After all, if you two do fight here, we're in trouble—we're here to help, not to make a feud. I'm weak enough and important enough that he won't really do anything to me. ”

Fujimaru Rika really thinks so, so she said so. However, Enkidu looked at her with an inexplicable gaze, as if she had just said something strange like "Doesn't one plus one equal three?"

"How?"

"Nothing." The green-haired man smiled inexplicably again, "You've been like that, and it's good that you can keep it that way - then I'll go it alone in the direction of the smell of something wrong, be careful yourself." ”

With that, he vanished in place, leaving Rika Fujimaru and the five Terminator Midnight Lords there.

Then, the atmosphere became inexplicably weirder.