It was a silent stare off between two people. One the person was the perpetrator of the mess, and the other was the victim. Luon who performed a CPR like task usually wouldn’t mind such a thing, but if taking in consideration for Arisa’s feelings, he felt a tad bit bad despite having done so to save her life.
He waited for Arisa’s verdict as he lowered his head. At this moment Arisa who had regained her senses didn’t say anything yet. Instead, she began to evaluate the surroundings and found the chest that Luon had opened. She turned to Luon once she thought she had seen enough and asked, “What’s the situation right now.”
Luon felt relieved that he wasn’t punished and began to tell Arisa about their current conditions and his speculations. The moment he mentioned the starlight twinflower, her eyes widen as she replied, “So you’re implying I ate a half of a single flower!?”
Luon nodded and almost immediately Arisa began to cultivate. To be perfectly honest Luon had no idea what the effects of the flower was, his study in the herbalism was shallow. All he knew was that it had some medicinal properties which he concluded would be able to heal their wounds, however, after seeing Arisa who began to cultivate diligently, he started to do the same and was amazed by the effects.
Luon could feel his body wrapped in the surrounding energies of nature around him. It was like the flower was able to absorb the air to continue to grow stronger, and Luon had felt the same. Luon entered a dormant state of meditation, he felt his body slowly becoming more robust.
After about half an hour of cultivating did he stop when Arisa smacked him awake as she stated, “Now’s not the time for this, right now our bodies have completely recovered, and we don’t know the situation outside is. We should hurry to regroup at the outpost.”
Luon stood up as the sounds of bones cracking followed him. He used his BMPU and found that he had risen two levels after eating the flower and his body was covered in a disgusting black liquid from the impurities of his body.
Luon quickly washed his body in the stream and clothed himself with a brand new set of clothes from his intraspatial bag. By the time Luon was done, he had found Arisa was already ready waiting for him to depart and the pair began to explore the caverns they were in.
Since there was air in this region, they quickly concluded there was an exit and determined the direction based on the flow of the wind. They stopped after a few minutes of walking, Arisa pinned Luon against the wall and said, “Quiet down, there’s someone here.”
Hearing those words, Luon utilized an invisibility artifact he made to hide their presence from the intruders and soon enough they came into sight.
In the lead was Zythos and following behind him was Chester and the other goons. Luon speculations were on point, Zythos did rouse the Inzektors to take action against them, and now they wanted to retrieve the evidence. Fortunately, Luon had stored the chest in his intraspatial bag, so they have something to help convict them of their crimes.
“Are you sure it’s here Chester?” asked Zythos.
Chester nodded and replied, “From the last reading from the tracking mechanism we lost the signal the moment the chest entered the caverns. It should be around here somewhere.”
“Alright then folks, spread out and look for it. You two over there go back towards the entrance and inform the ones keeping watch to be careful of Inzektors. I don’t want to be ambushed while inside, and no matter what keep the scrambling mechanism active. We don’t want any trouble with the starship now.” With Zythos’s command, two of the members ran back towards the entrance while the rest of them departed to different parts of the cavern.
When they had all left Luon had undone the invisibility artifact, and Arisa said, “Let’s hurry up if what he said is true, then if we destroy the scrambler at the entrance Captain Waver would have a higher chance of understanding the current situation.”
Luon nodded, and the two ran after the two members who were deployed to the entrance, and soon enough after following their trail they exited the caverns. Before the surprised members of Zythos’s group could notice the two, they were immediately knocked unconscious from Arisa and Luon’s quick, coordinated movements. Luon searched their bodies and found the device and immediately destroyed it.
Once he had done so, Arisa contacted Captain Waver to inform him about the situation. Captain Waver who heard of the atrocities that Zythos had done began to evacuate wandering students but relayed some unfortunate news to Luon and Arisa.
“Right now we cannot rescue the students at the outpost. Currently, they are being attacked by a swarm of Inzektors and within the pack are several potential threats that may destroy the starship if we attempt to rescue them. The students need to hold off for another hour before Helen gets there and another two hours before reinforcements arrive,” said Captain Waver.
Luon looked at the time and found that after leaving the first outpost half a day had passed. According to Captain Waver who managed to contact the students they started the battle about an hour ago and without the help of all the robots and munitions at the facility they would have already fallen. Although Ravagers were strong, they were nothing before the massive explosive materials stored in the base that Luon had made.
Unfortunately, those resources began to dwindle as the siege continued. Captain Waver offered to retrieve the pair in which Arisa shook her head and reject the proposal. Arisa said, “If I were to leave my friends and companions behind then how could I become a great commander?”
She turned and faced Luon and said, “Are you coming with me? You don’t have to do so if you want and you can return to the ship with Captain Waver.”
Luon shook his head in response as he said, “My friends are there as well, and I can’t leave you behind. Besides, you don’t have any methods to arrive at the outpost safely, isn’t that right?”
Arisa who heard his words nodded, she didn’t have any way to get to the outpost beside a straight up frontal breakthrough. With Luon by her side, she knew that he had some tricks and weird devices that may increase their chance of success and she had hoped that he came along as well.
Arisa then replied to Captain Waver and said, “We’re going to the outpost, can I get you to retrieve these fools?”
Captain Waver gave a sigh and agreed, he couldn’t decide the fates of these children especially when they were very determined. He could only regret being injured and unable to help them defend the base. The most he could do is get the perpetrators of the mess judged by the law and retrieve the remaining students.
Arisa and Luon left towards the base, the blast from the escape had pushed them several kilometers away from the outpost and behind the enemy lines. Arisa turned to face Luon in which he perceived from her eyes her asking, ‘So what’s your big plan.’
Luon pulled out from his intraspatial bag a square box with several engravings on it. Arisa who didn’t know anything about engravings looked at the object and exclaimed, “Isn’t this the school’s platform jumping mechanism that we use for box jumping? Why would you need that here.”
Luon looked at Arisa and said, “Your correct and at the same time incorrect. This is indeed the same model that we use for box jumps, but at the same time, this is a customized version I made and found at Zekar’s shop. We used it to test the ability to dodge attacks in the air when running tests.”
Luon began to wire a mana container to the box and motioned Arisa to stand on top with him. As the two stood on the platform, Luon said to Arisa, “You might want to hold tight, it might be a bumpy ride.”
“Wha-” Before Arisa could ask anything the device shot them in the sky, they were immediately thrown several hundred meters away from the ground as Arisa held Luon tightly and asked, “Don’t tell me you have no plan here as well!”
Luon shook his head as he instantly equipped a paraglider from his intraspatial bag and he tied himself and Arisa onto it while maintaining their height using wind magic.
“I couldn’t do this before when we were escaping because I didn’t have enough mana to do it safely, but after eating that flower I now have enough to do so,” said Luon. He had exhausted nearly all of his mana protecting them from the explosion so he couldn’t have used the paraglider before, but now that Luon was brimming with mana he could use this tactic.
“Are you ready?” said Luon as he finished tying themselves to the hang glider.
Arisa nodded as the pair flew towards the base, along the way Luon had tossed several explosives on the swarm of Inzektors, seeing this Arisa asked, “Didn’t you say you had no more explosives? And couldn’t you break out of the situation before?”
Luon smiled as turned and faced Arisa while saying, “I lied. However, If I used it before while we were trapped it would’ve been a waste since the giant bomb was going to blow up all of them in the first place. Don’t worry about it I knew what I was doing.”
Arisa stayed silent during the trip she thought to herself, ‘This guy is a dirty liar, know what you’re doing? You almost got us killed. Zero explosives? Then he starts tossing them everywhere. At least he’s reliable when it matters the most. However, he doesn’t share his thoughts with anyone else. It would be nice to hear the plan before he started to take action… nevermind first thing we got to do is help the others. I’ll deal with this guy later.’
…
“Hey, Shizuka I just got a call from Captain Waver saying that both Luon and Arisa are safe. Also, we need to hold out for another hour before Teacher Helen comes over to help us out, and another two hours before a military unit arrives. How is our supply lasting?” said Gizmo after he had contacted Captain Waver.
“Umu, that’s some good news if I hadn’t heard any. There’s only a quarter of munitions left in the base, at most we could only survive for another hour. If only Luon were here, then we could last maybe another hour more. He stored most of other outposts munitions in his bag,” Shizuka said as she continued to develop munitions.
“Captain Waver said the two are coming soon since they just disabled the scrambler. It shouldn’t take them that long before they arrive,” replied Gizmo.
At this moment Gizmo received an urgent message on his BMPU which stated that a large group of Ravagers appeared. Gizmo turned and faced Shizuka as he said, “We need your help again, more Ravagers.”
Shizuka stopped developing munitions, and the two climbed the defense line. It was a gruesome sight of Inzektors continuously dying, and the smell of gunpowder and death filled the air. Belle who was already on the walls while shooting Inzektors turned to face them as she said, “Shizuka didn’t your NG-Arms run out of energy? Why are you here?”
Shizuka smiled as Gizmo replied for her instead, “Didn’t you already know? Shizuka doesn’t have just one NG-Arms, she has two!”
With those words, she equipped another set of NG-Arms and begun to deal with the Ravagers who had passed the defensive line. Earlier they were repelled with explosives, but due to the lack of supply every once in a while Shizuka had to step in to deal with them.
After dealing with the last Ravager who had scaled the wall a series of explosives erupted from a distance. Gizmo, Belle, Shizuka and everyone else on the wall turned to face that direction to find a chain of explosives making its way on the ground.
They all looked around for the perpetrator and were unable to find him until one of them pointed out, “Look what’s that up there.”
As they all looked a few of them mumbled to each other, “What is that?”, “I don’t know,” “Is it a bird? No, a plane?”.
Shizuka who starred at the sky smiled and said, “It’s not a bird or a plane, it’s just another bomb maniac terrorist.”
Everyone nodded at her words while watching their entrance.
