Star Rank Hunter

Chapter 418: Emperor

Everyone knew the asteroid belt was dangerous. Coupled with the unique magnetic interference in the area, flying through it was already a daunting task. Normally, ships decelerated upon entering the belt to ensure safety. Right now, however, the pursuit unfolding within the asteroid belt was nothing short of madness.

Shattered asteroid fragments blasted outward like shrapnel, while periodic shockwaves pulverized every object within range into dust. Numerous fighters were caught in the blast radius, obliterated by the indiscriminate destruction. Yet this didn’t force the pursuers to halt or retreat. They stayed glued to the tail of the spacecraft ahead.

“Can we go any faster?!” Knight asked, staring at the screen displaying the fighters hot on their tail. It looked like those people were truly risking their lives. Lunatics were always the hardest to deal with.

“No. We’re still inside the asteroid belt, and the magnetic fields and interference are too troublesome,” Ci Jincheng said in a grave voice. “Factoring in the size of our ship, our current speed is practically at its limit. If we accelerate any further, our safety can’t be guaranteed. If we clip even the edge of an asteroid, the people behind us will seize the opening to blow us to pieces.”

Anxiety gnawed at them all. They had secured the vaccines for the eighty-six viruses, but escaping safely was easier said than done. It was their rotten luck that the planet was located inside the asteroid belt. Navigating out was a nightmare, and entering warp in these conditions was entirely impossible. Shaking off the hounds on their tail wouldn’t be simple.

Sweat drenched Kang Man’s forehead. Even with Knight and Pride assisting at the helm, dodging the increasingly relentless shockwaves and artillery fire—while simultaneously weaving through scattered debris and incoming asteroids—demanded absolute focus. The sheer volume of calculations in his head and the physical strain of piloting had pushed him to his limits. But they couldn’t swap pilots now. It was the worst possible time; a single misstep would doom them all.

Cillin pulled up a detailed star map of the asteroid belt. He checked their current position against the edge of the belt, glanced at the pursuers trailing them, and turned to Ci Jincheng and the others. “If we stop worrying about dodging their cannons and shockwaves, and boost our speed by another fifty percent, are you confident you can avoid the asteroids?”

Ci Jincheng thought for a moment. “Yes.”

“We can do it!” Knight replied without turning his head.

Pride echoed the same response.

“Good.” Cillin shrugged off his thick protective suit and headed for the control room door.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Fenghai Chao asked, stepping in front of Cillin.

“Causing some trouble for the guys behind us. We’re nearing the edge of the belt, but judging by how those base guards are acting, they’re probably going to trigger a massive area-of-effect explosion next. If that happens, dodging will be impossible.”

“Causing trouble? Those bastards are charging at us like they aren’t afraid to die, and they outnumber us by far...” Fenghai Chao trailed off, staring at Cillin in shock. “Don’t tell me you’re planning to go out there alone to cover our retreat?”

Cillin gave him a look reserved for idiots and replied, “I’m not that noble.”

With that, Cillin walked out.

“Hey, Cillin! Are you sure about this? Need a hand?” Lung called out.

Cillin didn’t look back, simply tossing up a hand in a “don’t worry” gesture.

“What is that guy planning to do?” the others in the control room asked.

“No idea. Czedow, do you know what Cillin is up to?” Lung looked toward Czedow.

Czedow calmly raised his eyes, swept his gaze over the group, pulled out a book, and remained silent.

Everyone: “...”

Cillin made his way toward the hatch. By the time he reached it, the Armor had already covered his body.

“Drop the shields,” Cillin said into his communicator.

The moment the ship’s shields deactivated, the hatch opened. Cillin flipped outside, clinging tightly to the ship’s exterior to keep from being thrown off. The hatch was located on the upper hull, angled at a forty-five-degree incline, and Cillin plastered himself against this slope.

“Hey, Cillin, can you handle this? Do you need us to slow down?” Knight’s voice crackled over the comms.

“No need. Just maintain your current course.”

Pressed flat against the hull, Cillin slowly flipped over to face the pursuers on their tail. With a flick of his wrist, a cannon barrel materialized in his grip.

Several asteroid fragments blasted outward by the shockwave bombs slammed into the ship’s surface. With the shields down, they dented the hull in several places. A fist-sized chunk of debris smashed into the metal barely half a meter from Cillin. Judging by the crater it left, if that had hit a person—even one wearing a protective suit or Armor—they would have been left half-dead at best.

The shockwaves were relentless, and the ship’s rapid evasive maneuvers made it impossible to lock onto any targets. This was exactly why no one aboard the ship had wasted their energy trying to fire back.

Cillin hefted the cannon, searching for the optimal firing angle.

Navigating the asteroid belt, the spacecraft juddered occasionally as shockwave-propelled debris battered it. The hull was already pockmarked with craters, but fortunately, the ship was built tough; so far, the damage consisted merely of “flesh wounds.” Plastered to the sloped hull with his cannon ready, Cillin seemed completely oblivious to his surroundings. He ignored the shrapnel striking inches from his body, and he paid no mind to the suffocating pressure of a massive asteroid scraping past them. Right now, the only things in his eyes were the pursuing fighters and the chaotic scattering of asteroids around them.

Now!

A massive net that seemed woven from white lightning cast outward. Not just one—three massive “nets” deployed consecutively in three different directions. The moment he fired, Cillin dove straight back through the hatch.

“The rest is up to you!” Cillin said over the comms to the crew in the control room as he sprawled out on the floor near the hatch.

At the helm, Kang Man and the others had no spare focus to figure out what had just happened. All they knew was that an immensely destructive force had erupted behind them, generating a massive wave of propulsion.

However, Lung and the others who weren’t piloting had a clear view. Those massive nets of white “lightning” sliced through any asteroid fragments and pursuing fighters that touched them. Furthermore, every collision triggered an energy burst. Combined together, they formed an earth-shattering bomb. The cascading explosion rippled outward, reducing asteroids to ash. The fighters caught within the blast radius were instantly vaporized.

Once Cillin was safely inside, the ship’s shields reactivated.

The ship shook even more violently, but instead of dropping, their speed spiked. Propelled by the shockwave of the explosion, the spacecraft accelerated drastically. The pilots felt their adrenaline surge to the absolute limit.

It wasn’t just the pilots; even Lung and the others watching the screens felt a suffocating tension. On several occasions, the ship scraped past massive asteroid fragments by a hair’s breadth. Before they could even catch their breath, they were plunged into one near-collision after another.

Cillin didn’t get up from the floor by the hatch. In the past, firing just one shot had nearly crippled his arm. Firing three shots back-to-back had left his entire arm utterly numb and devoid of feeling, while an intense wave of exhaustion crashed over his whole body.

Deciding to just lie there, Cillin didn’t move, taking the chance to rest. He left the rest to the others. Even if Kang Man, Knight, and the others couldn’t handle it alone, Czedow and White Ghost were secretly assisting them. If the combined efforts of their entire crew couldn’t pull them through, then they could only accept their fate.

Cillin closed his eyes, counting the seconds. The exact moment he opened them again, the ship breached the edge of the asteroid belt and instantly engaged warp, leaving the treacherous sector behind.

Only then did everyone cautiously let out a breath. Their nerves had been wound so tight that, for a moment, they had been afraid to even exhale. In the quiet, they could hear the frantic pounding of their own hearts.

The arms of the crew members who had been piloting were visibly trembling.

“Holy... fuck! Scared the life out of me!”

Knight slumped back in his chair, refusing to look at the control panel any longer. Now that the ship had entered warp, the autopilot was engaged, and Fenghai Chao’s group stepped up to monitor the instruments.

Lung pinched his own arm. It was great to be alive, having successfully avoided crashing into those asteroids.

“Hey, Cillin, are you alright?” The group finally had a chance to check on him, realizing he still hadn’t returned to the control room.

“I’m fine.” Cillin had already deactivated the Armor and was stumbling down the corridor. “I’m going to get some rest.”

The case containing the vaccines had already been safely stored by Ci Jincheng. The medical instruments were busy analyzing the samples in order to synthesize more vaccines.

“Are you really okay?”

“I’m fine.” Cillin stepped into his quarters. “Call me if it’s an emergency.”

“Got it. Get a good rest.”

Knight and the others were also exhausted and desperately needed to recover. Having withstood a particle storm and survived this harrowing pursuit, everyone needed some downtime to recuperate.

After Cillin entered his quarters, Wheeze poked his head out from Mengqialuo’s “cloak” and motioned for Mengqialuo to head toward Cillin’s room. Mengqialuo didn’t make a sound, simply walking in the direction Wheeze indicated.

Arriving at the door to Cillin’s quarters, Wheeze jumped down and gestured for Mengqialuo to sit and wait nearby before slipping into the room alone.

Cillin was sitting on the edge of his bed, seemingly waiting for Wheeze.

Wheeze eyed Cillin, and after confirming he hadn’t sustained any serious injuries, hopped up onto the bed.

“Is the thing ready?” Cillin asked.

“Yeah, it’s ready.” With that, Wheeze opened his mouth and spat out a transparent, thirty-centimeter-tall liquid canister.

Inside the clear liquid rested an egg-sized object. The entity was moving, as if trying to break free.

Cillin unsealed the canister. The creature crawled out of the fluid and onto Cillin’s outstretched palm.

Looking at the little guy in his hand, Cillin cracked a smile.

“Is this thing really going to work? It doesn’t look like a ‘Dream Tapir,’ and aren’t ‘Dream Tapirs’ supposed to be microscopic? This guy is way too big,” Wheeze commented as he inspected the creature.

The reason Wheeze hadn’t participated in the recent operation was because Cillin had assigned him a special task. For the entity inside the canister to mature, it required highly specific conditions. The parameters were so strict that even a single jostle could halt its growth. Therefore, Cillin had entrusted the canister to Wheeze. As a result, Wheeze had spent this entire period living like a broody hen “incubating an egg,” peacefully napping inside Mengqialuo’s “cloak.”

Fortunately, the creature’s growth rate was astonishing. In such a short amount of time, it had evolved from a microscopic speck to its current size.

Cillin carefully examined the creature sitting quietly in his hand. In terms of size, it was vastly different from a “Dream Tapir.” However, judging by its physical appearance, it was an eighty percent match, and its genetic similarity exceeded ninety-nine percent. After all, the “Dream Tapirs” were derived from it.

Indeed, the entity currently resting in Cillin’s hand was something he had artificially synthesized. By decoding the genetic data left behind in Chamonidine’s records and cross-referencing it with the intelligence they had recently gathered, he had successfully recreated the “ancestor” of the “Dream Tapir”—the primitive organism before it was subjected to the viral payload modification experiments.

This primitive ancestor could help Cillin track down the “Dream Tapirs.” Whether it was a progenitor “Dream Tapir” or a subsequent generation—even one that had multiplied over several generations—as long as it was within a certain radius, this creature could sense it.

Cillin named this primitive organism—Emperor.

After resting in Cillin’s hand for a moment, the primitive organism named Emperor followed Cillin’s command and burrowed directly into his palm. The bulging skin gradually smoothed out, leaving no trace that an egg-sized creature had just slipped inside.

Because “Dream Tapirs” were microscopic, they were incredibly difficult to capture. According to the intelligence they had acquired, apprehending even a single, divided offspring of a “Dream Tapir” had required a monumental amount of effort. Only by controlling the “Dream Tapirs” could they control the viruses. If tackling the viruses directly failed, their only remaining option was to go through the “Dream Tapirs.”

As Cillin pondered this, he noticed Wheeze had suddenly gone quiet. Glancing over, he saw the cat sitting with his ears perked up, the fur on his earlobes twitching. He was clearly eavesdropping on something. His expression grew increasingly impatient, tinged with disdain and contempt—likely a sign that he was hearing bad news.

Sure enough, not long after, Ci Jincheng contacted Cillin, asking him to come over to discuss something.

Everyone gathered in the control room. Ci Jincheng briefed them on the message he had just received. Knight, Pride, and the others had their own intelligence channels and didn’t need any further explanation.

According to the intel Ci Jincheng had just received, his father wanted him to hurry to Planet J-C335 in the J Star Sector. A situation had broken out there. Word was that Senior Senator Beythor had been infected with a virus—and not just one strain.

It wasn’t just Ci Jincheng; Knight and Pride had also received the same orders when they contacted their fathers. Their underlying anxiety over Beythor’s condition stemmed entirely from a desire to secure his support. Beythor had always been a renowned neutral figure in the Star Alliance’s political arena. If they could win his backing at a time like this and force him to owe them a favor, they were confident they would secure his vote in the future.

The military and politics were inextricably linked. Right now, it seemed like the Eight Great Legions were making the biggest uproar, but the major political families were also making massive moves in the shadows—they were just keeping a lower profile. Their power and capabilities were impossible to ignore. In the future division of power, securing more support meant a higher chance of success. An opportunity like Beythor was hard to come by, and it just so happened that Ci Jincheng and the group had acquired a set of vaccines. Furthermore, the day before they contacted their families, a research team studying a captured offspring of the Dream Tapir had managed to synthesize sixty-two different vaccines. Although there was a slight overlap with the set Ci Jincheng’s group possessed, this was undoubtedly a monumental opportunity—a beacon of hope.

The legions backing Knight, Ci Jincheng, and Pride operated under an alliance. If they could secure Beythor’s support right now, their coalition would undoubtedly grow even stronger.

The analytical data from their newly acquired set of vaccines had already been transmitted to their respective factions, allowing them to synthesize the vaccines based on that information. Treatment and prevention protocols were officially underway. Just as the politicians had clamored, the counterattack against the Dream Tapir had finally begun.

There were still a few other major suspected bases on the star map obtained from Mengqialuo that they hadn’t visited yet. However, since Ci Jincheng and the others had already contacted their respective legions, someone would naturally step in to handle them. Right now, their only task was to take this set of vaccines and save Beythor, hoping that whatever virus the senator had contracted fell within its treatment range.

“Someone has already arrived to rendezvous with us,” Knight said, explaining the reasoning behind their course of action. “After all, the instruments on this aircraft are incomplete, and our analytical capabilities are limited. If we want a deeper understanding of these viruses, we need to extract more detailed data from this set of vaccines. The retrieval team will take a portion for analysis and research, and use the rest for the rescue. Naturally, the first person we have to save is that old man, Beythor.”

To be completely honest, Knight had absolutely no fondness for Beythor. In the political arena, people like Beythor were called conservatives if you wanted to be polite, and cowards if you didn’t. He never participated in the power struggles between the major interest groups; he had even abstained from voting on the matter regarding Miracle.

He had abstained twenty years ago, and he had abstained this time too. Knowing that the vaccines they had worked so hard to procure were going to be used to save someone like that first made Knight feel as if he had just swallowed a fly. It was sickening.

“The J Star Sector? I hear that’s a heavy infection zone now, too,” Lung said with a frown. Tapping his fingers against the tabletop, he was noticeably quiet, stripped of his usual frivolous demeanor.

“Almost all of the trade sectors are heavy infection zones right now,” Kang Man said, his eyelids drooping, his voice betraying no emotion. “But the infected are basically all civilians. Anyone with a modicum of power has already armed their territories, locking them down under layers of heavy security.”

As reluctant as they all were, the priority privileges Beythor held in committee assignments as a senior senator were undeniably tempting to every faction. It was no wonder Ci Jincheng and the others had been urged by their families to rush to the rescue, terrified that someone else might beat them to it.

Cillin sat in his seat, listening to their conversation.

He rubbed his palm and spoke up, “Then let’s go.”