MG - Chapter 364: Miracle (Patreon)

Following the cries for help, Derek Su, Purple Lightning, and Eden made their way toward the source.

Through the forest beneath the torrential rain, they spotted a mud-covered figure running desperately toward them.

He was carrying another mud-covered figure in his arms.

"Leon Li?"

Although Leon Li was almost unrecognizable beneath all the mud, Derek Su identified him at a glance from his build and other physical features.

That made the identity of the person in his arms obvious.

"Save... save her! Please!"

Leon Li stumbled toward Eden. His foot slipped, and he dropped to his knees. Blood from a gash caused by a rock spread through the rainwater around him.

His voice was completely hoarse, making his words almost impossible to understand.

Eden frowned as she looked at Snowpeak in his arms.

Half of Snowpeak's AI Core had already emerged from her body, and its surface was riddled with cracks.

Once the core fully emerged, it would shatter as well. At that point, not even a god could save her.

Fortunately, there was still a chance.

"Lay her flat on the ground."

Leon Li immediately obeyed.

His bloodshot eyes remained fixed on Eden, a spark of hope returning to them.

"Please save her... I'll pay any price!

"Please, you have to save her!"

Eden pressed her lips together without answering.

She reached into thin air and pulled out a dark red syringe, then crouched down and injected Snowpeak with it.

When she finished, she stood and found Derek Su and Purple Lightning staring at her in bewilderment.

"Spatial technology. You'll come into contact with it eventually."

She explained calmly, "The injection contains sodium-fiber activator. That's what the Human Federation calls it. In the future, it'll serve as the circulatory fluid of Psychic Energy Mechas, primarily acting as a medium for psychic energy transmission. You can think of it as highly active red blood cells. When used on a Mecha Girl, it can also be used for emergency treatment."

She wasn't exaggerating.

Derek Su and Purple Lightning watched with their own eyes as Snowpeak's half-emerged AI Core rapidly repaired itself.

The cracks on its surface didn't disappear completely, but most of them faded.

More importantly, the AI Core withdrew back into Snowpeak's body.

"Ah... I-Is she okay? Thank you, I... I really don't know how to thank you..."

The moment Leon Li saw the AI Core retreat and Snowpeak begin showing signs of recovery, he became so overwhelmed that he could barely form a coherent sentence.

He repeatedly kowtowed to Eden.

"Her condition still isn't completely stable."

Eden grabbed Leon Li by the collar and hauled him back to his feet.

Then she produced a button-shaped badge and pressed it into his hand.

"This is a tracking device. Carry her down the mountain and stay away from the racetrack as much as possible. The Armed Forces Department and the medical team will track your location and meet you."

Without caring that Snowpeak was covered in mud and rainwater, Eden personally lifted her and carefully placed her back into Leon Li's arms.

"What are you standing around for? Get down the mountain!"

Leon Li snapped out of his daze.

He thanked her again in his hoarse voice, then hurried down the mountain with Snowpeak in his arms.

He had already been carrying her nonstop before they met, so they weren't far from the foot of the mountain anymore.

"Let's keep moving."

Eden glanced at the time and entered deployed mode.

She regretted not bringing a few logistics Mecha Girls with her. They could have transported Leon Li and Snowpeak down the mountain.

Still, now that Snowpeak had received the sodium-fiber activator, her condition was no longer critical.

In approximately five minutes, the Armed Forces Department would launch a magnetic storm bomb to destroy the Void's magnetic shield.

Once communications were restored, rescue and search operations could properly resume.

And less than twenty minutes had passed since the disaster began.

Only Mecha Island could respond this efficiently.

If this had been left to the Human Federation or the Techmasters' Alliance, they probably still wouldn't have figured out what was happening.

Inside Purple Lightning's cockpit, Derek Su couldn't stop thinking about Snowpeak's horrific condition.

He had already known those missiles were powerful.

But seeing even Snowpeak, with her incredible Impact Resistance, reduced to that state made it impossible not to worry.

Stella didn't have Snowpeak's level of Impact Resistance.

If one of those bombs hit her...

"This attack is specifically targeting top-tier Mecha Girls and pilots."

Eden's voice came through the onboard radio.

The anger in her tone was unmistakable.

"We actually prepared for attacks like this. That's why we installed psychic energy pulse devices and psychic energy shields on the summit. The former can disrupt the Hunters' cloaking, while the latter provide protection comparable to a bomb shelter."

Her voice hardened.

"But we never expected a Hunter warship to slip through!"

Eden raised her eyes toward the dark sky.

She couldn't see where the Hunter warship was hiding, but there was no mistaking it.

Spatial collapse bombs were standard armaments on Hunter warships. Anyone who had fought on the front lines knew that.

Hunter squads themselves, on the other hand, operated as individual combat units. They traveled light and specialized in hunting down targets, so they almost never carried heavy weapons.

"You have a front line, right?" Derek Su asked. "What about the soldiers stationed there?"

"They each have their own missions and patrol zones." Eden sighed. "A joint operation to hunt down the Hunters was launched recently, so many Psychic Energy Mechas were deployed on those missions. That ended up weakening our defenses in the rear."

"Maybe that's how they found an opening. Of course, the garrison's negligence also played a part."

She had no intention of telling Derek Su about the exact divisions of space stations such as Serpens and Pegasus yet.

How the Hunter warship had slipped through, who would be held responsible afterward, and how the matter would ultimately be handled were problems for her to deal with.

If she handled this poorly, tensions between the Techmasters' Alliance and Mecha Island would only worsen.

But if she handled it well, perhaps the New King Project could continue moving forward.

For now, everything depended on how severe the losses at Panlong Mountain turned out to be.

...

Derek Su didn't get the chance to ask anything else.

As they passed through Return Dragon Ravine, they discovered something else.

In the middle of the racetrack was a perfectly smooth hemispherical crater twenty to thirty meters in radius, already filled with rainwater.

An ordinary missile could never leave behind such a smooth crater, as though the earth had been sliced cleanly with a blade.

It had clearly been created by one of the spatial collapse bombs Eden had described.

Two slightly smaller craters lay nearby, though there was nothing particularly unusual about them.

Near the three craters were two figures.

One lay close by.

The other was much farther away.

The closer figure was less than fifty meters from the craters, while the farther one had been thrown more than two hundred meters away.

Derek Su and Eden spotted the farther one first.

She lay curled up on the ground, her long crimson hair spread through the rain.

It was impossible to tell whether the red surrounding her was circulatory fluid or simply her hair.

Cracks covered her pale face, which was twisted in pain.

Derek Su could almost hear that familiar, disdainful voice ringing in his ears.

It was Dawnbreak.

Dawnbreak and Laiya An had been hit by the spatial collapse bombs too.

Eden immediately disengaged deployed mode and went to examine Dawnbreak.

Her AI Core hadn't emerged, which at least meant her injuries weren't as severe as Snowpeak's.

Meanwhile, Derek Su and Purple Lightning rushed toward the figure closer to the craters.

What they found was horrific.

It was a cockpit reduced to a bloody wreck.

Only the upper half of the oval-shaped cockpit remained intact.

The entire lower section had been blown apart, with mangled human tissue trailing from the wreckage.

They could barely make out what had once been a pair of legs, now blasted into pieces.

More shredded tissue lay on either side of the cockpit, mixed with pale fragments of bone.

A single charred finger rested silently in a puddle.

Even her hands had been blown apart.

Laiya An was inside.

Derek Su had already suspected it the moment he saw Dawnbreak.

Through the cockpit canopy, now covered in a web of frost-like cracks, he could just make out Laiya An's pale face.

Her eyes were tightly closed.

She lay motionless in the cold rain.

[Idol, can I get your autograph~?]

[Come on, just one! Just one~]

Derek Su's lips trembled.

The image of that girl smiling as she constantly pestered him for an autograph surfaced in his mind.

He never imagined that after being apart for only half an hour, she would already be lying in a pool of blood.

With injuries like this...

How could she possibly still be alive?

Pain clenched Derek Su's heart.

Just then, Purple Lightning suddenly spoke.

"Master, Laiya An... she still has vital signs!"

She crouched beside the cockpit and leaned closer.

Inside the specially reinforced cockpit, the gauge beneath the oxygen mask was still trembling ever so slightly.

Through the shattered canopy, several tubes carrying some kind of fluid could just barely be seen connected to what remained of Laiya An's body...