“Getting ready to read the archive.”
“Archive? What's that? Is the archive a book?” Hai'an had never been exposed to such terms before, and he could not understand what Auguste meant by “reading archives”.
“Not books.” Auguste rubbed Hai'an's head, but did not explain it to him. “Soon you will know what it is.”
On the way to the Tomb Star, Alia had talked with him alone on her nano computer. Primitive Mechatron warriors could sense each other's abilities. As early as the time of the first explosion of the Tomb Star, Red s.h.i.+eld had already sensed the energy fluctuation of the Primitive Mechatron Warriors on the Tomb Star, but she was not sure whether it was him or not, after all…?
In the black market, all the original fighters should have fallen. But Red s.h.i.+eld sent a special contact message for the original fighters, and after that, they did receive a letter from the Tomb Star.
Auguste was shot as he moved towards the robotic a.s.sembly center. Hai'an put his hand over his wound to treat him, but Auguste waved him away. He took Hai'an and hid in a ditch. “JianJian, I'm all right. We'll stay here for a while.”
“Is Winchester with you?” Auguste picked up the page and asked Colin.
“More than half of the soldiers have been injured. YanYan…” Colin pinched the small earphones on his left ear and looked back at Queltan, who was stunned by YanYan's body in his arms. “Would that be too much? Queltan is still a child after all.”
“Did he cry?”
“No, but I think…”
“That's good. At least he learned the first lesson.” Auguste frowned, but there was no superfluous expression on his face. “Tears and concessions can not bring peace. We want a rational new president, not one who would hide from bullets, and just wait for others to protect his weak self.”
“Oh, they have finally come up with a clear division of operations. I can't believe there will be such subordinates.” Colin retracted his high-explosive gun and watched the soldiers brought by Winchester start to put up their battle formations. “It's such a waste, the dregs are dead, the rest of the elite is useless. I think you can start reading the files.”
With a slight sigh, Auguste took the high explosive grenade in his hand and fired it at the center of gathering robots. The sky-bursting fire lit Auguste's b.l.o.o.d.y face. His deep red eyes were like coagulated blood, and orange flames were printed in his pupils. Somehow, Hai'an thought about the burning of Elune Forest. When Auguste raised his hand and caressed the side of his face, Hai'an shrank slightly. Then he saw Auguste disappearing, the whole world twisting and breaking up, and then it gave out a dazzling white light.
Hai'an couldn't help closing his eyes. When he opened them again, he found himself back on the aircraft. Outside was the dark universe. Occasionally, a few stars twinkled in the distance. The Tomb Star in front of them was still as dark as ever, without any warm light.
“Dizzy?” Before Hai'an recovered, he heard Auguste's voice. Then he felt a pair of warm hands gently rubbing his temples, relieving his strong nausea. “You may not be able to adapt to the first reading.”
“I…” Hai'an opened his mouth, but found that he had nothing to say.
“Auguste!” Winchester snarled, unfastened his seat belt, rushed up from the seat behind the aircraft and punched Auguste, but Auguste quickly got up from his chair, avoiding Winchester's attack. “What the h.e.l.l are you doing?!!”
“You asked me to help you train your soldiers.” Auguste's face was calm and his voice did not fluctuate at all.
“Yes, I did!” Winchester raised his fist, but put it down quickly. “But I didn't let you do that.”
“I'm just doing the right thing. Your soldiers are too weak. It's just a small test.” Auguste sneered. “But look, how much did your men lose? I don't know how Alto trained you. Maybe he didn't even think that war would break out. You've forgotten everything in the last hundred years of comfort.”
“We didn't know that would happen on the tomb star beforehand.” Alia also unfastened her seat belt and came over. “The moment the robots came back to life, Red s.h.i.+eld felt the energy fluctuation of the original machine armor, so we were going to determine how strong you are, so that we can decide the training plan.”
“You are really too weak.” Colin shrugged his shoulders.
“These soldiers were only responsible for guarding Queltan's safe retreat…” Winchester took a deep breath and tried to explain, but when he looked at Auguste's expressionless face, he suddenly said nothing.
“Winchester, that's not an excuse. You should know that their mission as rescue forces ended the moment they received Queltan.” Instead of looking at Winchester, Auguste sat back in his chair and slowly fastened his safety buckle. “But you also gave me confidence. From your point of view, the people of Emperor's forces today are probably a group of soft persimmons, that is, they don't know how strong they can be after Ivan's training.”
There was a silence in the cabin, and Winchester frowned and sat back in his chair.
When they got off the s.h.i.+p again, they saw the same scene as before. The landing place, the broken fighter plane, even the robot touching the wires were the same. Most of the soldiers who landed after them were pale and sweaty, and some even needed help to walk.
Those soldiers were wounded or dead in the “archive” just now.
Although they had not been hurt in reality, their feelings in the “archive” were very real. They had experienced the pain themselves, whether they died or were injured.
They just got off the s.h.i.+p and it disappeared behind them. Alia looked at the time shown by the nano computer on her wrist, three minutes before they had just been attacked.
“You only have three minutes.” Auguste stood at the foot of Red s.h.i.+eld with all the people of the Vagrant, “This time, unless you are all dead, I will not help you read the files. The pain will multiply. You can do it yourself.”
As soon as Auguste's voice fell, Red s.h.i.+eld opened its protective s.h.i.+eld and wrapped them tightly in a blue diaphragm. As soon as Winchester's soldiers heard Auguste's words, they pulled the safety bolts of their weapon. After all, no one wanted to die. That pain was too real.
“Auguste, you…”
“Give me a gun, Winchester.” Winchester took a few steps forward, but his sleeve was pulled by Queltan. Queltan's face was very calm, but his tone of voice was very firm. “I have no weapons.”
“Queltan…”
“I don't only want to be protected by you. I want to protect you, too.”
Winchester sighed and gave him a high-explosive gun. “By the way,” he kindly reminded Queltan, “The recoil of weapons is very strong…”
But before Winchester had finished, the ground began to shake again, and the robots got up from the metal ruins and started shooting at them.
It's had been exactly three minutes.
Quetlan pulled the bolt of the high-explosive gun and fired a shot at the robot in front of him. He did not kill the robot, but was shocked by the recoil force and slammed into YanYan standing behind him.
Winchester: “…” His little master was not only physically weak, but also had a terrible shooting accuracy.
After the previous battle, the soldiers also had their own way to deal with these robots. Colin stood on Red s.h.i.+eld's arm and watched with relish. The bullets fired by the robot bounced off the protective s.h.i.+eld supported by Red s.h.i.+eld. They did not cause any substantial harm. Colin poked Corson's shoulder and asked in a low voice, “Do something! Who on earth lives on the Tomb Star? It's all these things.”
“How do I know, I heard it's Red s.h.i.+eld's power.” Corson shook his head and gave Colin a white eye.
“It's Pier.” The mature female voice of Red s.h.i.+eld came from their heads, “Backtracking can be 'archived', copy a certain period of time, destroy the 'archive', then you can 'read' the 'archive', back to the time before the 'archive'.”
“Are we in reality now, or in the archive?”
“In the archive, a period of time can be copied three times, the time limit of the archive is 72 hours, more than 72 hours will automatically read the archive, the ratio of time to reality is 10:1.”
Colin sighed a few times. “No wonder Tomb Star blew up so many times. It's OK to read the files. Red s.h.i.+eld, why do I feel that your ability is frustrating? They would also be able to study new inventions. It seems that your ability is useless.”
Red s.h.i.+eld: “Ha ha.”
The soldiers who were fighting with blood saw a flash of blue light from the protective s.h.i.+eld over Red s.h.i.+eld, and then a man was thrown out, looking as if he had just covered up their retreat.
“The main one is over there, go and fight with him!” A soldier waved his arm, greeted the soldier behind him, and moved towards Colin.
Colin was pulling the protective s.h.i.+eld and shouting, “Red s.h.i.+eld, I'm wrong! I'm really wrong! You are super bull!! You're the best on the Vagrant! Alia let Red s.h.i.+eld open the protection and let me in!!!!”
But the s.h.i.+eld did not open. Instead, a grenade hit Colin's s.h.i.+eld on the side of his head, triggering a blue wave. It was blocked by the s.h.i.+eld and landed on the ground. It hit the metal wreckage and made a “clatter” sound. Colin looked back. Many soldiers were excited and running towards him, followed by numerous robots and bullets.
“f.u.c.k!” Colin opened his eyes wide, quickly lifted his high-explosive gun and turned to run.
“Oh, let him push.” Red s.h.i.+eld sneered, watching Colin run away in awkwardness. Corson swallowed spittle and dared not plead for his brother.