A Core Ship From The Start

Chapter 437: Chapter 331 Intelligence Collection_1

Chapter 437 -331 Intelligence Collection_1

One cannot deny that Yue Huasha’s self-introduction was rather striking, but Duanmu Huai was quick to clarify. So, the girls quickly understood the whole situation, then they immediately focused their attention on the Fighting God Tournament — although Duanmu Huai didn’t feel like elaborating on it. He simply passed the matter to Honoka, asking her to explain it to everyone, and he returned to the mothership.

“Phew… It’s such a hassle.”

Upon returning to the mothership, Duanmu Huai sighed. Watching girls playing was enjoyable, but being the subject of their gossip was downright torture. Three women were equivalent to a thousand ducks, let alone there were more than three…

“You’re back, Master~~~”

Upon arriving at the tactical control room, Mia, who was sitting in front of the console, cheerfully greeted Duanmu Huai. The demeanor of this artificial angel remained constant as if nothing in the world could affect her.

“Yeah, let them have their fun. I’m beat.”

Duanmu Huai shook his head. He remembered his school days, being pursued by numerous female students and even being invited to karaoke. However, he steadfastly refused. When his classmates questioned him why, he said, “Women are really troublesome, you guys don’t have them, if you did, you’d understand…”

He didn’t even finish his sentence before he was attacked and beaten up in retaliation.

Well done! You turn down bread and then ask us to eat cake?

At that time, Duanmu Huai didn’t fight back, if he did, the popular guy would have probably ended up dead.

However, now Duanmu Huai understood what he meant. Indeed, having too many women was troublesome. Discussing serious matters wasn’t a problem, but when they have idle time to gossip, they could drive a man crazy. It reminded Duanmu of his shopping trips with his mother. As he was physically strong, he was in charge of carrying things. His mother would haggle over a few cents with the vendors for a long time. Back then, Duanmu couldn’t understand why a woman would fuss over a few cents for a piece of clothing…

Of course, the main reason his mom took him shopping, besides having him carry the clothes, was for better haggling.

If the vendors didn’t budge in the end, she would call him over and tell him that the vendor was a rip-off. Seeing Duanmu, the vendors would usually immediately give a 90% discount.

But his mother didn’t use this tactic often. According to her, Duanmu was like a weapon of mass destruction. Using him didn’t prove her haggling skills and thus felt unsatisfying.

Of course, in Duanmu’s view, this ability was useless… You feel accomplished because you haggle over a piece of clothing at a street stall? He just found it annoying and embarrassing… because there was always a crowd of onlookers.

This 𝓬ontent is taken from fгeewebnovёl.co𝙢.

Was it worth it for a few cents…?

“Ah…”

Duanmu quietly sighed and brought his mind back to the present.

“Any new developments?”

“The first reconnaissance fleet has returned and is currently compiling the collected intelligence…”

“Oh?”

Upon hearing this, Duanmu immediately perked up.

During the mothership’s extensive renovation, Duanmu had not been idle. He had built several reconnaissance ships and sent them to different coordinates via {@spacegates} for surveys. After all, having played the game for so long, he had a clear picture of what forces were located in which places.

The problem was, Star Ocean Online is a dynamic real-time game. And given Duanmu’s progress was indeed advanced, so even if he was in the right place, the plot for that faction might not have progressed to match his previous experiences. However, Duanmu had a way to solve this issue.

It’s simple, just find a reference.

Just like when he went to UNSC, Duanmu didn’t know what the situation at UNSC was, so he went straight to Proxima Star. After all, Duanmu knew that the fall of Proxima Star was a turning point in the large-scale war between UNSC and the Star Alliance. By observing Proxima Star and noting whether it had fallen, he could more or less determine where the faction’s history had progressed to.

Thanks to numerous fact-checkers in the game who loved to dig into other civilizations’ histories, Duanmu was fairly familiar with the past of most well-known factions in Star Ocean Online.

So, he sent the ships off to various target planets during the mothership’s retrofit period and had them record what they saw before coming back to report to him. With the vastness of the Star Ocean, even if Duanmu wasn’t a long-time gamer who completed every civilizational main storyline, he could still use his own memory combined with the locations of various civilizations seen on forums to send reconnaissance ships out for surveys.

It was akin to casting a wide net and, who knows, maybe a big fish would be caught.

Of course, this method was a bit cumbersome, but Duanmu had to err on the side of caution. After all, there was a difference between transmitting information and physical objects. If these informations were intercepted by some subspace demon, it would be like handing them a map of human civilizations. Then, those civilizations would be at risk from the Chaotic Demon.

Despite the extra trouble, Duanmu insisted on this method. These ships were only to record visuals, then bring them back to him. With the {@spacegates}, back and forth journeys wouldn’t waste much time. Moreover, these ships were staffed by puppets with limited capabilities, not capable of doing complex tasks… Of course, for Duanmu, this was a good thing.

If they were too capable, it would be worrisome.

“Collate the intel and bring it to me.”

“Understood~~~”

As he was speaking, Duanmu sat back down. After a short while, a set of intelligence files appeared on his terminal.

“Let me see… Hmm, everything is normal, no signs of intrusion… This is normal too… This planet is uninhabited…”

Duanmu Huai sifts through the data. Strictly speaking, the information is quite rough, without any further analysis of these planets. It’s just a video showing whether there are inhabitants, any civilization, or any sign of warfare… Well, it’s a puppet, after all, the expectations can’t be too high.

Could you demand a robot to write an eight thousand word graduation thesis? Of course not.

If a robot could do that, it would be a horror novel.

“Hmm?”

As Duanmu Huai flipped to the third-to-last piece of information, he was taken aback by the scene captured in the video.

The footage showed human cities scattered across a planet, reduced to utter ruins, the aftermath of battles, akin to a War Planet…

Oh, by the way, the War Planet has gradually begun to recover. Thanks to the last surviving twenty or thirty million people, the Tribunal has rebuilt a dam which now provides energy. Most of these survivors have settled in the city. A modern city accommodating twenty million people isn’t strange anyway. Aside from this, the solar and wind energy equipment that Rebecca sold have also been put into operation.

The planet’s future probably relies solely on renewable energy.

After all, they have even run out of uranium, what else can they depend on…?

As for their fate, that entirely depends on them. The Tribunal is responsible for protection, but not for hand-holding. Whether they could leave the planet and venture into the Star Ocean is up to them.

Let’s get back on track.

What happened here? Did a World War turn it into a wasteland?

Fortunately, Duanmu Huai quickly found the answer. Not far away, a group of people carrying conventional firearms was attacking another group. On the other side, a bunch of guys that look like metal skeletons were armed with laser guns…

“Holy crap!?”

Upon seeing this, Duanmu Huai shivered and nearly jumped out of his chair.

Did the Space Undead come back to life?!

However, after watching for a while, Duanmu Huai noticed that these guys were not Space Undead but robots that looked like skeletons. At least judging from their somewhat rigid body shape and movements, they were very different from those dumb Space Undead.

“Phew… That scared me. I thought I was going to confront the Space Undead again.”

Duanmu Huai sighed in relief. He didn’t like Space Undead. If Duanmu Huai noticed the presence of Space Undead anywhere, his most likely response would be to issue an extinction order and bomb the Tomb Planet directly, rather than foolishly rushing in to die.

As Lu Xun said, if you see a robot, you immediately think of the Space Undead, then about the Tomb World, followed by the Action Figure King, and finally the Star God fragments…

Forget it, let’s not dwell on it.

In truth, invasions of human colonies by the Space Undead are not uncommon. Space Undead date back very far in history and were dormant for thousands of years. It’s quite possible that humans had colonized these planets during that period, without any knowledge of the existence of the Tomb World. It’s quite possible that when a Chaos invasion activated the Anti-Chaos Protocol or a Lord of the Undead suddenly woke up and saw, “Hey, my home has been taken by outsiders while I’ve been sleeping for thousands of years, can I just let it go?”

Then they fought back.

However, these robots are clearly not Space Undead. The most distinctive feature is that they do not emit the signature nauseating green light of the Space Undead. The conventional weapons used by the Space Undead are Gauss Weapons, which give off a green light. Although these robots are equipped with laser weapons, they emit red light.

Secondly, the power of these robots’ weapons is, how should I say it… less than satisfactory.

It might be worse than the flashlights of the Empire.

The reason they seem so unstoppable is primarily because the human weapons on the other side are even worse…

Looking at those shoddy guns, they probably wouldn’t even break the defences of the Beast race on the War Planet, let alone these robots.

“So, a Machine Intelligence Crisis happened here?”

Duanmu Huai watched the entire video from start to end, and it seemed that this planet was in a worse state than the War Planet. People on the War Planet were plagued by the Beast Race, but at least there were formal institutions like the Wei’an Government and regular forces like GEAR who could review and take to the battlefield during operations like the Valley Storm. This planet, on the other hand, seemed to lack any semblance of organized human government, and only some scattered soldiers barely survived among the rubble…

What kind of civilization could screw themselves over to this extent…?

Although Duanmu Huai was unclear about the details of the situation, he had made up his mind.

In a nutshell, he would need to visit the place to know for sure.