Cillin gave Xi Kai a summarized account of the Robert Family, and the researcher reacted exactly as he thought he would: disdainful. He even sought out Eudy and asked him to provide some data on the Robert Family and the robots and cyborg weapons they produced.
“Unbelievable. Who gave them the courage to call themselves the Robot Kingdom?” Xi Kai said while staring at a hologram.
A video with robots that looked almost identical to humans and the fourth and fifth generation robots Cillin’s group had encountered during their run-in with the Robert Family was being played. For those who didn’t know much about robots, there was no denying that their robots were amazing. Like real people, they could lose their temper, throw a tantrum, comfort people like a friend, and even execute their master’s instructions like a true soldier. However, this was only true if you looked at it from a layman’s point of view.
Xi Kai had researched Origin robots for decades, and the Xi Family of the Mist Bodhisattva Empire for generations. The ability to identify whether a robot’s behavior was artificial or real was practically ingrained in their genes since they were born. That was why Xi Kai could tell who was a robot and who wasn’t from the video in a single glance. Czedow might’ve been able to fool him if he were present in the video, but these “shoddy creations” were nowhere good enough to fool his eyes.
Unfortunately, neither Cillin nor Eudy had gathered much information on the Robert Family, so Cillin asked Lung and Shi Huajing to do him a favor and send him all the information they had on them. They were aware of the Robert Family’s recent movement, but only to a certain extent. It wasn’t like they went out of their way to spy on them after all. Both men sent everything they had on the Robot Kingdom for the past two years or so.
The massive robot rebellion that had taken place in Robert Frenz’s planet had hit the Robert Family hard. Cillin’s impression of Robert Frenz was that of a man who was so stubborn and obsessive in his ways that he gaslighted even himself to believe an obvious lie. No one was saying that the Robert Family wasn’t praiseworthy—in fact, they are the indisputable in terms of robotic technology in the entire GAL—but having too much pride and confidence also blinded them to many things. In that sense, the robot rebellion was a good thing to them. It had shaken them out of their self-inflicted stupor and forced them to strive for greater heights.
Looking at the first-hand information Cillin had gotten from Lung and Shi Huajing, the new robots were much better than what they were two years ago. Although they hadn’t developed in the way Xi Kai had hoped they would, they were an absolute menace on the battlefield. Their weapons configuration, material construct and liquid cores had also been upgraded to become as stable as the first generation robots. At the very least, they hadn’t experienced another robot rebellion since two years ago.
Xi Kai admitted that the robots in the latest information were much better, but he paid them little to no attention because they weren’t the type of robots he was striving to create.
On a related note, Xi Kai’s confidence had skyrocketed ever since he began the X-series and accidentally created X-7, a robot with a randomized attribute. The probability of an X-7 occurring was less than one in a thousand, but it still gave Xi Kai a lot of inspiration. As a result, he had burning through resources like crazy as of late. This situation was made worse by the fact that his robots weren’t the only projects he had to handle, and Mo Heng was building some space fighters for the Eleventh Squad, meaning that a portion of their supplies were off limits to him.
Frankly, Xi Kai was getting desperate as of late. He had everything planned down to the letter, but if he ran out of resources then everything would come to a screeching halt to say the least. He had never encountered this situation before he came to GAL because there wasn’t a day where the Xi Family weren’t gathering resources in case of emergencies, not to mention that some members of Black Viper was sent on resource-gathering missions from time to time. With an entire robot army to help handle their resource problem, of course they were never in danger of running out of basic resources. In the Mist Bodhisattva Empire, their only problem was their inability to reproduce the Origin robots.
However, they weren’t in the Mist Bodhisattva Empire anymore, so there was next to nothing Xi Kai could do to fix the problem. So, he looked to Cillin for a solution.
Cillin thought of Xi Kai’s request after leaving the researcher’s workshop. Without resources, Xi Kai would not be able to execute his projects or create the new batch of robots for the Eleventh Squad, which was a problem for both of them. The researcher had been so desperate that he returned some of the robots he considered to be “failures” into the furnace, but that had led to Moon treating him like air to this day. Even Sigma was ignoring the researcher despite his attempts to justify his actions. He had come to Cillin because he was literally at his wit’s end.
Cillin went to Shi Tang’s workshop next. The young man had been working on the Shortcut since he joined the Eleventh Squad.
“How is it?” Cillin asked.
“It’s a lot more stable than before, but it still can’t support the crossing of more than a couple of vessels at the same time,” Shi Tang replied while showing Cillin his latest findings.
Although Cillin had managed to return to GAL using the black box, the data showed that it wasn’t a perfect crossing. Perhaps it was because the black box was too dated to perform at its full capacity, or perhaps there were some other factors in play. Regardless, the black box wasn’t working exactly as intended even after Moon had given it a look-over.
“It’s not a problem if we’re crossing over to the other side with just a space fortress like last time. However, anything bigger than a space fortress may not be able to cross over safely. It’s the same with pushing more than a couple of vessels through the Shortcut at the same time,” Shi Tang explained.
The young man looked ashamed because he had failed to live up to expectations. In his opinion, the results he got were disproportional to the amount of time he had invested to the research to say the least.
“What’s this?” Cillin pointed at a rough chart that Shi Tang had drawn himself.
“Oh, I almost forgot.” Shi Tang perked up a little. “I calculated the best access point for the Shortcut on GAL’s side, and I discovered the spot we came through is no longer the best choice. It’s still a great access point, mind you, but things have changed since the planet with a ton of machinery installed in it took some damage, and the fact that the magnetic field of the entire Sector Z is undergoing a subtle change. I recalculated things based on the black box’s current capabilities and found that the new best access point is… here!”
Cillin smiled when he saw the spot Shi Tang had marked. It was because the new access point turned out to be very close to their base. Not only that, it was “secluded” in the sense that it was located amidst a cluster of rank D planets. Few people would pay attention to such a place.
At first, Cillin wasn’t planning to return to the Mist Bodhisattva Empire. It was because at least a handful of factions were watching the original access point closely. Considering how chaotic GAL was right now, the last thing he wanted was to catch a tail while he was literally crossing over to another galaxy. However, Sigma informed him that most of the instruments on the planet were destroyed, so there was next to nothing it could do to support them if they tried to cross over to the Mist Bodhisattva Empire using the original access point. They didn’t need it anyway since they had the black box. Now that Shi Tang had calculated a new access point, the idea of traveling to the empire suddenly seemed a lot more appealing than before. And that was exactly what he ultimately decided to do.
Of course, they wouldn’t need to find a “best” access point to mitigate the risks if they could just restore the black box to its original state a thousand years ago. Ideally, Cillin wanted to restore the black box to its former state or build his own black box, but a brief look into the device told him that the old Xi Family had left behind a ton of traps in their equipment. It would more time than they could currently afford to duplicate it, so Cillin had no choice but to postpone that project to a later date.
He was sure it could be done though, especially with Xi Kai and Xi Mu at his side. There would be a time where the Eleventh Squadron could travel anywhere they wanted without restriction.
Back to the subject of the Robert Family. According to the information he gathered thus far, it seemed that the Robert Family was in cahoots with the military right now. No one knew exactly which Army they were cooperating with, but they had definitely built a batch of improved combat robots and a vast number of half-cyborg weapons as of late, and their first victim was none other than the Hunters. Obviously, they weren’t going to attack the Great Four from the get go—you do not attack a formidable foe with untested weaponry after all—but it was only a matter of time before things escalated to that point.
No one stayed at the same spot forever. Unlike fiction, progress and advancement weren’t unique to the good guys only. If you were content to stay as you were while everyone else was fighting to improve themselves, then you only had yourself to blame when you found yourself left behind or worse, dead. Just like the Food King Hara had said, it was always better to be safe than sorry. After all, you never truly know when your enemies would hit you.
Anyway, there were several reasons Cillin ultimately decided to travel to the Mist Bodhisattva Empire. Xi Kai’s resource shortage was one reason, and Moon, Sigma and Xi Mu’s wishes to visit was another. Thirdly, he himself was planning to obtain something that only the Mist Bodhisattva Empire could provide.
Who should I bring with me on this trip though?
Cillin visited Tico after he left Shi Tang’s workshop. The doctor was currently giving Sha Rou and Kong Lujia a lecture on various medical knowledge, and it was an arrangement that had persisted for quite some time now. Tico was very happy to have the two girls because she was the only doctor in the entire squadron. If there was a large-scale battle, there was a high chance Tico would not be able to handle every medical issue on her own. They did have medical robots, but they were less reliable than humans in this regard.
As for Mo Heng’s workshop, Cillin could hear how busy they were before he even stepped through the door. Cary, Xiao Shang, Mogas and more were all spending time in Mo Heng’s workshop as of late because the old gangster was responsible for building their personal fighters. They wanted to help out not just because they wanted to show Mo Heng their sincerity, but also because they very much wanted to participate in the process of building their own fighter.
Cary was inserting a component into a slot as Mo Heng had instructed him to when he saw Cillin. When he was done, he wiped the stains on his work uniform and asked, “Yo, commander! What brings you here? We don’t have any missions to do yet, do we?”
“You guys look busy,” Cillin commented while sweeping his gaze across the workshop.
Cary chuckled. “Gotta leave the old—I mean, scholar Mo a good impression, you know?”
“Sure. There won’t be any assignments in the foreseeable future, so feel free to help out during this time.”
“Haha, thanks!”
Not far away, Xiao Shang and Ba Dao also let out a sigh of relief. They would prefer to participate in the process of building their fighters from the start until the end than to be pulled away for a mission somewhere in the middle.
Perhaps they would’ve have changed their mind if they realized that it came at the cost of visiting a whole new galaxy and civilization.
Cillin visited a few more locations after that, and he was happy to find that everyone was busy with their own thing. Mao was dueling Shusag to improve his combat skills, Scarlet Wind was instructing Tesoro to better use his claws and more. Everyone was striving to improve themselves even though this was supposed to be a free period for them.
Xi Kai was overjoyed when Cillin told him that they would be paying the Mist Bodhisattva Empire a visit. He immediately started calculating the amount of resources he needed to bring back to GAL. Some people might wonder why he didn’t just stay at the Mist Bodhisattva Empire if he didn’t want to run out of resources. It was because the Xi Family enjoyed a special status in the empire, but that same status also meant that they had to obey some rules if they wished to maintain their privileges. As a result, there were certain ideas Xi Kai could never test out unless he wished to risk his entire family for it.
This wasn’t an issue in GAL as a matter of course. So much freedom!
Xi Mu had also expressed his wish to join in the visit. He wanted to see how the Xi Family in the Mist Bodhisattva Empire was doing, and check out the technology of a whole new civilization in a whole new galaxy.
Wheeze wanted to come along as well. As a cat, it was a greedy bastard who wanted the best of both worlds. When they were stranded in the Mist Bodhisattva Empire, it had missed GAL greatly and wanted nothing more but to return home. However, it hadn’t even been a couple of months before it started missing the Mist Bodhisattva Empire once more. That was why Wheeze had begun packing almost as soon as Cillin had inquired its intentions about the matter. It brought nearly all of the new fish biscuits the Food King had made for him and everything else because even Cillin had no idea when they would be returning to GAL. It could be as short as weeks, or as long as months depending on the situation. The last thing it wanted was to run out of its favorite food while it was there.
Cillin decided to bring Tang Qiuqiu with him this time. He was sure Guan Feng would be very happy to meet her.
Cillin had a feeling that Shusag, Tesoro and Sha Rou wouldn’t want to visit the Mist Bodhisattva Empire, and he was right. After everything they had suffered in the empire, they were only too happy to escape it once and for all. Although GAL was currently embroiled in a chaotic war, they still found it a far better place than the Mist Bodhisattva Empire ever was. Long story short, they would rather die than go back to their home galaxy.
Shi Tang was coming with them as a matter of course. He was one of the main personnel who would be controlling and adjusting the black box after all. Moon, Sigma, Cillin’s body double and Xi Kai’s prized X-7 would be accompanying them as well.
No one else except Eudy and Dias knew exactly where Cillin and some of the gang would be going. Cary, Xiao Shang, and the new members of the Eleventh Squad all thought that Cillin had left on a secret mission again—which wasn’t an entirely inaccurate assumption—so they paid the odd activity no attention whatsoever.
They would be flying back using the same space fortress. The passengers were just a bit different this time. Wheeze and Sigma could barely contain their excitement, and Tang Qiuqiu was confused as hell. What is this Mist Bodhisattva Empire? Cillin said it’s in another galaxy, but what is even a galaxy?
Cillin had kept his explanation brief and simple, but it was still almost too much for Tang Qiuqiu to understand. That was fine though. Her confusion turned into utter shock when a gigantic, maelstrom-like vortex opened in front of the space fortress.
“Wh… what is that?” Tang Qiuqiu asked while nudging Wheeze.
The gray cat’s tail curled into a happy loop as it answered, “It’s a very fun place.”
