"What? Your office is actively hunting for a Stellaron?"
Yanqing had originally assumed Julian was finalizing his itinerary to return to the safety of the Xianzhou Alliance waters. He never anticipated hearing that the developer intended to hunt down the tracking coordinates of a Stellaron.
As a Cloud Knight Lieutenant, he was acutely aware of the systemic dangers pinned to those cosmic anomalies. If this were back home within the fleet, backed by the strategic assistance of the General and the calculation arrays of the Master Diviner, perhaps his survival instincts wouldn't have flared up so sharply.
But for a single operational squad responsible for VIP protection, a Stellaron was an incredibly volatile variable.
However... Yanqing stole a brief glance at Julian, his mind instantly replaying the memories of the craftsman single-handedly forcing a Lord Ravager's proxy into a brutal stalemate. Reflecting on that metric, a Stellaron suddenly didn't look like such an absolute disaster after all. If the man could block a general of Ruin, what could a localized horde of the Antimatter Legion attracted by the core possibly achieve? Could a few standard monsters outscale an Emanator?
"Whatever makes you happy..." the boy muttered, his shoulders dropping.
"Haha, that's the spirit!" Julian laughed, offering a carefree shrug. "What real threat can a small piece of hardware like a Stellaron pose to our roster? It's nothing more than a minor energy cell."
Staring at Julian's completely unbothered posture, Yanqing felt a sudden, heavy pang of quiet melancholy wash over his chest. He vividly remembered their very first meeting, recalling how smugly he had boasted about his personal sword forms. Standing before the developer now, he couldn't muster a single shred of that old arrogance.
But he refused to let his spirit drop completely. Recognizing that Julian no longer required his physical protection on this route, the youth simply turned on his heel and marched straight back into the vessel's private training cell to log more hours. Seeing someone not much older than himself wielding such terrifying cosmic authority made him realize his previous worldview had been far too narrow and arrogant.
As he stepped into the cell, a wave of deep confusion briefly clouded his thoughts. But the exact second his fingers locked around the hilt of his longsword, the uncertainty vanished from his eyes, replaced by a cold, sharp determination as he began swinging the blade through the air.
"Let's set our coordinates," Julian instructed his automated navigation systems. "Our destination is Jarilo-VI. We'll maintain a leisurely cruising speed this time; there is zero reason to rush the engines."
The pioneers had only just touched down on the frozen plains, meaning their roster would require a few days to navigate the local political landscape and settle their entry protocols. Julian had more than enough time to burn.
As for the specific navigation charts, Jarilo-VI had been formally cataloged by the Alliance's star-mappers centuries ago. However, because the sector had been violently unhitched from the interstellar rail network for a millennium, the planet had long since been filed away under forgotten archives. In fact, due to the dense presence of the Antimatter Legion surrounding the atmosphere, standard commercial merchants regularly bypassed the route entirely, wanting zero entanglement with those monsters.
With the flight paths locked in, Julian finally found the freedom to log into his own game servers. Bypassing the operational test queues, since Pokémon Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald had officially cleared the storefront, he—the master producer—hadn't even found the time to run through the Hoenn region as a regular trainer.
Two quiet days flew by in a flash.
Beep, beep, beep! Alert: Detecting high-density Stellaron radiation severing the local Silver Rail lines. Forward transit is impassable. Dropping out of warp...
The previously silent hull of the starskiff suddenly shuddered, its engines humming loudly as the vessel systematically exited its high-speed warp pocket. Hearing the automated sirens echo through the bridge, Julian knew their boots had cleared the arrival gates.
"How did your office map out the exact coordinate of a Stellaron before our long-range sensors even initialized?"
Yanqing, who had been forcibly dragged away from his training cell to help Julian clear a few double-battle routes in the game, looked up from his tablet with wide, surprised eyes.
"I didn't have any hard telemetry," Julian answered smoothly, his voice completely natural as he spun his pre-planned excuse. "I simply reviewed the historical archives indicating that a massive wave of the Antimatter Legion had descended on this sector a thousand years ago. I figured a deployment of that scale always points to a Stellaron core, so I decided to path our ship here to take a quick look. I never expected our gamble to hit the absolute jackpot on the first scan."
Yanqing stood completely speechless, unable to find a single flaw in the developer's logic. He could only chalk the discovery up to Julian possessing an unbelievable streak of cosmic luck.
"Let's put the data logs aside for a moment," Julian smiled, gesturing toward the primary viewport. "First, let's open a line to say hello to our old friends."
Not far from their current drifting coordinate, the massive, elegant silhouette of the Astral Express hung silently against the backdrop of the frozen white planet. Since every traveler navigating the cosmos relied on the ancient Silver Rails pioneered by Akivili, it was perfectly logical that both of their vessels would be bottlenecked at the exact coordinate where the path had been violently severed.
"It's the pioneers from the train again," Yanqing blinked, staring out at the golden passenger cars. "What a bizarre coincidence."
The known universe stretched across infinite light-years. For two independent ships to cross paths twice within such a massive void felt less like common probability and more like destiny.
"A high-spec Xianzhou starskiff? The hull markings look remarkably familiar," Welt murmured, adjusting his glasses inside the train's main parlor. "Could it be Julian and his bodyguard?"
Himeko stepped up beside his console, her eyes scanning the sudden spatial reading illuminating the bridge's main monitors. "Although the statistical likelihood is incredibly low, according to our sensor signatures, that is the most probable answer."
The navigator couldn't hide a brief flash of genuine surprise. Without running an aligned flight plan or sharing their destination logs beforehand, crossing paths out in the deep vacuum of open space wasn't just rare—it was borderline impossible. Even seasoned interstellar pirates were forced to linger near established stellar fuel points, waiting for their targets to exit warp tunnels before they could attempt a tracking lock. If both vessels were moving through active warp pockets, a blind encounter was out of the question.
Granted, the presence of the Stellaron acted as a massive physical block that forced both ships to drop anchor at the exact same rail intersection. But the routes leading back toward the Alliance territory didn't consist of a single path; there were thousands of separate warp lines a pilot could choose to clear the sector. For their paths to collide at this exact coordinate proved that sometimes, cosmic probability had a very funny way of working out.
"Old Yang! Himeko! How on earth did your crew end up out here too? What a fantastic coincidence," Julian's voice chimed warmly over the comms speaker. A crisp holographic projection of the developer snapped open right in front of their console.
"Our situation matches your own parameters," Welt answered with a relaxed smile. "The local Silver Rails were completely severed by a high-density Stellaron core, leaving our train with zero clearance to push forward until our team deals with the containment logic. I simply didn't expect our paths to realign so quickly."
"Ah, our profiles are slightly different," Julian chuckled, leaning back in his projection field. "I actually directed my ship to this sector specifically to hunt down the Stellaron."
Welt and Himeko both displayed the exact same bewildered expression Yanqing had worn a few minutes prior. Before they could vocalize their questions, Julian smoothly repeated his fabricated story about tracking historical legion deployments.
"Then your studio's luck is truly exceptional..." Himeko noted, her eyes narrowing slightly with intellectual curiosity. "Though, if I may inquire, why is your office suddenly tracking a Stellaron core?"
While she understood it was a bit forward to query a guest about his private corporate roadmaps, a Stellaron was far too dangerous a variable to ignore. Welt remained highly alert as well; after all, this specific developer had just caught the direct eye of Destruction a few days ago.
"Haha, let your minds rest, I harbor zero intention of using the material to unmake a solar system," Julian laughed frankly, waving his hand. "The reality is much more mundane. My studio is currently configuring a planet-sized multiplayer server cluster, and the daily energy metrics required to keep the lines running are astronomical. Generating that volume of electricity through traditional power grids would completely tank our quarterly profit margins, so I figured using a captured Stellaron core as a permanent battery would be the most cost-effective solution."
He didn't obscure a single detail, laying out his corporate logistics with absolute transparency.
"Uh..." Himeko paused, her brilliant mind temporarily running out of vocabulary words to describe his engineering plan. "Mr. Julian's design philosophy is... remarkably unique."
She had spent her life studying cosmic technology, but using an existential threat like a Stellaron as a mere corporate utility battery was a concept she had never encountered. Then again, she reasoned, a craftsman capable of standing toe-to-toe against a Lord Ravager's envoy and securing a partnership with Madame Herta was naturally bound to think on a completely different wavelength than ordinary citizens.
"Let's see..." Julian murmured, feigning a quick scan of the empty parlor seats. "Are March 7th, Dan Heng, and Stelle currently down on the surface managing the core? Is this a tactical exercise to test the new recruits?"
Welt offered a slight nod. "We have welcomed a new passenger to our roster, and since our sensors confirmed the local planet preserves a relatively low danger coefficient, our office agreed it was the perfect environment to sharpen the young ones' field forms."
"What's the current status of the operation?" Julian asked.
Through the constant mental link maintained by the Marshadow hiding down in Dan Heng's shadow, he knew every single detail of the drama unfolding across the snow fields. But to preserve his social cover, he needed to keep his external questions aligned with standard ignorance.
"According to the latest text log transmitted by Dan Heng, their squad has successfully identified the physical location of the core," Welt explained, scrolling through his updates. "They are currently advancing toward the coordinates with the assistance of a few local native factions."
"However, due to the intense radiation bleeding from the core, our long-range communication arrays are experiencing severe atmospheric distortion, and our satellite imaging loops have been completely jammed. It has been a significant window since their last stable data handshake cleared our ports, so we cannot verify their exact situation at this frame."
"There is zero reason to let your anxiety spike," Himeko added smoothly, offering a reassuring smile. "With Dan Heng leading the ground team, an unmanageable accident is highly unlikely to compile."
As the official navigator, Himeko preserved an absolute understanding of the archivist's hidden depth. Before the young man had formally committed his profile to the Express roster, she had personally witnessed his capabilities when dealing with a planet-sized Stellaron disaster. Although his complicated past had forced him to lock a massive portion of his true power behind strict personal boundaries, Himeko knew that if his companions ever faced a genuine, life-threatening emergency, Dan Heng wouldn't hesitate for a single second to draw upon that strength to clear the field.
Beep, beep, beep...
"Oh?" Himeko blinked as a sharp tone chimed from the primary console. "Their network signature just pierced the atmospheric distortion field. Let's patch the audio through and review the telemetry together."
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