VAP - Chapter 133
Chapter 133: The Marshal's Journey is the Sea of Stars (29)
The Broodmother was about the same size as an ordinary King Zerg, perhaps even smaller. Its physique was similar, only the color of its iron carapace was a shade lighter.
Its abdomen was noticeably swollen, but not to an exaggerated extent. At the very least, singling it out from the ranks of the King Zergs at a glance would not be an easy feat.
If it had been anyone else—someone without the system's visual perception and analytical abilities—the Broodmother might have actually slipped away.
But there were no what-ifs.
She approached silently, launching a surprise attack. With a thunderous crash, Deer Song landed heavily on the Broodmother's smooth back, swinging its sword down at a vital joint.
However, the strike didn't have the desired effect; the light sword's sharp blade was blocked, unable to penetrate its body.
Yue Du narrowed her eyes.
The mecha's hard mechanical tail swept out, forcing back the King Zergs attempting a rescue. Yue Du closed her eyes and quickly extended her senses.
It was mental energy.
Unlike the other King Zergs, the Broodmother's mental barrier clung perfectly to its body, and its durability was a cut above the rest.
In fact, the fluctuations of that mental energy were very familiar; she had sensed them just a short while ago, within the fog barrier on the planet's surface.
Yue Du narrowed her eyes, then suddenly leaped away.
Almost at the same instant, the joint connecting the Broodmother's head and torso suddenly twisted nearly one hundred and eighty degrees, and a stream of ghastly green liquid shot out from behind its savage maw.
Since Yue Du dodged in time, the liquid landed on the carapace of a King Zerg behind her. The King Zerg shrieked as the affected area swiftly blackened and began to rot.
Yue Du thought: …So venomous.
She knew King Zergs had corrosive bodily fluids, but not to the point of eating through a comrade's iron carapace, and certainly not this fast.
The Broodmother was at least ten times more venomous than its descendants!
The Broodmother's attack having failed, its pale gray head slowly turned. Beneath its antennae was a pair of enormous eyes, shaped much like a human's, but they had no sclera and were pitch-black.
At first glance, it was far easier on the eyes than the other Zergs, but this was an advantage Yue Du couldn't appreciate in the slightest.
In her exceptionally clear perception, the Broodmother's eyes were compound eyes, made up of countless, densely packed smaller eyes. When it looked at her, it gave the illusion of possessing higher intelligence.
Or perhaps it wasn't an illusion.
Yue Du calmly dodged another jet of corrosive fluid, calculated the angle, and had her mecha fire a blast.
When the thick smoke cleared, the Broodmother was unscathed. Its mental barrier was also more powerful than that of a King Zerg.
As long as the barrier was up, nothing could touch it.
In that case, she would just have to shatter the mental barrier!
Yue Du enveloped herself in a mental field, guarding against the Broodmother's corrosive fluid and attacks from the other King Zergs, before landing on its back once more.
The White Deer quietly appeared in the cockpit. It stood silently behind her, its long, slender neck slightly bowed as if lending her its strength.
And this was indeed a sign of her mental energy being unleashed at full power.
Beneath the dark sky, two invisible forces of mental energy clashed head-on.
The Broodmother's mental energy, much like the planet's fog barrier, had a powerful corrosive effect. An ordinary Guide would likely suffer from mental exhaustion within a minute, leading to mental chaos or even a near-death state.
But Yue Du's mental energy, honed across several small worlds, was not so easily dealt with. What's more, she was far more skillful than the insect.
Within her refined body, a silver-blue data stream flowed steadily, constantly calculating the intensity and angle to apply her power, then executing the optimal solution.
This tit-for-tat confrontation lasted for a full half hour.
The Broodmother was undoubtedly the pinnacle of the Zerg race's power and intelligence. But Yue Du, despite being an outsider weakened by the small world, was at the absolute peak of this world's power scale—just like Sheng Xuejiu.
The Broodmother was gradually losing ground. The planet's fog barrier, which had been formed from its mental energy, was now rapidly dissipating and returning to its source, converted into reserve power to bolster its defenses.
The scales gradually tipped in Yue Du's favor. The threads of her mental energy converged, tightening until they nearly formed a single point pressed firmly against the mental barrier.
The Broodmother finally panicked.
A shrill, weeping sound escaped its mouth, like the cry of a wailing woman. Paired with its insectoid face, the sound was exceptionally horrifying.
It wasn't screaming to frighten her—and certainly not to elicit sympathy. This sound was a call for its offspring to come to its defense.
Yue Du gritted her teeth, vigilantly reinforcing her mental field to guard against the potential frenzy of the King Zergs.
…But the anticipated attack never came. Instead, the Broodmother's cries grew weaker.
Going in for the kill, her amber pupils constricted sharply. The intensity of her mental energy multiplied in an instant, shattering the Broodmother's mental barrier in a single blow.
The sound of shattering glass seemed to echo in her ears. Yue Du didn't let up. The blade of her mental energy drove straight through the Broodmother's exoskeleton and complex tissues, finally piercing deep into its brain core.
Yue Du gently twisted the "hilt," scrambling the spherical core to pieces.
The Broodmother let out a tragic howl, completely different from its earlier cries. Its membranous wings failed, and its massive body began to freefall.
Yue Du did not fall with it. Deer Song hovered in the air.
Out of her sight, the swollen part of the Broodmother's abdomen suddenly began to spasm. The skin stretched taut over something inside, becoming translucent as if about to burst.
As the twitching of the Broodmother's many legs subsided, the movement in its abdomen also slowly ceased. It was the final struggle of the unborn, next-generation Broodmother.
The dead Broodmother's body finally hit the ground with an earth-shattering thud.
The mechanical voice was never late.
"Ding! Broodmother's death detected. New Broodmother's fetal demise detected. Second main mission objective complete. Reward: three thousand points."
Yue Du retracted her mental energy and staggered inside the cockpit. She had expended too much power at once today and was finding it hard to bear.
The mecha's control screen lit up.
Sheng Xuejiu's voice, tinged with a faint smile, sounded on the internal communication channel: "Are you tired now?"
Yue Du: "Yeah, but I'm okay."
She straightened up and looked up. Her gaze fell upon a tranquil sky, and beneath it was her host.
To be precise, it was her host's mecha under the dome.
There were no other Zergs around the Silver Lion. One reason was that with the Broodmother dead, the Zerg had lost their sole hive mind and no longer knew what to do.
The other reason was that the King Zergs that had been surrounding Yue Du and the Broodmother had been more or less dealt with by the Marshal.
During the final moments of the mental piercing, she had single-handedly taken on all the King Zergs, annihilating them one after another.
The Silver Lion flew leisurely closer. Yue Du received a docking request and accepted it.
A moment later, the cockpit door opened. The sound of military boots striking the floor approached step by step, stopping behind Yue Du.
A pair of long, slender arms wrapped around her waist.
Yue Du relaxed all her strength and leaned naturally into Sheng Xuejiu's embrace.
"Put Deer Song away and ride back in my mecha," Sheng Xuejiu said. "The Zergs are a non-issue now anyway. We can take our time heading back, or even take a detour and tour the star system."
Yue Du: "Since we're already here, we might as well just take Deer Song back."
Sheng Xuejiu: "No."
Yue Du: "...?"
Then she felt a force applied to her, her feet left the ground, and her vision inverted.
Sheng Xuejiu had swept her up into a princess carry.
Yue Du: "This is your reason?"
Sheng Xuejiu tilted her head and smiled: "This is my reason."
Yue Du: "...Alright then."
Going out of her way just to carry her for a few more steps was absolutely something her host would do.
Yue Du's experience told her not to argue with her host at times like these. It was best to just go along with it—besides, she was enjoying it herself.
Humming a cheerful tune, Sheng Xuejiu carried her fiancée all the way back to the Silver Lion's cockpit, immediately switched it to living mode, and carefully placed her on the bed.
Yue Du's mouth twitched. "I'm guessing you're not planning some kind of post-victory physical celebration?"
"What are you thinking? Just lie down and rest," Sheng Xuejiu said righteously, lightly flicking Yue Du's cheek. Finding the sensation strangely pleasant, she flicked it a few more times.
Yue Du: "..."
Don't think I didn't see that tempted yet regretful look on your face.
She shook her head and said with resignation, "Stop playing. Record the coordinates of the Zerg planet first. We'll need to send people to clean up later."
Especially the leaderless Zergs, which were now in a chaotic swarm. In fact, bees were more orderly; a hive still had its queen, but the Zerg Broodmother was well and truly dead.
Sheng Xuejiu agreed. She pulled up the mecha's trajectory, and the optical computer automatically calculated and recorded the coordinates.
After finishing, Sheng Xuejiu activated autopilot and came over to lie down beside Yue Du, happily twirling a lock of her hair.
Yue Du turned her head, wanting to pet the cat. Sheng Xuejiu had just let it out, and it was now perched comfortably on the White Deer's back, enthusiastically licking the deer's antlers.
Sheng Xuejiu saw through her intention: "Give me your hand."
Yue Du held out her hand. Sheng Xuejiu immediately took it and gently placed it on her own head. Her long, slightly curly, pale gold hair spread out like a bolt of shimmering satin.
Completely unsurprised, Yue Du went along with it and stroked her hair.
The White Deer lay by the bed, perfectly composed.
Deer Song had now been retracted.
A single Silver Lion, carrying two people, departed from the Zerg planet, now free of its fog barrier. It left the Broodmother's corpse and the chaotic swarm of Zergs behind, sailing silently through the boundless starry sky.
In the year 3007 of the Star Calendar, Federal Marshal Sheng Xuejiu and her adjutant, Major Yue, discovered the location of the Zerg nest and worked together to eliminate the Zerg Broodmother.
The Federation's high command was shaken by the news. After dispatching troops to the coordinates of the Zerg planet and confirming the report, they lifted the information blockade.
Instantly, a massive uproar swept through the entire Spiral Star System.
As cosmic predators, for how many years had the shadow of the Zerg loomed over the Federation and the Empire? How many people had lost their lives, and how many had lost their families, because of the Zerg?
The numbers were staggering.
And now, that great mountain was gone.
It hadn't just been moved; it had been blasted into rubble, never to pose a threat again.
The excitement throughout the Federation was irrepressible. People had thought Sheng Xuejiu's prestige had peaked over a year ago when the president was ousted, but now it was clear her reputation could soar even higher.
Thus, even when the Marshal declared an end to the state of war and the Federation convened an election to select a new president and restore the former order, people still spoke of nothing but the Marshal, paying the election no mind at all.
If they had to vote for someone, it would undoubtedly be Sheng Xuejiu.
Speaker Xi of the Federation Parliament even withdrew his candidacy, publicly stating he would vote for the Marshal.
Afterward, the election results were announced. Sheng Xuejiu was, without a doubt, elected the new president.
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