The Almighty Ring

In the night, Jiang Fei took a nice long bath, ate a fancy dinner, and headed to bed. Instead of playing the game, Jiang Fei decided to sleep normally instead. There was nothing going on in the game that required his immediate attention anyway. Hence, he decided to sleep the old-fashioned way and even dream—if that was possible for him. Losing the main component of the Main Engine room was getting on his nerves, but Jiang Fei was not a young boy that would be blindly driven by anger. Eventually, right before Jiang Fei dozed off, he thought about what 0542 said.

Besides declaring the unknowns as the enemy, Jiang Fei had reconsidered what 0542 had said. Until this point, Jiang Fei had only encountered the unknowns twice. The first time was deep in the ocean floor and the second time was inside the Main Engine room where one of the unknowns had revealed himself as Bennette Straz. From what he had gathered, they were vulnerable to Isabella’s attacks while she was in Berserk state. That was the only weapon he had against the unknowns. The fact that Jiang Fei only had Isabella to rely on against the unknowns was risky and he had to admit that. Even so, he had the utmost confidence that Isabella would emerge victorious.

All the fights with the unknowns were outdoors. This time, Jiang Fei planned to bring the fight to their base—their closely guarded, or even possibly, heavily guarded base. It was likely that Jiang Fei would be met with fire and fury.

Jiang Fei got too sleepy and dozed off. It had been a while since Jiang Fei had slept properly—the way humans meant to sleep. He slept like a log for more than 12 hours, waking up the next day at 10am, when Shang Guanqi came to wake him up.

Just as when Jiang Fei had made all the preparations and was about to head out for Ariel and Isabella, Shang Guanqi held him back.

“I’m just spitballing here but… Are you going to do something dangerous today?” she questioned.

“… nothing of that sort,” choking on his words as he spoke.

“There’s no need to keep it a secret. I’ll make sure Pa and Ma won’t know about it. I’d just… felt the need to tell you to be careful,” said Shang Guanqi. For as long as Jiang Fei could remember, he had never looked at Shang Guanqi as a family member but that morning made the difference. Shang Guanqi was talking to Jiang Fei as if she was genuinely caring for her little brother. The worried look in her eyes and the concern in her voice was blaring. It was the first time he had felt kinship from anyone besides his parents.

“I… I will,” said Jiang Fei, nodding his head with confidence. Jiang Fei left his room and headed towards Isabella’s. He paused for a moment when he opened her door.

“Are we going out?” Isabella asked only after she noticed Jiang Fei stayed at the same position for several seconds, quietly.

“Uh.. Oh. Right. Yeah, we’re going to the capital once more,” said Jiang Fei. Even though he said that, the location that Jiang Fei had given to Ariel was not the location of the unknowns. It was, in fact, another point of interest that might or might not be related to them. It was just another point that was listed in the results obtained from the super radar system.

The reason why Jiang Fei had a sudden change of heart, was because of Shang Guanqi. Because of the attention given to him by Shang Guanqi, his stepsister, Jiang Fei was reminded about the pain he would be inflicting on his family if anything went wrong during the assault. Although he had a plan, he could not bet on it to return home safely. If he died, what would become of his family? Who was strong enough to protect them from the unknown threats?

It so happened that the point of interest that he had randomly selected was in China’s capital as well. It was related to the unknowns. Since it was luck, Jiang Fei decided to revise his plan. The location was a small outpost set up by the unknowns. Jiang Fei had decided to attack those outposts to gather enough information about the unknowns. Until he collected enough, he would postpone his main assault on the unknown’s main base.

For this trip, Jiang Fei dared not have Ariel to teleport them too close to the capital. Instead, he had Ariel to teleport somewhere far, roughly 100 kilometers away from their main destination.

“Let’s fly there,” said Jiang Fei before he pulled out the hoverboard.

10 minutes later, Jiang Fei was only several kilometers away from their final destination. At that distance, Jiang Fei thought it would help in their covert mission to just travel on their feet instead of flying in the air.

“0542, camouflage!” Jiang Fei ordered 0542 to create a barrier to hide them. Even though the enemy possessed the same technology, having a barrier erected could at least hide them for a bit. Less than a minute later, the three of them arrived at their location, the unknowns’ outpost.

From its outer appearance, the outpost was fashioned out from an abandoned factory from the late 50s. It was small, measuring at only several tens of thousand square feet. However, Jiang Fei knew that the factory was just a front. Based on the data that Jiang Fei had obtained from the radar system, he knew that this factory housed a large underground facility.

Of all the data that the radar had produced, only a handful of it was considered wasteful, the others were so valuable that Jiang Fei thought it was energy well-spent. Not only did the radar managed to scan the detailed structure of the facility, but it had also highlighted several defense points where security was concentrated the most. Following the guide, Jiang Fei slid past all surveillance cameras and motion detection devices. After moving carefully around the factory, Jiang Fei arrived at the entrance to the underground facility undetected.

“Open the door,” Jiang Fei ordered. He placed the ring close to the keypad beside the metal door and let 0542 to do its thing. Although he was attacking this facility, he wanted to gather as much information as possible before alerting the enemy. He needed to make haste from the entrance to the center of the facility to gather information before the enemy could temper them.

30 seconds later, the door opened and the three of them entered quietly. The unilluminated corridors were hard to move around but thanks to detailed mapping of the entire facility, Jiang Fei knew exactly where to turn to avoid being detected. The place he wanted to pay a visit before actually engaging the enemy was the archive room. 15 minutes later, they were close, almost halfway through before the alarm went off.

The entire corridors were flashing red and the walls unfolded open, revealing beam particle guns that aimed and fired at Jiang Fei.

“Sh*t! What gave me away!” Jiang Fei groaned disgruntledly. He had honestly thought that he had done a good job sneaking around the facility by following the detailed map. However, it did not matter now since they had already been detected.

“Let’s force our way in!” Isabella suggested while giving Ariel a certain look. Even though they were being showered with beam attacks, they were not strong enough to force Isabella to use the power of Berserk. Ariel alone was more than enough to handle those turrets.

“We gotta move, ladies!” said Jiang Fei as he grabbed Isabella to his side before running towards another corridor that was not armed with guns.

Without distraction, Ariel snatched the map that Jiang Fei had sketched out with the least effort and make a hole in the wall. They were already been discovered and there was no reason to remain covert. Ariel created holes in the wall, building a straight path towards the archive room. Everything that was in between were either destroyed or forcefully moved away.

Two minutes of “forcing” their way through the facility, the trio arrived at the archive room. Based on the lack of security in the room, Jiang Fei thought they could be either be lucky or unlucky. The archive room could be a dud since there were no security systems to defend the place.