The absolute silence that followed the Saintess casually rattling off the complex verification string was deafening. The surrounding technicians went from completely ignoring her presence to staring with a mixture of raw shock, profound joy, and an intense wave of curiosity.
A single, burning question consumed every mind in the room: Had Jeanne simply executed a monumental, once-in-a-lifetime lucky guess? Or did she secretly possess an intimate knowledge of the fortress's deep-level security protocols? If it was the latter, did it mean their mind-numbing, hair-thinning password-testing labor was officially over?
"Uh... how on earth did you manage to drag that specific sequence out of thin air?"
While the engineering crew harbored an immense curiosity, they noted that the Doctor, Kal'tsit, and Theresa had yet to offer an official comment. Consequently, no one dared to bluntly interrogate the Saintess, considering they still viewed her as a somewhat mysterious outside entity. Navigating a topic that potentially touched upon her personal secrets was a delicate matter they weren't prepared to handle.
However, Closure, who shared a far more casual baseline of familiarity with Jeanne, didn't hesitate to throw the question right out into the open. The moment the query left her mouth, every technician in the immediate perimeter quietly shifted their gaze toward the Saintess, eagerly awaiting her response.
"Intuition? I simply harbored a persistent feeling that those exact digits would clear the prompt," Jeanne explained, lightly brushing a strand of hair behind her ear, her own expression laced with a touch of bewilderment. Privately, she was thoroughly amazed to discover that her divine Revelation possessed such an incredibly practical, unorthodox utility!
If I were to establish a private consulting booth out in the real world, she mused, relying on this all-powerful heavenly guidance to crack mainframe firewalls and encrypted banking profiles for clients, would I pull in a higher profit margin than Laterano makes selling my official commemorative statuettes?
"Aw, are you serious? It was just a lucky guess?!" Closure groaned, her shoulders slumping into instant disappointment. She assumed Jeanne had simply been blessed by a massive stroke of cosmic fortune. The notion that someone could consistently bypass system security through blind guesswork was entirely unscientific, after all!
Yet, while the chief engineer remained thoroughly skeptical, another individual in the room was practically radiating pure, unadulterated zeal. The Doctor stared at Jeanne with an incredibly intense fire in her eyes, silently cursing her own fragile memory for causing her to overlook such a monumental asset!
She remembered with absolute clarity that Jeanne had previously confessed to wielding a divine capability known as Revelation—a celestial grace that, whenever the Saintess faced a critical operational bottleneck, would inevitably deliver the exact answer or methodology required to resolve the crisis.
"Come over here for a second, Jeanne," the Doctor whispered frantically, leaning in close to the Saintess's ear to keep the conversation strictly confidential. "Be a savior and help me decipher this fifty-six-digit master sequence. You are well aware of how thoroughly fractured my cognitive functions are by this point; I have systematically wiped nearly every deep-level password from my active memory channels."
The strategist offered a low, helpless sigh regarding her own mental decay. She had genuinely reached a tier of desperation where she was considering extreme physical measures to jog her stubborn brain cells. For instance, would allowing Kal'tsit to suspend her from the ceiling and beat her with a heavy clipboard provide the necessary structural stimulus to recall her lost data strings?
As for Jeanne? She harbored a crushing intuition that she wouldn't be permitted to evacuate this laboratory before nightfall. Letting out a long, defeated sigh, she looked down at little Fafnir standing beside her dress, giving her a helpless shake of her head.
"It looks like you will have to embark on your foraging expedition without me, little one. I am firmly pinned to this station for the foreseeable future."
Hearing that her guardian wouldn't be accompanying her to the dining sector, the young dragon delivered a perfectly obedient, understanding nod. She resolved to undertake the journey alongside Theresa instead. However, after taking a couple of paces toward the heavy exit doors, she suddenly spun around, pointing a tiny finger at the Saintess.
"I shall secure an abundant harvest of meat and bring it back to Jeanne! You must remain perfectly stationary and behave yourself right here!"
The Saintess let out a soft laugh. The silly child had systematically memorized the exact disciplinary lectures Jeanne usually directed toward her, and was now boldly deploying those identical phrases back onto her caretaker! Still, she offered a warm smile and nodded in absolute agreement.
"Let's see what we are dealing with," Jeanne muttered once Fafnir had departed. She stepped up to the primary console beside the Doctor, and the moment her eyes drifted across the terrifyingly complex interface, a wave of profound speechlessness washed over her. The screen was choked with a minimum of twenty advanced authentication blocks!
Staring at the dense, swirling thicket of alphanumeric sequences and bizarre, archaic symbols that she couldn't logically comprehend, the Saintess felt her brain actively threatening to short-circuit. What kind of unholy gibberish was this?
Yet, while her conscious mind completely locked up, her omnipotent divine Revelation remained entirely unimpeded. The endless, dizzying strings of hidden data blossomed within her consciousness with absolute clarity.
One by one, passwords that the Doctor vaguely recalled—along with an immense ledger of codes that had been permanently erased from the strategist's memory—surfaced within Jeanne's thoughts. Guided by the unerring thread of celestial light, her fingers danced across the terminal, systematically inputs the correct sequences until the high-level security permissions of Rhodes Island were dismantled layer by layer.
Watching the Saintess execute the bypass with effortless fluidity, the Doctor couldn't help but view her as a naturally gifted corporate espionage asset. If one were to drop this woman into the primary research divisions of the major Columbian conglomerates to harvest their classified technological blueprints, the difficulty level would be roughly equivalent to scooping up ordinary pebbles from the side of a dirt road.
Jeanne: I am a formally consecrated Saintess of Laterano! How dare you formulate a plan to employ my divine gifts for industrial espionage? Even if my financial reserves were so thoroughly depleted that I was reduced to eating grass, I would never stoop to such jobss!
By the time the entire operating system was officially unlocked, Jeanne noted that the atmosphere among the surrounding staff had shifted into something thoroughly bizarre. The look the engineers were directing toward her frame was deeply unsettling... it felt as though the entire room was collectively fighting the urge to drop to their knees and perform a full, reverent kowtow right before her feet.
In truth, the technicians genuinely wanted to worship the woman who had just salvaged what remained of their miserable sanity. If the social boundaries of the facility permitted it, they would have gladly constructed a literal shrine to Jeanne right there on the engineering deck! This celestial lady was nothing short of an immortal goddess descending from the heavens!
A collective wave of profound relief swept through the department. Thanks to the Saintess's miraculous intervention, the grueling technical labor required to calibrate the core mainframe had been systematically slashed by a whopping forty percent! Just think of how many precious hairs had been saved from early shedding!
"Is this the true output of your Revelation?" the Doctor remarked, happily slacking off as she leaned against the console beside Jeanne. Watching the Saintess effortlessly untangle the web of encrypted nodes that she herself could barely visualize, the strategist drifted into deep thought. How on earth did an ability that completely violated the fundamental laws of logic manage its internal output?
Of course, it was a metaphysical mystery that even Jeanne couldn't logically articulate, let alone a scientifically minded observer who couldn't see the divine framework. Attempting to parse the mechanics of a miracle was an exercise in pure futility.
Meanwhile, on the opposite flank of the command deck, Kal'tsit was personally refining the secondary control relays. Witnessing the green success prompts blossoming across the grid, even the chilly medical officer let out a quiet sigh of relief. It appeared the upcoming deployment would proceed far more smoothly than her initial models had predicted, completely eliminating the need to postpone their departure.
When Jeanne finally concluded her morning of labor and turned to depart, she found herself showered with an overwhelming torrent of gratitude from every technician within the sector. Even Kal'tsit stepped forward to offer a crisp, sincere expression of thanks—a development so unprecedented that the Saintess briefly wondered if her auditory channels were malfunctioning.
However, the moment she stepped into the communal mess hall and witnessed the line of kitchen staff—who looked as though half their life force had been violently extracted from their bodies—sitting alongside a blissfully unsupervised Fafnir who was joyfully inhaling mountains of food, Jeanne realized her extra labor had been an absolute necessity.
Given the young dragon's catastrophic caloric requirements, even a slightly relaxed dining session was enough to drive a team of ordinary chefs into early graves from pure exhaustion. Babel was footed the literal bill for three massive meals a day to sustain this bottomless pit; if anything, Jeanne felt as though she was extracting an immensely lopsided advantage from her partnership with the organization!
Presently, the Saintess sat at a corner table alongside Theresa, engaged in casual conversation while watching Fafnir systematically polish off her five hundred and forty-second individual plate of fried rice. Is it just my imagination, Jeanne thought, a bead of sweat forming on her brow, or has this child's internal storage capacity expanded yet again?
Ultimately, under Jeanne's firm intervention, the chaotic buffet was officially brought to a halt around ten in the morning. The reason the Saintess put her foot down was beautifully simple.
In a few hours, the official lunchtime rush would begin. The kitchen staff desperately required a brief window to rest their aching limbs; not even a hard-working donkey on a collective farm was subjected to such relentless, uninterrupted exploitation.
"On a serious note," Jeanne remarked as she and Theresa strolled down one of the main corridors, voicing the lingering concern that had been weighing on her mind, "you have only just initiated the primary systems check on this landship today. Is a handful of days truly a sufficient window before we attempt a full deployment? Are you not concerned that this massive mountain of iron might experience a total mechanical failure midway through the wastes? If we stall out in the middle of hostile territory, the logistical crisis will be catastrophic."
Her anxiety was grounded in sound reasoning. A piece of heavy machinery that had lain buried in the dirt for an epoch surely required extensive, multi-layered testing before it could be considered truly dependable, right?
"Rest easy," Theresa replied with a serene, comforting smile. "I maintain absolute confidence in the structural capabilities of our engineering division. When it comes to vessel mechanics, those women are... professionals."
The Demon King delivered those final words with a sudden, sharp trace of hesitation—primarily because the moment the word left her mouth, the overhead luminescent strips flickered out, plunging the entire corridor into absolute, pitch-black silence! Yes, the power grid had failed with that exact, comical timing!
Theresa stood frozen in the darkness, completely drained of words. Is this truly how you choose to repay my confidence, Closure? The grand leader of the Sarkaz felt an undeniable wave of embarrassment warming her cheeks.
"It appears... certain localized sectors are still prone to minor, unexpected hiccups," Theresa offered, her voice echoing sheepishly in the dim corridor. Even though the environment was shrouded in heavy shadows, Jeanne could still discern that the Demon King's beautiful smile had taken on a thoroughly awkward, strained quality.
Still, looking at the silver lining, identifying these critical flaws while the fortress remained safely docked within the excavation pit was a massive stroke of luck. It was infinitely superior to discovering a catastrophic circuit failure once they were cruising through a barren wilderness.
All around them, emergency flashlights flared to life as frantic waves of engineering personnel began sprinting back and forth through the junctions, desperately hunting for the source of the electrical failure. They were so thoroughly consumed by the crisis that they didn't even possess a single spare second to acknowledge the three onlookers watching the spectacle unfold.
Deep down in her gut, Jeanne harbored a distinct intuition: their original departure date was about to experience a significant, unavoidable delay. Evaluating the sheer chaos vibrating through the corridors, if Closure and her crews managed to permanently stabilize the primary electrical grid before the week was out, it would be nothing short of an absolute miracle.