"Alright, explanations can wait. You two should absorb this Echo right now. If the frequency dissipates before you do, that would be an unbelievable waste!"
Chixia jabbed a finger at the glowing Crownless remnant, her voice urgent. Missing this would break her heart on their behalf.
"Good point."
She nodded and, following Yangyang's earlier instructions, raised her gourd-shaped Pangu Terminal with its mouth aimed at the Crownless's phantom.
Nothing happened.
A few seconds crawled by in silence. He could almost hear the crows flying overhead.
"What's wrong? Is my Terminal broken?"
"Shouldn't be. Mine can't absorb it either."
She tapped her Terminal with a frown. He shook his head and pulled out his own to try. The result was predictably disappointing. The golden phantom didn't so much as flicker.
A line of text appeared on both their screens.
[Data Dock level insufficient. Unable to absorb.]
"Yeah. Figured as much." He sighed.
"Data Dock? What Data Dock?" She blinked.
"Think of it like an Echo encyclopedia. The more Echoes you collect, the higher your Data Dock level. Higher level means you can absorb more Echoes, and stronger ones. Ours is at... zero."
He shrugged. Her face fell instantly. Zero meant they couldn't absorb the Crownless Echo. They'd hit the jackpot and couldn't cash it in.
Worse, according to Chixia, an unabsorbed Echo would dissipate on its own after a while. Their prize was on a timer.
"No! That can't happen!"
"That's... such a shame." Yangyang and Baizhi wore matching looks of sympathy. Watching an Echo this rare evaporate was painful even for them.
Then she drew a deep breath, and her golden eyes flickered red. Her sword slid from its sheath.
"Yangyang. How long before an Echo dissipates on its own?"
"Huh? I think the maximum is about an hour."
"One hour..." Her eyes narrowed. "Maybe that's enough."
The killing intent rolling off her made the other three take a step back, eyes wide. They had no idea what she was planning. But her counterpart, attuned to her thoughts as always, understood immediately.
"Look, I admire the ambition, but the plan you're thinking of, kill every Tacet Discord in the area within an hour and level up the Data Dock enough to absorb an Overlord Class Echo, isn't going to work."
"Wh...?!" The other three gasped in unison, heads snapping toward her. She couldn't be serious.
She stiffened, but held his gaze. "We should at least try. I'm not tired yet."
"I'm not saying you couldn't wipe out everything nearby in an hour. I'm saying even if you did, it wouldn't raise the Data Dock high enough." He reached over and patted her head. He believed in her strength without reservation.
But with the Crownless gone, the Etheric Sea was already receding. The Tacet Field was going quiet. New Tacet Discords would stop spawning soon. Even if they scoured the whole area clean, the Data Dock wouldn't level up enough to handle an Overlord Class Echo.
She went silent. One hand pressed against her chest, her expression screaming, It hurts. It hurts so much.
If she'd never learned how rare an Overlord Class Echo was, watching it fade would've stung a little, nothing more. But Yangyang had been thorough in her explanation. She now understood exactly what they were about to lose, and it felt like watching a hundred million credits vanish while she stood there helpless.
The grief was real.
His expression was complicated. He was fairly sure that before her amnesia, her Data Dock had been maxed out. She'd been a completionist, every Echo catalogued. But when her memory reset, she'd wiped her Terminal so thoroughly that she hadn't just cleared her browsing history; she'd nuked the entire collection.
"Yangyang, can any of your Terminals absorb it?"
He caught her before she collapsed to the ground and turned to the others. The idea was simple: if they could, the three of them could hold the Echo in trust until the Rovers leveled up enough to take it back.
Unlike a fresh transmigrant and an amnesiac whose Terminal had been factory-reset, the other three had to have Data Dock levels above zero. Maybe one of them could handle an Overlord Class Echo.
All three shook their heads, apologetic.
"We're sorry..."
"Our Data Docks do have some levels."
"But nowhere near enough for an Overlord Class Echo."
If it were possible, none of them would have hesitated. The Crownless was the Rovers' kill. Without those two, the three of them might not even be standing here. But the truth was, their Data Dock levels weren't much higher. Yangyang served in the Midnight Rangers' Outriders, but her unit's primary role was reconnaissance, not frontline combat. Chixia was a Jinzhou Patroller, essentially a city cop; her job was public safety, not hunting Tacet Discords. And Baizhi was a researcher and healer who rarely saw direct combat at all.
All three were Resonators, but none had accumulated enough combat Echoes to push their Data Docks anywhere near Overlord Class capacity.
"Well... guess we're out of options."
Her shoulders drooped. She stared at the golden phantom they'd beaten into existence on their very first try, reluctance written across her face. There was nothing to be done. She was about to give up when...
"In that case, let's try this instead."
"Hm?" She blinked.
"I told you before, didn't I? Compared to you and your amnesia, I know a little more about us." A cryptic smile crossed his face.
He walked up to the Crownless Echo, its faint golden light washing over him, and raised his right hand. The Tacet Mark carved into it began to pulse. Then, in a voice only the two of them could hear, he called out.
"Dinner time, Abby. Swallow it whole."
"Food... food... so hungry... eat!"
A voice only the two Rovers could hear answered back. She stared at her own glowing Tacet Mark in shock. The voice had come from inside them both.
Her right hand rose on instinct.
As if driven by something deeper than thought, they spoke together.
"Become mine!"
"Become mine!"
Both Tacet Marks erupted with blinding golden light. A tremendous pull seized the Crownless Echo, unraveling it into streams of luminous particles that poured into their outstretched palms.
"What... what's happening?"
"They absorbed it?!"
"I'm not dreaming, am I..."
Yangyang, Baizhi, and Chixia stared, disbelief etched into every line of their faces. Absorbing a residual frequency with their bare bodies instead of a Terminal was the kind of thing that, if they hadn't witnessed it firsthand, they would've dismissed as a bad joke. So what exactly were these two Rovers?
They'd only just met, and already the impossible kept stacking up.
On the other side of that miracle, the two Rovers' eyes flashed violet for an instant after the absorption was complete. The purple vanished a heartbeat later, swallowed by their natural gold.
They looked at each other. Delight sparked in both their gazes.
Then, in perfect unison, they each raised a leg and brought it down on the Tacet Field's ground.
BOOM.
BOOM.
Two stomps. The Tacet Field buckled and cracked. Yangyang and the others felt the earth lurch beneath them, the sudden tremor nearly throwing them off their feet.
They looked up.
Fractures radiated outward from where the two Rovers stood, the ground cratered around their footprints.
"Well, if it can't be our Echo, might as well turn it into experience points." He grinned, flexing his hand. "Leveling up feels pretty good."
"Our power... it went up. A lot!" She clenched her fist, golden eyes bright.