"Oh, I never expected to see you here. I was quite surprised when Elio suddenly mentioned you earlier."
Silver Wolf stepped out of the portal, greeting Julian without a hint of formality. Kafka followed a step behind her, her dark coat brushing past the digital embers of the spatial tear.
The moment they materialized, Yanqing's hand snapped straight onto the hilt of his sword. The Stellaron Hunters were a notorious presence across the Xianzhou Alliance, and his instincts screamed at him to stay vigilant. Yet, looking at the two fugitives, the young lieutenant didn't harbor a single drop of fear; his posture radiated the absolute confidence of a prodigy who believed his blade form could match anyone in the room.
"This must be fate," Julian said with a casual shrug. He remained completely composed, though his gaze naturally drifted toward Kafka. She was just as beautiful and elegant as he remembered from his past life, but a faint, secret sigh crossed his thoughts when he saw her eyes—they were polite and calm, completely lacking the deep, protective affection his main character had always known.
"It is a pleasure to meet you, Miss Kafka. You are indeed every bit as elegant and intellectual as the legends state."
Julian stepped forward, offering his hand with a warm smile. Kafka smiled faintly, her gloved fingers catching his for a brief, polite handshake.
"As Silver Wolf said, you truly are a charming person, Julian," Kafka replied, her voice smooth and melodic. "It's the first time I've ever heard a target praise my appearance so highly before a script initializes."
Julian chuckled. Honestly, the vast majority of people either froze in terror or dropped into a sweaty combat stance the second they heard the title 'Stellaron Hunters.' Who among them would actually find the peace of mind to notice their style? Besides, if he hadn't possessed his unique meta-knowledge, his own senses would have flagged Kafka as a high-risk predator long before his mind could catalog her grace.
"So, what is the strategic foundation for this ambush?" Julian asked, turning his head to look at Silver Wolf. "Are you locking this lift car simply to prevent my studio from interfering with your script? You could have just cleared a communication link. As long as your team isn't planning to flatten the space station into space dust, why would I refuse a simple request from a friend?"
"How can your calculations be so certain that our parameters don't involve destroying the facility?" Silver Wolf pouted, deliberately lowering her voice to try and scare him.
"Tch. Unless your office desires to invite an eternal, galaxy-wide war against the Genius Society, your team wouldn't dare cross that line," Julian smirked, completely seeing through her bluff.
Elio was an elite scriptwriter; he would never allow his agents to step onto a branch that meant offending multiple reality-warping geniuses just to clear a single storage vault.
"Fine, you're zero fun," Silver Wolf huffed, blowing a bubble with her gum. "The system lock wasn't even set up to contain your profile anyway. Our objective is strictly to manage the young swordsman standing at your shoulder."
Julian's mind ran the equation, and absolute clarity filled his thoughts within a microsecond.
He had already resolved to sit in the back row as a quiet spectator to let the main story roll, but Yanqing didn't share that dataset. The core issue was that the boy was an incredibly stubborn, hot-blooded Xianzhou chivalrous youth. At this exact frame, he was easily one of the strongest active combat assets present on the Herta Space Station. If he were allowed to sprint onto the main bridge alongside the Astral Express crew, the poor Doomsday Beast would probably get sliced into pixels before it could even clear its first major area-of-effect macro—leaving zero opportunity for the main character to absorb the Stellaron and awaken the path of Destruction.
"Ah, so it was your edge that was threatening to ruin my preview show," Julian laughed, turning to face his bodyguard. He completely ignored the boy's stunned look and stepped out of the lift car, knowing the narrow metal capsule held zero clearance for an authentic martial duel. "In that case, Miss Kafka, I shall trouble your department to deliver a thorough piece of 'education' to this youth. His expression still looks remarkably unconvinced."
Yanqing stood completely frozen. What is the baseline logic of this trade? We were traveling as allies a second ago, and now he is casually organizing a frontline general of the Hunters to educate me?
"What are you staring at the walls for?" Julian teased, leaning his back against a nearby laboratory pillar. "Jing Yuan didn't ship your profile out to the stars simply to enjoy a luxury vacation. Well... maybe a vacation was part of the ledger, but his primary intent was to grind your skills against the rough elements of the universe. Now that an exceptional, high-spec sparring partner has custom-delivered herself to your coordinate, why aren't you unlocking your sword forms?"
Hearing Julian mention that his master harbored this hidden, training motive for the journey, Yanqing didn't doubt the calculation for a single frame. He spun around, his golden eyes locking onto the two fugitives as a massive, burning wave of pure competitive fighting spirit violently surged through his veins.
"An authentic physical trade is indeed necessary to clear the path," Silver Wolf nodded, stepping past the group. "I'll leave the execution to your blades, Kafka. My character class isn't optimized for raw physical brawling."
True to her word, the hacker strolled completely out of the combat zone, settling down right next to Julian to secure a premier viewing angle. Kafka and Yanqing followed them onto the wide silver floor of the Storage deck.
"My word, this species of physical assignment really belongs to Blade's ledger," Kafka sighed softly, her fingers lightly tapping the triggers of her twin submachine guns as she met the boy's intense aura. "But unfortunately..."
She left the sentence drifting, but Julian easily filled the blank. Blade has likely already departed for the Xianzhou waters to initialize their next major script. The timelines separating the space station from Jarilo-VI and the Luofu were notoriously tight; the immortal swordsman being out of position was perfectly normal.
"Oh, right. Let's see if this environmental macro initializes correctly," Julian murmured, wanting to test a newly unlocked Pathstrider capability. He raised his hand and sharply snapped his fingers.
HUMMM—
A shimmering, neon-blue cube of rule-based energy violently expanded from his palm, instantly wrapping the entire corridor within a secure, isolated dimension.
The three combatants paused, their lenses scanning the glowing boundaries with deep curiosity.
"What species of software partition did your console just drop?" Silver Wolf asked, her eyes narrowing.
"This is an authentic Battle Zone," Julian explained with a satisfied grin. "I was merely running a quick real-world projection test, and I didn't calculate the syntax would compile so smoothly. The rules match our standard Pokémon mechanics: as long as your profiles are locked inside this space, even if both of you unleash your maximum lethal output, the absolute worst-case outcome is a temporary 'unable to battle' status block. Unless someone stubbornly executes a secondary strike after a knockout, there is zero risk of sustaining permanent physical trauma or death."
"Well, that balances the equation beautifully," Kafka smiled, her gaze returning to the young lieutenant.
Since the rules guaranteed the boy's survival, she could dispense with her safety thresholds entirely. The youth was Jing Yuan's beloved personal disciple; accidentally crippling or erasing his data block from the universe would invite the absolute, unbridled retaliation of the Hunt—a corporate disaster the Stellaron Hunters had zero desire to invite.
Without a single secondary of warning, Kafka's silhouette vanished. She materialized like a phantom directly inside Yanqing's blind spot, her boot executing a rapid, high-impact kick that sent the boy flying across the floor before his fingers could even clear his hilt to block.
However, the Young Sword Master wasn't a low-tier elite unit. He stabilized his frame mid-air, his personal blade snapping into his right hand while a brilliant ring of glowing flying swords automatically formed a defensive circle around his shoulders.
Suddenly, a sharp ping on his danger radar forced his eyes down. The steel plating beneath his boots was completely littered with small, blinking submunitions on the verge of detonation.
BOOM!
A massive cloud of fire and dark smoke swallowed his position. Yanqing frantically commanded his flying blades to interlock into a solid shield, but the sheer force of the blast threw his formation into chaos.
Before the smoke could even clear the vents, a volley of silver swords violently pierced the gray mist, screaming straight toward Kafka's head. The woman didn't even blink; her twin guns barked in perfect rhythm, systematically shooting every single blade out of the air with absolute precision.
A slightly disheveled but intensely focused Yanqing followed right behind his weapons, closing the distance to lock Kafka within a fierce, high-speed melee exchange. His swordsmanship was immaculate—every slash perfectly placed and overflowing with a sharp, biting cold. Yet, against Kafka's flawless combination of swordplay, gun-kata, and martial arts, he couldn't secure a single frame of advantage.
To make his math worse, Kafka would occasionally weave invisible threads of spider silk or drop a whisper of her Spirit Whisper command across the audio channels, systematically jamming his muscle reactions. Within less than a dozen exchanges, the young lieutenant was completely stripped of his ability to launch a counter-offensive, trapped inside a looping sequence of absorbing heavy physical hits.
Julian was having a marvelous time, his phone camera clicking continuously as he saved dozens of high-definition photos of the boy's struggles, while Silver Wolf watched his antics with a perfectly flat, deadpan expression.
"By the way, your baseline Pathstrider energy has undergone another massive upgrade, hasn't it?" the hacker noted, her eyes tracking the stability of the Battle Zone.
"The logic is clean: the more citizens submerge into my software across the star-lanes, the deeper my reservoir grows," Julian answered proudly, not moving his camera lens. "With Topaz unlatching the IPC's marketing vaults to launch our winter campaign, I feel like a single word defines my current standing—invincible."
"Hehe... seeing your console maintain such high confidence is comforting," Silver Wolf smirked, her fingers cracking as she checked her data pad. "It seems my office won't need to allocate any anxiety over what follows next."
"What exactly follows next?" Julian paused, lowering his phone to shoot her a puzzled look.
"Nothing at all. For the 'invincible' Julian Reed, it's bound to register as a minor, insignificant matter," Silver Wolf laughed mischievously, refusing to unpack the reference.
"Hey! Don't drop a riddle string and leave the chat!"
The hacker ignored his complaints, reorienting her vision toward the center of the room where the match was rapidly entering its closing frames. Kafka executed a fluid, sweeping spin, her blade catching Yanqing's guard and knocking the boy flat onto the silver tiles. Under the unique mechanical rules of the Battle Zone, his consciousness smoothly entered a temporary, protective daze to prevent his vital bar from cracking.
Yanqing's raw talent among the younger generation was undeniably spectacular, but when forced to match steel against an elite powerhouse who had survived decades on the corporate death lists, his current experience pool was simply far too shallow. Throughout the canonical scripts, the poor kid consistently picked fights with the absolute gods of the setting—Jingliu, Blade, and Dan Heng's dragon form. Adding Kafka's name to his list of historical beatings was simply another peak-tier milestone for his resume.
"It has been a remarkably long time since my body cleared such an enjoyable piece of physical exercise," Kafka murmured, sheathing her blade with an elegant click as she smoothed down her coat. The protective daze holding Yanqing ran its course, and the boy slowly sat up, rubbing his aching forehead with a look of intense, quiet frustration.
Kafka turned her face toward the developer, her expression warm. "My highest appreciation for your understanding and the safety parameters of your arena, Julian. Our schedule has hit its limit; we must depart for the main chamber now. Let's move, Silver Wolf."
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