Chapter 63: A Sudden Brainwave
The biting chill of Belobog's streets eventually drove the Astral Express crew to seek refuge. Huddling around a wrought-iron table at a quiet street corner, they nursed steaming cups of locally brewed hot cocoa, letting the warmth seep back into their numb fingers.
"So," Rekka began, staring thoughtfully into his mug. "I have an idea..."
Instantly, the relaxed atmosphere vanished. Spines straightened. March 7th paused mid-sip, her pink eyes widening in sheer panic, while Dan Heng's grip tightened around his cup as if preparing for an imminent disaster.
"What kind of idea?" March asked, her voice trembling slightly.
Dan Heng leaned forward, his expression deadpan but his tone laced with genuine dread. "Let us talk this through calmly. Please, whatever you do, do not blow up the planet."
They stared at him like he was a walking doomsday device.
Rekka gasped, clutching a hand over his heart in mock devastation. "Do I look like some kind of cruel, evil megalomaniac to you? This is too much. Way too much! The prejudice in your hearts is a heavy mountain crushing my gentle soul!" He beat his chest, putting on a theatrical display of grief.
"No," Dan Heng replied, completely unmoved by the performance. "I am just afraid of your 'sudden brainwaves.'"
He wasn't worried about Rekka making careful, calculated plans. Dan Heng was utterly terrified of the moments when this chaotic anomaly experienced a sudden flash of inspiration.
Rekka waved a hand dismissively, dropping the act. "Relax. I am not going to blow up the planet." He paused, tapping his chin. "Don't you guys think this place is a little too fragile, though?"
"Well, the ecosystem here has indeed suffered a devastating blow," Dan Heng noted, narrowing his eyes. "So, what exactly are you planning?"
"I want to take the planet with me."
"Take the planet with you?!" March shrieked. The hot cocoa sloshed over the rim of her cup, narrowly missing her skirt.
"Calm down," Dan Heng interjected, raising a hand to stall the madness. "You cannot just smash a celestial body into pieces and haul the rubble away."
Rekka groaned, slumping back in his chair. "Seriously, what kind of chaotic monster do you picture when you look at me?"
"The kind who talks absolute nonsense with a perfectly straight face," March shot back, grabbing a napkin to wipe her cup. "It always sounds like a joke, but then it actually happens!"
Pressing two fingers against his temples, Rekka sighed. "What I mean is miniaturizing the planet."
"You want to turn Jarilo-VI into a potted landscape for the Astral Express?" Dan Heng asked, his stoic facade cracking slightly.
"What are you talking about?" Rekka scratched the back of his head, looking at them as if they were the crazy ones. "It is just way more convenient to nurture an ecosystem after shrinking it down. Think about it. With a planet this massive, how are we supposed to manually help the environment recover to its original state? If we shrink it, fix the climate, and let it heal, we can just enlarge it back to normal size later."
Silence descended upon the table.
March and Dan Heng exchanged a long, exhausted look. It could only be said that, as expected of someone currently drawing power from the Path of Erudition, Rekka could casually propose reality-breaking, magical solutions from angles no sane person would ever consider.
"However," Rekka continued, taking a casual sip of his drink, "with my current technological setup... I can't shrink the planet as it is right now."
"Then what is the point of bringing it up?" Dan Heng sighed, feeling a headache coming on.
"I will be able to do it once the Stellaron is dealt with," Rekka explained, his tone shifting to something slightly more analytical. "The unstable frequency emitted by the Stellaron would likely cause the spatial compression to fail midway. So, the Stellaron problem has to be resolved before we can play gardener with their ecosystem."
March raised her hand like a student in a classroom. "Then what about the people living here? What happens to them? They can't be shrunk along with the dirt, right?"
"Of course they will be shrunk together," Rekka nodded, stating it as an absolute matter of fact. "Humans are part of the ecosystem too. And don't worry, people in a miniaturized state won't feel any physical discomfort. To them, life will go on exactly as usual. It is just that the physical scale of their entire world will be compressed relative to the outside universe."
Dan Heng rubbed his temples, the headache now fully manifesting. "Have you considered how the populace might react if they discovered they had been stuffed into someone's pocket and carried away off-world?"
"That is exactly why we have to communicate with them first," Rekka said, spreading his hands in a gesture of pure innocence. "I am not some evil overlord. I definitely wouldn't do something like that without saying hello first. We just need to go have a polite chat with their ruler."
Despite Rekka's claims of being a kind, virtuous, and reasonable person, his companions clearly held a different opinion. It was much like an Emperor declaring 'I am but a mortal man,' while his subjects continued to worship him as a living god.
Rekka drained the last of his drink and stood up, stretching his arms. "Let's go. We have gathered enough intel from the streets. The leader governing this frozen popsicle of a city is in that massive building up ahead. I will go handle the diplomacy."
Inside the grand, imposing architecture of Qlipoth Fort, the atmosphere was frigid.
"So, what you are telling me," the blonde ruler began, her voice echoing off the high, vaulted ceilings, "is that you are visitors from beyond the sky. And you claim to have already helped us clear the threats frozen out on the snow plains..."
"Correct," Rekka replied cheerfully, standing casually before the massive desk.
"And you want to help us restore our environment?"
"Right on the money."
Madame Cocolia, the Supreme Guardian of Belobog, stared down at the eccentric young man. She didn't buy a single word of it, her sharp eyes expressing a very reasonable, heavy skepticism.
But Rekka was a man who preferred to let raw, obvious facts speak for themselves.
Without breaking eye contact, he tapped a command into his terminal. High above the planet's atmosphere, the Hyperion adjusted its targeting arrays, carefully calculating a trajectory that completely bypassed the last bastion of humanity. A blinding beam of concentrated orbital energy pierced the clouds, striking a desolate patch of the frozen wasteland miles away from the city walls. The distant, devastating boom rattled the stained glass windows of the fort, sending a tremor through the floorboards.
Rekka smiled warmly. "Now, that should prove I wasn't lying about our firepower."
Faced with a man whose opening diplomatic move was literal orbital bombardment akin to divine punishment, what choice did the cold, calculating Supreme Guardian have?
"I... still need to consider it," Cocolia managed, her knuckles turning white as she gripped the edges of her desk.
Naturally, she needed to consider it. The current Cocolia was already teetering on the edge of mental instability thanks to the whispers of the Stellaron, but even a madwoman knew better than to blindly trust an outsider who could summon apocalyptic lasers from the sky.
"More than that," Cocolia continued, forcing her voice to remain steady and authoritative. "I want to know exactly how you sneaked into this city."
"Just a little bit of simple camouflage," Rekka said, waving a hand as if brushing away a fly.
"Are you trying to tell me the Silvermane Guards simply let you stroll through the gates?" Cocolia raised a skeptical eyebrow, her authoritative aura flaring. "No questioning, no inspection, not even a basic report to their superiors?"
"Yeah, that is pretty much exactly how it went."
Cocolia's jaw tightened. "Belobog has its own rules, outsider. No matter how clever your methods of infiltration are, since you have entered this city, you must obey the laws here. The military force you just displayed is indeed astonishing, but for me to believe you are here as saviors of this world... just this is not enough."
"Well naturally, trust takes time to build," Rekka agreed, spreading his hands and looking like the most accommodating person in the universe. "We are in no rush. You can take all the time you need to consider our offer. We will just wander around the city, maybe collect some environmental data. Just think of it as us doing some homework in advance."
Cocolia's piercing gaze lingered on Rekka's face for several long seconds, trying to dissect his casual demeanor and judge just how much of his ridiculous story was true.
"After all," Rekka added smoothly, "conducting various inspections of the city's infrastructure is an indispensable part of the restoration process."
The young man spoke flawlessly. His attitude was so cooperative and polite that she couldn't find a single fault to latch onto, yet every instinct in her body screamed that something was terribly off.
"However," Cocolia countered, narrowing her eyes, "the Fragmentum monsters inside and outside the city walls haven't decreased in number at all."
"Ah, about that. Based on my sampling, those Fragmentum monsters do not belong to the Antimatter Legion," Rekka explained, folding his arms across his chest. "My warship's sterilization protocol was specifically targeted at the frozen Antimatter Legion units. Rashly adding unknown targets to the orbital strike might have caused deviations in the blast radius. We wouldn't want to accidentally vaporize your city, right?"
He took a step forward, his tone turning slightly more analytical. ", the strength of those Fragmentum monsters is relatively low compared to the Legion. You should be well aware that the Voidrangers frozen out there in the ice would have come back to life the second they thawed. But now? All those ice sculptures outside have been permanently dealt with."
Rekka tilted his head, his eyes locking onto hers with a sudden, piercing intensity. "Since the problem of the Antimatter Legion is solved, you have no reason to let the Stellaron continue freezing this planet. And you have even less reason to sit back and watch the Fragmentum spawned by that Stellaron continue to expand... right?"
Cocolia's breath hitched imperceptibly.
They knew. They knew about the Stellaron's existence. They knew the Eternal Freeze and the Fragmentum were both byproducts of the Stellaron. Just who were these people?
"In that case, Belobog is naturally deeply grateful," Cocolia replied, her tone softening slightly as she attempted to pivot the conversation and play dumb. "Also, regarding this... Stellaron... I am not aware of what you mean—"
"Yeah, yeah, if you say you don't know, then you don't know. That is not important," Rekka interrupted, nodding agreeably. "Let's just go seal the Stellaron right now."
"Now?" Cocolia blurted out, completely caught off guard. She hadn't expected him to just bypass the political dance entirely.
"Yeah," Rekka said, looking at her as if she were the one being unreasonable. "Although the Antimatter Legion is gone, isn't the Fragmentum still a massive threat to your people? Why not solve the root cause quickly? What are you keeping the Stellaron around for? A holiday decoration?"
Cocolia opened her mouth, but for the first time in years, the Supreme Guardian found herself utterly speechless.
Wait for what? She hadn't actually believed a single word Rekka said about saving the world. Her entire plan had been to stall, get these dangerous outsiders under her control, and then squeeze them for information.
How could he just casually suggest walking up and sealing the Stellaron right this second?!
"We Trailblazers are just good-hearted folks walking through the universe, offering a helping hand," Rekka said, reaching into his pocket. He pulled out a small, rectangular piece of cardstock and slid it across the massive desk. "This is our business card. Please take it, thank you. From Stellarons above to leaky pipes below, there is no job we at the Astral Express can't handle."
Cocolia stared blankly at the card resting on her desk.
Printed in bold, cheerful letters, it read:
Astral Express, Professional Services.
Scope of Business: Toilet unclogging, sewer maintenance, appliance repair, interstellar express delivery...
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