Chapter 149 Explosion

The maintenance tunnel didn’t lead directly to the propulsion unit, but it did allow access to the aft maintenance area. The thruster used by the space island was an enormous device, hundreds of meters long in its main body. On the surface, it would resemble a small mountain. Its aft maintenance area was like a factory equipment room. This place, filled with machinery, pipes, magical arrays, and flashing indicators, was located tens of meters underground, at the lower rear of the propulsion unit. The explosion hadn't completely torn it apart, but a huge crack had been blown open in its upper shield.

Hao Ren found himself in a wide room, surrounded by strange, unidentifiable equipment. Artificial gravity had completely failed, and the most intense acceleration phase of the propulsion unit was over. As a result, debris and other detritus floated in the air. The ceiling sloped away to one side, and a massive gash ran through this sloping alloy roof. Harsh light streamed in from outside, casting bizarre and dangerous silhouettes of the floating debris onto the opposite wall.

Hao Ren immediately ran to check the devices that looked like control panels. He knew he was inside the unit, and shutting down the system from within would be the best option. He might not know how to operate them, but he could transmit what he saw to the data terminal and let the elven experts analyze it. However, he quickly abandoned the idea. All the equipment was obviously broken, and the dim, cracked crystal controllers were useless.

Izhaks was surrounded by a layer of searing lava shield. He was preparing to unleash his power. After carefully sensing the energy flow around him, he went to a corner of the room and punched a huge hole in the wall: "The point of failure should be ahead."

Hao Ren ran over and took a curious look. Outside, there was nothing but blinding light. After his eyes adjusted, he could make out the structure beyond the room: ahead was the propulsion unit's "combustion chamber," or something similar. He could see a huge, tubular channel stretching out, and the flickering flames at the end offered glimpses of distant stars. As he observed, the shadow of another floating island flashed past the end of the channel. He could see many parallel small pipes lining the channel walls. The light mainly emanated from these pipes. Between these scorching pipes and the maintenance area was a buffer zone of about ten meters, filled with a ring of massive devices. Despite this buffer, Hao Ren still felt a wave of heat: it was probably just psychological.

Izhaks tore the hole in the wall even wider, then leaped out. He stood in the center of the buffer zone, stretching his body. A scarlet cloud of fire, like churning magma, quickly enveloped him. His body rapidly swelled within the swirling demonic mist, instantly transforming into a giant demon over five meters tall.

Hao Ren jumped out after him: "It's been a while since I've seen you like this."

"Haha, it's more comfortable this way," Izhaks said, flexing his limbs. Fortunately, they were communicating telepathically, or he would have been spewing sparks everywhere. "I want to take a look outside; it's hard to tell how big the propulsion unit is from here."

Hao Ren hummed in agreement. As he looked around, he suddenly noticed something in the distance.

He gestured for Izhaks to wait, then laboriously floated over. As the data terminal said, he could move in a vacuum without any external force. As he did so, Hao Ren saw a faint trail of afterimages behind him, but it didn't mean he was moving fast. It was a spatial afterimage caused by some kind of coordinate displacement. Moving this way made him feel like his senses were being split into countless parts and distributed along his path, causing intense dizziness. He had to be careful not to move continuously for too long. When he finally reached his destination, he saw what was on the ground: an Irimian elf, wearing a strange spacesuit, who appeared to be dead.

Suppressing his surprise and nervousness, Hao Ren stepped forward and turned over the body. Under the transparent visor was the face of a young male elf. There was no sign of pain on his face, and his eyes were closed as if he were asleep. Hao Ren found no obvious external injuries, so he was curious about the elf's cause of death until he noticed a very small crack on the back of the spacesuit: death by depressurization.

Perhaps the physiological structure of elves was different from that of humans; they seemed to simply fall asleep when they died in a vacuum.

Hao Ren subconsciously looked around and saw that the elf had fallen in front of a control device, his hand resting on one of the control levers. He struggled to decipher the characters next to the device and finally translated the blurred symbols: Emergency Stop.

Hao Ren suddenly understood: it seemed that the maintenance area had noticed something before the propulsion unit exploded. This elf must have been the staff on duty. After discovering the equipment malfunctioned and losing contact with the surface, he tried to rush to the combustion chamber to shut down the system manually, but he failed.

An ordinary Irimian elf who died in the line of duty. Although he risked his life to protect the island, his last effort failed.

"We should move his body to a safer place," Izhaks said, looking down at the elf. "It's going to explode here soon."

Hao Ren nodded silently, secured the dead elf on his back, and floated back to the tunnel as quickly as possible. He placed the elf near the second gate, which was probably the safest place he could find.

Then, he and Izhaks rushed out of the propulsion unit along the giant combustion pipe: it was a thrilling journey. Hao Ren had never imagined that anyone would be bold enough to hurtle through a hundreds-meter-long space thruster, surrounded by deadly explosive flames. At first, he worried that his rigid shield wouldn't withstand the high temperatures and impact, but it seemed that the Empire's products were of high quality. Besides severe dizziness, he wasn't hurt.

But the shield had been drained a bit.

A massive pillar of light, over ten kilometers long, was spewing before them, its momentum terrifying and shocking.

This was the light and flame emitted by the propulsion engine. The engine had three main nozzles, but only one was operating. One was extinguished, and the other was a mess of metal debris torn apart by the explosion. But none of them were completely destroyed. It seemed that the elven spellcasters on the other side of the wall had made a significant misjudgment about the engine's condition. Near this giant engine, Hao Ren also saw the attitude control nozzles. They were distributed below the island's ring and spewed smaller flames, frantically trying to correct the deadly tearing force that the main engine was exerting on the island, only making the situation worse.

Izhaks stood next to Hao Ren, his body ablaze with flames that couldn't be extinguished in the vacuum. The flames burned into a ball of fire in zero gravity, making the terrifying demon seem like a small, awe-inspiring sun. He frowned, looking at the engine structure that was difficult for him to understand, and compared it to the key features the elven mage had told him: "Looks like blowing that thing up is all that's left. It's not like things can get any worse."

Then, he began to brew an unprecedentedly huge super fire ball mixed with green fel flames. Hao Ren looked around and saw some small lights flickering in the distance. They were Irimian cruisers that had come to rescue but couldn't get close due to insufficient configuration. The elves could only watch from afar, puzzled by Hao Ren and Izhaks in demon form: they must be "strange creatures" beyond their worldview.

Hao Ren had finally been seen as a "different being" in the true sense.

A moment later, Izhaks's super fire ball was ready. Hao Ren stared blankly at the behemoth, which was over ten meters wide, spinning rapidly, and connected to Izhaks's hands by several rune chains: "Are you sure it's okay to smash that thing into it?"

"It's been precisely calculated," Izhaks said confidently, nodding. Then, he spun around twice and hurled the fire ball at the propulsion unit!

A huge light exploded on the out-of-control engine, its power... was indeed a little smaller than Hao Ren had imagined. It seemed that Izhaks's precise calculation was correct: the behemoth fire ball didn't blow an even bigger hole in the floating island.

Hao Ren stared nervously at the cloud of smoke after the explosion. Was the crisis... over?