Chapter 1郝仁摸不着头脑

Hao Ren and his team had only been on this planet, Lahrhein, for a few days. Moreover, due to being locked within the atmosphere, Nolan's planetary-level observation equipment was useless. Therefore, they couldn't claim to know much about this world. The musty old texts were filled with inaccurate embellishments and ambiguous annotations. The intelligence Nolan collected with probes also provided few valuable clues. Thus, facing a suddenly erupting "natural disaster," Hao Ren was completely baffled.

But he was one hundred and one percent certain that Lahrhein was facing a massive crisis.

It could have erupted sooner or later, but it waited until he led the investigation team in, the timing so precise it was as if it had been timed with a stopwatch.

This fact immediately made him think of his jinxed constitution—given that this constitution had been ordained by the reality-warping female lunatic, Raven 12345, he had to take it seriously, no matter how absurd it sounded.

But in the next moment, he began to seriously consider the reason behind these "punctual" disasters.

Being "jinxed" was certainly a good explanation, but it didn't provide any reference value. Hao Ren firmly believed that the development of anything had its internal laws, even Raven 12345's reality-warping was based on a complex mathematical model and her old woman's work permit. Therefore, the sixteen great fissures opening up on the Lahrhein continent must, and had to, be for a reason. And since they chose to erupt at such a special time—when he led the investigation team in, and just when he used Bug the Little Weakling to peek into the truth inside the Great Pit—it was necessary to associate these two things together.

As a qualified investigator, one must not give up any clue, even if it only had a sliver of possibility.

Could this matter... be related to the Great Pit?

Although the fissures appearing on the surface did not directly lead to the Great Pit, and he had personally confirmed in the underground palace that the Great Pit itself had not moved during the eruption, the timing of the two events was too coincidental for Hao Ren to not consider this. Could it be that the things Little Weakling observed with the probe caused these changes on the surface? Or...

Did the act of "observation" itself stimulate some mechanism deep within this world...

These questions flashed rapidly through Hao Ren's mind, but he didn't have the energy to delve into each one right now, because a more pressing situation was before him: those "flame people" who had emerged from the surface fissures were now swarming towards the human (and non-human) settlements like ants attracted to candy.

He had to think of something to do.

"Nolan, can you destroy those monsters?"

"Yes," the ship spirit immediately replied, "but it would destroy this plain as well—Boss, this ship is trapped within the atmosphere. For an interstellar warship, flying at any altitude within this range is like skimming the ground. This ship's weapon systems are for space combat. Firing at the ground at this distance is tantamount to regional extermination, even at the lowest power."

Hao Ren actually knew this himself. Nolan was an interstellar warship—although the Xi Ling race classified her as a "civilian-grade frigate," everyone knew what level of thing a god race's civilian frigate was in the mortal world. The design concept of such a government ship's firepower system was to allow inspectors to eliminate any opponents who could threaten them while performing tasks in various worlds. And things that could threaten an inspector were not common in the universe.

They usually needed hundreds of meters of advanced armor and shields of equal strength to be worth a shot from Nolan.

And a weapon that could handle such a scene, facing an undefended plain, and firing at point-blank range... Anyway, when Hao Ren was in Holletta, he had put the ship in high orbit and irradiated the planet's surface with a secondary gun at the lowest power, and that had melted the entire Beinz Diocese.

"Deploy the autonomous mechs and armed drones in the ship's hangar to help the locals defend against those monsters," Hao Ren said, settling for the next best option, "do your best."

"What about the covert operation protocol?"

"Maintain the ship's covert operations," Hao Ren quickly replied, "there's nothing we can do about those combat machines. But since monsters covered in flames are already emerging from the ground, it doesn't make much difference if a group of UFOs on our side falls from the sky. When you have too many lice, you don't feel itchy, and when you have too much debt, you don't worry. Let the world's experts, scholars, and media platforms figure it out themselves."

"Nolan understands. Also, do you need a beacon broadcast?"

Hearing Nolan mention this last thing, Hao Ren had to seriously consider it.

A "large-scale" battle had indeed occurred. The armed conflict that erupted on the planetary level exceeded the combat power of the action team he led. According to the previous plan, it was certainly time for a beacon broadcast. However, the problem was that Lahrhein was completely different from the dark domain he had expected.

He envisioned the dark domain as a fragmented universe, filled with a large number of celestial fragments. Even if he and his group landed on a larger celestial body, they could still run to the empty space of the universe and deploy a teleport gate. Therefore, the drone legion and the guardian legion, the two waves of reinforcements he originally arranged, were both prepared to execute interstellar warfare standards.

At the time, no one thought that the awesome investigation team would be trapped in the planet's atmosphere...

A signal flare to summon reinforcements—that was true, but where would you put those reinforcements? Hao Ren estimated the thickness of Lahrhein's atmosphere. If they were neatly packed, they might be able to fit in Salamander's guardian legion. If they snapped off the giant ships' antenna systems and those sail-like energy diverters, they might even be able to leave a little aisle. But Salamander would probably be unhappy. As for the drone legion... it was really too crowded, even with a reinforced company of storage experts.

Although he could pin his hopes on the idea that "the teleported-in fleet would be 'squeezed' outside the atmospheric blockade by some unknown protection mechanism, becoming lucky ones who jumped out of the map," Hao Ren didn't intend to gamble on his luck. Frankly, since he knew his goddess's nature, he no longer believed that he would have good luck...

But with reinforcements standing by outside, and he was watching a planet open a cataclysmic dungeon, it was not a pleasant thing. Hao Ren's mind turned, and he asked Nolan, "I remember that a reserved information margin was set in the beacon broadcast system to deal with complex and unexpected emergencies. It should be useful at this time."

This was just an act of caution at the time, but now it seemed that this caution was really necessary.

"There is such a setting, but the information we can transmit is very, very little," Nolan replied, "Due to the particularity of the dark domain, beacon broadcasting is a very precise process, and there is almost no extra bandwidth available for messages. This ship believes that the few bytes we squeezed out are not enough to explain the bizarre situation in this bizarre world..."

"Salamander is a soldier, drones are weapons, and obeying orders is the duty of both, so we don't need to explain it clearly," Hao Ren said, "The message is just a few words: Fleet standby, send ground troops."

"Nolan understands."

With the beacon broadcast arranged, Hao Ren felt half at ease. Next was to return to White Maple Leaf City as soon as possible. Although he and the others couldn't transform into thousands, they could help a city defend against monsters.

Everyone had ridden horses to get here, and they had ridden for two full days and nights, but there was no such urgent situation at that time. In the current situation, they naturally couldn't continue to choose this slow-moving method.

The first thing Hao Ren thought of was the data terminal's space teleport function.

He believed that in this critical situation, Leah wouldn't care too much about why a group of "fallen adventurers" would have valuable group space transfer props.

However, the data terminal reported explosive news: "Partner, unable to activate teleport."

"What?" Hao Ren was shocked to hear this. "Your space teleport is also locked?!"

The first thing he thought of was the same "lockdown" phenomenon as Nolan's inability to leave the atmosphere.

The data terminal replied in the mental connection: "It does seem to be locked. Although this unit has successfully obtained the coordinates, it found that these coordinates could not be brought into real space when activating the teleport module. This lockdown probably existed from the beginning—but we haven't performed space teleportation until today, so we haven't noticed this."

The data terminal's small-scale space teleportation was restricted, and the first thing Hao Ren thought of was Nolan's warp engine—could that engine actually not be used either? When Nolan did the test before, she only started half of the warp engine. Maybe the same interference would also act on the Behemoth Rock Turtle!

Unable to leave the atmosphere, and unable to activate hyperspace teleportation, this was really an increasingly bad situation.

However, the bad situation seemed far from enough.

Just when Hao Ren thought the situation was bad enough, Nolan reported a completely out-of-plan event: "Boss, no response from the beacon broadcast."

"What?!"

"The reason is unknown, but no response signal was received after the beacon broadcast, and no signs of space channel establishment were observed. Preliminary estimate is that the signal failed to penetrate the dark domain."

At this moment, Hao Ren almost had the urge to curse: "I swear... I should have checked the almanac before going out. It's not a good time to travel these days!"

But after enough bad news, there was always some good news. After a moment, Nolan sent the latest battle report she had observed: "Boss, the monsters that emerged from the fissures have begun to attack human cities, but the locals are reacting quickly. They have activated the cities' protective barriers, and the local garrison has begun to organize defense."

At this time, Hao Ren had accepted the fact that the beacon had failed, and began to think about the possible reasons and solutions. After hearing Nolan's new report, he frowned slightly, and while moving towards the edge of the Black Forest with the team, he asked in the mental connection: "How do you judge the combat power of both sides?"

"I don't think you need to worry for the time being," Nolan's voice also seemed relieved, "Although the disaster happened very suddenly, the residents of this world don't seem to be strangers to combat, and the monsters that emerged from the fissures are not invulnerable—the defense organized by the locals is very effective. It seems that they won't be finished without our help. Of course, the premise is that those fissures don't continue to do anything weird."

Hearing Nolan's new information, Hao Ren couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief.

Although it happened suddenly, since the Lahrhein people had the ability to hold on, he didn't need to be so nervous.

But they still had to rush back as soon as possible. They couldn't do anything staying in this burning Black Forest.

At this time, the group had reached the edge of the forest. Nangong Sanba quickly found the place where he had tied the horses based on his perception of the runes, but those poor animals had already died on the ground.

A small fissure happened to appear in this place. The flames and smoke gushing from the fissure easily killed the ordinary horses, and on the nearby trees, most of the runes left by Nangong Sanba had been extinguished.

These runes were only used to resist beasts and weak magical beasts. The cracking of the earth obviously exceeded their scope of action.

Looking at the fissure that was still spewing fire and smoke, Leah subconsciously clenched the staff in her hand: "What... is going on?"

"No matter what's going on, I think we have to solve the immediate problem first." Hao Ren said with a frown, and in his field of vision, some flaming humanoid creatures were gathering one after another.