Revisit Azur Lane

"These can only be known after measurement."

Hermione took the toolbox with both hands, placed it on the ground, and opened the lid, making a clattering sound. It turned out that the box contained a three-layer structure, and the various equipment that had been stacked had room to collide because the box was open.

"No matter how many times we look at it, the Commander seems to be more like a collection of cutting-edge technologies than we are."

Hu De was quite impressed by Zhou He's performance of retrieving objects from thin air, to which Zhou He simply smiled and said, "In that case, I am quite similar to you, except that I possess the 'naval port' ship equipment, which gives me a slightly wider range of capabilities than you."

After a brief pause, Zhou He suddenly remembered that the system had reminded him before that he could place the builder in the real world to build, so the other functions should be similar?

While possessing immense power might seem impressive, it's certainly not something a human could accomplish. If the system's capabilities could be mechanically manifested in reality and automated, or used in conjunction with his own ship girls, wouldn't he no longer need to explain himself so frequently?

'May I?'

Zhou He pondered for a moment before opening the system interface. After confirming that there was no question mark hidden in the corner, he focused his attention on the "Construct" function bar. In just over ten seconds, the system interface popped up two options: "Condense Construction Equipment into Reality" and "Construct Directly".

After selecting 'Build Directly' again, he began to examine the other function items and made an unexpected discovery: the 'Dock' and 'Warehouse' options could actually materialize in reality, but the 'Homestead', 'Research', 'Mission', and 'Attack' options did not respond.

"Dock, warehouse...wait, could this be the correct way to open it?"

Zhou He suddenly remembered his plan to build a dock. Wouldn't it be a complete port if he piled up cement roads to raise the base, added a dock, a shipyard, and a warehouse?

'No, no, no, is that really true?'

Because it was so smooth, Zhou He felt something was off, but upon closer reflection, even if something went wrong, he seemed to be able to take back the dock and warehouse.

Damn! He had never thought of this before because it was for convenience.

Luckily, he discovered it early. If he had waited until he had exchanged his Homeland Coins for real-world warehouses and docks before finding out, he would have lost a fortune.

"...What's wrong with the Commander?"

Cleveland walked in and saw Hermione doing repairs and Zhou He deep in thought with a changing expression. He asked Tosa quietly, and the latter shook his head slightly: "Who knows? He's probably thinking about something. He often spaces out when he's at home."

Time ticked by, and Zhou He finally came to the conclusion of 'trying it at home'. Hermione, thanks to the availability of tools and materials, was able to make simple repairs to the damaged circuits. Once all the disconnected circuits were connected, the copper wires wrapped in fluororubber were covered in a faint blue light.

At the same time, all the lights that had been turned off in the basement suddenly came on with a 'click-click-click' sound.

Chapter Fifty: The Testing Ground and the Chess Pieces

"Ah, it's lit up."

In the pitch-black passage, Zuikaku, who was trying to remain calm as he followed Z23 into the dark, was momentarily blinded by a sudden flash of light. After adjusting, he immediately became alert again. Reaching a fork in the road, he looked around and then turned to Z23 to discuss, "Since the power system has been repaired, let's go straight to the command center."

Z23 thought for a moment and nodded: "Okay."

Meanwhile, Zhou He, who had left the power room, discussed splitting up with the others and then led Yuudachi to explore separately.

The basement has many branching paths, and you can see a room every certain distance. When there is no power, they are all tightly closed. When there is a power supply, they will automatically open when they sense a humanoid creature. Yuudachi is lively and active, and he can't resist the sight of such a fun thing as an automatic door. Whenever he sees an iron door, he will go over and stand there waiting for it to open, having a great time.

"Ah! Commander, look, this looks like a bedroom."

Of course, opening the door to observe is part of the exploration. Hearing Yuudachi's greeting, Zhou He stepped closer, and just one glance made his eyes twitch: there was nothing in this room except for the iron bed, and it was more like a detention cell than a bedroom.

After confirming that there was no water production equipment inside, Zhou He continued to explore without stopping. Occasionally, he would glance at the rooms with glass windows. Most of these rooms were furnished with long tables and other furniture, as well as various closets integrated into the walls, giving them a futuristic and technological aesthetic, a pure post-apocalyptic base style.

"If war continues indefinitely in the future, this design style is not without reason."

Although the concept was unclear, Zhou He remembered that a large black fox monster appeared in the Shinano event. At that time, it was a hot topic of discussion in the game group. That monster seemed to be a common enemy of the ship girls and the sirens. If the sirens were also fighting against that kind of thing later, it would be quite reasonable to make such a mass-production base that could be discarded at any time.

Ok?

Zhou He seemed to have figured out why the base was destroyed, but if a monster of that magnitude really made a move, there would probably be nothing left here—there was only one possibility: this place was bombarded by passing humans or ship girl fleets, and then the Sirens guards fled at the speed of light.

It's so annoying to be completely clueless about the outside world.

Zhou He disliked these baseless guesses without any information, and even found them annoying, because the storylines in the game Azur Lane were designed to make you guess.

Now that he's transmigrated into the real-world ship girl world, he still has to guess, because the similarity in this respect is practically 100%.

While he was staring blankly, Yuudachi ran to the corner at the very front of the passage and peered out. She then turned around and waved excitedly at Zhou He: "Commander, there's a really big door here!"

"Oh?"

Zhou He collected his thoughts and strode over. Turning the corner, he saw a huge iron gate, at least four meters wide, slowly opening. Through the crack in the gate, he could see a huge screen inside, as well as computers and other electronic devices below it.

"We're really lucky."

Raising his hand to high-five Yuudachi's equally dark little hand, Zhou He smiled as he walked through the door, looking at the huge equipment room, which was fan-shaped and covered at least two hundred square meters. The machines inside seemed to have restarted due to the reconnection of the power supply. Various screens on the equipment were flashing images and lights of unknown meaning, while the huge screen on the wall was divided into dozens of small blocks, observing a dark-toned sea area.

"Sure enough, this place is monitoring what's happening inside the Mirror Sea."

Zhou He stared wide-eyed at the monitoring blocks. He was all too familiar with this scene; it was a common background image in the game. He tried to find more information from it and did find it. Five split screens were showing the battle between the fleets. Although the camera was far away, he could still see sirens in the form of warships on both sides of the battle, as well as relatively small figures that resembled humanoid forms.

"Is it about generating ship girl chess pieces and having them lead the Siren fleet to fight each other? What's the point?"

Zhou He found the animal fights somewhat interesting, but the appearance of humanoid creatures was a completely different experience. He frowned and relayed the location of the control room to Hermione and the others. At the same time, he walked to a computer that was constantly flashing text. After only three seconds, he gave up and turned to Yuudachi, beckoning: "Yuudachi, can you understand Hawk Language? I'm not very familiar with it."

"Let me see... wait, why are the Sirens using eagle script?"

Yuudachi, touching and fiddling with things, came to Zhou He's side, stood on tiptoe, and looked at the text symbols displayed on the computer screen, feeling quite peculiar.

'Because the Sirens originated in the White Eagle.'

Zhou He knew this, but he wouldn't say it. In the eyes of his ship girls, the Sirens were pure enemies, and he didn't want his ship girls to doubt his existence because of some 'enemy and friend from the same source' theory.

"Probably because it works better; the White Eagle is very advanced in this area, isn't it?"

Yuudachi made up a reason, and he actually believed it. He squinted and carefully read the text and conveyed it to Zhou He: This machine is reporting an error because the information it received from the internal system of the Mirror Sea Area is incorrect compared to the planned experimental progress in the project database. Moreover, because there is no administrator to correct it, the error will increase as time goes on.

The system is requesting a restart of the experiment because both the opposing black and white pieces have shown a large number of 'awakening' reactions, and continuing the experiment would lead to uncontrollable events in the war.

"Commander, what does this mean?"

Yuudachi turned her head to seek help from Zhou He, whose brows were furrowed. She had her own translator and could understand the eagle script, but she couldn't understand these things when they were put together.

"It's hard to say. It probably means that the ship girl pieces in there have become too strong and uncontrollable."

Zhou He was actually even more confused, because he could only listen to Xi Li's translation, but by piecing together the general knowledge he had about the game, he could get a rough idea of ​​what was going on:

This is a Sirens testing ground where an unknown experiment is being conducted using replica ship girl pieces. However, this place was attacked and abandoned (forgotten?) by the Sirens half a year ago. The experiment continues, but because no one is following the system's feedback to repair the experimental progress, the ship girl pieces inside have begun to awaken.

"What is the awakening reaction? It shouldn't be meta-ification. If meta ships could be mass-produced so easily, there wouldn't be so few of them in the game."

He asked Yuudachi to use the computer to look up what awakening reaction was, but Yuudachi didn't know how to use a computer, so the two of them, one big and one small, could only stare at each other helplessly.

However, the stalemate was quickly broken. Footsteps came from outside the door, and the others joined them in the room. As soon as they entered, Zuikaku exclaimed, "This is truly magnificent. This must be the most useful place in this base."

"Commander, what's the situation here?"

Hu De looked around, then stepped closer to ask Zhou He about the situation. The latter shrugged and pointed to the computer behind him: "The information is all in here. Who among you knows how to operate it?"

He knows how to use a computer, but if you ask him to work on a computer that's entirely in English, he might as well just give up and go to sleep.

"..."

Upon hearing this, Hu De smoothly stopped in her tracks, looked up at the screen on the wall, and her gaze quickly locked onto several areas where battle was taking place. The figures in the screen made her eyes flicker: "Where is this being monitored?"

"There really are ship girls other than us. I have mixed feelings."

Others also noticed the battle scenes. Zuikaku said this, but her eyes were shining. She was very interested in fighting the Sirens or sparring with other ship girls.

As for Zhou He's speech, only Hermione and Cleveland came over in the end. After discussing it, the two decided that Cleveland would take over the investigation. Following the text instructions, they brought up the search terms and entered the information about the awakening reaction that Zhou He wanted to know.

"Awakening reaction refers to the gradual convergence of the experimental chess piece (mold)'s memories, emotions, thoughts, and actions with the ship girl's original consciousness, resulting in a high degree of synchronization, and ultimately it can become an individual completely identical to the original body."

Cleveland read out the results, a look of horror flashing in his eyes. After searching for the keywords, he suddenly took several steps back and looked at the ship girls fighting the Sirens in the surveillance footage: "These people are different from us. They are experimental individuals created by the Sirens using us as a template."

"!!?"

Her words stunned everyone present. It was unheard of for a Siren to be able to do such a thing. Several people immediately turned their attention to Zhou He.

“I know this is shocking, but as far as I know, this is just the most basic technical capability of the Sirens. Cleveland, search for information about the location of the test site and its entrances and exits in the Mirror Sea.”

Zhou He remained calm, because he already knew about these things, and it was difficult for him to pretend to be shocked, so he simply got straight to the point.

"Mirror-like sea?"

Cleveland obediently stepped forward to inquire, but found no relevant information. However, the search for the test site quickly yielded a response, and the location displayed by the system surprised her greatly. She looked at the others and said, "This test site is less than five nautical miles west of this island. You can enter it directly from this base. Previously, this island suffered an unknown attack that caused a malfunction, which led to some of the Sirens fleet escaping. It has now been repaired on its own."

"Is that right?"

Zhou He was also surprised. Could it be that the only aircraft carrier fleet he had fought had actually escaped from the Mirror Sea?

No wonder a group of them were wandering around in this area. The instructions they received were most likely to follow the orders of the 'chess pieces' and fight each other. Once they left the testing ground, they could not receive the orders, so they stayed put, which gave him the opportunity to fight against the many with the few.

As things gradually became clear, Hu De glanced at Zhou He and asked, "Commander mentioned earlier that the anomaly discovered in Kursk was this testing ground, right?"

"Ah."

Zhou He nodded, his gaze sweeping over the others: "Actually, I noticed the anomaly here when you were fighting that Siren carrier. However, Bismarck happened to be in that area at the time and nothing unusual happened, so I didn't tell you. I came here this time to find out more about this issue."

"Bismarck? I see."

Hood's slightly furrowed brows relaxed. She looked at Bismarck and noticed that she was still staring at the screen on the wall. Following her gaze, her pupils narrowed slightly: "Commander, could you adjust the position of the monitor?"

"Can it be done?"

Zhou He turned to ask Cleveland, who nodded and performed a search. Dozens of screens on the entire wall switched perspectives at the same moment, displaying the various areas where the battle was taking place.

The appearances of those 'chess pieces' were also revealed to everyone. Zhou He looked up and saw that they were all familiar faces.

"Although I can't tell who's who, these are all Royal Navy and Ironblood ship girls, right?"

Zuikaku narrowed her eyes. She wasn't just guessing. Royal Navy ship girls are judged by their clothes, while Ironblood ship girls are judged by their ship outfits. One has gorgeous clothes, while the other has ship outfits that look like pets.

"It's really bad fun."

Tosa clicked her tongue. Although Bismarck was cautious and taciturn, she had roughly learned about the two from their occasional conversations. The conflict between the Royal Navy and the Iron Blood factions, combined with the keywords 'experiment' and 'conflict,' allowed her to guess what the Sirens were really up to.

"Commander, is she Tirpitz?"

Suddenly, Bismarck spoke up. She looked at the silver-haired woman on the screen who appeared calmly facing the war and was holding a flag similar to hers. Although they had never met, she could feel that this ship girl's existence had a special meaning to her.

"Yes."

Zhou He glanced at her and said, "She is Tirpitz."

"commander."

Z23, standing next to Bismarck, was the first to raise her hand and ask, "Cleveland just said that these people who experience awakening reactions will eventually become completely identical to their original forms. So, should they be considered Sirens, or ship girls like us?"

"Yes, this issue is worth discussing in depth, but the terms 'Siren' or 'ship girl' are actually irrelevant."

Zhou He nodded to her and simply stated his opinion: "We only need to distinguish between the two concepts of 'enemy' and 'friendly forces.' If we encounter other fleets at sea and they launch an attack without hesitation, then even if they have the appearance and ideology of ship girls, they are still our enemies."