Ultraman Legend of the Light Chaser

Chapter Thirteen: The So-Called Bet

“You’ve been writing and writing ever since you finished work…” Pito’s new form has shed the ball-jointed doll that keeps losing parts, and he can finally talk to Kinoshita Kei through the whiteboard: “Don’t have to get up early tomorrow?”

"Class is in the afternoon," Kinoshita Kei uploaded the photos and checked the spreadsheet one last time: "Okay, it'll be finished soon!"

Pito erased what he had written earlier and added his own question: "Application form?"

"That's right. As for my application to join GUARD, I'm not a rare Alchemy Star member, and I don't expect a real top-tier elite team to want me, so I applied for a support position."

“You’ve only just started school; if you go to the GUARD, you won’t be able to continue your studies.”

"Professor Fukui has already agreed. Given his personality, if this were the first time he had heard about GUARD, he would definitely have talked about it in class. But he didn't mention it at all in the last class, so I guessed he already knew. Given his status in the industry, he must have been involved in the development of GUARD. So I asked him for the way to join them—this volunteer form."

Kinoshita sent the email, stretched, and said, "I might not even get in, but I want to try anyway. If I can get in... I want to see what they've developed. I even took out a high-interest loan for this!"

At this point, Kinoshita Kei's eyebrows and eyes drooped.

“You want to go to GUARD? That’s ambitious,” Professor Fukui said, his glasses reflecting an eerie light. “I do have some connections. You’re quite smart, and you’re the first student to come to me about this. That’s quite bold.”

A glimmer of hope immediately appeared in the young man's eyes.

“There are many talented people in there. Although you have just been admitted to my school, you are still my student. You used my connections to get in, so you will be registered under my name.”

"Yes! Be competitive and don't embarrass me! I understand!" Kinoshita Kei nodded repeatedly to show his obedience.

Professor Fukui opened a document on the computer, and the printer spit out several sheets of paper: "Here you go."

Kinoshita Kei accepted the list with both hands as a sign of respect, but when he saw what was written on it, he felt as if he had been struck on the head: "These, these lists are..."

“If you go to GUARD, you can’t attend classes on time, which starts the self-study program,” Professor Fukui said matter-of-factly. “This is the reading list we require for students taking self-study courses. In addition to the textbook content, I have added a list of books that I will refer to when lecturing. If you read them, it will not count as a missed class.”

The paper was light, but the densely packed list on it weighed a ton.

"You want to watch all of them?" Kinoshita Kei asked hesitantly.

"Kinoshita Kei, I've remembered your name," Professor Fukui said with a smile from behind the desk.

No, I don't want you to remember me. Kinoshita Kei continued, "What if my application fails and the GUARD doesn't accept me? This...this list of references..."

"You must strive for excellence," the professor said, adjusting his glasses. "What harm is there in reading more books? Reading is always beneficial. I will carefully review your reading notes. It's okay if you miss the exam; we have special treatment for outstanding students to make up for it."

"..."

As Kinoshita Kei signed the registration form, he felt like a poor man from the old society, with the landlord standing behind him, grinning sinisterly. He clearly didn't want to sell his surplus grain at a low price, but the landlord, through a combination of pressure and coercion, forced him to sell it at a blood-curdling price. Or perhaps he was signing a loan shark's agreement, borrowing for GUARD membership application qualifications, and repaying with a mountain of study notes and supreme make-up exam answers.

The key issue is that he gave this loan to risky projects, which could potentially be a complete loss.

Kinoshita Kei couldn't help but feel a pang of sadness: "Pito, boss, I have a question for you."

Pito quickly wrote on the whiteboard: "Please".

Do you enjoy reading? Do you like writing? Neat and tidy handwriting! Would you like to write reading notes?

“No, I hate writing,” Pito said expressionlessly. “These are the hands that hold the knife, meant to cut down the chaos and restore peace!”

“No,” Kinoshita Kei covered his face, “I’m glad the protagonist of ‘The Swordsman’ came back to life, but don’t use his lines at this time…”

A muscular, scarred hero dressed as a ronin huddled on a small mat, like a bear perched on a circus ball. He held a whiteboard and scribbled on it with his rolling pin-like fingers: "My son, is there anything you're unhappy about?"

"No, no, I wouldn't dare, I wouldn't dare." Kinoshita Kei glanced at the other person's pectoral muscles that could crush him. "The Swordsman" is a manga with a lot of sentimentality, and the art style is still stuck in the era of "Dragon Ball" that he was obsessed with when he was a child. The protagonist is very good at fighting, visibly so. This is actually okay in the manga, but once you step into reality—what is a demon muscle man?

He used to laugh at Pito for writing so much that he broke his fingers, but now he's worried that his little whiteboard won't withstand a gentle squeeze from Pito.

"Um... Brother Shadow, no, where's Master Aiba?" Kinoshita Kei changed the subject, afraid that if he replied to the wrong thing, this muscle man would get upset and kick him into the wall like a salted fish flicking its tail.

“He’s gone to contact another ‘light’,” Pito said, squeaking his marker. “No need to worry, with my approval, he will surely return victorious.”

……

"I almost thought I wouldn't be able to go back."

Aiba Yu hid himself in the seawater, still shaken.

Before leaving, he made a bet with Xianyu. He said that Xianyu's new form would probably not achieve the expected result of "opening his heart to Xiaojing". Xianyu said that when he went to find Gaia's human form, he would be amazed by his talent. All he needed to do was train him in some skills to deal with strange monsters.

Aiba Yu was "amazed" by the configuration of the Ariel base.

Flying from the ground to the high altitude where the base is located naturally requires more energy. When Aiba Yu reached the same height as the base and was just about to sneak in, he heard the alarming sound from the base.

[Abnormal heat dissipation detected.]

[Spectral capture, 99.87% overlap with the second spectral system at coordinates (335, K1).]

[Target has entered the warning area; proceed with deportation.]

You may have heard the saying "using a cannon to kill a mosquito," or "Why should I study the accuracy of a bullet impact point that is only 1 or 2 meters away from 1000 meters? Why not just increase the kill radius?" As Aiba Yu emerged from the clouds, he was greeted by a massive artillery barrage from a base that embodied the most advanced technology in humankind.

Their guidance is fantastic, and the laser heat is excellent. I'll definitely come back next time.

Aiba Yu retreated from a distance of 100 meters from the base to more than 10 miles away. Even then, the persistent little gadgets still chased after him. He simply retreated into the sea, where the missiles that followed him around the bend created white splashes of water and fish that passed by.

"Is this really something that can be developed in just one or two days?" Atsuko Sasaki was incredulous at the effectiveness of the so-called "abnormal heat warning system," and she began to look at the childlike scientific analyst, Gamu Takayama, in a new light.

"I asked some classmates in the quantum physics research lab for help," Gao Shan said. He never expected that the system, still in its experimental phase, could actually detect the abnormal heat source and successfully guide the base's defense system to automatically counterattack, as if they had driven away a big guy.

"This heat source appeared at (335, K1) on the ground that day. I also found related images through the identification program. I will organize them after the complete search is finished. It escaped this time, but it may reappear next time. The results of a large-scale comparison will be the key to subsequent tracking."

Having witnessed the base's automatic counterattack and heard that the task he had assigned to Takayama Gamu had been completed smoothly, Akio Ishimuro was pleased with the correctness of his decision to allow Takayama Gamu to join XIG. However, he also felt that he shouldn't praise him too much, lest Takayama, with his still immature personality, do something rash. So, the praise that was on the tip of his tongue turned into a simple affirmation:

"Well done, my dream."

Chapter Fourteen: The Fake Meta Realm

After Aiba Yu returned, he and the equally dejected Sanyu remained silent for a while.

Kinoshita Kei anxiously awaited news of whether the application was successful or not. Seeing one of them silent, staring at the sky with a serious expression, and the other looking dejected, even the muscular man managed to contort himself into a pitiful expression, he couldn't help but ask:

"What's wrong? Did you get a setback? Tell us what's bothering you so we can all have a laugh."

"Snap—" The muscular man broke the whiteboard in half.

Shadow turned his face and stared at him with a calm expression, looking up from his mouth to his eyes, and finally down to his skull.

Kinoshita Kei sensed a hint of danger. He was always flexible and adaptable: "It's okay if you don't tell me, big brother! If you get hit by a pillar, we'll kick the pillar; if you get hit by a lamppost, I'll kick the lamppost!"

“Gaia has already defeated a monster once, but you, Uranus,” Aiba Yuu said, still staring at his skull, “have not yet awakened.”

Kinoshita Kei clutched the top of his head with both hands: "You could flip my skull off and I still wouldn't be able to sense... no, I mean, you guys are planning to... physical awakening?"

The other person had already moved closer, and Kinoshita Kei felt a chill run down his spine.

Aiba Yu suddenly looked away and glanced at Pito behind him: "Your new pose is completely ineffective."

"I...I... Waaaaah." The muscular man threw the whiteboard aside in a fit of pique, curled himself up even tighter, hugged his knees, buried himself in them, and precious tears streamed down his face like a river.

"that

"Just do it my way." When Kinoshita Kei heard Shadow say that, Shadow's dark eyes turned back, and he felt his skull begin to freeze.

“First, energy.” Kinoshita Kei’s dark eyes were covered in silver, and he saw endless snow and wind surging out from the silver light. In the blink of an eye, the small room had changed.

The reason he could still confirm it was a room was because he saw the walls of fog standing all around him. Kinoshita Kei looked down and realized that he was sitting on a piece of ice. He didn't know if the ground below was thick frozen soil or water that hadn't completely frozen.

The table was brought in, and the computer was already displaying a disconnection notification because it had no internet connection. The books that Professor Fukui highly recommended were stacked to the side.

Pito was clearly taken aback: "An alternate dimension?"

Aiba Yu was silent for a moment: "...Meta Domain, you could say that."

That day, he asked Noah how to enter Meta Realm from the outside. Noah told him to find the feeling of entering the Dark Realm and that he could find the key by reversing the synchronization frequency. He made it sound as easy as drinking water.

“The Meta Realm is just an application of spatial power,” the big shot said. “It’s not difficult. You can master it. Just remember one thing: its unfolding is closely related to your body. You could say it’s a part of you.”

The expert said it wasn't difficult, and Aiba Yu believed him.

After pondering for a long time and personally experiencing a wave of spatial turbulence, he figured out something a few meters square, which is too much to call a domain, and barely qualifies as a space.

Let alone fighting inside, even getting a single monster tooth stuck in there would be a disaster.

But now it's in use. The density of light particles inside the field is several times higher than outside, making it a good place for Kinoshita Kei to sense Uranus.

Kinoshita Kei's pupils trembled: Meta Realm? Is it the Meta Realm I know that's cheap and useful but always gets reversed into a debuff later on?

I vaguely remember it being filled with sand and soil, black and red, and a hazy aurora like a filter. What is this thing that looks like wind, snow, and fog?

A strange gust of wind blew in from the corner. Who knows where this thing, only a few meters square, got its wind from? It made Kinoshita Kei shiver.

"It's so cold," Kinoshita Kei rubbed his goosebumps. "Why did you bring me here?"

“I will slowly activate the light within you with my energy. As for the cold…” Aiba Yu said matter-of-factly, “You won’t feel cold once you awaken.”

"Big brother? Bro? Boss? Are you saying 'I'm going to freeze to death,' 'You won't freeze to death if you awaken,' 'But I haven't awakened,' 'Then go awaken,' 'But I'm going to freeze to death,' like that?" Kinoshita Kei's breath instantly turned into white frost. He began to feel like he wasn't rubbing his arms, but rather a piece of ham covered in a hard shell.

The muscular man behind him emitted an even louder "whoosh" sound.

"Are you cold too, my good brother?" Kinoshita Kei thought to himself that Pito, who had always been unrestrained and always fighting all over the world with his deep V-neck exposed, was now suddenly in the freezing cold. He was probably as frozen as a dog as he was.

The hero still buried himself in his knees, but he didn't look like he was crying; he was... struggling.

A sliver of icicle hung from his leg. As he struggled, he tugged at the fabric around his knees, as if his face and the cloth were stuck together.

"Waaaaaah!" (Frozen! Frozen!)

Pito instinctively wanted to change his form to escape, and the most nimble and thoughtless form he took was a salted fish.

Smooth and slippery, covered in salty water, it's the kind of salty fish that could make a Baotu Spring cry.

The muscular hero's body visibly shrank. He was briefly freed, and then there was a "crackling" sound. The salted fish had just raised its proud head when it froze into an ice sculpture.