Ultraman Legend of the Light Chaser

Ryo Nakai chuckled, "Still a student, huh? Your home is in Burkina Faso. You mean Nasiri, right? He's a very serious and funny guy. He's in charge of testing insulation materials. You might want to ask him for help if you encounter any problems in this area."

"Huh?" Kinoshita Kei craned his neck to look at the coating on the top of his finger. So that layer was heat-insulating paint? He asked, "Do we still need to handle the specific execution work like material testing?"

“The specific execution is handled by the relevant professionals, so we don’t need to get too involved. But we are the ones who proposed the design, so we need to understand their work. If you don’t want to make a fool of yourself,” Nakai Ryoya pulled out a palm-sized softcover notebook from his pocket, flipped through the previous records, and suddenly shouted, “The insulating rubber rings! Have you forgotten the three-day inspection?! Don’t be misled by the reliability of products on paper!”

"Ah...yes!" Three people in orange uniforms picked up their toolboxes and scurried up to the second floor.

Kinoshita Kei weighed the wrench in his hand, feeling like he had gone from a high-end researcher to a contractor's... lackey.

……

On the other side, in Kinoshita Kei's dormitory.

Aiba Yu appeared to be resting with his eyes closed. The lazy bum had transformed into a burly swordsman, flipping through Kinoshita Kei's textbook with one hand and opening a bag of spicy dried fish with the other, occasionally licking his fingers with relish.

Red oil would often drip down, only to be caught by an invisible force just before it touched the snow-white paper, and then "smack" onto the swordsman's clothes.

Aiba Yu opened one eye: "Don't get oil in his textbook."

"Hmm, I understand." The swordsman wiped his hands on his clothes, cleaning them carefully as if he were wiping his beloved sword, leaving oil stains that spread from the edge of his clothes to his chest.

Aiba Yu's expression changed, and she moved away from him.

Pito was holding the book "High Energy Astrophysics," which Aiba Yu found like a book from heaven. Aiba Yu couldn't help but ask, "Can you understand it?"

The swordsman looked up from his book, twitching his scarred face. In the comics, this face was truly manly, but in reality, it was enough to send chills down one's spine: "Do I need to understand this? I am a highly qualified, highly intelligent success planet."

"..."

Aiba Yu chose to continue "resting with his eyes closed".

When he was fighting Mezad, he summoned a portion of the armor he obtained from the Land of the End. He had previously thought that the armor was a one-time use item, and since he had given the Medal of the Light Chaser to Sakuma Jun for self-defense, he didn't need to rely on it anymore. However, when he felt his psychic power was about to give out, it came out on its own to solve his immediate problem.

Aiba Yu wanted to find the feeling of summoning it. He couldn't expect it to appear again and again when his brain was about to explode, so he was now using various gentle methods that wouldn't trigger the monitoring alarm to quickly deplete his mental energy.

For example, watching the red oil splatter as Pito ate his spicy dried fish, or trying to control every grain of dust in the air, just like he had churned up sand before. It's not enough to just clump up the dust; it has to be more refined—so Pito finished half a bag of snacks, let out a contented burp, and when he looked up, he found himself sitting opposite him.

Myself in a salted fish form.

There was only a frame, outlined by dust, staring at him with a pair of dead fish eyes filled with a limited amount of material.

The salted fish, lured by dust, was very enthusiastic. Seeing that it had finally emerged from the book, it swung its tail at his face with a nimble and powerful flick, exactly the same thing the salted fish had done to Aiba Yu before.

"Oh!"

The dusty salted fish shook itself away, while the muscular hero, with a dark face, had a head full of dust that looked like it was doing a bunny dance on his precious hair.

Chapter Thirty-One: A Foreseeable Tragic Tomorrow

"How dare you provoke me!" The burly swordsman suddenly stood up, knocking over his chair with a thud. He first licked the chili sauce left on his fingers, then pointed with his rolling pin-thick fingers: "The people I've slain could line up from Tokyo to Paris. Back in the day, Sasaki Kojiro could shatter a flying swallow with a single slash, and I, Pito, could slice your head open with one stroke. No problem!"

Aiba Yu stared at the red oil and salted fish saliva on the big man's fingertips, as well as the gray hair all over his head.

"You dare to provoke me with your little body? Huh? I think you're just like Gaia, that brat who doesn't know who his father is!" Pito pulled out a Japanese sword from somewhere, exactly the same as the one used by the protagonist in the "Swordsman" comic, with a mottled handguard, a hilt wrapped in coarse cloth, and a family crest meticulously carved on the end.

"The Swordsman" is, after all, a shonen manga, highly praised for its visceral, impactful combat and visually stunning scenes. The protagonist is a hot-tempered guy. It seems the power of a salted fish can finally no longer suppress the traits he copied; the salted fish no longer sheds tears in the face of trouble, and with the support of a muscular giant, he finally stands up.

Now!

"Young man, I advise you... ah!"

The dormitory suddenly transformed into a blinding white freezer. The valiant hero, brandishing a long sword, had barely taken two steps before being frozen into a statue in this very place.

“You’ll break his table and bed first.” Aiba Yu walked over and, taking advantage of Pito’s still-grip-knife grip, snapped his long sword into pieces in a few strokes and tossed it aside. The big man glared at him angrily.

Perhaps it's because he's been using it a lot lately, and his proficiency has improved. Aiba Yu looked at the space, which was now more spacious than before, with some surprise. He decided to continue training Kinoshita Kei here, as it would not only help him develop the pirated Meta Domain but also help him develop Uranus's power, killing two birds with one stone.

As for this salted fish...

"Are you calm now? If you want to fight, you can fight here."

The hero couldn't make a face because his face was frozen.

“Oh, right,” Aiba Yu suddenly remembered something. He raised his hand, and the ice and snow sealed by the leather fell away. The hero was freed and threw a punch with wind pressure, which was caught in his hand: “Did you copy the swordsman’s technique from the manga?”

"Hmph," Pito kicked him in the chest, and Aiba Yu let go. Pito, who was nearly two meters tall, nimbly flipped 360 degrees and landed: "The more familiar I am with something, the more characteristics I can recreate. Recently, in order to communicate with my dear Xiao Jing, I read all of his books! Not to mention his most beloved book, 'The Swordsman'!"

The burly man reached out and beckoned, and the shattered pieces of the sword seemed to come alive, reassembling themselves in mid-air before flying back into his palm with a "whoosh." Pito assumed a horse stance, bowed slightly, and as he sheathed the sword, he turned his body to the side, assuming a typical sword-drawing posture: "Straight Heart Shadow Flow, 'Mountain-Crushing' Kaname Ichiro, please enlighten me!"

Ignoring his boisterous antics, Aiba Yu asked, "Then you must be familiar with the monsters on Earth. Can you transform into their appearance?"

"Of course I know every child!" Pito inserted the knife into the snow casually. He seemed a little calmer than before: "But what kind of characteristics and how many characteristics I will show, I can't control myself. Hmm... If I become the Kiru you pushed back to sleep last time, maybe I will inherit his arousal and beat anyone he sees. What's even more terrifying is that if I inherit his hobby of drinking lava... maybe I will direct the volcano to erupt so that I can more easily obtain food."

"In that case, it's better to keep the image simple. Xiao Jing needs more sparring partners. He needs to practice with different opponents to gain combat experience. You can continue to familiarize yourself with the comics he has read and find some characters with safe characteristics to change stances."

Aiba Yu's words made Pito's eyes light up even more: "I've seen so many! Swords, spears, halberds, axes, hooks, the Six-Finger Qin Demon, fists and feet, a hundred-hit combo in mid-air without touching the ground, fancy spinning windmills, the Straight Heart Shadow Style 'Mountain Crush' Kanameichiro, the Realization Style 'Sky Breaker' Shinbei, the action is perfectly executed, the special effects are highly realistic! Anything that can be done on this earth... I can do it!"

"Ah, that's good."

At this moment, Kinoshita Kei, who has just transformed his identity into a foreman's assistant, still has no idea what he is about to face.

……

"Equipment inspection requires a lot of experience, and of course, even more so, patience and the right attitude."

Kinoshita Kei nodded repeatedly. He knew all of what Nakai Ryoya was saying. Even though he had never been involved in these jobs, he could still make them up. It was a skill he had developed for taking exams back then: talk about attitude before you speak, and talk about patience before you speak.

But what Nakai Ryo also wanted to tell him was far more than that: "In this world, especially after the prophecy about the 'Root Destruction Invitation Entity' appeared, there are too many things that current science can hardly explain. Those monsters that sleep underground, we never thought that such a thing would exist before—they appear in various forms in ancient human legends. This is the 'attitude' I'm talking about."

Ryoya Nakai flipped directly to the last page of the handbook in his hand, where Team Leader Fukui had requested an extra copy of a reminder:

"Always maintain a sense of awe for the unknown."

“Don’t take legends for granted. Maybe they’re traces left by monsters,” Nakai Ryoya said, leading him upstairs to the sky-surveillance cameras mounted above. “Similarly, there are a whole bunch of stories about ‘meteorite falls’ and ‘meteor showers.’ Maybe one day what falls won’t be a meteorite, but a cosmic monster… That’s why GUARD established the Sixth Squadron and split it into the Geological and Astronomical Research Group. We are the eyes of the Geo base, one monitoring the underground and the other monitoring the universe.”

Kinoshita Kei understood what he meant. In the world of Ultraman, aside from the "Taiping Fengtu Ji" (a historical text), the series frequently featured children seeing mysterious figures, finding adorable alien creatures, or even their pets being connected to monsters, or even being monsters themselves. As a child, after seeing Sira, he always fantasized that the sparrows that hopped around on the power lines in the early morning would transform into some kind of wondrous divine bird. Even without Nakai Ryo's reminder, Kinoshita Kei, the man who claimed to have a script, would never overlook anything that seemed to connect to monsters!

“Monitoring the universe,” Kinoshita Kei stared almost obsessively at the telescope’s lacquered casing, which could reflect images of people. His wife was so beautiful! Nakai Ryoya told him that there was another telescope like that in the Andes Mountains, and Kinoshita Kei couldn’t help but ask him, “When can we go see that one in the Andes?”

“We have dispatched specialists to maintain that one,” Nakai Ryo also chuckled. “Didn’t you notice your own serial number?”

"It's 005, but right now I only see me and Team Leader Fukui? The other two are outside tending to the telescope on the base."

"You can go see if you want, but don't go looking for something so far away. The team leader asked me to guide you, so I can't just watch you dawdle," the smiling Buddha suddenly turned into a devilish face: "You've only been looking with your eyes since just now, where are your notes?! Put them down!!! Is this how top students at Jonan University study?! You've completely disgraced Professor Fukui and Team Leader Fukui! Where are the parameters I told you about the thermal insulation material? Did you remember that the deployment angle of each solar panel is different? Do you want me to repeat the 'three prohibitions' when inspecting insulating rubber? Now, immediately, right now, from the very first sentence I told you this morning, write it down without missing a single one!"

Chapter Thirty-Two: Snowflakes Flutter, North Wind Howls

"Hey you...aren't you Earth?" Kinoshita Kei shook his nearly empty spicy dried fish, his heart aching beyond measure.

What is the greatest joy after a hard day's work?

Squeeze yourself into the sofa, open a bag of your favorite snacks, pour yourself a soft drink, forget about calories, forget about work and worries, watch anime or scroll through videos, just squat there and relax, using everything you love to soothe your tired soul.

"My spicy fish! You know this base supermarket doesn't sell it?! It's a genuine Sichuan-style seasoning from the motherland, specially mailed here!" Kinoshita Kei roared, grabbing a burly man several heads taller than himself. The man's clothes still had red oil on them, an undisguised mark of his crime!

"You, a supposedly dignified Earth consciousness, aren't those fish your children? Don't you feel any remorse eating your own children?! Where is your conscience?"

The hero wiped his mouth: "According to you, wouldn't I be in excruciating pain every time I breathe? So many microorganisms and bacteria! You're holding me right now, do you know how many precious little mites are dying underneath me?"

Kinoshita Kei got goosebumps all over, while Aiba Yu silently put down the "High Energy Astrophysics" book he couldn't understand and moved to a position further away from Pito.

"What are you doing? Discriminating against microorganisms and bacteria?" The muscular man chuckled and stepped forward, while Kinoshita Kei took a step back: "Do you know how hard they work to change the world? Many, many, many years before humans appeared, they were my, Mother Earth's, most important children!"

“No, buddy, something feels off about you saying ‘mother’ with this body,” Kinoshita Kei blurted out in desperation after being pushed against the wall, “I don’t want a male mother!”

"boom--!"

Pito punched the wall, and next door, just as Kinoshita thought he'd knocked over a cabinet and was about to be smashed to pieces, the muscular man grabbed him by the collar, lifted him up like a chick, and strode over to Aiba Yu: "Come on! The live Uranus! He looks great! How about we..."

"Huh? What are you doing?" Kinoshita Keishan, unaware of the impending storm, looked at Aiba Yu with sincere eyes like an innocent lamb: "No way, I just got off work and had dinner. I'm very tired. People's constitutions can't be generalized. I need to rest. I... Ugh!"

The snow chilled the world, and it chilled the hearts of young people as well.

The muscular hero was granted special permission, and the wind and snow no longer dared to approach him. He twirled his sword, the blade cleaving through the soft, swirling snow. He extended one foot forward and stepped back with the other, his footprints landing like mountains, steady and composed. The swordsman's smooth, mirror-like blade reflected the young man's astonished face.

"You, Salted Fish King, you..."

Pito's pose is exactly like the cover image of "The Swordsman," except that while the protagonist swordsman cuts through leaves, Pito cuts through snowflakes.

For a moment, Kinoshita Kei thought he had been transported into a game world. What was this guy posing with a sword in front of him, the final boss? The final boss shouted his line: "This sword will cleave through the chaos and restore peace!"

Then he held the knife horizontally, and what was visible to the naked eye, perhaps some kind of "knife aura," sent up a trail of snow. The tip of the knife pierced through the curtain of snow and pointed into the distance: "Come and fight!"

Kinoshita Kei felt a chill run down his spine. The reason he judged that it was "sword energy" was because he had seen it in a manga, and the color was exactly the same! It was the protagonist's irritable and eye-catching red!

"Mousar, Musar!" Aiba Yu had activated his domain and was about to stand aside and watch the show, while also testing Kinoshita Kei's physical abilities, when he suddenly heard Pito's mental dialogue. The other person called out to him: "Add some special effects! All I can do is rub hot air and brush red light. In manga, when the protagonist finishes swinging his sword, there's a ground-shattering effect, like the floor cracking open and red marks coming out. This domain is yours, so hurry up and create one for me!"

"..."

As the blade pointed forward, red cracks, like flames, extended from the corresponding spot on the ground, a shocking sight against the pale snow.

Startled and unaware of what was happening, Kinoshita Kei retreated repeatedly: "Holy crap, King of Salted Fish, Big Brother, Dad! No, no, no! I don't know how to use a knife! I don't have a knife! I've read the manga, and that's 'Mountain-Crushing' Kaname Ichiro, who can slice eight of me in one go! What kind of fight can I have with you? I'm an office worker! Can't we use a more cultured approach? Um, that, advanced mathematics, formulas, how great is that!"

The swordsman maintained his stance, but he relented: "Alright, let's compete in literature then."

"Great, great, we're all civilized people!"

The swordsman swiftly wrote on the snow with the tip of his knife: "Calculation of the initial parabolic orbit of comet 1995f (1995IV) using the Olber method. Observation location: Purple Mountain Observatory, Nanjing."

Below is the initial data. The observation time has been adjusted to eliminate axial aberration. You have 20 minutes to complete the task.

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Kinoshita Kei felt like he was cracking open.