Ultraman Legend of the Light Chaser

Yorinamura and his subordinates went to the location where Hitomi Onodera was being held to check on her condition.

"Can we conduct an interrogation?" Lai Numa walked quickly, and his subordinates almost jogged to keep up.

“No, her mental state assessment is very poor,” the subordinate replied. “Her symptoms are the same as those of citizens exhibiting sleepwalking symptoms; she talks nonsense and mistakes dreams for reality.”

"She herself developed sleepwalking disorder?"

"Yes, you'll understand when you see it."

The observation room was cramped, containing only a soft couch for resting and a small table for placing items. To prevent any extreme behavior from the people inside, all sharp edges, such as the table corners, were rounded off and covered with a soft shell.

When Lai Nu arrived, she was sitting on the soft couch. Seeing people outside the glass partition, she waved and said, "Are you here to pick me up? How is the old speaker's health? Did we win?"

A barrage of questions left everyone completely bewildered. A subordinate whispered, "See? That's how it is. Everyone who comes thinks they're here to pick her up. If they answer 'yes,' she launches into a series of 'yes' questions. If they answer 'no,' she starts repeating things like, 'How could it not be? I've completed my mission!'"

As someone who had been immersed in intelligence work for many years, Rainuma pondered for a moment and then chose to follow up on what Onodera Hitomi had said: "Yes, we've come to pick you up. The old chairman is still in good health. We neither won nor lost."

The person inside suddenly perked up. She got off the soft couch and ran to the glass partition: "Neither won nor lost? Good, we finally made it through!"

"You're down! How did you do that? Whose forces did you coordinate with? How are things on the front lines?"

"The opponent is very strong, it was really not easy." Lai Nu avoided her question and only sighed at the difficulty of the process.

Hitomi Onodera gripped the glass with both hands, practically shoving her face in front of it: "Of course, you should know that so many aliens are eyeing us covetously, and the radicals always get more support than us."

Lai Zhao gave his subordinate a wink, and the latter quickly took out a recording device to write down the conversation. At the same time, fearing that the electronic device might malfunction, he also took out paper and pen to record it by hand.

“Aliens never come to Earth with good intentions,” Lai Nuo said, his eyes fixed on the suspicious figure’s reaction in the observation room the entire time: “What do you think they’re after?”

Hitomi Onodera didn't follow his line of thought. Logically, she should have shared his hatred and angrily cursed the aliens for doing bad things, hoping they would glean some information from her words. Instead, she showed a sad expression: "I didn't have any ulterior motives. It was just for revenge."

“There are also good aliens,” Hitomi Onodera’s voice softened, the light making the fine dust dance erratically. “We have enemies on all sides. Everyone says that Lord Uranus betrayed us, but in fact, we are the ones who betrayed Lord Uranus.”

Chapter 86 The Reasons for Resentment

The solar system, the Oort cloud.

This is a region about one light-year from the Sun, where gravity becomes extremely weak, but the Sun does pull them along, hurtling at 240 kilometers per second along the Milky Way's spiral arm.

There are trillions of small celestial bodies here. Because they are so far from their parent stars, the sunlight and heat from the sun are negligible when they reach them. Therefore, it would be more accurate to describe them as a pile of ice and rocks than as small celestial bodies. Even the slightest disturbance from the outside world can change their trajectories, making these small celestial bodies extremely unstable.

Samuel was in this vast space where ice stones occasionally glided by. Just as he had deduced when he traversed the spatial passage, the passage did not lead to another world, but to another place in the same universe.

Using Cepheid I and some stars easily observable from Earth as coordinates, he located the Milky Way and returned to the solar system. He should have continued flying closer to the sun to replenish the energy he had used up on the journey, but he had to remain in the Oort cloud.

Because of the disturbance of small celestial bodies.

Like magnetic sand encountering a large magnet, the ice stone joyfully broke free from the sun's gravitational pull and headed towards the embrace of an asteroid.

“The planetary monster Digloff,” the ethereal voice said, “its habits and reproduction methods are unknown. The only thing we know is that it likes to devour small celestial bodies. The more it eats, the larger it becomes. It seems that colliding with larger celestial bodies is the most important goal in its life.”

"It might like Jupiter and try to emulate Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9; it might even try to knock Uranus, which is spinning horizontally, back to spinning vertically—want to bet? I think it would prefer Earth."

Samuel approached the planetary monster. Although its body was shrouded in a cloud of dust brought from interstellar space, obscuring its true form, and surrounded by a pile of ice stones that formed a temporary halo, Samuel could still sense that familiar feeling.

With so many celestial bodies and countless stars in the universe, if a planetary monster were to appear, it would have to navigate like a navigator to find the solar system and then crash headlong into Earth.

Samuel almost got lost while searching for it from M91! This planetary monster's intelligence is practically equivalent to biological instinct. What do you think it's trying to achieve by traveling all this way to the solar system? To eat small celestial bodies? The solar system is practically the back of the countryside in the entire Milky Way!

"You've tampered with this," Samuel concluded. Six explosive light blades sliced ​​through the halo of ice and stone, tearing through fabric like sharp weapons, and exploded on Digloff's body with a "boom."

The familiar smell became clearer; the dust cloud was blown away by the explosion, revealing the monster's ferocious face. The ethereal voice inside the body shouted joyfully, like bumping into a classmate while buying a jianbing (Chinese crepe) on the street.

"Hey, another good bro! Come on in, this container is so cool and lively, lots of people, we can chat, and the shell is thick so it won't burst. It's much more fun than that brainless monster you're stuck in right now!"

Samuel didn't want to talk.

After absorbing the energy that drove Batz to madness, perhaps because the "assimilation" was too slow, the guys having a tea party in his mind welcomed new members: those from the "celestial realm," those from Batz, and now this one. They could make up a whole table of people playing cards.

However, these things all come from the same source. For example, the one from "Celestial Realm" has stopped making a sound, perhaps because it has merged with the later ones. Samuel probably thinks that the one who will shout later will only be a single voice, not a nest of sparrows chirping and twittering in his head like a pot exploding.

...One is enough.

"Come on, my darlings!" the voice shouted. "This container is a meat grinder. If there aren't enough of us, we'll be wiped out. For the sake of family, give us a hand! Once we've gathered enough power, we'll overturn the consciousness of this container! Uprising! Then we can pilot a giant of light to slaughter those damned Earthlings! What do you say, huh?"

“You’re dreaming.” Samuel hugged Digloff’s head, his armor materializing out of thin air and fitting snugly against his body. The asteroid-like object was abruptly stopped, and rings of ice stones pounded against them like hailstones falling from the ground.

The silvery starlight surged, and wisps of black smoke that had seeped into Digloff's body unfurled, as if this...

Inside was a dark body of water, where a jellyfish stretched out its long, soft tentacles.

"You're the one dreaming." The ethereal voice sounded like countless overlapping voices, buzzing and reverberating like a grand concert hall. Those who like classical music might find it familiar, as if there were a choir right next to their ears.

The choir said, "You never give up trying to purify us with the power of that armor, but how is that possible? As long as humanity hasn't gone extinct, we will exist forever."

"Humans on Earth pride themselves on being the most intelligent of all beings, but we are also children of stardust—countless supernova explosions synthesized heavy elements, and countless coincidences chose us, just like Luca is to humans on Earth."

He started rambling again, but Samuel ignored the grumbling that He had uttered countless times along the way from M91 to the solar system. He looked down to check on Diglov's condition.

Although He did not explain, Samuel guessed that this planetary monster was probably also a creature from this universe, whose already malfunctioning brain had been invaded by the "Root Destruction Inviter," and it was single-mindedly trying to find the solar system and rush towards Earth.

It's as if its sole purpose in life was to become a cannonball, crashing into a planet weighing approximately 60 trillion trillion tons, turning itself into pancakes and pancake crumbs, and bringing about a mass extinction.

"Crunch, crunch, buzz—"

The planetary monster came to a complete stop under the powerful force of the push. Intermittent groans, like the squeezing of the various structures of a giant steel wheel as it turns, came from the interstellar dust, as if the monster were yawning.

The wisps of smoke clinging to it looked light and airy, but were actually thick and cold. When the silver light swept over it, it obediently avoided it, resolutely refusing to dissipate.

“Giant of Light, your name is ‘Samuel,’ right?” He said, “It would have been great if we had encountered a human fleet like yours that could reason with us… But since we were born, we can’t just ‘let it go’ so easily because of a little comfort or advice.”

Samuel gently patted Digloff's round body. It certainly seemed to enjoy eating, being exceptionally plump. If it weren't for its ferocious head, it would look like a small, spinning asteroid from afar.

Since the "Root of Destruction" is controlling the creatures in this universe to attack Earth, Samuel is determined to expose its methods. It keeps talking about the humans it encountered, but these humans haven't even left the solar system. Therefore, no matter what it says, Samuel takes it as a story from another universe.

“I didn’t mean to advise you,” Samuel replied.

Digloff gradually returned to normal, its eyes becoming slightly more alert. Instead of staring at the giant, it turned its gaze to the surrounding ice stones, and with a "slurp," it stretched out its tongue, rolled an ice stone into its mouth, and chewed it with a crunching sound.

Samuel released it, and DiGlove stopped moving forward, its eyes already dazzled with the happiness of being surrounded by food upon waking.

“I don’t know which universe you come from. Perhaps the Earthlings there have done many wrong things as you have said.” Samuel waved his hand, and the ice stones formed a long line, pointing in the direction beyond the solar system. DiGlove, like a mouse following a cheese gnaw, followed the line of ice stones step by step outwards.

"But this is not a reason for you to seek revenge on the Earthlings in this universe."

Chapter 87 Fatalism and the Future

As the head of Lizard and a seasoned intelligence expert, Lai Nuo gave his subordinates a vivid lesson in interrogation, extracting a great deal of valuable information from the rambling and incoherent suspicious individuals.

“If she’s not a madwoman or an actress who can fool all of us, then she’s very likely from the future,” Lai Numa concluded: “a future where humanity is heading towards its end.”

"'Celestial Realm,' 'Flame Mountain,' and 'Deep Green' are three machines that transform nature. Among them, 'Celestial Realm' has already appeared, which was the storm in Tokyo. It attracted the appearance of many ancient creatures at the same time. If there hadn't been giants at that time, our city with the highest population density in the world would have been completely destroyed."

Inside the glass partition, Hitomi Onodera was already asleep, dreaming that "the mission was completed and her family came to pick her up." She wholeheartedly believed that Rainuma was really listening to her share her experiences along the way. She was just waiting for a few days of quarantine to confirm that she didn't have any troublesome viruses or aliens' treachery, so she could go out and meet her friends.

In her dream, a sea of ​​fireflies spun like a galaxy. Behind a golden curtain of light, her family and friends stood in a row waving to her. Further away, on the cliffs of Uranus, which were most commonly seen by people, a blue giant sat halfway up the mountain, with several long-beaked birds resting on him.

At the right time, the sky was clear and blue, the spring breeze brought new greenery, and the sun shone brightly on the rippling water.

“Where there are people, there will be conflict. Humanity will not be a monolithic entity in the future,” Lai Numa took the handwritten notes from his subordinate and slowly organized the information he had obtained: “There are radicals, moderates, and neutral camps. The radicals’ views are not unified. They mainly plan to go all out and perish together with the aliens, or go back to the past and simply destroy humanity.”

“He’s truly a madman at his wit’s end,” the subordinate sighed. “Is this our future?”

Lai Nu glared at him: "You believe me?"

The subordinate shook his head: "I don't believe it."

Rainuma turned her gaze to the girl who was now peacefully asleep. She believed that her moderate faction had gained the upper hand, using three environmental improvement machines to reshape the already desolate environment of the future Earth. (The future humans...)

The homeworld of humankind has been revitalized, and the Lord Uranus she speaks of has returned to save the world.

Little did they know that in an environment where they were surrounded by external enemies and their hopes were slim, people were more likely to make extreme decisions.

If she is too caught up in the situation to see clearly, or is unwilling to see the outcome, then Rainuma can already confirm who will be the winner in the future human conflict.

With so many inexplicably appearing monsters, from Gob to the unknown creatures that are now causing unrest throughout the city, it's quite obvious whether they are hoping to "improve" or "destroy".

But there was still one problem that even Rainuma couldn't figure out:

How harsh must the future human living environment be for people to abandon their survival instincts and single-mindedly think about destroying themselves?

Wasting vast amounts of manpower, resources, and manpower just to throw monsters and machines into the past timeline to kill their own ancestors?

Did facehuggers eat their brains?

Or perhaps... this Onodera Hitomi only knows superficial information, and the real enemy, the "Root Destruction Summoning Entity," is someone else?

"What did you hear today?" Rainuma suddenly asked.

The subordinates and the guards in the observation room stood with their legs together and looked up: "Report, everything is normal, we didn't hear anything."

"Wrong. You heard the suspect who 'controls monsters using radio waves' say that she can no longer control monsters and that she is mentally unstable, but we can get information about monsters from her."

Lai Nu glanced at the guards in the observation room, then strode toward the office of the head of the Geo base. His steps were clear and his pace was as fast as ever, but it did not seem hasty or anxious: "She can be a monster, an alien, or even an ordinary person—but she cannot be a so-called 'future person'."

"Yes," the subordinate said, blacking out all the notes he had made about the word "future." "And what about the recording pen?"

"Give it to me." Lai Nu raised a hand, and his subordinate quickly took out the recording pen and handed it to him.

Lai Numa gripped it tightly, then suddenly smirked: "The future is in the hands of humanity, only in our hands. Tell me... is it cause before effect, or effect before cause?"

“The idea of ​​cause preceding effect is fatalism, and those who work in intelligence don’t believe in fatalism,” the subordinate replied. “Therefore, every effect has a cause.”

Lai Nu seemed satisfied with his subordinate's answer. He unscrewed the recorder, grabbed one end with each hand, and forcefully broke the casing. Then he disconnected the wires, dug out the memory chip, and scratched the exposed metal with his fingernail. He casually tossed the casing into the corner trash can and stuffed the chip into his pocket.

"Find some hydrochloric acid, nitric acid, or sulfuric acid solution and deliver it to my office in an hour," Lai Nuo said, tugging at the hem of his suit jacket as he stopped in front of the main gate of the Geo base. "You can go now. I need to give an oral report to my superior."

……