The Naval Base of the Unnamed Ship Girls

"Remember, when you use this power, it means you will become something completely different."

“I know…” Essex’s eyes burned with boiling hatred as she forcefully pushed Chiaki away. She knew what Adun meant, because Adun was not just explaining what she was about to do with simple words.

Instead, they used a more intuitive method to help Essex understand the price to pay for the power gained in such a short time.

The phrase "completely becoming something else" is a euphemism used by Arden, in the eyes of the Protoss, who are all masters of soul studies.

The most intense and swift power is none other than the power that burns the soul.

Essex took a step forward, seemingly speaking to Ardon, yet also to herself.

As Essex moved forward, the flames that had been coiling around the longsword swirled and spread to Essex, who was wielding the longsword, which could serve as a kind of psionic medium.

As if using Essex's body as fuel, a crimson flame blazed up.

After retreating a distance once more, Adun, who had floated outside the room, sighed.

"Even with my help... to achieve this with an independent soul, sigh..."

When the burning crimson flames reached the critical point, a ball of blazing fire appeared in the room.

Essex's body, engulfed in flames, merged with the red flame that, though devoid of heat, radiated terrifying energy.

In the blank stare of the Retribution, Essex paid no attention to the culprit behind everything, because when she entered this state, it meant that the last moments of her soul's existence were counting down.

“The Void… descends…” Essex’s voice seemed to come from the Twisted Void.

Chiaki, who had just been pushed against the wall by a sword, had just stood up when Essex, who had transformed into a red fireball, tackled her to the ground again.

Essex stared intently at the struggling humanoid mechanical spider she had pinned to the wall, then continued chanting in the Void Voice:

"Annihilation... is coming..."

First came a short, sharp sound of space collapsing, followed by an explosion even more dramatic than the self-destruction of the robot piloted by the Hyperion.

On the ground, the ship girls who were regrouping and preparing for a general offensive saw a huge, blood-red beam of light appear at the location of the military police headquarters, which was originally their target.

Under the glow of the red beam of light, the remaining robot legions on the battlefield instantly lost all their strength and collapsed to the ground.

Hyperion, the only one who knew what this scene meant, bit off the cigar he had just lit, his eyes wide with surprise:

"Damn, is that Orega that self-destructed?? Huh?"

(Orega: The super dark archon who was eaten by Blizzard's retcon)

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Hmm, I'm adjusting my biological clock, so I woke up a little late. I'm trying to write an update now.

☆, Chapter 420: The reborn deep-sea aircraft carrier

A deep-sea aircraft carrier, clad in jellyfish-like armor, opened its eyes. After a somewhat bewildered glance at the surrounding ruins, its standard deep-sea ruthlessness materialized on its face:

"Tsk, is this the territory of the ship girls?"

Judging from the concentration of deep-sea atmosphere in the surrounding environment, this deep-sea aircraft carrier, which possesses self-awareness as soon as it opens its eyes, immediately determined its location.

For a newly born deep-sea carrier with no companions around, its debut is practically a hellish experience.

"Judging from my current appearance, I must have just transformed. I didn't expect it to turn back so soon?" In this place far from the deep sea, clearly a territory ruled by ship girls, the deep-sea aircraft carrier sighed and muttered to itself.

"Or are you going to try to win me over with some past events after being captured by those bitches? A bunch of idiots."

As the deep-sea aircraft carrier, completely unaware of its strange state, indulged in its imagination about its future, Adun descended from mid-air behind her.

"Who?" Adun made no attempt to conceal her movements. Sensing that a ship girl was approaching the deep-sea carrier beside her, she immediately drew her cane and turned around to face Adun with a fierce look on her face.

"Hmm..." After looking the deep-sea aircraft carrier up and down for a while, Adun said in a somewhat mischievous tone, "It's not using the 'wo' language, how unexpected?"

“Wo?” (Are you also an Abyssal?) The Abyssal Carrier strangely used her own unique language when she heard the ship girl in front of her say that.

She found it strange that when she faced Adun, she did not feel the innate hostility that deep-sea ship girls had shown her when facing other ship girls, as mentioned in her memory.

"Oh? I'm not an Abyssal Ship Girl. In your current worldview, I should belong to the Ship Girl faction." Adon did not explain why there was no inherent antagonism between herself and the Abyssal Ship Girls.

When Adun first met the starship Narcissus, who had caused so much trouble, she was surprised to find that there was no inherent hostility between her and Narcissus.

This situation means that many of Adun's previous speculations about the inherent hostility between ship girls from different factions have been overturned.

The most important point is that the inherent hostility between Adun and Hyperion towards Omega Yuriko, the multi-purpose war fortress of the Rising Sun Empire summoned by Charlotte, is not a widespread phenomenon.

It's possible that the inherent antagonism between Adun and Omega, and the inherent antagonism between native ship girls and deep-sea ship girls, are not the same thing.

These things still need further verification, Adun naturally wouldn't tell the deep-sea ship girl in front of him. He simply took out a thick notebook, wrapped it in psionic energy, and tossed it directly into the deep-sea carrier's hand, saying:

"This is what you... This is something she gave me before, telling me that if I had the chance, I must pass it on to you."

"What is this?" asked the deep-sea carrier, startled by Adun's act of taking the object into her hands while she was focused on defense.

If the strange ship girl in front of it had thrown a bomb or something instead of this notebook, this deep-sea carrier felt it might have been instantly defeated.

“Her…or rather, your old diary,” Ardon replied, pausing briefly.

"Huh?" Upon hearing this answer, the deep-sea carrier was stunned for a moment, then immediately threw the diary in her hand to the ground as if she were holding something hotter than a bomb with its pin pulled, saying, "Since you call yourself a ship girl, then you should know that there is no relationship between her and me!"

“If it were any other deep sea… that statement would naturally be correct, but…” Adon frowned halfway through his sentence, then raised his hand and caught a drop of liquid falling from the sky with his fingers.

"But what?" The deep-sea carrier, curious about what Adun would say, quickly asked.

“But I was just fulfilling a promise I made to her.” Ardon replied, looking at the sticky liquid standing still on his fingertip.

At the same time, more of this liquid, which is slightly thicker than normal rainwater, fell, just like rain.

"Agreement? Heh, do you think you can persuade me to join your ship girls with this agreement? Don't dream!" Unlike Adun, who uses her psionic energy to cover her body with a water-proof layer, the jellyfish-like equipment on the head of the carrier-type deep-sea ship girl can be used as an umbrella when it rains.

Seemingly to prove that her words were not fabricated, the deep-sea carrier stomped hard on the rain-soaked diary with her high-heeled shoes before continuing to say to Adun:

"Kill me, dismember me, slice me, or braise me—bring it all on! I'll take it all!"

The seemingly untouched rainwater left no trace on Adun. The Protoss Ark looked up at the clear, star-studded night sky, then flew into the air and uttered a single sentence to the deep-sea carrier:

"Stay where you are, and I will arrange for someone to protect you."

As Adun said this, Wo-chan, who had been assigned by Adun to protect Kaga and Atlanta at the edge of the battlefield, made a confused "wo" sound. Then, amidst the exclamations of the two ship girls beside her, she braved the rain and rushed into the still-burning battlefield.

"Protect? Do you think I'm an idiot?" The Abyssal Carrier, utterly astonished that Adun could fly, spat and said, "Don't think I don't know how much of a feat it is to capture an Abyssal ship girl alive in your country. Do you think I'd stay here waiting for protection?"

While making these remarks, the deep-sea aircraft carrier was completely unaware of why it knew that capturing a deep-sea ship girl alive was a great achievement.

Feeling that staying here would only lead to being captured and used as spoils by those ship girls, the deep-sea carrier decisively decided to find a place to hide and turned away from the ruins without any hesitation.

After walking about a dozen steps, the deep-sea aircraft carrier stopped, sighed, and backed up to its original spot, staring at the diary on the ground that it had stepped on and broken in two, now soaked by the rain.

Finally, as if making a decision, he bent down carefully, picked up the diary, and wiped the raindrops from it with his pale fingers, saying:

"No matter what you did before, at least I'm using your body now, so... consider this my repayment!"

The deep-sea carrier, having tossed her laptop into her ship's equipment compartment, wiped the water from her face and complained:

"Why did you have to rain like this, God? It's gotten my face all wet."

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I'm still begging for monthly votes, and this chapter should be chapter 421.

Chapter 420 Rain

Rain in nature requires clouds, but the sky above Central Academy is clear enough to see the Milky Way. So it is obvious that the liquid that fell after that huge red pillar of light turned the Central Academy's military police headquarters into a giant crater was not just rain.

Moreover, this impurity quickly became apparent after the liquid fell onto the ship girls who were cheering their victory.

First, a trainee admiral clutched his head and knelt on the ground in pain. Then, the rookie ship girls around him, who had only recently inherited their ship equipment and had been assisting on the battlefield, began to convulse in agony.

Afterwards, as this unexpected rain gradually gave the post-war Central Academy a desolate atmosphere, almost all the ship girls and admirals exposed to the rain were greatly affected.

The admiral lost his connection with the ship girls, and the ship girls also discovered that the contract between them had vanished without a trace.

Furthermore, as more and more of their bodies come into contact with this liquid, whether they are trainee admirals or official admirals, new ship girls or veteran ship girls, they are all terrified that they are gradually losing their power.

Fortunately, the robots had already completely collapsed before the rain started.

Otherwise, if those robots cooperated with this strange rain, these hastily assembled ship girl armies would suffer enormous losses.

Of all the ship girls, only Akagi and North Carolina, the two leader-class ship girls, seemed completely unharmed after being soaked to the bone. Hyperion, like Adun, had activated its psionic shield before the rain started, using it as waterproof armor.

The psionic shield generator on Hyperion was a free gift with the short-range warp engine inside its body. Since the Terran behemoth-class battlecruisers had never been prepared to carry Protoss psionic shield generators, the main purpose of the psionic transmitter on Hyperion was probably just to provide shelter from the elements.

After noticing the effects of these liquids on the ship girls, North Carolina hesitated for a moment before suddenly saying:

"Holy crap, the Enterprise actually managed to develop something like this?"

North Carolina's words reminded Akagi, and the IJN carrier, still a bit weak-kneed after its powerful attack, seemed to remember something and said:

"They actually made it, and they even prepared such a large quantity. It seems they must have made it a long time ago, but we just didn't know it."

The fact that an explosion could drench half of the Central Academy suggests that a considerable amount of this liquid was produced and stored deep within the academy.

"What... what is this foul-smelling stuff?" Hyperion asked, sniffing the liquid with a disgusted expression after catching a bit in his hand.

"A weapon that uses ship girls and admirals as hypothetical enemies." North Carolina carefully chose her tone, trying to explain in a way that avoided being teased by the Hyperion for being reckless.

"It can temporarily deprive the ship girls and admirals who come into contact with it. The original plan was to use it when the military police were performing their duties."

"Because the Pacific theater lost its governor, and a new governor could not be appointed for a long time, the Enterprise proposed this idea at the time in the face of inevitable division," Akagi explained.

"Hmm...Isn't the Pacific theater already split in two?" Hyperion knew this basic geographical knowledge.

“What we’re worried about is another kind of division, internal strife. Even if it’s not swallowed up by the deep sea, it will be devoured by other theaters of war. At least for now, the Pacific Theater is still intact,” Akagi said, shaking his head.

“I see, that makes sense.” After acknowledging North Garden and Akagi’s explanation, Hyperion asked, “What’s the mechanism of this thing?”

"You'll probably have to ask Enterprise yourself about this," Kitazawa said with a mocking look in the direction where the military police headquarters used to be.

"Well, because Enterprise has always been in charge of the research and manufacturing of these things. Apart from the fact that these things are a kind of shielding method so that the admiral and ship girls cannot sense their abilities temporarily, rather than completely eliminating the abilities, we don't know any more than you do."

Akagi sighed and continued, "Actually, before, North Carolina and I even thought that the Enterprise's research on this kind of thing had encountered great obstacles and that the project had stopped."

"It seems the Enterprise really has some tricks up its sleeve," Northtown said with a smile. If the project had really stopped, where would all these products have come from?

"Shielding?" Hyperion carefully deactivated part of his psionic shield, allowing some of the liquid to come into direct contact with his body.

An immediate stinging sensation spread throughout Hyperion's body from the parts that had come into contact with the liquid.

"Tsk... How come you two look perfectly fine? Doesn't it hurt at all?" Hyperion asked, shaking his hand as he looked at Kitazate and Akagi, who were soaked.