Volume 5, Chapter 5 – Pulled Off a Big Score

The warehouse was especially easy to find. Aside from the office building and equipment depot, nearly all the other visible single-story buildings were warehouses.

Compared with those on less technologically advanced planets, however, the warehouses of Fitch Mining Company looked exceptionally high-end.

Fully mechanized and automated, with an imposing front gate to match.

“Clang!”

Anran punched straight through the gate with a thrust from Hurricane.

It was orange-grade equipment, made from excellent materials and further empowered by wind-attribute magic. Even though Anran’s Sword Saint class level was not very high, breaking down a lousy door was no problem.

“Wooo! Wooo! Wooo!”

The alarm immediately began to blare, but Anran no longer cared in the slightest.

By the time she reached the warehouse, the manager’s office and equipment depot had already been blown up, so the entire mining company had long since gone on high alert.

There were already more alarms going off than anyone could count. One more made no difference.

“Crash!”

Aila, following close behind, kicked the gate open. The two bandits then charged inside in an instant.

Anran had already cleared out her subspace. All 216 cubic meters of it were waiting to swallow up the raw ore.

Ignore the cheap stuff. Throw everything valuable into the subspace.

As she kept tossing things in, Anran picked out a slightly different sound amid the shrieking alarms.

It was coming from the entrance.

“Shh.” Anran gestured to Aila.

The two of them immediately found cover and hid.

Soon, voices came from the gate they had kicked apart.

“Don’t rush. Send a detection bug in first.”

“Bzzzz.”

Anran saw a mechanical flying insect, about half the length of a pinky finger, fly inside.

[Detection Bug]: Mechanical item.

Its function was probably similar to her spider robot and reconnaissance drone, though its performance was undoubtedly much better.

Anran tried using Mechanical Interference, but the skill that had once been so useful failed this time.

The detection bug continued flying steadily, patrolling the warehouse in an orderly pattern as it gradually approached Anran and Aila’s position.

So what if the skill did not work? So what if it came closer?

The instant Anran saw the detection bug, she had already made up her mind.

Just as it was about to reach her position, Anran suddenly shot out.

She used the new skill she had just learned, [Flash Step Lv. 10]. It consumed 80 sword aura points, had a ten-second cooldown, and forcibly displaced the user anywhere from zero to eight meters.

Anran currently had a total of 575 sword aura points, recovering at a rate of one point per second.

So-called forced displacement was not the same as teleportation. Otherwise, it would have been far too outrageous for a basic skill. It simply meant the user could interrupt their current action and make an immediate movement.

The speed of that movement was tied to the Agility attribute.

As it happened, Anran’s Agility was a terrifying 135.

Over such a short distance, she moved almost as fast as teleportation.

“Smack!”

Anran instantly appeared two meters away. She swept out her armguard-clad hand and successfully captured a detection bug, then tossed it into her subspace.

Wonderful. Once she had time to analyze this detection bug, those two old pieces of junk from before could finally be retired…

No, wait. They could still make themselves useful. She could just sell them to players.

Anran hid again.

Outside, everyone stared blankly as the feed suddenly went black.

“Did you see anything just now?”

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“Just a shadow?”

“We still can’t confirm how many people are inside.”

“Send three more in.”

Three detection bugs flew steadily into the warehouse.

[Flash Step] plus [Advancing Slash]. The seamless combination let Anran snatch another two bugs in an instant, while the third was reduced to fragments by the slash from [Advancing Slash].

“…”

“…”

Five utterly baffled faces.

“Requesting backup!”

“What? There is no backup?”

“…”

The communication ended.

“Fuck this. I’m done. You lot hide under your desks while sending me out here to die? Fuck your mother!”

“Clatter, clatter!”

The five men wisely tossed aside all their cumbersome gear, got into their vehicle, and drove away.

Anran heard the shouting outside loud and clear.

She was a little confused. At first, she thought the other side had laid some kind of trap, but after waiting a while longer, she heard another burst of clattering outside, followed by silence.

“…”

Since you are not coming in, do not blame me for helping myself.

“Let’s continue.”

After saying that to Aila over their private channel, the two quickly headed deeper into the warehouse and resumed collecting things.

There was not only raw metal ore, but also some special minerals.

For example, there was expensive construction stone, sculpting material popular among high society, and even nearly three thousand grams of Zelo Crystal tucked away in a corner, worth several thousand Bilu per gram.

Zelo Crystal could store void energy and was a key raw material for creating stabilizing force fields.

This haul was rock-solid.

Forget everything else. Into the subspace first.

Anran estimated that she had already acquired close to twenty million Bilu in raw materials from this warehouse.

Since there was nothing more valuable here, it was time to move somewhere else.

So Anran smashed through the wall and walked out.

Why bother taking the usual route?

Even if someone was blocking the door, it would not matter. She casually cut down several industrial robots along the way.

The orange-grade Hurricane was absurdly sharp. Those robots had been made from fairly good materials, but they still could not withstand a single strike. Hurricane severed them at the joints.

She received a pitiful 18,000 EXP.

Anran had not come here to kill people this time, though.

She was only here for the loot.

Anything valuable that could be carried away was coming with her.

“Boom!”

After several more thrusts opened another wall, Anran entered the second warehouse.

The entire Fitch Mining Company branch had descended into complete chaos.

No one knew how many enemies had come. Two of the people with authority had also been killed by a single cannon blast, leaving no one to take charge. Naturally, everyone else panicked.

After the initial chaos, however, no second wave of attacks came, so they finally began to recover their composure.

“Quick, quick! Contact headquarters first.”

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“Damn it! Someone actually dared attack Fitch Mining Company!”

With the governor of the entire Sea Blue Forest backing them, the people of Fitch Mining Company had always been arrogant.

Of course, it was hardly rare for someone to walk all over them either.

The Empire was certainly formidable at this stage, but Governor Fitch was not a formidable governor.

Besides, chaos had always been the defining feature of Sea Blue Forest. It lay at the edge of the Empire and bordered the battlefield against Night Owl. Plenty of people dared disregard Governor Fitch. Harrison, for example, had sworn to become the number one wanted man and had already killed quite a few imperial officials.

“I can’t fit any more.”

Anran looked resentfully at the remaining pile of ore. After sweeping through three warehouses, the materials she had obtained could not have been worth more than one hundred million Bilu, no matter how she calculated it. Compared with the more than one billion she had lost, the gap was still enormous.

The more she thought about it, the more irritated she became.

So she simply swung Hurricane and began rampaging through the warehouse with Aila.

They cut down everything they saw.

Ore, crystals, mechanical equipment, electrical equipment, even the warehouse itself.

Smashed. Shattered. Everything broke apart and littered the floor.

The branch manager of Fitch Mining Company would never get to see this scene again. Otherwise, he might have died from rage. Or perhaps from fright?

In any case, the losses were measured in the hundreds of millions.

“Boom!”

After kicking through yet another wall, Anran suddenly found a long-distance transport vehicle right in front of her.

(?????)

“Supervisor! Supervisor! All our warehouses have been wrecked, and the intruders stole a transport vehicle and fled!”

“Where are our people? Where are the people sent to stop them?”

“I-I don’t know.”

“Then why the fuck are you still reporting this to me? Send people after them! Send everyone you can! Are all of you brain-dead? Even if you can’t catch them, you should at least put on a show of trying! Fuck!” The supervisor shot to his feet in fury and pounded the desk so hard it boomed, nearly smashing it apart.

“Yes, yes, sir.”

The person delivering the report was so frightened that he immediately turned and left.

Before long, several vehicles were racing wildly along the roads near Fitch Mining Company, chasing a transport vehicle bearing the company’s own name.

The pursuing vehicles were clearly faster. The distance had originally been a full kilometer, but now only a little more than four hundred meters remained.

“Once we catch up, are we going straight in?”

“There are more than thirty of us, and the other side has one damn vehicle. Why wouldn’t we?”

“You still want to chicken out at a time like this? They have already walked all over us.”

“All right. Everyone, get ready. As soon as we close the distance, aim for the wheels.”

“Got it… Wait, what is that?”

While they were still talking, the rear doors of the transport vehicle ahead suddenly opened.

The vehicle was packed with minerals. Amid them stood an extremely stylish-looking cannon platform. Its round, moderately thick barrel was accented with cold blue decorations that made hearts pound, while its sturdy base radiated power. The little girl standing beside the cannon was even more dazzling.

“Holy shit…”

“Dodge! Dodge!”

“Motherfucker!”

“Brake!”

The vehicles swayed unsteadily.

The pursuing vehicles immediately fell into disarray. Their hovering bodies tilted as they tried to veer aside, but the Gauss cannon had already fired.

The shell’s speed far exceeded their imagination. And when it came to the art of aiming, gunner Aila was undoubtedly top-class.

“Boom!”

The recoil made the transport vehicle sway, but it was nothing serious.

The shell moved too fast. In an instant, it punched through three vehicles lined up one behind another.

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“Ka-boom!”

One vehicle was particularly unlucky. The shot struck its power system, and the entire vehicle exploded instantly.

The two immobilized vehicles beside it were dragged into the blast as well.

Not that it mattered. Everyone inside had already been GG. Being blown to pieces merely turned it into a gruesome scene unsuitable even for adults.

As for the two vehicles that had already veered off to the sides, the people inside were scared out of their wits.

“Go, go, go! Get out of here!”

“Why the hell would we keep chasing? They’re too vicious. We’ll die if we continue.”

“Ugh…”

“Keep chasing? We should count ourselves lucky if they don’t fire again.”

The two vehicles turned around and fled even faster than they had come. Halfway back, smoke began rising from the vehicles, making their occupants so anxious that smoke might as well have been coming out of their heads too.

In reality, Anran had no interest in the survivors.

She would gain no EXP even if she killed them, and Aila did not gain experience through kills either. A Yulan-metal shell was not cheap. It was better to let them go back and spread word of how terrifying she was.

“Whoosh!”

They tore down the highway. After closing the vehicle’s rear doors, Anran soon returned to her spaceship.

They made two trips to move all the ore aboard. Seeing every room packed to the brim, Anran revealed a satisfied smile.

Poverty?

Fuck poverty.

These supplies were worth one hundred million Bilu!

Although she would not sell most of them, selling even one-tenth would bring in ten million.

Once she built a few more coilguns and made some minor modifications to the ship, Anran and her spaceship would count as a respectable fighting force.

“Boom!”

The small spaceship instantly vanished into the clouds of the clear equatorial sky.

…

“What? The branch was robbed? Did anyone get a clear look at them?” The man who had taken the prospecting team to the North Pole suddenly received a communication.

Sweat beaded on the forehead of the supervisor who had been issuing orders earlier. “No.”

I…

“Then what the fuck is the point of calling me back now? Where are the intruders? Where are the minerals? What are the losses? Have you managed to calculate anything at all?”

“N-No.”

“You fu…”

“I’ve already sent people after them!” the supervisor immediately shouted.

“After them? You couldn’t stop them when they came to rob you, and now you send people to chase them?”

“No, no, that’s not what happened.” The supervisor hurriedly explained, “Manager Barnett was blown up and killed immediately, so everyone below him fell into chaos. I only barely managed to organize our people after the warehouses had already been torn apart.”

“…”

“You had better give me a good result.”

“Yes, yes. Of course. Absolutely.”

“Phew…”

After the video call ended, the supervisor felt as though his clothes had been soaked through. Aside from Barnett, the man just now was the branch’s second-ranking figure.

He still had to deal with a video call from headquarters later. Hopefully, the pursuit team would bring back good news.

Ding!

“Hello, how did… Where is everyone else?”

The moment the supervisor accepted the video call, he saw a smoke-filled scene and one ashen face after another. His heart immediately sank.

“They… they were killed by a single cannon shot.”

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“I…”

I’m finished!

Saving face no longer mattered.

The supervisor collapsed directly onto the floor.

“Supervisor Wang, this is all we can do. Good luck.”

The call ended. The remaining men on the other side abandoned their vehicles and fled as well.

Accountability from headquarters would involve much more than a reprimand. By now, they could already roughly estimate the scale of the losses.

The figure would start at one billion.

It was a deadly figure.

Literally deadly.

Ding!

“Hello.”

The supervisor barely managed to reach out and press the answer button.

“Wang Chuanliu!”

A grim face appeared on the screen.

“You’re dead.”

Ha. I just hope my family will be safe.

Wang Chuanliu sank into utter despair.

Governor Fitch’s incompetence was famous throughout the Empire. At the same time, his explosive temper was equally notorious in Sea Blue Forest.

Although people mocked him for “incompetent fury,” those people were Night Owl and certain space pirates. Against ordinary people like them, Governor Fitch could still cut them down one by one with ease.

…

“The army’s morale is far too low right now. Once Night Owl stabilizes its defensive line, the space fortresses here definitely won’t hold.”

In deep space, at the top of an artificial orbital base close to a massive planet, two men in imperial military uniforms frowned deeply. Their gazes passed through the glass and settled on the enormous arid planet below, dominated by shades of gray and yellow.

Vast artificial structures surrounded the planet. This position lay toward the rear of the second defensive line.

The main force of the Ninth expeditionary army was currently deployed along the second defensive line.

“Continuing to resist here is extremely unwise, but the emperor and parliament are pressing us too hard.”

“We can only sacrifice some of our people here, and at the third defensive line as well. The enemy has all the momentum right now. If we can grit our teeth and give up a few things, we may still have a chance.”

“That Star Gate cannot be left intact either.”

“Reserve a portion of the energy. If the other side doesn’t act impulsively, we’ll have no choice but to withdraw directly.”

“That’s all we can do. Sigh.”

A sigh echoed through the room, which glowed with pale blue light.

The view pulled back. Several colossal fortresses had been constructed around the planet, while the broad orbital rings stretching between them were covered with all kinds of gigantic defensive weapons.

Countless robots were gathering resources on many barren planets.

Because everything had happened too suddenly, the Ninth expeditionary army had not yet had time to begin exploiting the star itself.

…

“Whooo…”

The flowing air snapped the nearby flags in the wind.

Once the spaceship came to a steady stop, Anran and Aila finally landed on the planet that was the destination of their journey, a remote world in Sea Blue Forest.

Okelia.

Freedom, chaos, trade, lawlessness.

A perfect place to fence stolen goods and stir up trouble.