NIKKE, when the stars bloom

"Please."

……

……

"Commander? Commander! Wake up! The operator said the rescue team has arrived at the outskirts of Area K."

In the empty underground garage, Anis's voice was echoing tirelessly.

"We've only known each other for a short while. It would be very ungentlemanly for you to die like this, Commander."

"Annis..."

"Commander?"

Phoenix, lying flat on the ground, glanced at the chestnut-haired girl with a displeased look. Seeing her smiling face, he couldn't help but say, "If you bother me again... I will report you to the headquarters when I get back."

"Huh? Don't be so stingy, Commander!"

Amid Anis's playful exclamation, Rabbi, who insisted on standing guard outside the underground garage, felt his heart

——So tired.

Everyone was trapped in the ruins of the city full of letches, and danger could strike at any time, so why did she have the absurd illusion of taking the children out for a spring outing?

"Commander, given your current physical condition, I hope you can speak less..."

Rumble, rumble, rumble——

Before Lavi could finish his instructions, he heard a faint engine sound from far away on the road, spreading towards the garage.

If you listen carefully, the noise made by the engine is like a huge waterfall, dull and heavy.

"Everyone on alert!"

Rabi's originally relaxed mood was tensed by the roar.

Is it a support force?

Or some rare Letcher species?

The girl's thought had just come to her mind, and before she had time to think or react, she heard unbearable harsh electricity and noise coming from the headset.

"Zizizizi... this is... Zizizizi... the pioneer... Zizizi... listen... Zizizi..."

Very good, although I can't hear what the other party is saying, but they can speak human language, which at least proves that they are not Letcher.

"This is the vanguard. Please respond if you hear me."

Considering the commander's almost dry vocal cords, Lavi took the initiative to assume the duties of a liaison officer and tried to communicate with the other party using the most official sentence structure.

"I repeat, this is the vanguard. Please respond if you hear me."

Rumble, rumble, rumble——

As the girl continued to ask questions, the thunderous engine noise in the distance became more and more impatient. However, the impatient current in the communication suddenly disappeared.

Combining the two, Rabi didn't need to spend too much time thinking about it to come to the conclusion - the engine sound must have come from the support force, and the leader of the support force lacked patience and experience.

After making such a big fuss, have you ever thought that it will cause unnecessary trouble?

"Everyone continue to remain alert!"

Rabi had just given the order when he realized that the vanguard troops now had a commander, so he quickly added a sentence.

"Commander, please give the order."

"..."

"commander?"

"..."

"Um... Rabbi, the commander seems to have fainted, but don't worry too much. I touched his neck and he still has a heartbeat."

Rabbi: “…”

……

……

Willpower is something that, once relaxed, will continue to collapse like dominoes at a moderate speed until the last card falls.

But that was not the case for one commander.

When he saw a green dot in his sea of ​​consciousness rushing towards him, his willpower did not fall like dominoes, but became like a dangerous building that the engineering department was planning to blow up - it collapsed in an instant and was vulnerable to any blow.

however……

A shot of adrenaline taught Phoenix the mysteries of the human body.

"H-hoo-!"

Heavy gasps suddenly appeared in the underground garage. At this moment, the man who had just woken up from a coma felt that all the blood in his body had been illegally replaced with espresso, and every pumping of his heart seemed to burst his brain blood vessels.

"Ah! Commander is awake. How do you feel? Are you feeling unwell?"

"As a patient, if you feel unwell, you must tell your senior. Commander, please do not hide your condition!"

"Um...Is it really okay to give me a saline injection and adrenaline injection at the same time?"

"Commander, it's safe for now, you don't need to worry."

Amid the chattering of questions and concerns, Phoenix's vision slowly regained focus. Then, after seeing the personnel composition of the support force, someone almost fainted again.

An extreme dessert lover who likes motorcycles, a hospital idol who loves his seniors, and a black-bellied doctor who is his senior.

Three people, all using shotguns as weapons!

Including Lolfe on our side, there are a total of eight people in the team, and half of them are using shotguns.

Just looking at this shabby lineup, even Letcher had to shake his head.

Chapter 6 Crisis

Late at night, the ruins of the city without any lights glowed with a faint silver-blue glow under the moonlight.

Above the black curtain, the bright and quiet galaxy hangs in the sky, and the brilliant pearls dotted like stars seem to bring a little fluorescent blue background to the boundless night sky.

Even people like Lavi and Anis, who often come to the ground to perform missions, are still dazzled by the breathtaking and vast starry sky.

"The ground... turns out to be even more beautiful than what is described in the story."

Pepper, a pink-haired girl with white cat-ear headphones and a ponytail, looked like a child seeing her favorite toy. Her cherry-like eyes sparkled with bright and lively luster, and she was unwilling to take her gaze away from the sky.

　Not to mention her, even Dr. Meili, who usually likes to squint, has opened her hazy purple eyes and exclaimed with a smile:

"Well, it's a beautiful view that is perfect for calming the patients."

"No... As expected of Senior Merry!"

Hearing Merry's unintentional sigh, Pepper came back to her senses and excitedly clenched her fists in front of her chest, looking at her senior with admiration.

"Even when he was admiring the night sky, the senior was able to come up with a plan to comfort the patient so quickly!"

"Actually... I was just sighing casually."

"This shows that Senior Merry is always thinking about the patients! I will keep this in mind, Senior!"

Over here, two logistics medical personnel from the Seraph Corps were chattering.

　Over there, a commander who had no idea of ​​romance had a dull expression on his face, carrying an anti-material sniper gun that was more than 21 meters long and had a caliber of mm. He walked at the front of the road like a zombie, his mind full of the scene of Pepper and Merry performing the live performance of loading shotgun ammunition not long ago.

To be honest, Meili's filling speed is just barely acceptable.

This is basically due to the feeding system of the shotgun in her hand, which uses a horizontal magazine similar to the P90. The bullet changing method is not much different from the P90 submachine gun, and may even be more convenient.

And Pepper...

Ugh--

After all, he is just a young doctor living on the underground ark. Now that he has been transferred to the surface because of me, it is already a unilateral sin on my part. If I force him to know this and that, it would be somewhat ignorant.

"By the way, Commander, did you really see a large group of Letchers in the K-8 area?"

After following Phoenix for a while, Anis couldn't bear the doubts in her heart anymore and asked the question that Rabi and others had wanted to ask for a long time.

"I've seen them from afar." Phoenix did not hide it and said frankly: "According to my visual observation, the number must be at least 200. Is this considered a large batch?"

"Two hundred?! Commander, doesn't that mean you escaped from under the noses of two hundred Letchers?"

"Commander, although I don't want to question this data, two hundred is too much..."

"Wait, wait, wait a minute! Commander, do you mean that the eight of us are going to investigate the lair of two hundred Letchers?"

When they learned that there were as many as two hundred Letchers they were going to face, the Nikkis, including Lavi, stopped in unison, and looked towards the commander who was still leading the way in front of them with complicated glances.

Then, they saw their commander slowly turned his head. His pair of emerald green eyes exuded a dangerous aura under the night light, like a will-o'-the-wisp and a ferocious beast, making every girl unforgettable.

"When did I say two hundred?"

call--

Hearing the commander deny what he had just said, Anis's originally tense shoulders suddenly relaxed, and her slightly trembling chest seemed to silently tell the shock she had just suffered.

Fortunately, fortunately, the commander is indeed playing a prank...

"I said two hundred at the bottom."

Anis: "..."

What does two hundred Letchers mean?

There are almost two hundred powerful machine guns mounted on your face. Not to mention hiding behind cover, even if you hide underground, they can still knock you out with their firepower alone.

"So how did the commander escape?"

After the shock, Lavi quickly realized that there was a more important problem than the two hundred Letchers. It was precisely because of her question that the other six Nikkis couldn't help but feel a bad feeling.

How did the commander survive?

If this question is rephrased, it would be: Why was the commander the only one who survived?

"I don't need to run away, because I didn't let those Letchers find Team 055-A."

Sensing the suspicion brewing in the atmosphere, Phoenix, who was familiar with the plot of the game, considered it and said slowly:

"On the morning after we discovered the Letcher Group, when I woke up, all four members of my team were missing."

The man did not tell the girls the truth directly, but chose to mix the truth with the falsehood and make up a lie that was not so false as a way to deal with the situation.

In fact, his four mass-produced Nikkis had been used as bargaining chips by the Ark's chief artificial intelligence, Anik, before they left the Ark. After viruses were implanted in their systems, they were sent to the ground to be consumed by Letcher.

Using the history of the previous life as an example, the underground Ark was the Song Dynasty, and Letcher was the Liao Kingdom. The Ark ceded territory and paid compensation just to prevent Letcher from launching a full-scale attack, and survived with the spirit of living one day at a time.

The difference is that the Song Dynasty was at least an unequal treaty signed by humans, while the Ark was a "contract" signed privately between artificial intelligence and Letcher behind the back of humans.

It is hard to say whether there is anyone else among humans who knows about this except him, the time traveler who has achieved dimensionality reduction.

Therefore, even if the truth was told to the Ravis, they probably would not believe it.

Again, he is a time traveler. He knows these characters who once lived on paper and is familiar with what they have experienced, so he naturally develops a natural sense of familiarity and closeness.

but!

From the perspective of Rabi, Anis and others, he was just a commander who had known them for less than 24 hours and had a strange ability to escape.

No one with normal intelligence would trust him wholeheartedly.

drop--

Just as Phoenix was observing the expressions of Lavi and others after hearing the lies, the flat radar map in his mind suddenly emitted a series of ethereal reminder sounds.

Beep, beep, beep, beep—

Suddenly, countless flashing red dots appeared on the edge of the radar map.

Encirclement?!

The man thought of a possibility and instantly fixed his sights on the new reinforcements.

Sugar, Pepper, Merry...

Which one of them was infected by Anik? !