Chapter 418

Chapter 419: Foxy stands upon the earth (continued)

Orbital bombardment from low orbit began. Before Foxy’s body struck, a storm of Fox Fire meteors fell first as suppressive fire.

The mass of flames around her split the instant it hit the atmosphere, turning into thousands upon thousands of small light spheres that rained toward the ground. The dense “fire meteors” burned so fiercely they vaporized every cloud along their path. A thousand bright lines poured down like a waterfall, and the moment they touched the Crystal Jungle, they triggered a roaring chain of blasts.

The entire Jungle shook. Thunder rolled from deep below, laced with ugly cracking and that unsettling Resonance.

Yu Sheng felt the chaotic howls explode inside his mind as the Jungle changed. He whipped his head toward the Deep Forest and saw the crystalline “sea” at its heart surging upward. Countless “giant trees” grew in a rush and fused, birthing a crystal mass larger than all the “Yun Qing Zi” from before combined.

As it rose it kept changing shape, one moment a long-bearded elder with hair standing on end, the next a towering tree, then an illogical living cluster of crystal stuck in constant collapse and rebuild. Deep inside, a huge energy reaction pulsed.

“Are you kidding me?” Yu Sheng’s face changed the instant he felt that energy. He snapped open a Door back to the Forest’s center and called to Irene as he stepped through: “I’m going to shut down its air defense!”

Irene barely had time to blink before he vanished: “…Huh?”

Her collar tightened. Luna bent, lifted her with one hand, and ran still farther from the Crystal Jungle: “High energy reaction, need to retreat farther.”

Irene yelped as she bounced along: “C Buckle, what are you doing, put me down-”

Yu Sheng returned to the Jungle’s center.

He looked up. The crystal mass there had swelled into a mountain, its “body” lit within by violent flowing light.

In the sky, a bright point grew fast. Rings of flame spread through the atmosphere and rained down even denser suppressive fire.

“What a bloody disaster this is,” he muttered with a crooked smile, glancing toward where Irene and Luna had run, then fell straight backward.

His body began to come apart even before it hit the ground. Ash scattered and drifted between the towering crystal “trees.”

In the next heartbeat, the whole Crystal Jungle went still. All gathered energy was forced down. Every crystal branch froze. The “cycle” in the deep was clamped shut again. The Jungle lost its power to resist.

It lasted only a short time, but it was enough for an Orbital Fox Warhead to smash into that crystal mountain.

The Nine-Tailed Fox fell from the sky and struck, unleashing the compressed Fox Fire in an instant. At first, the world went quiet for less than a second, as if even the air molecules had been pinned and stopped shaking. Then a fireball brighter than the sun began to swell, seemingly slowly, from the crater’s center.

The heavens lit up. A blinding white day flashed across this cold, far-off planet. After a while, Irene, now far away in Luna’s arms, finally heard the rolling thunder behind them.

She felt her whole body quiver with the rumble: “Yu Sheng is dead again.”

She shaded her eyes toward the crater as the glare faded to bearable levels and added, “Or maybe he’s very hot. Could be a few hundred million degrees.”

Luna set her down like a sack.

“C Buckle!!” Irene squeaked.

…

Yu Sheng drifted in a dim hush. The sudden cut of death had broken his thoughts, and it took him minutes to recall why he was in this darkness and the last thing he saw before it.

He remembered a fox head wreathed in fire diving straight at him, a headbutt from the sky.

“She headbutted me to death again,” he muttered in the dark, a little helpless.

This time he didn’t wait in the foggy afterworld for a slow respawn. He moved his mind straight into the Otherworldly Hotel to use it as a “temporary body.”

He needed to know Foxy’s state as soon as possible, and whether the Crystal Jungle had, as planned, gone “quiet” after the strike.

High above Sentinel Silence, lights came on through the ship. The core module hummed awake. Sleeping Systems booted in a rush.

“Irene.”

Running back with Luna, Irene heard the voice in her head and jumped: “Yu Sheng?! You’re not dead? Or revived already? That fast?”

“Dead,” Yu Sheng said easily. “My body needs time to regenerate. I’m speaking through the Otherworldly Hotel. Where are you and Luna?”

“We’re heading back. Foxy said after that move she’d need someone to watch her,” said Irene, who had already plastered herself back onto Luna, mostly because her short legs were slow. “That blast was amazing-”

“I saw it clearer than you,” Yu Sheng cut in. “What’s the Jungle’s state? Still active?”

“The Crystal Jungle? No more Jungle,” Irene peeked into the distance and answered in her mind. “Just a steaming big pit. Oh, I see Foxy. She’s stuck in it.”

“…?” Yu Sheng blinked.

A moment later, Luna sent a live feed through the Artificial Saintess link straight to the ship.

The Nine-Tailed Fox stood upon the earth.

Head first.

Thanks to Luna’s speed, she and Irene reached the Impact Crater quickly. The Crystal Jungle that had covered the crater was gone.

At the center lay piles of fine, inert debris. Heat shimmered off the ground. Dust drifted in the wan sunlight. It looked like the end of the world.

Irene tilted her head back. The huge Nine-Tailed Silver Fox was planted in the ground head-down. Four legs and a bundle of tails stuck out, twitching in the wind now and then.

Now Irene finally understood what Foxy meant by needing help to “get unstuck.”

She deeply regretted not pestering Yu Sheng for a phone. Even a kiddie smart watch would have worked. Anything with a camera…

She hopped down from Luna, stepped carefully around the shards, reached Foxy’s side, and poked a tuft of soft silver fur on the fox’s back: “Hey, silly fox, you still alive?”

The Nine-Tailed Fox shook, her four legs flailing in the open air.

“Need help?” Irene asked.

“Of course!” came Foxy’s muffled voice from underground. “I have no strength! Dig me out!”

“If you change back to human, you could climb out.”

“I said I have no strength! Changing shape costs power!” Foxy’s legs kicked again. “Stop messing around. Call your Mass Produced Dolls!”

“Okay, okay,” Irene chuckled as she stepped back, “just wait a sec. Yu Sheng let you headbutt him to death, so now I have to Summon the Mass-Production Units from the Valley myself. I’ve never done it alone… oh, right, tell them to grab some little shovels first…”

Foxy’s hind legs kicked twice more. She sighed among dirt and stone and went still to save strength.

Her stomach rumbled.

A little later, Irene finished her first solo Summoning. The first batch of Mass Produced Dolls popped into place.

They were the units that had withdrawn earlier due to low power. They couldn’t fight, but they could still walk.

A whole crowd of 66.6-centimeter-tall Dolls gathered, each holding a tiny shovel or hoe from who knows where. They looked like they had stolen them from the Dollheads’ gardening class. They huddled, exchanged a plan, then got to work with lively chatter.

On a lonely alien world, a Nine-Tailed Fox who had just carried out an orbital strike was stuck headfirst in the ground, while a flock of Gothic Dolls dug around her with gardening trowels among crystal rubble.

Even Irene had to admit it looked a bit too absurd. She leaned toward Luna and whispered: “C Buckle, this scene is truly abstract.”

Luna thought for a moment and nodded: “Yes.”

That said, the little Dolls were enthusiastic, but their work speed was… modest.

Yu Sheng had regenerated by the time they were still digging.

He watched Irene organize an excavation crew of Mass Produced Dolls to free Foxy and stood speechless for a long moment. Then he shook his head with a helpless smile: “At this rate they’ll be digging until next year.”

“What else can we do?” Irene threw up her hands. “You don’t know how hard the ground is. Silly fox’s head is jammed in a pile of rocks. I even suspect she ‘cast’ herself into the ground.”

Yu Sheng’s eye twitched. He tipped his head back to look at the Nine-Tailed Fox stuck in the earth.

Foxy kicked her legs. Her belly rumbled like thunder: “Benefactor, I’m hungry.”

“…”

After two seconds of silence, Yu Sheng sighed and pulled out his phone.

He had a number saved. Its owner claimed he could take any engineering job, from building a public toilet downtown to dropping an orbital defense citadel on an alien planet.

“This one,” Yu Sheng said, “we’ll hand to our all-purpose Engineer Sun.”