Chapter 612 "The Guest"

Before the "guest" arrived, Luo completed one last preparation in her living room—she affixed a portal card to the door leading to the suite and activated it, creating a portal that could lead to the "hotel hub" at any time.

This building possesses extremely powerful early warning antennas and a certain degree of self-defense firepower. Although she felt that Old Joe might not be that bold—after all, taking action in no man's land and firing on the Grey Dwarf Star are two completely different concepts—in case, just in case that mechanical freak's logic chip really did develop amazing intelligence, and in the most extreme case, the other side directly launched a "Purgatory" torpedo from space, she would have about a few minutes to evacuate from here with her men.

After completing this preparation, she gave all the employees in the building a day off in advance, and kicked out all the ordinary people who were just working in the building.

After patiently waiting for an hour, her guest arrived as scheduled.

Bilo's estimate was a little later.

A luxurious, silver-white shuttle entered the atmosphere and sent a docking request as it entered the planet.

Luo had changed into her favorite silver-white dress and was leaning back lazily on the sofa in the living room. A spherical communication robot was floating in front of her, and a visitor's docking request was popping up on the holographic projection above the robot, along with a greeting card icon.

Luo clicked on the icon, and a beautifully designed welcome image came into view, with a line of text jumping before her eyes accompanied by the effect of fireworks:

"Congratulations on your safe return, my best colleague and friend—welcome back to us."

“Boss,” the captain of the guard’s voice came from the side, “there are two unidentified light frigates parked on the track. They have no group markings and jumped over here with Old Joe’s shuttle.”

“Hmm,” Luo nodded calmly, and casually approved the shuttle’s docking request. “Take two people to greet our guests.”

The captain of the guard left the room.

The silver-white luxury aircraft landed on the helipad on the top floor of the building. After a while, Luo heard footsteps coming from the corridor outside the door.

The door opened, and a tall figure came into her view.

It was a body of steel—except for a small part of the bionic skin on its body, it was almost entirely a heavy machine. Its height of more than two meters was covered from head to toe with thick alloy plates. The sharp edges of the steel and the small part of the cable conduit that was deliberately exposed made it look intimidating.

Old Joe, a former Algerian.

"Ah, Luo, it's good to see you still in such good spirits," the two-meter-tall steel body spoke in a loud, almost noisy voice. The smile on his alloy-carved face looked comical and strange. He opened his arms, as if he wanted to give him a hug, but received no response. Instead, he was blocked by two guards on the scene, so he smiled awkwardly and lowered his hands. "I'm serious, if you really died so easily, it would be a big loss for the company."

As Old Joe spoke, he looked up and glanced around.

The living room, decorated in the traditional Algerian style, features dark blue decorative tapestries on the walls, a high-precision simulated starry sky projection outside the domed window, a running classical planetarium in one corner, wooden shelves, bookshelves, and a burning fireplace—the flames in the fireplace are not even a holographic projection, but real flames.

Firewood is an expensive commodity on the Grey Dwarf planet, especially the kind that doesn't release all sorts of strange toxic substances when burned.

"You still really like retro stuff." Old Joe shook his head and clicked his tongue in amazement.

Luo leaned back lazily on the sofa covered with dark red cushions, looked up at the other person, and said, "I'm a rather old-fashioned person, it's an old habit of mine, and it's hard to change."

Old Joe shrugged, his mechanical joints making a slight whirring sound, and stepped onto the sofa in front of Luo and sat down.

The massive, heavy steel body sank into the sofa, looking almost cramped.

Then he suddenly hummed in confusion, turning his head as if observing the surrounding air.

“What’s that smell? My sensors detected something… ‘strange’ in the air,” Old Joe looked at Luo, his tone devoid of emotion. “The smell of blood?”

“Incense, some witchcraft stuff I got from the black market,” Luo said, taking a deep breath as he spoke. “To be honest, it does smell like blood, because this stuff is made from blood. The black wizards added some really strong stuff to it. I have to rely on this incense to stay calm now… You, you blockhead, probably can’t understand. You haven’t needed to regulate your endocrine system for a long time.”

Old Joe stared at Luo for two or three seconds.

There was indeed a blood-like substance floating in the air, but it seemed to be just evaporated blood components. His sensors did not analyze any further information or report any poisoning—the blonde elf and her guards were also exposed to this thin blood vapor, and everything seemed normal.

As his vigilance gradually dissipated, Old Joe's expression relaxed.

What kind of poison could affect a body made of tough, reliable steel?

“It seems you’ve been through a lot,” he shook his head, his tone seemingly filled with sympathy and concern. “Flesh and blood are ultimately more fragile, aren’t they?”

“Probably, but I can’t let go of the ‘world’ that this body can perceive. Even though you may think these perceptions are vague and inefficient, I still can’t accept that the whole world has become a bunch of data transmitted back by sensors,” Luo said calmly, his gaze falling on Old Joe. “Your body of steel is still a bit extreme for me.”

The incense burner on the table was running silently, with thin mist seeping out little by little.

Old Joe felt that some strange signals were appearing in his sensors, but when he tried to pay attention to them, the signals disappeared like ghosts.

He also felt a slight itch on his back, but how could a body of steel have the concept of "itch"? He hadn't dealt with this feeling for so long that he quickly ignored the itch.

“In any case, I’m always happy to help,” he said, adjusting his posture on the slightly cramped sofa and forcing a stiff smile at the blonde elf in front of him. “I helped you with your first surgery back then—without that first transformation, you wouldn’t be where you are today.”

Luo blinked slowly, her expression unchanged.

The excruciating pain of her spine being severed and the living metal gradually eroding her spinal canal seemed to resurface from her memory. She felt her brain implants were discharging irregularly, and numbness and tingling spread across the base of her skull. But in the next instant, all of this was soothed by the bloody smell permeating the air, turning into only a gentle illusion.

“I want to know what exactly happened,” Old Joe stared into Lowe’s eyes. “I went to your base a few days ago. It looked like it had been swept by a space storm. The entire planetary system had shifted horribly. The data recorded in the local logs was confusing. The last communication between your space station and the corporation was just a bunch of chaotic and crazy babbling. At that time, your personal identification signal had already disappeared… Then we received news that the Junction had announced an angelic descent and fall. In the limited footage, your space station was floating on the Junction’s dome.”

“An accident,” Luo said calmly. “I got my hands on a ‘stone’ a few years ago, but I never imagined it was some kind of ‘beacon’ that could summon angels—and while trying to draw out the power contained in that stone, the Dark Angel descended.”

Old Joe adjusted his posture on the sofa again, pretending to listen attentively.

He felt his chest pounding. While the information about the Dark Angels was valuable, the story of how this golden-haired elf had survived was even more intriguing.

"So how did you survive? And what's the story behind the news coming from the border region?"

“That thing, the Dark Angel, has the power of a spacetime domain. The first time it ‘awakened,’ it teleported the entire Blackrock Space Station to the border,” Luo told the truth almost the entire time, but deliberately omitted a lot of details. “I don’t know how I survived. When I woke up, I was already in the Secret Service prison—I don’t even know as much as you do about the Fall of the Angels.”

"The Secret Service?" Old Joe's tone rose. "How did you escape from that place?"

"Is this also part of the company's investigation?"

“Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t mean to doubt you—it’s all just doing my job,” Old Joe spread his hands. “You know what the Secret Service is like. That expressionless witch’s cage holds the most dangerous creatures and non-creatures in the universe, and there have been very few escapes in the last century. As for you…”

He looked Luo up and down on the sofa.

"I don't think you have the ability to escape from that place."

Luo slowly propped himself up from the sofa, leaning his upper body towards Old Joe.

“An angel hunter led a dark angel to break me out of prison,” she said in a slightly hoarse voice, as if telling a thrilling and bizarre story, “like a hero defeating a dragon to rescue a princess, they released me right in front of that stoic, emotionless man.”

Old Joe's eyes widened, the unvarnished look of astonishment on his metallic face almost comical. He stared at Luo for several seconds, then suddenly leaned back on the sofa, letting out a near-noisy laugh: "Hahahahahaha..."

The unrestrained laughter lasted for a moment, then he suddenly stopped, and his tone finally lost its superficial politeness: "Playing tricks on the investigators at a time like this won't do you any good, Luo. You'd better think it through. I might be the only person who can help you get back to Blacklist right now—in this place, people without support are worse off than worms in the gutter."

Two guards stepped forward.

Luo waved her hand and lazily returned to her original posture. She sighed in relief amidst the scent of incense, then looked at Old Joe with a half-smile: "You see, I'm more used to you being like this. We can communicate so frankly from the beginning—just like before, before I was promoted."

(End of this chapter)