27 Alethea’s Astral Mission

Morning guys,

We deeply apologize to intrude on your reading (again), we would like to inform you guys, we might not be able to post a chapter next week (16/10/2018). We'll be out for the whole week to Phuket with all of our extended family members. It's a familyday kinda thing. And we sorely needed the break. As I say, this work is a week-to-week basis, so no stockpile. Sorry. I don't like giving empty promises and put your hopes up for nothing.

Alas, enjoy reading :)

p/s: Mrs Mooncat just got a graphic tablet for birthday from Mr Mooncat (yay!) Soon, a picture of the characters in Glory of the Witches and A Sojourn of a Transmigrated Housewife will be released in our Patreon for patrons :) Wait for it!

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Chapter 27: Alethea's Astral Mission

Alethea has been travelling in her astral form for more than one year in a very high speed. She had pushed herself hard. Her speed was so high, she could even overtake the fastest military aircraft of Graycastle empire. She kept on travelling forward in a straight line following the same direction which was the sun. While travelling, she noticed that although the sun of their solar system was supposedly undergoing its death prematurely and should've released intense heat, she didn't feel a single thing.

The only thing she could feel was her astral body losing its connection with the main customized body bit by bit. She wondered, will she be able to re-establish connection with her own body later. Or did she need to go through a one-year acclimatization again when she returned to her home planet.

At the beginning, it had been fun and astounding. Space was full of wonders as it was filled with blinding sparkling lights, stars and asteroid debris. However, later, it felt dull and dry, as she experienced the same scenery again and again every single day. She didn't even have her personal VIRCOFF with her as the gadget was bound to her custom physical body, and not her consciousness in the form of astral body.

The only changes were her surrounding was getting brighter and redder, indicating her getting closer to the star that functioned as the sun for their planet. As she was closing in, she finally noticed something wrong with their sun!

From afar, she saw chains after chains of black material encircling the gigantic sun from top to bottom in wide arcs! The chains themselves were thick with cannon-like attachments which produced a purple ray, bombarding the sun from within the encirclement. Not far from the sun was eight structures in the shape of a large wheel in a perfect octagonal formation, also encircling the sun a few paces away from the 'chain'. A long 'cable' attached from the black 'chain' were connected to the 'hub' in the middle of the 'wheel'. The 'hub' was supported by crisscrossed white beam-like structures which functioned like 'spokes' on a bicycle wheel.

Alarm bells were ringing in her head. What His Majesty speculate is true! Alethea gasped. These structures were obviously doing something to their sun!

Alethea was weighting the risks of either further investigating the wheel-like structure or returning home immediately to report. After some thought, she finally decided to take the risk to scout deeper. Just by observing the sun being sabotaged by these structures was not good enough. She must know who and how it was done. Who knows she could even destroy the structures to delay the inevitable demise of the sun and gave them more time? More importantly, she had not seen or felt any life forms from the structures.

After conserving her mental energy for any unexpected encounters, she moved stealthily towards the nearest structure. From afar, it simply looked big. However, Alethea had not realized that the wheel-like structure was further than she thought. When she was in front of it, it was like an ant standing in front of a skyscraper. It was simply too gigantic!

Her astral body easily went through the structure to investigate the inner parts. Inside were a myriad of components interconnected to each other, just like a complicated electronic board. The only difference was the connections were three dimensional, whereas a normal electronic board was just two dimensional. She moved cautiously among the electronic parts, afraid to touch any of them although she was just an apparition. Soon she reached a small path and followed through while memorizing everything that she saw. Roland would know what to do as long as she could go back and report.

....

An intrusion was detected on the outer layer region of the Energy-harnessing Wheel. The intrusion was detected after being scanned by a variation of energy waves as physical detection has failed. Following the standard operating procedure, a group of drones were automatically dispatched to investigate by the mainframe. At the same time, the core mainframe controlling the overall energy mining process generated a class III report and immediately sent it to the headquarters at a nearby space station three galaxies away.

An android in front of a workstation automatically switched on as it received a report from one of the mining wheels not far from their station. It then immediately passed it to a man in a navy blue bodysuit with a long dark purple hair tied up at the top of his head. The man read through the report and went to a large screen. After touching a few hovering holographic buttons in midair, the screen lit up as it was connected to a group of men in gray bodysuits.

"You guys are near to Point X319 correct?" Skipping on the basic pleasantries, he went down to business with the group of mercenaries.

"Just a few hops away, Boss. Is there anything that needed our attention?" A man with a languid expression tilted his head to the side and answered lazily. He injected some politeness into his words since the man in the screen did pay them well for their short term service.

"There's a rat in Wheel 6 of Wheel Station X319. The mainframe had sent in a group of drones to scout and eliminate if it just some trivial matter. However, please go ahead and observe just in case the rat got away. Do not immediately eliminate it upon encounter. If it could survive the drones, it means it is quite strong, and adequately intelligent. Find its lair and destroy." Unsatisfied with the helpers' attitude, the man in blue became more stoic in his speech. He immediately terminated the connection after relaying his command. It was not good interacting with these savages for long periods of time. Just by observing their attitude, he noticed his heart rate and body temperature had increased from the indication panel in his eyesight.

...

"Alright! Sit tight! Let's go check the douchebag's wheel!" Zenti decided to follow the guy's instruction since the boys had been out of action for the longest time. It's good to finally have a purposeas they have rested for too long already. If they could hunt some space beast, it'll provide some form of entertainment. They took this short term mission to man a sector of energy-harnessing wheels from the money grubbing Estrella Conglomerate to rest after an S-level mission a year ago. However, since each sector was so large, they only responded to problems rather than wasting their energy core for unnecessary jumps. For the whole year of their service, there was only a few occasions where there was truly a problem that needed their attention. The rest were just false alarm.

The whole team were sick of it and begged him to terminate the contract and started on a new, more exciting one. Zenti was helpless too. He was just a tiny team leader, with no influence over termination of an already-sealed contract. He could only accept or reject a mission before it started. Hence, their bored attitude pervaded the surrounding like a plague, influencing even him.

After calculating the trajectory of the hyperjump, he immediately pushed the lever at full throttle. In his heart, he had a tiny hope that the space-organism could survive the attack of the drones. Like that, they could finally have something that they could do.

...

Alethea had been fighting a group of beetle-like drone sentries for a few hours already! The number of drones swarming over her was nearly more than what she could handle. She longed for her body where she could employ her magic empowered by the Recombinant power armor. All these weaklings would be toasted in no time. Right now, she could only harness the astral power channeled to her from Neverwinter's Sanctuary 3. Since she was just in the form of an apparition with only her consciousness and mental power present, she was helpless without a physical attack. Meanwhile, the drones in question couldn't attack her too, but hounded over her like stray dogs. She knew she needed to annihilate every one of them in the hopes that they couldn't relay the information about her to the owner of this structure in time.

She had circled around the whole structure and even reached the hub to investigate. Although she didn't understand a single thing, with her excellent memory, she could at least draw what she saw to Roland. At the hub was where she met with the first hovering beetle-like drone. It had tried to burn her with a tiny flamethrower and even switched to a laser. However, since she was just a form of consciousness, she was unharmed.

Alethea finally decided to use the astral power supporting her travel to vanquish the drones. She compacted the power with her mental energy and released bullet-like projections with precision on each of the drones' head-like metallic bodies. She had finally killed off all those annoying bugs after a while.

[I need to move out as soon as possible! The possibility of me being discovered is extremely high!] She knew she had used a high amount of power from Sanctuary 3. She really hoped that she still have enough energy to travel back. She believed that Roland would know what to do to help her. After making sure that there was nothing following her, without further ado, she sped off in the direction of her home planet as soon as possible.

Unknown to her, a camouflaged spacecraft was recording her actions a few hundred meters away. The stealth mode was so good that Alethea didn't even detected a tiny bit of life force leaking from it.

...

Zenti's e-cigarette felled from his mouth as he saw an apparition in the form of a beautiful woman with long wavy hair emerged from the structure of the 'wheel'. He had been watching closely from the monitor which has been adjusted to a different wavelength. He had thought it was some kind of space beast who excelled in camouflaging, attacking the energy harnessing structure. These pests loved them structures because they were attracted to the energy stored inside.

The woman was intangible! She was even flying without a spacesuit! Her body was made of light particles with a light shade of colors, which made Zenti and co. realized that it was a human after all. What made all of them shocked was how the woman didn't break the structure as she moved out, rather, she moved through the structure like a ghost!

"Captain! Is that a ghost or an angel?! So beautiful!" His lecherous wingman asked as he drooled.

Seeing that Zenti didn't answer their teammate's comment, another one asked. "Should we catch her?"

Zenti cleared his mind after a few second of contemplation, "Nope. I don't think we can. Can you see that she can go through walls? Let's just follow her to her base. Gentlemen, behave. We're being paid to annihilate the whole species." In Zenti's mind, he didn't attribute the woman as a normal human anymore. Maybe she was a sub-human species that was not yet being discovered by the Empire.

...

In the middle of the night, Roland was awakened by a loud siren from the secret room. He fell asleep on his workstation from exhaustion. He quickly ran towards the room to check on the Astral Power Reservoir energy level. The amount was dangerously low! He braced himself and went to a panel beside the reservoir and keyed in the amount of energy to be converted to Astral energy from the country's reservoir.

Pulling the lever resolutely, the whole of Graycastle electrical network except for research facilities and hospitals went on a power outage.

[Something must've happened to Alethea!]

His heart was in pain for not being able to help. He could only supply her with the highest amount of energy Graycastle could provide.

...

A few minutes later, an announcement was made via the Cerebral Connector explaining about the power outrage in Graycastle. Citizens were expected to be patient for three hours before operations will return to normal. At the moment, the professionals of Graycastle were concentrated in Neverwinter Royal Capital, so they knew the power outrage might be due to massive consumption of energy from certain experimentation by the government in Neverwinter. Others were still oblivious to the truth, as they could only sigh for not being able to switch on their air-conditioning. The weather had been very unforgiving and extremely hot. Some were having heatstrokes even after information of heatstroke prevention has been circulated extensively by the pro-government media. Fires occurred at a daily basis at different parts of the empire.

...

Alethea had been travelling back rapidly for almost a year. She knew she could depend on Roland. The astral energy was boosted nearly on the spot after she finished off the metallic bugs from the wheel-like structure before. As she came closer to her home planet, the familiar connection with her custom body got stronger and stronger. It made her felt a great sense of relief.

As she neared the vicinity of the moon of their home planet, she saw a large pile of debris floating in space. Dead persons bearing the familiar military regiment uniforms were floating everywhere.

Alethea was extremely shocked with her findings. She stopped moving to investigate.

[What is going on?! Why are the military personnel here in space? Did the spaceship building project failed? Why are they not rescued?!] Due to her prolonged absence from Neverwinter and the inability to relay messages to each other, she didn't know the empire's current technological progress. However, she did know of the empire's goals of making a fast spaceship in an effort to save everyone from their current predicament.

Within the cluster of shattered spaceship parts, she found four red lights not far from each other, beeping the S.O.S. signal she learnt from Roland during a safety class session a long time ago. When she went near, she found the younger generations of the Witch Union unconscious inside! All of them were inside a shield-like elliptical bubble, seriously injured. However, all of them were inside a nutrient solution and their lives were not in jeopardy.

She gritted her teeth and summoned her mental energy to pull all four ladies with her towards Neverwinter airspace with all her might.

[I need to save them no matter what!]

...