Everyone thought that Merciless would be boarding their starship, but in reality that wasn’t the case. Maybe it was just habitual alertness, but Yin Wushe’s spaceplane had stopped after coming within tens of kilometers of the Eleventh Squad’s starship.
Meanwhile, Yin Wushe was still conversing with Cillin, “Let’s have a fight. If you win, then I’ll give you a useful intel.”
“What intel are we talking about, exactly?” Cillin asked.
“Vanguard, of course. Do I look like the type to speak nonsense?”
Behind Yin Wushe, everyone curled their lips at the exact same moment. Yes, actually. If only you would talk less nonsense all the time.
“Okay. How do you want to do this?” Cillin asked.
“Hmm…” Yin Wushe observed the space outside his spaceplane for a moment, “Two members each, space battle.”
“A fighter duel, then?”
“What? Of course not. This is gonna be a good ol’ love-making session.”
Cillin: “…”
Once again, everyone on Merciless’ side was facepalming in shame and humiliation. In the end, Judy was the one who spoke up, “Boss, they won’t understand our internal language.”
There was no way to tell if Yin Wushe’s look of realization was genuine or not. In any case, he explained, “That’s what we call hand-to-hand combat in our organization. In this case, it means fighting in space wearing protective suits only.”
Cillin asked again, “The location?”
The middle-aged man made a hand gesture, and an image appeared on Cillin’s screen. It was the space between their spaceships. “You see this asteroid belt here? It’s close enough, the battlefield looks good, and there are no risk of electromagnetic storm. It’s perfect.”
“You haven’t told us what you want if we lose,” said Eudy with worry in his tone. As the vice commander of the Eleventh Squadron, Eury had spent a good amount of time looking into Merciless. That was why he felt far more worry than Cary and the others. No matter what the outcome of this duel was, it wouldn’t change the fact that they had come under Merciless’ attention.
“What happens if you lose? Hmm, the energy ores you dug up a while ago looks pretty good. How about twenty percent of what you have?” Yin Wushe said.
Eudy looked at Cillin. “Commander?”
“We accept. How many rounds are we fighting though? One? Three?” Cillin asked.
“One is enough. Any more than that is just a waste of time.”
“Will you be fighting?”
“Of course not. Why would I get involved in a children’s game?”
A children’s game, he says…
It was an annoying way of putting things, but Eudy supposed it made sense coming from a legend like Yin Wushe. If anything, their squadron should be handle anything Yin Wushe could throw at them except himself… or so he hoped.
Yin Wushe gave them ten minutes to choose their combatant.
“So, who are we sending?” Mo Heng asked.
It was impossible for the old man not to worry about this. Who would’ve thought they would run into Merciless on their way home, not to mention that they had just wrapped up a battle a while ago. It was one thing if he knew nothing about them, but Mo Heng was more than aware of infamous killer organization thanks to his son. A Hunter’s life sure wasn’t an easy one.
“I’ll go.”
“What? You sure?” Cillin’s decision wasn’t unexpected, but Mo Heng couldn’t help but worry anyway. It wasn’t like the Eleventh Squad was lacking in capable combatants, and what if something happened to Cillin? The opponent was the Merciless after all.
Logically speaking, Mo Heng knew that Cillin was one of, if not the strongest combatants on their ship. He just didn’t want to risk any harm befalling the boy.
“Don’t worry. I know what to do.”
“You say that every time, and every time you left me feeling like I’m about to have a heart attack!”
Mo Heng threw his hands helplessly before taking a seat.
“Who’s our second combatant?” Eduy asked.
Cillin looked outside the door and called out, “Wheeze. It’s time!”
“Okay—”
The gray cat had been waiting outside the door a while ago. It flew into the bridge the second it heard Cillin’s call.
What could Mo Heng even say to the man-and-cat duo? Cillin was as stubborn as he was, and the cat? Forget it.
Ten minutes later, the screen lit up once more. Yin Wushe asked, “So? Are you ready?”
“Yeah. We can begin anytime,” Cillin replied.
“Good. Let’s begin immediately then.”
The second Yin Wushe said this, the hatch of his spaceplane opened. Two people flew out from the airlock.
Cillin did not recognize either combatant because they were clad in protective armor. It was no ordinary protective armor either; Cillin had a feeling that it was built by Merciless themselves. It was a space cameo suit equipped with a lot of propellors and acceleration equipment, but not so much that one would call it bloated. While it was not as light and easy to move in as Xi Mu’s armor was, the differences were pretty miniscule. Also, the duo seemed used to fighting in space in that type of equipment.
“Let’s go.” Cillin patted Wheeze before heading toward the airlock.
Cillin’s decision seemed rushed on the surface, but it definitely wasn’t made out of haste. Although he hadn’t had much contact with Yin Wushe at all, he had acquired much info from Shi Huajing and Lung. Mo Heng had also told him what he knew about the legend as well.
Since Yin Wushe had been lying in wait for them, it meant they were well prepared. The duel request was less of a request and more of a notice they couldn’t even reject if they tried. In that case, he could only meet it head on. Cillin had also brainstormed a number of responsive measures with Eudy. He was confident that his vice commander wouldn’t disappoint him in case the unthinkable happened.
Of course, Czedow and the rest of this non-human crew were ready as well. They would take action if Cillin gave them the signal. Worse comes to worst, they had an army of robots capable of space combat that they could deploy.
Wheeze transformed into its cyborg form in front of the hatch. There wasn’t a time it didn’t feel like a super badass while transforming. Man, I’m so meowing cool.
It flapped its wings and looked back at Cillin. “Hop on!”
The hatch opened, and Cillin jumped onto Wheeze’s back. He grabbed its folded ears while they shot out of the starship.
As mentioned earlier, the battlefield was set on the asteroid a short distance away from their starship. The fat cat flew until they reached an asteroid and landed. Merciless’ two combatants were already waiting for them on the asteroid right next to theirs.
In Merciless’ bridge, everyone was staring at the big monitor at the center.
“He really did show up with his cat,” Judy said.
They were just discussing if Cillin would attend the battle with Czedow or his strange cat. During their investigation, they had obtained a footage of the gray cat transforming into a cyborg and flying in space. After the duel was decided, they even had a bet on who Cillin would attend the battlefield with. Yin Wushe had bet on the gray cat, while Silver, Stola and Judy had bet on Czedow. They had personally experienced his strength after all.
Unfortunately, their boss had won the bet this time.
“I gotta say though, I would be pretty proud if I had a cat as cool-looking as it. It’s the mythical half-cyborg lifeform, right?” Judy asked.
“Yep. It’s nothing like those failures the scientists tried to create in their labs either. This half-cyborg is extremely stable,” Yin Wushe said. He then looked at the small creature nibbling away at a small cup of ice cream on the table and asked, “What do you think?”
The small creature looked like a rat, but it had an extremely long and fluffy tail. Its eyes were big and bright, and it was eating the cup of ice cream with a spoon small enough to fits its tiny paws.
When it heard Yin Wushe’s question, it looked up while wiping away the cream on its whiskers. “Yep.” It went right back to its ice cream after the short reply.
Yin Wushe’s gaze turned back to the screen. This wasn’t the first time they had seen the cat, but it had never displayed its cyborg form until now. If it had, it would’ve drawn countless attention a long time ago. Cillin sure knows how to keep his cat’s abilities hidden!
Back on the asteroid belt, Cillin made a pause gesture from Wheeze’s back as the two combatants got ready to make their move. He then asked, “Is there any weapons restriction?”
The two combatants stopped in their tracks but said nothing. A while later, Yin Wushe gave his reply, “Please don’t use that extremely flamboyant, lightning-shooting cannon of yours. We don’t have anything like that.”
Long story short, everything else besides that was a go.
Cillin jumped off Wheeze’s back and allowed his armor to attract him to the asteroid’s surface like he was on land. While he was doing so, his opponents jumped away from the other asteroid and landed on theirs. Thanks to the acceleration provided by their protective armor, they landed a few meters away from Cillin’s location in just the blink of an eye.
“Are you ready?” One of them asked. Their voice was modulated so that it was impossible to tell their age or gender. Their inflection was also perfectly even and betrayed no emotion whatsoever.
“I’m surprised. Do you always fire a starting pistol before assassinating your targets?”
His opponents moved right after Cillin was done talking. They had waited for Cillin to get ready out of respect. As Yin Wushe put it, this was just a match, not an actual assassination.
Cillin held out his hand and summoned his blade. The one and only. He hadn’t planned on hiding this because he was sure that a man of Yin Wushe’s caliber would’ve found out about the truth; at least some facets of it. Even if he couldn’t be certain, he wouldn’t have come to Cillin if he hadn’t suspected something.
His opponent blurred. The clash of blades was so swift that there was only a brief, instantaneous flash of light before it faded to nothing. The same thing was happening on the other side of the asteroid.
Everyone thought that Wheeze would give its opponent a taste of its rip and tear in its cyborg form, but to everyone’s surprise, it did not. Not only that, it transformed back into its biological form as its opponent swung their thorny whip at him.
Everyone in the Eleventh Squad was surprised by this. Wheeze itself had proclaimed that this was the form that best fit its “astounding” qualities, and it had transformed into its cyborg form before the battle had begun. So why had it turned back to a fat cat?
In the spaceplane, Yin Wushe was digging away at a new cup of ice cream when Wheeze’s unexpected action caused him to pause for an instant. He then broke into a grin and said, “Oh, piglet, that boy is so cunning, isn’t he? How is he so good at hiding his abilities?”
Everyone wanted to see Wheeze fight in his cyborg form, which was why Cillin had specifically instructed it to turn back right the second the battle began. He was certain that Wheeze was fast enough to avoid taking any damage. He was also certain that it could run rings around the entire asteroid without getting caught.
There was one question that puzzled Cillin: why did Yin Wushe want to drive Wheeze into the open? From the start, he knew that Yin Wushe hadn’t arranged this so-called space battle to observe the Eleventh Squad’s combat capabilities. He just wanted to see Wheeze.
It was when he saw Yin Wushe picking up another cup of ice cream did he recall something. Shu Huajing had once told him that someone in Merciless was extremely interested in half-cyborgs…