Pandora’s greatest fear had suddenly manifested before her eyes. Terrified, her legs gave out, and her knees hit the ground with a heavy thud. Her small face turned deathly pale, and her pupils dilated in sheer panic.
Wang Yue looked down at her with a cold sneer, clapping her hands slowly. “You’ve certainly had quite a lot of fun these past few days.”
“Y-you saw everything?”
Pandora looked ashen. She slumped onto the floor, looking as though all the bones had been sucked out of her body, leaving her as nothing more than a limp, spineless creature.
“Based on my observations, you emit a strange scent to control others. The condition for activation is intimate contact; it doesn’t seem to work at a distance. Otherwise, I would have fallen under your control long ago.”
Wang Yue did not approach. Instead, she kept her distance, watching the girl with a wary, piercing gaze.
Having her secrets ruthlessly exposed caused Pandora’s internal world to nearly collapse.
“Ah… ah…”
In her extreme terror, she let out a whimpering cry. She turned and began to crawl away, her instincts screaming at her to get as far from Wang Yue as possible. However, the door was blocked; her only hope was to jump out the window.
She hadn’t crawled more than a few steps before a giant hand, manifested through Witchcraft, pinned her to the floor. She was forced into a humiliated dogeza position, her forehead pressed against the tiles.
At this point, words were useless. She could only remain there, prostrate and defeated.
A collar was tossed onto the ground.
It was made of black patent leather, inlaid with a ring of geometrically cut silver tetrahedrons.
“Put it on,” Wang Yue commanded.
Pandora hesitated, but then Delia’s voice rang out from behind her.
“Disobedience won’t do, Pandora. I can testify to every single one of your misdeeds.”
Delia had regained the lively, cheerful disposition she had at the start of the term, yet there was now a deeper, more tranquil aura about her. Being caught in the crossfire between Wang Yue and Pandora had forced her to grow up quickly.
Pandora bit her lip and screwed up her face in frustration, but she had no choice. She picked up the collar and fastened it around her neck.
“Don’t worry, I’m very gentle. This isn’t one of those explosive collars that will blow your head off. It’s simply enchanted with a Rejection Mystic Art. Anyone who comes within a meter of you will be repelled. It’s to prevent you from using your scent to control people. Also, take the crow!”
With a rustle of feathers, a crow landed on the black-haired girl’s shoulder and gave her small ear a sharp nip.
Pandora cried out in pain and began to sob softly.
Though much of it was an act, a genuine sense of impending doom was rising within her. Her situation was even worse now than it had been at the start of the school year. She wasn’t just being monitored; she was being completely isolated.
Pandora knew in her heart that her “Mother” hadn’t refrained from acting until the fragrance dissipated out of mercy. Wang Yue had simply been wary of collateral damage. She wanted to protect the other five girls. Moving forward, given the slightest opportunity, Wang Yue would likely kill her without hesitation.
Despite having neutralized Pandora, Wang Yue didn’t feel much relief. The true enemy was the mysterious figure still hiding within the school.
Furthermore, looking at the long term, an unimaginable natural disaster might be looming in the future. It could happen in ten or twenty years, or it could happen tomorrow—hanging over them like the Sword of Damocles, ready to fall at any moment.
Wang Yue was in the habit of thinking ahead.
Recalling disaster movies she had seen in her previous life, a person’s two legs could never outrun the earth splitting open. When a cataclysm struck, the people in a city were like ants, swept away in an instant.
The only reliable thing was a vehicle. In movies, there were always scenes where shockwaves, sinkholes, and fireballs chased the protagonist’s vehicle, only to be left eating exhaust.
If it were just one or two people escaping a disaster, the Low-Crawler Colin would suffice. But with a large group, it was useless.
Wang Yue’s vision was something akin to Howl’s Moving Castle—a massive, magic-driven, steampunk vehicle with a bionic structure.
Rusted iron components would form the image of a living creature. Accompanied by the creaking of bearings, joints, and armored plates, mechanical pseudopods would gallop forward with fierce bursts of steam.
It would tear through jungles and thickets, scale mountains and traverse mudflats, facing the rising or setting sun with a metallic hide that shimmered with a light both ancient and new.
In the high-level greenhouses, potatoes, vegetables, and fruits would grow. Rainwater would flow through corrugated iron pipes into purifiers, and rows of little girls’ clothes would hang from the laundry lines…
However, designing such a massive vehicle was an incredibly difficult undertaking. It required a professional team, massive research funding, countless experiments, and numerous iterations.
If she just drew a few sketches in a moment of passion and assumed magic would solve every problem, the result would likely be a disaster of engineering—stalling at the factory gate or sinking the moment it left the dock.
Fortunately for Wang Yue, the library contained existing mechanical structures she could reference. Furthermore, the incredible strength and durability of Transcendent Materials increased the margin for error in her design.
Moreover, the Secretary, Delia, was essentially a human calculator. She was the primary reason Wang Yue had put the design of the Mobile Fortress on the agenda.
Now, having been freed from the scent’s control, Delia had become her devoted subordinate.
The Silver Moon Phantasm.
Seeing the thousands of mechanical arms with various functions within the Spire, and the Clockwork Heart that looked like the creation of a god, Delia’s mouth fell open. Her eyes sparkled with shock.
This incredibly complex mechanical marvel completely captured her heart, making her tremble with a surge of excitement.
Ever since she had absorbed the “High-Speed Actuary” skill, anything involving precision, calculation, assembly, measurement, or mechanics—anything related to mathematical computation—piqued her intense interest.
“Senior…”
Delia looked at Wang Yue. After seeing the Phantasm and the workshop, Wang Yue’s image in her mind became even more towering and awe-inspiring.
Wang Yue took a glass of lemon tea from a tray held by a maid puppet and handed it to Delia before taking one for herself.
Then, Wang Yue began to explain the coming doomsday crisis and her vision for the Mobile Fortress.
Delia’s jaw remained dropped. The continuous stream of high-level information gave her a sense of horror and awe. For the first time, she truly felt the disconnect between how ordinary people and Transcendent beings perceived the world.
What made her feel even more deeply honored was that her Senior was telling her everything. Unlike her father, who treated her like a child and ignored her questions about deeper secrets, Wang Yue was treating her as a partner.
Delia felt a warmth in her heart. Feeling valued made her both happy and anxious, her eyes wide and round.
Wang Yue led the tawny-haired girl to a workbench and pointed at a conceptual diagram.
“My plan is to build a mothership fleet. First, we need a flagship that can house about two thousand people. It will carry ‘Sonic Spiders’—single-pilot crafts that can swarm out of the hangar. The middle decks will be the living quarters, with comfortable cabins, activity rooms, swimming pools, as well as plumbing and sewage systems. The upper decks will be the agricultural zones… Next, we need the main warships. I’ll need strategic attack ships with swappable subsystems, amphibious assault ships, and heavy raiders…”
Initially, Delia felt lost in the complexity, but after Wang Yue’s detailed explanation, she began to understand the will driving the design.
This mothership was a Mobile Fortress designed to cope with the frequent earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, and mudslides that would occur before and after the apocalypse. It wasn’t primarily for military conquest.
Therefore, the most important aspects were mobility and the agricultural zones capable of feeding thousands.
“It’s so complex…” Delia murmured, her lips trembling.
“Yes. It’s a monumental task. A design institute of thousands would take years or even decades to complete it. However, with your High-Speed Actuary and the existing structural designs from the library, we can likely build it within a year, perhaps even sooner,” Wang Yue said confidently.
“Just the two of us?” Delia asked, her worry mixed with anticipation.
“For now, just the two of us,” Wang Yue replied with a smile.
Delia nodded vigorously. While the task put immense pressure on her, her body—which had been altered by the Mystic Art—was incredibly excited by the prospect.
Furthermore, at the thought of doing this together with her Senior, the tawny-haired girl felt a powerful surge of expectation. Her chest felt tight with excitement as she let out a series of quick, shaky breaths.
