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AFS 2: Strange Flame Strangeness - Part 9 - Attack of the Gray Alien Space Crab
🕑 Added 2025-03-30 18:10:46 +0000 UTCPart 9
She grabbed my arm. “What? No! You have to save him! I... He’s...”
I patted her hand. “Relax. I was joking.”
Her mouth opened. She looked so mad. It was ridiculously hard to stop myself from laughing.
“He’s better than fine. His physical rank is just improving from 3S to 4S. What he’s experiencing is just growing pains.”
She pointed to the glowing man on the ground. “That does not look like growing pains!”
I crossed my arms. “How would you know? Have you ever seen someone reach 4S-rank?”
She opened her mouth but couldn’t reply.
“That’s what I thought.”
Chad stopped glowing and writhing around. Even his wound had healed without a trace.
“See, all better.”
Of course, he still hadn’t woken up yet.
Liu YaoYao bent down and pressed her hand to his neck. Then she sighed with relief.
A loud, throaty screech sounded throughout the jungle.
I spread my divine sense out. A disgusting bipedal space crab limped toward us on half-formed crab-like legs like it wanted revenge. It had probably sensed Chad’s energy as he upgraded. I also sensed a few other things out in the jungle that might cause us problems later, but they seemed to run from the area on instinct.
Damn it. After doing some quick calculations, I turned to YaoYao. “Can you pilot your mech?”
“Technically, I can. I’d prepared to take over after Chad was injured.”
I grabbed her shoulder. “Good. It’s time for you to realize your strength as the protagonist... of your own life.”
“That was a very strange place to pause.”
“I pause in strange places. Don’t worry about it.”
“Fine. Wait, shouldn’t you be piloting?”
Of course I should! But if she didn’t pilot the mech now, she wouldn’t discover her aptitude for it, nor the fact that she had an SSS physique suited for piloting.
Spring rushed over with the two spy bots. He likely heard the crab’s roar.
“Fairy Lin, did you hear that?”
“I did. I need you both to buy me time while I use my ultimate move.”
She frowned. “What could you even do outside of a mech? You’ll be in danger.”
“You mean the pineapple and puppies thing?”
I pointed my finger at Spring. “We don’t talk about that!”
“I don’t know why you’re so embarrassed. That was a powerful spell.”
“Shut up! And no. I’m never using that again. Because this time, I came prepared.”
I pulled out a majestic blue-steel sword from my space button that I had forged while I wasn’t researching alchemy. This era was blessed with high quality spiritual metals, so I easily crafted a blade at the peak of heaven rank. It glittered with blue spiritual energy. Everyone’s eyes seemed to lock onto it as if they sensed the power within.
“I just need you both to lure it to the clearing over there and keep it near stationary for ten seconds.” I pointed to an area of forest about thirty meters away. It had been decimated by a recent fight and was clear of trees and grasses with a steep hill next to it.
YaoYao’s eyes grew wide. “Ah, you can’t mean to face it while being outside of a mech, right?”
“I’ll do it,” Spring said.
She grabbed his elbow. “She can’t be serious, right?”
“Just trust her. Fairy Lin has methods we can’t even imagine.”
Damn straight.
He threw the unconscious Chad over his shoulder, then jumped with him up to the prince’s cockpit and strapped him into the mech engineer seat.
I rested my blade against my shoulder like a gangster. “Hey, I’m not happy about this either. This was my one chance to fight a space crab in a mech during this challenge, but I have to be out here to kill it off all by myself.”
YaoYao looked at me like I’d said something offensive.“...”
Spring jumped back down. “...”
What? What did I say? Was I wrong? Whatever.
“Snap to it people! It will be here in two minutes, but we need it over there.”
The two siblings glanced at each other, then rushed toward their mechs. Ah, they were kind of adorable, almost like dragon and phoenix twins.
As their cockpits closed and the mechs booted up a fog began rolling in. Then, as if the two were linked physically, they began to run while in sync toward the bipedal space crab.
***
I dashed toward the hill next to the clearing I pointed at. Even in SciFi stories, the ones with the high ground always won. And the losers lost a limb or four.
As I traveled, I followed their progress with my divine sense. Actually, I hoped the two could take care of the space crab by themselves. Unfortunately, this was a female lead interstellar story, which meant that there was only around a 60% chance that she would take care of the big bad instead of her male partner. Though that chance certainly increased the longer her future significant other stayed unconscious.
As I passed a massive tree, a large alien panther-like black lizard thing jumped out of a hole in the ground. Damn it! I must have missed it.
It stared at me with its large blue eyes.
I froze. Fuck. In my past life, spiritual beasts despised my fucking guts. I expected this life wouldn’t be any different.
Except it just blinked at me and ran off.
Holy shit! It didn’t hate me on sight! It was like whatever had prevented me from being accepted by this world had vanished with the completion of the original Xianxia story, Devouring the Heavens.
Either that or, since these were alien beasts, they didn’t count.
So here was the question: had my time finally come?! Could I actually pet a giant lizard kitty without it trying to eat my face?
No, focus. I had other things I needed to do. Researching alien beast taming could come later!
I quickly reached the clearing and jumped up the steep hill that was almost a cliff. When I reached a hidden area between two massive trees I stopped and turned toward the clearing. All I could do now was wait and watch everything come together or not.
In the distance, Spring and YaoYao’s mech guided the classic-gray-alien-looking space crab toward the clearing while dodging short blasts of purplish-blue energy from its hands. Its legs appeared half-formed and crab-like as if it had been severely injured before and regrew them in their most basic crab leg form. Despite that, it was keeping up with YaoYao’s mech.
Since she didn’t have my enchantment, her mech was slow and made a tantalizing target. Spring, however, was practically running circles around the alien crab. He took shots at its hands, forcing it to keep wasting its energy in missed blasts.
It was a good thing they reached the clearing, but unfortunately, the siblings were too slow.
A swarm of flying armored star crabs that heard the bipedal crab’s call for help swooped down on the clearing. If we didn’t do anything to thin them out, we’d be in big trouble. Which was why I wanted us to come to this particular clearing.
Two blue mechs crashed through the jungle and entered the clearing. Maya had come with her partner to get her flag back, and she just happened to run into the swarm with us.
But that wasn’t all.
A red and white circular shield flew out of the treeline and bashed into the back of the alien crab’s head, preventing it from charging its long blast. James Gu’s red mech ran forward and caught the shield his engineer must have put together over the past day and used it to bash through the head of another flying crab.
Wait. Did the author of the original novel just blatantly steal from my home country’s favorite fictional captain? Yeah, I wasn’t even surprised. She was a much better writer than her brother, but if I considered her brother’s shitty writing quality, that wasn’t hard to do.
His partner mech followed behind him, holding two rifles and picking off the flying crabs that threatened James’ blind spots.
There was a tacit agreement between the challengers that their first priority was always to take out the invaders first. Everyone there understood the assignment.
The small clearing became a battlefield of mechs, star crabs, and spy bots. And speaking of those little drones, Steve found me right away. He almost bumped into me. I scowled at him. “Hey, get farther back if you don’t want to die.” It spun around and flew high into the air. Another four flying crabs flew down at lightning speed, crashing into Steve and breaking him apart.
“...” Damn it. I pointed my sword at the one with a red dot on its head. “You killed Steve! You bastard!” I sent a Thousand Cuts towards where its wings would be. Once my blades of energy collided with it, the delicate looking fly-like wings broke off, causing the crab to plummet to the jungle and splat into a boulder.
Poor Steve. He will be missed. Maybe I could play a rock eulogy for him once we survived this hell. Or would an electronica one be more apt? Whatever. The important part was that we had to mourn the dead later.
Author’s Note:
Poor Steve. He will be missed.
Comments
Pinpenny the great lithian
I can't believe those evil crabs killed Kenn- Steve!
Meredith
Jeez the whiplash from the previous chapter’s cliffhanger. Whew. Onto reading the rest of this chapter. (Thank you for this short story, author!!!)
Lola
Steve, no!!!
