Alien Workers

(This chapter is free)

At midnight, the Empire Commanders from their distant home planet finally entered the final stage of their long spatial warp. Next came Pandora's task: she would become a Void Beacon, guiding those 300 commanders through their final spatial calibration, lest some unlucky Empire Officer end up having to crawl out of a resident's toilet.

Having fully switched into information-processing mode, Pandora's hair had turned a crystal-like ice blue, and a faint deep-blue glow gradually emerged around her body. From afar, she looked like a blue elf standing silently beneath the night sky. The dreamlike beauty of it made even the moon above seem dim by comparison. Watching from a distance, I found myself unknowingly lost in that dazzling curtain of light.

As the Warp Tunnel's opening drew near, the blue light around Pandora grew brighter and brighter. Gradually, her entire body became a brilliant source of light, the faint blue radiance illuminating dozens of meters around her.

"This would be so convenient for traveling at night," I sighed.

I stared fixedly in Pandora's direction, afraid of missing this unprecedented sight. At last, several faint black silhouettes gradually appeared around Pandora.

Were these the 300 commanders?

More than ten seconds later, the black shadows gradually became more solid, and the figures closest to Pandora had begun to reveal vague facial features.

"They're here!" I called out softly.

"Brother," Pandora's calm voice drifted over, "don't stare at a strong light source for too long. You'll start hallucinating..."

Ahem. So that was why those shadows had started looking more and more like Pandora.

I smiled awkwardly and turned away, no longer looking at Pandora, who had become an unidentified glowing object.

"Say, Pandora, it's been almost ten minutes, right? Why haven't they arrived yet?"

Pandora did not answer me. She merely continued concentrating on guiding those 300 people whose shadows had not even appeared yet.

"They're here." Pandora's voice suddenly rang out, jolting me back from my wandering thoughts.

As Pandora's words fell, colorful aurora-like curtains of light gradually appeared in the surrounding air, and figures emerged from them one after another.

Were these the Empire Commanders?

The people who emerged from the light curtains were only translucent black phantoms, like ghosts. They bowed to me from afar, then stood where they were. Gradually, their bodies began to solidify.

More than ten minutes later, I was surrounded by Empire Commanders wearing Silver White alloy light armor. Three hundred people—not too many, not too few—stood in neat ranks before me, suddenly giving me the feeling that an army of thousands was entirely in my hands.

The technology was truly terrifying. With it, all it took was sending one person behind enemy lines to transport an entire army straight into the enemy's headquarters. I could only secretly rejoice: luckily, I wasn't a war maniac. If Hitler had awakened this Empire... that thought was simply too disturbing...

Pandora had already returned to normal. She quietly walked over to my side, and a wave of heat blew toward me. Curious, I turned my head and saw the clothes on Pandora's body fluttering continuously in the hot wind—so she was venting heat?

After staring at the Empire Commanders for about five minutes, I awkwardly said to Pandora, who was still noisily venting heat beside me, "Um, Pandora, shouldn't you say something to them first? I don't know how to start..."

Pandora nodded and calmly stepped forward a few paces. In an instant, I felt as though the little girl beside me had become a different person. A pressure I had never experienced before spread outward from Pandora, and that bearing—something that should never have belonged to a little girl—made my heart tremble.

Only then did I truly realize that Pandora was a general.

The quiet girl stepped forward and raised her right hand high.

The Empire Officers before her tensed their bodies.

"For the Empire!" Pandora suddenly shouted, her childish voice carrying an ironclad, unquestionable force.

What?

"For the Empire!" The Empire Officers' roar shook the heavens!

Hey!

"Freedom is Power!" Pandora had completely transformed into a Hot Blood Loli.

"Freedom is Power!"

Hey, hey, hey! That wasn't what I wanted you to say!

"This world shall become the Empire's new frontier... mmph..."

Several hundred commanders watched expressionlessly as their Hot Blood general was gagged and dragged away by a man who sprang out from the side, yet they still shouted in perfect unison, "This world shall become the Empire's new frontier... mmph..."

Hey, hey, hey, I was covering Pandora's mouth, wasn't I? Why were you adding the "mmph"? Were you deliberately causing trouble?

"Ahem—everyone, listen up." I cleared my throat a few times and stepped forward. "First, let me introduce myself. My name is Chen Jun. You should already know my identity—your current leader. First of all, I'm very glad that everyone came all this way. Comrades, you've had a hard journey!"

A cold wind blew past...

The facts proved that I really wasn't suited to formal speaking occasions like this.

"Looks like everyone is very serious... then I'll keep it brief. First, regarding this world!" My voice suddenly rose. "This world is not the Empire's front line. Although there are conflicts here, peace is still the main theme of this world. I don't want you arriving as conquerors, and I especially don't want you disturbing this world's tranquility. You may stay here, but if anyone dares cause trouble—that is defying my will, and defying the Empire!"

Pandora had told me this: the best way to make Shilin Apostles obey was to use the Empire's laws to suppress them.

A blue light flashed through hundreds of pairs of eyes at once—proof that they had recorded my words as the highest-priority long-term command in their thought circuits.

I had to say, it felt really great to lecture several hundred Empire Commanders so righteously!

At that moment, Pandora suddenly tugged at the corner of my clothes and whispered, "Brother, one's missing."

"What's missing?" I did not react for a moment.

"There are only 299 people here," Pandora said. "One commander of the Mind Assault Unit is missing."

"Missing? Did something go wrong during the spatial warp?"

"No—all units that underwent spatial warp have reached their destination. I'll expand the search channel—" Pandora suddenly paused, as if she had discovered something utterly unbelievable. Her expression turned strange as she said, "Found him..."

Completely baffled, I watched Pandora walk beneath a large tree nearby, focus herself, and then throw a punch at the trunk!

A flash of red light passed, and the thick tree trunk exploded into scattered ashes.

A young man in Silver White light armor with a long, narrow face fell to the ground.

Pandora lightly kicked the man lying on the ground, confirming that he was completely unconscious. Then she turned back to the other commanders waiting for orders and said, "Look, this is what happens when you forget to activate public navigation during a warp."

I wiped the cold sweat from my forehead. "What happened?"

"This idiot forgot to activate public navigation near the end of the warp, so he got transported into the tree trunk. About half his stomach should be wood fibers now. He was lucky. If the spatial interference effect had gone a little more wrong, his entire body might have fused with the trunk."

Heh... hehehe... I hadn't expected such amusing people among the Shilin Apostles. It seemed they were not all cold and emotionless like Pandora.

Besides, the Shilin Apostles' vitality was truly formidable. He had not even died from that...

"What do we do now? He'll be okay, right?"

"He'll be fine. Just find someone careful to pick him clean," Pandora said casually.

Sure enough, I really could not treat these people like normal humans.

Just as I was still marveling at the Shilin Apostles' formidable life force, a tall, bearded middle-aged man walked up to me, snapped to attention with a smack, then heavily struck his left chest with his right fist—apparently that was their military salute?

"Reporting to the Emperor: the Pandora Heavy Armored Legion has completed assembly. Keaos, commander of the Fourth Mind Assault Unit, failed to report. The remaining 299 await orders. Please issue your command!"

Mm, very good. This really felt satisfying!

Pandora also turned her gaze toward me. Though I could not read any emotion from those blank eyes, I could still sense that she cared greatly about how I planned to arrange these 300 people. After all, based on her analysis of my financial situation, the only ways to feed 300 people were robbing banks or printing counterfeit money...

My gaze slowly swept across the perfectly ordered 300, and then I suddenly revealed a brilliant smile.

"Starting tomorrow," I said with a grand wave of my hand, "you'll all go get jobs for me!"