Milia, Upload, Departure!

The Research Center had always been the busiest place in the base. A chief scientist who wished she could place her Mass Projection in every laboratory throughout the Empire, together with a group of equally passionate and crazy researchers, had formed an "army" that was no less formidable than the Pandora Legion in a certain sense. Every time I visited their labs, I always felt as though I had stepped onto a battlefield. The atmosphere around me was as fiery as the Earth's core.

I found Tawell's Mass Projection in the BPS dismantling area. She was overseeing the container-opening test here. This was already the seventh attempt; the previous six had all ended in failure. As a result, every researcher present wore a somewhat grave and troubled expression.

The container that had drawn everyone's attention floated calmly on an antigravity platform more than three meters in radius, surrounded by two layers of high-intensity Psionic Shields.

"It has self-destruct devices in both its inner chamber and outer shell. We still can't determine the activation conditions. It seems to have several different activation modes. The first time we tried to remove the outer lock, we nearly blew it to ashes."

Tawell pointed at the black metal box floating in midair. Since she was currently a Mass Projection, her voice carried a faint metallic tremor. I noticed that despite the repeated failures, Tawell did not seem especially frustrated. She showed no resentment toward the metal box that had caused her so much trouble. I had to admire her temperament, though on second thought, that might have had something to do with the fact that the container looked so much like a coffin...

"We are currently trying to bypass its outer lock." Tawell paused and brought up a schematic. In the image, the target