What Kind of Nonsense Is This?

My head was spinning badly, and my vision was blurry. Aside from pain, he couldn't feel anything anywhere in his body. The only sounds he could make out were a dreadful pounding in his eardrums and even more irritating racket and commotion.

Yet Yu Lian felt a little happy.

After all, his memories had stopped at a moment that hadn't been all that pleasant—He had awoken for some reason, starlike light blazing in his eyes, while a gamma-ray burst capable of tearing apart even a Titan-class battleship erupted from His gaping maw.

With his perception of that power as a high-level psionic and decades of experience traversing the stars, he could say with certainty:

"No hope! I'm dead! See you in the next life!"

But the eternal oblivion he'd expected hadn't come, which was certainly worth popping a bottle of champagne over.

So those two kids managed to pull me out? Smugglers like them actually got this hero out from under the Star Dragon King's jaws. They'll be bragging about that until next century!

Sure! Once I'm recovered, I'll teach you anything you want to learn, and I won't hide a thing you want to know.

"He's done for. We really have to..." a man's voice said urgently.

I take it back. Smugglers are still smugglers!

"Three comrades have already died today, sir!"

Right, that's the kind of integrity a smuggler with ideals and ambition ought to have... Wait, that sounded like a rather young woman. I don't remember any pretty girls on your ship.

The woman's voice was lovely, spirited yet with a hint of sharpness. She was exactly Yu Lian's type, so he was sure she had to be pretty.

"But his power armor is wrecked, and things are like this now... Do you expect us to drag him back one step at a time?" The voice that had been ready to abandon him now sounded more exasperated.

"I didn't think that was a question, sir." The pretty girl—according to Yu Lian—stood her ground.

"Watch your attitude, Sergeant First Class Hilika!"

By now, even Yu Lian, whose head was still spinning and whose intelligence and judgment hadn't recovered to a tenth of their usual level, could tell something was off.

Sir? Sergeant First Class?

He hadn't dealt with the military for at least five or six years. He was also certain that if a proper military organization ever ran into him, they'd either be in mourning or deliriously happy. They wouldn't act like this.

Perhaps desperate to find out what was going on, he felt his eyelids growing a little less heavy and managed to force them open. The first thing he saw was an endless expanse of sandstone, seemingly gilded in gold. The heat made the dust-laden air shimmer along the horizon, distorting his vision. Above it stretched a deep blue sky, with two suns, one blue and one red, hanging there like the eyes of gods.

As the saying went, "A lone wisp of smoke in the desert curls, then rises straight; the setting sun above the long river appears twice, round and bright!"

"Could this be Tatooine... Ugh, that old joke's been around for decades. I'm so lame!" Yu Lian lamented his own bad sense of humor, then realized half a second later that he must be on New Jade Gate, the first colony humanity had developed in the Andromeda Galaxy.

He knew every grain of sand and speck of soil here.

New Jade Gate... It was like a second hometown to him in his second life. But that had been the planet's name before Earth's people lost it.

"We've only been on New Jade Gate for a few years! Don't you understand? We're surrounded by danger ourselves!" shouted the man Hilika had called "sir."

Your conversation sounds like it came from another era! What do you mean, only a few years? Isn't it the year 884 of the Galactic Common Era? Humanity lost this "Andromeda's yellow jade jewel" nearly half a century ago!

Its new owners had long since renamed it the Iron King's Domain—a name with absolutely no taste, just like the Kaitai.

"They're coming!" A third voice rang out, edged with fear.

Yu Lian heard hurried, heavy breathing, the grinding of mechanical joints, the click of rounds being chambered, and the roar of power axes and chainswords. He had to say, all of this felt so out of place that he couldn't feel nervous at all. It was like he was in the middle of some absurd farce.

He pushed himself halfway upright—just that movement alone exhausted him—and quickly assessed his situation.

Yu Lian told himself that no matter how out of place this felt, and no matter how much every bone in his body hurt, he had to get a handle on things immediately. That was a quality every "free knight," seventh-ring psionic, and one of the most notorious wanderers in the universe had to possess.

He was lying on a powered stretcher. Within a ten-meter radius, a dozen armed soldiers were hurriedly forming ranks. They looked utterly exhausted, and some were even trembling, but at least nobody had run away. That counted as commendable courage, more or less. It was just that...

"You're standing too close together, and your firepower isn't arranged in layers. This is early infantry doctrine, from before General Patton's reforms. It's only because this parallel universe took a wrong turn on the tech tree that people have this kind of tactical discipline even in the space age." Yu Lian shook his head with a sigh.

"...Warrant Officer, you're awake?" Yu Lian heard Sergeant First Class Hilika's voice, then saw her face leaning close.

It wasn't realistic to expect a girl wrapped in power armor stained with blood and dust, her face grimy and exhausted, to waft over with a pleasing fragrance. Even so, despite being covered in the dust of the road, she didn't look the least bit disheveled. Beneath her neat, short blond hair was a face with clear, strong features, and a pair of fiery red eyes no ordinary Earthling could have. She was full of life yet sharp and formidable—a truly dashing beauty.

Hilika... Sergeant First Class? Red eyes! Wait, no way...

Yu Lian felt he recognized her, but only from the news and videos.

And she couldn't possibly be this young...

"Don't worry. The soldiers of the Commonwealth never abandon their comrades!" she said with unwavering seriousness. She checked her rifle with precise, meticulous movements.

Commonwealth soldiers... Uh, miss, why are you wearing an AS-40 powered exoskeleton, something only pirates and ga—gangsters still bother using, and holding a C10 kinetic rifle that went out of production almost thirty years ago? Are you filming a period drama?

Yu Lian would have liked to say that, but as a free wanderer who'd roamed most of the universe, he knew this wasn't a performance.

These people really were nervous and afraid, gritting their teeth as they prepared to face something.

"This place is too open! We can't afford to get bogged down here, Lieutenant Mondsen!" The man who'd first wanted to leave Yu Lian behind was still chattering, though now he was talking to a middle-aged man wearing the same old model of powered exoskeleton.

Lieutenant Mondsen seemed to hesitate for a moment, but he gritted his teeth and said, "We'll crush them here! Get back to your position, ensign!"

His tone was firm, though he sounded a little too firm, as if he were forcing it.

The two officers stopped arguing—not because the ensign wanted to keep quiet, but because the billowing cloud of dust in their line of sight was drawing closer and closer. It was near enough that they could smell its stench.

They also failed to notice that Yu Lian had already looked them over.

The insignia on their shoulder plates had orange backgrounds. That meant they belonged to the garrison forces stationed on an extragalactic colony—lower even than the "Space Marine gorillas." In common parlance, they were "garrison cannon fodder," naturally at the very bottom of the military's pecking order.

Their rank insignia were silver swallow patterns, one with a star and one without. Sure enough, one was a lieutenant and the other an ensign.

As for the sergeant major beside them, her insignia was a thick copper-red bar crossed with two swords. She really was a sergeant first class.

These were indeed the Commonwealth military's rank insignia. But hadn't that doomed nation already...? Yu Lian looked at the stern-faced sergeant, especially lingering over her handsome, spirited face, and began to guess what was going on.

What was this? A second playthrough?

"Open fire!" Lieutenant Mondsen roared.

The kinetic rifles in a dozen hands glimmered with electromagnetic light. With a muffled roar, they sent more than a hundred steel spikes into the cloud of dust. Immediately, amid shrill, savage howls and the flying severed limbs of creatures that looked part insect and part beast, a thicker stench of blood and gore congealed into a nauseating fog and surged toward them even more furiously.

Clearly, the kinetic rifles' barrage wasn't enough to make them retreat.

"What the hell are those things?" a Black sergeant cursed through clenched teeth.

A stockier staff sergeant beside him ground his teeth in silence. He kept firing his rifle with one hand while his other rested on the power axe at his waist. He was the biggest and strongest person in the squad. Though he wore no powered exoskeleton, he was clearly taller than both the sergeant and the obnoxious ensign.

Even so, the hulking man looked visibly nervous. He seemed strong enough to throttle a bear with one hand.

If they were truly natural beasts, they wouldn't charge to their deaths through a hail of gunfire. The fact that they defied everyone's common sense meant the situation was unknown, and that naturally brought fear.

"Yow! Roar!" Strange monsters resembling oversized hyenas, with insectlike hooked claws jutting from their flanks, burst out of the dust, their vicious faces full of murderous intent. At a glance, there seemed to be more than a hundred, and who knew how many more were hidden by the dust.

Mixed in with those oversized "hyenas" were large, upright, armored "cobras" that shot up to more than two meters tall, brandishing scythelike claws.

They really were terrifying. They looked like emotionless predators, and they traveled in packs far larger than any carnivore should. Yu Lian couldn't even guess what good their thick shells, tough enough to withstand bullets, were supposed to be.

Everyone was terrified, gritting their teeth and holding on. But Yu Lian felt only humiliation—so much humiliation that he was almost embarrassingly close to tears.

Help me up! Bring me my atomic light spear, my Hurricane blaster, and my Dawn Sword! I was the one who fought the Ether Dragon for three hundred rounds, if nothing else! I've even beaten up your queen more than once!

And now I've got a bunch of low-level zerglings and hydralisks all over me? What kind of nonsense is this?