A Successful Infiltration Requires Thorough Reconnaissance and Investigation / Kanna Goes on a Field Mission!

Fortunately, after causing trouble last time, Kanna stopped stirring things up to avoid drawing too much attention and ruining her plan to sneak into Outcast's convoy. But to avoid seeming suspiciously low-key, she came up with a plan to "sacrifice her precious sleep for Rhodes Island's cleanliness."

Relying on her excellent physical condition and boundless energy,

she wandered all over Rhodes Island every day.

Luckily, everyone aboard had heard of the hatchling's "glorious deeds." After all, reading a self-criticism over the shipwide broadcast was unprecedented since Rhodes Island's founding.

So whenever people saw her, they greeted her with smiles. Those more familiar with her would even feed her snacks.

Closure even reported to Kal'tsit that since the little dragon joined Rhodes Island, snack sales had risen by thirty percent. It was clear that the little dragon was becoming increasingly skilled at scamming food and drinks.

That day, Kanna was swaggering through the corridors with a broom over her shoulder as usual when she spotted the fully armed members of A1 Squad chatting not far away.

She scampered over to them.

"Hi! Fen, Closure, Meteor, Pheobe, Ifrit, are you heading out on a mission?"

Watching Kanna run over on her short little legs, Fen gently tapped her forehead and said with a hint of excitement,

"Yeah. I heard Elite Operator LOGOS found something in Leithanien. Instructor Misery has already led a team there to provide support, and our Reserve Action Group A1 has also received orders to head to Leithanien as a reserve and logistics support squad."

Kanna froze for a moment after hearing Fen's words. Leithanien, A1 Squad... wasn't this the incident where that silly dog cost someone two hundred pulls to get onto the island?

Thinking about it, she finally understood why Eyjafjalla had attacked A1 Squad in the story while exhausted and starving. They were responsible for logistics, so they must have brought plenty of food.

Given Eyjafjalla's simple-minded personality, faced with a huge pile of food while starving, she naturally would not care whether anyone was standing nearby.

Just as A1 Squad finished organizing their equipment and prepared to leave, Kanna grabbed Fen's hand. "If you run into a dog who looks like she isn't very smart, don't fight her. You just need food to trick her into submission. Whatever you do, don't try to take her head-on."

???

Fen stared at Kanna blankly, having no idea what she was talking about.

"You don't need to understand. You'll know when the time comes. And remember to bring her back!" Seeing Fen hesitate, Kanna put a finger to her lips and gave a soft shush. Then, wearing the expression of a mysterious prophet, she turned around and vanished from Fen's sight with a series of "tap tap tap!"

After returning to the group, the others asked Fen what Kanna had told her, but she shook her head. Kanna had been so vague, and combined with her thoroughly unreliable appearance, Fen naturally did not repeat Kanna's riddle to the others.

As Kanna walked away, she began to worry. Once Eyjafjalla arrived, along with herself, who was "not very good at eating," Rhodes Island would probably be facing a severe food shortage.

But she quickly tossed that concern aside because she spotted someone she knew.

It was a girl she had met during Rhodes Island's recent major cleaning operation. At the time, the girl had lost control and blasted an entire pane of glass to pieces. Kanna happened to be passing by and, hearing the noise, scampered over.

After discovering the girl had lost control, Kanna effortlessly pinned her to the ground until she regained control.

When Kal'tsit and the medical staff arrived after receiving the report, all they saw was Kanna kneeling on the floor and Popukar "enjoying" a lap pillow.

After learning that Kanna could easily restrain her, Popukar became Kanna's little follower. The two wandered all over Rhodes Island together, and whenever Popukar had a mental episode, Kanna keenly noticed it and restrained her before she could cause further damage.

Kal'tsit happened to be quite pleased with this arrangement. Letting the two little ones restrain and help each other saved her quite a bit of trouble.

After seeing Popukar, Kanna quietly approached and lightly patted her shoulder.

By the time Popukar turned around, Kanna had already gone around behind her.

Seeing nothing, Popukar turned back in confusion, only to find Kanna standing in front of her with a cheerful grin.

"Ah! Kanna!" Popukar was startled at first, but once she realized it was Kanna, she happily hugged her.

Mm, her control still needed improvement.

Feeling the Super Strength that was enough to choke an adult man unconscious, Kanna could not help nodding.

This was already a considerable improvement from before.

Although Popukar possessed Super Strength completely disproportionate to her size, she lacked the control to match it. Combined with the occasional loss of control caused by her Originium infection, she had almost no friends her own age on Rhodes Island.

So when Popukar learned Kanna could suppress her, she decided Kanna was one of her own kind. She also treasured their friendship deeply, giving Kanna a hug powerful enough to kill any lolicon every time they met.

However, after learning alongside Kanna, Popukar's control over her strength steadily improved. Her strength only slipped out of control when she was excited; ordinarily, she had almost stopped damaging items around Rhodes Island through accidents.

For that, her current teammates—the other members of Reserve Action Group A6—were all very grateful to Kanna.

Especially a certain dog. Although the two little ones often squeezed his hand and curiously asked why it was so different from everyone else's, he never got angry over it. Instead, he happily fooled the two little ones.

A successful infiltration depended on thorough reconnaissance and investigation beforehand.

Inside Rhodes Island's medical room, Warfarin was unusually focused on a screen, repeatedly dragging the progress bar back and forth.

"You're still watching that?"

"Why wouldn't I? She fell from that high up, and look—the footage caught by the surveillance camera clearly shows that the back of her head hit the ground first. And then? She got back up in less than a second, and she didn't look injured at all afterward. I went to check where she landed, and there's still a small dent there.

Kal'tsit, I think I've figured out what Kanna is. With your knowledge, there's no way you don't know. Are you sure it's safe to keep something like that aboard the ship? Are you sure that if Kanna really loses control, you can guarantee Rhodes Island's safety?"

"Sorry, I can't. But you should also understand that if we can make her truly like Rhodes Island, then I can guarantee Rhodes Island will become one of the safest landships on this land. Risks and rewards coexist. Since she bears us goodwill, I believe the benefits of accepting Kanna far outweigh the risks we need to take."

Kal'tsit did not get angry after hearing Warfarin's rebuke, because Warfarin truly cared about Rhodes Island. She believed Rhodes Island could bring new hope to the Infected, which was why she was upset that Kal'tsit had accepted a creature so difficult to "control."

"All right. I hope you're right." Warfarin sighed and stood up.

"I just checked, and we have a significant shortage of medical equipment. We need to urgently purchase a batch."

"Yes, I know. We already contacted Rhine Lab. Blacksteel International will transport a batch of medical supplies from Rhine Lab aboard later."

After their brief dispute, the two began discussing and researching future operations again.

Elsewhere, after Kanna and Popukar rounded a corner, they found an Operator lying beside the corridor.

Thinking the person was suffering an Originium infection episode or had been attacked, the two hurried over, only to discover that she was simply asleep.

Popukar recognized her as the caster Durin from Action Group A4.

Unlike the Reserve Action Groups, Durin was a genuine full Operator as a member of an Action Group.

After Popukar reminded her, Kanna remembered. Durin was indeed one of Rhodes Island's "founding veterans" and a frequent face in public recruitment—a nuisance. The four members of A4 were established as full Operators, yet all of them were only two-stars in the game. It was truly miserable, considering even the weakest reserve teams were three-stars.

Kanna remembered that Durin's game profile said she loved sleeping and could sleep anywhere, so encountering a sleeping Durin in this quiet, secluded corner of the corridor was nothing strange.

Once they knew it was Durin, neither of them woke her. They quietly backed away, and after they left, Durin opened her eyes and looked in the direction they had gone. "Interesting little brats. But what does it have to do with me? I'll sleep a little longer... zzz..."

"Why were you so nervous just now?" Kanna asked Popukar after they left the corridor.

"Ah! Durin is a full Operator. Isn't it normal for a reserve Operator like me to be nervous around a full Operator?"

"Then I'm an Elite Operator, but I've never seen you get nervous around me."

"Huh! Kanna is an Elite Operator? That's amazing! Let me see~"

"Don't suddenly lean in like that~"

People passing by could not help smiling fondly at the two little ones hugging each other like a pair of dumplings.

When the two reached the dessert shop, they saw Blue Poison waiting at the entrance.

Under her lead, the three entered together.

The last time Blue Poison made desserts, no one had watched Kanna, so she had been able to steal bites without restraint.

But this time, Popukar, who had been assigned a task by Blue Poison, kept her eyes wide open as she watched Kanna, giving her no chance at all to unleash the power of her extremely hungry mouth.

She could only sit obediently and wait for Blue Poison to bring out the desserts.

After eating, the two little ones narrowed their eyes and lay across the table, savoring the lingering taste of the desserts like two softened dumplings.

After resting enough, Kanna and Popukar held hands as they left the dessert shop and continued their "great mission" of cleaning Rhodes Island.

The reason Kanna had been slacking off so much lately was also because of the mission system. After joining Rhodes Island, it had issued two consecutive missions: kill ten mutated creatures no less than three meters in size and one ton in weight, and face a Catastrophe once.

Kanna had no chance to encounter the former while aboard Rhodes Island. Even if mutated creatures appeared across the land, when something as huge as Rhodes Island passed by, they fled far away. She could not find even the slightest opportunity.

The second mission was even more impossible. Rhodes Island had quite a few resident Catastrophe Messengers, and except in urgent or necessary situations, they helped Rhodes Island avoid every Catastrophe it might encounter.

So she could not encounter one at all, much less face one directly.

As for deliberately causing a Catastrophe for the sake of her mission, that option had never even existed in Kanna's mind.

Because of this, Kanna had not obtained any new skills recently.

However, under Outcast's guidance, she had familiarized herself with using Palm Thunder and Star Alignment in the training room, and she had developed quite a few useful tricks.

Thanks to everyone's cooperation, before Rhodes Island entered Columbia's border to resupply and infiltrate, Kanna had unusually managed not to create any new trouble.

Just as Outcast's group finished organizing their gear and prepared to depart under cover of night, Kanna's mission finally refreshed.

"Successfully complete one mission for your faction. Receive one skill based on completion performance. Skill strength will be determined by mission difficulty."

Kanna rubbed her dragon horns. This difficulty was hard to judge.

After all, the only thing that could truly make her feel challenged was the complexity and confusion of intelligence, since she did not particularly like thinking. If a problem could be solved by rushing in headfirst, she usually would not consider whether there was a more refined method.

If she had to be challenged by strength, she would probably need to encounter some truly formidable people.

That meant she could not complete this mission on Rhodes Island. Given the current situation, even if Rhodes Island had a mission for her, it would probably be the simplest kind, and the skill she obtained would definitely not satisfy her.

But she had found an opportunity. Through several days of secret observation, she knew that Outcast was about to leave Rhodes Island on a covert mission.

And after several days of observation and exploration, she had more or less investigated every intersection on Rhodes Island and the locations of all its surveillance cameras. Sneaking aboard unnoticed should not be much of a problem.

So when she noticed Outcast was about to leave, she hid herself inside first.

Because they were leaving late at night and assumed everyone else was asleep, no one noticed a little hatchling sneaking into the convoy.

Kanna Was Going on Field Duty!

"Oh no! Kanna is missing!" Amiya rushed in from outside and said breathlessly.

After Amiya finished speaking, she realized Kal'tsit was not surprised at all. That morning, worried Kanna would be sad after Outcast left, Amiya had specifically gone to visit Kanna early. But there had been no response when she knocked. Feeling that something was wrong, she immediately forced the door open, only to find an empty bedroom. Seeing that, she hurried to the central control hub to find Kal'tsit.

"Outcast sent a report ten minutes ago. They discovered Kanna hiding in the trunk this morning. After requesting approval, they decided to include Kanna as a member of this mission's operation group."

As she spoke, Kal'tsit unusually pinched the bridge of her nose.

"That little Kanna has certainly given us plenty of surprises. Inform ACE and his squad, who were on guard duty last night, that they will be responsible for cleaning Rhodes Island's restrooms for a month as punishment."

Beside Kal'tsit, surveillance footage from Kanna's bedroom to the garage kept flashing past, yet not a single camera had captured any trace of Kanna.

"Pass down the order: all surveillance systems throughout Rhodes Island are to be redeployed. There must not be any more blind spots. I do not want this to happen a second time."

"Hehehe, that little Kanna might have the talent to become a top-tier assassin!" A figure emerged from the nearby shadows. After carefully reviewing all the footage, she spoke with admiration.

"She must have overheard Outcast discussing the mission last time. I have to admit, she was patient. Over a week and a half, she used cleaning as an excuse to roam across Rhodes Island, successfully finding a corridor with surveillance blind spots and slipping into the departing convoy without anyone noticing. But because of this, we also learned that Rhodes Island's current internal oversight has enormous flaws."

At that moment, Closure entered from outside after receiving Kal'tsit's message. She had previously wondered why Kal'tsit had summoned her so early in the morning.

After watching the footage and hearing about Kanna, she looked utterly disbelieving. She personally pulled up every camera feed from Rhodes Island the previous night, yet still could not find the slightest trace of Kanna leaving.

The next moment, she slumped into her chair, secretly grateful that Kanna had held no ill intent. Otherwise, Rhodes Island's entry security would have become a joke.

After all, SWEEP needed to know an intruder existed before they could act. And if they could not find the intruder at all, SWEEP could not possibly monitor every corner of the ship. If something really happened, the only person left holding the bag would be her, Rhodes Island's chief engineer.

Seven in the morning.

After leaving Rhodes Island, Outcast's group quickly headed toward their planned destination.

According to Kal'tsit, their mission this time was to receive several children rescued by the Melanite Children's Rights Protection Foundation from an experimental accident, including one special individual.

Besides Outcast's squad, the receiving team also included a medical squad led by TOUCH from the medical department, to ensure everyone's safety during the handover.

After traveling for a while, they suddenly heard snoring that should not have been coming from inside the vehicle.

They immediately stopped to inspect the vehicle and ensure the mission's security.

After opening the trunk, they found Kanna curled up fast asleep at the very back beneath a pile of supplies, with a snot bubble already forming at her nose.

Everyone was stunned when they discovered Kanna in the vehicle.

Fortunately, Outcast reacted quickly. She first carried Kanna out of the trunk, then discussed the matter with TOUCH. Because the mission was time-sensitive, the convoy could not return to Rhodes Island, so she sent a message to Rhodes Island and decided to bring Kanna along on this mission.

Although Kanna had no "real combat" experience, Outcast believed that Kanna's powerful physical abilities and Originium Arts were more than enough for a low-risk mission.

When Kanna woke from her deep sleep and found herself in Outcast's arms, she lowered her head in embarrassment.

Fortunately, Outcast did not blame her. She simply told Kanna not to do this again. If Kanna wanted to go on field duty, she should actively speak to Kal'tsit or Amiya, and they would arrange something for her based on the missions available.

After sincerely apologizing, Kanna sat in Outcast's arms and began looking forward to the mission.

She had seen that two squads were involved this time, so there had to be some difficulty to it. If she participated, the mission would surely be harder than anything she could complete aboard Rhodes Island.

After the convoy had driven for a day, it arrived outside a warehouse near a small town.

When the people in the warehouse saw Rhodes Island's group arrive, they were tense at first. Once they realized the newcomers were the people sent to meet them, they immediately relaxed their guard.