Golden Spirit

Half an hour earlier, 14:55.

The fighter jet had already crashed into a small town at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, while Li Qing and Giorno had just formed a two-man party to farm an epic-tier boss.

As they ran along the highway toward the crash site, they desperately searched for suitable transportation.

"My God."

Li Qing tried entering Digitization Mode and used his acute hearing to sense the activity at the crash site several kilometers away.

"What?" Giorno heard Li Qing's unconscious exclamation. "Is the situation that bad?"

"What do you think?"

Li Qing helplessly spread his hands. "I can hear that thing from three kilometers away. How could the situation not be bad?"

"Judging from the sound waves alone..."

He deliberately paused, then spoke to Giorno in the tone of someone telling a ghost story:

"After swallowing the jet engine, that monster is already about five or six meters tall."

"Oh."

Giorno was not frightened in the slightest.

He merely sighed softly before saying with a calm expression:

"The energy from a fighter jet engine far exceeds that of a school bus. This was to be expected."

"Still..."

Giorno looked somewhat concernedly at Li Qing, whose expression was slightly strange. "You seem a little down?"

"I wouldn't call it being down."

Li Qing was slightly surprised by Giorno's perceptiveness before speaking in a complicated tone:

"I was just thinking about something."

"To save myself, I accidentally led Meat Chunk onto the bus. To save the students on that bus, I stayed behind to fight alongside you. To save you and me, I led Meat Chunk onto the plane. And to save himself, the pilot made the plane crash into a densely populated city."

"In the end..."

"I saved some people, but even more people may die because of it."

"What was all this? Would it have been better if I had done nothing from the beginning?"

"..."

Giorno fell silent for a moment.

"That question... was really pointless."

His gaze remained steadfast.

"We only did what we had to do at the time."

"The ones who should be questioned are not us, but the piece of trash who released this monster."

"This..."

Li Qing paused slightly, then could not help laughing happily.

"Hahahaha."

"That unwavering state of mind... Are you really only thirteen, kid?"

"Absolutely."

"I just started the second half of my first year of middle school this year."

Giorno gave Li Qing a helpless glance and said very seriously:

"Stop thinking about such pointless things."

"Hurry up and do what we can do next!"

As he spoke, he began analyzing the battle with full concentration.

"Although that monster has gotten bigger, the situation is actually far more favorable than before."

"Previously, we were simply too close to Meat Chunk. The moment we moved even a little, it could catch up to us immediately."

"But now, we can keep the greatest possible safe distance from it and extend the time it takes to catch us."

"That's true."

Li Qing translated Giorno's idea into terms more easily understood by people from Dragon Country.

"That monster has always been slightly faster than us. From my observations, it has consistently maintained a speed around 1.2 times that of its prey."

"Let the distance between me and the monster be X meters, and my speed be V meters per second. Then the time it takes to catch us should be t = X/(1.2-1)V = 5X/V."

"Clearly, the greater the distance, the more safe escape time we can gain."

As he spoke, he added:

"And I observed earlier that the monster's maximum detection range should be one hundred meters."

"In other words, X can be at most one hundred. We can attract its aggro while staying one hundred meters away from it."

"Uh..."

After taking a moment to adjust to Li Qing's way of thinking, Giorno continued:

"That's right."

"This V is actually the fastest speed among all moving objects within that monster's detection range that we must maintain."

"We will definitely be affected by other people while moving, but such interference is actually quite limited on land."

"Even if a car passes through the battlefield, assuming it is traveling at sixty kilometers per hour, we only need to keep our moving speed V > 60 km/h = 16.67 m/s."

"Taking X at its maximum value of one hundred, and V > 16.67, we get t < 29.99 seconds!"

"That means as long as we maintain the maximum distance of one hundred meters from the monster in advance, even if a car traveling at sixty kilometers per hour interferes, we can buy ourselves nearly half a minute of safety!"

"That's more than enough time!"

Li Qing added, his eyes shining:

"In that case, as long as the two of us always maintain the maximum safe distance and draw its aggro back and forth from different directions, we can kite this mindless monster wherever we want it to go!"

"Just like adding vectors!"

"Uh..."

"I understand the logic, but..."

Giorno, still only in his first year of middle school, asked with a bewildered expression, "What are vectors?"

14:58.

"To carry out the plan, we must ensure that we can move faster than every source of interference, including cars."

"Obviously, we need transportation for that."

"Cars are too cumbersome for complicated terrain, and bicycles are too slow to meet the requirements, so..."

"A motorcycle, combining speed and agility, is the right choice."

While solemnly explaining his reasoning to Li Qing, Giorno skillfully pried open the lock of a motorcycle parked by the roadside.

"Hey, hey."

Watching Giorno's serious, focused expression as he picked the lock, Li Qing could not help making a few snide remarks.

"Why are you so practiced at this?"

"Hm?"

"You mean stealing cars?"

Without even looking up, Giorno answered calmly:

"It's complicated to explain, but there was no other choice."

"My stepfather and I have a terrible relationship. He would not even pay all of my tuition."

"And I'm only thirteen this year. No legitimate place would dare hire child laborers my age."

"So..."

"Working was impossible, and I didn't know how to do business. Stealing things like this was the only way I could make a living."

After recounting his experience without changing expression, he directly added:

"Right."

"Besides the motorcycle, we need one more thing."

"Once the battle begins, the two of us will definitely be separated by quite a distance."

"Shouting alone won't let us communicate in time amid that kind of chaos, so it would be best if each of us had a phone for instant communication during the battle."

"I have one on me, but I don't know whether you have one."

"I understand."

Li Qing understood Giorno's reasonable request to "turn on party voice chat" and immediately nodded. "I'll figure out how to get a phone right now."

The words had barely left his mouth—

When an extremely furious voice suddenly rang out nearby:

"Y-you bastards!"

"What are you doing to my beloved bike?!"

The speaker was a young man in a green shirt and jeans, wearing a furry hat. He radiated laziness from head to toe and looked like an idle layabout.

Pointing at the motorcycle whose lock Giorno had already picked—and which Giorno had somehow started—he said furiously:

"Get off that thing, you shameless car thief!"

"Sigh..."

"Why make it sound so ugly?"

Giorno could not even be bothered to respond. Li Qing, on the other hand, patiently gave a well-meaning reply:

"How can saving the world be called stealing?"

"Your motorcycle has been requisitioned by us. The people of Naples will not forget your contribution."

"Y-you!"

The young man's face twitched with rage.

"You shameless bastard..."

"Stop right now! I'm calling the police!"

"Oh?"

Li Qing's eyes lit up. "Calling the police? Do you have a phone on you?"

"That's right!"

The young man angrily pulled a brand-new Nokia from his pocket and threatened them in a strong voice:

"I can call the police here and now! Are you still not stopping?!"

"Oh."

Li Qing narrowed his eyes and smiled gently. "Then thank you."