Chapter 129 - Next Contract

Inside the Azur Lane base, there is a room that is very simplistic in terms of decor, focusing on practicality only rather than artistic value.

Despite being the room for the Commander of Azur Lane, the Commander himself, Adam is always missing and his role is always filled by Enterprise and New Jersey with the occasional appearance of Agent when there is something big happening. However for today, as usual, there is only Enterprise alone with occasional traffic of shipgirls either handing in paperworks or collecting them, shipgirls reporting their sorties or commissions completion and those that have no actual business being here but still come.

After a group of Destroyers and Light Cruisers finish reporting about their patrol and leave, Enterprise immediately loses her stern and professional expression as she sprawls on the desk and sighed.

"Weeks… it has been two weeks since Commander last visited the base." Enterprise sighed, she missed Adam very much but also knew he was busy working on his projects.

She missed the old times in the previous world. Even when he has a lot of wives and is always busy. He presents at least once every day in the base.

Looking at the mountain of endless stack of papers, Enterprise felt tired and incredibly burnt out.

"I need to take a break." Enterprise stood up and declared before she walked away from the desk and collected her coat and cap as she made her way out.

"Enterprise."

"Enty!"

Enterprise heard a familiar voice calling out for her and turned her head around to see her sisters having a tea party with the Royal Navy ladies.

"Yorktown Nee-san. Hornet." Enterprise called back before adjusting her course to join them at the garden outside the main office building.

"Come and take a seat." Yorktown invited with cheerful smiles on her face while tapping the new chair brought over by Sirius.

Enterprise nodded and took a seat near her sisters before she set her eyes on the table and the Royal Navy shipgirls, Illustrious and Formidable. Immediately Enterprise noticed on everyone's ring finger is a Promise Ring. Everyone isn't trying to hide they have a ring and in fact, showing it off quite proudly.

In her past life, even Adam isn't as frivolous as giving everyone a ring if they wanted and instead only managed to buy around 30+ rings from start to end.

With everyone having one, the value of the Promise Ring depreciated and became less appealing. But unlike the others, Enterprise still has something else to boast about other than the ring. That is the fact she had consummated their love. Aside from herself, the only other shipgirl that did is New Jersey.

"Enterprise?"

"Nee-san?" Enterprise looked around and realised she had been too deep in her thoughts and unaware that others were staring at her.

"What's with the evil chuckle just now?" Yorktown interrogated with a small huff and pout.

"It's n-nothing!" Enterprise blushed before she quickly denied it. She blushed because she recalled the scene from that evening she shared with Adam and New Jersey having threesome.

"Nothing? Do you think your older sister is that easily tricked? Spill the beans now or I'll make you confess." Yorktown playful catches Enterprise to prevent her from running away.

"Yeah, how could it be nothing when you are chuckling evilly and looking down at us?" Hornet added, pressuring Enterprise to spill the bean.

"No! I'm not telling!" Enterprise said before she broke free from Yorktown's surprisingly strong hold before she ran away.

"Don't you dare run!" Yorktown ordered with a faux angry voice before she chased after Enterprise energetically with Hornet.

As for Illustrious and Formidable, they remain calm and continue their tea party with just the two of them.

"I wonder what it is that the Enterprise is hiding from us." Formidable wonders.

"Ufufu, it's it already quite obvious?"

"I don't understand." Formidable lowered her head and unable to see what Illustrious stated were obvious.

"Hmn, what do you think about the aura she carries?" Illustrious gives another hint before taking a sip of her tea.

"Her aura? Her aura…" Formidable think about it very intensely with her eyes closed for better focus.

She tried to recall the details and what she could recall is other than the normal workaholic and professional Enterprise. She looks more mature… as if she had a mature charm which most don't have. Not even the Royal Ladies which exude elegance can replicate such aura.

"Indeed, that is the aura of a real woman." Illustrious said when Formidable opened her eyes with the answer.

"Doesn't that mean Lady Enterprise and the Commander did…" Formidable couldn't finish her words as she felt incredibly embarrassed and blushed.

"Yes and not just Enterprise. I think New Jersey did too." Illustrious said with an envious face as she sighed.

"T-Then, we should find Commander and ask him to make us real women too. We are her wives after all." Formidable suggested while showing the ring on her finger as the proof.

Illustrious smiled and chuckled a little at Formidable's suggestion. "Alas, I don't think Commander will ever come to the base. After all, the Commander is purposely avoiding the base because there are literally hundreds of shipgirls waiting to catch him here." Illustrious said before she pointed to a few directions where several other shipgirls just like herself are camping the main office building where Adam will definitely come if he visits the base.

It was then Formidable realised that all this time Illustrious had been hosting a tea party here to lay in wait as an ambush for the Commander's arrival along with Yorktown that always accompanied Illustrious. Formidable gulped while looking at the smiling Illustrious now in a different light.

———

Alices, the resident quintuplets of trouble makers of Adam's group.

"I am bored."

"Me too."

"Me three."

"Me four."

"Me five."

Each of them agreed to the original. Tina in the distance, stopped her training when she overheard the Alices is up to something again.

"Let's go find, Master!" The original Alice said and her Dummies all agreed.

"Let's go!" They cheered before they paused. "How are we going to Mars? We are on the moon and there is no teleportation gate to Mars." One of them raised her hand and forwarded this question which the original Alice immediately went into deep thoughts for a split second before she reached her answer.

"We will fly! We can make wings to fly and we can survive the vacuum of space! Let's go!" The original Alice said before all the Alices sneak away from the training ground thinking no one saw them when in fact, Tina had been observing them the whole time.

"What are these troublemakers up to this time?" Tina mutters with a frown as she dismisses her Anti-Material sniper rifle Spirit Weapon and quickly follows after the Alices.

When she exited the secret training facility, she saw five streaks of light flew past her and headed toward Mars which was a small dot in the distance.

"Did they seriously try to fly to Mars?" Tina couldn't help but worry as there's no way they could reach Mars through flight alone. Their Reishi reserve isn't big enough to cover the entire distance even if they use Hirenkyaku.

Well, Tina is true because the five later got stuck in space unable to move without Reishi in their reserves and in the surrounding area. Thankfully, saving them is a very simple task for Agent to simply open a portal on their location.

As for Alices, they are later forced by Winter to sit through a hours long lecture about safety for trying to do something stupid like physically flying to another planet.

———

On the surface of Mars, it mostly looks untouched. An orange desert that spans the entire world. But underneath the dunes of iron sand is a partially hollowed out planet which is being converted into a massive shipyard for the construction of massive spacecrafts.

Inside the Mars base is Adam working on converting the entire planet into a spacecraft. Having a planet sized mobile base is definitely something very convenient as he has numerous facilities scattered across different worlds because of the issue of space. But now that he conveniently has a partially hollowed out planet due to the BETAs mining operations, he decided to take advantage of the situation and move all of them here.

The production of the mechanical Quincy soldier's body had been progressing smoothly.

Adam manages to implement the nano technology of the Ceph from his Crysis suit which will be the flesh. As long as a single nanite survived, regenerating the entire body is not impossible as they can self replicate by consuming materials.

As for their skeleton, it is made from the alien alloy of the BETA. The alien alloy is actually normal metal alloy contaminated with G Element that they create as a defensive wall on the lining of the core room. The speciality of this alien alloy is not only that they are very resistant to extreme cold and heat, they are also not brittle despite how durable it is. It's perfect to create the skeleton.

In short, the production of the body is no problem at all. However, he still couldn't tackle the problem with producing High Grade Neural Core. He is satisfied with allowing the disposable Soldats to use Low and Mid Grade Neural Core. But for the Sternritter android and the Grandmaster, he cannot use inferior material which can hinder their potential.

The only solution to resolving this problem is by going to Honkaiverse and obtaining the Core of Reason which allows him to skip all the tedious and delicate manufacturing processes and directly manifest the end result, High Grade Neural Cores. However, as much as he wanted to leave for another Contract World. Adam felt worried something may happen in his absence.

Ever since the day he tried to peek on the Iron Blood and got injured by backlash as the results, Adam had never stopped trying to look into the future for any clues.

As of now, all he knows is that Iron Blood had been obsessed with Origin Cube research. They are doing everything in order to harness the power of the Origin Cube and Metamorphosis. That seems to be the reason for the Deus X influence.

For the time being, he didn't dare to poke the hornet nest yet. He didn't know yet what Deus X was planning with his actions. Adam cannot afford to do anything and jeopardise his current efforts in creating his military force with any disturbance. That's why he didn't do anything to the Iron Blood and simply watched from the sidelines despite knowing he could be regretting this in the future. But he already took the gamble to bet on the Mechanised Quincy Soldiers. This is the only method he sees in his vision where he has a chance of victory against Deus X.

"Rather than dawdle and worry about something uncertain. It's better I go and resolve the problem for the Neural Core as soon as possible and finish creating the Mechanised Quincy Army." Adam said after holding back his urge to peek at the future again.

After making his mind, Adam returned to the orbital Fortress and gathered his close companions to talk about the decision to go on another Contract to obtain the Core of Reason.

"Please, at least let one of us come with you, Master. Or else we cannot feel relieved." Agent immediately requested, which received a nod from pretty much everyone.

"Yes, Adam. You have been forcing yourself too much lately. We are not a burden, we also wanted to help. We cannot bear to just sit on the side while you are working tirelessly day and night without trying to help." Winter added with a saddened look on her face when Adam said he wanted to set off alone again. "Or could it be that you see us as nothing more than a burden that you are unwilling to let us help?" She immediately made herself look pitiful, using Adam's weakness against him.

"Who said you all are useless! I just didn't want to involve anyone with a dangerous mission." Adam immediately becomes enraged. He didn't want to admit but what Winter said is partially true, he purposely didn't want to bring them because he is afraid that they might get harmed.

"But we aren't weak anymore, Adam. With the power you give us, we are now strong. Strong enough to stand by your side." Agent hugs Adam from the back which immediately douses the anger inside him as he realised he had been tricked and now he has no more excuses to deny their participation unless he wants to admit he is keeping them all protected like plants in the greenhouse.

"Fine…" Adam sighed and massaged his forehead, looking defeated. "So who is going to come with me?"

Everyone obviously wanted to come along. But that would be impossible as each of them have their own task to do here. Only Agent can afford to follow because she have her Dummies body filling in for her and Jalter because she never picked any work and had been focused on training the whole time.

"Just the both of us." Agent pointed at herself and Jalter who nodded.

Surprisingly, they all already reached an agreement as no one else voiced their objection except Alices who insisted to come along but a glance at the menacingly smiling Winter made Alices shut up and hide behind Tina. They tried to look at Adam pitifully, asking for help but Adam could only refuse and promise them he will bring them along next time. After all, in the Honkaiverse is the Herrscher and he will probably be fighting one. He can't afford to bring them into such a dangerous battle.

"Alright then, we will depart tomorrow. Let's end here for now, I still have to make a few preparations." Adam excused himself after giving his wives a kiss and the little ones a kiss on their forehead after they got jealous for not receiving one.

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