Chapter 10 "Is...is he gone?"

A group of masked people armed with weapons emerged from several unmarked starships. They stared blankly at the spot where the starship, supposedly drained of all energy, should have been. It was now empty. Their minds struggled to process what they were seeing.

"What the—! Where is he? The boss's huge mech, all those fat chickens!"

Someone shouted, their voice filled with grief, as if they had gone bankrupt overnight. They were so enraged that they ripped off their face mask.

If Mingmei and the others were there, they would have recognized him.

It was none other than Waldo, who had dropped them off!

The people around him were undoubtedly his teammates.

But these veterans were dressed and acting unlike soldiers, behaving more like… space pirates.

"I bet someone in there had a starship energy stone!" someone nearby speculated, getting very close to the truth.

"No way! Is it that outrageous? Are all the freshmen so rich these days? We agreed to strip them bare and give them a taste of the harsh realities of the world!"

In the end, was he the only clown here?

"Search! Our original plan didn't exclude the possibility of them not leaving! Since the others haven't sent any messages, it means they haven't encountered those students on the road. Either they haven't gone far, or they've realized something's wrong and changed their route."

Waldo had been observing the students on these starships all along, especially those two with ridiculously high game scores. He had never stopped watching them.

The girl in first place seemed strong, but the guy in second place was the one he couldn't see through.

Every time Waldo looked at Mu Chen, even a half-second linger in his gaze would be noticed. And when their eyes met, Mu Chen's dark eyes were unsettling to stare at for too long.

It was as if he was being seen through.

If they left here without flying towards Qilan Star according to the information they had left, he dared to say that Mu Chen had figured something out.

"Could it be that the young general's sister let something slip?"

Someone remembered that they had an "inside person" on the team.

"How much do you think the young general would tell her?" Waldo glanced at the person who voiced the suspicion. "Don't think everyone else is stupid. After all, our legion has a bad reputation. It's not impossible for them to be wary of us."

Speaking of which, who among them hadn't been messed with when they were younger?

Back then, they had been caught in the rain and couldn't wait to tear up the umbrellas of the newcomers, then give the next generation a kick.

"I heard from some other brothers that the students from the other schools they were leading all suffered losses. Don't let us crash and burn here, okay?"

Some of the soldiers felt dejected when they mentioned this. It was supposed to be the veterans' job to give the freshmen a hard time, but what if they were overturned by the freshmen this time?

"If we're the only ones who crash and burn, I won't have the face to see anyone when we get back."

"Shut up, all of you!" Waldo glared at the group of groaning veterans. "Pull up all the star charts here. You know we're crashing and burning, so why aren't you hurrying up and fixing it?"

…

"Ah, are you sure this is okay?"

After resting on the mining star for a day, they were not only treated to delicious food by the robots, but the robots also helped them replenish some of the resources in their starship for free.

Whether it was food or drink, and even seeing that their starship didn't have any offensive weapons, they reinstalled some energy weapons for combat.

If the robots hadn't reminded them, they wouldn't have noticed that this starship didn't have any weapons to fight back with.

"It's okay, this location is not safe. You must learn to protect yourselves when you're out and about."

They were standing outside the starship, watching all sorts of robots helping with the inspection and installation, when they heard these words. The group couldn't help but look up in the direction of the electronic voice.

A robot with huge arms was installing missiles on the starship. It turned its pointed head and showed a smiling emoticon.

Smiles are contagious. For a moment, the people around couldn't help but laugh along.

But after laughing, some of the more perceptive people in the crowd suddenly realized something: "You… you can understand what we're saying?"

"Why… why wouldn't we understand?"

"You… you can automatically reply?"

"If it's not some strange White, why can't we reply?"

"You can hear us anytime, anywhere…?"

"Yup~ We can hear you anytime, anywhere, you know~"

Hearing the robot's "yup," Mingmei could see that one of the students turned gray.

What kind of stimulation was that?

Mingmei wondered, but before she could ask what was wrong, a robot with small wings flying past the grayed-out student said, "Wow, are you the cool guy who said he's going to marry a robot in the future?"

Everyone: ???

Holy crap! Dude, your tastes are unique!

Apparently, the night before, this guy was walking around looking at those robots who were also "watching" them humans, and he praised the robots' excellence and said that robots were his ideal partner, so Kawaoi Ryoma got a spontaneous combustion on the spot.

His words had spread throughout the robot community last night.

This kind of statement of "I'm no longer interested in living people, robots are better" was being revealed so nakedly—how embarrassing!

Mingmei watched his face turn from white to red and then back to white, and finally return to normal, she couldn't help but ask him:

Is there really nothing left in this world for you to miss?

Yeah, he already said that, and now even the robots know. What else is there for him to miss?

Kawaoi Ryoma thought miserably, met everyone's gazes, and then the little robot that had just flown past him, and finally said with a wooden face: "Yeah, what's wrong with robots? As long as they look good and have a compatible personality, what's wrong with that?!"

Oh, that last "what's wrong with that" was quite loud, scaring everyone.

"Clap clap clap"

Someone in the team suddenly started clapping and cheering.

"Bro, you're a badass!"

"That's right! As long as they meet my aesthetic standards and aren't Zerg, any other race is fine! I'm not picky either!"

"Yeah! If you like it, what's wrong with it?"

Suddenly, everyone started shouting. Mingmei looked at everyone, who seemed encouraged by this classmate and shouted out their thoughts.

Mingmei listened for a long time and realized that everyone had ideas about the merfolk from next door, the orc race, and so on.

For a moment, Mingmei felt like she was already behind the times for finding a human partner.