Studying on the battlefield was, of course, a joke. Hao Ren had wanted to ease the mood a little and let Rheia relax, but frankly speaking, he did not expect the weapon that Rheia had so painstakingly prepared was actually something like this.

He originally reckoned that she would create a new pair of divine blades, or some other “normal equipment”, as the weapon she had used last time against the madness was a sword, and her skill points in one-handed weapons must surely be higher than the rest. He had never thought that she would actually conjure out a sacred tome… you won’t be wrong calling it a notebook.

Hao Ren felt like he may have overdone it when he tried to hammer “knowledge is power” into her head, and that caused her to have a distorted world view…

Then again, Hao Ren was not worried that Rheia would make a mistake with her choice of a new weapon. While she may look diminutive, she had lived for several million years, and had gone through the war against the Mad Lord, and the Godslaying War. For an ace student when it comes to academics, her choice of a ‘sacred tome’ as her weapon must have been carefully thought through.

Hao Ren felt that he just needed to trust Rheia’s decision, just like how she had trusted his and Vivian’s plan.

“Actually… I had thought of tying the tome up with a chain and use it as a flail just like mum,” Rheia said as she weighed the tome in her hand. “But after some consideration, I’m just not adept at using a flail, and practically takes precedence, style over substance will inevitably cause problems.”

Hao Ren smacked his forehead. “I don’t think putting a chain around your tome and using it as a flail as stylish at all…”

Rheia smiled as she kept her tome and walked to the bridge’s exit. “It’s stylish, no doubt. Smashing someone in the face with any weapon is always stylish.”

Hao Ren shrugged as he hefted the Starbreaker Crowbar up to his shoulder. “I’ll lead. You still get lost in this ship.”

The Petrachelys was still moving within nothing but darkness and chaos, and the various twisted objects that appeared ceaselessly and the light from the starship’s shields made it look like the ship was riding into a storm, and before the starship, a bizarre “mirror dimension” was closing in.

The “mirror dimension” was awe-inspiring and terrifying at the same time, it looked like it was linked by various mirrors, forming an orb-like barrier so wide it was beyond imagination. So massive it was that even when the starship was still millions of kilometers away it already looked like an endless wall bearing down on it. It was as if the entire universe had reached an end, and everything stops before it.

Even when it was screened by the darkness and chaos, the image of the entire universe was reflected in the mirror. This was beyond all normal optical laws and was more like an information projection. Through the external sensors, Hao Ren noticed that the mirror was filled with starlight, and all of the stars of the Plane of Dreams were arrayed on it, but yet all of the light was twisted; and within the various angles of the “mirror”, the starlight was being overlapped and compressed, showing a darkening, pale hue, as if the stars were extinguishing slowly.

As they got close, the shadow of the Petrachelys finally appeared on the mirror, and from the various angles on the mirror, there were thousands of the ship’s projection, and each and every one of it was the moment the ship was destroyed: some were shattered, some were quartered, some were outright melted down into liquid metal.

“Whoa.” Nolan’s projection appeared beside Hao Ren. “That scared the sh*t out of me.”

Hao Ren gave Nolan a side-eye as he yanked the metal plating before him. “Your tone isn’t all that convincing.”

“Still up to her party tricks.” Rheia looked rather dismissively at the images from the sensors. “Using this ‘mirror’ to show her ‘power’ that she’ll be destroying this world with? I can’t believe that sorry excuse of existence is actually my other half…”

This was the Petrachelys’ propulsion engine room, and normally this was maintained by the automated drones, and the human-sized passageway was not opened. But under Nolan’s control, Hao Ren and the rest had reached that special place.

They were ready to do something that was against all security protocols as planned.

The low hum of the engines running echoed all over and this humming was like Nolan’s heartbeat. They sounded stable and powerful, totally not like something that was about to be trashed with a stick.

The final plating was taken off, and a series of parallel crystal pipes were arrayed across like sticks of light, and that moment the crystallized energy tubes let out a blue glow, providing energy to the security systems.

At that moment, the ambient hum became louder.

Nolan hugged her arm as her head shrunk in. “I… I’m a little nervous.”

Hao Ren lifted the Starbreak Crowbar and pointed toward the energy conduits. “No worries, the pain will be gone in a flash.”

“Only fools would trust you!” Nolan glared back, but as this was her own idea, even when she was nervous, she had to bite the bullet. “Just… Just keep your head steady when you do it. Those two tubes in the middle, don’t you go damaging the parts on the side!”

Hao Ren pouted as he lifted his crowbar. “Oh you, don’t worry. I’m adept in all weapons, and a mere crowbar would be beyond me? Just make sure you’re in sync with me, the moment I smash that it, you floor the accelerator toward that ‘mirror’, and blow this dimensional structure to kingdom come. If you do it too early or too late that’s just a waste of a good stick…”

Nolan glared again. “Bullsh*t, you are just wasting a stick, I’ll be wasting my own waist!”

Just like that, as Nolan’s voice trailed away, Hao Ren smashed the beak of the crowbar downward!

Nolan screamed, “F*ccckkkkk, that hurtssss!!!”

Even when she was heavily damaged by the divine storm in Star Cluster X she had never sounded so painful. It seems like having her waist smashed by a crowbar did actually hurt.

The screaming aside, Nolan as an A.I. was still maintaining the usual precision and efficiency, and as soon as the safety systems of the void engine blared out its alert, the Petrachelys’ engines exuded bright particle stream, and the already decelerating speed suddenly became a stream of light and smashed against the layer of chaotic dimension masked by countless of mirrors.

With the safety system destroyed, a surge of energy was directed by Nolan to the void engine module, and the engine, originally cannot be deployed inside the world barrier was forcibly activated, and went into overdrive within a few seconds.

The waist of the ship let out orbs after orbs of bright light, as the unstable field of order tore holes throughout the starship’s protective barrier, and a large number of metal fragments and crystalline dust spew out of the gaps, and at the same time, the space around the ship, too, was visibly collapsing, a large number of distorted light formed into an uneven surface, enveloping the Petrachelys.

And the moment the surface made contact with the ship, the ship lost control, and it started appearing and disappearing inside the dimension, as the undefined dimensional structure had destroyed the continuity of its navigation, and making it impossible, but the void engine overload had reached its limit.

There was no terrifying explosion, and the moment the void engine went into meltdown, the Petrachelys’ waist simply just flashed, before an ethereal bubble-like structure appearing around the ship, and the thin membrane expanded rapidly, spanning about ten kilometers wide before popping soundlessly like a bubble.

And the mirror surface at the nexus of the Dark Abyss too shattered, the information shock wave sent out by the void engine’s meltdown which complexity exceeded all dimensional laws totally unraveled that layer of chaotic dimension. All of the twisted dimensional projection was wiped out by the information torrent, leaving it in its original form.

At the price of the shipgirl’s waist, Hao Ren had broken through the last gate before the Mad Lord.

As the chaotic dimensional unraveled, Hao Ren had a hallucination. He saw the mirror fragments flying about, and the tiny, floating mirrors passed through the shield’s barrier and hull armor like a phantom, and filled the cabin, passing slowly in front of him.

Rheia and Vivian had disappeared.

He looked at the floating mirror fragments in the air, and on it, he saw his face, he saw the stars in the distance, and the old, unkempt streets of the Southern Suburbs forgotten by the city.

He saw a pale figure in one of the fragments, and the face was laughing at him. “What did you see? Did you see yourself? Did you see me?”

Hao Ren laughed back. “For a starter, this illusion sure lacks creativity.”

“What’s the difference between illusion and reality?” The pale, evil goddess continued laughing. “This universe will soon end, and your struggles only delay it for just that little bit. And when it comes, all reality is nothing but data floating in the chaos and void… If it is meant to end, what’s the meaning of your insistence with the delineation of the border between illusion and reality?

“Meaning? I have never told you the meaning of what I desire.” Hao Ren smiled as he grabbed and smashed a piece of the mirror in his palm. The image on it was of CARS being destroyed and countless broken crystal towers floated in space. “You have never seen the real image of the world outside. What I’m pursuing, even if I were to tell you, is totally beyond you.”

The pale face contorted as a terrifying smile appeared on it. “Mortal, flowery words will not save you. Before this world-ending power, how do your desires stand up to it?!”

“How much? The key is not what my desire is, it is how much your value is.”

Hao Ren broke into a laughing fit and smashed the mirror with the latter’s image. “To me, you are nothing but a moving year-end bonus!!”

At that moment, all of the illusions disappeared.