this infinite world

"In short, we need to intercept all the Zerg and keep them outside our defense line, and not let them get beyond the line."

After arguing with Luo Gandao for more than ten minutes, Zhang Xiaoxue, who was still unsatisfied, finally remembered what she was here for. She cleared her throat and said to Luo Gandao and Tom in front of her: "This is the task we must complete for now."

"…It's not that simple. These Zerg can recognize the mental power emitted by planetary consciousness and intelligent life forms. It won't take long for them to sense a galaxy four light years away."

Tom opened his eyes and rubbed his temples, shaking his head and saying, "The universe is so vast, once the Zerg has determined their target, even if we intercept them midway, they can choose to take a detour or even open a wormhole to reach their destination directly... You should understand that if you defend too long, you will lose."

"Brother Tom is right!"

Luo Gandao also chimed in, saying confidently, "Is this the method you came up with after spending so much time here? I thought you must have some profound ideas after staying with Chu Xuan for so long, but I didn't expect your thinking to be so superficial..."

"Oh, the wisdom of mortals."

Hearing the contempt in Luo Gandao's words, Zhang Xiaoxue was not angry. Instead, she raised her head: "Is your brain not enough to support you to think about the problem using reverse thinking? Listen carefully... What I just said was 'Don't let the swarm invade the colony', not 'protect the colony'."

"Reverse thinking? No need to protect the colony?" Luo Gandao was just a little bit hot-blooded, not a real fool. Hearing Zhang Xiaoxue's words, he immediately thought of a cruel possibility: "You mean, do we have to destroy those humans who are about to be exposed to the Zerg's perception range in advance?"

"...This is no joke, Zhang Xiaoxue."

Hearing this, Tom's expression became serious. He subconsciously sat up straight and asked, "Is this Chu Xuan's idea, or is this a plan you came up with yourself?"

At this moment, Tom, the most experienced member of the Devil Team, thought a lot. Judging from the behavior of the clone Chu Xuan and the relationship between Zhang Xiaoxue and him, it was normal for her to come up with this idea.

But emotionally, whether as a human conscience or as a loyal supporter of the replica Zheng Zha, it was difficult for Tom to agree with Zhang Xiaoxue's plan, which was no different from the "Stratholme Killing Competition", even though this plan might have come from the replica Chu Xuan: "I object... Although 'Fortify the Walls and Clear the Wilds' is indeed an effective plan, it will sacrifice too many people."

"If there is no other way, then this is undoubtedly a necessary sacrifice in order to protect the coordinates of the earth and the continuation of human civilization."

Zhang Xiaoxue looked at Tom, who clearly expressed his disapproval, and sneered at first. But when she found that the other two had serious expressions on their faces, she crossed her arms and said, "But this time you misunderstood... The task Chu Xuan gave us is to actively attract the Zerg swarm and make them mistakenly think that we are the 'nearest human colony', and then actively fight a sniper battle with the Zerg on the front line."

"The Zerg search for targets based on their perception of the will of the planet and the mental power of its inhabitants. This spaceship has both the planetary cores collected by the Reapers and a mental controller like you, Tom. It is not difficult for them to simulate the signals of the human colony to carry out strategic deception."

"Is that so... That's good."

After hearing Zhang Xiaoxue's active disclosure of the whole plan, Tom and Logan breathed a sigh of relief. The latter even smiled again: "Oh, I thought you were a woman with a vicious heart and a vicious mouth, and you really wanted to do that extermination thing, but it turns out you were just pretending..."

"Stop talking nonsense and don't speculate on my behavior without authorization."

Zhang Xiaoxue showed a trace of disdain on her cold and arrogant face. She said seriously: "Chu Xuan's plan is absolutely correct, and everything will develop as he expected. Since our mission is to lure out the main force of the Zerg and create an opportunity for the captain and his men to enter the Klendasu system and make the final decision, we should do our best to complete it!"

——You are still too young...

Although he didn't say it out loud, Tom shook his head secretly in his heart.

Zhang Xiaoxue was still inexperienced after all, and had no idea how strong the captain had become. Ever since he followed the man named "Yi Qi" back to the previous world to "revisit old friends", the captain seemed to have been reborn and returned to his original nature. His aura was faintly connected to the heaven and earth, and faintly revealed a sense of "the way is hidden and nameless, and the great sound is silent"...

...By the way, these two words should be used, right?
Tom collected his thoughts and coughed. He looked at Zhang Xiaoxue in front of him and said gently, "Although the captain never hypocritically sympathizes with the victims and never frowns when he is required to kill, it is not the captain's wish to deprive innocent people of their lives without even making contact."

"In my opinion, this mission is not so much a feint to attract the attention of the Zerg, but rather a test for the captain and Chu Xuan to see if we can truly serve as a member of the Demon Team and face the final battle in the near future... After all, there is no loser in our Demon Team."

"Of course I know about this kind of thing."

Although Zhang Xiaoxue said she was not convinced, judging from the way she lowered her arms unconsciously, this girl who revered the clone Chu Xuan as a god had obviously taken his words to heart.

But the next moment, Zhang Xiaoxue's words made Tom and Luo Gandao's faces fall again: "As for the operation of simulating the human colony signal, considering that your mental power may have left traces on the Zerg, I plan to give this task to Sophia."

As she spoke, Zhang Xiaoxue clapped her hands and said, "Okay, Sophia, come in."

As soon as he finished speaking, the door of the medical room opened, and a blonde girl in a black nun's uniform appeared. What entered the door before her body was the huge weapon bulging on her chest, which made the already loose nun's uniform raise an obvious arc... Instead of affecting the overall beauty, it further highlighted her slender figure.

The girl called Sophia obviously had an extremely delicate appearance, like a queen or princess of a medieval country, but the piece of cream cake in her hand, which looked like it had a very high sugar content, completely destroyed her noble image.

Especially Sophia, who seemed to have not expected the door to open at all, ate the cake in her hand slowly, bit by bit, with a happy expression on her face. It was not until Zhang Xiaoxue could not bear it anymore and coughed that the girl showed a surprised expression, and quickly swallowed the cake in one gulp while facing the gazes of the three people... Her cheeks bulged, really like a hamster.

“…Is she really reliable?”

Looking at Sophia who was chewing the cream cake, Luo Gandao blurted out subconsciously, but he knew he had said something wrong as soon as he said it, and quickly added: "Well, I'm not questioning Sophia's ability. In terms of strength alone, she must be able to complete this task perfectly, but considering her personality and the way she is on weekdays..."

"Hmm... Yeah." Seeing that Logan mentioned her, Sophia blinked stupidly at first. After a few seconds, she swallowed all the cream cake in her mouth with a "gulp". Then she nodded seriously, and then showed a sunny smile that was totally out of place for the Devil Team and looked at Logan and said, "No problem, you can leave it all to Sophia."

Being stared at by Sophia, Luo Gandao subconsciously looked away. But a few seconds later, when he felt something was wrong and followed Sophia's line of sight to look at the potato chips in his hand, his face suddenly darkened and he looked at Zhang Xiaoxue next to him with a speechless look.

"Ahem... Trust Sophia."

Tom held his forehead helplessly. Although he felt like relaxing just by looking at her, considering his current situation and the clone Chu Xuan's usual meticulous planning style, he still said against his conscience: "She may be a little lazy on weekdays, but she never fails when it comes to big things."

Sophia-Antoinette, the main exchange is the S-level priest profession, from the pan-fantasy world, can perform magic like a magic contactor, can obtain divine arts from the gods and concepts she believes in, can also manipulate spirits with holy words, or recreate myths with prayer miracles.

Those who can communicate with the gods through their minds are naturally also good at dealing with people's spirits. Therefore, a priest with strong "perception" is naturally also a strong mental controller.

Although Tom had never seen Sophia use any magic, normally this girl, apart from eating, would use her Holy Light Shaping Enchantment to beat up the enemies...but the induction between those who controlled the mental power never lied.

——In fact, Sophia has now been the spiritual controller of the Demon Team most of the time, replacing Tom's original position. This is naturally because Tom's current position has changed. Now he still has the captain authority of the Demon Team, and he and Luo Gandao have opened the fourth-order intermediate gene lock. He is the main combat attacker under the clone Zheng Zha, and charging into battle is his job.

Rather than using mental power to scan and act as the eyes of the team, Tom often uses mental power as energy to drive his ability to manipulate metal, so the Demon Team needs a second mentalist to fill this gap...

Perhaps because of this, Sophia, who was a priest but also had a talent for spiritual power, was copied by the Lord God to the Demon Team to fill Emily's vacancy. And in terms of spiritual and soul attainments, she never disappointed the Demon Team.

"What's the saying in ancient China? Believe it, no need to say more."

Thinking of the skills Sophia had developed on her own in the spiritual and soul fields, and shifting her development direction more towards the development of spiritual light and the ability to manipulate metal, Tom coughed awkwardly and said seriously, "Sophia will not let us down."

"Brother Tom, are you reading some weird books again?"

Amid Logando's complaints, Sophia took action first. She took out a blood-red crystal from somewhere. It was the Philosopher's Stone from the world of Fullmetal Alchemist. It originally required the souls of hundreds of people to refine it, but after inquiring from the Lord God, it could be exchanged for a blank pure version.

Da da--

There were two soft sounds, and Sophia moved her fingers gently, tapping on the blood-colored crystal. The voices of hundreds of people appeared in the minds of the three people present. "They" greeted each other, communicated with each other, and even each of them showed different personalities, preferences and interpersonal relationships!

Da da--

And as the girl knocked twice more, this noisy yet orderly "radio drama" suddenly stopped.

"Captain, is this okay?"

Sophia tilted her head with a blank expression, looking at Tom, who looked surprised or happy. "I combined my experience as a psychologist in the church hospital before entering the main god space, and implanted a virtual personality into each blank soul through soul casting."

"The only problem is that once there are tens of thousands of souls, my ability to understand them won't be enough to support me in implanting credible social relationships for them..."

"It's completely sufficient. There's no need to be so detailed. As a Gestalt creature, how can the Zerg understand the diversity of human society?"

Tom nodded, and at the same time corrected Sophia's address: "Also, don't call me captain."

"I understand, Captain." Sophia snatched the bag of potato chips from Logandao at some point and was stuffing the chips into her mouth while answering incoherently.

"... whatever you want." Tom wisely gave up his plan. He looked at Zhang Xiaoxue and asked, "Besides that, what are your other plans?"

"Well, Alia will try her best to connect with the consciousness of this plane to fight against the corruption of the hive mind on the plane; Feng Luo will deploy his 'imaginary field' to delay the speed of the insect swarm as much as possible, and 'Wind God' will use his speed advantage to be responsible for guerrilla warfare to fill in the gaps. I will be the center of the battle and command the overall situation..."

Zhang Xiaoxue answered quickly, obviously confident: "As for you, Tom, you will be the main force with Luo Gandao and fight the Zerg head-on."

As she spoke, the girl looked at Logan on the other side and said, "Your mission is to find and destroy the command nodes of the Zerg, and make them fall into a state of paralysis due to command failure in the shortest possible time. As for the start time of the operation, it will be tentatively scheduled for 20 days later. This period of time is enough for us to prepare all the preparatory work... How about it, is there anything wrong with you?"

"Who are you looking down on? Of course it's okay."

Luo Gandao stood up, pinched his knuckles, and smiled confidently: "Hehe, the insect swarm is nothing but chickens and dogs. Brother Tom and I will definitely not let the captain down!"

——And you’re still talking about me... I think you’re the one who’s read some weird books.

Listening to Logan's "hehehe" laughter and Sophia's continuous chewing of potato chips, Tom, who felt his head starting to hurt again, lay back on the pillow and didn't want to read anything anymore. (End of this chapter)