Tonight, Alice joins the hunt.

That's why the witches initiated this dream warfare plan.

Since the physical body isn't a good fit, then a suitable body will be created. Once that virtual space is completed by the world's behind-the-scenes mechanisms, the body Alice chose for her arrival will be able to fully adapt to her will, which has weakened her own obsessive soul to its limit. And on this basis, given the right fortune and a war to stimulate her power, the power of the genetic lock will inevitably be revived. In comparison, changing bodies is hardly a significant issue.

[Back in our youth, the ways we played with each other's bodies were incredibly varied. A mere makeover... Alice could fix herself without any intervention from the main god.]

Patchouli thought to herself, she knew very well that this world had been proven to be a multi-layered structure. She was currently in the lower layer, while the controlling mechanisms behind the world were in the upper layer. And once the world created based on Esdeath's memories was successfully completed, it would become the middle layer that never existed. The flaws in the world would then be created, and at the same time, it would provide Alice with the foundation for her extraordinary existence.

She wasn't worried from the beginning that Alice's plan would fail. Because Alice's schemes always used the failure of the plan as a springboard to move to the next step—if the strategy of deceiving the operating agency failed and the virtual world did not become real, then Alice would expel the newcomer and proceed to the next step.

She will use war and slaughter to churn and devour all the spiritual power in this world that constitutes everything—including herself, Esdeath, and the swarm of brain worms linked to the mental network. With an absolutely massive spiritual force and a will tempered anew from chaotic thoughts, she will forcefully push herself to the Demon Lord rank!

Doing so will inevitably lead to many problems, but a inferior product is always better than a substandard one, just as the last-place student with a score of 60 is always better than the first-place student in the next class with a score of 59. And as long as we get through this hurdle, the Supreme God has plenty of ways to resolve the problems that will follow.

But now it seems...

"The situation is not as bad as I had anticipated."

Patchouli looked up and turned to gaze at the void outside the porthole. She was currently in a remote star system about three hundred light-years away from the Korendadu swarm system. There were traces of swarm activity here, but not much, and once she cleared away the remaining swarms, this place would be an excellent temporary haven.

Approximately 130 minutes have passed since that unsuccessful encounter. Patchouli is certain that the two members of the Senzhou team do not possess the ability to jump between star systems or search—in other words, they won't be able to catch up in a short time.

Since they can't catch up, their actions are quite predictable.

“One of them is a psychic, and there’s no doubt they’ll make contact with the cerebrates on the insectoid planet or the main force of the expeditionary fleet. The latter is far more likely than the former, and once they take action, my previous preparations will come in handy.”

Patchouli glanced at the God Watch on her wrist; a clear line of text had appeared in the section indicating the main quest.

—'Survive in the current world for seven days, all players will receive 3,000 reward points and one C-rank side quest.'

—'Failure penalty: None.'

The main questline is very convenient, with no conflict or hostility, making it an extremely easy option for a team like the Central Continent Team, which is considered the weakest. If the goal is simply to avoid battle, then perhaps all they need to do is steal a ship and jump to some unknown region of the galaxy, and surviving this horror movie won't be difficult.

but……

[Neither I, Alice, nor Chu Xuan would tolerate such a fruitless endeavor.]

Patchouli thought to herself, her mind racing.

She had reviewed the main quest assigned to the Southern Flame Continent team. The main quest displayed was: 'Survive in the current world for seven days and kill a total of 30,000 reward points and one B-level side quest before the time runs out. Completing the objective will grant the entire team 5,000 reward points and one C-level side quest. Failure to complete the kill requirement before the time runs out will result in the deduction of double reward points and the side quest from the entire team.'

Clearly, the Supreme God isn't some idiot who randomly assigns teams. Currently, there are no irreconcilable conflicts between the Central Continent team and the Southern Flame Continent team. Even if the Southern Flame Continent team loses half its members, it can make up for its losses by killing the Zerg or the Expeditionary Force. Based on this, the possible missions of the Forest Continent team can naturally be imagined.

Patchouli stretched out her hand and waved it outwards, extinguishing all the light screens around her.

Undoubtedly, while the main god arranged team battles in this world, they didn't actually emphasize clashes between reincarnators. In this movie world called Starship Troopers, there were no irreconcilable conflicts between the three reincarnation teams. If the Central Continent Team and the Forest Continent Team hadn't been downgraded due to their own factors, perhaps the three reincarnation teams wouldn't have clashed at all until the end of the story.

However, this makes things very clear.

The Supreme God has only allowed us seven days to stay, and once that time is up, we will be banished from this world regardless of whether we have completed our mission objectives. Combined with the information we previously gathered about the world's stratification… it seems that a dramatic change will occur in this world on the eighth day.

[Perhaps the existence of the upper world decided to purge this galaxy, or perhaps the people of the lower world found a way to conquer the upper world. The latter is more likely than the former, and Chu Xuan has been gone for so long without a word, so he must have gone to deal with things related to this matter... I'm really stupid, it's so obvious that I only realized it now.]

She gently rubbed her head and sighed.

The obstacles in the main quest are gone, and with Chu Xuan orchestrating things behind the scenes in the upper world, our escape route should be secured. Now, the question is how far we can go in this game.

Although I've given up on the foolish idea of ​​trying to outwit Chu Xuan, I still need to complete the tasks I was assigned earlier, so as to see them through to the end.

Taking down those two secondary Senzhou team reincarnators should be no problem. However, once we eliminate them, the stronger members of the Senzhou team might also appear. Given our current resources and combat strength, we're still somewhat lacking in the ability to save the entire team's lives.

[We still need to get some information from Zheng Zha... After soaking in the nano-repair solution for 130 minutes, plus the treatment I prepared, his body should be almost fully repaired, at least he should be able to retrieve some important data.]

She stepped out of her makeshift command center—not the Great Library, but aboard another capital ship that had crashed the de Chroy. Two hours earlier, after the engagement, Patchouli had appointed this starship, bearing the intriguing name of Roger Young, as the new flagship of the Huntsman fleet. Then came the warp and refit time.

There were many crew members on the ship, and many recognized her face. As she walked through the long corridor toward the sanatorium where Zheng Zha and Zhang Jie were staying, the soldiers and staff along the way bowed and saluted her respectfully. They looked at her with the eyes of someone looking at a legendary hero—even though the Hunting Fleet had suffered considerable losses in the previous battle.

Her mood lifted slightly, and her steps became lighter. Soon, the sanatorium where the two men were located came into view.

She casually dismissed the guards standing at the entrance of the sanatorium. A wave of unfiltered brainwaves immediately radiated outwards from her.

【I'm Patchouli, I'm coming in.】

She thought to herself, and then she immediately sensed an affirmative response in her mind.

"Please come in, Miss Patchouli." Zhang Jie was deeply weary, and as his thoughts were conveyed, the steel door before him quietly opened. Patchouli then stepped into the spacious hall.

She saw Zheng Zha, suspended in the transparent jar, glaring angrily at her.

【You almost killed me! Patchouli Knowledge!】

Section 51 Level Up

"Were you blown up?" Patchouli asked casually.

No, but—

"Since you're not dead, what are you yelling about? We've been working together for so long, don't you have confidence in my control?" She walked to the transparent jar where Zheng Zha was, and after operating the control terminal on it, the entire jar changed from standing upright to lying flat. The speaker was then turned on, and several metal tentacles with delicate mechanical probes probed into the back of Zheng Zha's head and spinal cord while he looked completely dumbfounded.

"Hey! Norrell! What are you doing! What is this nonsense!?" Zheng Zha's face was a little pale. Drilling holes in the back of his head without anesthesia was surprisingly painless. However, despite the lack of pain, these tentacle-like things... made him feel slightly uneasy.

He twisted the body, which had been repaired to about 80% of its original mass. His lower body and two forearms were still a tangled mass of flesh and blood. The fourth stage of his body had long been forcibly withdrawn and was suppressed by various strange facilities, preventing him from entering directly. Without any leverage, this was the extent of his resistance.

"Don't move around, I need a medical check-up."

"My body hasn't fully recovered yet!"

“Once it’s fixed, it’ll be harder to test,” Patchouli replied casually. She then ignored Zheng Zha’s subsequent loud protests and began inputting a bunch of complicated and difficult-to-understand parameters into the control terminal.

"Zhang Jie, you should say a few words for me too!" Zheng Zha shouted. "Maybe it'll be your turn soon!"

"He doesn't need it."

"Gah—?"

Patchouli explained without looking up, "You successfully entered the fourth stage earlier. In the fourth stage, your genes were significantly altered, so much so that even though your body tissues are almost completely destroyed now, the remaining cells will automatically develop and differentiate after acquiring enough energy, and re-form the advanced body that your instincts created for you in the fourth stage."

"Zhang Jie is simply injured; the injuries are mainly mental and brain-related, so there's no need to worry about that."

Unlike Zheng Zha, who was floating in a transparent jar, Zhang Jie lay weakly on a wide, soft hospital bed, raising his hand in a helpless gesture towards Zheng Zha. He didn't even bother with mental communication, appearing as if he had been completely burned away.

Zheng Zha then fell silent.

"Your body is repairing more slowly than expected. Logically, after activating the healing magic and injecting such a large dose of nano-repair fluid and high-energy solution, your damaged body should be fully repaired within fifteen minutes at most, and you should be able to regain full combat power after thirty minutes. But now it has been one hundred and thirty-five minutes."

Patchouli explained.

“I initially thought it was just a slight error that naturally occurred in the estimated parameters, so I decided to wait and see and deal with some other experiments. But now it seems there might be other reasons.” She stared at the many parameters that were refreshed on the terminal for several seconds.

"Uh... do I need to be mentally prepared?" Zheng Zha stammered, a sense of foreboding creeping over him.

“It’s not entirely bad news,” Patchouli shook her head and replied. “Your muscle strength has increased by 240 percent, and your tensile strength, resilience, and other miscellaneous parameters have all increased dramatically. Your bone strength has increased by 215 percent, transforming from a normal calcium structure into some kind of complex structure. Your cell activity has increased dramatically, the exact percentage is not yet quantifiable but it is at least two or three times higher than before, and even severed limbs can be repaired quickly on their own. In addition, your body has many new functions.”

"Your skin is now covered by a translucent, highly durable membrane with a force-dispersing structure that blends seamlessly with the surrounding flesh, essentially making it immune to the kinetic energy of close-range direct hits from early 21st-century anti-material sniper rifles. It also offers significantly improved energy resistance; thermite at 200-5000 degrees Celsius cannot burn through your skin in a short time, and liquid nitrogen and oxygen at near-minus 200 degrees Celsius cannot cause frostbite. Furthermore, your skin can autonomously absorb and convert cosmic radiation, allowing you to survive freely in space."

“Of course, the most important thing is that your brain and lower abdomen… that is, your upper and lower dantian have both formed crystalline structures capable of storing large amounts of energy. Similar to the ‘golden elixir’ in some ancient Eastern legends, its effects are also similar. Your energy reserves have thus increased to about fifteen times what they were before, and if you can truly reach the fourth stage, there is still room for further increases.” Patchouli explained very quickly, soon giving a general overview of Zheng Zha’s new state. She paused slightly, poured herself a glass of cool water to moisten her throat.

"Wow..." Zheng Zha exclaimed in surprise.

"Then wouldn't I become incredibly powerful?" He couldn't help but beam with excitement. "That guy from the Senzhou team with the sword, what's his name, Rost? He was only slightly stronger than me before... no, he was weaker. I just hadn't fully mastered my power yet. So if I encounter him again, wouldn't I be able to..."

“You could just self-destruct right here.” Patchouli glanced at him irritably. “I’m not going to argue with you about wasting a long-range teleportation scroll worth 6,000 reward points for nothing. First of all, you can’t leave this repair tank right now. Because your body was actually fully repaired two hours ago, and then you tore it to smithereens again.”

"Huh?" Someone was speechless.

"Don't you understand? Then let me explain in more detail." Patchouli sighed softly, looking at Zheng Zha with eyes as if staring at a piece of rotten wood. "Your body was modified by your instincts when you were in the fourth stage, so it is adapted to your state at the fourth stage. However, you entered the fourth stage for too short a time, so your body has not been completely modified."

"Think about it, and you'll understand. Your overall physical strength has increased by nearly 2.5 times on average. But your energy reserves have increased more than tenfold. At the same time, your skin and many newly formed organelles in your body are constantly absorbing cosmic rays and free energy in the atmosphere, keeping your body in a state of high-energy overload at all times. And it is precisely because of this that the cells in your body are regenerating on a large scale every moment, and then dying on a large scale."

"Simply put, your physical strength can't keep up with your energy system... I really don't understand what you were thinking at the fourth level, instead of focusing on improving your physical strength, you put a lot of effort into accumulating energy. As a result, although your physical body has been greatly enhanced, perhaps even reaching the third-level limit of AA-grade enhancement, your energy system..." Patchouli shook her head.

"...It has probably touched upon, or even reached, the fourth stage. Of course, this is not really a troublesome issue. After all, it is your own body, and you can adapt in three to five years. But the problem is that we don't have three to five years right now. Even three to five days is debatable."

How exactly did you develop this fear of energy deficiency?

“Uh…” Zheng Zha tilted his head awkwardly. “Well… there are all sorts of reasons, I suppose. But it’s not important to dwell on that now. I think the most urgent thing is to solve the problem with my body. Do you have any good proposals? Norrell, how about using your old method of ‘memory world’ to buy me three to five years?”

“Unfortunately, I can’t do that. If you want to use that method, you’ll have to go to the world of gods and demons and find Anubis.” Patchouli glared at him. “I haven’t even reached the fourth level myself, how could I create and control a memory world that can contain extraordinary power? This isn’t some convenient hyper-simulation simulator where you can just press a button to get the parameters you want.”

She pursed her lips.

“However, I do have a suitable solution.” She paused, then continued, “Your current situation is simply that your physical strength cannot match the energy system that penetrates deep into every cell. So, although the cells in your body regenerate very quickly, they also die very quickly due to overload caused by excess energy. To deal with this situation, I currently have about two methods.”

“First, extract the excess energy from your body and store it in an external container.” She reached out and summoned Zheng Zha’s crimson greatsword of destruction to her side. “This greatsword is essentially a fourth-tier creation. Because you are not within the ancient angel’s power system, you can only use its extraordinary strength as a close-combat weapon, and cannot use its many internal functions. It is essentially a weapon comparable to, or even slightly superior to, the holy sword of the Senzhou team.”

“I can’t modify the fine details inside the blade right now, but if I just change the energy interface so that the energy in your body can replace the divine power of the ancient angel, I can barely manage to do it. I didn’t do it before because the energy conversion efficiency after changing the interface was too low. If you swung the blade once, you would be so drained that even my energy supply couldn’t keep up with you. But now… I think this plan is roughly feasible.”

“Secondly, I will personally install a new energy conversion mechanism at the energy source in your upper and lower dantian to improve the quality of your energy,” Patchouli explained, stretching out her hand and using light signals to construct a simple diagram in mid-air that even a monkey could understand.

Visible light formed a human-shaped diagram on her fingers. Points of light, representing free energy, converged from the outside of the figure to the inside, then concentrated in the brain and lower abdomen, forming two slightly larger spheres of light. These spheres were quickly filled, and the scattered energy, unable to converge but still continuously absorbed from the outside, gradually exploded within the figure, shattering the body into pieces.

“I thought they’d explode like firecrackers,” Zheng Zha interjected. “I didn’t even feel any pain!”

"That's because every cell in your body has organelles that convert energy, so the breakdown naturally occurs on a single-cell basis. At the same time, the nano-repair fluid is filled with a large amount of pain relievers, so it would be strange if you could feel any pain," Patchouli explained calmly.

She waved her hand and continued the previous topic.

“I will compress and purify your existing energy, and then transform it into a higher level. Alice should have already done this for you once, purifying your internal energy into innate true qi and compressing your blood energy into demonic blood energy. This allowed your energy to exert about twice the effect of a main god of the same level. What I need to do is continue this process and compress your excessive energy a second time.”

She outlined two separate, slightly smaller spheres and a series of intricate mechanisms on the outside of the two spheres of light. When the points of light representing energy were gathered onto the larger sphere, the smaller spheres would operate, purifying the energy in the larger sphere and turning those tiny points of light into even finer, yet more dazzling, light streaks.

The previously excess energy then became scarce, and the energy exchange channels within the body were able to reach a point where daily release and absorption were balanced. As a result, the human form became stable.

"Like this, once the energy is fully compressed, the two 'golden cores' in your body can hold a larger share of the energy. Even if there is still excess, you can safely release it through the body's exchange channels."

"That sounds pretty good." Zheng Zha raised an eyebrow. "It seems much better than the first option."

“If you can successfully reach the fourth stage, then both of these plans will become useless.” Patchouli waved her hand, dispelling the light signal model around her. “Plan two is only an emergency measure. According to my previous estimates, the energy in your body needs to be compressed to at least one-tenth of its previous level before it can stabilize. This will be a very troublesome operation. At the same time, the strength of your body is still insufficient. Under these circumstances, once your self-created ‘explosion’ and ‘destruction’ are activated, there is a high probability that you will explode on the spot.”

She considered it for a moment, then corrected herself. "Hmm... 'Explosion' might still be usable. Your new body's self-healing ability should be able to keep up. 'Destruction' is definitely out of the question. Of course, even the 'Explosion' back then was far more powerful than your current 'Destruction'."

She tilted her head and looked at Zheng Zha. "Two choices, which one do you choose?"

Zheng Zha laughed.

“Norreggie, since you know that Margot had already enhanced me once before, you should know that I have already made a similar choice.” He exhaled softly, releasing a string of bubbles into the transparent jar. “I want them all.”

"A jack of all trades, master of none," Patchouli replied calmly. "Filling the Greatsword of Destruction solves the problem of quantity, while secondary energy compression solves the problem of quality. Choosing both means that your quantity will be insufficient, and your quality will also be insufficient. At most, you will become more balanced, but this will indeed make the modification process smoother."

"I believe you have a plan to improve both the quality and quantity of what's in my body, Norrell. I know there are even stronger beings in the Morizu team, and as the captain, I'm willing to take the risk."

"You said that?" Patchouli raised an eyebrow.

“I said it,” Zheng Zha answered firmly.

“Very good.” Patchouli snapped her fingers. “The energy system within you actually has the potential for further development. It’s not just about cosmic radiation; it even has the potential to extract zero-point energy from the vacuum. And if there is a sufficiently strong external energy stimulus, and a balance is achieved, I can fully activate their energy production efficiency, allowing them to provide you with even more energy.”