Revisiting Azur Lane

"Commander, if we go any further, we will be 'sucked' into the mirror sea. Many reconnaissance planes that were sent out earlier have been cut off from communication after entering. This may be a small world of the same level as the one in the Omen."

After arriving at the destination, all the crew members got off the boat and gathered around Zhou He to exchange information. The one who spoke was Zuikaku, and several carriers including Shokaku next to him gave the same answer.

"In that case, then proceed with caution. Yukikaze, Yudachi, Z23, Hermione, and Kursk, you will be the vanguard. Hood Tosa, Bismarck, and Shokaku and Zuikaku, the five of you will enter two minutes later. If you encounter the enemy, you will first grab their attention and avoid the node where we enter. The rest of you will maintain the formation and enter in turn after five minutes."

Zhou He thought for a moment before making an arrangement. He looked at the people who were listening attentively and said, "After marching for so long, everyone must be a little hungry, but now is not the right time to cook. Let's rush in and gain a foothold before resupplying."

"it is good!"

Yudachi raised both hands in agreement, Javelin and Z23 also expressed their understanding. The destroyers were the ones who supported Zhou Hechang the most in the crowd, while the rest of the people were thinking more about how to deal with the unknown enemy rather than eating.

After the assignment was made, the action started on time. After saying goodbye to Zhou He with a smile, Yukikaze, who was riding a wolf, and the other three people who were named, approached the mirror sea at the same time. When they were about fifty meters in front of the transport boat, they suddenly disappeared from the spot.

"We're off too."

Hood and five other battleships followed closely behind, entering the mirror sea while the rest of the ships were getting into formation.

At this time, Zhou He stood on the side of the speedboat and looked at the place where they disappeared. He glanced at the people on the ship who had not shown any signs of low health, and directly used the system to manually control the two transport boats to move forward. The speedboat that was set to follow the two boats also moved forward slowly.

"Follow the commander."

New Jersey was standing very close to Zhou He's speedboat, only about thirty meters away. Hu Teng was keeping the same distance from her. The two of them replaced Yudachi and Xuefeng, and led the team on the left and right to protect Zhou He's speedboat. Kaga, who was left behind, was very dissatisfied and led the team with Shentong to protect the transport boat on the left, while the Royal Ark and London protected the transport boat on the right. Everyone rushed towards the mirror sea in the general form of a circular formation and quickly entered it.

Zhou He, who was surrounded in the middle, felt extremely safe - it should be like this, but Zhou He himself was still a little panicked. Even though his ship girl had already flattened several mirror sea test sites, this was the first time he entered one of them. Fortunately, this body was a spiritual projection, which made him nervous, but not confused.

Sitting in the speedboat, he watched the ships and people in front of him disappear one by one. When he was about to enter the mirror sea area, he opened his eyes wide and tried to observe the transition from the big world to the small world. However, there was no transition CG at all, and the light in front of him did not change at all, and he had already merged with the fleet in front.

The sun was high in the sky, the sound of the rolling sea water was still noisy, and the perceived temperature was no different.

"Come in now?"

Zhou He vaguely heard the cry of seagulls. He looked up into the distance and saw a small black dot. His sight shifted and fell on the system map. Sure enough, it turned into a large dark map. It is commendable that the two old aircraft carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku (? ) that came in first have begun to conduct aerial reconnaissance. Part of the map around him has been lit up, including the small black dot in the distance - this is an island, but it is not entirely an island.

On the system map, this island has signs of infrastructure, and in the center there is a black spire, shaped like the Dark Tower in the second season of Digimon.

"The Siren's base?"

Zhou He looked at the island texture and felt it looked very familiar, as if he had seen it in a game.

But since he had a sense of déjà vu, it can be confirmed that it was the masterpiece of the Siren. I just don't know what function this tower plays.

As for other directions, no special discoveries have been made so far.

"Commander, there is a place that looks like a Siren stronghold over there. Do you want to go over there?"

Zuikaku ran over from a distance to report to Zhou He, and Zhou He nodded directly: "Come closer, fight if there are enemies, don't attack for now if there are no enemies."

The goal of entering the Mirror Sea is to explore and close the Mirror Sea so that he can get the mission reward. So at this stage, what he has to do is to collect as much intelligence as possible, first figure out the general situation in this test site, and then start a killing spree.

Perhaps there will be a team of ship girls that intrudes here like the White Eagle Fleet did before?

He was wary of the unknown environment, but also had a glimmer of hope. If he was lucky enough, there would be locals in this small world to help him, then he would be able to do things more efficiently.

Fantasy is beautiful, but reality is cruel. While the fleet was approaching the Black Tower Island, his aircraft carriers discovered the Sirens. All of these Sirens were executors, and they were not basic. They exuded a technological blue light all over their bodies. They even appeared in an organized manner, not just wandering around, but coming straight towards them.

"This is at least a Type II Executor. Don't take it lightly. Go all out to get rid of them."

Zhou He began to call out his orders. There were a total of thirty-six executors who came over, divided into three single columns, including six on aircraft carriers, six on battleships, and the rest were mixed in the front row. He took advantage of the fact that the opponent had not yet released its carrier-based aircraft and directly ordered Shuanghe to attack first, and then divided his own team into four single columns to outflank them.

The battle was on the verge of breaking out. These executors reacted incredibly quickly. When faced with an air raid, they changed their formation into a circle for defense, protecting the aircraft carrier in the center, and then the battle line mixed with the front row to surround the periphery for counterattacks.

"There must be someone behind this group of Sirens. Is it the Purifier?"

Zhou He saw the formation change clearly from the map. Fortunately, the enemy only had six Type II aircraft carriers, and he also had six. This was a rare 1v1 duel in the past few months, and the number of people in this fleet was similar to that he brought.

The battle started, Xuefeng led the team and rushed into the Siren line to tear it apart. A few shots destroyed a battleship. Even the wolf under her killed two Siren destroyers during the charge. Now Xuefeng's stats are not far from her previous berserk state, but her spirit is stable and her stats are exploding. Her main feature in encounters is her fierceness.

With air strikes + strange numerical assaults, this Type II Executor fleet collapsed at the first touch and was wiped out in less than half an hour - this is also the difference between the Executor and the mass-produced type. The mass-produced type of battleship is large enough and very resistant to attacks, while the Executor is in human form and very agile, but it will die if it is hit by two head-on shots, and its tolerance rate is also lower.

"It's a complete success."

Zhou He felt relieved. With Xuefeng there, the enemy's line would be disrupted. As long as the others followed, they could drive the entire Siren fleet.

Unfortunately, no ship girl was dropped this time, but he was not disappointed, because the Anchorage in the scientific research system only needs 21 heavy cruisers to unlock.

After the battle, Zhou He and his men quickly evacuated the scene. The aircraft carrier continued to investigate, while the fleet approached the Black Tower Island. From a distance, it looked like a big black dot, but as it got closer, the island became larger and larger. Its area is estimated to be calculated in square kilometers. There are traces of infrastructure in the flat areas around the island, and there are spires extending to the depths of the island. There are many houses and even ships, but there are no garrisons. It is an air port.

"You are so arrogant, what is the use of this thing?"

Zhou He looked at the clean and beautiful infrastructure in front of him and couldn't help but click his tongue. If he had such a seaport, even if it had no strategic location to defend, he would have to send someone to guard it. But this place was just vacant, what a shameful waste!

"It should have a function similar to a signal station."

Xuefeng looked at it and asked the others around him, "Is your communication ability not interfered with?"

"No."

Having just fought a battle, Yudachi was a little excited. She pointed to the airport in front of her and said, "Can this be used as our temporary base?"

“…It’s possible, but we need to see if this tower has surveillance capabilities.”

Xuefeng felt a little strange. In other worlds, the communication capabilities of ship girls would often be cut off or blocked by Sirens and used as a means of tampering. However, this group of ship girls from Zhou He's family had never encountered such a situation. They didn't even need a base station and could directly carry out long-distance communications of hundreds of nautical miles, which was a bit of cheating.

"Let's go up and have a look."

New Jersey volunteered to point to the spire, and looked at Hood and the others: "Can you control the Siren's electronic system? I can't."

"Hermione, please go."

Hood's expression remained unchanged. She also learned a few moves, but she didn't want to show off, so she handed the task over to Hermione, who gladly accepted the order: "I understand."

Afterwards, Hermione applied to Zhou He, who agreed and gave the task of exploring the spire to New Jersey and other White Eagle members. After all, the Sirens all use Eagle language, and the developer of the Sirens in the game seems to be from White Eagle, so they have the same master and master.

Seeing that New Jersey and his group were the first to land, Zhou He thought for a moment and tilted his head: "London, you go with them and help Hermione."

"it is good."

London followed Hood out of the line, and after looking around, Zhou He gave instructions to Kursk directly through the dock: explore the energy source of this airport.

At the same time, he asked Zuikaku, Shokaku, Royal Ark, and Elbe to conduct diffuse reconnaissance in four directions of the island to ensure the safety of the surrounding area.

Not long after, Zhou He's speedboat landed at the dock on the shore. This place did not look like a wartime material transfer station, nor did it look like a development area. There were no cranes or cargo boxes around the dock. There were only two pretentious warehouses. The overall feeling was more like a place for leisure time.

"Why would Siren build a port like this for vacation? Are there many intelligent Sirens here?"

Zhou He led the team to observe twice and instinctively felt that something was not good. In ordinary mirror seas, the Siren bases were either military fortresses for production or for collecting resources, but there was an idle Siren Airport here, which was enough to prove that the content of this test site was very unusual.

"Is the Purifier trapped here? Can we let her be the mole again?"

Without telling anyone else what he was thinking, after patrolling twice, Zhou He found an open space and started building a temporary kitchen.

Put everything else aside for now; eating is the most important thing.

Oh, it seems that his body does not need food. His real body far away in the port area needs it. It is impossible for him to cancel the projection now. At least he has to figure out the situation in this test field before he can cancel it. Fortunately, besides Jarvis, there is also Akashi in the port area. He should be able to get some nutrients for him to barely keep his real body going in the next two days.

"We need to resolve this as soon as possible."

Zhou He felt the pressure.

Chapter 183 Surrounded

There is also a distinction between day and night in the testing ground. Zhou He had already experienced this when he was in the physical copy of the Omen. He never thought that in just a few days, he would once again enter the difficult mirror sea.

“The time here and outside seem to be synchronized, but the space is independent.”

Zhou He looked up at the sky. The moon was unusually round, and the scattered light was brighter than the outside world, illuminating the entire world in silver-white. Only by the bonfire with flames rising in the open space did the color look slightly normal.

Even though Zhou He still had the mind to look at the sky, in fact, he had just finished cooking. When he decided to use projection to follow the team, he confidently asked to be the logistics manager, but he never thought that the number of his own ship girls had reached an astonishing thirty-plus. Even with the help of Enterprising Javelin, Z23 and others, he was busy from the afternoon until after seven o'clock when night fell, and he barely fed the twenty or so girls who were exploring near him.

The group of people from New Jersey who were sent out to explore the purpose of the Black Tower had not eaten yet. He thought it was almost time for them to come back, so he hurried to cook. He spent 15 Home Coins on this meal. Normally, he never saw them eat so much at home.

All he could say was that fortunately this projection's body wouldn't feel physically tired. After being busy for so long he only felt mentally exhausted. This projection consumed a lot of energy, and he didn't know if he could recover by sleeping.

"Commander, they are back."

After traveling for a whole day, most of the ship girls sat around the campfire to rest and communicate after eating. Only a few destroyers named by Zhou He were on sentry duty nearby. The one who came back to report to him was Ayanami. Zhou He nodded at her and then looked into the distance. Because the moonlight was bright, he could see a group of figures moving down from a higher altitude. Although he couldn't see their faces clearly, there was no one else here.

“I don’t know if there will be any discovery.”

Zhou He saw Ayanami off and glanced at the crowd gathered around the campfire. Only at this moment could he truly feel that his own ship girls were just special girls, not humanoid weapons born for fighting.

Everybody was waiting for New Jersey and the others to bring back news. After all, Shokaku and other aircraft carriers had only gotten one piece of information from their outward exploration, which was that every few dozen nautical miles there would be black tower islands similar to the ones here. There were islands in all four directions: southeast, northwest, and northeast. There were also black tower islands in the oblique directions such as the northeast and northwest, but they were farther away.

Although they didn't know what the purpose of this pattern was, they could feel that it was unusual.

Not long after, New Jersey and his group approached the temporary camp. Hermione and London approached the Hood directly, while New Jersey found Zhou He directly. He took a deep breath beside the stove in an exaggerated manner, and was quite intoxicated: "I can smell the fragrance of food here from a long distance away. I haven't eaten for so long, I'm almost starving."

"It's already been prepared for you. Eat first, and then we'll talk about the situation over there."

Zhou He couldn't help but smile when he saw this. He brought all the dishes in the thermal box to the table that had just been wiped clean, and invited Cleveland, Harman and Hermione who had returned to eat together.

New Jersey was very patient and started eating right away. Harman looked at York City and hesitated to speak. Only Cleveland poured himself a glass of cold water and drank it all. After a refreshing shout, he spoke to Zhou He:

"Commander, the function of this spire is similar to what Xuefeng said. It is a communication base station, but it has a more important function. It can monitor the area within dozens of nautical miles. It is a top-down view, just like a spy satellite, and the display is very detailed. We have seen everything you do on it."

"Oh? This is quite interesting. It's a pity that I didn't ask Akashi and the others to come along. Maybe they could analyze it."

Zhou He was surprised, but not particularly surprised, as these two functions were still within his scope of imagination.

New Jersey, who wanted to keep the secret, almost choked on his food. He stopped pretending to be calm and took the bowl to speak: "This tower is a monitoring center. It stores a lot of monitoring images. We have looked through all the images and found that there are not only sirens in this test site, but also ship girls who are similar to us, but the equipment they use is at least one era ahead of ours. The two sides have had several battles nearby. No, the word "exercise" is more suitable to describe such scenes."

"A ship girl who is ahead of her time? A combat exercise?"

This amount of information was a bit excessive, but Zhou He's brain was working quickly. He vaguely remembered that there seemed to be a similar activity plot setting in the game?

It took him a while to react - the official Azur Lane seemed to be out of ideas, so they created a group of Type II ship girls, which were aimed at second-generation ships that were modernized or inherited the name. Among them, the more famous one was Yorktown II, which was like a reborn lady, the lady of the Essex class.

If that's the case, that would be great. He has local people and can seek cooperation with them.

But there is also a small problem. The "future world" in the game plot seems to be a virtual world created by a group of metas fighting against the arbitrator. The test site in front of us is obviously not at that level.

"But there is a ship girl who looks like a II ship here, could there be an arbitrator among them?"

Zhou He bit his lip and tilted his head to look at Xuefeng, who was lying next to the campfire in a similar situation to Yuli. Yuli had her eyes closed, while Xuefeng was counting stars with her eyes open. She seemed to notice Zhou He's gaze, so she looked up and half sat up: "Did you find anything?"

"Our next opponent may include an arbitrator."

Zhou He took a breath and minimized the situation.

"what!?"

Xuefeng was immediately startled, her ears pricked up. What was going on? Why was there an arbitrator in the test field managed by the experimental agency? The rules and regulations of each system in Siren were clearly defined. Isn't this simply an overstepping of authority?

"Is that arbitrator very powerful?"

Yuudachi was disturbed by her scream. He opened his eyes and looked at Xuefeng's surprised expression, and asked curiously.

Xuefeng glanced at her and said, "It's not a question of how powerful they are. Our opponents so far have always been experimental institutions. They are not combat models. The Arbitrators belong to the Arbitration Institute. They are very special combat units and are very high-end individuals in the entire Siren system."

"Hey, where have I heard these words before?"

Yuli was not scared, but just felt that it sounded very familiar. She turned her eyes to Zhou He. The words she had heard could only come from Zhou He's mouth.

"Yuudachi, you are too lazy. The commander said a long time ago that the Arbitration Agency has strong combat capabilities."

Zuikaku, who was sitting next to Shokaku, yawned and waved his hand casually: "It doesn't matter. It's a good opportunity to see the highest level of the Sirens' combat power."

"..."

Xuefeng looked at this group of leisurely guys and couldn't think of what to say for a moment.

If they really met the arbitrator, they would not care. They only had the possibility of dying here, so they stood up and said to Zhou He: "Your Highness Zhou He, as long as you can give me the coordinates of the port area or the outside world or the anchor items connected to it, I can try to break the barrier of this test site and leave."

"Coordinates and anchor points."

Zhou He could understand why Xuefeng was so panicked. When playing the game, there was a comparison of the combat power between Embers and Arbiters. Not to mention the perverted Black Enterprise, about four ordinary meta ship girls could repel an Arbiter. In comparison, Frederick the Great had entangled several camps to besiege the Builder's host in the event, and there were a total of three Meta participating in the group.

Although this cannot directly reflect how big the gap is between the mainframes of the experimental agency and the dispatched individuals of the arbitrators, it is certain that they cannot beat the real arbitrators now.

"As for anchor points, I am probably the most suitable anchor point."

Zhou He smiled and poked himself with his fingers, but he was not in a hurry to retreat and run away: "There may be an Arbitrator here, or there may not be, but one thing is certain, even if an Arbitrator model appears, it will not be the genuine Arbitrator you know. If there is such a ferocious thing, there would be no need for the Observer to die alone yesterday to delay our progress."

"This, the observer's actions are unpredictable. Perhaps she simply wants to find out our composition before we enter here and are wiped out."

Xuefeng felt that what Zhou He said made sense, but when she thought of those troublesome arbitrators, she was unsure. Before she came here, she had never actually fought with an arbitrator. Even if she met one occasionally, they would just stare at each other across space or from a distance before leaving.

According to her personal experience and the experience of the Meta ships she encountered, the Arbitration Authority took a non-provoking attitude towards people like them. Just as they were afraid of the Arbitration Authority, the people of the Arbitration Authority were also afraid of their combat effectiveness.

"Xuefeng, is the Arbitrator really that scary?"

Seeing Yukikaze so hesitant, Shokaku asked in a gentle voice. Although they did not regard Yukikaze as a special member, her combat ability was undoubtedly the strongest among them. It seemed that the Arbitrator was really powerful to make her so conflicted.

Xuefeng hesitated to speak, but soon calmed down and replied with a smile: "Arbitrators, they are not that powerful!"