"Passenger Caelus, I suppose this is goodbye." A small rabbit-like being said with an almost sad look in its eyes.
"As unfortunate as it is, Pom-Pom, I will truly miss all the adventures we've had and the Memories We've made", I said as I looked at the small conductor of the express. Truthfully, I didn't really want to leave, but both of us knew this Day would come.
Honestly, I had originally hoped that when I disembarked from the Express, I would have done so in Fulfilment. However, I never imagined that what would cause me to leave the express would be my inability to continue travelling.
As I got off the Express, I saw Pom-Pom give me one final nod before the Train's door slid shut. As I turned around and began walking away, I heard the whistle of the Astral Express one final time as it left the atmosphere of the planet.
As I continued to walk, I felt a constant Aching pain course through my body. As I thought back to all the events that had happened, it had been 17 years since I had reincarnated into this world, and my life had become truly crazy. At first, I didn't really suspect anything as I believed that I had just been reborn into a normal world. I could not have been more wrong. My first clue came once I finally understood my home planet's language and learned my name, Caelus That, on top of having silver hair and Golden eyes, had quickly made my identity apparent. At first, I merely called it a coincidence, but that all changed once my parents started teaching me about the Aeons.
That had confirmed what world I was in. It was the world of a game called Honkai: Star Rail, and with that knowledge, I had begun preparing for the future I knew at the time I would embark on. I had begun studying a lot of knowledge and learning things that would be useful to me in the future. Unfortunately, that's when I made my second Mistaken presumption since my reincarnation. When I had turned the age of nine, all hell broke loose.
People were screaming, and buildings all around were engulfed in flames. The constant buzzing of wings was heard, and if one even dared to look up, they would only see one thing.
insects. The entire sky, which should have been in the middle of the day, was darkened and pitch black due to the sheer number of them flying in the sky.
I had been forced onto an evacuation ship with other people as we hastily launched into orbit. Looking out the window, hundreds of other Ships could be seen flying through the atmosphere as well, but even as the ships, the swarm was relentless. One by one, you could see ships destabilising. Before, their trajectory was inevitably changed to a downward spiral back onto the planet due to the damage they had sustained.
The only ship that made it out of the atmosphere and into space was the one I was on, but that wasn't the end of it, as the swarm still chased us. Eventually, the ship had sustained too much damage, and whoever was piloting had completely lost control of the ship. As we aimlessly tumbled through space.
Eventually, I heard the sound of metal giving out, and I could feel the air rapidly decreasing around me as Insects had broken into the ship. I sat there helplessly watching as the people around me were slaughtered and torn apart one by one. I was panicked and in a complete state of absolute fear when all of a sudden the entire ship jolted, and I passed out.
I honestly didn't expect to wake up, but I did. I woke up to see a strikingly familiar ceiling that belonged to the Astral Express. Before I heard the familiar voice of Pom-Pom call to me to explain where I am and what happened, apparently, that jolt I felt before passing out was the evacuation ship I was in crashing into the express. Of course, it's quite hard to ignore when someone crashes into you in the middle of space, so a few of the members of the Express Had investigated and found the situation of the near destroyed ship that had crashed into them.
By the time the swarm that was surrounding the ship was fully killed, I had been the only survivor they found and was brought aboard the Express Unconscious.
I stayed for a few weeks with the Express Recovering as the train traversed the cosmos before I eventually requested to truly join the astral express using the reasoning that I wanted to find somewhere I could belong again.
I remember the smile on Pom-Pom's face that day as he handed me the familiar golden ticket welcoming me to the express.
That day, I had become a nameless, but at the same time, a truth had made itself blatantly clear. I had been reborn into the world of Star Rail, not only before the story began, but far earlier, near the end of the swarm disaster.
I shake my head to dispel the memories, as there was no reason to continue thinking about it.
Though I did have some relief still lingering in my heart at the swarm disaster being finally gone, as it truly was a horrific nightmare To Live through.
I stared up at the sky. In the time I was reminiscing, it had already turned to night as thousands of stars shone in the sky.
I sighed. It had been approximately 30 system hours since the Aeon of propagation was confirmed to be dead. It's been 25 system hours since Akivili The trailblaze had disappeared.
As for my own currently injured body, it happened 15 system hours ago in a fight against the Antimatter Legion. What would you expect the forces of destruction to not be doing anything during an event that nearly destroyed the universe?
So yeah, while the swarm disaster was happening, the universe was also having to fend off constant attacks from the Legion as well. Ever since the battle of the Aeons started, the Swarm and the Legion have both been attacking every faction in the Galaxy that they could see. Thankfully, at the time the assault started, The Express had been close to an IPC fleet, so thankfully we had back up. Frankly, that was probably the only reason we survived. Even if it is the IPC, they at least had numbers, while the express had quality.
So while the express did a large majority of the heavy lifting, the IPC fleet had provided cover fire to prevent Us From being overwhelmed by the frankly absurd tens of thousands of enemies. While The Express only had around 20 passengers at the time in the IPC had over 10,000.
The Express took heavy losses along with the IPC. Out of the twenty remaining passengers, only seven, including myself, survived, and the IPC barely had 500 soldiers left.
As for my injuries, It was caused by the fact that not only were we fighting for 25 hours straight, but also in the fact that I myself wasn't supposed to be a combatant. Don't get me wrong, I could hold my own in a fight pretty damn well, but at the end of the day, I was just a mechanic on the path of Erudition.
I had held my own for a while before the sheer relentlessness of both the Legion and the Swarm had overwhelmed me and destroyed most of my equipment. In the end, I was quite literally fighting with the scraps of the weapons I had originally had on me. For a while, I was even using a broken propeller from a drone as a sword.
In the end, I had somehow survived, but I had accumulated far too many Injuries during the fight to come out unscathed A nasty thing about the Legion is that any attack they land on you causes a Surge in the path energy of destruction coming out of them you can imagine What would happen if one was say... be stabbed and then had the energy of destruction itself released into them....
To say I was lucky to be alive would be an understatement.
And that's inevitably why I had to disembark from the Express. My body was so injured after the fact that I couldn't even go through the act of warping without my body convulsing in pain.
I once again shake myself out of the memories as I unlock the door in front of me and enter a small one-bedroom apartment that was provided to me after the fight by the IPC Executive that led the fleet that had assisted us during the fight.
Honestly, I could tell that the executive was genuinely showing pity for my injuries and wanted to allow me to have somewhere to rest for the last few years of my life and had provided me a place to stay.
Yeah, because even though I had lived with my injuries, even living five more years would Be A miracle. I couldn't help but feel a little regret because even though I had taken part in a grand adventure to assist as many people as we could during the disaster, I had yet to meet the characters that had made such an impact on me in my past life.
I reached into my coat and pulled out a book. It was an introduction to biology as I sat down and began studying. To tell the truth, I had already devised a plan to allow me to live through this, but it would require persistent effort, and I didn't even know if it was actually feasible. to create an artificial body and then transfer my consciousness into it.
In short, I wanted to create a humunculus. Though, to be completely honest, I wasn't fully sure if it was even possible, but I was going to try.
As for whether or not I could pull it off if it was the answer was of course yes. It wasn't like I was some super genius in my past life; in fact, I have my current life to thank for my confidence in this.
One has to realise that in the game, even though the protagonist had almost become Inseparable from the trash can memes, the trailblazer was in fact very intelligent This was proved by the fact that they could raise multiple near-bankrupt businesses into prominent success with barely any experience.
But there was one other thing that made me confident in this, the Continuance quest for the Herta space station, more specifically, the event where the player creates all of the cat cakes. Despite the process being relatively easy for the player, as it was in the form of a mini game in reality, the process was definitely a lot more complicated than that. As if it were truly as easy as the game made it seem, then Ruan Mei would not deserve the title of genius. So that means realistically, the trailblazer was intelligent enough to replicate at least a portion of Ruan Mei's research with no experience beforehand.
And not to mention the trailblazer did it with probably barely over a few months of Memories as they had amnesia.
So yes, the Trailblazer is indeed quite capable and is most probably the primary reason why I am as intelligent as I am. As I know damn well, I would have never been capable of any of this in my past life.
As I was intently studying the biology book in my Hands, I felt my confidence grow as I began To genuinely comprehend what I was reading.
As I Felt A burning passion within me, I smiled as I opened my mouth and began to speak out loud, "Don't worry, Pom-Pom, I'll make sure that goodbye wasn't final." As I said that I looked out my window and into the night sky as I made a promise to myself
A promise that I would eventually continue to traverse the Stellar Sea.
=====CH1END=====