Chapter 365: Operation Commences
Jane watched the chaotic, lively bickering unfold before her, the initial awkwardness of her exposed undercover identity melting away into quiet amusement. She waved a hand dismissively, a genuine, relaxed smile touching her lips.
"It's okay, really. You are all friends of the Little Shopkeepers, so I trust you. And... Miss Stelle, she's very..." Jane paused, searching her vocabulary for a polite descriptor. "...lively."
At the word 'lively,' Stelle instantly forgot the throbbing bump on her head and her exaggerated grievances. With a sudden burst of raccoon-like energy, she slipped right out of March 7th's restraining grip. Lunging forward, she seized Jane's hands in both of hers, her golden eyes sparkling with intense, overwhelming gratitude.
"Miss Jane, you are such a good person!" Stelle declared, her voice ringing with dramatic conviction. "From now on, you're my sworn best friend! Anyone who dares to bully you, I won't stand for it!"
Seeing Stelle's sudden shift into a hot-blooded anime protagonist left the rest of the group entirely speechless. March 7th simply facepalmed, groaning quietly into her glove.
Finally, Welt stepped forward, adjusting his glasses as he smoothly pulled the conversation back on track. "Stelle, there will be plenty of opportunities to hear Miss Jane's stories and undercover experiences later."
He cast a measured glance at Stelle, then swept his gaze over the assembled group, finally settling his focus on Qingyi and Jane. His tone grew noticeably heavier, grounded in his usual reliable authority. "The current priority is to capture Bringer based on the intelligence Miss Jane has provided and resolve the immediate crisis. Let's not forget our core objective for gathering here, and... the corresponding reward upon mission completion."
Welt's words—especially that deliberate, lingering emphasis on the word reward—acted like a bucket of ice water dumped directly onto Stelle's hyperactive nervous system.
The chaotic playfulness vanished from the Trailblazer's face faster than a dropped sweet roll. She released Jane's hands, snapped her spine perfectly straight, and adopted a mask of deadpan, hardened solemnity. It was as if the girl who had just been jumping around prying for government secrets had been entirely replaced by a seasoned, emotionless mercenary.
She nodded with sharp, mechanical precision. "Uncle Yang is absolutely right! Mission first! Rewards... uh, no, justice and comrades are more important!"
Catching her own slip-up, she quickly cleared her throat and locked a dead-serious gaze onto Qingyi and Jane. "Then, let's set off immediately! We have a Bringer to catch!"
Thanks to Stelle's abrupt tonal whiplash, the atmosphere finally shifted from the comedic fallout of a blown cover to the tense, focused preparation of a strike team.
Seeing the topic finally anchored, Wise quickly took the reins. He shot Stelle a calming look. "Don't rush in blindly. We haven't even clarified the tactical situation yet."
He turned his attention back to Jane, his expression shifting into the sharp, analytical demeanor of a veteran Proxy. "Jane, what are the exact details? Has Bringer's current location been hard-confirmed?"
Jane smoothly slipped back into character. The slight, polite awkwardness she had displayed around Stelle vanished, replaced instantly by the razor-sharp, calculating aura of a top-tier operative.
She gave a curt nod, her report crisp and efficient. "According to the latest encrypted pings I've received, Bringer has indeed infiltrated the Epis Port Hollow."
"His primary goal seems to be using an undocumented, unstable path within the Hollow to smuggle himself directly into the strictly controlled Thorn Zone, hoping to completely evade our pursuit grid."
She paused, a mocking, dangerous smirk playing at the corner of her lips. "However, our 'big shot' target happens to be far greedier than we initially projected."
"He doesn't just want to escape. He's locked his sights on a massive cache of high-value Ether items secretly stockpiled deep within the Hollow's inner rings. He intends to loot the vault and take the entire shipment with him."
"So," Jane continued, her tone dripping with the satisfaction of a perfectly laid trap, "I played along. I disguised myself as a black-market 'contact' who could provide the transport logistics to move his stolen goods. He took the bait completely, and I successfully lured him to an isolated, designated drop point within the Hollow."
"I've already transmitted the exact spatial coordinates of that drop point to the Little Shopkeepers' communication devices via a heavily encrypted channel." Her gaze shifted toward Wise and Belle.
The two siblings didn't need to be told twice. They immediately lowered their heads, their fingers flying across their terminal screens as they verified the incoming data packets.
"Excellent!" Belle cheered, her face lighting up as the map populated. "This way, we won't have to wander around the Hollow like headless chickens waiting to get ambushed!"
Jane nodded slightly, her expression turning serious once more. "The rest is up to your strike team. Please stay vigilant. Bringer likely still has the remnants of his elite guard force with him, and the environmental hazards inside the Hollow... well, you all know those dangers far better than I do."
Before Jane could even finish her warning, the crisp, heavy clack-clack of mechanical weapon latches echoed through the room.
Everyone whipped their heads around. At some point during the briefing, Stelle had equipped a pair of slightly exaggerated, glowing blue tactical goggles over her eyes. She stood with her feet planted wide, holding a MAC-10 submachine gun—suspiciously identical to Kafka's signature weapons—in each hand. The muzzles were angled slightly downward in perfect trigger discipline. She was fully armed, vibrating with kinetic energy, and absolutely ready to breach and clear.
"Intel confirmed! Target locked!" Stelle barked, her voice dropping an octave as she deliberately imitated the gritty tone of a hard-boiled action movie protagonist.
Despite her best efforts, the sheer, unadulterated thrill of the impending fight bled through her facade. "No time to lose, speed is of the essence! To prevent the target from shifting locations, we deploy immediately and catch him completely off guard!"
Her impetuous, hyper-aggressive posture made it look like she was going to kick down the nearest wall and sprint into the Hollow by herself.
However, her dramatic display served as a perfect catalyst. Yanagi adjusted her glasses, her voice cutting through the room with calm authority. "Check your equipment, everyone."
Harumasa and Soukaku immediately began running through their final diagnostic checks, the metallic clicks of weapon safeties and Ether-charge hums filling the air.
The members of the Chat Group followed suit. Although most of them relied on their own innate elemental abilities or the anomalous weapons provided by the system, basic tactical readiness was never something to be ignored.
"Coordinates received, locked, and synchronized to everyone's personal navigation devices," Wise confirmed, looking up from his terminal as the final data transfer completed.
"Go!"
At Stelle's enthusiastic command, the assembled group stepped forward in unison, crossing the threshold into the bizarre, spatially distorted, and highly unstable environment of the Hollow.
However, the very second they crossed the boundary, the anomaly struck.
Although they had stepped through the entrance shoulder-to-shoulder, the violently shifting light and shadows of the Hollow tore at their formation. When the spatial distortion finally stabilized, the team realized with a jolt that they had been scattered.
Stelle, March 7th, and Dan Heng materialized abruptly on a narrow, precarious platform constructed from discarded industrial pipes and heavily rusted metal grating. Below their boots lay a bottomless, suffocating abyss of darkness, illuminated only by the faint, sickly glow of scattered Ether Crystals clinging to the distant cavern walls.
Miles away, in an entirely different sector, Zhongli, Venti, and Hu Tao found themselves standing in the center of a fractured, open plaza littered with crushed shipping containers. Deep fissures spiderwebbed across the concrete ground, violently venting geysers of raw, volatile Ether energy into the stagnant air.
Before anyone could assess their new surroundings, a semi-transparent, glowing blue system screen forcefully projected itself directly into the retinas of every single Chat Group member, displaying several lines of stark text:
[Operation Commences!]
[Bangboo Adaptive Balance Mechanism Activated.]
[Description: To ensure fairness and maintain the structural challenge of this activity, the basic physical attributes and specific extraordinary abilities of all Bangboos have been temporarily balanced and synchronized. This restricted state can be actively broken at any time by the participant's own conscious will.]
[Warning: Once the balanced state is intentionally broken, the participant will immediately be judged as having failed this operation. All items currently stored within the system backpack will be permanently reset to zero, and the participant will be forcibly teleported back to the Hollow entrance after a ten-second countdown. Please evaluate your decisions carefully.]
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