a new day came, and Daniel was still hitting the books, only now did he realize that there wasn't anything hurrying him, and he could take his sweet time studying before doing things
he decided first to digest all the knowledge he had, to improve his abilities before "attacking" Tendor's cyber security again to get more knowledge, and hopefully, find information about the science liberation brigade so that he could gather even more knowledge from them, it was about to become a vicious circle
but he still had to find and defeat them and there were many more things he wanted to achieve in between, like waiting for Alice to arrive so he could get the knowledge about the life diagram, and also developing a way to create a new type of M.A.R.U that could be used through the itchy explorers that were currently laying dormant, without revealing his identity, and for sure he would need interstellar flight capabilities to reach Gregosh
of course, he could ask for sister chaos's assistance, and everything could be solved in a second, but Daniel kept thinking "wouldn't that be boring" he highly valued the chance to fight technology with technology, and wouldn't let it slip away
to achieve all this would take an even longer amount of time if he continue to stubbornly muddle through instead of digesting all the knowledge that was currently in his hands, as such, all the projects aside from the seafood farm were brought to an alt, and the only two things in Daniel's mind aside from his studies, were using Tickles innate ability as much as possible as a secondary source of knowledge, and when would the spidercrabs eggs hatch, and he wasn't the only one
even if the mechanical army situation had calmed down, many people were trying to contact the specter family to get the chance to study the princess egg, differently from any other kind of eggs of the hive creatures, princess eggs were kept hidden and protected by the queens, finding one was already excitingly rare, but actually managing to obtain it intact was a first even for them as the queens would prefer to destroy it than to let it fall in others hands
Sophia herself was very interested in it, and would often be seen around the cloud train as she went to analyze the progress and collect information from the point of view of a cultivator, alas the egg that seemed to be close to hatching for a long time, was still firmly encased in his strange bubble nest
while studying, and sometimes when Vincent was free going fishing, a month had passed and Daniel had spent most of it sunbathing in full lizard mode on the lake shore, he was so calm and composed while reading that the absence of explosions and strange noises alerted the family, but after confirming that there wasn't anything fishy happening in the background they finally relaxed
and while joseph, Phoebe, and Sophia when they were free would often accompany Daniel as he was reading, Alexander would still mostly be gone and appear once in a while, the routine was always the same, after spending some time chatting with Daniel, he would go visit Wilhelmina his daughter and Vincent's sister, that was imprisoned in the vault dimension because of her past crimes
it was unclear if Alexander was blaming himself for the way things went, or was angry at Vincent for arresting her way back then thousands of years before eventually becoming the president, but one thing was for sure he loved her very much and would often get in contact with her and just talk, even if she barely acknowledged his existence
in fact, the only reason Wilhelmina was still imprisoned to this day, is that she showed no remorse and refused to talk with anyone, she didn't even try to put up an act to trick them and just ignored all of them, if they couldn't perceive her soul and life energy anyone would think that this was just an elaborate puppet, but there where no doubts, that was her body and soul in that place that even if it looked like a luxurious villa was still nothing more than a comfortable prison
in a manor a few kilometers outside the capital rainbow city, inside a well-lit office, a woman covered in heavy purple robes was throwing various furniture and decoration around while cursing, at the small scrawny man that had come to give her bad news
the woman after throwing a paperweight at the man's head, looked at him like there was an excrement kneeling in front of her instead of a person and said "try to repeat that again"
the man that had blood flowing out of his forehead after being hit by the paperweight said trembling "the great space devouring formation has been found . . . the formation core was taken away and it's now in the protector's hands"
the woman started kicking the man, like she was possessed by a ferocious and angry demon, and said "all these years of work, wasted, utterly wasted, just die you miserable piece of . . ."
the man at this point more dead than alive screamed in a desperate attempt to save his life "I heard they suspect the Garian's, it's still possible to incite a war and make them destroy each other, once they are weak, you can let the surrounding civilization take care of them for you"
the woman looked at him and said "you, worthless idiot, my plan was PERFECT and INESCAPABLE DESTRUCTION, the formation would have reached its peak the day of the Specter family reunion and all of them would have been perfectly erased from this universe, do you think I give a shit about the Sun Federation or the Garian Absolute Monarchy, JUST DIE!" at that point, she stomped on his head ending his life
soon later she sighed and said "it's already the fourth plan that fails, this time was perfect, how is this possible" she was biting her nail so hard that small droplets of blood started to come out
as she punched a mirror that was one of the few things still standing in the office she said "I still have a backup, I will have to meet this Daniel specter, if you want something done right you should just do it yourself, look at all this filthy blood, time to change identity again"
at that point, she activated a transport formation, and disappeared, soon later the entire manor spontaneously combusted, and before the authorities could reach even the stone had melted into lava erasing everything
the next morning good news reached the specter household, or better almony that was still a guest, Alice had already reached the central galaxy of the Sun Federation, and would soon enough arrive to Verulus, thanks to the various gate formations that helped connect the various solar systems in the galaxy
as such, Almony could be seen furiously walking up and down like a restless caged animal, while Daniel while reading was also keeping his hears open, even if it wasn't obvious, he too was excited about getting his hands on the Biomechanical technology
and in the afternoon an oval-shaped spaceship arrived in the orbit of Verulus, but it wasn't as big as expected, being only the size of a commercial plane, it was granted permission to land in a space that existed for this exact reason just 10 or 15 mt away from the portal that led inside the specter dimension, a parking space for guests that was rarely used
and from the ship, a voluptuous mature woman with silky pale skin and brilliant silver eyes came out of the ship via an elevator placed at its center that transferred her to the ground
and at the portal waiting for her were Vincent, Daniel, and of course, Almony, who started running to hug her mother while shedding tears of happiness
as soon as Almony calmed down a bit, while still holding on to her mother's arm, the two of them walked to Vincent and Daniel and Alice said "I really don't know how to thank you for reuniting me with my little girl"
Vincent courtly replied "it was just something done in the passing, don't think too much about it, let's go inside and have some tea so you can show us your skurian alliance proposal"
Alice nodded and smiling said "of course, I'm glad to take on the helm of ambassador for once"
soon they walked down the pebbled path and Vincent said "now that we are inside no one can spy on us, let's take it easy there's also some uncomfortable truths that we have to make the both of you aware of"