"Hmm~~? A kill?" Zoe blinked her multicolored eyes in confusion. "Do you want their heads?"
"Hey, it's just a figure of speech... I didn't mean it that way."
Li Lin, feeling anxious, quickly descended to a height above the ground and activated the scanning system of his battle armor.
The land had been completely plowed down several layers by the meteor missile made of star magic. The few hundred people temporarily stationed here had been reduced to nothing more than bone shards.
From above, the deep pit looked just like it had been struck by a meteor, except for the absence of any actual meteors.
There was nothing else.
Zoe had acted ruthlessly, and naturally, no Noxians had survived.
"This…"
Li Lin continued to descend and landed beside the deep pit, staring into the dark, gloomy abyss below, unsure of what to say.
At this moment, Zoe, floating in mid-air and observing Li Lin's figure, opened a portal with her mind and stepped through, appearing directly behind him.
She seemed to sense that Li Lin was upset by her reckless behavior, causing her mood to drop a little.
"Li Lin," Zoe said, tugging at his wrist with a hint of hesitation. "I always end up doing things I shouldn't. If I made a mistake... I'm sorry."
"Eh, forget it."
Even without killing those bloodthirsty enemies, Li Lin still had an unassembled battlefield mech, Urgot, on hand.
If he upgraded the Inventor series' small skills, he could barely manage to make it into a "legendary" quality item and level it up without much trouble.
Otherwise, he would have to wait until he built the second mech, the War Lord, or designed a new concept mech to unlock new technologies.
Li Lin shook his head, retracted the nanotech armor on his right hand to his wrist, and flicked Zoe gently on the forehead with his middle finger.
"Hmm…" Zoe let out a pained whimper.
She covered the spot where Li Lin had flicked her, looking up at him with a pitiable expression, clearly aggrieved.
Li Lin, as if venting frustration, ruffled her hair a few times. "Stop pretending to be aggrieved. I didn't even use much force."
"Eh~~"
Caught out, Zoe immediately stopped her display of grievance and stuck out her tongue at him.
"Did you pick up that acting skill from watching some theater troupe?"
"Ah~~ You even know that! It's from an Ionia theater troupe!" Zoe excitedly shook his arm. "We're truly in sync!"
Li Lin: "…"
...
...
After Zoe's antics, the nanotech drones he had sent to track the Dusk Brigade were also destroyed along with the meteor strike.
As he hesitated whether to return to Piltover and use these few days to personally build the War Lord and unlock some new genetic technology, he remembered his promise to Jarvan IV to help his soldiers restore their vision—he just needed to deal with Faris Noladi and her subordinates.
If he couldn't manage it or if it took too long, it would be hard to explain…
Li Lin glanced at Zoe, who was floating in mid-air, swinging her small feet and humming a beautiful tune, completely absorbed in her own world.
The "date" with her could wait.
Just as Li Lin resolved to call Zoe back to his workshop, the AI's alert interrupted his thoughts:
[Master, according to the footage from another Noxian temporary outpost's drone, The Lady of Blood has led her Dusk Brigade to escape there.]
"Huh? They actually escaped?"
Li Lin stared in surprise at the holographic display, which showed the coordinates marked by the AI on the map.
The Noxian temporary outpost was located north of Silent Lake, primarily set up to guard against the dragon bird support troops from the Greenfang Mountains and Everpeak.
To fully grasp the movements and intelligence of the Noxian forces, Li Lin had dispatched cloaked drones to monitor their positions.
Unexpectedly, this turn of events brought an unexpected surprise.
[They must have discovered you and Miss Zoe and realized the situation was turning against them, leading them to abandon their soldiers and flee.]
"They moved pretty fast."
[However... Noxus is currently facing another issue. I wouldn't recommend seeking them out at this time.]
Li Lin raised an eyebrow, a hint of confusion crossing his face.
[A drone that infiltrated the Noxian temporary outpost captured an image of a mysterious masked woman…]
The AI immediately explained, downloading a somewhat blurry photo and video from the cloud to the battle armor system for Li Lin to view.
It showed a graceful woman in a deep purple backless gown standing in the forest outside the Noxian military camp.
The average equipment level was already at Blu-ray, but capturing supernatural phenomena seemed to revert to "old-school" technology.
"Why is there exposure issues?"
Li Lin magnified the extremely blurry photo, which barely revealed a female silhouette.
Due to the quality of the capture, it was impossible to perform a high-definition repair.
He then shifted his focus to the brief three-second video clip that had fleetingly captured the scene.
Although the video was also blurry, it differed from the static photo, allowing Li Lin to catch some new details.
For instance, the woman seemed to be veiled, with a faint purple glow around her eyes.
Behind her, where the trees should have been visible, two indistinct shadows covered the area, also glowing faintly purple.
[It's not the drone's fault. The footage was fine before capturing the image of the mysterious woman,] the AI explained, showing Li Lin the normal footage before the mysterious woman's appearance.
From the drone's perspective, it was functioning correctly when it suddenly detected an energy fluctuation. The drone adjusted its camera to the source of the energy spike.
The moment it captured the blurry figure in the forest, the footage became distorted.
Within three seconds, the footage completely vanished, and the connection with the satellite and AI was lost.
After watching the footage, Li Lin couldn't help but gasp.
Could it be... Morgana?
[According to the last energy reading from the drone, the woman's energy level is comparable to Miss Zoe's, far beyond that of any human mage,] the AI reported.
"I heard someone call my name," Zoe suddenly turned to Li Lin. "Was it talking?"
Since staying at the Kiramman Estate, Zoe had become familiar with the AI, showing initial curiosity about the "artificial intelligence."
But after learning that the AI was just data, created to operate according to fixed programs and extended logic, she lost interest.
"The AI said that the person I'm looking for escaped across Silent Lake. And it mentioned that..."
Li Lin hesitated, considering how to explain the situation to Zoe.
"There seems to be someone like you."
"Like me?"
Zoe's face first showed surprise, then quickly turned to excitement.
"Yes, yes, I can feel it! There's definitely someone with a Star Spirit's essence, but..."
She scratched her head, her expression turning to confusion, "Her state is very strange, as if her power was split in two, and she inherited the extreme part."
(End of Chapter)
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