Lessons on Raising a Partner

Chapter 53: Final Expeditionary Force

Lydney operated the electronic dog to carefully shuttle between the worm monsters, which occupied almost every corner of the planet. From the perspective of Pyramid, the color of the planet was meat pink.

Tracking the direction of the radio wave, the electronic dog came to the back of the flesh-and-pink planet, where they first saw it. The more the electronic dog moved forward, the clearer and more intense the radio waves sounded in the microphone, and Auguste’s hand became tighter and tighter with the sound of the radio.

In the end, after the electronic dog passed through several low bushes, a huge black spaceship appeared in front of everyone. The spaceship was huge, almost ten times larger than their ship, but it had been abandoned for a long time. Although the spaceship looked brand-new and had no serious damage, no one would have thought it was abandoned if it hadn’t been covered with vines on the hull.

The ship’s huge hatch had a very simple badge with three paw marks on it. This was the last batch of expeditionary warships sent by the Ayulon that year.

At this time, the airship’s radio waves were clear and audible, without any murmur, “drops – drops – hiss” one after another, making people inexplicably irritable and uncomfortable, like an unexpected visitor, breaking in at a certain time from a room you had not fortified, and destroying all your defenses with a sword.

Suddenly Carl stood up, kicked over the chair, breathed fast, and seemed to be suppressing a very strong feeling. Then Carl turned and wanted to leave the hall.

“Carl!” Auguste stood up and shouted at Carl.

Carl stopped and took a deep breath with his eyes closed, but his voice was painful to hear, “Auguste, it’s not until today that I realized how pathetic we are.” After that, he left the hall without turning his head back.

Lydney watched Carl suddenly leave the hall and hurried after him.

Auguste watched Carl leave, silent, and did not continue to speak. Hai’an stood at the edge of the table and pulled at Auguste’s sleeve. Feeling Hai’an’s little strength, Auguste sighed and picked up Hai’an. “Leston, Alia, get ready to leave Pyramid tomorrow and go to that planet.”

Then Auguste looked out of the window at the endless black rock wasteland of Pyramid. The planet’s gale continued day and night, mixed with endless slag of ice in the wind, accompanied by snowstorms, and never stopped. But the planet was not so desolate.

His homeland should not have had war.

Carl didn’t turn around. He just went back to his room and slammed the door so hard that he broke the handle. Lydney ran after him and picked up the door handle that had fallen to the ground. Carl’s door was only slightly hidden and could be opened with a push, but he still stood at Carl’s door and knocked.

“Carl, it’s Lydney. May I come in?”

“... Come in.” A few minutes later, Lydney heard Carl’s muffled voice coming from the room. He gently opened the door and found Carl lying on his bed. When Lydney came in, he buried his head in the pillow as if he didn’t care. He didn’t respond at all.

“Carl? Carl?” Lydney whispered Carl’s name.

“What.” Carl sniffed, with a strong nasal sound.

But Lydney was relieved to hear it. Carl cried, but it was also a good way for him to let off steam. Lydney sat by Carl’s bed and clapped him on the shoulder.

“Why did you cry?” Lydney’s voice was soft.

“Nothing...” Carl seemed to have adjusted his mood, grabbed Lydney’s hand with his hand, turned around and sat up, but his eyes were still red and his long eyelashes were wet with tears “I just think that for so many years, Auguste and I have been doing meaningless things.” Carl looked sideways at a worn dragon doll on the other side of the bed. His voice was quiet in the room. “You know what? This doll was the only thing that Auguste and I took away when we left home. I used to fight over toys with Auguste because we had only one doll.... Later, Auguste gave the doll to me, and I bought him many other dolls. Actually, we don’t need to find anybody else. The Ayulon... maybe they’re already all dead. That’s good. This race shouldn’t have existed...”

Lydney didn’t know how to comfort him. “How did that happen?”

But instead of listening to him, Carl buried his face in his hands. “Lydney, let me be alone for a while.”

“... Okay.” Lydney got up from the bed and, as he approached the door, looked back at Carl. “You have a good rest.”

There was no light in Carl’s room. He could not see clearly from a distance in the dark room. He could only vaguely hear his irregular breathing. Lydney turned around and saw Auguste standing near Carl’s door with Hai’an in his arms, he was silent and kept his head down. Only Hai’an, who hanging on Auguste’s arm, looked up at him from time to time and then at Lydney.

“Carl... He said he wanted to be alone.” Lydney hesitated and relayed Carl’s words.

Auguste’s voice was hoarse and he answered, “Yeah.” Then he stood up straight, turned around and walked slowly back.

“Auguste.” Lydney called out to Auguste. Auguste stopped and listened to him. “What’s wrong with that ship?”

“Carl saw his eggshell... There’s nothing wrong with losing, Carl’s right.” Auguste raised his feet. “It’s not for justice, it’s for victory. It’s sad truth for our race.”

Lydney’s pupils shrank slightly, opened his mouth, and then closed tightly.

The Ayulon were not a mysterious race among the stars. There were many historical books about their history. As for their evaluation, there was only one sentence in the history books about them: Madmen longing for war.

The place where Ayulon existed was considered the breeding ground for war; blood, death, and killing were the things they longed for. They fought on every planet, and every planet the Legion’s iron hoofs went to was soaked in the tears of mothers and orphans, mingled with the constant roar of gunfire, smoke and blood. Even if someone died, they didn’t care. For them, to die on the battlefield was the greatest life.

But war was accompanied by sorrow, pain and despair, and those who died on the battlefield would never understand how painful it was for those who were waiting for them to return. Later, there was a faction within the Yayulong ethnic group that advocated peace rather than war.

In the name of seeking peace, they set off the civil war in Ayulon. That was the last lament before the genocide. Because they did not have enough armaments, they tricked other innocent Ayulons into surrendering their eggshells and contributing to the peace of their races. In fact, they only created expeditionary armies to intercept legions returning from other planets.

The main star of Ayulon instantly became the main battlefield, and a large number of civilians died. Auguste’s mother, after loading him and Carl into the escape capsule, destroyed all the maps leading to the main star of Ayulon.

Auguste still remembered when he was sitting in the escape capsule with his eggshell in his arms and his mother’s face covered with blood, while his father was trying to cram food into the escape capsule. Carl, a little boy, was crying so hard that he gave up his eggshell and his father had to put a dragon doll in his arms.

It was his father’s birthday gift in advance.

“Protect your brother.” Father clumsily touched his head and closed the escape pod door. Mother stood outside the door, tears pounding down.

“Never come back!” This was the last word his mother left him.

He drifted around the universe with Carl for more than a decade. When food was exhausted, he rushed down to other planets. Then he landed on different planets and tried to live, but he didn’t know why. They have no home.

Every Ayulon had a special feeling about his eggshell. He and Carl were fraternal twin brothers and they could sense each others eggshells.

Auguste finally knew how the worm monster of Pyramid came into being. It was the masterpiece of the expedition ship, and the powerful gravitational circle was also the expedition’s method. Star-to-Star technology, trans-satellite delivery of materials, these technologies were for the victory of the war. He should have guessed. Auguste hated the Freedom Alliance very much. In his opinion, the Freedom Alliance, like the Peace Party of Ayulon in the past, was the executioner under the banner of justice.

What they brought was war. Not peace. Not democracy. Not freedom.

Very few of the Vagrants slept that night.

Lydney returned to the hall to debug the equipment with others.

Alia was worried about Lydney. “Didn’t you sleep last night and why don’t you rest today?”

“It’s all right. I didn’t sleep for several days and nights in order to keep pace with everyone’s progress when I was doing research in Emperor Du.”

“Did you get a stimulus shot?”

No matter how hard pure human beings tried, physical strength could not catch up with evolutionary human beings.

Lydney smiled, without refuting.

“Hum.” Alia snorted coldly, but did not persuade him.

“Auguste has finally found someone else.” Colin sat in his chair and debugged Alia’s new firearm. After all, if they killed the worms directly, they would leave behind black rocks. They could only use firearms against the worms.

Corson disapproved of Colin’s remark. “It’s better not to find them. Didn’t you see how Auguste and Carl looked?”

“But we found other spaceships, and I’m afraid we can’t find a map of the main star of Ayulon?”

Corson listened, and his movements stopped.

“Right?” As soon as Colin looked at Corson, he knew that he had heard what he was saying.

By the time the flesh-pink planet arrived, Auguste would be able to find his way home.

But he hoped their home was still there.