Pegmont was still alive, on Mars, alone. Even he had no idea how he had survived back then. As early as a month ago, he had already decided to stop pondering that question.
He said that out there, he was doing pretty so-so.
"So-so" roughly meant that he wasn't dead yet, but he was no longer strutting around cocky and arrogant, forced instead to skirt around Great Spikes all across the planet. Otherwise, it wouldn't have taken him this long to make it back to the spot where he had buried his communicator.
To get back here, Pegmont had run two super-marathons circling Mars.
"You... you're alive, and so-so is good enough. Sob... I love you! I love you so much, Pegmont!" Ina, the lucky Aquarius communications operator—recently transferred because she was supposedly blessed with incredible luck, and originally a nurse—was so overcome with emotion she didn't know what to do with herself. Flustered, she blurted out nonsensical words that defied logic, two streams of tears flowing freely down her cheeks as she spoke.
"What? You love me?!" Even someone as devoid of logic as Pegmont, all the way out on Mars, was dumbfounded by Ina's logic in that moment.
"Yes, I love you, I love you so much," Ina said, wiping away tears.
When a young woman spends every single day caught between despair and fantasy, constantly calling out for a man, exhausting all her heart and soul worrying over him, waiting for his reply... she seemed to have unconsciously gotten lost in the role. Or perhaps, in this overwhelmed moment, she simply couldn't find any better way to express herself.
"You..." Ina struggled to say more.
Humanity had finally received a response from Pegmont. Logically, there should have been matters of supreme importance to discuss right now, yet her mind went completely blank.
In truth, she should have notified her superiors by now, but it had slipped her mind completely.
Fortunately, the commanders of The Refusers had not forgotten.
"How's Mars?"
"Not much of anything. Basically a giant desert, without even cacti or lizards. But the sun here is blue, which is pretty interesting."
A conversation bearing on the fate of humanity: one dared to ask, and the other dared to answer.
Fortunately, they didn't get the chance to keep chatting like this. The Refusers' officers, sprinting madly behind Ina, quickly arrived on the scene and snatched away the communicator.
"Survive, Peg. That is your only mission right now. Humanity's Mars Expeditionary Force will depart in three days."
Even as Tu Zi spoke, The Refusers' technicians behind him immediately patched Stream Blades into the line.
"Oh. Got it." With someone else on the line, Pegmont didn't dwell on the girl who had professed her love for him. Lying prone in a sand pit, he gave a crisp, straightforward reply.
"Is there anything you want to say right now?" With the call proceeding and the most crucial information delivered, Tu Zi handed conversational control over to Pegmont.
This was undoubtedly the right move—save for the fact that he hadn't taken into account that the man on the other end was Pegmont.
"Anything I want to say?" Pegmont hesitated for a second, then said, "Right! That tractor field back then—I was just that close! Just that close, you hear me? I almost took it out. But there was a moon that night, and they had more than a dozen ships waiting for me in the sky..."
To Pegmont, this explanation was of paramount importance. After all, he was the Pink Pegmont! Even if he failed, it could never be an utter defeat; he had to make that crystal clear.
Yet for The Refusers and Azure, they had already gleaned the vital information from his words: the Great Spike tractor field on Mars had not been stopped.
As for the rest of his excuse, it wasn't the least bit important right now.
"We understand... That's really a shame, then." Tu Zi had to cut him off before asking, "Anything else? Anything else you want to say?"
"Anything else?" Pegmont seemed to pause on the other end. For once, his tone carried a rare note of wistful emotion. Neither rushed nor slow, he said, "I'm living over here, where there's a blue sun, rocks, and dirt. Other than that, it's all Great Spikes... I want to see a human being."
To say this was undoubtedly more useless talk. Yet no one attempted to interrupt him, and Tu Zi did not respond. The Refusers' entire communications cabin fell utterly silent.
"Yeah, I want to see a human. Even the person I hate most would do. If there really aren't any, a dog or an ant would be fine too," Pegmont continued.
Tu Zi still gave no reply, even though he knew deep down that he should cut Pegmont off immediately to ask far more vital questions.
"...I'm guessing that person you hate the most is very likely me." The voice replying to Pegmont came from another line. Someone had joined the call.
Han Qingyu—Major Qing—had entered the conversation.
"Don't worry, you'll see me soon enough," he added with a warm smile in his voice.
"...Looking at it that way, I'm really down on my luck." Recognizing Han Qingyu's voice, Pegmont chuckled on the other end and said, "Still, you're not coming to rescue me, are you?"
"Of course not. I'm just going to Mars to fight a battle. Though if I happen to run into Legion Commander Pegmont, I wouldn't mind joining hands with you once more." Han Qingyu could not afford to waste any more precious airtime. Having spoken his piece, he took the initiative to pivot. "What's your exact situation right now?"
"I—I'm out of source energy blocks. Ran out over a month ago. If it weren't for having so few source energy blocks, I would've wrecked that tractor field ages ago," Pegmont said.
"Out of source energy blocks? Then your device..." The Refusers officer who suddenly chimed in had wanted to ask: *Doesn't that mean your device has been useless for ages, too? Then how are you still alive? Does Mars actually have oxygen?*
Fortunately, before he could finish that foolish question, he was cut short just in time. A powerful hand clamped over his mouth from behind and yanked him away from the communicator.
The man was an elderly Caucasian whose age had advanced to such an extreme that it was impossible to tell how old he was.
The vast majority of the people here didn't know his name. They only knew that originally, "The Refuser" wasn't an organization, but merely his personal codename.
"The device is gone too. Smashed," Pegmont answered earnestly, a little dispirited, from the other end of the communicator.
So this guy currently had neither source energy blocks nor a device... and in this condition, he had survived alone on Mars for over a month.
And out there, there was no oxygen, no food, and it was infested with Great Spikes.
*If he can pull that off... can he even be considered human anymore?*
In that instant, that very thought crossed many minds in the room. Fortunately, having just witnessed the prior reprimand, no other foolish, reckless fool blurted out careless questions.
It was actually a close call.
Because if someone had genuinely asked, they might well have questioned Pegmont straight to death on the spot.
"Yours truly is down to a single blade left on his entire body now," Pegmont added when no one replied.
"What about clothes? No clothes left either?"
Such a bizarre, totally pointless question naturally didn't come from The Refusers; it came from Stream Blades—from He Tangtang.
The guy spoke up so abruptly that not even Han Qingyu or Wen Jifei could stop him in time.
Fortunately, given He Tangtang's level of scientific literacy, he couldn't formulate a question like whether Mars had oxygen anyway... He didn't know a thing about that stuff.
"Clothes... of course I still have clothes." Pegmont's voice lacked conviction this time. As he spoke, he looked down at his own body.
What passed for clothes was now nothing more than a tattered rag wrapped around his waist.
*This still counts as clothes, right? Yeah, it counts.* Pegmont tried his best to convince himself. Otherwise, following his achievements as the first human to land on Mars and the first human to circumnavigate Mars, he would become the first human to streak across Mars.
"Then what are you eating right now? Don't tell me you haven't eaten for over a month?" Caught off guard again, they heard He Tangtang pop up with another question.
Of course, this time, he wouldn't get to hear Pegmont's answer.
In the Stream Blades base conference room, Han Qingyu finally had enough and chopped him unconscious with a swift knife-hand strike.
"I eat Great Spikes, of course. Stragglers like black armors and blue-sheened Great Spikes—I can still chop 'em down just fine. It's just that stuff tastes even worse, that's all."
Fortunately, there was something to eat. Pegmont had narrowly dodged a fatal realization and escaped unscathed.
On this end, Han Qingyu, Wen Jifei, General Bochen... along with the entire Azure Board of Elders, almost simultaneously clutched their chests and breathed a massive sigh of relief.
By now, everyone could pretty much paint a mental picture of Pegmont's situation: amidst an endless, colossal desert swarming with roving Great Spikes, the sole, naked human—gripping a single blade—crept carefully in hiding, streaking hunched through the sands, poaching in the buff...
"Do you know how many Great Spikes are on Mars right now?" Finally, "The Refuser" spoke in person, pulling the vital conversation back on track.
"How many? A ton! Teeming everywhere. I don't know the exact number," Pegmont said.
"..." The Refuser's side froze for a moment.
"What? Do you really think someone can just take a few glances and know how many Great Spikes are on an entire planet? I'm not fucking living in a novel!"
"You... you could actually give a rough estimate," The Refuser said gently.
"Oh. Then I estimate somewhere above thirty thousand and below five hundred thousand," Pegmont replied.
The Refuser: "..."
"Anyway, there are at least thirty thousand. They've already pulled off two tractoring waves, and in the last few days, it looks like they've started building another large tractor field," Pegmont said.
When he said that, the atmosphere instantly grew tense.
"Then what about higher-tier Great Spikes?! What ranks are there specifically? Are there any Putaers?"
"Putaers?"
"Extremely tall. Over a hundred meters."
"None of those. I only know there are Daies."
"How many?"
"One? Two? Maybe three, four, five, or six." Pegmont struggled with it for a moment. "Those things all look the same, don't they? And they don't show up together, so how am I supposed to know if this one is that one, or that one isn't the same one?"
"...Understood," The Refuser said hesitantly.
"Really?" Pegmont thought to himself: *Impressive, he can actually make sense of that!*
"No," The Refuser replied.
"I knew it! But it doesn't matter. That bastard is coming anyway, right?" Pegmont said. "Just tell him to bring me a device, and pack plenty of source energy blocks... Beep, beep-beep."
A sudden flurry of beeps rang out, then lapsed into dead silence.
"FUCK! It actually ran out of juice!" Pegmont frowned and stared down at the communicator in his hand. "Wait... I don't think I told them where to find me..."
"They wouldn't think I'm just going to wait right here, would they? This place isn't even three kilometers from the Great Spike tractor field!"
Meanwhile, back on Blue Star, at The Refusers' communication station, inside the secret chamber of the Azure Board of Elders, and in the conference room of the Stream Blades base:
Nobody said a word for a time. Because everyone—including "The Refuser" and the members of Stream Blades—vaguely felt in their hearts that they had just messed up.
This was supposed to be such an all-important conversation!
"Did we... forget to agree on a rough rendezvous area for when we arrive?"
"Yeah."
"We didn't ask him about the main distribution areas of the Great Spikes on Mars or the locations of their tractor fields either."
"Yeah. Nor did we ask about the key points and conditions for fighting on Mars."
"Then... what do we do now?" the authoritative, enigmatic "Refuser" asked with distinct unease.
"How about we bring a few extra-large bullhorns?" Han Qingyu suggested tentatively. "Once we land, we can do a couple of broadcast sweeps? To save manpower, we could pre-record the message."
"..."
Chapter 893