Chapter 26: We Must Cooperate with Her!
The idea seemed completely preposterous, and most of the officers treated it like a fairy tale.
Drowned out by their laughter, the logistics officer’s face flushed red. He doubled down, insisting, “I’m serious! I saw the live broadcast with my own eyes! If you don’t believe me, look at the playback. See for yourselves.”
He eagerly pulled up a recorded clip of the stream via his terminal. The others gathered around with amused smiles, simply looking to enjoy the entertainment.
However, the second the footage rendered, the laughter vanished. The room fell dead silent.
The clip captured the critical standoff where the adult Iron-Eating Beast, its eyes blazing blood-red, stared down Su Wudeng. Believing its newborn cub had been stolen, the apex predator’s protective fury had reached its peak.
Even through a secondary recording, the sheer, suffocating pressure of being locked on by a fully matured Iron-Eating Beast pierced right through the screen. Those savage eyes felt like they were glaring directly at the officers themselves, rather than the girl in the video.
An instinctual fear gripped the room. There was absolutely no way this was a digital fabrication. With a predatory aura that terrifying, the beast in the footage had to be real.
The officer who had pulled up the clip pressed his advantage. “See? That is undeniably an authentic Iron-Eating Beast. And what you won’t believe is that she had just engaged in a life-or-death territorial battle against a rival sovereign while actively pregnant with a triplet litter. And she won! My god, her combat resilience is terrifying.”
“And look closely right here,” he added, gesturing excitedly in the air as if he were the one who had fought the battle. “There’s a massive laceration ripping across her chest and abdomen! That is the physical mark of her glorious victory!”
By the time the playback concluded, the officers who were seeing the beast for the first time remained entirely spellbound. Absolute disbelief was written all over their faces.
“My god, it’s the real deal.”
“That glare… for a second there, I felt like I was the one standing in that clearing.”
“I felt an involuntary chill down my spine.”
“Is that place genuinely just a small retail shop? Are we sure it isn’t a front for a black-market research laboratory? How can a standard storefront command an animal that powerful?”
“Exactly. Didn’t the academy texts state the Iron-Eating Beast line went completely extinct decades ago? Why does a remote shop have a living specimen?”
“Wait… look at the corner. What’s the brand logo on that layout?”
A sharp-eyed strategist isolated a small watermark in the corner of the interface. “Pet Love Home…” he whispered, his brow furrowing. “Why does that name sound remarkably familiar?”
The communications clerk who had been waiting for the mysterious vendor’s response suddenly went rigid, his gaze locking onto the active text channel on his master console. The exact microsecond the name on the ledger registered in his mind, his lips began to tremble.
Pointing a shaking finger at the monitor, he gasped, “It’s her! The mysterious supplier we’ve been buying the premium spiritual plants from—it’s Pet Love Home!”
General Chu bolted out of his leather chair, the metal frame scraping harshly against the floorboards. He cleared the distance to the console in two massive strides, his eyes burning. “Are you telling me the hidden botanical vendor we’ve been tracking is the exact same entity that possesses a living apex sovereign? They are the same organization?!”
The clerk’s hands shook with pure excitement as he pulled up the registry details. “Look at the data signatures, General! It’s the exact same account. She didn’t even bother to mask her network identity; she’s using her primary retail profile.”
The sheer, monumental fortune of the coincidence left them breathless.
A Captain murmured reverently, “If this data is accurate, it means… we haven’t just secured a premium line for rare spiritual plants. We have stumbled onto a direct pipeline to an active reservoir of living, contract-capable companion beasts!”
“This is an absolute godsend!”
“Who on earth is this shopkeeper?!”
Before the excitement could even settle, a crisp chime echoed from the console speaker. The vendor had transmitted her official response.
Pet Love Home: I can supply all five of the spiritual plant strains you requested. However, upon reviewing my active inventory, I find that the final two varieties are currently in low supply. Will the attached allocation suffice? Here is the itemized manifest of what I can dispatch immediately.
A highly detailed manifest materialized on the central display screen:
- Dragon Blood Vine: 100 stalks
- Mind Amber Grass: 100 stalks
- Insect-Eating Star Flower: 100 stalks
- Diamond Healing Root: 20 pieces
- Spirit-Defying Grass: 5 stalks
The briefing room plummeted into a suffocating, dead silence.
“Am I… am I misreading these numbers?”
In their previous procurement runs with alternative merchants, clearing a total allocation of ten spiritual plants was considered an exceptional logistical success.
“Someone pinch me,” the Captain beside him whispered, his voice completely hollow. “I need to verify I’m not trapped in a dream right now.”
“The sheer volume of her botanical assets is staggering!”
“She didn’t just fulfill the order—she actually has the final two legendary-tier strains in stock!”
General Chu stood frozen for several agonizing seconds before erupting into a roaring, booming laugh. “Hahaha! The heavens are smiling upon my fleet!” His chest swelled with immense pride and unyielding focus. “Let the Seventh Vanguard Army of the Zerg try to hold the line now!”
The Seventh Vanguard Army was one of the absolute most terrifying elite swarms within the Zerg collective. Composed entirely of massive, heavily armored warrior bugs, they were universally dreaded across the front lines as the “Iron Torrent.” The sole reason the Ether War Zone had been locked in a brutal, bloody war of attrition was due to the non-stop pressure of this specific vanguard. It had permanently remained General Chu’s absolute greatest operational crisis.
The lead strategic analyst on his staff lunged toward the table, his eyes bright with excitement. “General, with a botanical influx of this magnitude, the baseline combat efficacy of our Eastern Fleet will escalate by at least three full tiers!”
“Sourcing one hundred Insect-Eating Star Flowers means we can immediately condition one hundred elite scouts, multiplying our sector-wide early warning capabilities by a factor of two!”
“Precisely!” a Colonel cut in, his voice fired up. “The bulk deployment of Dragon Blood Vine and Mind Amber Grass will exponentially multiply our heavy tamers’ physical endurance and human-machine synchronization metrics during prolonged engagements. A conservative forecasting model suggests a minimum fifty percent spike in fleet efficiency!”
“And that’s completely ignoring the Diamond Healing Roots! With twenty pieces in our trauma bays, the mortality rate among our front-line beastmasters will plummet by more than thirty percent!”
“As for those five rare stalks of Spirit-Defying Grass… they hold the precise energetic threshold required to force our senior tamers to break through their bottlenecks into the higher realms!”
How could General Chu not go completely wild with excitement? Sourcing this batch of spiritual flora would radically alter the strategic balance of his entire Eastern Division, potentially converting his fleet into the decisive hammer that would turn the tide of the entire galactic war.
“Move!” General Chu’s voice vibrated with raw adrenaline. “Secure the pricing models immediately! I don’t care what figure she names—we are buying this entire manifest!”
The clerk quickly initialized the input deck to compose a message.
“Hold on,” General Chu commanded, a sudden thought halting him. “Did you explicitly inform her of our official military identity during the preliminary inquiries?”
The officers froze, exchanging sheepish, uncomfortable glances. The Director of Logistics slowly, hesitantly raised his hand, deep embarrassment written all over his face. “It seems… we omitted that parameter, sir.”
General Chu’s expression darkened. “You blundering blockheads! Sourcing an industrial supplier of this magnitude, and you risk making her skip town because she thinks we’re shifty civilian brokers? Inform her of our full military status immediately! Let her understand that the High Command of the Eastern Division possesses infinite capital to back this transaction, and that we are looking to establish a permanent, long-term strategic alliance going forward!”
“To have an official institutional identity this powerful and completely fail to utilize it leverage… you people are an absolute pack of idiots!” He thanked his lucky stars he had chosen to monitor the session personally.
“Oh, right, and add another hard-coded clause to the text.” He barked out rapid instructions. “Inform her that beyond standard credits, our high command is prepared to offer alternative assets. Whatever her organization requires—as long as it falls within my executive military clearance, she will receive it!”
“Credits, high-tier institutional honors, restricted military commendations, or official ranks—if it’s within our power to print, she can have it! We must bind this supplier to our division at all costs!”
“Furthermore, inquire about her availability for an immediate, in-person diplomatic meeting. Our primary objective is to verify if her infrastructure can sustain a stable, multi-quarter logistical output.”
“We secure this pipeline, gentlemen. No matter the cost, do you understand me?”
“Sir, yes, sir!” the logistics staff roared in perfect unison.
The moment that manifest had loaded onto their monitors, every officer in the bay knew this was a historic turning point for the Eastern Division. If those plants cleared the shipping ports safely, they would play a decisive role in the upcoming fleet engagements. And when the East District claimed the glory of breaking the Iron Torrent, promotions, resources, and infinite funding would cascade down onto their department.
General Chu kept his eyes fixed on the clerk’s console, verifying every single syllable as the text was transmitted. His mind was a storm of complex, deep-seated emotions.
Their Eastern Fleet had been systematically marginalized and suppressed by the other three military districts for far too long; the structural deficit had been suffocating.
The Southern District commanded a monopoly on rare interstellar companion beasts—vibrant, living organisms that possessed terrifying combat flexibility and could effortlessly adapt to extreme vacuum environments, leaving standard mechanical mechas in the dust.
The Western District maintained deep co-development links with top-tier corporate research laboratories, providing their tamers with continuous streams of next-gen prototype weaponry and predictive tactical AI software.
The Northern District served as the primary playground for the heirs of the Capital Star’s ultra-wealthy elite, backed by bottomless funding that allowed them to casually buy out any scarce resource on the market.
And what did his Eastern Fleet possess? Nothing but raw, bloody hard work. All they had to throw against the meat grinder was their own flesh and blood. Every square kilometer of territory they held, every single victory recorded on their logs, had been paid for in tamer lives.
But now? The ultimate golden finger was dropping straight into their lap.
General Chu’s gaze turned dangerously sharp, his voice dropping to a low, solemn rumble. “Listen to me carefully, everyone. Our window to permanently alter our destiny is standing right in front of us. We lock down this alliance, no matter what it takes.”
Back at Pet Love Home, Su Wudeng finalized her response.
Before long, the terminal pinged with the buyer’s reply: “We will take the entire manifest immediately!”
Her eyes sparkled with pure excitement. Just who the hell am I dealing with? Their financial velocity is terrifying. A conservative market assessment for this single transaction easily clears a hundred million credits!
And that was a modest estimate. The final two items on her list—the Diamond Healing Roots and the legendary Spirit-Defying Grass—were high-tier botanical treasures. She knew that if she traded them strictly for common currency, she would actually be shortchanging herself.
Just as she began drafting a pricing model to protect her margins, a massive, formal paragraph of text flooded her terminal interface. She scanned the lines, her jaw dropping in absolute shock.
Official Transmission: Greetings, Shopkeeper Su Wudeng. It is imperative that we formally state our institutional identity. We represent the High Command of the Eastern District within the Aether War Zone—the eighth of the galaxy’s primary military sectors. Acting on behalf of the Commander-in-Chief of the Eastern Fleet, I am reaching out to initiate formal diplomatic negotiations regarding a critical strategic partnership.
Our high command wishes to establish a permanent, stable, and exclusive logistical alliance with your venture. The spiritual plant strains your organization commands are of vital, decisive importance to our front-line fleet operations against the swarm. To seal this alliance, our division is prepared to offer the following institutional compensations:
Astronomical credit financing, high-tier official military commendations, priority resource access, and direct, localized planetary protection from our fleet assets… We urgently request that you give this proposition your most serious consideration. Upon your approval, we will immediately dispatch an elite diplomatic vanguard to establish direct, in-person contact with your facility. Once again, thank you for your profound support of our soldiers and the front-line war effort.
Holy crap, Su Wudeng thought, completely blown away. The big spender on the other side of my screen is the literal military? And the entity personally managing the text channel is the Commander-in-Chief of the entire Eastern Fleet?!
The active battlegrounds where humanity resisted the Zerg swarm were divided into eight primary galactic sectors, each governed by a dedicated military war zone. The sector closest to her coordinates was the Eighth War Zone—the Aether War Zone. The sector’s command structure was segmented into four regional divisions: East, South, West, and North. The officer commanding a regional fleet held a rank of at least Major General or higher.
In other words, she was currently negotiating with a literal Major General!
Su Wudeng had never imagined her anonymous buyer would possess a background this imposing. But turning the realization over in her head, it made perfect sense. Sourcing that volume of rare botanicals and dropping hundreds of millions of credits without a second thought was a logistical feat only a military command could execute.
“It seems the front-line war of attrition is infinitely more critical than the news feeds suggest,” Su Wudeng mused, her brow furrowing. “Otherwise, high command wouldn’t be this desperate to lock down an alliance. The Zerg pressure must be staggering.”
She physically resided within the jurisdictional borders protected by the Eighth War Zone. Logically, the more powerful the Eastern Fleet’s iron shield was, the more secure her small shop would remain.
Furthermore, her eyes locked onto the phrase “Official Military Commendations.”
“This is the ultimate strategic window,” she realized, a brilliant spark igniting in her eyes. “If I can secure a high-tier official institutional endorsement…”
The funded smear campaigns and coordinated troll armies running rampant on the Star Network would be instantly, violently neutralized. They kept screaming that her living pets were nothing but fragile, synthetic fabrications that would weaken society’s combat readiness. The exact second she plastered an official military certificate reading “Outstanding Contributor to the War Effort” across her profile, she wanted to see those cartel executives try to spin the narrative.
While her competitors could only talk big on the boards, she would hold an actual, verified award issued by the High Command. Additionally, the alliance guaranteed a permanent, high-volume commercial pipeline for her spiritual plants, securing a steady stream of credits. Factor in the explicit promise of direct military protection, and the transaction was a total home run.
She paused for a moment to organize her thoughts, carefully typing out her formal reply:
Pet Love Home: Thank you for your profound transparency and trust. I am deeply, sincerely honored by the prospect of my venture contributing to the front-line war effort. As a citizen of this sector, shielding the continuity of human civilization is an unyielding, non-negotiable responsibility…
She opened with a long, impeccably polished block of patriotic rhetoric to establish her baseline integrity and loyalty to the sector. Once the formalities were anchored, she smoothly transitioned to her core terms:
Pet Love Home: Given the high-stakes nature of this alliance and the critical value of the manifest, I propose a localized baseline package price of 100 million credits for this initial transaction. Furthermore, my venture requests that the corresponding official honors and titles be formalized through an explicit, public commendation ceremony, showcasing the vital, decisive utility our companion beast lineage contributes to the front-line survival of our species. Upon your high command’s acceptance of these parameters, we can proceed to formalize the logistics for our long-term partnership.
Su Wudeng reviewed her text, nodding with immense satisfaction.
A hundred million credits was an incredibly generous, rock-bottom price point for a haul of this magnitude. Her delivery cleared a massive volume of three hundred fully matured stalks across the first three premium strains. As for the final two high-tier botanicals, if those items hit a Capital Star luxury auction house, a single root would easily fetch tens of millions. Slicing the price tag down to a hundred million was an exclusive discount she was serving up solely because she was dealing with the defensive fleet. Anyone else trying to buy would be turned away at the door.
Though the Great Prosperity Era’s growth cycles were remarkably efficient, harvesting still required time and labor. Her ultimate objective was to lock down an ironclad relationship with the military command. Sponsoring medals and high-tier military achievements carried a massive social prestige. For her shop, it meant securing the ultimate, unyielding institutional shield.
Most importantly, it granted her the strategic clearance to navigate future crises under the shadow of the military’s authority. While her shop’s internal security system made the physical building an absolute fortress, it couldn’t stop desperate syndicates or corporate spies from constantly swarming her front door, which would be incredibly tedious to manage. But the second her storefront was hard-coded as a protected military asset, the parameters changed completely.
Crossing paths with the High Command was a death sentence for any civilian entity. Especially when the fleet’s primary staging bases were located right in her sector!
Meanwhile, back inside the Eastern District Logistics Command bay.
The entire staff of officers remained glued to the master console interface. For the first time in their operational history, they felt time crawling at an agonizing pace.
Suddenly, the terminal gave a sharp alert chime.
“The transmission has cleared! It’s here!” the young Lieutenant yelled, his voice laced with pure excitement. The officers violently crowded the console, fighting for screen space to digest the text.
“Holy crap, she signed off on the terms!” A massive roar of cheers violently shattered the silence of the bay. “And she’s only asking for a hundred million credits! This is an absolute steal!”
“The request for official commendations is completely rational and within our power to grant!”
General Chu let out a long, heavy breath of relief the second the verification cleared, realizing his palms were slick with nervous sweat. However, as his analytical gaze parsed the text structure, he rapidly detected the underlying tactical gears turning in the shopkeeper’s head.
He murmured thoughtfully, “This shopkeeper is exceptionally sharp. On the surface, she’s requesting empty titles and public ceremonies, but her true objective is to force our fleet to extend our protective military shield over her venture.”
“In other words… an industrial-scale supplier commanding a botanical treasure grove of this magnitude… actually lacks an established faction or corporate army backing her play?”
A brilliant, sharp light violently erupted within his eyes. “This maps flawlessly to our own strategic bottlenecks!”
“Our Eastern Fleet commands absolute destructive combat power but lacks high-tier biological resources. Meanwhile, this shopkeeper commands boundless resources but lacks institutional protection!”
“An alliance between our entities… is a match made in heaven!”
Fired up by the realization, General Chu commanded, “Transmit our immediate acceptance! Inform her that High Command is officially bestowing upon her venture the legendary ‘Sparks Spreading Across the Prairie’ commendation! That is a prestigious fourth-tier institutional honor traditionally locked out for civilian entities.”
This specific honor was reserved exclusively for civilian entities that stood up during catastrophic planetary crises to deliver a decisive contribution to the continuity of human civilization. It carried an official holographic certificate, a massive one-time state bonus, and hard-coded military protection from local fleet assets. Terrified that the shopkeeper might not fully grasp the monumental value of the title, General Chu personally instructed the clerk to compile and transmit a detailed breakdown of the legal and social perks attached to the award.
“Furthermore, inform the shopkeeper that while a high-tier honor of this caliber typically requires weeks to clear the central senate’s review boards, I am personally executing an emergency executive override to fast-track the protocol. The credentials will be fully operational within three business days.”
“Simultaneously, inform her that an elite, three-man tactical vanguard is departing our staging base immediately to handle the logistics and discuss our long-term contract parameters in person. Ensure the text concludes with our deepest institutional gratitude.”
General Chu ran a final check over the transmission before offering a firm nod. “Send it out.” The text cleared the encryption buffers, cementing the deal.
General Chu’s eyes were burning with intense, dangerous focus, his lips curving into a wide, triumphant grin. He turned toward his elite vanguard staff, his voice dropping into a deep, authoritative register. “Yuan Bo, Qin Ke, Lei Jing—step forward!”
Three towering, battle-hardened officers instantly stepped out from the formation, their postures perfectly straight as they snapped into a rigid military salute.
General Chu locked his sharp gaze onto them, delivering his directives syllable by syllable: “This partnership represents the absolute future of our Eastern Fleet. You lock this supplier down with unbreakable tethers. Can you execute the mission?”
“We swear to bring back the contract, General!” the three officers roared in perfect unison, their voices thundering through the command bay.
General Chu nodded with deep satisfaction. “One more thing. Our analysts picked up the telemetry regarding that fully grown Iron-Eating Beast sovereign in her facility. Run a quiet, professional evaluation on its parameters while you’re on-site.”
“If the opportunity presents itself, see if you can open negotiations to acquire a contract-capable cub for our elite divisions.”
“But establish this firmly in your minds: every single interaction must strictly respect the shopkeeper’s explicit wishes. We are here to secure a mutual partnership, not to deploy administrative coercion. Do you understand me?”
The lead officer, Lei Jing, offered a crisp nod. “Understood, General. Rest your mind; our vanguard will navigate the negotiations with the absolute highest tier of diplomatic sincerity.”
General Chu took a deep, steadying breath. This wasn’t merely a massive logistical win for his personal record; it was the ultimate strategic turning point for the entire Eastern Fleet. He had been drooling over the Southern District’s living companion beast divisions for years. Every single time the High Command held a joint planetary summit, the Southern general would insufferably flaunt his beastmasters’ metrics, arrogance dripping from his face as he ran through their research breakthroughs. Meanwhile, his Eastern Fleet had been left with nothing to show but casualty logs.
But now? The Eastern Fleet held the ultimate ace. If the front-line lines weren’t locked in an active state of alert, barring him from leaving his command deck, he would have jumped onto a stealth transport to personally fly to her storefront himself.
Back at Pet Love Home, Su Wudeng reviewed the incoming military clearance and leaned back into her leather chair, a long, ecstatic sigh escaping her lips.
“Nailed it!”
Her gaze darted toward the trending search boards, watching the residual corporate troll threads still trying to scream that her shop was an expensive, fragile indulgence that would fail society against the Zerg front. Though the mothers had thoroughly shattered their primary lines, a cluster of brainwashed machine-doctrine purists was still parroting the rhetoric in the sub-forums.
Well, let them bark for another seventy-two hours. The exact second her official military honors cleared the fast-track boards, she would pin the credential directly to her shop’s front banner. She couldn’t wait to see those cartel executives try to handle a direct endorsement from the High Command.
Her immediate priority shifted to logistics—packaging the harvested spiritual plants. She had to give the Major General credit; the man was exceptionally thorough. He had manually overridden the civilian postal networks, routing an official military cargo channel directly to her storefront coordinates. She didn’t have to bleed a single credit paying for premium interstellar shipping or high-yield logistics insurance packages!
Once the crates cleared her back-loading bay, her workload was officially cleared. “Now I just sit back and wait for the military liaison vanguard to touch down.”
Su Wudeng reviewed her shop’s ledger balance, which now proudly displayed a cool 100 million credits. Absolute, deep satisfaction washed over her. She pulled up the elite corporate digital procurement catalog of the Interstellar Peace Company.
“Since I’m officially filthy rich, it’s time to indulge in some serious industrial capitalism!”
She was going to build an automated agricultural facility within the prime primeval forest zones of the Great Prosperity Era. She refused to spend another afternoon manually uprooting flora stalk by stalk until her lower back gave out.
“Let’s see what automated industrial hardware they have in stock.”
“Mechanized agricultural harvesters, intelligent botanical identification scanners, automated stasis storage crates, high-efficiency atmospheric packaging drones…”
“Add to cart! Add to cart! Add to cart!”
Her eyes suddenly locked onto a brand-new model of tactical reconnaissance drone. It appeared to be the Peace Company’s current flagship product, pushed directly to the top tier of her recommendation interface. Su Wudeng pulled up the technical schematics, her focus igniting instantly. “Look at this scan radius. I should absolutely secure one of these.”
Setting everything else aside, she could deploy it to remotely map and scan the entire primeval forest from the safety of her cabin. Furthermore, the storefront offered an extensive catalog of supplementary tactical modules optimized to run alongside the drone.
“Biometric vital sign monitors, high-definition holographic topographical mappers, deep-range communication signal boosters…”
“Buy them all!”
“This setup is absolutely perfect. With this tactical grid online, I can run real-time, sector-wide surveillance to detect if any injured or abandoned pet beasts are stranded in the wilderness, allowing me to execute rapid extraction and recovery operations.”
She happily browsed through the rest of the Peace Company’s premium catalog. However, the exact second she proceeded to checkout, she stared at the final invoice. The aggregate cost of her industrial and tactical equipment cleared 95 million credits.
Her ecstatic expression immediately vanished. “This burns through capital way too fast. Advanced technology truly is the primary driver of productivity, but it’s also the galaxy’s undisputed, apex money-eating beast. The Interstellar Peace Company’s profit margins are disgustingly lucrative.”
Despite the physical pain in her chest, she gritted her teeth and tapped “Confirm Payment” without a shred of hesitation. “It’s a foundational infrastructure investment!”
Right then, Zhong Huihui knocked cobly on the doorframe. “Shopkeeper, an elderly gentleman has just arrived at the storefront. It should be Professor Yang.”
Su Wudeng’s eyes lit up instantly. “Professor Yang is here? Let’s go, let’s go!”
Professor Yang was the final reserved buyer who had secured the last Snow Crystal Cat. She had learned from Chu Yansen that the professor served as the Director of the Endangered Species Research Institute.
While it was common knowledge that the institute had suffered a severe decline over the decades and was largely marginalized by high command, he remained a fully accredited, official academic authority.
Crucially, his mind was an absolute, living treasure trove of biological knowledge! While she could rely on her smart glasses to identify basic spiritual flora and fauna, the underlying database couldn’t even begin to compare to Professor Yang’s encyclopedic intellect.
The professor had dedicated his entire life to the exhaustive study of companion beasts; his breadth of knowledge was staggering. His wealth of practical experience was a resource that simply couldn’t be replaced by algorithms. He possessed access to highly classified, invaluable biological data that had never even been digitized into the public archives.
She needed to cultivate a deep, ironclad alliance with a senior academic of his caliber.
At the same time, Professor Yang stood outside the storefront, wiping a heavy layer of sweat from his brow with a weary sigh. He glanced around the dreary, industrial street. “I didn’t anticipate the coordinates to be this remote. Thank the heavens I remembered to pack a heavy-duty respirator.”
He shook his head, his expression clouding with deep concern. “The planetary ecology is deteriorating at an alarming velocity. I never imagined the atmospheric conditions on a fourth-tier planet had decayed to this severe of a baseline.”
He looked up, confirming the neon signage read “Pet Love Home,” before finally pushing open the heavy glass doors.
However, the exact millisecond he crossed the threshold, the scene that greeted his eyes struck him completely dumb. A wave of perfectly pure, revitalizing air washed over his face, completely devoid of industrial toxins. Breathtaking, vibrant floral arrangements and luxury botanical displays were scattered with meticulous, elegant precision across the room. Thick, emerald vines cascaded smoothly along the walls, the entire environment pulsing with an intoxicating, overwhelming aura of authentic, organic life.
He stood frozen in absolute shock for a long moment, before suddenly remembering he was still wearing his heavy filtration mask. He frantically unlatched the respirator, pulling it off his face, and took a deep, desperate breath of the ambient air.
Instantly, he felt every single pore in his body vibrate, as if his very cells were cheering and dancing with raw euphoria.
“This… this is an absolute, untouched Pure Land!”
