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It was not possible to access the propulsion unit block from the maintenance hatch, but it could lead up to the rear maintenance area of the block. This space island's propulsion system is an enormous one. The main area itself covered at least a few hundred meters long and was almost the size of a small mountain. Behind it was a factory-like equipment room. These contained all the necessary items needed to run the place and was deep underground. When the block exploded the area was not blown apart, but it did left a gigantic crack on the outer barrier.

Hao Ren found himself in a very wide room, and in it was all sorts of weird equipments that was beyond him. The artificial gravitation field had completely shut down here, and as the most powerful thrust had since passed, many of the equipments and debris were floating. The angled alloy roof of the room had a giant on it and blinding light were coming in from the crack, casting a rather eerie and dangerous looking silhouette with all of the floating debris.

The first thing Hao Ren did was to look for something that resembled a control terminal. He knew this was already the inner part of the block and if they could shut the whole thing down from inside it was without question the best way forward. He may not know how to operate it but he could transfer the image that he sees to the MDT for it to liaise with the Elven specialists. But that thought quickly went out the window, it was clear that the place was ruined and those charred and broken crystilline control panels were of no use.

A layer of molten shield surrounded Y'zaks as he went. The demon was already prepared to go ahead on if the situation calls for it. After sensing the flow of energy in the area he came to a corner of the room and blew a hole in the wall. "Ahead should be the place where things went haywire."

Hao Ren took a curious peek and saw nothing but blinding flashes of light. After his sight recovered only then he could properly see what was in the room. The front part was the combustion valve of sorts of the propulsion system and from it was a long, tubular pipeway extended all the way outside, at the end of it pipe, beyond the raging flames you could faintly see the stars. As he squinted he could see the silhouette of another island passing by in a flash. There were many auxiliary pipes that were laid symmetrically along the walls of the main pipeway and they were the main source of the light. Between the superheated auxiliary pipes and the maintenance area was a ten meter odd buffer zone that was divided by a enormous ring-shaped device. Despite the buffer, Hao Ren could still feel the heat coming at him. Although it was probably just psychological.

Y'zaks tore a bigger hole in the wall and leapt ahead. Standing in the buffer zone with his arms wide open, a crimson cloud of flames, almost molten covered his body and his size expanded within the demonic cloud rapidly and no sooner he had transformed into a five meter tall Great Demon.

Hao Ren followed suit as he leapt into the buffer zone. "Haven't seen you in that form for a good while."

"Heh, still feel more comfortable this way." Y'zaks said as he stretches his arms and legs. Thankfully they were using telepathy to communicate or else the great demon would be spouting embers the moment he speak. "I'll go have a look outside. It's a bit hard to determine how thing the whole propulsion unit is from here."

Hao Ren nodded and as he looked around the place he spotted something in the distance.

He signalled Y'zaks to stop for a moment as he laborously made his way towards the object. It was as what the MDT said, he could indeed move in space without any outside force. As he moved Hao Ren saw a series of blurry afterimage behind him. This however did not mean that he was moving quickly, it was rather the effect of the location conversion. Using this method of moving felt like his innards were being torn apart and reformed again and again along the path, causing him to nauseate. An unpleasent reminder that he was not supposed to move for long period of time. By the time he reached the object only did he realised what he saw. An Aerym Elf in a odd looking spacesuit. By the looks of it, the person was dead.

Hao Ren suprressed the shock and anxiety that started to well within him as he turned the corpse around. Under the transparent helmet was the face of a young male elf. He didn't look like he suffered before his demise. With his eyes closed he almost looked like he was deep asleep. Hao Ren could not locate any obvious signs of injury as well and that piqued his curiosity. Only when he spotted a very thin gash on the suit that he realised how the elf died. Death by decompression.

It seemed that the elf's biological make-up was different from humans, when they die in vacuum they looked like they had just went into a deep sleep.

Hao Ren looked around the area and realised that the elf had collapsed in front of one of those control terminals. His arms was still holding onto the control lever. Hao Ren tried to identify the wordings beside the control panel and after some effort he managed to translate the words: Emergency Stop.

Hao Ren then understood what had went on here. It seemed like before the propulsion unit exploded the maintenance team had detected something was amiss. The dead elf was probably a crew on duty and when he found out that the system had gone haywire and that he had lost contact with the surface he tried to slam the emergency stop lever. But evidently he failed.

A normal elf who sacrificed himself on the line of duty, even though he had traded his life for the protection of his island, his last effort was unfortunately futile.

"We better move his body to somewhere safer." Y'zaks lowered his gaze towards the elf. "This place is about to blow up."

Hao Ren nodded again solemnly and after securing the dead elf on his back he floated all the way back to the corridor and placed the body near the second bulkhead. It was probably the safest of all places at the point of time.

After that, he went along with Y'zaks along the gigantic pipeway out of the propulsion system. This was a rather harrowing experience. Hao Ren had never thought someone had the balls of iron to dash out of a thruster pipeway under a blazing inferno. He had worried if his Steel Membrane Shield could withstand the extreme heat, but it seems that Imperial products are just too solid; aside from a major nausea Hao Ren was pretty much unscatched.

But his shield had depleted somewhat.

A giant pillar of flame, almost ten kilometres long was blazing in front of them. The scene was almost too nerve-wrecking.

This was the flame from the propulsion system. There were three main thrusters, but only one was operational. Of the two non-operational thrusters, one had since died off while another was shredded by the explosion. They were however not completely destroyed yet. It seemed that there was a miscalculation by the elves on the status of the engines. By the engines there were multiple stabilisers, all located on the underside of the hoop. Spewing blue flames, the stabilisers were francitally trying to stabilise the island, not knowing that they were expediting its demise.

Y'zaks stood beside Hao Ren, his body engulfed in raging flames that even vacuum could not quench. Without any gravitation pull, the flames formed into an orb around the great demon, making the already imposing figure a miniature sun. He frowned as he looked at the layout of the engines that was quite beyond him. After contrasting with a few key parts that the eleven magister had told him, he went. "It seems like blowing that up will solve the issue. Things can't get any worse anyway."

As he finished his sentence he conjured an enormous fireball which demonic green flames licked about. Hao Ren took the chance to look about and he saw from a distance the small corvettes that were unable to take out the engines. The elves onboard could only look from afar puzzled, and to them, Hao Ren and Y'zaks were creatures of wonders, beyond their understanding.

Hao Ren finally realised how it felt to be seen as an 'supernatural'.

After a while, Y'zaks fireball, or more appropriately, Teraflare was at its apex. Hao Ren gawked at the giant fireball in front of him. The Teraflare was spinning rapidly with runic chains forming over it as it floated on Y'zaks hands.

"You sure this will work?"

"I've taken everything into consideration." Y'zaks nodded confidently. He then spun on the spot spot twice and flung the fireball at the propulsion unit with aplomb!

The gigantic fireball enveloped the propulsion system as it exploded. The strength of it... was much smaller than Hao Ren had anticipated. It seemed that Y'zaks indeed had taken everything into account, the Teraflare had not wiped the island off the map.

As the smoke cleared Hao Ren looked intently at place the propulsion system originally was. Has the crisis...been averted?

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