7: The system's functions have begun to recover.

The cramped escape pod slid silently through the icy void, like a speck of dust flicked away by a giant's careless hand, hurtling into a bottomless darkness. Through the observation window, the burning wreckage of "the tenacious" had shrunk to a dim point of light, finally swallowed by the eternal night, along with its roars, whispers, mutations, and sacrifices, sinking into silence.

Inside the pod, time lost all meaning.

Lina stopped breathing three hours after the separation. The violent shock of her psychic awakening had destroyed her already frail body—internal bleeding, organ failure. She passed away without a sound, under Oleg's horrified gaze and Han Zhe's futile attempts at rescue, her body temperature gradually fading until she curled up in a cold corner like a frozen bird. The shattered cog amulet slipped from her lifeless hand, clattering onto the metal floor, its luster gone forever.

Oleg broke down. First came quiet sobs, then hysterical howls as he slammed his head against the pod wall until his forehead was a bloody mess. He cursed the God-Emperor incoherently, cursed the Orks, cursed this damned ship and everything on it. Despair and the confined space quickly crushed his last shreds of sanity. He began hallucinating, pointing at empty corners and screaming "They're coming!" or muttering to the unconscious Lina (who was still alive at the time) about seeing the smoke from his hometown's hearth.

Han Zhe tried to calm him, only to be met with frantic shoves and a bloodshot, hostile glare. Oleg no longer trusted anyone, including Han Zhe. He huddled in another corner, hugging his knees, trembling uncontrollably, his eyes vacant, repeating incomprehensible words under his breath.

The rations of food and water were meager to begin with, designed only for a single person for a few days. Han Zhe strictly controlled consumption, but after his mental collapse, Oleg sometimes refused to eat and at other times, driven by hallucinations, snatched the dwindling synthetic water, leading to waste. The pod's air circulation system emitted an overburdened hum; the recycled air carried an increasingly stale odor as carbon dioxide levels slowly climbed, making one's thoughts sluggish.

Silence. Apart from Oleg's occasional delirious mutters and sobs, there was only the almost inaudible pulse of the escape pod's attitude engines making minor adjustments and the monotonous, sleep-inducing hum of the life support system. Outside the observation window lay the unchanging starscape—cold, magnificent, vast, and utterly indifferent. The destination planet, Griffin IV, was nowhere to be seen; perhaps they had already veered off course, drifting toward the desolate fringes of the galaxy.

Han Zhe remained silent most of the time, forcing himself to stay alert. He checked Lina's cold body, covering her pale face with a clean cloth torn from his own uniform. He tried to communicate with Oleg, even if only to receive a hollow response. More often, he leaned against the inner wall, closed his eyes, and focused all his mental energy on that faint, deep-seated blue glow in his mind.

The system was his anchor, his sole fragile connection to that destroyed "future" and to the meaning of his own existence.

[Energy Level: 4.1%... Slowly recovering... Source: Stellar radiation (extremely weak), host biological metabolism, waste heat dissipation from pod equipment. Efficiency low.]

[Navigation System: Completely offline. Stellar database incomplete. No Imperial navigation beacons or known space station signals detected.]

[Life Support System: Estimated remaining operational time: 78 standard hours (based on current occupant count and consumption rate). Warning: Carbon dioxide concentration approaching alert threshold.]

[host Status: Moderate dehydration, malnutrition, mental fatigue, mild claustrophobic symptoms. Recommendation: Reduce activity, concentrate consciousness, assist energy collection.]

Concentrate consciousness... Han Zhe tried repeatedly. He recalled every detail from "the tenacious"—the rusted pipes, the cloying smell of iron, Kahn cleaning his pistol, the silver light erupting in Lina's eyes, the twisted forms of the mutants... Each memory came with stinging pain and nausea, but he forced himself to delve deeper, trying to extract any shred of "intent" that might boost the system's efficiency. He didn't know if it worked, but it was the only proactive thing he could do.

Occasionally, when his mind synchronized with the system's faint fluctuations, he would "see" flickering, incomprehensible fragments of symbols or hear an extremely brief, damaged-recording-like ambient noise—the scrape of metal, echoes of distant explosions, and the unsettling remnants of whispers. These fragments vanished in an instant but made him more certain that the system was still operating, still perceiving and recording in some way.

Oleg's condition continued to deteriorate. He began showing severe dehydration symptoms: dry, flaking skin, cracked and bleeding lips. His hallucinations intensified; sometimes he mistook Han Zhe for a dead comrade, other times for Imperial enforcers hunting him. Once, he lunged at Han Zhe, eyes bloodshot, a bestial growl in his throat, trying to snatch an empty water canteen hanging from Han Zhe's waist. Han Zhe had to struggle to subdue him, temporarily restraining him to a safety harness with a loose cable. Oleg struggled for a while before exhaustion took over; his head lolled to the side as he fell into a faint, his breathing weak and irregular.

Han Zhe looked at him, a cold numbness in his heart. Another life about to fade away. In this metal coffin, death was the only certain end; the only difference was when.

He sat back in his spot, pulling out the few remaining pieces of "scrap" from his chest—the largest, sharp-edged broken circuit board and two completely tarnished small servo motor remnants. They had been collected with faint hope, but now they were just useless pieces of metal and silicon-based junk.

He rubbed the cold surface of the circuit board, its once-precise etched lines now blurred. If the system could still function, if there was enough energy... He thought blankly, his gaze falling on Lina's covered body, then shifting to Oleg's unconscious face, finally returning to the eternal darkness outside the window.

Would it end like this? Dying in battle like Kahn, fading away silently like Lina, or exhausting the last shred of vitality in madness like Oleg?

No.

A faint yet exceptionally clear resistance rose from the depths of his consciousness. He had crossed over, bringing the system, not to die in an unknown corner. The escape chance Kahn bought with his life wasn't for him to quietly await the end here.

He would survive.

This thought was like a spark falling onto long-dormant tinder. It wasn't just survival instinct, but a deeper, more stubborn will. He would survive, find a way out, and give meaning to this life snatched back from the brink.

He focused his mind with unprecedented intensity, not passively assisting the system's energy collection, but actively, almost forcefully, pouring his own will—the will to live—into that point of blue light.

[Detecting strong host willpower drive... Forcing energy collection mode into overclock... Warning: This operation will increase host mental load, may cause consciousness damage... Executing...]

Excruciating pain! It felt like a red-hot iron rod was being driven into his temples, churning his brain. Han Zhe grunted, his body tensing, cold sweat instantly beading on his forehead as his vision darkened. But he didn't stop, gritting his teeth, continuing to press his resentment, his anger, his almost greedy tenacity for life into the system.

The circuit board and motor remnants in his hands suddenly became scalding hot!

Not physically hot, but a strange sensation of energy burning. He saw extremely fine, pale blue threads of light seep from his fingertips, worming their way like living things into the microscopic structures of the metal and silicon.

[Material contact... Detecting usable basic material units... Energy channeling... Attempting ultra-low-frequency decomposition and absorption...]

The "scrap" in his hands changed color to a grayer, more ashen hue at a rate barely perceptible to the naked eye, its texture seeming to loosen slightly. Simultaneously, the nearly stagnant energy reading on the system interface in his mind suddenly jumped!

[Energy Level: 4.1% → 4.3%!]

It worked! Han Zhe's spirits lifted. Despite the splitting headache, he felt a near-mad excitement. He focused even more intently, channeling all his mental energy into the connection between the objects in his hands and the system.

[Energy Level: 4.3% → 4.8%!]

[Energy Level: 4.8% → 5.5%!]

The absorption rate accelerated! The circuit board was the first to completely turn into a handful of grayish-white, crumbly powder, sifting through his fingers. Next were the two motor remnants; their casings softened and disintegrated, the internal micro-coils and cores rapidly losing structure, turning into finer dust.

As the last bit of metal debris lost its luster—

[Energy Level: 6.1%!]

[Basic function restart threshold reached! Initiating core protocol self-check...]

[...Resource Conversion Unit... Partially restored (Efficiency: 3%).]

[...Basic Construction Sequence... Locked (Insufficient energy, lacking blueprints and resources).]

[...Environmental Scan Module... Enhanced (Range: 500-meter radius, precision increased).]

[...Database Defragmentation... Attempting to recover critical information...]

A pale blue light screen unfolded across Han Zhe's ret—

—ina, still dim with sparse data streams, but much clearer and more stable than before. More importantly, a faint yet tangible "vitality," like a mechanical heart restarting its beat, emanated from the system core.

Success! Although only a tiny bit had been restored, it meant hope! It meant he was no longer completely passive!

Suppressing the dizziness and nausea from mental overexertion, he immediately commanded: "System, scan the external environment of the escape pod for any usable materials, energy sources, or potential landing sites! Prioritize areas with high metal concentration or energy anomalies!"