Is Unlocking the Stellaris Tech Tree in Star Rail Really Okay? [356]

“So big…”

Through the window, Li Sushang gazed at the colossal figure emerging in the distance, its form becoming clearer by the second. She couldn’t help but voice her astonishment.

As a complete rookie, the most significant and challenging mission she had ever participated in was a military operation to eradicate a counterfeit medicine syndicate.

The rest of her time was either spent on leave or in the barracks training—a monotonous routine that left her with little exposure to truly extraordinary events.

Most of her knowledge about the wider world came from the stories of veteran Cloud Knights. These tales were often embellished, with details so exaggerated they sometimes didn’t hold up under scrutiny.

Even the storytellers in the marketplace didn’t spin yarns this wild…

But this time was different.

For the first time, Li Sushang was witnessing a drake—a true, supermassive behemoth drifting through the starry sea!

Forget about the transport ship they were in; even the fleet’s largest cruiser was nothing more than an infant before this creature—so small it was almost laughable.

Li Sushang licked her dry lips, glanced toward the L-Drake, then turned back.

“Shifu… are you sure about this? I mean, it’s huge—I doubt it can even hear us if we talk.”

As she spoke, she spread her arms wide in an exaggerated circle, emphasizing just how absurdly massive the L-Drake was. Its slow, ponderous movements only made it look even more dumbfounded.

The images in Seele’s office, along with the cold, clinical numbers on the reports, had failed to give her a real sense of scale. All she thought back then was that the L-Drake had a pretty badass design…

But now that she was actually up close?

Seeing its body—large enough to rival half of a Xianzhou Luofu flagship—was enough to make her feel a little uneasy…

Chen Lin propped his chin on his hand and said casually,

“Sushang, didn’t you want to take a photo to send home? Look, this is the perfect opportunity. Want me to wait until we’re closer so I can snap a better shot for you?”

Li Sushang thought for a few seconds before finding an excuse.

“…I’m afraid my mom will think I faked it with Photoshop.”

“No worries. I’ll vouch for its authenticity. Besides, the company will release an official report about it in half a month.”

Chen Lin chuckled as he looked at his little disciple. She might be a bit slow at times, but she wasn’t outright stupid.

Li Sushang hesitated. “Shifu, maybe we should… wait and see?”

Something about the whole situation didn’t sit right with her. She had the nagging feeling that she wasn’t even big enough to get stuck in the L-Drake’s teeth. Running up to take a photo felt absurdly reckless—it was much safer to stay close to her master.

If circumstances allowed, she would’ve latched onto Chen Lin like a little accessory and refused to let go.

Mom… the outside world is terrifying!

Meanwhile, Seele kept a sharp eye on the distant dragon, her entire body tense, as though ready to enter combat at any moment. She knew the L-Drake’s attack patterns and effective range, so the moment their transport ship entered its striking distance, she became fully alert.

She couldn’t fight the L-Drake in direct combat, but she could phase the entire transport ship the instant it attacked, allowing them to evade any physical strikes.

The L-Drake clearly noticed the transport ship.

It slowly rolled over, bringing its monstrous, menacing head to face the tiny speck before it. Several pairs of eerie, blue-glowing eyes fixated on the ship with intense curiosity as it began inching closer…

The sheer difference in size was staggering—like a skyscraper looming over a compact car.

“Sh-Shifu…”

Li Sushang shrank behind Chen Lin, her heart lodged in her throat. She could barely even speak.

Chen Lin glanced back at his little disciple, who was clinging to him like a sloth, her grip practically unshakable. His mouth twitched slightly as he reopened his UI.

[Requirement: A transport ship carrying Chen Lin must approach the roaming L-Drake: 1/1]

[Progress: 0.01%]

[0.02%...]

The L-Drake project had already registered as meeting the necessary conditions, and a progress bar had appeared beneath it. Even though Chen Lin hadn't taken any action yet, the bar had already begun to shift.

At the center of the bar was the 0% marker. To the right, the bar was green; to the left, it was red. Right now, the indicator was slowly inching toward the green side.

In addition to the progress bar, several interactive options had appeared below it:

[Send a friendly signal to the L-Drake. (Consumes 25 units of nanobots; greatly accelerates project completion speed.)]

[Do nothing. (No cost.)]

[Let me take a closer look at you! (Grants 5 units of nanobots per day; drastically slows project completion speed.)]

The default selection was the second option—"Do nothing."

Chen Lin had encountered similar special projects before, back on pre-Belobog and the Xianzhou, and he knew that changes in the progress bar could lead to wildly different outcomes.

If the indicator started shifting toward red, that likely meant bad news. On the other hand, if it moved toward green, the resulting events were generally favorable to him.

A prime example was his past encounter with Cocolia. Once the bar turned green, internal political strife started plaguing her rule, and a series of disastrous coincidences kept stacking against her.

By the time she found herself utterly isolated and abandoned, she still hadn’t figured out why her luck had suddenly taken such a nosedive. One moment, the aristocrats she had promoted were bleeding the citizens dry with outrageous taxes; the next, her own palace guards had defected to Chen Lin’s side…

In short, from experience, he had no real interest in choosing the third option. Rationality won out over curiosity this time.

"Let's see..."

Chen Lin opened his [Rare Resources] tab. If he remembered correctly, he had quite a stockpile of nanobots—remnants from the now-extinct Tamz Civilization, which had been consumed by a nanite nebula at an unknown point in history.

During his exploration of that disaster site, he had managed to acquire a variety of rare resources, including these nanobots.

At present, he had exactly 50 units on hand.

Nanobots weren’t particularly useful before unlocking [Nanotechnology], unless a player was desperate enough to sell them on the P-Society Market for energy credits. Otherwise, they just sat in storage collecting dust.

With Jarilo-VI suffering from severe ship losses, military alloy was in high demand. Chen Lin had carefully managed his resources, liquidating some assets to acquire energy credits and then spending a significant sum on emergency alloy purchases from the P-Society Market.

As a result, his once-overflowing energy credit reserves had nearly bottomed out. Even so, he wasn’t broke enough to start selling off rare materials—especially since 50 units of nanobots weren’t even worth a few ships.

After weighing his options, he switched from "Do nothing" to "Send a friendly signal to the L-Drake."

Spending 25 units of otherwise-useless nanobots to drastically reduce waiting time? Definitely worth it.

The moment he confirmed the action, something unexpected happened.

A dark cloud suddenly materialized in front of the transport ship.

The L-Drake, which had been circling and observing the vessel, immediately fixated on the strange cloud. Its previously relaxed, meandering movements came to an abrupt halt—then, like a predator pouncing on prey, it lunged straight at the black mass.

The transport ship’s crew panicked and immediately reversed course, retreating a safe distance.

Had the ship been equipped with a Psionic Jump Drive, they probably would have activated it the moment the dragon charged.

"What the hell just happened?! Why did that thing go berserk all of a sudden?!"

Seele, who had been clenching her fists in preparation for an emergency, slowly released them. The ship phased back into normal space as she studied the situation with wary confusion.

Li Sushang hesitantly poked her head out, cautiously watching as the L-Drake swallowed the black cloud in one massive gulp. She gulped as well—because, to her, it looked less like the dragon had devoured some random cloud and more like it had just eaten their entire ship.

While the two girls remained on edge, Chen Lin remained calm.

After all, that "black cloud" was just a swarm of nanobots he had released.

He hadn't expected the 25 units of nanobots to be used as bait, but the rapidly progressing bar didn’t lie.

Clearly, nanobots were worth their 1:110 energy credit price tag for a reason…

"Shifu… what was that just now? And… why is it suddenly staring at us?"

Li Sushang shuddered as she noticed the L-Drake had stopped its erratic movements. No more looping flights, no more dramatic swoops—just stillness.

Now, it simply hovered in place, staring.

Its many pairs of luminous eyes locked onto the transport ship, unblinking.

A chill ran down Li Sushang’s spine.

Chen Lin stroked his chin thoughtfully. "If I had to guess, it's probably curious about who we are and why we're here."

After a brief pause, he added, "That black cloud was a signal I created using nanobots—meant to convey our peaceful intentions. Looks like it accepted the message."

"Oh… I think I get it? Maybe?"

Li Sushang nodded uncertainly.

Her mind, however, drifted to a completely different question.

Just how did Shifu even make that nanobot cloud?

Surely he hadn’t been carrying it around this whole time?

She lowered her gaze and scrutinized Chen Lin’s outfit.

After a thorough once-over, she couldn’t spot anything that looked like it could have stored a mass of nanobots.

…Actually, now that she thought about it, he didn’t seem to be carrying anything aside from the clothes on his back!

Wait… do experts all have some kind of personal storage dimension?!

This thought led her to recall the Master Diviner of the Divination Commission, who also seemed capable of making things appear and disappear at will.

She had even personally witnessed that Master Diviner order ten cups of Immortal Delight Tea—only for all of them to mysteriously vanish the moment they were handed over…

While his clueless disciple remained frozen in thought, Chen Lin ordered the transport ship to slowly approach the L-Drake, preparing to engage with it further.

Thanks to the special project mechanics, the progress bar would continue advancing even if he did nothing. However, Chen Lin hadn’t forgotten a crucial detail from the event chain—the L-Drake could understand psionic signals. He intended to see exactly how that worked.

The L-Drake tilted its head from side to side, showing no resistance to the ship’s approach. Unlike before, it didn’t dart around aimlessly but remained still, waiting.

Its massive, mountain-like wings trembled slightly. It harbored no hostility toward the tiny vessel before it—after all, its instincts told it that this little thing was the one that had just offered it food.

So, it decided to observe further.

As the L-Drake blinked its enormous eyes, studying the transport ship, its gaze passed through the transparent hull, allowing it to glimpse the interior.

And then—

A face.

Something—or someone—inside the ship overlapped with a memory deeply etched into the L-Drake’s cerebral cortex.

“Wait… wait… hold on…”

A fragmented thought, in some unknown form, surged into the L-Drake’s consciousness.

It let out a sharp screech and, with an excited flip, performed a full backward somersault—its enormous tail nearly smacking into the approaching transport ship.

Inside the vessel, the monitoring equipment immediately detected a strange but fleeting waveform anomaly. At the same time, the psionic field Chen Lin had extended outward picked up a similar signal. Per his command, the signal was drawn back to him.

Chen Lin wasted no time analyzing it—using his Zro Dust to conduct a full-scale decryption.

His request was instantly processed by The Shroud, which translated the signal’s general meaning.

Apparently… it was some kind of joy?

Chen Lin muttered, “No way…”

Seele turned her head. “Brother Lin, what are you mumbling about?”

“It’s really happy right now. Like, actually overjoyed.”

He didn’t keep the translation to himself, relaying it to the others.

Still, he was completely baffled by how the L-Drake had gone from simple curiosity to outright excitement.

It was like feeding a stray cat on the street—just because it looked cute, you went and bought it a sausage, hoping to pet it while it ate.

But instead of just eating and leaving, the cat suddenly latched onto your leg, determined to follow you home for life.

…That level of attachment.

I gave you one meal, and you’re acting like this?

Chen Lin’s Stellaris-style "Future Sight" made him well aware of the L-Drake’s nature. This type of space-dwelling creature—often found roaming L-clusters—was, in reality, a highly advanced aggregation of nanobots.

In Stellaris, if a player chose to kill an L-Drake upon discovery, a message would pop up:

"Scientists have discovered a small quantity of deactivated nanomachines in the L-Drake’s brainstem."

This was the developers' way of hinting that L-Drakes weren’t actually biological lifeforms, but colossal, sentient nanite constructs.

Unfortunately, the lazy devs at Paradox Interactive never wrote any further lore about them. The polite way to put it was that they left it up to player speculation.

Chen Lin gave the joyfully flipping L-Drake a strange look.

Even if he treated it the same as the ones he’d encountered in the game, there was no reason for it to be this excited, right?

Do you… actually want to be enslaved by me that badly?

This is weird.

Still plagued by questions, Chen Lin decided to conduct a small experiment.

He sent a psionic command to the L-Drake:

"You’re so cute. Flip again."

This was purely a test—he wanted to figure out what types of psionic signals the L-Drake could actually interpret.

And then…

A few seconds after receiving the signal, the L-Drake suddenly twisted its body, rolling over twice in the opposite direction.

This time, it even adjusted its movements to avoid accidentally hitting the transport ship while flipping.

Chen Lin: "???"

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T/N: ???

This is a fan translation of 在星穹铁道点群星科技树真的没问题吗? by 杏雨诗韵 All rights to the original work belong to the creator. Please support them by exploring their original work or sharing it with others if you can. Thank you for reading and supporting my efforts to bring this story to a wider audience!