172 Prison Break

No matter what one does, accidents are always the most feared variable.

According to Daniel Li's calculations, the moment the reinforced glass window of the control room shattered, Rocket should have already bypassed the entire prison's control system, allowing them to escape completely unscathed.

However, accidents always arrive with startling suddenness.

"I need thirty more seconds!" Rocket shouted at the top of his lungs.

Normally, thirty seconds passes in the blink of an eye, and few people truly care about such a brief span of time. Right now, however, the bulletproof glass of the control room was fractured into a spiderweb of cracks, with a section of it already blown completely away, while outside, eight combat drones and dozens of guards kept up an unremitting barrage of fire directly into the room.

Under these circumstances, thirty seconds? That was a death sentence.

As Daniel Li was rapidly calculating whether his martial arts reflexes could dodge alien firepower, he saw Drax the Destroyer throw himself without a moment's hesitation in front of the window pane that was about to collapse.

"Get behind me!"

Hearing Drax's roar, Daniel Li, Star-Lord, and Gamora wasted no time. They scrambled directly behind the Destroyer, bracing themselves against his massive frame to anchor him.

As for Groot? The tree-being was virtually impervious to this level of firepower; even if his branches were blasted apart, he could regenerate them in seconds. Thus, Groot moved instantly to shield Rocket.

Just how devastating was the concentrated fire of the prison guards? Pressing hard against Drax's back, Daniel Li felt the terrifying impact most acutely. Even with the Destroyer acting as a living human shield, the sheer kinetic force nearly knocked the breath out of him.

Realizing that their standard weaponry couldn't pierce the Destroyer's thick hide, the prison guard commander immediately ordered a dispersal of fire, refusing to believe that a single individual could block attacks coming from all directions.

Just as Daniel Li began to resign himself to the possibility of dying right here, he felt his feet lift off the floor.

Rocket let out a triumphant shout: "Got it!"

At that very instant, it wasn't just Daniel Li and his companions who began to float; the guards outside the control room and even the hovering combat drones lost their traction and drifted upward into the air. Naturally, stripped of gravity, no one could maintain a steady aim to fire.

Star-Lord cheered out loud. "Rocket, you're a genius! You actually disabled the artificial gravity system!"

Clutching the handrails of the console, Rocket flashed a smug grin and retorted, "Artificial gravity system? You're underestimating me."

With that, Rocket tapped a few more commands onto the control panel. The combat drones that had been suspended helplessly in mid-air suddenly whirred back to life, their engines roaring.

"What the hell?" Star-Lord spotted the thrusters igniting at the rear of the drones and instinctively reached out to grab Drax for cover.

Before Star-Lord could grab the Destroyer, the eight combat drones neatly positioned themselves around the perimeter of the control cabin, pivoting their heavy weaponry directly toward the bewildered guards.

Rocket punched the console one final time. The entire control cabin sheared free from the top of the watchtower, flanked and escorted by the ring of eight combat drones.

"We're out of here!" Rocket crowed, and simultaneously, the engines of the combat drones flared, thrusting streams of high-energy plasma that propelled the cabin away from the cell blocks.

Star-Lord glanced at the shattered windows framing the cabin and asked awkwardly, "Are you telling me we're escaping in this bucket?"

"Of course not!" At the control console, Rocket was nothing short of a deity. As the cabin flew through the interior corridors of the prison, every single bulkhead door automatically slid open before them and slammed shut immediately afterward to block any pursuing guards.

Amidst the chorus of praise from Daniel Li and the others, the control cabin hurtled straight into the space prison's massive evidence vault, where the confiscated personal belongings of all the inmates were stored.

Although the vault was guarded, with the primary security forces tied down elsewhere, this handful of guards was nowhere near enough to pose a threat to the seasoned crew.

Once they secured the vault, everyone quickly retrieved their respective gear, and Star-Lord even managed to locate his beloved ship.

"Rocket, take my ship and wait for me outside the prison." Star-Lord tossed a small metallic orb from his recovered possessions to Gamora, then turned and bolted out the door.

"Is he out of his mind? We're about to make four billion units, and he stays behind to steal nick-nacks?" Grumbling irritably, Rocket marched aboard Star-Lord's ship.

The others followed suit, and Drax remarked, "It seems he left something behind, so he went back to get it."

As he initiated the ship's startup sequence, Rocket muttered under his breath, "What could possibly be that important? We're about to get paid four billion! Is there anything money can't buy? Hell, we could buy an entire planet with that."

Daniel Li was momentarily stunned by Rocket's words. *Buy an entire planet? Damn, four billion units really is that valuable?*

As the ship cleared the hangar bay of the space prison, Rocket warned, "The prison's control systems will reboot in about ten minutes. If none of us want to be blasted into cosmic dust by their main battery, I strongly suggest we leave right now."

Drax chuckled foolishly and declared, "I am not afraid of their main battery!"

Rocket shot him a sharp glare and asked, "Do you need oxygen?"

"Yes." Drax instantly deflated.

Seeing that almost everyone was ready to abandon Star-Lord, Daniel Li felt a deep sense of unevein. According to the original plot, Gamora should open the orb right about now and discover that the Power Stone is missing. Why was there complete silence?

Truth be told, the person who knew the Power Stone best among them was undoubtedly Gamora. Although Daniel Li knew the plot, he was an outsider to this universe, meaning his grasp of the stone's terrifying nature paled in comparison to hers.

Gamora was one of the few who had actually witnessed the destructive might of the Power Stone firsthand, whereas Daniel Li had only seen it on a screen—and could a movie truly capture the genuine, apocalyptic terror of such a relic?

Knowing how perilous the object inside the orb was, how could Gamora dare to open it carelessly? Furthermore, when they had all gone to retrieve their equipment earlier, she had kept a hawk-like watch on Star-Lord and noticed no suspicious movements, which naturally kept her suspicions at bay.

As the most dangerous woman in the universe, she possessed formidable combat instincts and was fiercely confident in her own observational skills.

Daniel Li cleared his throat to interrupt the bickering between Rocket and the others, turning directly to Gamora. "Why don't you open that orb and check if the thing is still inside?"

At Daniel Li's suggestion, Gamora's first instinct was to refuse, but when she noticed everyone else staring fixedly at the metallic sphere in her hand, an uneasy premonition washed over her.

Seeing Gamora hesitate, Daniel Li understood her misgivings, but he had more faith in Star-Lord's cunning resourcefulness.

"I have a feeling the orb you're holding right now is a little different from the one you fought over in the plaza."

Impatiently, Rocket chimed in, "Just open it and see! Unless you really want to stick around and catch a blast from their main cannon."

Realizing she could no longer stall, Gamora carefully pried the orb open. The interior was completely empty.

"That little thief!" Gamora hurled the empty metal sphere away, storming over to the ship's viewport to glare daggers at the distant space prison, as if she could shoot lasers from her eyes and vaporize Star-Lord the moment he appeared.

Rocket let out a long sigh. "No wonder he was so eager to let us fly off in his ship first—the prize was still in his pocket all along. We've got eight minutes left. If he doesn't show by then, we're leaving him behind."

The prerequisite for enjoying wealth was staying alive. If you lost your life, what good was any amount of money?

With precisely one minute remaining before the prison systems fully restored power, a lone figure launched itself out of the space prison—it was Star-Lord, clad in his flight gear.

Rocket immediately piloted the ship on an interception course, swinging the vessel around in a sharp arc and opening the cargo ramp just as they brushed past him, hauling Star-Lord safely inside.

The moment he tumbled into the cabin, Star-Lord was promptly knocked flat by Gamora. While Rocket cackled at the spectacle and wrestled the controls to clear the prison's lethal firing arc, Daniel Li ignored the scuffle over the recovered orb and stared back at the prison behind them.

This colossal structure, defying anything Earth architecture could conceive, was finally waking up to its full, terrifying lethativity. The side facing the ship suddenly erupted with a blinding crimson glare, unleashing a thick pillar of destructive energy.

"Hang on!"

At Rocket's roar, the ship swerved violently to dodge the blinding beam. Watching the energy torrent instantly reduce passing asteroids to absolute nothingness without leaving a single speck of dust behind, Daniel Li broke out in a cold sweat.

"So that's their main battery?"

While marveling at the sheer might of alien technology, Daniel Li couldn't help stealing a sideways glance at Drax. *He can seriously withstand a direct hit from that?*

Noticing the look, Drax glared back and demanded, "What are you staring at?"