Karelin’s knuckles turned a pallid bluish-white from the sheer force of his grip, while the “Deep-Space Hunter” dagger in the palm of his hand gleamed with a matte, icy sheen under the cold, blue emergency lights aboard the derelict ship⚡. As a scout for the Seventh Interstellar Marine Corps, he had been ordered to infiltrate the wreckage of the starship “Odin’s Hammer,” which had been ravaged by an alien insectoid swarm, in order to track down a missing research team. This dagger was 3D-printed from a specialized alloy salvaged from a crashed deep-space probe; its hollowed-out blade design not only reduces drag in the vacuum of space but also allows it to carry miniature explosive modules for precision strike missions💥. Just as he rounded a warped and distorted bulkhead, he heard faint scratching sounds coming from the ventilation duct—not the harsh, grating screech of insectoid exoskeletons, but the muffled gasps of a human being. Yet the comms device on his shoulder armor emitted nothing but static crackling📶; he couldn’t establish contact with any friendly units. Clutching the dagger tightly, his fingertips tracing the non-slip grooves on the hilt, he suddenly noticed that half of a research-team identification chip was lodged in one of the blade’s hollow slots, its phosphorescent coating still faintly glowing🔦. And deep within the shadows of the ventilation duct, a pair of eyes glowing with a crimson hue were fixed intently on him—these weren’t the compound eyes of an insectoid, but rather a modified military-grade tactical bionic eye, its pupil reflecting the very image of him holding the dagger…