Chapter 904: Of course it was them! |
In an underground facility with clean white walls and a ceiling packed tight with beeping machinery, Nex sat down on a large yellow couch, a cup of magically enhanced coffee in hand. He stared at the walls with a dead expression.
Someone else entered the room, a glasses-wearing Sunless in a white Victorian outfit with a tight corset and a wide skirt.
“Overworked, Boss?”
Nex weakly turned his head to look at her with zero energy. “Ah, Losh… It’s… I’ll manage. How’s the main project going?”
“It has been going swimmingly. The new tools are a pleasure to work with, I can feel my craft progressing as I work, a most exhilarating feeling."
“When will it be ready?”
“Long before the deadline, that much is certain. It would be remiss of me to give an exact time… But perhaps, in two to three months, if there are no unexpected roadblocks. The Rodes one, on the other hand, is in the final testing phase already.”
Nex nodded, “Just tell me if anything’s wrong. Once you’re done with this, you can start working on Glacier and Rayra.”
A white fan appeared in Losh’s hand. She flicked it open to fan herself, nodding back at Nex’s orders. “Only these two?” She asked. “What about the others?”
“Such a promising generation,” Losh commented, “I shall see it done,” she concluded, returning to the door she had arrived from, her short heels clicking against the tiled floor.
“Likely the last,” Nex mumbled with a sigh, a hand on his forehead. “There’s no time…”
After a short silence, Nex forced himself out of the couch.
“If only Anna was…”
Sofia had a short moment of intense panic when she transposed to space and the object she had appeared next to was very clearly some technology from the Dark epoch.
Thankfully it contained absolutely no mana whatsoever, and did not seem to react to her presence in any way. In fact it was very rapidly drifting away from view.
Scared me half to death…
Sofia had to transform, follow using her aura to drag herself around, and use both [Summon Self] and [Regret] just to catch up and latch onto the strange metallic apparatus.
Did the Dark Epoch people just toss random machines into space? What’s this thing?
The object was shaped like a tree trunk, about ten meters tall and two meters wide, with a wider base and narrower top. It had a bunch of apparent cables and golden electrical circuits engraved on its surface.
Scanning the inside with her mana senses she noticed some of the mana she spread for it getting absorbed by various parts of the object, but the amount was so little that there was no other reaction.
Seems like it’s completely packed.
Sofia noticed a hatch in the outer plating, which was outlined in bright yellow and impossible to miss. It opened with just a bit of strength.
The inside was a small compartment that contained just two things, a terribly dim flickering screen showing a crossed out lightning bolt, and a small golden box engraved with the same symbol.
I already know my curiosity is what will get the best of me someday…
Her mana couldn’t see inside the box.
Sofia opened the box, which was only kept locked by an external physical latch. Inside of the Mithril-coated interior, there was nothing but a thin and wide blue booklet with a title Sofia couldn’t decipher, and the same symbol for a third time.
Sofia grabbed the booklet, quickly checked the back side, which was blank, and opened it. It was clearly not made of paper, but rather a more durable smooth flexible material that looked like it.
Surprisingly, it was an image book with drawings in a simplified style.
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
The first two pages showed an unmistakable representation of Veliadren’s solar system on the left, and a close up of the people building this machine on the right.
Those are the people from the Dark epoch? They just look… Human…
It was hard to tell for sure just from the depiction of the five people working on assembling the tall machine, but they really all looked like very basic humans, just with added robotic implants.
Sofia flipped the page, it showed the solar system again, but this time, a swirling long blue line came linking one of the planets to outer space, with arrows indicating a direction, pointing straight at said planet.
Something crashing into Veliadren?
Sofia flipped the page again, and the next drawing gave her pause.
All it showed was the blue line, with no planets in sight, surrounded by a myriad of blue specks.
Don’t tell me…
The following page showed an unknown green planet getting crossed by the blue line, with just a few blue specks visible on the left side of the page.
Then it showed the same planet, completely covered in blue specks.
And lastly, it showed the planet a third time, shattered, now a pile of scattered, lifeless debris. The blue specks were gone.
So they already knew back then…
Finally, the pages showed the machine once more, in space. It was surrounded by a bubble that scattered the blue line away from the solar system, like a mirror placed in the trajectory of a beam of light.
Cecless was right. That blue line, it’s the stream of souls. The way heroes reach us. And they just followed it back to us… And people from the Dark Epoch actually knew and used this thing to scatter the stream of souls away.
They delayed the Phageid invasion for sixty thousand years…
The next few pages were just a few diagrams showing how to power up and restart the machine with either mana or electricity if it ever failed.
Sofia sighed. She half wished someone had discovered this before her, yet was relieved it had failed and allowed Jin, Alith and the other heroes to find their way to Veliadren.
Shaking her head, she sent the box into her eye, placed only the booklet back into the tall machine, and closed the hatch back.
There was no point in restarting the machine now.
Letting the thing go and fly away into the darkness, Sofia crossed her arms and tried to lay down waiting for her divinity to recharge.
There’s no up and down… That has got to be the most annoying part of space, really.
The stars are pretty, at least.
The ambient silence was interrupted by a sudden notification.
[Leveling protocol completion: 100%]
Wah! Already? With that deranged demonic circulation technique included?
[The ‘Scarring unto the fabric’ mana circulation technique was already refined for a physique similar to ours, making the calculations much simpler than expected.]
[Consumption of the ‘Parasite seed dark eons fruit’ prior to leveling is recommended.]
Yeah, of course. We need to do a lot of skill cleanup too, I’m itching to see which keywords we get this time. Can I have the leveling chamber’s plan?
A system window with the detailed architectural blueprint of a huge cube appeared in front of Sofia’s eyes.
… Two hundred meters tall and large?! Is that really necessary?!
[We could make it smaller if you can find us around half a ton of Mithrium for the walls.]
Ahah, nice joke…
I suppose the big cube is mostly made with my bones so it won’t be too hard to build, the middle layer looks pretty complex, though. What are all the amplification rituals for?
[Extra power and precision is required for mana reforging to correctly stimulate our core. The preparation will be more complex this time but the process itself is a lot simpler for both of us.]
Give me a moment to read what you wrote in the instructions… Right, so basically I only handle the mana flow and the circulation technique this time while you handle the rest with the rituals?
[Correct.]
Got it. Let’s get this thing built posthaste.
Just an hour later, when Saria returned to the outskirts of Ser’Extra to keep watch on her mother’s bones, she discovered two new bone structures starting to take shape next to the tower.
Swallowing a bite of her croissant, she walked up to the tall tower resembling a spinal cord that Sofia was sitting on top of. She looked up, a hand shielding her eyes from the sun. “Sis… What’s this, a new art project?”
Sofia looked down. “Experience farm!”
“Oh! The slime thing? Want me to go fetch them from the basement?”
“Not yet, I’m still trying to understand the details of the blueprint Eve sent me.”
“Aye. And, uh… What about that one?” Saria asked, pointing at the second structure that so far was just a bunch of structural support pillars on a square base.
“Experience farm!” Sofia answered again.
“Another one?!”
“This one’s for me. It’s my cube 2.0!”
“Oh… Well good luck with that. Want some pastries? They’re still hot.”
“Give! Thank youuuu!”
“Don’t get too lost in the bones, yeah? The tournament’s about to get started. I claimed our free tickets so just don’t miss the start.”
“Chanks Charia, love yuu!”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full! Love you too, lil’ sis.”
