It wasn't until they got closer—no, to be precise, until Michael was actually walking on top of "it"—that he realized what he had initially mistaken for elevated aqueducts were actually connecting corridors linking different sectors of the ruined city.
Makes sense, he thought. The lunar surface has no lakes or rivers. What need would there be for aqueducts?
A small, dark pebble lay near his feet. Michael casually nudged it aside with the toe of his boot. Unexpectedly, the "pebble" tumbled twice across the seemingly stone-paved corridor, producing a crisp, familiar clinking sound.
"This is—"
Michael crouched down, pinching the dark object between his fingers. He squinted at it for a mont, then closed his hand around it tightly.
When he opened his palm again, the corroded outer layer of the dark "pebble" had flaked away, revealing a pale yellow, amber-like crystal within.
He materialized a specialized test tube, dropped the crystal inside, and applied a gentle heat. With a faint hissing sound, the crystal lted into a constantly flowing, transparent liquid. However, if one could magnify it countless tis, they would see it wasn't liquid at all, but rather active nanobots.
"What is it?" i asked, approaching.
"This is... Soulium."
"!"
Similar "stones" were scattered everywhere. Nearly every corner of these ruins was littered with black crystalline fragnts, large and small – all Soulium.
"Such a massive amount of Soulium..." i mused aloud, baffled. "Why would it be left exposed like this? It's like an open-pit mine, but Soulium is supposed to be artificially manufactured... Unless... unless so imnse force scattered it all."
Understanding seed to dawn on Michael. He first knelt, placing his palm flat on the corridor floor, sending faint tendrils of blue energy seeping downwards.
He frowned suddenly, as if the situation wasn't quite what he'd expected. Then, he quickly ran towards a nearby cluster of ruined buildings and began touching everything, running his hands over surfaces incessantly.
If soone were to edit together just his actions and display them on a large screen, it would be hard to believe he was caressing cold, rough stone ruins and not sothing... warr and softer.
After a short while, he opened his eyes, a look of "just as I thought" on his face.
"The stone portions of the buildings have a composition similar to lunar regolith; they were likely built using materials directly sourced from the Moon's surface," he reported. "Certain structures, presumably important defensive installations, have Soulium armor plating of varying thickness embedded within the stone walls. The exposed Soulium we're seeing scattered around now is probably the debris left when those fortified buildings were destroyed."
"Oh?" Elysia let out a soft sound of interest. With a few effortless, graceful leaps, she vaulted over the massive, crumbling wall directly in front of them to examine the other side.
"Wow, Michael! You're right! It's all solid Soulium inside here!" she called back, her voice echoing slightly.
Hearing this, i also instinctively reached out, touching the rough stone surface beside her. She couldn't sense the internal structure like Michael, nor could she effortlessly scale the high wall like Elysia to observe its inner layers directly.
Separated by her bulky spacesuit, she couldn't even truly feel the texture of the ancient stone wall.
She remained silent for a mont, then, with sudden boldness, removed her large, heavy helt visor. Like soone who had been drowning for a long ti finally reaching shore, she inhaled deeply, greedily, almost desperately, breathing in the air that had lingered here, trapped in the river of ti, for tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of years.
"Are you sure that's okay, i?" Michael asked, concerned.
"It's... it's fine..." i managed, shaking her head slightly.
She casually tossed the heavy visor onto the ground and, without hesitation, began unfastening the cumberso outer layers of her spacesuit.
Michael understood her sudden rush of emotion. It wasn't simple excitent or exhilaration.
Quite the opposite. This impulsive action stemd from a weight, an imnse, suffocating burden that had been pressing down on her.
A weight that neither i, nor Elysia, nor Michael could possibly bear alone.
Moreover, back at the base, as the leader, i's every action, every expression, was constantly scrutinized by everyone.
Leaders weren't forbidden from showing negative emotions, of course, but such monts of vulnerability were precious and rare. One slip could shatter morale.
It was precisely this understanding – and perhaps soone else's self-awareness of their own emotional volatility – that had led to i becoming the sole, undisputed leader of Fire Moth after the recent restructuring.
Now, finally, here, with no "outsiders" watching, i allowed herself a mont. A chance to do sothing slightly more "reckless," more cathartic than her usual disciplined deanor permitted. A way to vent the accumulated negative emotions she could never openly display.
She leaned forward, finally pressing herself against the ancient stone wall, letting the warmth from her body, conducted through the thin inner layers of her suit, flow into the cold, lonely stone that had stood silent through countless days and nights.
And, quite unsurprisingly, she sniffled quietly, wiping her nose.
Ten minutes later, i, having regained her composure, began ticulously examining the scattered Soulium fragnts nearby.
She scrutinized every fracture point on the black crystals, despite the faint, ominous purple veins of residual Honkai Energy marring their surfaces. When a detail was unclear, she leaned in closer, her face re centiters away... sotis so close Michael half-suspected she might try to take a bite out of the Soulium...
He felt compelled to issue a warning: "i, maybe be a little careful about the radiation? Honkai Sickness is unpredictable stuff, you know."
"Hm?" i shook her head dismissively.
Right, Michael recalled. While Honkai Energy adaptability and resistance were quantifiable trics, outside of active Fire Moth combat personnel, ordinary people rarely underwent quantitative testing. The testing procedure itself involved significant exposure to Honkai radiation.
So, for most people, these trics remained qualitative assessnts – 'high resistance,' 'low adaptability,' etc. It was no wonder that despite i repeatedly assuring them of her high natural resistance, Michael and Elysia still worried about her pushing her limits.
"Let Protheus handle that kind of close analysis," Michael suggested gently. "If you sohow contracted Honkai Sickness, Kevin would probably actually flay alive. Besides," he added, trying a different angle, "apart from you, there's really no one else capable of... leading Fire Moth right now."
i shook her head again, silencing Michael's nagging with a single, pragmatic sentence: "Given the ambient Honkai Energy concentration within these ruins already, does my proximity to these specific fragnts really make much of a difference?"
He had to concede her point. Most regular Fire Moth soldiers were forced into dical retirent after just three to five years of service due to chronic Honkai Sickness, often requiring amputations.
Only a lucky few ever received the rare, life-saving serum treatnt. Even soone like SPACY, their leading expert who spent years researching the disease, had lost an arm to it and had required serum treatnt twice afterward.
Yet i, despite constantly working with Honkai-related materials and phenona, had never shown any symptoms. It was nothing short of miraculous.
Michael was forced to finally, fully accept what she'd told him before: her inability to beco a MANTIS wasn't due to poor Honkai Energy adaptability, but rather a fundantal incompatibility between her cellular structure and the specific ICHOR factors used in the surgery.
Perhaps sensing her previous tone had been a bit too curt, i added, softening slightly, "While the portable terminal is convenient, its processing power and mory are ultimately limited. I'd rather save its resources for more critical tasks. Simple observation and preliminary assessnt like this... my own eyes are sufficient."
"Oh? If you say that, i, you must have made an important discovery!" Elysia suddenly popped up beside them, effortlessly slinging an arm around i's shoulders.
Behind her back, hidden from i's view, Elysia subtly conjured a delicate crystal flower in her palm, silently working to dilute the ambient Honkai Energy in their imdiate vicinity as much as possible.
"Not entirely a discovery," i admitted. "More like... deductions based on observation."
"Oh, co on! Discovery, deduction, whatever! Just tell us already!" Elysia urged playfully.
i scratched her head slightly, quickly organizing her thoughts: "Firstly, neither of you pays much attention to Fire Moth logistics, so you might not grasp the sheer scale of what this ans." She gestured towards the massive ruined wall behind them. "Just the Soulium plating reinforcing this single wall contains enough raw material to manufacture thirty Seventh Divine Keys."
"That extravagant?!" Michael and Elysia exclaid in unison, clicking their tongues in amazent.
They both rembered Mobius complaining more than once about Commander Phamas's initial reluctance to fully fund the Soulium project back in the early days. Her exact words, dripping with sarcasm, had been sothing like: "The production cost of a single gram of Soulium is enough to completely re-equip Fifth Squad."
While that was likely a rough, hyperbolic estimate lacking strict financial rigor, if they used it as a basic benchmark:
A standard Fire Moth combat squad back then had consisted of twenty to thirty mbers. Equipping a new squad of that size required approximately the equivalent of one year's worth of 'Grade A' survival resources for one hundred people.
The Seventh Divine Key, Judgnt of Shamash, excluding manufacturing wastage, weighed roughly two kilograms (2000 grams). Therefore, by Mobius's crude tric, one Seventh Divine Key represented the resource cost equivalent to sustaining two hundred thousand people for a year at Grade A levels.
And the armor plating behind this one wall conservatively equaled the mass of thirty Seventh Divine Keys. That translated to the staggering equivalent of sustaining six million people for a year at Grade A resource levels.
Grade A, the 'relatively comfortable' tier, was typically reserved only for the families of high-ranking United Governnt officials. Its resource allocation was more than three tis that of the bare minimum 'Grade D' survival level.
Which ant, converting the cost of just this one wall into basic sustenance, it could feed at least eighteen million people for an entire year at the minimum survival standard!
And walls like this... how many thousands of them existed throughout these sprawling ruins? Even if not every single wall was reinforced with costly Soulium plating... even if only one percent were... the implications were still mind-boggling.
"Exactly," i confird their silent calculations. "Even if we transported all the Soulium currently stockpiled by Fire Moth across the entire planet to the Moon, it likely still wouldn't be enough to construct a city of this scale, fortified to this degree."
Michael understood i's unspoken question imdiately— "And why? Why expend such astronomical resources to build a fortified city like this, here, on the Moon?"
Their gazes t silently across the ruins. Michael gave i a slight, confirming nod, silently validating her line of reasoning.
"Furthermore," he added, building on her point, "why specifically use Soulium for structural reinforcent? While Soulium is undoubtedly far stronger and tougher than even our most advanced specialized alloy armor plating, using it purely for architectural strength on this scale seems illogical. Weight isn't a primary concern for static defenses like this; they could have achieved similar defensive capabilities simply by using much thicker, heavier layers of conventional alloys. So..."
The three of them arrived at the sa inescapable conclusion simultaneously, voicing it almost as one:
"It was ant to block Honkai Energy radiation!"
"Considering the extrely high ambient Honkai energy levels concentrated around this basin," i continued, her voice low and serious, sketching out the grim scenario, "my hypothesis is that this... this might have been the final battlefield. The place where the civilization before ours made their last stand against the Herrscher of Finality – the very last Herrscher.
"Imagine," she elaborated, her words painting a vivid, terrible picture, "the arrival of the Herrscher of Finality would unleash an overwhelming wave of Honkai Energy, instantly converting most conventional forces into mindless zombies or worse. So, they built these heavily shielded strongpoints, embedding Soulium armor deep within crucial structures. These fortifications were designed to allow their elite forces to weather that initial, catastrophic radiation surge. Then, once the initial energy wave subsided slightly, they would erge en masse from these hardened shelters to engage the final enemy."
i's description hung heavy in the air, the image stark and chilling. The reference to "the civilization before ours" was now an understood, if unspoken, reality between them.
"In that case," Michael spoke up quickly, breaking the heavy silence before it could fully settle, "we should prioritize exploring buildings confird to have Soulium reinforcent. Compared to the others, they were clearly deed more strategically important." It was the logical next step, and both i and Elysia nodded in agreent.
He imdiately realized his mistake, however, as both i and Elysia turned to look at him expectantly. Right. Heavy lifting and dangerous exploration... guess that falls to the guy, huh?
"..."
Michael silently vaulted back over the massive wall and began rummaging through the pile of rubble on the other side. After several minutes of searching, he found nothing of interest besides more Soulium fragnts.
When he climbed back over, he saw Elysia had once again perched herself on the cliff edge, gazing thoughtfully towards the enormous, dark pit dominating the center of the basin. i, anwhile, had activated the Protheus terminal and was already running complex calculations.
"Hm? I thought we were supposed to be conserving Protheus's processing power?" Michael teased lightly as he approached i.
Her response, however, was utterly serious. "I just considered a possibility. Since Soulium construction was used so extensively here, there should logically be stockpiles reserved for repairs and replacents. At the very least, there ought to be surplus materials left over. After all," she added grimly, "if they were truly preparing for a final confrontation with the Herrscher of Finality here... there would have been little point in planning to transport any leftover Soulium back to Earth afterward."
Makes sense, Michael thought grimly. Either they won, in which case they'd have all the ti in the world to salvage later... or they lost, in which case the unused Soulium would be as aningless to their extinct civilization as unspent money left in a dead man's bank account. Whether it's stored safely or hidden under a mattress makes no difference then.
"Doctor," Protheus's synthesized voice suddenly emanated from the terminal, "Based on analysis of the lunar ruin schematics derived from your uploaded scans, there is a large, relatively intact structure located approximately five kiloters further along the crater rim from our current position. Based on architectural style and structural integrity readings, it is highly probable that this building served as a large-scale storage warehouse. However, I cannot confirm its contents contain Soulium without direct sensor readings."
Michael followed the projected directional indicator, quickly locating the distant structure Protheus had identified.
"Well, that's convenient," i remarked. "It's located right near the central crater anyway. Saves us a detour. Michael, could you trouble yourself to use your Void abilities? Let's teleport directly there. Further exploration of the peripheral ruins will have to wait until the mass-produced MANTIS units arrive. Our primary objective for this mission is to investigate that central crater."
"Hey! i, do you always have to wait until the absolute last second to reveal the actual mission objective?" Michael grumbled good-naturedly, throwing his hands up in mock exasperation. He walked over to the cliff edge and gently tapped Elysia on the shoulder.
"Co on, Ely, ti to go!"
Perhaps his voice was too soft, or maybe Elysia was lost deeper in thought than he realized, but she gave absolutely no reaction.
"Hm? Ely? Elysia? Miss... Pink... Elf (Fairy)?"
Still nothing.
Refusing to believe she was that zoned out, Michael leaned closer, putting his mouth right next to her ear. He hesitated for a split second, then his downward glance caught sight of the slight indentation the decorative band around her thigh made against her skin.
A mischievous glint sparked in his eyes, his lips curled into a wicked grin, and he suddenly yelled—
"PINK FATTY!"
---||---
Ten minutes later, before the designated "warehouse."
A spatial rift tore open, and Michael stumbled out first, his ears bright red, looking utterly mortified and on the verge of tears.
The massive warehouse doors were, predictably, sealed shut. Michael first tried pushing them, placing his hands flat against the cold tal. They didn't budge an inch. Recalling the heavy blast doors back at the Fire Moth HQ, he changed tactics.
Wedging his fingers into the thin seam between the two colossal doors, he braced himself and began pulling outwards with imnse force.
"GROOOOAN—RUMBLE—"
After untold millennia, a thick layer of fine lunar dust coated the door surfaces. The intense vibrations caused by Michael's efforts sent clouds of it billowing outwards, creating a choking haze.
Showers of small pebbles and debris rained down from the top of the doorfra, pelting Michael's head and shoulders like gritty hail.
By the ti he had managed to pry the two door sections – each easily a hundred ters tall and nearly ten ters thick – open just wide enough for two people to walk through side-by-side, he turned around looking like a complete idiot who'd stood outside in a blizzard all night, utterly covered head-to-toe in gray dust.
"Pfft!"
Elysia, i, and even the holographic Protheus projection erupted in simultaneous laughter.
"Phoo—" Michael pursed his lips and blew sharply, sending a small cloud of dust puffing away from his face.
Finally, Elysia, still giggling so hard she nearly doubled over, stepped forward and kindly helped brush the thickest layers of dust off his face and clothes.
i watched them from the side, biting her lip to suppress a smile. Protheus suddenly spoke quietly to her: "Doctor, would you like to take a short break? It is almost ti for your scheduled communication uplink with Captain Kevin."
"Oh? How long until the scheduled ti?" i asked casually.
"Er... There are currently two hours, thirty-two minutes, and fifty-seven seconds remaining until the scheduled communication window."
"..." i sighed softly, making a ntal note to personally remove the "Kevinesque Dry Wit" subroutine from Protheus's emotional simulation module as soon as they returned to base. The AI had clearly surpassed its source material in the art of deadpan trolling.
The interior of the warehouse was pitch black. A cool draft flowed out from the relatively narrow gap between the massive doors.
"Urgh!" Michael suddenly clutched his head, stumbling slightly.
"What's wrong?" Elysia, only a step away, imdiately steadied him. But Michael just shook his head, waving her off, indicating he was alright.
He had just swept the interior with his Herrscher of Sentience powers. There was nothing inside that could remotely be called 'alive'. Despite expecting this, despite holding no real hope, he had checked anyway. The confirmation still sent a pang through him.
He held out his hand, palm up, and a small, bright fla ignited above it. Then, taking the lead, he stepped cautiously into the darkness.
Elysia linked her arm through his, leaning slightly against him as they walked. "Why not just create lights?" she whispered.
Michael shot her a sideways glance. Honestly, it was only at tis like this that he rembered his primary Herrscher core was Reason, not Void, Sentience, Death, Fla, or Thunder... Ugh, what other powers did I even absorb again?
If Elysia could hear his internal monologue, she would undoubtedly cover her mouth to stifle a giggle and remind him of the self-deprecating nickna he'd given himself years ago during a mont of profound weakness – the Herrscher of Nerfs.
While the two in front clung together, i followed them inside, holding the Protheus terminal aloft.
The holographic projection of Protheus herself emitted a soft, blue luminescence, illuminating a far wider area than the flickering fla in Michael's hand.
Because of this, she was the first to spot the humanoid shadow lurking just inside the doorway—
"Doctor, watch out!"
Being a pure projection, Protheus, despite her protective instinct, couldn't physically shield i.
All she could do was instantly divert maximum power to her illumination function, hoping to clearly reveal the potential threat to i. But even as she did, a sliver of doubt crossed her digital mind – Michael and Elysia might be joking around, but the probability of both of them simultaneously relaxing their guard and making such a basic tactical error should be extrely low, shouldn't it?
"It's alright, Protheus. It's just a ch suit," Michael called back casually from ahead, without even turning around. He hadn't made such a rookie mistake, of course.
The piercing blue light from Protheus cut through the darkness, revealing Michael was correct. It was indeed just a ch suit, roughly human-sized.
It stood frozen mid-stride, one foot forward, one back, its arms outstretched unevenly before it, as if reaching for sothing or recoiling in its final mont. It was no wonder Protheus had initially perceived it as a hostile figure in the gloom.
However, the energy indicator light on its chest and the optical sensors in its 'eyes' were completely dark, covered in the sa lifeless, gray dust as everything else. It was clearly inactive, powerless for millennia.
i suddenly took two bold steps forward, stopping directly in front of the dusty machine. She reached out, pressing her index, middle, and ring fingers against the ch's chest plate. Then, she applied gentle, steady pressure.
"CRASH!"
The ch, weighing hundreds of kilograms, toppled backward with a deafening clang, crashing heavily onto the warehouse floor. Yet, strangely, its limbs remained locked in the exact sa walking/reaching pose it had held while standing.
i didn't stop there. She took two more steps, crouching down beside the fallen machine.
"Snap!" Michael finally decided to fulfill his duties as the Herrscher of Reason. With a crisp snap of his fingers, cold, brilliant white light flooded the entire warehouse, banishing every shadow, illuminating the vast space as brightly as day.
Now, in the stark light, Michael and Elysia finally understood i's unusual reaction. The humanoid ch wasn't just any ordinary machine.
Although its internal circuitry and control systems were still unknown, its external design... its overall shape, size, and proportions... bore a striking resemblance to a general-purpose humanoid combat fra i herself had designed shortly after joining Fire Moth years ago.
While superficial resemblance alone didn't prove anything conclusive, similar chanical designs often implied shared functional principles.
For example: a strictly humanoid form is rarely the most optimal structure for a purely chanical combat unit. Designers typically modify the humanoid template significantly to better align with chanical kinematics and combat efficiency, rather than adhering strictly to biological anatomy.
The reason i had designed her original model to be so rigorously humanoid, in both shape and scale, was because it was intended from inception for single-pilot operation.
To put it more bluntly, like Tony Stark's suits, it was designed to be worn, directly controlled by a human operator inside... less a 'ch' and more accurately described as advanced powered armor.
And i had every reason to suspect, looking at the fallen machine before them now, that this ancient precursor followed the sa design philosophy...
Which ant...
i clenched her fists, her expression hardening with resolve. Without hesitation, her fingers moved with practiced familiarity, finding the external ergency release latch on the ch's chest plate.
"TSSSSSHHH—CLANG!"
With a sharp, ear-splitting hiss of escaping pressure and a loud tallic clang, the ch's armored faceplate violently ejected outwards. It shot past i's head, skimming her cheek so closely it actually sliced off a few stray strands of hair near her temple. This chanism is different, more forceful than mine, the thought registered fleetingly in i's mind.
"Clunk—Clunk—"
Two more dull, heavy sounds followed as internal locks disengaged, and the ch's limbs suddenly went limp, slumping lifelessly on the floor.
"Well?" Michael asked, though he already knew the answer.
Beneath the ejected faceplate... there was nothing. Empty space. The void left behind induced a strange, poignant sense of sorrow, especially for i. She had seen the ch's final, frozen posture and had perhaps subconsciously hoped, against all logic, to find soone still inside.
No, she corrected herself ntally—of course soone had been inside. How else could it have assud that final, desperate pose?
It was just that... tens of thousands of years had passed. And unlike the vacuum outside, there was oxygen within this sealed warehouse. The pilot's body had long since decomposed, returning to dust, leaving absolutely no trace behind.
This outco was entirely predictable, of course. i wasn't grieving for the inevitable decay.
Her thoughts were simpler, colder, yet resonant with empathy— What a pity. They died unknown, unheard. And after death, they remain so. Will we...?
Her sadness was rely a kindred sorrow, an empathy born of shared potential fate. The fox grieving for the death of the hare.
However, from Michael's unique perspective, empowered (or perhaps cursed) by the Herrscher of Sentience, he witnessed sothing far more horrifying:
Over hundreds of thousands of years, the physical body had long since turned to dust. Within the Sea of Consciousness associated with this suit, all mories, all traces of identity, had been utterly eroded away, leaving only a terrifying, echoing void.
Yet, perating that void, thick and suffocating, was the raw, undiluted agony, despair, and unyielding defiance of the pilot's final monts—
That was the source of the sharp pain Michael had felt upon entering the warehouse. His own Sentience powers felt like a tiny rowboat tossed on a tempestuous ocean before this ancient, concentrated wave of despair, threatening to capsize him at any mont.
"Hey! Cheer up, you two!" Elysia suddenly chirped, forcing a bright smile, though her eyes remained slightly narrowed. "Finding nothing is definitely better than having a creepy skeleton suddenly pop out and scare us all, right?" She offered a weak, slightly off-key attempt at a joke.
With her intelligence, Elysia had surely reached the sa conclusions as i, perhaps just a fraction of a second slower. (Honestly, just a tiny fraction!)
But the heavy silence was becoming unbearable. Soone had to try and lighten the mood, right?
Yet, no one laughed. Not even a strained, awkward, or pitying chuckle.
Elysia opened her eyes fully, puzzled by the lack of response. She saw i, Michael, and even the holographic Protheus completely ignoring the mountains of equipnt and potentially priceless Soulium stockpiled deeper within the warehouse. Their gazes were all fixated on sothing near where the ch had fallen.
A small, unassuming glass stele, a rectangular plaque standing upright on the floor.
It wasn't large, maybe the size of four adult hands placed together. After Michael gently blew away the thick layer of accumulated dust, they could see its surface was densely engraved with intricate, unfamiliar characters.
i and Michael exchanged a look. He nodded grimly. With a wave of his hand, Michael materialized a complex array of sophisticated scanning and analysis equipnt.
i connected the Protheus terminal to Michael's newly created devices. anwhile, Michael carefully approached the glass stele and used a fine tool to scrape off a minuscule sample – thankfully, the vibration from the falling ch hadn't shattered the ancient artifact.
In less than a minute, Protheus delivered the dating results—
"Sample analysis indicates this glass stele was manufactured approximately two hundred and fifty thousand years ago."
"Can you decipher the inscription?" Michael asked imdiately.
He couldn't believe the previous occupants would leave an inscribed monunt here for no reason. It had to contain crucial information – perhaps even details about the Herrscher of Finality's powers, secrets his own fragnted future knowledge hadn't yet revealed?
Though, a part of him knew that was unlikely. If humanity had truly faced the Final Herrscher and managed to ascertain its abilities, they likely wouldn't have had the ti or opportunity to calmly carve inscriptions afterward.
"I cannot guarantee full accuracy without comprehensive linguistic analysis," Protheus replied cautiously. "However, theoretically, as long as the language originates from Homo sapiens sapiens developntal lines, I should be able to achieve a partial or approximate translation through comparative analysis with known linguistic databases."
This was exactly what i had been waiting for. She used a handheld scanner to capture high-resolution images of the entire inscription, uploading the data directly to Protheus. Then, she stepped back, waiting patiently for the AI to work its magic.
"Sothing's wrong," i murmured, frowning deeply.
"What is it?" Michael asked. He too felt an instinctive sense of unease, sothing fundantally discordant, though he couldn't quite pinpoint it.
He glanced at Elysia; she wore a similar expression of faint confusion.
i pushed her glasses up her nose, hesitating slightly before voicing her concern: "Two hundred and fifty thousand years ago... Modern archaeology has found traces of hominids dating back that far, but as you both know, those were largely proto-human species like Homo erectus or Neanderthals. Our direct ancestors, Homo sapiens sapiens – anatomically modern humans – are generally believed to have only erged and begun migrating out of Africa around one hundred thousand years ago. Let put it another way... If a human civilization capable of confronting the Herrscher of Finality existed on Earth a quarter of a million years ago, why is there absolutely no corresponding archaeological evidence?"
"Hmm? Maybe these ruins were built by Moon people after all?" Elysia quipped, trying once more to inject so levity.
But i, trapped in her hyper-rational analysis mode, didn't even register the joking tone. "Impossible," she countered automatically. "If an advanced civilization had originated on the Moon, it's highly unlikely this would be their only major settlent... Granted, our exploration of the Moon is far from complete. But more importantly, this site shows no evidence of large-scale agriculture or sustainable food production. It couldn't have supported a self-sufficient civilization..."
Her words tumbled out faster and faster, her mind racing through logical contradictions, until Protheus thankfully interrupted her—
"Doctor, the preliminary decryption of the inscription is complete."
The AI's synthesized voice sounded... hesitant? Strange, almost uncertain. The three of them frowned simultaneously, their unease deepening – but not because of Protheus's odd tone.
The entire decryption process had taken less than a single minute. What did that imply?
It ant the language inscribed on the ancient stele was extrely similar to the languages they currently used.
It clearly originated from the sa linguistic root – that of Homo sapiens sapiens.
But modern humans only left Africa 100,000 years ago! How could this possibly be???
However, as the translated text began scrolling onto the projected display... i's pupils contracted violently. It wasn't really an 'inscription' in the monuntal sense. It read more like the final, hastily written page of a diary. Or perhaps... a last will and testant. And in that instant, all the baffling contradictions suddenly, chillingly, resolved themselves—
To you who co after, greetings.
By the ti you read this inscription, our era has surely long since ended.
Yet, I am still glad—if soone truly can read these words, then it ans, at the very least, the traces of our existence have not completely vanished. The fla of human civilization has ultimately not been extinguished.
But simultaneously, this also likely ans that your civilization now faces circumstances similar to our own, doesn't it?
A small piece of advice for you: the final Herrscher, the Herrscher of Finality, will appear shortly after the Twelfth Herrscher is defeated. Its point of arrival is fixed. Yes, I'm certain you've seen the large crater just outside.
Alright, Προμηθε... ah, that is, my artificial intelligence partner, she is urging again to keep this brief. After all, with the Honkai Energy concentration reaching this level, the battle should be starting any mont now. We don't have much ti left.
I hope Kevin and the others achieve victory. Though, if they do succeed, I'll definitely destroy this inscription before they return, hehe.
-- Dr. I
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