Chapter 6: Planetary Wars
For two weeks, they kept experimenting and studying my body at Fort Vanguard, the planetary defense force base for experimental weapon testing and exercises. I cooperated with them as much as I could. I wasn’t particularly clueless about the methods they were using to study my body. Back at school, I did my best to gain as much knowledge as I could. I was driven to reach the mark my father had created before he disappeared.
To prove his innocence, I wanted to gain power and recognition the same way he did. So I began studying his work. But despite my efforts, I still had trouble understanding his research.
A few days at the military base and I noticed something within me began to change. Not in a way I was expecting.
Every day, I began noticing changes in my body—things I couldn’t understand. For one thing, I stopped sleeping completely. No matter how much I tried to put myself to sleep, my mind refused. And being active all the time was difficult to get used to. To add to the strange list, my memories began changing. Details were being added to everything I remembered. They were becoming more vivid and clear, rewriting and putting the missing pieces together. After seeing something, I wasn’t forgetting it. And once you stop forgetting, curiosity kicks in.
That’s when I began reading books. Physics was at the top of my list, but I was reading any book I could find. I even learned a few different languages.
The more I read, the more I realized how much I didn’t know. Despite the newfound ability, I was still unable to understand how the serum worked or how I was able to survive the dose that was irrefutably fatal. That’s when I realized just what kind of effort my father had put in to understand all those books in his library. To come up with his theory of quantum gates
Going through his work, I discovered there were many things I didn’t know about him. So I asked Number One to tell me about the world my father was teleported to and the kind of people he found on the planet.
He told me that my father, together with a group of others caught up in the portal web, were all teleported to a planet called Rebirth. Aliens called Fayers are the only sentient beings who live on the planet. And since no living being could survive an unanchored jump from Rebirth to Earth, my father created a machine that could make the jump, equipped with the knowledge to operate the quantum drive and bring the message of the coming threat.
He told me that the Vodocks, who were coming to attack our planet, stood among the most intelligent sentient beings in the universe. And that they are a species with one sole desire: to conquer lesser biologicals. They sought satisfaction from blood and the subjugation of lesser life. They had the knowledge and technology to build the deadliest weapons in the galaxy, but they decided to use a different weapon instead. A weapon to amplify their already superior bodies—a drug to increase their physical abilities and use their fists to destroy their prey. A serum from long ago called ELB—‘Eternal Life Binder’—the limitless amplifier.
I became scared listing to his description of Vodocks
He paused, his voice softening. “This serum, isn’t just a drug. It’s a bridge between magic and reality, a key to unlocking what lies beyond the physical world. In different galaxies, it’s known by different names. Some call it the ‘Mana Awakener,’ a catalyst that lets you tap into mystical energies like the mages in old fantasy tales. Others name it ‘Aether Essence’ or ‘Spirit Catalyst,’ it binds the mundane to the arcane. Your father saw its potential not just as a weapon, but as a link to something greater.”
Hearing about the serum frightened me. If the enemies were coming with an army of super soldiers, how were we going to defeat them with the one vial of the serum we had?