Chapter 375: Playing with Blocks
Coop tentatively exited the hexagonal compartment, feeling as if crossing the threshold into the rest of the ship was akin to leaving a protective trench to enter no man’s land. The only reason he forced himself to move was that he didn’t want to waste more time while his companions dealt with the Eradication Protocol. Really, he felt like exploring an alien spaceship shouldn’t have been his responsibility at all.
After he was out in the open, it took several moments for the feeling of exposure to diminish, though it didn’t completely fade. He had an uncanny sense that this was the kind of place most would want to escape from rather than sneak into, but he knew better than let his feelings ruin an opportunity for Ghost Reef. In that sense, he had to press forward.
He slowly spun around once he rose to his feet, gazing into the distance. He was having a difficult time fully comprehending the internal space of the Ark, finding the size of the megastructure to be nothing short of bewildering. It was basically an entirely new frontier contained within what must have been an alien spaceship, greatly exceeding his imagination in terms of scope. The place was absolutely dizzying.
The air was unusually crisp, the temperature low enough to reveal his nervous breaths. He couldn’t tell if it was deliberately controlled or if the vessel was that insulated. He imagined that at its exterior peak, it would naturally be cold due to the altitude, but surely it would be hotter across the rest of its surface.
On his second revolution with his eyes wide and head tilted slightly as he sought to understand the confines of the ship, he wondered why he was the only human there. It seemed secure enough. It was so large and so empty, he could confidently say that every person would have comfortably fit, even before the assimilation decimated their population. There wasn’t a single enemy in sight, the mana was nice and calm, and every human could have even had their own personal hexagonal compartments.
Wasn’t that obviously the point of this so-called Ark? To survive the flood of mana? It made perfect sense to him based on the name the Exiles had provided.
With the thought ringing in his head, he bent to help Lyriel pull herself out of the compartment, then reached down to give Palisteon a chance to climb out. None of them were actively utilizing mana, subconsciously avoiding unnecessary actions after Coop had run down a list of imagined problems before they explored any further. Naturally, alien security systems were chief among his worries as they effectively trespassed on a spaceship, but Lyriel was less concerned given his possession of the key. Still, they all behaved as they explored further.
Coop was the first to cross the border between tiles, stepping onto the next cell, aiming vaguely toward the horizontal tube in the center. Really, it was the only notable feature they could identify, so the plan was to follow the direction of its internal mana current and hope that it led to the core, as Lyriel called it. Coop figured they were looking for the bridge of a ship, or some alien equivalent that would have a control panel for him to fiddle with, and somehow that was meant to save his island.
He had a thousand questions bouncing around in his head, but he doubted any of them could be easily answered. Who built the Ark? Where exactly did it come from? What was its actual purpose? Was it really for them?
Lyriel had been unable to confidently answer any of his questions except that she admitted there was one on every planet in the galactic community. Even that simple fact boggled his mind, considering that meant there were, at a minimum, hundreds of billions of these Arks. A handful of them might have exhausted every necessary material on planet Earth for its construction, so billions seemed incomprehensible.
Otherwise, Lyriel surmised that the system had provided the Arks for the Exiles as it continued its clash with mana itself. That may be what she believed, but Coop wasn’t so sure and he had argued as such before they continued. It stank of the same contradictions as the Avatar of the System being disconnected from the very thing she had claimed to represent, but if it meant protecting Ghost Reef, he didn’t really care how he accomplished his task. Lyriel promised that in this, their goals were absolutely aligned. She wanted nothing more than to protect every living being, now and in the future, from the oppression of mana. She had gambled her long life on the mere chance of achieving that goal, so he really didn’t doubt her sincerity. He just wondered about the chances that she was misguided at any point.
Just as he and the pair of aliens reached the surface of the neighboring hexagonal tile, having decided to trek across the interior on foot, the top of their original compartment slid back over the opening with a smooth whooshing sound before reconnecting in the exact center. The seal covered the singular gap in the tiled surface that fully encompassed the interior of the ship, creating a uniform veneer as far as the eye could see.