Chapter 380: Seed of Knowledge
Coop jumped to a dozen different conclusions when presented with the panopticon configuration of the Ark. With Presence of Mind, he was detecting repressed auras from every single exposed compartment, whether they were dark red or golden yellow. Was the Ark actually a prison? Some kind of people-sized insectarium? Cold storage?
He needed the full story, but he was in the wrong place to actually receive it. Instead, he only managed to glean that it was absolutely not the sanctuary that they had hoped for.
What was inside the countless cells? That was the initial question leaving him feeling a deep sense of dread. Admittedly, he panicked a bit, thinking that maybe the ship was meant to capture humans even though it didn’t make sense for that to be the case.
Mana and the system were two distinct entities. The forces of mana would not be filling a system-aligned ship unless Lyriel was very wrong about some fundamental truths within the galactic community. But Coop thought her being mistaken had always been a possibility.
His mind raced as he subconsciously tried to confirm his fears, stuck on what might have been the worst case scenario where all those cells were being filled by abducted humans. If people were already being caught by the forces of mana and trapped in the compartments, he had to free them. His fingers itched as he barely held back from summoning his spear and taking more direct action. Only the doubt harbored by the tiny logical portion of his mind held him back.
There were way too many cells just for humanity. Even if every person had survived the assimilation, they would barely occupy a fraction of the available compartments. Every human that ever existed, throughout all of history, still wouldn’t make a dent in the overall capacity. Any number he tried assigning to the compartments filling the interior space of the ship felt like an underestimation. The absolute numbers were completely ludicrous.
Even just the yellow cells in the section nearest to him and Lyriel would already represent almost every surviving human, and they were a small fraction of the smallest inner ring. The thought didn’t help to calm him down, instead giving him the impression that the Eradication Protocol might have been too efficient and the fighting on the surface was already concluding. Still, he couldn’t envision a situation where so many people were somehow caught. The people he knew would have fought to the end, especially after struggling through the start of the assimilation.
Then again, how much did he really know about the forces of mana? Maybe he had been underestimating their capability, like how they had judged the Icons of Mana on a mere fraction of their power. With the Eradication Protocol enacted, perhaps they had different plans than what the name implied. As illogical as it seemed, such a scenario didn’t seem impossible when presented with such a display.
It didn’t make sense for the ship to have been designed with humanity in mind in the first place. It was ancient, probably launched long before more primitive life emerged from within the primordial seas of a much younger Earth.
But it could still be capturing people even if it wasn’t designed for them. Maybe there were species that actually required that many cells, and maybe it would simply add humanity to its collection. He bit his lip as he thought it might make sense and actually aligned more with the observations he and his advisors had made regarding the limits imposed on them through the assimilation.
Where unevolved species were raised up by the addition of the system, humanity had been crippled. It was like an EMP had been used to disable any potential threats while they were judged for integration. What exactly happened to the ones who failed? Lyriel said extinction, but what was this?
He could feel his hackles raising as his heartbeat spiked. He really wasn’t sure what to believe. In the end he would fight the system, the forces of mana, the Ark, and whoever else threatened Ghost Reef.