Chapter 454: To Know Or Not To Know
N’bayé continued checking each black box to listen to its audio message.
Her strong desire to know more caused her to be unrelenting, she just wanted to fully understand everything that had happened or was happening.
What were monkeys? Who was the Highest Hill? What calamity did the owners of this facility face? Why were there so many hibernation pods?
And why was there a room filled with short or long audio messages at all?
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"We’ve been blessed with wisdom and understanding beyond measure, yet we were not smart enough to understand.
Perhaps, it is our destiny to be used as a scapegoat, to let the other races know that there is a limit.
Our hunger for knowledge, our desire to be enlightened, it has doomed us all. Perhaps they were right, we shouldn’t have tried to do what we did.
We threatened the foundations of all that was known, not known, and to be known.
It’s a shame truly, if we were allowed to succeed, who knows what we could have accomplished.
If you are listening to this, I hope you never do what we did.
Don’t try to know everything, because if you do, eventually you’ll know everything there is to know about the universe.
And once that happens, you will become curious about what mysteries lie beyond what we know.
By then, you will be too far gone to be saved."
...]
Another vague audio message. N’bayé memorized it and replayed it in her mind over and over again.
She knew that anyone could have found this place but it felt like a warning to her specifically.
Or perhaps, a warning to people like her.
N’bayé acknowledged all this data and analyzed them with ruthless efficiency, storing them in her memory bank for later use.
She continued listening to all the messages until she was done with the last one.
Suddenly...
[Password chips 333/333: Complete.
Unlocking interface...
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N’bayé stared at the terminal’s screen, then at the small black box in her hand. She never would have guessed that all the little boxes were actually password chips to unlock the terminal.
It was a strange method of setting up a password too.
If it wasn’t N’bayé, if it was someone else who didn’t have that deep curiosity and was impatient, they wouldn’t have been able to do it.
Someone like Diane or Zabita would have given up after the tenth audio message.
Soon, the terminal’s screen changed and the virtual keypad adjusted too.
A clear interface, interactive, and minimalistic. There were a few icons and folders containing digital items on the screen.
Seeing this, N’bayé immediately leaned down and began typing away. This was what she had been hoping to find all along.
She hoped that it would contain what she wanted.
It did.
N’bayé’s eyes brightened like a child who had been given an early morning birthday gift.
One folder contained a long list of videos, these videos were visual logs of different genetic experiments performed on different creatures, at least, that’s what was mentioned in the folder’s description.
There was another folder containing blueprints for different machines and megastructures.
Another folder contained languages. There was one that had a detailed log of an ancient civilization’s history from rise to fall.
Another folder was filled with detailed studies of scientific principles like physics, biology, and chemistry.
The next folder had a step-by-step guide for learning mathematics. From the simplest to the most complex concepts.
One of the folders even contained a vast encyclopedia of different creatures of the universe and the respective laws they were affiliated with.
The folder that N’bayé found most interesting was one that was labeled ’Project Ape’.
There were many folders within folders, topics within topics. Enough to keep someone like N’bayé busy for a very long time.
The last folder was a bit shorter and was about the relationship between multiversal travel and quantum mechanics.
It was short and seemed to have been incomplete. N’bayé browsed through this one.
It seems that the civilization never got the chance to finish its research.
N’bayé sighed, suppressing the genuine excitement she had within her.
Now that she had seen what she wanted she was a lot calmer.
For some reason, the deal she had made with Kael flashed in her mind at this time.
When she and Kael had first met each other, they had established a conditional contract that could be broken by N’bayé within ten years if she saw fit.
The premise of that contract was that Kael gave her the knowledge she wanted.
Unfortunately, Kael had been busy most times and the last hands-on research he did was with Isaiah and the limit seal.
Most times, N’bayé and her team were the ones researching while Kael just jumped in once in a while.
Technically, if N’bayé wanted to leave Kael’s pride and break the contract now, she could.
Nobody would be able to stop her.
After all, she just got a butt load of data and information that would satisfy her curiosity for a while. Not just Kael, even the entire Lion Civilization might not be able to give N’bayé what this terminal just gave her.
She could walk out of Kael and Ozia’s life, just like that.
But N’bayé didn’t.
She thought back to the moment she first entered the facility, when she laid her eyes on the four anti-power rockets.
The first thing that came to her mind back then was that the rockets might be useful to Kael. Kael was the first person she thought of.
"I seem to have a heart, after all," N’bayé muttered indifferently. She silently pushed the thought of leaving Kael away from her mind as if it never existed then returned her focus to the terminal.
Now, the only thought on her mind was how to remove all these things from the underground facility.
She had not forgotten about the hibernation pods that contained those strange creatures within.
N’bayé typed away, using her knowledge of the computer systems that humans had to operate the terminal.
She found the settings and was able to change the password. She created a really long password that only she would know.
After that, she turned off the terminal and left the room filled with little black hard drives.
It wasn’t like the terminal was going anywhere.
N’bayé continued to explore the facility, also counting the hibernation pods with every glance.
They were all sleeping...or dead.
N’bayé circled the facility and didn’t find any other entrance other than the one she had passed through.
"If they woke up, how would they all get out?" N’bayé asked herself. She imagined that she was an architect or engineer who would build this type of facility.
In such a scenario, where was the best place for the sleeping creatures to go once they woke up?
But N’bayé realized that she did not know the characteristics and behavior of these creatures. And from the audio messages, she guessed that this place was meant to prevent anything from going in or coming out.
And if the civilization was as advanced as N’bayé assumed it to be, then this was probably not the only planet to have this facility.
It also meant that this place might not be that important, just one of the many holding cells.
The front entrance was probably the only entrance.
"Then how did humanity originate from this place?" N’bayé asked.
She remembered that one of the doors had been opened slightly.
Now that she thought about it, if those creatures were running away from something, not all of them might have been able to make it and some of them would have been stuck outside.
It would explain why that door had been open, because some of the so-called monkeys had remained outside the facility.
As N’bayé walked around the facility, her powerful magus mind pieced together the patterns.
But as she made assumptions, more and more questions popped up in her head.
There was just so much to unpack.
With nothing left to do here, N’bayé turned into a golden streak of light and rushed out of the facility.
////
Kael stood over the colossal body of the war dragon. He didn’t roar out in victory as there was no need.
His eyes stared down coldly at the dragon who was barely alive. The War Dragon’s body began to shrink rapidly, losing all the strength he had in him.
As the dragon got weaker, Kael’s active Hunter State deactivated.
Soon, the War Dragon had returned to the regular size for most dragons and Kael was now a three-meter-tall golden lion.
It was hard to imagine that these two had nearly destroyed the continent just now. If not that Kael was able to end the fight very quickly, the damage to Planet Kareem would have been tremendous.
The heavenly beacon that was once inside the dragon commander floated beside Kael.
This heavenly beacon wasn’t the same as the heavenly beacons the lions used. This one was linked to the Dragon civilization and could open a heavenly gate to the Draconic Heaven.
Now, it belongs to Kael.